"Brothers"

Richard's Review: 4 stars

Director Jim Sheridan may have figured out a way around the war-on-terror movie jinx that has kept everything from "Jar Head" to "In the Valley of Elah" and "Lions for Lambs" off the top ten box office list. He turns the volume way down, making a quiet movie that keeps the action to a minimum and lets the emotion of the piece to the talking. Oh, and he's cast three appealing actors, Spiderman, Prince Dastan and Senator Padm� Amidala (that's Tobey Maguire, Jake Gyllenhaal and Natalie Portman to you) doing some of the best work of their collective careers.

For the purposes of the story Gyllenhaal and Maguire are Cain and Able, diametrically opposed brothers. Tommy (Gyllenhaal) is a bad seed, freshly released from prison after a bank robbery gone wrong. Sam (Maguire) is a captain in the Marines, a former high school football star, husband to Grace (Portman) and father to two adorable daughters (Bailee Madison and Taylor Geare). When Sam's Black Hawk helicopter is shot down in Afghanistan's Pamir Mountains he is presumed dead. Back home Tommy tries to fill the gap left by his brother, playing dad to the kids and platonically comforting Grace. The twist is that Sam is not dead; he's been captured and tortured by Taliban fighters. When he is liberated and brought back to the States, his easy, warm smile is gone, replaced by paranoid volatility.

"Brothers" is a slow burn of a movie. Dialogue driven, the action moves slowly, allowing us to get a good sense of who these people are and why they behave the way they do. Lots of biographical information is delivered, but much is left to our imaginations. Tommy, for instance, is just out of jail, but we never find out the details of his crime. Instead as Sam and Tommy drive past a bank Sam asks, "Are you ever gonna apologize to that woman?" and we get the whole picture.

The movie is ripe with such moments. When Grace confronts her dead husband's closet for the first time it is played silently, but packs a wallop. Sheridan isn't afraid to let the audience think for themselves, and imagine how they would react in similar situations. Call it "method watching" if you like, it demands the audience to fill in the blanks, and it is an effective way to tell an emotional story.

It's an emotional story, but not a complicated one. Sheridan even has Grace say at one point, "I am such a clich�," and she's right. Many of the characters are by-the-book -- there's the bad boy who finds redemption through family, the hard-as-nails former military man -- but these actors add shades of grey to otherwise black-and-white renderings. Gyllenhaal brings warmth to a character who shouldn't have any, Portman has a strong veneer but there is sadness in her eyes and Maguire, despite a tendency to be a bit bug-eyed, effectively portrays Sam's confusion. "I can't be there," he says of his home. "They don't understand me. Nobody understands me."

The supporting cast is equally strong. Sam Sheppard still has a profile worthy of Mount Rushmore, but now has the beer belly to go with it and it gives his character some heft, literally and figuratively but it is Bailee Madison and Taylor Geare as daughters Isabelle and Elsie who really shine. They are remarkably endearing without giving the kind of precious performances that mar so many kid's roles.

"Brothers" isn't a war movie it's a movie about what happens after war, and in its own quiet way shows the toll war takes on not only the people overseas but those who stay home as well.

"Up In The Air"

Richard's Review: 4 1/2 stars

"Up in the Air," the third film from director Jason Reitman, takes the best elements from his first two films, "Juno" and "Thank You for Smoking" and molds them into one seamless package.

George Clooney is Ryan Bingham, a high flying "termination engineer" who fires people for a living. Hired by independent companies, he flies from city to city doing the dirty work when it comes to mass layoffs. He's perfectly suited to the job and with the recent global economic downturn, cousin, business is a boomin'.

He's a road warrior who loves the perks of the job, the air miles -- his goal is to hit the 10,000,000 mile mark -- the status cards and life in airports. On the road 322 days a year ("That leaves 43 miserable days at home"), he says all the stuff that people hate about traveling -- the recycled air, the artificial light and warm sushi -- are the things that remind him that he is home.

Other than his job he's commitment free, other than the odd woman he meets in an airport or hotel bar, like Alex (Vera Farmiga), a fellow road warrior who gets "turned on by Elite status." His carefully constructed life may come crashing down, however, when his boos (Jason Bateman) hires Nathalie (Anna Kendrick), a know-it-all IT expert who has an idea that may ground him permanently.

It's possible that George Clooney is the only actor working today who could make Ryan Bingham likeable. He uses every ounce of his considerable charm to make this man who treats commitment like a disease and fires people for a living bearable, much less likeable -- but he does. If he didn't the movie wouldn't work on the level it does, it would simply be a smug (and timely) social satire on how some people have found ways to benefit from the recent economic downturn.

Instead it's a heartfelt portrait of a man who tries his best to isolate himself from the pain and hurt of real life (and his job). Clooney, in what may be his strongest outing yet, combines bravado and vulnerability in one very appealing package.

Jason Reitman has found a balance in style between the heartfelt clarity of "Juno" and the biting satire of "Thank You for Smoking. He's pitch perfect with the tone, mixing cynical with witty, creating one of the nerviest movies of the year. Opening a comedy about firing people when job market is on red alert takes some stones, but Reitman wisely attacks the subject head on, using vignettes of recently terminated people as a sad comment on the times we live in. Those scenes add some profound emotional heft to the story while Clooney and leading lady Vera Farmiga do the rest with a wonderfully acted relationship between two sharks that leads Bingham to an existential epiphany.

Clooney and Farmiga aren't the only high fliers in the cast; Anna Kendrick, a young actress best known for her role in Twilight shines as the overly meticulous IT expert who has a thing or two to learn about people.

It's hard to believe that "Up in the Air" is only Reitman's third film. It's the feel-bad feel-good movie of the year, so self assured, so strong in style and performance that it should get much notice at awards time.

"The Private Lives of Pippa Lee"

Richar's Review: 3 1/2 STARS

The old maxim, "never judge a book by its cover" could have been coined to describe Pippa Lee. When we first meet her at age fifty she's the very picture of composure, a well put together spouse to her much older husband. Of course, the journey to becoming Pippa Lee, trophy wife, is far more interesting than the well manicured facade she presents to friends, family, and even, most of the time, to herself.

 "The Private Lives of Pippa Lee," the new film starring Robin Wright Penn in the title role, takes the viewer on the wild ride that is (and was) Pippa's life.

We first get to know the middle aged Pippa, devoted wife of Herb Lee (Alan Arkin). He's thirty years her senior and in a move to make a "pre-emptive strike against decrepitude," he and Pippa leave New York for a retirement home.

There her life begins to fall apart, and in a series of flashbacks we learn about her mother--a hopped up Maria Bello -- her drug tinged wild young life -- as portrayed by Blake Lively -- and even a kinky photo session with her aunt's lover. As her life unwinds, she finds security in the most unlikely of places -- with the troubled son of a neighbor (Keanu Reeves).

Based on a novel written by director Rebecca Miller, "The Private Lives of Pippa Lee" is a rambling look at a woman in the midst of "a very quiet nervous breakdown." The quirky flashback structure shouldn't work, but Miller teases us, keeping the story fresh by bit by bit doling out tantalizing moments from Pippa's life. There are ups and downs, and the reckless Pippa often seems to zig when she should zag, but in the end the story is life affirming, but in a grown up way.

Despite the presence of teen dream queen Blake Lively, this isn't a drama for kids. It's a study of living life north of 40, populated with believable, interesting characters.

Front and center is Robin Wright Penn in the lead role. She's never made much of an impression on me, despite her great beauty, but here she glows, as if this is the role she has waited all these years to do. As the elder Pippa (Lively plays her as a young woman) Penn hits all the right notes, creating a fully formed person out of a collection of flashbacks and biographical notes.

She is supported by an engaging and able cast including Alan Arkin as her wrinkled husband, Winona Ryder as her teary-eyed friend and (ultimately) betrayer Sandra, Maria Bello as her pill-popping Stepford Mom and Keanu Reeves as a love interest with a twist.

"The Private Lives of Pippa Lee" mixes and matches mid-life drama and humor, delivering some surprises and real emotional moments to create an interesting portrait of an interesting person.

"Everybody's Fine"

Richard's Review: 3 stars

Despite the title of the new Robert De Niro family dramedy, "Everybody's Fine," everybody is most certainly not fine. In fact, the kids in the Goode family have a variety of problems -- some big, some small. The only thing that binds them is a desire not to worry their father with the details of their family woes.

De Niro plays Frank Goode, a recent widower planning a family reunion -- complete with "fancy wine and filet mignons" cooked on an expensive new BBQ -- with his four adult kids. His plans are scuttled when, one by one, his kids cancel. It's like a Harry Chapin song come to life.

His late wife had kept the family in touch, but with her gone he's missing the connection to his kids so he decides, instead of "spending more time in the garden" as his doctor suggests, to make a cross-country trip to see his kids in person.

"Everybody's Fine" is De Niro's "About Schmidt." He's the man who spent his life trying to give his kids the best life he could but despite his best intentions (and high expectations) they turned out to be less than perfect. In other words, they're human. This is a movie about expectations and the pressure of having to live up to them.

The road trip format offers up lots of opportunities to introduce new characters and give each of the kids their own unique space and situation. Director and screenwriter Kirk Jones makes full use of the medium, introducing Frank to people along the way -- random people on a train, a dangerous homeless man in a bus station, Melissa Leo as a plain talking truck driver -- and for the most part the movie makes the most of these opportunities.

A visual metaphor involving telephone wires -- Frank was a factory worker who coated "a million feet of wire" with PVC coating to get his kids "where they are today" --g ets a little old and at one point storm clouds literally come rolling in when the going gets tough, but its heart is in the right place.

Unfortunately too much heart puts a damper on the ending of the story, wrapping things up in the kind of tidy bow that never exists in real life. It's too bad Jones takes the easy path to wrapping the story up because up until the feel good ending (which follows a not-so-feel-good climax) the movie has been true to the emotional journey that many families take. Jones does a good job at showing the kind of little tensions that arise when families get together while exposing the white lies that people tell to spare the feelings of those close to them.

It's good work that is blunted by a corn-ball ending, but good work nonetheless.

At the heart of it all is De Niro. I don't know how many people I've seen get shot, punched, stabbed or generally abused by him over the years -- it's a considerable number when you think back to all the bad guys he's played -- so it is amazing how quickly the image of Bad Bobby is replaced by Frank, a caring, if somewhat bumbling father. De Niro makes Frank an everyman, a totally relatable character that keeps the movie interesting even when it takes a turn for cheesy sentiment.

"Everybody's Fine" isn't as good a film as "About Schmidt" but it does get much right about the family dynamic.