Gone Girl

**Spoiler Alert**

Director: David Fincher/Starring: Ben Affleck, Rosamund Pike, Neil Patrick Harris, Tyler Perry, Carrie Coon, Patrick Fugit and Kim Dickens

If you're like me, you may be one of five people in our solar system who hasn't read Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl. It might not be surprising to learn a Yanomamo indian living within the densest tangles of the Amazon rainforest has read it. For us five who haven't, we have David Fincher's adaptation.

Fincher has a proven track record with the dark and edgy. But even the talent behind the terrific The Social Network and Zodiac can stumble into silliness, like the hard-to-take-seriously Fight Club and the pointless, time-wasting The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. So in which camp does Gone Girl lie? It pains me to say it's settled comfortably among the latter, which is too bad, considering the film version of the novel has been one of the most anticipated adaptations in recent memory.

How does the film go so wrong? For starters, the first half-hour to forty-five minutes contains the most unnatural sounding, glib dialogue I've heard in awhile. It doesn't help that Fincher can't get the actors to overcome the deficiencies. It also doesn't help that Rosamund Pike, who I assume was trying to lend her character an air of mystery, speaks in such a low, flat voice that not only sounded unnatural but was distracting. It's difficult to establish character when the main female protagonist's utterances calls to mind the Siri voice heard on electronic devices.

It seems almost superfluous to offer a movie synopsis when the plot is probably familiar to everyone in all hemispheres. It is also necessary to say very little because even a small helping of the plot will give most of the movie away.

Ben Affleck plays Nick Dunne, a former journalist and college professor who finds himself unemployed and without prospects though he owns a bar which was financed with a chunk of his wife's trust fund. Nick's seemingly perfect mate is Amy (the lovely Rosamund Pike), whose parents are authors of a famous children's series.

When the story begins, we see Nick visiting his watering-hole, where his twin sister Margo (Carrie Coon) tends bar. As they banter and jive, Nick discusses his five-year anniversary with Amy before he returns home. Upon entering his house, he finds a living room table overturned and broken. Nick phones the police, who arrive soon after. Following Detective Rhonda Boney (Kim Dickens) and her partner Jim Gilpin's (Patrick Fugit) investigation of the premises, Amy is presumed kidnapped. Among the clues left in the house is a white envelope that reads "clue 1" which Nick explains is part of an anniversary treasure hunt of sorts which was conceived by his wife. The white envelope is one of several the detectives and Nick will find over the course of the story. The envelopes will eventually incriminate him in some manner or another.

As the investigation unfolds, Amy's disappearance becomes fodder for the national media, particularly for tabloidy shows that devour sensational news stories. Initially supportive, the public begins to suspect Nick after a photo begins to circulate of himself posing with a poster of his wife; one that shows him grinning incongruently. Why anyone would be stupid enough to allow themselves to grin in such a situation and be photographed robs the plot of credibility and the film of some logic.

As the public turns against Nick and his guilt becomes a given in their perception, he is forced to hire a hot-shot lawyer who specializes in defending creeps and lowlifes named Tanner Bolt (Tyler Perry). Unable to afford the $100,000 retainer fee, Bolt agrees to represent him anyway.

As the anti-Nick sentiment reaches a feverish pitch, evidence accumulates to warrant his arrest. But a dramatic plot-turn reveals his wife is alive and well and hardly the victim of a kidnapping. It becomes abundantly clear she is plotting Nick's downfall.

All through the film, we hear Amy's voice as she narrates a personal diary she keeps which will, like the white envelopes, incriminate Nick and is yet another carefully crafted scheme to ruin him. Amy's history of plotting against her boyfriends and lovers soon comes to light as Nick begins to doubt his wife's kidnapping. At this point in the film, Amy is no longer the victim but a cunning, conniving hellcat who will leave no vindictive stone unturned to send her husband behind bars or to the gallows.

I found her motives somewhat weak and unconvincing. Why she bears a passionate hatred for men seems a little vague and the psychological history that fuels her anger is feeble. I'm sure it comes across plausibly in the novel but Flynn's script doesn't address the issues cogently.

The movie gets better as the story progresses after the terrible dialogue exhausts itself. But it doesn't get much better; only more heated. Much rides on Rosamund Pike's performance, in which she plays a calculating, disturbed psychotic reasonably well but there is something almost vaudevillian about it as if it's all played for laughs. Maybe that's Fincher's intention.

Only the ending is a surprise, as we get some sense of the weird, psychological bond Amy and Nick share though it barely clears the logic crossbar.

I really liked Kim Dickens performance as the tough cop and Tyler Perry in the lawyer role. It's nice to see him play something other than Medea and play it well.

It is interesting to note that apart from Tanner Bolt, all the people who impact Nick's life are women: the lead investigator, the two T.V. personalities who interview Nick, his sister who runs his bar, his mistress and Amy herself. What kind of statement are Flynn--and indirectly Fincher--making about women in society? Is it some kind of message about the transfer of power between the sexes? Nick appears as mostly passive next to the various female personalities. All the women challenge or threaten him at some point in the film, which is also quite interesting. Even the redneck couple who menace and rob Amy are exhorted to do so by the woman, who freely admits her culpability; the husband is merely an instrument. Nick's puzzling decision at the film's end suggests his wife holds a greater influence over him than we're led to believe.

The film didn't leave me with a feeling of unease the way Zodiac or The Social Network did. It made me chuckle derisively a bit and I shook my head, feeling a little perplexed but it elicited little else. If it isn't a good film, at least the ending avoids a happy, blandly conventional resolution.

Flynn has little to worry about; failed adaptations never reflect negatively on the novels. Gone Girl book sales should be remain fairly robust. Maybe I'll give the book a try. Maybe I'll ask the Yanomamo indians if they've seen the movie.

The Equalizer

**Spoiler Alert**

Director: Antoine Fuqua/Starring: Denzel Washington, Marton Czokas, Chloe Grace Moretz, Bill Pullman and Melissa Leo

What is there that Robert McCall, the mysterious habitue of a neighborhood cafe and employee of a home improvement store can't do? He dispenses health tips to his fellow employees, helps train an overweight co-worker for a security guard test and generously offers inspirational, you-can-be-whatever-you-want-to-be advice to a call girl seeking a better life. He lives his life in an orderly manner that would make most obsessive-compulsives shudder. Not enough for you? Well, he also has little patience for the profanity his Home-Mart colleagues utter and chides them for their junk-food intake. The man is so good and straight he urinates holy water.

Oh, and one more thing; he can also thrash (to put it mildly) a room full of Russian underworld slimes who threaten his call girl friend Teri (Chloe Grace Moretz), with a frightening array of martial arts and weapon skills and can repurpose mundane home-improvement merchandise for lethal ends.

Can such a man possibly exist in this world? In this dimension? In director Antoine Fuqua's (Training Day) world, he can.

The Equalizer, Fuqua's monumentally silly action flick, is enjoyable at times but if gritty realism is your thing, then brother (or sister), you've come to the wrong place. It features yet another character so common in multiplexes these days; a seemingly ordinary man who happens to be a former CIA operative; one who has retained his deadly training.

Denzel Washington plays the aforementioned Robert McCall, a man with god-like unflappability who lives alone and leads a life that is deceptively prosaic. He works a shift at Home Mart while his insomniac evenings leads him to his local cafe, where he habitually occupies the same seat and drinks tea made from a teabag he carries on his person. McCall arranges the book he brings along, the silverware and his napkin just right; leaving nothing to casual randomness. His book is The Old Man and the Sea; a selection chosen from a 100-Novels-Everyone-Should-Read list that his former wife worked most of her way through. He chats about Hemingway's novel with Teri, who like McCall, is a cafe regular.

After seeing Teri sitting at the counter on consecutive nights, McCall discovers she is being pimped by a Russian scumbag named Vladimir. Ever the paladin, McCall offers to buy Teri's freedom from Vladimir after he sees her battered face following a beating she suffered at the Russian's hands.

McCall bravely enters Vladimir's office one night to bargain; offering a hefty sum. Vladimir and his minions are naturally contemptuous of McCall and his offer. Before McCall leaves the office, he locks the door then scans Vladimir's men in an almost-scientific manner before unleashing death; sparing no gruesome or sadistic means to accomplish his bloody goal.

McCall's brutal dispatch of Vladimir and his men comes to the attention of their boss, who deploys another heavily tatooed Russian named Teddy (Marton Csokas) to find the man responsible for the carnage. Teddy's specialty is troubleshooting for the underworld overlord and he executes his mission in a psychotically impassive, amoral and vicious manner, suffering no impediments.

The film becomes a cat and mouse game between Teddy and McCall that proceeds in a predictable, mechanical fashion until the preposterous final showdown inside the Home Mart, where Teddy's thugs hold McCall's fellow employees hostage. Once McCall arrives, you can guess the rest.

The one and only scene I found deliriously entertaining was McCall's confrontation with Vladimir and his men. The fact that he actually times the violent bloodletting speaks volumes about his obsession for order. Alas, the rest of the movie is what it is.

I can't account for the casting of Melissa Leo and Bill Pullman, who have brief, thankless and bland roles as McCall's former associates. As talented as Denzel Washington is, he is no stranger to slumming, but this script is even more of a slum-stroll than he's accustomed to. Chloe Grace Moretz's role as the hooker-with-musical-ambitions is as thin as frost while Marton Csokas' tattooed torso probably has more detail than his character description.

As always with films like The Equalizer, absurdities in narrative and character are taken a bit too seriously. The film could have used some of the self-aware silliness we find in The Expendables series.

Hey, at least we finally have a hero who reads books! Why has that never happened before? I guess it's pretty tough to imagine Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzeneggar or Bruce Willis cracking the spine of Don Quixote--one of the other books McCall enjoys in the cafe.

Was I mistaken in believing a sequel was hinted at? Why bother speculating; it's as certain as a sunrise.

The Maze Runner

**Spoiler Alert**

Director: Wes Ball/Starring: Dylan O'Brien, Will Poulter, Blake Cooper, Thomas Brodie Sangster, Kaya Scodelario and Patricia Clarkson

Continuing the teens-in-dystopia story trend, Wes Ball's first feature film The Maze Runner bucks the reverse gender type-casting we've seen in The Hunger Games and Divergent with it's legion of male characters.

Movie audiences are threatened with genre-fatigue and if the thought of sitting through one more film of this stripe induces groaning, one can breath easier knowing The Maze Runner brings something new and thrilling to the table.
Some elements of the genre are familiar; the young individual's struggle against a government or Big Brother-like entity he or she is almost powerless to comprehend or effectively fight; the struggle to prove oneself to peers, and the realization that said individual is exceptional in some way, which is revealed in the course of the story.

But Wes Ball's film, unlike its aforementioned cousins, relies heavily on mystery; much of it cleverly witheld from the audience until late in the story. The who or what behind the mystery is what fuels the narrative engine; keeping us riveted and engaged.

Dylan O'Brien plays Thomas, a young man suddenly deposited into a community of males mostly his age by way of an elevator that rises from below ground to the surface of what is called The Glade. Thomas is unable to offer the boys who pull him from the lift his name, for it is common for new arrivals to not remember their names or identities.

What exactly is The Glade? We (and Thomas) learn it is a lush, sprawling plot of land bounded by towerering walls of impenetrable-looking concrete the inhabitants can neither see over or climb. This strange place serves as a kind of prison whose purpose and design the boys/young men have yet to fathom.

Thomas meets the community leader Gally (Will Poulter); who is efficient, orderly and intolerant of anything or anyone that upsets the order he's helped maintain.

Life in the Glade seems utopian; the community grows its own crops, builds its own shelters and respects Gally's de facto leadership. But no utopia can truly be regarded as such when its inhabitants are denied access to the outer world, which is what motivates Thomas when he sees what appears to be an opening in one section of the massive, concrete wall. Before he can enter, he is stopped and warned about what lies outside the Glade. We learn an intricate maze, whose walls shift nightly, denies the boys escape from whatever and wherever they find themselves. Patrolling the maze are cyborg-like creatures called Grievers; a kind of spider-scorpion hybrid who are fast, nearly indestructible and deadly. As someone ominously states; noone has ever encountered a Griever and lived to tell the tale.

In the community, a group with a specific skill set are Maze-runners, who explore the maze daily in hopes of finding a way out. After Thomas defies the community rule about not venturing out into the maze, he encounters a Griever and barely escapes, though another runner is "stung" and nearly killed. Thomas' action earns him Gally's wrath, thus creating an adversarial relationship between the two young men. Gally sees Thomas' arrival as something inimical to the community while Thomas sees Gally's disdain for everything that disturbs the status quo as dangerous complacency. Thomas' regard for Gally is very reasonable, considering the leader's risk-aversion and his stubborn refusal to organize a more proactive escape.

One day, the community's attention is drawn to the lift and the arrival of another abductee. This time it is a female; one who knows Thomas' name, which perplexes and renders everyone suspicious. Elements from Thomas' past begin to appear in his dreams and memories and the young woman, Teresa (Kaya Scodelario) appears in his recollections, though he is as baffled as his Glade-mates as to the significance of her presence.

The film dispenses expository information thriftily, which helps stoke our curiosity. It is also refreshing to see characters employ their reasoning and wits as they close in on the mystery of the maze and who has plotted the Glade inhabitants' abduction. If the film has a socio-political agenda, it may be allegorized in the final shot, which carries a subtle, environmental message.

I can say no more about the plot lest I expose the mystery but I will say Thomas learns he and Teresa were unwitting or not-so-unwitting participants in theirs and the community's abduction.

The performances are sound. I especially liked Will Poulter as Gally; the Glade's source of menace and oppression. Dylan O'Brien also acquits himself well, giving us our first male Katniss Everdeen.

A plot-driven film like The Maze Runner tends not to place a high premium on visuals but the CGI-rendered Maze and Grievers look substantial and convincing.

The reasons behind the maze and the abductions stretch and strain plausibility but it is intriguing and we learn the whole story is but a teaser for the next installment in what will be--gasp!--a franchise. But unlike Divergent, whose future iterations threaten audiences with future drowsiness, The Maze Runner stimulates more curiosity and questions. Whether they can be satisfactorily answered is up to the filmmakers. We care what happens to the characters--an always elusive but crucial consideration when crafting a franchise. If a ludicrous plot fails the audience, a film can still be redeemed with compelling characters who think and feel. And if the creators of the Maze Runner franchise commit this seemingly obvious idea to heart and head, failure will most likely not be an option.

Before Snowfall

Director: Hisham Zaman/Starring: Abdullah Taher, Suzan Ilir and Bahar Ozen

Hisham Zaman's Before Snowfall is a brilliant jewel; a singular gem both original and captivating. It seems all the more incredible when one considers the extraordinary performances by the non-professional cast. That the story begins with the beauty of arid, deserty Iraqi-Kurdistan, unfolds in the blighted, city-streets of Istanbul and ends in a Norwegian wintry countryside is a testament to Zaman's feverish and expansive imagination. His film is unsentimental, immediate and powerful.

Zaman's film makes us a travelling companion to the protagonist Siyar (Abdullah Taher), a young man shouldering man-of-the-family duties for his mother and two sisters in a small village in Iraqi-Kurdistan. This rural world seems so far removed from that of iPads, iPhones and Twitter it could just as well be Alpha Centauri as a middle-eastern country.

Siyar's sister Nermin (Bahar Ozen), is to be married to the son of a wealthy and influential Kurd named Aga (Mohammed Tejir). Aga arrives in a convoy of cars and is attended by an intimidating entourage of male relatives, who are hosted by Siyar's family. It is particularly unnerving to see the young Siyar face a group of older men as they negotiate his sister Nermin's marriage to Aga's son.

Siyar discovers his sister is seeing a man not her fiance and before he can put a stop to the assignations, Nermin and her lover flee the village. Facing familial disgrace and dishonor, Siyar travels to Istanbul, where he learns his sister has taken up residence with her lover. With the powerful Aga's resources and information, Siyar is able to follow leads and gather information as to her whereabouts. It is tacitly acknowledged by all concerned that he means to kill Nermin to restore family honor.

Taher was well-cast. His intense, burning eyes and penetrating gaze are a perfect compliment to his monomaniacal committment to his mission, which he pursues with demonic determination.

After an associate of Aga's provides Siyar a room in a run-down hotel, he continues his search but with little luck. One day, while buying food from a street vendor, he is robbed by two street urchins, one of whom he chases with the same determination that brought him to Istanbul. After catching the thief, he learns his would-be robber is actually a girl named Evin, who he eventually befriends.

While Siyar searches for his sister, he is introduced to Evin's hardscrabble life; an existence defined by slumlife and petty theft.

Siyar manages to track Nermin, who sees that her knife-wielding brother means to kill her. In spite of Siyar's efforts, his sister manages a narrow escape. The next day, Siyar discovers his sister has left Istanbul for Berlin. When Evin learns of his imminent departure, she asks to follow him to Berlin, where she hopes find her father.

Their passage to Berlin comes only after a series of struggles, which are accomplished by dangerous, clandestine means. As they and other refugees brave the harrowing obstacles along the way, they are captured in a Greek forest by police who demand the name of their smuggler. Trying to spare Evin the police officers' humiliating demand to strip, Siyar names the smugglers; an act that will carry devastating repercussions.

Siyar discovers his sister has eluded him yet again in Berlin, which means crossing another border and searching another city; this time Oslo. Meanwhile, Siyar and Evin find her father, which proves to be a heart-rending disappointment. As a romantic attachment to Siyar burgeons, Evin follows him on his north-bound quest.

While Siyar meets with another contact in Oslo, a casual meeting between Evin and a stranger proves to be very ominous.

Siyar's search leads to an inevitable, unforeseen and tragic conclusion. We see how the fallout from Nermin's defiant disregard for tradition has a far-reaching, powerful and life-altering effect on her family and indirectly, Evin's relationship with Siyar.

I've seen few films in 2014 as good as Before Snowfall. It is a film with startling contrasts: The innocence of the rural vs the worldly experience of the urban, traditional values vs protean, moral relativism and circumscribed female freedom vs more unbounded female liberties, to mention a few.

The film also has us consider how Siyar is rigidly tethered to hidebound, cultural, moral codes; suffocating rules from which Nermin hopes to flee. How this morality is unreasonably conceived, dictated and enforced by males leaves Siyar, Nermin and their younger sister with little self-determination and few means to liberate themselves from said rules they are unable or unwilling to defy. Of course this can be weighed against Siyar and his culture's sacrosanct regard for family honor, whose transgression provides a reasonable pretext to kill--even family members.

It is also mind-boggling to measure the impact of Nermin's refusal to allow two parties of men to determine her future. More so is Siyar's fierce, unwavering pursuit of his goal and how the code he risks his life to protect and uphold clashes with the crude don't snitch code of the street.

Talented directors can coax a terrific performance from anyone; professionals and non-professionals alike. Zaman does so with consummate skill.

There is much about the film's visuals that will leave a lasting impression. Images of desert beauty mingle with shots of slum-decay and seedy, filthy backstreets. The opening scene of Siyar being mummified in plastic wrap in preparation for a smuggling is unforgettably surreal.
Before Snowfall is a masterfully told story; one not likely to take flight from someone's memory or imagination. It is a universe unto itself, one whose limitless reaches invite limitless interpretations.

Pride

:**Spoiler Alert**

Director: Matthew Warchus/Starring: Bill Nighy, Imelda Staunton, Dominic West and Paddy Considine

Based on the true story of the 1984 UK miner's strike, Pride dramatizes the unlikely alliance of the gay/lesbian group known as LGSM (Lesbian, Gays Support the Miners) and a Welsh mining town and the conflict that arose from the two disparate cultures uniting for a purpose. Identifying with the miner's mistreatment in the hands of an unsympathetic Thatcherite government, the LGSM starts a campaign to raise money for the strikers.

Led by a charismatic, young, gay man named Mark (Ben Schnetzer), the LGSM is formed as an activist group whose first campaign is to raise money for families of striking miners. The small group claims a gay/lesbian London bookstore as their center of operations.

The film firmly establishes the vehement anti-gay/lesbian climate of early mid-1980s'; showing us people who are very familiar with the hostility and violence their culture sometimes arouses.

The group chooses a small, Welsh mining town as a recipient of their fund-raising but are apprehensive; harboring no illusions about the virulent resistance they will most likely encounter. After the LGSM acquire a van to transport them to Wales, a young member of the group named Joe (George McKay) deceives his conservative parents into believing his trip is nothing more than a school-related school baking class. We know sooner or later his deception will be exposed, which adds a pinch of tension to a story already fraught.

As the group makes their way to the Welsh burg, the townsfolk prepare for LGSM's arrival. Though many are hospitably inclined, some fear the group and what they represent. Undaunted by anti-gay sentiment, some members of the community, lead by town representative Dai (Paddy Considine) embrace the group's altruistic agenda and their identity. Among the sympathetic citizens are Cliff (Bill Nighy) and Hefina (Imelda Staunton), who wield a certain measure of influence in the town.

The miners are naturally suspicious of the LGSM and some, as we might expect, are hostile but as the strike wears on and the miner's hardships mount, the town slowly begins to warm to the group and welcome their fundraising efforts.

While the group shuttles between London and Wales, Joe continues his deception until his mother uncovers evidence of his double life, which leads predictably to his alienation from his home. If the group is forced to contend with domestic intolerance, they also have to deal with the relatively new threat of AIDS, which hovers menacingly over the gay community.

Though the story takes place in the mid-80s', which isn't that far in the past, it is astonishing to see how far the western world has come in its attitudes about gay/lesbian rights. If all the battles have yet to be won, at least the film serves as a progress yardmarker.

The British have created a kind of niche for films like Pride; stories that deal with socio-political events but with the eccentric humor for which the English are known. Made in Dagenham and Pirate Radio are but a couple of examples.

I may have chuckled a couple of times but I found the drama a bit more compelling. Though the story is based on fact, it feels like everything about it is canned. I felt I needed only an impression of the characters to chart their actions and behaviors.

The performances are quite good. Ben Schnetzer is quite terrific as the determined realist of the group while Bill Nighy and Imelda Staunton are ever exceptional. Paddy Considine could play a pencil sharpener convincingly and make it compelling while Dominic West is also good as the elder gay man of the group who has endured too much intolerance to be altogether optimistic.

The end titles give us biographical information about what became of the various personalities; some successful in various causes, others tragically lost to AIDS. But in spite of the subject matter and its connection to real history, the film just seems like a well-done project rather than something excellently-done. The audience it will play to is the choir so it won't disappoint but won't please either. I would rather come away from a film hating it than feeling etherized indifference, which is my emotional response to Pride. It's an important story about issues that matter even now but that doesn't grant the movie free passage to the empyrean of dramatic/comedic excellence.

If the film had been American, the score would include triumphant orchestral blasts to queue our feelings of elation. That's really all that's missing from the film but bless the Brits for at least avoiding that annoying tendency.

A brother of mine used to say "It's there" whenever he was asked to express an opinion about something he for which he felt a passionate indifference. To assess Pride, one might say:

"It's not bad."
"It's not good."
"It's there."

The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Them

**Spoiler Alert**

Director: Ned Benson/Starring: Jessica Chastain, James McAvoy, Viola Davis, William Hurt, Isabelle Huppert, Bill Hader and Ciaran Hinds

The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Them is a variation of the film's two other incarnations; Her and Him, which tells the same story but from the different perspectives of the respective characters.

The film already suffers from an unfortunate title. If one had never seen a preview for director Ned Benson's feature film debut, one could think the story a sequel to the Yellow Submarine or a film related to the Beatles.

Jessica Chastain plays Eleanor Rigby, who was christened so after her father showed up for a Beatles reunion that turned out to be a hoax. I guess we can be grateful she wasn't named after some other Beatles' song; I don't think The Disappearance of Rocky Raccoon carries the same gravitas.

After the opening scene where we see Eleanor and her husband Conor Ludlow (James McAvoy) being carried away in the throes of love, we're immediately jarred by what follows. We see Eleanor in an over-the-shoulder shot as she walks along a bridge. She stops, then disappears offscreen. A bystander becomes horrified at what he sees and runs to prevent what becomes a suicide attempt though he fails to reach her in time. She narrowly escapes death after she is pulled from her would-be watery grave.

At this point we don't know why someone so in love would try to off themselves and it is to Benson's credit that he witholds the information, which keeps us intensely curious.

Eleanor, in a delicate emotional state, returns to her parents suburban home to convalesce. Her parents; Julian and Mary Rigby (William Hurt and Isabelle Huppert, respectively) her sister Katy and her nephew provide emotional support as Eleanor recovers.

Meanwhile, her estranged husband Conor desperately tries to keep his failing restaurant in the city afloat but he finds it difficult when his friend and underachieving, uninspired and apathetic chef Stuart (Bill Hader) is more an obstruction than an asset.

As Conor tries to reestablish contact with his wife, Eleanor tries to distract herself by enrolling in a class at city college. Her professor, Lillian Friedman (Viola Davis) was once a colleague of her father's. Lillian is suspicious of Eleanor's motives for taking her course, thinking it might be a lark but accepts her anyway. The two form a friendship over the course of the semester, meeting for coffee after class.

During a moment of subtle exposition, we learn the motive behind Eleanor's suicide attempt: the tragic death of her infant son.

The film does well introducing so many characters; arranging them like satellites around the main protagonists. Eleanor is drawn into the dramas of her family, which are slowly teased out; her father's fear of not providing proper paternal support, her mother's regret about giving up her music to raise a family and her sister Katy's single parent status. But we also learn a little about the people in Conor's life, particularly his father Spencer (Ciaran Hinds); a successful restaurateur who is the object of his son's scorn for his supposed disregard for Conor's mother.

One might think the loss of a child and the subsequent frayed marriage would be enough drama for one film but story insists everyone have their story, which deal with themes of parenting or the lack thereof. This poses a problem for the director; we're asked to feel empathy for so many characters whose stories deserve more time and attention than the film can possibly devote. Though Viola Davis is a powerful presence and her character worthy of screentime, Professor Friedman is little more than a repository of world-weary wisdom for Eleanor but in the end, she dispenses very little that is useful. The same problem applies to the other supporting actors; the three H's: Hurt, Huppert and Hinds, whose stock-in-trade is playing well-rounded characters with depth. If you cast actors as talented as H3, you better serve them characters deep as the Marianas Trench. But given their limited screentime, they are still fun to watch.

The same can be said of Jessica Chastain and James McAvoy. Chastain is a riveting presence in any film. Her luminous beauty and striking red hair almost distract us from her performance, which is typically accomplished. James McAvoy is equally fine but the film as a whole doesn't utilize any of the considerable talents to great effect. It creates interesting situations and backstories but somehow it only touches on them timidly.

It's an error in judgement to sell this movie as a romance. A critic's endorsement is seen on many of the movie posters for the film that read "One of the most romantic love stories ever." Aside from being ridiculous, hyperbolic praise, the statement is also misleading. I wouldn't call a film about a couple dealing with death of their infant a romantic love story, would you? Not that a movie of this ilk needs to avoid romance altogether but this isn't Roman Holiday. Maybe I'm being too unreasonable.

And I have no idea what the Beatles' song has to do with the themes or the narrative in the movie. The use of an iconic rock song in the title smacks of a gimmicky ploy to lure a certain audience. Aside from a few references, the song plays no thematic role in the film.

But ultimately, the problem with the film isn't its silly title. One of the film's major failings is its inability to make one feel anything--aside from a little pity--for Eleanor and Conor's emotional plight and shaky marriage. But I felt little else. I wasn't even interested in the will-they, won't--they issue the final scene addresses definitively.

The song Eleanor Rigby asks, "All the lonely people, where do they all belong?" My response: in a movie that isn't emotionally flat; one better suited to the considerable talents of the cast.

The Skeleton Twins

**Spoiler Alert**

Director: Craig Johnson/Starring: Kristen Wiig, Bill Hader, Ty Burrell and Luke Wilson

The Skeleton Twins is pure independent cinema in every atom of every frame. That isn't a knock but it often feels like it was fitted for an independent film suit before it became a movie. But director Craig Johnson's film can't be shrugged off or dismissed as cliched independent fare, for it is humorously morose and terrifically acted. One might expect Saturday Night Live alums Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader to be in over their heads playing twins who have suicidal issues but the most refreshing surprise about the film are the performances, which are affecting, sometimes funny and convincingly somber.

Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig are Milo and Maggie; said twins whose relationship has been displaced by time and geography. We learn the twins haven't seen one another for ten years; estranged not from rancor or a slight but from the natural drift siblings experience over time.

Maggie has just been called to L.A. from her suburban, New York home to be at her brother's side after his failed suicide attempt. It seems a little too coincidental that Maggie should be contemplating suicide just when she receives the phone call about her brother but it's plausible enough, given the eery, almost supernatural bonds twins often share.

She invites him to stay with her in New York and is welcomed by Maggie's husband Lance (Luke Wilson), who seems to be the complete anithesis of everything gay in Milo's personality. As Milo settles into his stay, the siblings and Lance are joined one night for dinner by their new age-besotted mother Judy (Joanna Gleason), whose hokey, spiritual nonsense the twins regard with little more than weary contempt. Maggie makes a point of expressing her disdain for Judy's lousy maternal record, which her mother acknowledges but without contrition. During the course of the film, we learn Milo and Maggie's father committed suicide; a family tragedy from which the twins inherit much psychological baggage.

As Milo finds himself back in his hometown, he visits a former lover, Rich (an excellent Ty Burrell); a former school teacher now bookstore manager. Rich lost his teaching job after his illicit affair with Milo, who was a mere teen-ager at the time. Though the scandal was kept underwraps, Milo's feelings for Rich endure. Rich's reaction to Milo's presence is dismissively hostile, especially after he makes his huband/father status known to him. This hardly discourages Milo as continues to pursue his former lover throughout the story.

We discover Maggie is no happier in her life. Her repeated efforts to have children with Lance have come to naught, which we learn she has sabotaged by secretly taking birth control pills. Though Lance is a good husband--though blandly so--Maggie's dissatisfaction with her marriage is palpable. Maggie also takes classes as an anodyne to the boredom suburban life visits on her. One such class leads to a romance that develops between Maggie and her scuba-diving instructor; a handsome, tattooed Australian or the male incarnation of everything a bored, unfulfilled housewife might desire.

As the story progresses, we see how screwed-up and unhappy the twins are and how they only have objective clarity when considering the other's problems, never their own. Maggie becomes incensed when she learns Milo is seeing his former teacher; a person she sees as seedy while Milo can't understand why his sister witholds truths about her marriage and reluctance to be a mother from Lance.

Some very interesting developments arise. Instead of the film building to a sentimental explosion of forced, tidy outcomes, more unhappy upheaval ensues. A crumb of hope remains but the story clings to messy, open-endedness, which feels truer to life.

We expect Wiig and Hader to handle the film's funnier moments, which they execute with ease but I didn't expect the actors to negotiate the gloomier, more dramatic scenes with power and restraint. Ty Burrell brings so much to the film; his scenes with Hader have urgency, longing and the shame of a life lived dishonestly.

The film makes an honest assessment of the characters and though they seem weighted down by their problems, they are never less than real and make very stupid and very human decisions for which we can empathize. In Craig Johnson's film, we're never allowed to rest where Milo and Maggie are concerned. They are volatile and we're never quite sure how they'll respond to disappointment or the more tragic realities of their lives. Wiig and Hader's performances make for a satisfying film experience even after an ending that seems a little deus ex machina. If it's the film's most glaring misstep, it doesn't scuttle or trivialize what comes before.