filmland / By North Coast Journal Staff

Holiday Downers

Inside the week’s pretty good crop of deep winter movies

(Jan. 1, 2009) Previews

The only film opening this week is The Reader, a post-WWII dramatic love story starring Ralph Fiennes and Kate Winslet. A young Berg (Fiennes) engages in a brief and passionate love affair with Hannah (Winslet), a woman twice his age, until Hannah disappears mysteriously. After years apart, Berg is stunned to learn that Hannah is a defendant in the Nazi war crime trials. Secrecy abounds in this Holocaust drama. Rated R for some scenes of sexuality and nudity. 123m. At the Broadway.

Reviews

DOUBT: For some, Catholicism and all of its glorious rituals induce the heebie-jeebies. Be advised that Doubt, the movie based on John Patrick Shanley’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play, might be a film that you should avoid if you can’t handle Catholic doom. On the other hand, if your memories of those years spent in Catholic school haven’t left you with church phobias that eternally haunt you, then this film is certainly worth the admission price at one of Humboldt’s fine cinematic establishments.

The story is set in Brooklyn in the year following the assassination of president John F. Kennedy, a year filled with much doubt and fear for Americans. The viewer is taken right into the heart of St. Nicholas, a straight-up Catholic academy serving the neighborhood’s predominantly Irish and Italian youth. Meryl Streep (Mamma Mia!, Rendition) plays Sister Aloysius, the school’s principal, and she is all that you could expect of a woman at the helm a religious school in the ’60s. Sister A. is one tough and intimidating lady who rocks some wicked hip pious gear. Unfortunately, all is not good in the sister’s hood.

There’s a new priest on the block named Father Flynn, portrayed by Philip Seymour Hoffman (Charlie Wilson’s War, Capote). This New Age, debonair leader is a bit too cozy with the academy’s young men for Sister A.’s liking. Sister A. warns the other sisters at the school about the new priest because she wisely knows that suspicions of this nature are not good to ignore. Sure enough, a young and innocent instructor dubbed Sister James, portrayed by Amy Adams (Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day), picks up on some abnormal and scandalous behavior going on with Flynn and the school’s only black student. Sister J. tells Sister A., and it’s on.

Sister A. is readily convinced that Father Flynn has in fact committed an act of molestation. She bravely takes on the touchy task of trying to prove, and subsequently deal with, the very real possibility that Father Flynn engaged in misconduct with the young male student. Given her position in society, the school, the church, etc., she is faced with quite a serious, not to mention uphill battle. For real. Her hunt for the truth brings up heavy themes of obedience, child abuse, homosexuality and sexism. Sister A. says that “in the pursuit of wrongdoing, one steps away from God,” but that doesn’t seem to stop her. She is one determined sister with a cause.

Her conquest to save the boy and the other young men of the school from the perceived, yet unproven threat leads to much unrest. Guess what. Doubt will stay with you throughout it all. Rated PG-13 for thematic material. 104m. At the Broadway.

1 2 3 4 5 NEXT PAGE >SHARE