The Descendants *½

Director: Alexander Payne
Cast: George Clooney, Shailene Woodley, Amara Miller
Judy Greer, Matthew Lillard, Beau Bridges, Robert Forster
Rob Huebel, Nick Krause

With his rugged handsomeness and sweet puppy eyes, George Clooney has gone from being a "movie star", in that unattainable, gold dusted sense, to becoming the perfect embodiment of the American midlife crisis. In movies like Up in the Air we are asked to suspend our disbelief and consider him not a star but a person: like the rest of us.
Clooney's likability has made this easy, if not entirely convincing and in The Descendants his charm is replaced by suntanned smugness as he plays the ruling patriarch of the Hawaiian King family. He plays Matt, an attorney who also is the sole trustee of a family legacy that owns 25,000 acres of virgin land in the island of Kaua'i.
When the film begins, and we are teased that richer, profounder themes lie ahead, we learn that Matt's family came to own this without making any effort and now, due to a law against perpetuity, they have to get either sell or lose it within the next seven years.
This plot twist suggests that we are about to find ourselves in the midst of a soul search, through which Matt would need to come to terms with his legacy in the midst of the modern world, for who can say they uphold such high values in these days?
The film then becomes something else, as Matt's wife falls in a coma, forcing him to raise his two young daughters: Alexandra (Woodley) and Scottie (Miller). Added to this, Matt begins to learn his wife kept secrets from him, including an affair.
This leaves Matt with no option but to fully become the patriarch his inheritance demands he is, but how can he do it when he's not even in control of his immediate family's life?
Clooney does his best "everyman" act but the film suffers from its imminent vapidity. Why should we care about these people when their problems seem so aristocratic?
The film even jokes when it begins that people think no one in Hawaii has issues but in all honesty can they blame us? When Alexandra learns her mother might die, she isn't in a hospital room but in a pool and when Matt decides to confront his wife's lover (Lillard) he does so through a series of real estate tricks. It's true that some movies have been able to hook and interest us in the lives of kings, queens and the extremely rich, but to try and do so, after hinting at larger themes ahead, isn't only ridiculous, it's an exercise in reverse empathy. Director Payne too, has become a specialist in chronicling the lives of men who can only be described as assholes, as they try to gain the humanity others around them seem to have. In movies like Sideways and About Schmidt, Payne's horrifying heroes have achieved salvation through the help of people around them who have more earthly values (remember Virginia Madsen in Sideways) and there would be nothing wrong if they never achieved it. After all life isn't always perfect and movies should under no circumstances be morality fables. What Payne understood so well in previous movies is that as humans we are flawed and what he does here is try to correct each of them by the time the movie is over. Not only does his practice backfire, it also makes sure we never want to see these people again.

Short Takes: "Love and Other Drugs" and "Hereafter".

More than the "Anne Hathaway and Jake Gyllenhall Naked Variety Show", this movie is a sadly overdone ode to complicated love. Sure, Anne and Jake are naked a lot and as good a marketing angle as that might've been, the truth is that they are remarkable not because of their bubble butts and perfect stomachs but because of the nakedness of their performances (corny to say it but true...).

Gyllenhaal plays womanizing Pfizer medical representative Jamie. Hathaway plays Maggie, the cynical, early onset Parkinson's disease, patient he falls for.

They try to make it all about sex but movie conventions have showed us that before soon they'll be entangled in some messy emotional issues.

When this happens the movie gives its lead actors a chance to shine, the rest however is a confused mess that makes it seem as if the editor and the director were on some weird emotion altering pill.

The film alternates between moods in such an uneven way that it's impossible for the filmmakers to say they were doing a cute postmodernist take on the drug experience through editing. The whole thing is jut muddled filmmaking.

It's nice then to see Gyllenhaal stretching his limited chops to explore a more aggressive character, someone unafraid to come off as a total jerk and win our hearts by the end (George Clooney would've played him in the 90's...).

And it obviously comes as no surprise that Anne Hathaway is all sorts of magnificent. The little things she gives Maggie are stunningly detailed without being show-offs. She could've played this woman with pity and gone over the top to deliver her message, however she does quite the opposite and slowly lets Maggie become who she is.

Watching Hathaway go from sexiness to raw pain is the one truly addictive thing about this movie.

Clint Eastwood has got to be one of the most overrated working directors, yet at the same time some of his films are so subtle and misunderstood that he seems to be slightly underrated.

Such is the case with Hereafter, a haunting romantic drama that fails to ignite the tragic passion The Bridges of Madison County did but is still able to steer off the preachy stubbornness of Changeling.

The script (written by Peter Morgan) seems to be getting its line from the Iñárritu school of "connecting random dots to achieve universal catharsis" and as such, we see how the lives of former psychic George (Damon), French tsunami survivor Marie (de France) and British boy Marcus (Frankie McLaren) are united by death and then brought together by the magic of the movies.

Eastwood however directs taking his cue from the school of Clint and turns the film into a meditative examination of life in times of chaos. Hereafter takes its time to make its point but it's never a slow movie. In fact Clint plays with the story so well that for a moment we doubt it's leading to the place where it eventually takes us to.

This makes it a curious experiment and the film often feels as moody as the characters are tragic. Damon gives a superbly restrained performance but the film perhaps belongs to the stunning de France. Her bittersweet portrayal of Marie is infused with a cruel tenderness that gives her such rich layers. Her story is often at risk of becoming the most convoluted and corny, yet she handles it with such class that you really don't care when the movie tries to turn her into a paperback romance heroine.

The ending of Hereafter might turn off some who feel Clint's gone senile, surrendered to love and just teased us for 130 minutes with the promise of turning on his darkness and delivering one of his intense takes on justice.

However those willing to look past the sensationalism the movie deals with, will be rewarded with a heartbreaking tale that tells us to stop worrying about what's to come when all we really have is today.

Love and Other Drugs **

Hereafter ***