filmland / By Charlie Myers

Disney’s Holiday Treat

Plus: Fat Braugher is one of the acting world’s great tragedies

(Nov. 29, 2007) Previews

There may only be two new openings on Friday, Nov. 30, but happily one of them is No Country for Old Men, based on the dark novel by Cormac McCarthy and adapted and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen. With a cast that includes Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin and Woody Harrelson in a story by one of my favorite contemporary novelists and direction from the Coens, who have never made a film I didn’t enjoy, this is as close to a no-miss film as I can imagine. The story involves a hunter (Brolin) who finds $2 million in cash and some heroin in West Texas and a totally evil man (Bardem) who leaves a wake of dead bodies and destruction on his way to who knows where. A Charlie pick of the year. Rated R for strong graphic violence and some language. 132 m. At the Broadway.

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Also opening is the thriller Awake, about a surgery patient (Hayden Christensen) who remains awake during his operation when something goes wrong with the anesthesia. Since he is paralyzed, his troubled wife (Jessica Alba) must make some tough decisions. The film is a first feature from writer/director Joby Harold, and co-stars Lena Olin and Terrence Howard. It’s always good to see Olin. Rated R for language, an intense disturbing situation and brief drug use. 94 m. At the Broadway and Mill Creek.

Reviews

LARS AND THE REAL GIRL:Lars and the Real Girl is not a great film but it has imagination and inventiveness, two qualities sorely lacking in most of this fall’s major releases.

No one would ever mistake this indie feature for a major release. Its offbeat subject matter, which teeters between comedy and seriousness, and the excellent non-flashy acting alone would disqualify it from any Oscar consideration.

The focus of the story is Lars (a spot-on, as usual, Ryan Gosling) who has somehow achieved chronological adulthood without really traversing the passage to “manhood.” Although he co-owns his deceased parent’s house with his older brother Gus (Paul Schneider, The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford), he lives alone in the garage and has to be tackled in the driveway by Gus’ wife Karin (a very good Emily Mortimer, Dear Frankie; Match Point) in order to come to the house for dinner, a meal he barely touches and from which he escapes quickly.

At work, he studiously avoids the advances of co-worker Margo (an excellent Kelli Garner, The Aviator). Salvation of sorts comes in the form of a mail-order life-size anatomically correct doll that he names Bianca. With the arrival of Bianca, Lars’ social life blossoms and he seems oblivious to the thunderstruck reactions of Gus and Karin and most of the inhabitants of the rest of the small unnamed but probably Upper Midwestern town. Gradually, however, the townspeople accept Bianca, raising the somewhat obvious question of who exactly is the “real girl.” Lars takes Bianca to doctor/therapist Dagmar (the always excellent Patricia Clarkson), who realizes that “treating” Bianca is actually the way to relate to Lars, and Bianca begins to “volunteer” at various events around town.

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