Cineastes the world over can readily agree that Catherine Deneuve, who came of age as the muse of a number of influential filmmakers in the 1960s and ’70s, is an enchanting screen presence. And they can presumably agree that quality, leading roles for women as they age — complex roles in which they drive the action and don’t stand as an accessory to the men in their characters’ lives — are at a premium. Reasonable minds can agree on these things and still not walk away thrilled and uplifted by On My Way, the road trip venture writer-director Emmanuelle Bercot crafted especially for Deneuve. A competition premiere at last year’s Berlin Film Festival, this testy and at times offbeat French import, more ramshackle than pleasingly ambling, never gels in a meaningful manner. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. In addition to its ongoing theatrical engagements, On My Way expands this week in Los Angeles, opening at the Laemmle Playhouse 7, the Laemmle Town Center and the Regal Westpark. (Cohen Media Group, unrated, 116 minutes)

Filmmaker Darren Aronofsky’s epic take on the epic Biblical story of Noah and the Great Flood is a movie that obliges an epic review, in many respects — more epic than this relatively straightforward appraisal will likely oblige. It’s a big and interesting and evocative and at times sigh-inducing work, for a whole variety of reasons. Boiled down, Noah is also poised somewhere halfway between a work of pure wonder and a more explicitly religious action text, resulting in a film whose fitful energies rather demand one’s attention, even when things aren’t quite working.



Noah centers on the title character (Russell Crowe), the last of the Antediluvian patriarchs, roughly 10 generations removed from the Garden of Eden and the first humans, Adam and Eve. Against the unforgiving backdrop of a barren landscape, Noah lives with his wife Naameh (Jennifer Connelly) and three sons, Ham (Logan Lerman), Shem (Douglas Booth) and Japheth (Leo McHugh Carroll). After a dream of a violent and deadly flood wiping out all humankind, Noah heads to visit his grandfather, Methuselah (Anthony Hopkins), to seek guidance. En route, Noah and his family happen across a group of slain people and one survivor, a girl named Ila (Emma Watson).

Noah’s conversation with Methuselah sets his mind. Convinced that the Creator wishes to destroy all humankind and start anew, Noah plants a seed from the Garden of Eden and then sets about building an ark to house all the animals of the world — an act which attracts the antagonistic attention of Tubal-cain (Ray Winstone), a warrior king descended not from the bloodline of Adam and Eve’s third son, Seth, like Noah, but the violent Cain.

From his debut film, Pi, on through to The Wrestler and Black Swan, Aronofsky has shown a penchant for obsessive and self-destructive characters. His sixth film is no different. While a family man in the broadest sense, this Noah is also very much of the Old Testament — a stern figure who embraces the cold indifference and vengeance, even, of the task for which he says the Creator has chosen him. For many viewers but especially movement conservatives who like to cherry-pick (or selectively focus on) which aspects of the Bible to take literally, that makes for a third act rife with plenty of uncomfortable moments and insinuations.

Aronofsky and co-writer Ari Handel make a number of other interesting and bold choices, though. They skip past much of the ark-building proper, and the sort of dissent and ridicule that would bolster Noah as a heroic figure, and interweave a few elements that could best be described as magical. Their boldest flourish involves the depiction of the Watchers, fallen angels conceived of here as giant, rock-crusted day laborers on loan from some offshoot of the Transformers series. Plenty of viewers will accept these beings simply as “cool,” but they definitely take some getting used to.

There are moments of hard and simple truth that peek out from the script, here and there. When Naameh plaintively says, “I want my sons to have children — I can’t bear the thought of them dying alone,” it gives us everything we need to know about her character. Noah, though, remains somewhat inscrutable (we witness more one-sided conversations with the Creator than combined complex interactions with Naameh and Methuselah), as does both Tubal-cain (when he bellows, “Your ark, your beasts and all your women now belong to me!” it feels like the progenitor of “All your base are belong to us!“) and the state of the Earth more broadly.

Other swathes of Noah, too, feel wooden and pre-fabricated — or, perhaps more accurately, lest that seem like some sort of awkward, ark-based pun, beholden to investment recoupment. Tubal-cain is an entirely functional foil whose inclusion seems designed to afford some action combat. Composer Clint Mansell, meanwhile, marks the narrative shifts in momentum, and all their attendant emotional markers, with much gusto — too much, really. Noah feels rather self-consciously grand at times. It doesn’t have the stomach for severe doubt or deeply interior psychological grappling and reflection; Aronofsky is more connected to the narrative’s mythic qualities, and the lessons they hold. This works in half-measures, but also creates a work that is pro forma in some respects.

Still, there’s a certain undeniable visual grandeur to Noah, which admittedly feels like a particularly imaginative and daring leap into uncertain waters for a big Hollywood studio film. Its general scale and inclusion of the Watchers are one thing, but when Aronofsky aims for Tree of Life-style impressionism, as with Noah’s re-telling of God’s creation of Earth, which unfolds in time-lapse-like fashion that courts a bit of controversy, with its evolutionary stages, it’s utterly mesmerizing. Would that Noah had even more of this. (Paramount, PG-13, 137 minutes)

It’s possible for a movie to confirm the innate filmmaking gifts of its helmer while still not quite succeeding as a standalone film. Such is the case with the artful yet frustrating Hide Your Smiling Faces, directed by Daniel Patrick Carbone. Reminiscent of films like David Gordon Green’s stirring debut, George Washington, and, more recently, Tchoupitoulas and Only the Young, this coming-of-age drama values tone over incident, and pays homage in its own way to the impressionistic moves and rhythms of Terrence Malick, but it also has trouble establishing a strong and memorable identity of its own. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here; to visit the film’s eponymous website, click here. (Tribeca Film, unrated, 80 minutes)

Films that honestly and entertainingly assay the early teenage experience removed from lowest-common-denominator gross-out shtick and other emotional cattle-prodding are few and far between, which is a big part of the reason that the altogether charming A Birder’s Guide to Everything feels like such a breath of fresh air. Instead of pandering to one and only one sentiment, this offering — poised pleasantly between quaint and quirky — does entirely right by adolescent feeling, while also leading viewers on an adventure that puts just enough spin on the old familiar road trip formula.



Directed by Rob Meyer, the movie centers on David Portnoy (Kodi Smit-McPhee, above right), a 15-year-old birding fanatic who, along with classmates Peter Nessbaum (Michael Chen) and Timmy Barsky (Alex Wolff), makes up the entire membership roster of his school’s Young Birding Society. David’s love of birds was inherited from time spent with his late mother, and his father, Donald (James Le Gros), hasn’t taken the time to effectively bridge that gap and invest wholeheartedly in his son’s interests.

Of course, Donald is also busy getting ready to wed Juliana (Daniela Lavender), and it’s against this backdrop that an emotionally adrift David snaps a photo of a supposedly extinct duck that hasn’t been glimpsed in North America in over 100 years. After receiving some advice from an eccentric ornithologist, Dr. Lawrence Konrad (Ben Kingsley), David, Peter and Timmy procure a car from Timmy’s cousin and embark on an epic if messily planned quest to track down the migrating bird. Also along for the ride, since she has the high-quality camera which they lack, is Ellen Reeves (Katie Chang). Discoveries of an unexpected nature ensue.

Its title suggests a certain amount of preciousness, but A Birder’s Guide to Everything is both honest and earnest, without sacrificing its sense of humor. The screenplay, written by Meyer and Luke Matheny, is pitched at a perfect, slightly pubescent level that takes into account the libidinal surge of high school (Timmy talks constantly if generically of sexual conquest on the horizon, as yet unrealized) while also embodying the fact that feelings of attraction develop at different rates amongst friends, and before the tipping point of sexual drive turns urges into actions. David, for instance, is more freaked out than titillated when Juliana’s bathrobe slips open, flashing him. Later still, when David, in conversation with Ellen, refers to the acronym shorthand for bird identification — General Impression, Shape and Size — and it phonetically matches a certain slang for male ejaculate, the movie acknowledges the joke without grinding to a halt to overindulge in it. It’s a moment that feels perfectly real, and of the teenage experience, when oftentimes no party wants to elongate an awkward moment by harping on it.

The cast, too, is great, and it especially helps that they’re legitimately age-appropriate for their roles. Smit-McPhee (The Road, Let Me In) has a gangly quality that fits David without over-articulating any air-quote dorkiness. Wolff has a forward-leaning charisma that is nicely modulated, while Chang is lovely, in a very pleasing and yet altogether innocent way. And Kingsley, as a dispenser of advice who eschews role model status, is spot-on — just the sort of slightly off-center, non-blood-related character from whom young adults can glean a life lesson. There’s nary a false note to A Birder’s Guide to Everything — this is a very pleasing movie about adolescent travails that can play to audiences both younger and older. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here; for more information, click here to visit the film’s website. (Screen Media Films/Focus World, PG-13, 86 minutes)