Review: “The Kids Are All Right” (2010)

There are plenty of films about marriage, but the characters in them never quite seem to grasp what “lifetime commitment” means.  Jules (Julianne Moore) does. She gives a speech late in “The Kids Are All Right” that doesn’t feel the least bit calculated. It has the profane sting of actual truth. “Marriage is hard … just two people slogging through the shit, year after year, getting older, changing. It’s a fucking marathon, okay?” Jules tells her kids, Laser (Josh Hutcherson) and Joni (Mia Wasikowska). “So sometimes, you know, you’re together for so long, that you just … you stop seeing the other person.” While Jules’ wife Nic (Annette Bening) listens silently, her eyes reflect understanding. She’s been in that muck and tracked it on the rug. This is just the first time anyone’s been brave enough to point out the footprints.

Frank speeches like these are rare in films involving married couples — because who wants to acknowledge the reality that “for better or for worse” actually means “for better or for worse”? Now there’s a dreadful thought to any fan of traditional romantic comedies. Director Lisa Cholodenko is not one such fan. She tackles the subjects of marriage, commitment and family head-on, peppering in enough humor in the script that “The Kids Are All Right” is far from depressing. Cholodenko presents the film as an earnest, funny portrait of modern marriage. Jules and Nic have been together for more than a decade, raising their daughter and son. Nic is a doctor with a sharply critical eye that finds fault even in the gay male porno she uses to get turned on. Jules, though, is more of a wanderer who hasn’t yet stumbled into a profitable career. This is a scab Jules has spent her entire marriage picking. Each mom gave birth to one of the kids using the same anonymous sperm donor. Laser, curious about the man’s identity, convinces Joni, who’s 18, to call the sperm bank. Into their uneventful family life saunters Paul (who else but Mark Ruffalo?), an almost catatonically mellow restauraunt owner. He charms the kids, even hires Jules to landscape his yard, but Nic’s good graces aren’t for sale. She resents his presence even when she pretends she doesn’t. She might register on an uneasy level that Paul and Jules have a lot in common. She’s shocked and not shocked when she finds proof Paul and Jules are sleeping together. 

Because “The Kids Are All Right” is not a film of bloated speeches, even the damage caused by this affair is underplayed. Nic’s epiphany happens at a meal at Paul’s house in a dinner scene nearly as wrenching as Anamaria Marinca’s in “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days.” Nic, who’s made a show of wanting to welcome Paul into their lives, yammers on incessantly, manifesting interest and politeness at every turn. She even croons most of a Joni Mitchell song while Laser and Joni look on, bewildered. Moore’s growing discomfort at her partner’s behavior is spot on. But the entire scene is Bening’s showcase, and she handles the pressure so marvelously it’s not hard to see that Best Actress Oscar in her hands. The range of emotions she covers is stunning, and she does it all without a sound. She retreats deep inside herself in that way humans do when faced with a crushing and unfaceable truth. What pain is there is too great to absorb in front of company, her children, so it floats around her in a haze. She can’t let it settle on her skin yet. It’s a magnificent combination of strong direction and acting that likely will win Bening that Best Actress Oscar.

Moore provides Bening some competition with Jules, who has a little-girl-lost quality to her. Moore is at her best playing wounded, rudderless women. Jules loves her wife and her kids, but her feelings of failure as a provider cloud her judgment. She projects them onto Nic, interpreting her comments as digs. Jules’ lack of identity leads her to make idiotic, rash choices and hurt the people she loves. This is what makes us human, and Cholodenko’s treatment of it is what makes “The Kids Are All Right” one of the best films of 2010.

Grade: A

Fey and Carell are a comedy dream team in “Date Night”

People who steal dinner reservations (Tina Fey, Steve Carell) have to use the payphone that smells like urine.

Just as the trailers promise, Phil and Claire Foster (Steve Carell, Tina Fey) spend a lot of time in “Date Night” shrieking and dishevelled, running around like (nicely dressed) headless chickens. But we all know that underneath those layers of ironic normalcy they’ve been waiting years for something this exciting to happen, something to shake them out of their two-car, two-job, two-kid coma. Neither one had the energy to concoct an adventure themselves. All they needed was a movie to do it for them.

This is ground zero of why “Date Night” is such a pointlessly entertaining romp: It makes perfect sense that Phil and Claire’s situation makes no sense. Phil and Claire are nice, overexerted suburbanites who have lost their spark to jobs and kids, and why would they get wrapped up in this kind of tomfoolery if it wasn’t a plot contrivance? Shawn Levy’s “Date Night” requires only that Fey and Carell play along, sell their chagrin at these outrageous circumstances and, at the end, give in/enjoy the adrenaline rush of it all and be a little changed — for the better — by the whole experience. This plot has been done umpteen-thousand times, but it has not been done by Tina Fey and Steve Carell, which makes all the difference. They have the right look, the right romatic and comedy chemistry, the right comic timing (their invented stories about other diners are invaluable). They are the key. Without them, “Date Night” would be just another ho-hum entry in the genre.

Levy wastes little time painting a portrait of suburban life, possibly because he knows there’s no need; this is been-there, done-that territory. Phil and Claire are the definition of respectable married people. He is a tax man who quietly urges his clients to invest their $600 refund instead of blowing it on a trip to Spain so they can “do it on the beach”; she is a real estate agent who lies about how close her houses are to New York City. They see each other mornings and nights, where Claire putting on her dental Night Guard is code for “nobody’s having sex in this bed tonight.” Two jobs and two kids and him never closing any drawer ever have muted their spark. Adventure takes over when Phil and Claire, at a high-falutin’ NYC restaurant, steal the Tripplehorns’ (James Franco, Mila Kunis) reservation. (This becomes a running gag that loses only a little steam by the conclusion.) This is worse than stealing someone else’s reservation because the Tripplehorns are in cahoots with a meanie mobster (Ray Liotta as Ray Liotta), two dirty cops (Jimmi Simpson, Common) and the DA (William Fichtner), a man who cannot resist a lap dance.

Spending any more time detailing the plot would be useless, because it’s standard-issue fish-outta-water comedy stuff. The important thing isn’t what happens but how Fey and Carell make what happens funny. There are, perhaps, no two comedians better suited for this: Fey excels at acerbic observational humor and withering sarcasm, while Carell could make understated physical comedy and rants into Olympic sports. For fans of both, this is an epic pairing that should have happened years ago. Marvel at the way Carell loses his cool with Claire’s perpetually shirtless ex-client Holbrooke (Mark Wahlberg, funnier than people give him credit for), or Carell’s expression as he clings to the hood of a cab he’s driven into the Hudson. Then there’s the matter of their bizarre “routine” in a local strip joint, which defies explanation and contains a shoutout to “Showgirls.” They get support from Franco and Kunis, no slouches in the ha-ha department, who are underused as the Tripplehorns but make their parts memorable. Kristen Wiig provides her usual outrageous soundbites, and Fichtner, too, a workhorse of a character actor, is somewhat wasted in his part. Please, Hollywood, let Wiig and Fichtner headline some movies. Just one each?

Then again, “Date Night” is essentially a big, noisy showcase for the talents of Steve Carell and Tina Fey. And if either one was any less talented, that might be a bad thing.

Grade: B

Brain-bending “Shutter Island” a stunner despite faults

Cat, meet Mouse: DiCaprio, Ruffalo and Kingsley star in the imperfect but riveting "Shutter Island."

Dry land, no matter where it’s located, offers some measure of comfort — a feeling of solidity, a foundation for the feet. Water does not. Its mysteries are limitless. Martin Scorsese means to capitalize on this elemental human fear early. Does he succeed? Please. The combination of the gray sky, choppy waves, an ashen-faced detective (Leonardo DiCaprio) and the score — which pulsates with supernatural menace — is dynamite. In these opening scenes, Scorsese yanks us around like marionettes. We’re right where he wants us.

He keeps on yanking throughout this long-delayed, atmospheric Gothic thriller/film noir send-up, perhaps having a chuckle as we labor to wrap our minds around the gnarled plot — much of Dennis Lehane’s tightly drawn novel is retained — and reason out characters who are beyond reason. “Shutter Island” is one of those films where everyone is hiding something; each line of dialogue seems designed to reveal everything and nothing. Listen, in particular, for Deputy Warden McPherson’s (John Carroll Lynch) greeting to the two federal marshals just off the boat: “Welcome to Shutter Island.” His eyes are a little teasing, but his tone says without saying: “You don’t know what you’re getting into.” Scorsese structures “Shutter Island” so that we don’t, either.

Here comes the tough part. To reveal too much of the plot would be criminal, so restraint will be the name of this game. No doubt you’ve heard lots of murmurs (some disgusted) about a twist; do not let anyone reveal it. Two U.S. Marshals, Teddy Daniels (DiCaprio, proving again he’s grown to deserve leading-man status) and Chuck Aule (a meh Mark Ruffalo) hop a ferry to Boston’s Shutter Island, the grim site of Ashecliffe Hospital for the Criminally Insane. (Sublime character actors like the ever-creepy Jackie Earle Haley and Patricia Clarkson get cameos.) It’s their first case together, and they’re an odd pair: Teddy’s a visibly haunted man while nothing sticks to the low-key Chuck. They believe they’ve come to investigate the disappearance of Rachel Solando (Emily Mortimer), locked away after drowning her three children. Though no one at Ashecliffe can or will explain her disappearance, chief psychiatrist Dr. John Cawley (Sir Ben Kingsley) has a theory. “It’s as if she evaporated straight through the walls,” he says. Kingsley’s slight smirk is cause for a few lost hours of sleep.

The investigation may be a sham. Patients and hospital staff may or may not have been coached. A recovering alcoholic, Teddy, still reeling from the death of his wife (Michelle Williams), may be a reliable or an unreliable protagonist. Rachel Solando may or may not have had help escaping her tiny, barred-in room. The only certainty is there is no certainty. So “Shutter Island,” essentially, is 138 minutes of known unknowns wrapped in a damn stylish package. Little Did He Know noir throwbacks rarely looked this good. The predominantly gray, chilly colors — of the island, the hospital itself — provide a terrific backdrop for such a twisted story about twisted people. Shots of Ward C, home to the most dangerous offenders, show a Gothic castle of untold horrors, where every corner is dark and puddled. Here “Shutter Island” very nearly swerves into horror territory. It comes closer with Scorsese’s envisioning of Teddy’s dreams, so bright they shatter the grimness. Not unlike Dario Argento in “Suspiria,” Scorsese uses the camera like a paintbrush, splashing rich reds and golds and greens against Ashecliffe’s walls and the island’s rocky shores. If despair is dingy, then horror is technicolor.

Sometimes the artistry goes too far at the expense of other elements. There are enough continuity errors as to be distracting (one stopped me cold during a white-knuckle scene). The music occasionally overpowers the characters — about whom, by the way, we learn virtually nothing. They are foreboding (Max von Sydow as Dr. Naehring is downright spine-chilling), and yet their emotional impact is nil. Even Teddy, whose story we come to know and whom DiCaprio imbues with repressed grief and palpable heartbreak, only registers faintly. Then again, “Shutter Island” isn’t out to warm our hearts. The film means to play brains and emotions like piano keys, and it does. And in a psychological thriller? Sometimes that’s more than enough.

Grade: B+

A bang or a whimper?

“SHUTTER ISLAND”!

 

The showdown between expectation and reality begins tonight…

The countdown begins…

…only 11 more days until my year-long misery is ended and “Shutter Island” is released!

Since I blabbered on about my excitement here, I’ll spare you a repeat performance and leave you instead with the trailer. Scorcese, don’t fail me now!

Top 10 actors/actresses of 2009

How many blog comments, I wonder, have inspired whole posts?

I don’t have an answer to that question, but the ever-astute Encore Entertainment posed a difficult but interesting question: Who gave the best performances, the ones that would top my list of favorites for the year?

Now that’s a thinker … but one that only lasted about six minutes. Then in marched the answers, and I present them to you thusly:

The ladies

Mo'Nique's blistering turn in "Precious" deserves to be called the best of the year.

1. Mo’Nique, “Precious”
2. Abbie Cornish, “Bright Star”
3. Gabourey Sidibe, “Precious”
4. Melanie Laurent, “Inglourious Basterds” 
5. Vera Farmiga, “Up in the Air”
6. Melanie Lynskey, “The Informant!” 
7. Isabella Rossellini, “Two Lovers”
8. Vinessa Shaw, “Two Lovers”
9. Charlyne Yi, “Paper Heart”
10. Meryl Streep, “Julie & Julia”

The fellows

Christoph Waltz creates the perfect villain in "Inglourious Basterds."

1. Christoph Waltz, “Inglourious Basterds”
2. Adam Sandler, “Funny People”
3. George Clooney, “Up in the Air”
4. Matt Damon, “The Informant!”
5. Tobey Maguire, “Brothers”
6. Joaquin Phoenix, “Two Lovers”
7. Paul Schneider, “Bright Star”
8. Joseph Gordon-Levitt, “(500) Days of Summer”
9. Mark Ruffalo, “The Brothers Bloom”
10. Zachary Quinto, “Star Trek”

Readers, which actors and actresses delivered the year’s best performances? Let’s hear your picks.

No. 12: “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” (2004)

“Too many guys think I’m a concept, or I complete them, or I’m gonna make them alive. But I’m just a fucked-up girl who’s lookin’ for my own peace of mind; don’t assign me yours.” ~~Clementine Kruczynski

If it’s true that the course of love doesn’t run smooth, it’s also true that our memories of that trip don’t follow a timeline. In the beginning, there are the obvious landmarks: the first meeting, a tentative investigation; the first conversation; the first kiss. But once affection sours, time goes full Cuisinart on those recollections, scrambling them so hopelessly we couldn’t reorganize them if we tried.

Joel (Jim Carrey) and Clementine (Kate Winslet) experience this reality not once but again and again in Michel Gondry’s tender and achingly beautiful “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” a film with a script that mimics the curious effects of time upon our memories of lost love. Here, the end and the beginning bleed together, and they also cloud the way we see everything in the middle because the boundary lines are loose and fuzzy. Charlie Kaufman, who penned the knotty script, seems intent on drawing us in by providing all the answers and letting us ferret out the equation.

What’s so wonderfully original and mesmerizing about “Eternal Sunshine for the Spotless Mind” is that Joel and Clementine are in the exact same position we are. Both find themselves in an odd situation with the facts of the present, yet they have no idea how they got there. And it takes quite some time before we figure out how they did, either. Since their story can’t quite be told in a linear fashion, let’s start somewhere in the muddy middle: On an uncharacteristic whim, timid loner Joel skips work and hops a train to Montauk. The ride back leads him to meet Clementine, a chatty free spirit with unruly blue hair (“I apply my personality in a paste,” she offers brightly) who’s sure she’s met Joel before. There’s an unexpected connection that threatens to become more, and that’s when everything goes pear-shaped: Seems Joel and Clem not only know each other, they used to be lovers. The reason neither remembers this has to do with Lacuna, Inc., an odd little business run by Dr. Howard Mierzwiak (Tom Wilkinson) that specializes in erasing painful memories.

Additional stories funnel into “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” involving Patrick (Elijah Wood) and Stan (the invaluable Mark Ruffalo), Lacuna’s memory-vanquishing technicians, and Mary (Kirsten Dunst), Mierzwiak’s receptionist. Their lives intersect with Joel’s because they’re charged with erasing Clementine from his mind, and all three are so wrapped up in their own strange realities that they don’t realize Joel wants to stop the procedure right in the middle of it. Not that his protests matter, really; he’s hidden too far in his own mind to be heard. This makes his anguish all the more wrenching, for who hasn’t let heartbreak lead to a bad choice screaming to be taken back?

There are, perhaps, no appropriate words to describe what Carrey and Winslet bring to this bittersweet examination of love. The kooky plot requires them to anchor their characters in reality, make them human enough for us to suffer their hurts and feel their joy. Carrey quiets himself enormously to play Joel, a lonely man who guards his heart closely. Winslet’s more open but no less touching as Clementine, a woman whose flightiness covers a deep core of insecurity and self-awareness. Together, with their stirring chemistry, they make Joel and Clementine’s love story one of the greatest ever told. 

Worry not, though, that “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” is some kind of repackaged epic romance with a comedic twist. Elements of the universal exist, certainly, but with Gondry behind the camera this is love story that feels almost shockingly intimate. We catch glimpses of under-the-cover confessions, lazy afternoon strolls, early dinners uncomfortable in their cold silence — the things no one ever sees. All the shots are so gorgeously lensed, so precisely placed and edited, that what we have is a story told in scattered Polaroids. And sometimes it’s the snapshots, creased and smudged with fingerprints, we keep closest to our hearts.

Five reasons I’m pumped about “Shutter Island”

1. It’s Martin Scorcese. MARTIN SCORSESE, the man who gave us “Raging Bull,” “GoodFellas” and “The Departed.” If that doesn’t sell you, nothing will.

2. The cast. The quickest of quick glances down the cast list is enough to make my heart skip about 14 beats. Say what you want, but Leonard DiCaprio has grown into a most accomplished, chameleon-like actor. Mark Ruffalo as his wisecrackin’ sidekick? Le sigh. And let’s not forget Sir Ben Kingsley, Emily Mortimer, Patricia Clarkson and (my personal favorite) Jackie Earle Haley. Oh my. I do believe I’ve got the vapors.

3. The book. Any Dennis Lehane fans out there know instantly “Shutter Island” is an adaptation of Lehane’s insanely tense, intelligent thriller of the same name. Does that mean we should hate it immediately, no questions asked? Hell no! Lehane wrote “Mystic River” and “Gone Baby Gone,” and both went on to become fan-freakin’-tastic films. Goes to show that when you start with a genius book, it takes a special kind of idiot to screw up the movie. And good ole’ Marty? He’s got a lot going on upstairs.

4. The setting. Boston is the new New York. Haven’t you heard? It’s leaner, meaner, darker, sneakier and less forgiving — all of which makes it the perfect locale for top-notch crime dramas. (Sorry, N.Y.C. We’ll still be friends!)

5. The horror component. Though Scorcese comes up aces in the crime drama and gangster epic genres, he’s only done one movie (the forgettable but not horrible “Bringing Up the Dead”) that vaguely resembles a scary movie. Since Scorcese never does anything halfway, I can’t wait to see his conception of a horror-thriller.

The countdown to February 19, 2010 begins!

 

Review: “Reservation Road” (2007)

By all rights, Terry George’s “Reservation Road” should be a 2 a.m. Lifetime Television weeper. All the trappings are there — a freak car accident that turns into an unsolved hit-and-run case; a grieving father who sees closure only in revenge; a driver whose sanity is buckling under the weight of what he’s scrambled to cover up — just waiting to be exploited shamelessly. But here’s the real shocker: That … never … happens. “Reservation Road” is no crudely simplified fable with a villain and a hero and a gift-wrapped ending; it’s not that kind of movie. No, what happens here is complex, delicate and deliberate. Don’t expect to walk away unshaken. 

Of course, part of what makes “Reservation Road” so compelling is the (admittedly) hokey-sounding crisis at its center: Driving home from a late Red Sox game with his son, Dwight (Mark Ruffalo) veers off the highway and rams into a child on the roadside at a gas station, killing the 10-year-old boy while his father Ethan (Joaquin Phoenix) watches, too shocked to remember the car or the driver’s face. Dwight, without quite knowing what he’s doing, drives away, leaving Ethan, his wife Grace (Jennifer Connelly) and their daughter with a dead body and no answers.

All of this happens very early, and there’s a reason for those emotionally punishing first 10 minutes: These events provide a framework for the rest of “Reservation Road,” which grows more unsettling each minute. The pile of coincidences is a stretch — or is it? In a small town, is it so hard to believe that the victim and the criminal might know each other? Have kids in the same school? Maybe George pushes this angle a bit too hard, makes it a bit too unsubtle, but perhaps this is necessary to pull us in. After all, nothing about this film is easy because “Reservation Road” splits us right down the center, forces us t0 see humanity in the criminal (a divorced dad afraid to lose partial custody of his son), demons in the wronged man (whose grief takes him to an ugly place). To identify with one man is to identify with the other. Phoenix and Ruffalo’s gut-wrenching performances ensure this much.

Oh, and speaking of the performances: Many argue that the faceoff of 2007 was DiCaprio/Damon in “The Departed.” Hardly. What Phoenix and Ruffalo do in “Reservation Road” lays waste to that claim. These two pour themselves into roles that require a frightening amount of emotional energy. Phoenix, who specializes in surly intensity, shows how close resignation can be to blind rage. He takes Ethan’s sadness to a place no one can touch, not even his wife (Connelly, who’s more nakedly emotional than ever). “How do I get you back?” she asks. Damned if Ethan knows, either, and Phoenix makes this internal confusion hard to watch but impossible to ignore. Unglued, too, is Ruffalo’s Dwight, whose decision to leave the scene sticks in his subconscious like a hunting knife in the gut. He can’t shake the guilt. Credit must go to Ruffalo, one of the finest actors out there, for not reducing Dwight to weepy, drunken heap. Ruffalo is too smart, too intuitive an actor to make that mistake. Instead he gives us a man who is slowly unravelling, who knows more with each day that he did much more than kill a child: he killed himself.

And so “Reservation Road” leave us with a whole mess of unanswered questions. Dwight takes a life, reacts badly and suffers dearly for it. But does he suffer enough? Can he ever suffer enough? Does he deserve to die? Would his death give Ethan the kind of closure he wants and needs? Don’t expect an eleventh-hour hug, a Kleenex or a cheat sheet. “Reservation Road” offers no comfort and no answers … which, in an odd way, makes the film something of a miracle. 

Grade: A-

Convoluted “Brothers Bloom” signals emergence of bright new talent

Brody, Weisz and Ruffalo get their con on in "The Brothers Bloom."

Rian Johnson is the Lucinda Williams of Hollywood. In his career, he’s directed precisely two feature-length films, “Brick” and “The Brothers Bloom,” both imaginative and damn-near brilliant. The former, an indie gem about a high school loner determined to find his vanished ex-girlfriend, signaled the appearance of a fledgling talent. But the latter? Johnson’s second creation shows that talent in full, crazy-twisty inventive bloom. Worry not that he’s sold out, for a bigger budget and three top-list talents have done nothing to dampen that indie creativity.

Such innovation becomes evident early on in “The Brothers Bloom,” a kind of fairytale/Picaresque novel hybrid about two long-con operator brothers bilking a clueless mark out of her inheritance. The mastermind is Stephen (Mark Ruffalo), a showboater who loves the game as much as he loves the money it produces. He’s a showman, writing all kinds of symbolism (which no one’s smart enough to catch) into his cons. Pulled along for the ride is his weary younger brother Bloom (Adrien Brody). Bloom wants out, mostly because he’s not a real person; he only plays the parts his brother writes for him. “He’s written me as the vulnerable antihero, and that’s why you think you want to kiss me,” he tells the leggy brunette he meets in a bar. Bloom’s an island, he knows it and he wants no more of his grifter lifestyle.

Until he meets Penelope (Rachel Weisz). The eccentric serial hobbyist gets drawn into the con to end all cons. And it’s a doozy, spanning continents and involving a creepy Beligian (Robbie Coltrane), an alluring explosives expert (Rinko Kikuchi), an eighth-century manuscript and a mysterious Russian fellow named Diamond Dog (Maximillian Schell), dastardly despite his lack of depth perception.

Rest assured there’s much more to the story than this, but it’s important to go into “The Brothers Bloom” with little information. The storyline’s something of an elaborate hamster playground, a maze with overlapping subplots that run smack into other subplots; some of these lead back to the beginning, while others point toward the numerous conclusions. Yet the strategy isn’t entirely successful. Fool moviegoers once, maybe twice, and they’ll likely stick with the gimmick. (It does, after all, reward intelligence.) Do it too many times and it becomes downright annoying. Thus, for awhile, all this conning and reconning and unconning seems enough to drown out all my chatter about Johnson’s ingenuity.

But wait. There are saving graces in “Brothers Bloom,” and they come in the form of inside jokes, cinematography and acting. Johnson peppers all sorts of puns and tricks in that add a sense of mischief, from obscure literary references to split-second sight gags. Then there’s Steve Yeldin’s cinematography. His work is fairly impressive, with his lensing capturing the landscapes (Montenegro, Prague) in a way that gives the film a timeless, expansive feel that seems a fitting backdrop for the essence of Johnson’s characters.

And, oh, the characters. Ruffalo’s an actor with a gift for understatement who trafficks in little expressions, so it’s nice to see him take on a character who thrives on melodrama. He deserves more than a little credit for making Stephen, a control freak with a serious God complex, someone worth liking. Weisz, underappreciated as a comic actress, finds spunk and optimism in Penelope, who grew up a shut in and now views the world with more interest than fear. Her energy seems overwhelming at times, sure, but there’s a childlike wonder that charms more than it irritates. And anyone who follows Brody knows his characters are all about externalizing the internal using just the eyes. He’s perfected the sadsack look — vulnerable antihero suits him better than self-deprecating wiseass suits John Cusack — but lets his eyes suggest more than plain old misery. Watching Bloom warm to Penelope, who’s every bit as stuck and lost as he is, is more honest than it ought to be in about professional liars.

Then again, “The Brothers Bloom” isn’t exactly a color-inside-the-lines con movie. There’s more heart than brain but less brain than ambition. Maybe Johnson shoots a little too high, maybe he tries a little to hard to be clever. But I can’t shake the feeling this guy’s got a masterpiece in him somewhere, and I can’t wait to see it. Talent like this is rare and refreshing.  

Grade: B-