"Youth in Revolt" showcases that bankable Micheal Cerra persona inventing a Tyler Durden alternate in the pursuit of his very own Lolita.

Zombieland

To paraphrase and disagree with what his character Tallahassee says during the new film Zombieland, Woody Harrelson is capable of being good at more than one thing. He perfected the dimwitted bartender to comedic perfection on the television show Cheers and he has mastered the persona of a natural born killer during is film career. For this film the two blend in a crowd pleasing, enjoyable piece of pointless entertainment.
In fact pointless is certainly in vogue as this is the season when monsters take center stage in the national consciousness. Grown adults dress up as ghosts and ghouls while zombies eat the flesh of their victims on the big screen. Usually, movies with this theme are laughably bad. In the case of Zombieland, it is knowingly laughable. It has the gore associated with its genre with a comedic touch that rescues it from the realm of camp. Driving this cinematic vehicle is the perfectly cast Harrelson. His Tallahassee, though not dimwitted, requires a comedic timing and joyous bloodlust few actors possess inherently. It is an inspired piece of casting for a character that must traverse the waste of what was the United States slaughtering zombie after zombie with unrestrained zeal.
Harrelson’s casting actually saved the movie because his counterweight, Jesse Eisenberg is that much of a letdown. Not that he is necessarily bad, it is just sad to see that either he or director Ruben Fleischer chose to have his character, Columbus, channel the comedic persona actor Michael Cerra has mastered since his days on Arrested Development. In a film that is so well done and intelligently aware of itself, particularly for the genre, there is no need to make such an obvious ploy to capture the audience’s sympathies.
Perhaps that is just splitting hairs because really Zombieland is a riotous joy to watch. The zombie’s kill with a gore that will trigger your gag reflex, every demented funny bone in your body will be tickled in turn by the ways the zombies are slaughtered by the humans. It is a pointless excursion into the Halloween season that will not soon be forgotten. Zombieland is an instant classic for a genre usually remembered for all the wrong reasons.

Inglourious Basterds

Screenwriters delight in creating villains personifying evil. Their imaginations run wild creating these vile humans whose ultimate comeuppance serve as a delicious just dessert. The crimes that illicit these euphoric moments of revenge are provided through the safe prism of fantasy; unless of course you were of the Jewish race living in Europe during World War II. The crimes perpetrated against the Jews were unfortunately not dreamed up by a demented writer and those responsible, though punished, got off easy in comparison to the millions of lives they destroyed. No dessert has vanquished the bitter taste in the mouths of the world. The only recourse over sixty years later lies in one purveyor of violent fantasy to invoke retribution worthy of the scourge the Nazis inflicted upon the world, Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, a fictionalized retelling of the war to stop a horrendous genocide.

Normally Tarantino’s villains exist in a blood thirsty world whose characters are as witty and charming as they are murderous. The result is the villains are generally cheered on and identified with, particularly because their crimes aren’t exactly exacted against the innocent. Inglourious Basterds is no different in creating a villain whose charm and wit is a joy to behold through Tarantino’s patented verbal assault. Austrian-born actor Christopher Waltz is captivating as the Nazi “Jew Hunter” Colonel Hans Landa. In another film, he would have been another of Tarantino’s heroic sociopaths. With the historic truths behind the fictional horrors he commits, Landa’s demise is one rooted on with unusual gusto for an imaginary revenge.

Hunting the Nazis in the film is a group nicknamed “the bastards”, headed by Brad Pitt’s Lieutenant Aldo Raine. Though Pitt pulls off the role to near perfection, the group as a whole could have used a more thorough flushing out of their story. The moments spent watching their “punishment” of the Nazis is pure sinful pleasure. One can only hope evil truly feels the pain they administer. As it is their power wanes and they unknowingly need the help of an orphaned Jewish woman to pull off the ultimate revenge fantasy that is decadently beautiful in its wicked execution.

It is frightening to feel such pleasure at the sight of such suffering. Usually you empathize with the suffering of another human being. Yet by dehumanizing an entire race, the Nazis only succeeded in exposing themselves as subhuman vermin in need of extermination. In history, they were punished, went into hiding or took a cowardly suicidal bullet out of this world, but in Inglourious Basterds, the Nazis find the end they deserved. Though no amount of fictional retribution can make up for the loss of millions of lives, for a little over two hours at least, Inglourious Basterds provides one glorious serving of sweet revenge.

District 9

Never underestimate the potential for evil when one entity gains the upper hand over another, forcing the momentarily weaker into submission. For ages, it has been happening all over the world when travelers come upon another culture and it has been happening for decades in the imagined world of Neill Blomkamp’s District 9, where the South African metropolis Johannesburg has had an extraterrestrial space craft hovering over it for well over 20 years.

A mockumentary at the start of the District 9 sets the film in action explaining the decrepit state the aliens were in when contact was first made. Weak and ineffectual, the visitors are hoarded into a settlement where they regain their strength but not their dignity or power as their refuge camp devolves into a violent slum where warlords both human and alien trade in misery, planning for a better future perpetually out of reach.

As fear of the unfamiliar and harrowing contact between the citizens of Johannesburg and denizens of outer space grows, a multinational army moves in to the area deemed “District 9” to keep the peace by relocating the refugees to a larger, out of the way encampment. During the eviction, the evil capabilities planned or already in existence come into focus as innocent lives fall by the wayside in the scramble for power.

The strength of the film lies in the story running parallel to the troubles in present day Africa that are tied to the horror of European colonization of the “Dark Continent.” There is an intelligence to District 9 not typically found in summer movies usually reserved for the celebration of special effect wizardry. Which is not to say this film skips out on the CGI or action; rather it is a feast for both the eyes and mind, entertaining but horrifyingly truthful.

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra

To be fair to the movie, looking back on a childhood spent with G.I. Joe, the characters and especially the villains could have only made sense in the mind of a child. If a film was to be made based on the comic book and action figures, a certain level of absurdity has to be expected if the source material was to be honored. But come on, they couldn’t do better than this? Recent comic adaptations have set a relative high mark for this genre of cinema, so when a film fails, as G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra painfully does, the disappointment is that much greater.

Just last year, The Dark Knight pitted Batman against the psychotic villainy of the Joker. Heath Ledger’s performance of that unbalanced lunatic earned him an Oscar nomination and proved the genre is capable of studying deeply buried human pain and torment while raising that struggle to the artistic level. Even the X-Men series with its ensemble of superhuman characters has been able to create a believable world out of the impossible. Not so with G.I. Joe.

At first glance it would appear an easier task concoct a reasonable fictionalized reality out of a story following an elite group of soldiers fighting a shadowy terrorist group calling themselves Cobra. The terrorist angle certainly rings true today and keeping the name does honor the tradition of the comic. But why did director Stephen Sommers have to rely on so much CGI that half of the film is closer to a cartoon than live action? Why couldn’t any of soldiers use a weapon that is even slightly grounded in the real world? Why couldn’t the screenwriting team come up with at least one decent line of dialogue? Why couldn’t the story lines of vengeance that drove the leaders of Cobra to such depths of evil at least seem plausible to have that sort of effect on a human soul? Why? Why? Why?

Perhaps this is all Hasbro’s fault. The toy making giant has obviously not been able to sell the rights to their franchises to any sort of competent filmmaking teams. Transformers 2 is probably the worst major studio release of the past decade with the original Transformers and now G.I. Joe following closely behind. If any sort of 1980s childhood innocence was still alive and on life support after Transformers 2 earlier this summer, it is dead, G.I. Joe just pulled the plug.

Julie and Julia

It was the best of stories; it was the worst of stories. Apologies go out to Charles Dickens and actually to director Nora Ephron whose film Julie and Julia should not elicit words such as “worst.” Nor “best” for that matter but really, this film is a tale of two stories. Half of the film is a joy to watch, the other insufferably dull and uninteresting. It is the story of how Julia Child became the world famous Julia Child and the story of blogger Julie Powell who spends a year cooking her way through Child’s cookbook, Mastering The Art of French Cooking. Watching the Julie and Julia produces the realization lifted again from Dickens, “we had everything before us; we had nothing before us.”

Everything is what you get from Meryl Streep. It is what you always get. Rare that she fails to produce a superlative performance and this turn as Child is no exception. She brings a whimsy and joy to the task of bringing Child back to life while giving just enough weight to keep the act from teetering too close to a caricature. Streep is balanced perfectly by Stanley Tucci whose portrayal of Paul Child is dignified and restrained. Tucci keeps this portion of the story grounded while leaving Streep plenty of room to take over and own the film.

Perhaps with those performances as a backdrop, it shouldn’t be surprising that Powell’s portion of the story is so dull. It certainly isn’t fair to the actors portraying the Julie and Eric Powell. Really, Amy Adams and Chris Messina do a perfectly fine job. But their story amounts to nothing. Their travails are dry, the fights feel forced and though the idea of cooking the entire cookbook and documenting it as a blog is interesting, Powell’s writing as shown in the film falls as flat as an improperly made soufflé. Even with an amusing use of The Talking Heads’ “Psycho Killer” while cooking a lobster dinner, the Powell’s entire story is nothing but an unsatisfying appetizer to the Streep main course.

Given the talents of Streep and Tucci it would have been delicious to explore the rich background of the Child lives. Child’s career as a possible spy in the forerunner of the CIA and her husband being targeted by Joseph McCarthy’s Red Scare could have provided a more complete tapestry to the life Streep resurrects. As it is, the film provides an unsatisfying counterbalance to the story of one of the first cooking superstars. Powell’s tale is nothing more than a personal story of discovery that should have stayed personal saving an unnecessary tale of two stories.

500 Days of Summer

Sometimes, love does not work out. Despite what countless films that fall under the genre of “romantic comedy”, the relationship between two seemingly perfect matches that an audience invests a couple of hours of their time in will not always work out in the end. It is a harsh lesson the real world knows all to well. It is a lesson 500 Days of Summer dishes out from the outset of a romantic comedy that obviously never heard it was supposed to follow a hackneyed formula to a blissful cinematic end.

With the outcome of the relationship out of the way, the film simultaneously reconstructs and deconstructs the relationship between Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and Summer (Zooey Deschanel) in an attempt to understand what went wrong between these seemingly perfectly matched characters. In another nod towards real life, the mystery is never really solved but the journey of attempted discovery is a joy to watch.

Though a little gimmicky at times, the story incorporates quite a few cinematic tricks along the way to highlight how sweet and wonderful Tom and Summer seemed to be for each other. The sugary perfection is so intense, the cavity it develops in Tom’s soul when the relationship ends exposes a raw nerve that he is never quite able to numb. It is over-the-top but grounded in genuine human emotion.

It is this authenticity along with some quirky humor and the performances of Gordon-Levitt and Deschanel that makes the film a delight even though the outcome of the romance is pre-ordained to failure. Love might end but life moves on, sometimes without any sort of explanation or closure. It is a cruel lesson but one that rings true for real life long betrayed by the common and stale romantic comedy that 500 Days of Summer rises well above.

Bruno

In 2006 the movie Borat was lauded as comedic brilliance for its ability to reduce the audience to tears of laughter while shoving American ignorance right in its face. Rising above the controversy surrounding the film, its creator and star was lauded as a genius whose star has not diminished in the last few years. Bestowing the title of a comic genius on Sasha Baron Cohen set the anticipation for his next work impossibly high while making the wait for the follow-up interminably long. Cohen’s long-awaited follow-up, Bruno, has finally been released and has indeed raised the “mockumentary” to dizzying heights of hilarity. The laughs though may have come at the cost of his subversive message that had many calling the man a genius being lost in the push for shocking humor.

There is no doubt that the depictions throughout the film are absolutely outrageous and hysterical in spite of any moral indignation. There are no lengths Cohen will not go to humiliate himself for the uncomfortable enjoyment of his audience. It is shocking in fact that the film did not receive a NC-17 rating for its graphic depictions of sexuality. There are images that, for better or worse, will become etched in your mind. With such a commitment to your psyche, questions will come as to what exactly those images will be remembered for.

The roar of the audience and tears down your face will no doubt come to mind, but what of social commentary. Cohen is attempting to expose hidden homophobic attitudes to the rest of the world through is flamboyantly homosexual character Bruno. Unfortunately, his over-the-top antics do not expose all that many hidden homophobic attitudes; it is not a shock that a hunter would take offense to a naked Bruno trying to crawl into his tent at night with nothing more than a handful of condoms. Nor is it shocking that an arena full of ultimate fighting fans would be offended by homosexual conduct; the purpose of the stunt called into question because it is equally doubtful whether their indignation would cause any of them to feel any sense of shame.

The real shame may lie with Cohen solely. By going for laughs at the expense of attitudes, he has run the risk of having his own views called into question. Does he humiliate himself as the flamboyant Bruno because he wants to exploit society’s evils or because those evils are ingrained as a part of him? Are the exploits funny because those evils reside in all of us? The only hidden evils he exposes in the film comes at the expense of some horrific stage parents who should have children protective services investigate each and every one of them. Otherwise the humiliation alone falls on Cohen whose antics implicate us all.

Tony Manero

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, unless of course the imitation is of traits that are not flattering. Movie history is filled with characters of dubious morality that have garnered a cult-like following. John Travolta’s Vincent Vega from Pulp Fiction certainly comes to mind. Travolta’s Tony Manero from Saturday Night Fever, not so much. Although the character of Tony is a violent womanizing potential rapist, the narrative of Saturday Night Fever is a beautiful arc of a story that watches Tony grow as human while using dance in the local disco as a vehicle to escape his bleak existence. It is a character that has and should garner a lot of imitation, unless the beauty of the tale is lost on the audience.

The Chilean film Tony Manero follows a man obsessed with Saturday Night Fever during the late 1970s, when the right-wing dictator Augusto Pinochet was ruthlessly ruling over his South American country. Existence was bleak so Raul Peralta turned to dance as the best hope for escaping the life he leads. He spends his days studying the film, practicing his dance moves, perfecting his clothes, hair and the stage where he is to perform his opus to disco. It would be a heart-warming tale if Raul didn’t fund his endeavors by also mimicking Tony’s lesser traits. He womanizes to ensure a place to live and violently takes what he can’t afford to purchase.

For Raul, those traits probably were his only chance out. His dance scenes are wonderful moments of comic relief, the dancing is awful with little hope of improvement. He would have been better served taking a hint from one of the scenes of Saturday Night Fever. In the American tale, Tony is mistaken for Al Pacino, who has garnered acclaim for his portrayals of violent gangsters. In a delicious bit of casting, Alfredo Castro, the actor who plays Raul, more closely resembles an aged Pacino than the dancing Travolta he wishes he were. A man like a Pacino character would have been a benefit to the Pinochet regime that violently eliminated all forms of opposition in Chile for several decades.

The abuses of the dictatorship are a backdrop to the story of Tony Manero. The regime’s obsession with its opponents allows the crimes of Raul to go on unnoticed. The only reason politics come close to Raul is because Raul’s friends were in active opposition to their government. Their activities have no affect on Raul because he truly is apolitical. His violence was a means to an end that was to include disco, a genre of music that has been accused of having no meaning itself outside of individual satisfaction. For Raul is satisfaction was all he could see; his downward spiral the perfect counterpoint Tony found in the heights of Saturday Night Fever.

Public Enemies

There is a long continuum of American outlaws who were legends in their own time whose stature has grown over the years. Dating from the Founding Fathers themselves to the Wild West and into the early decades of the Twentieth century, these individuals challenged and broke the laws of the governments of their times and reveled in populist adoration. Then, the adoration seemingly stopped; the idea of criminal as hero was wiped out as a modern America emerged. John Dillinger (Johnny Depp) was one of the last of these heroes. His demise and a theory as to why the outlaw became a villain in the mind of the general population is the subject of Michael Mann’s latest film, Public Enemies.

Dillinger’s heyday coincided with the end of the easy bank target. His profits came at the expense of banks that still relied on a vault as their only means of defense. A great deal of the film focuses on the FBI’s development of a modern mode of law enforcement designed to capture the brazen gangsters. Led by J. Edgar Hoover (Billy Crudup) who tabs Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale) as the lead agent tracking Dillinger, the FBI develops a system of wire tapping and profiling to tighten an ever shrinking circle around the outlaw. They go from being two steps behind to a step ahead as they employ tactics that question whether we as a country have sold our souls to bring about the end of the crime spree.

This is a question worth asking because Mann makes a point to throw in a line from Dillinger to another man that the gentleman should put away his money, the gangsters were there for the bank’s money, not the individuals. Set during the Great Depression, this positions Dillinger as a sort of modern day Robin Hood. Not necessarily giving to the poor, but definitely stealing from the rich who were perceived to be stealing from the poor. Was the population really on the side of law and order when the destruction of their financial world was being blamed on the same forces hunting Dillinger? The question is rendered moot as it becomes clearer that a common man can no longer stand up to a corrupt and/or self-interested government. Soon the criminals themselves begin to formulate their own modern techniques, robbing blind both the establishment and the common citizen.

It is a question from an era that has long since passed. The government still has a dubious reputation that is now matched by the country’s famous criminals. They are no longer lionized, but roundly vilified for their heinous acts. With an establishment that has become an untouchable; theft has become sanctioned by the SEC and violence has turned on the concept of neighborly love. Dillinger was as blood-thirsty as Ted Kaczynski and as greedy as Bernie Madoff. Public Enemies hints at why these villains went from famous to infamous in the span of decades and questions which reality would have left America better off.

Away We Go

There are a multitude of roads to take on a journey through life. Some highly traveled, others, less so. Good roads and bad. What works for some people does not work for others. The problem is society puts the pressure of conformity on individuals starting at a very young age. There is a standardized American dream that is purported to be the goal of all warm-blooded Americans. It is a nice dream that in reality cannot be made to fit each or any of us. Growing up with this prevailing ethos, it is difficult to see the absurdity of it all. That is why we need an outsider to point out the flaws in the mystique and to help point us in differing directions; an outsider such as English-born director Sam Mendes.

In 1999’s American Beauty and 2008’s Revolutionary Road, Mendes did his best to obliterate the American dream. With Away We Go, he is intent on finishing off any remaining vestiges of the dream. He accomplishes this task rather effectively, setting the stage to rebuild the dream without the clichés that it was built upon. The obliteration comes on a cross country trip an expectant couple, Burt and Verona, (John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph) take to find a place to call home for the start of their family. The family and friends they seek as the archetype of marital bliss are clichés in and of themselves and often times a disaster at the game of life. Where once the couple questioned if they are fuck-ups, the realization comes that everyone is a fuck-up; the road to happiness will have to be forged on Burt and Verona’s own terms.

The road they take leads to a wide open future with no certainty. Burt and Verona can only wish the path they have taken will lead to happiness, the only thing any of us can wish for. Despite what we are led to believe, there is no American dream that can be followed; we as humans are far too different. Mendes has spent his career tearing the belief in a common dream to pieces; in Away We Go he lays the groundwork to begin rebuilding. Taking divergent paths may feel alienating but they are necessary. Through these treks of individuality we find our own way and discover the differences between us all are indeed held together by a common string.

Transformers Revenge of the Fallen

There are films released during the summer that ask that you simply turn off your mind for a couple of hours and enjoy the spectacle. A film based on a cartoon based on a toy about an alien species of robots that have brought their war to Earth in disguise as mechanical objects would naturally fall into this category. With these lowered expectations then, it is quite baffling to witness how absolutely awful Michael Bay’s Transformers Revenge of the Fallen is. It is the worst movie in years, dating to the last Transformers film from 2007.

Bay is obviously in love with CGI effects and explosions. His incompetence in using any other piece of the cinematic art form (dialogue, acting, mise en scene) necessitates him relying on this calling card. Yet in this case, the effects are way over done. The robots are focused on so much that they become cartoonish in appearance. The audience would have been better served if the entire film remained animated for no other reason to save Bay from his own excesses. We aren’t saved from them or from the limitations in his filmmaking also pushed to excess.

Bay finds it necessary in a film about nothing to push little pieces of his morality into the script. The “Fallen” is a laughable allusion to Lucifer that counters the son of god status he attempts to grant on Optimus Prime. He makes it quite obvious he feels our government is turning its back on god. He even throws in President Obama’s name into the dialogue in an attempt to tell us what this President would do in the event we are over run by aliens. The ironic thing about Bay’s moralizing is that the comic relief he provides for this film are two Autobot twins who are essentially mechanized images of actors in black face.

After the initial Transformers film the quality of this sequel should come as no surprise. But childhood dreams die hard. A generation of kids grew up in the 1980s dreaming about what it would be like if their toys came to life. Michael Bay made that possible and now needs to rust in hell for what he has done to those now dead fantasies.

The Hangover

Las Vegas is proud enough of its hedonistic reputation that it uses the “What Happens in Vegas stays in Vegas” tagline in its national advertising. The fact that the reputation has reached the mass marketing level is a clear indication that the reputation in its original essence is essentially dead. Going to Sin City with the expectation of mischief by now feels like a cliché. The city is a destination location that knows it all to well, the marketing announces it, and the entertainment industry trumpets an experience of the unexpected that everyone has done before. In this sense The Hangover both falls for and celebrates this expectation of hedonistic pleasures.

The film itself feels like an amalgamation of countless movies about Vegas prior. After a brief introduction to four characters out on a bachelor party, the screen fades into a morning after aftermath that nobody has the memory to explain. Their hotel room resembles something straight out of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. The remainder of the film is spent retracing their steps in an effort to piece together the evening in which Doug (Justin Bartha), the groom, has turned up missing. The search is led by Phil (Bradley Cooper), the alpha male with the swagger of Vince Vaughn circa Swingers. He is joined on this quest by Stu (Ed Helms), the perpetual loser nerd who can’t find luck in love and Alan (Zach Galifianakis), a tag-along new brother-in-law exhibiting the mental capacity of Non, if Non were able to speak in Superman II.

This tried and true formula is actually a benefit to The Hangover. Nobody ever truly trashes a room the way Rauol Duke and Dr. Gonzo did in Fear and Loathing. Most guys probing the streets of Las Vegas probably feel as if they have the swagger of a swinger but in reality more closely resemble the nerdish Stu. This dichotomy between what happens in Vegas and what many believe happens in Vegas, between who a man believes himself to be and who he is creates some funny moments. Though the trailers for The Hangover probably rob the actual film of any laugh out loud moments, the movie as a whole is rather humorous from start to finish. There is nothing original in a film showcasing unexpected moments of a cliché, yet The Hangover wisely highlights these limitations and provides what is expected from a trip to a city where the fun that happens there is fleeting but better left forgotten.

The Soloist

There is a lot about humans that cannot be understood. People, incapable of functioning on the normal level as the rest of the world are still capable of experiencing the most beautiful pieces of artistic inspiration on levels that most people could never imagine. The Soloist, starring Jaime Foxx and Robert Downey Jr, is inspired by a true story about broken man (Foxx) suffering from schizophrenia but finding moments of clarity through the music of Ludwig Von Beethoven.

Though Foxx’s Nathaniel Ayers loves classical music, it is a modern musician who provides the perfect mindset with which to view this film. Leonard Cohen sings in “Anthem” that there is a crack in everything that lets the light shine in. In The Soloist, the light shines down on Ayers, a man living on the streets of Los Angeles who is found by journalist Steve Lopez (Downey). Ayers is one of society’s countless forgotten and Lopez is employed by a dying industry; both find new life through music at the crossroads of their shattered lives.

This is a pattern of discovery that replicates through time. The history of the world has been built upon the destroyed lives of others. In the wake of progress, artistic endeavors have risen to buoy those moving forward. Heartache and turmoil have been an inspiration to some of the most beautiful pieces of art and music ever conceived. Those pieces continue to inspire broken souls like Ayers who find refuge in the inspirations of other souls throughout history.

Music is the true star of The Soloist. The human drama is heartfelt, but nothing that hasn’t been done before and better in countless other films. But this movie will linger because Beethoven lingers, Mozart lingers, music and art lingers in our collective minds. When the world breaks down as it always does, it is the gifted soul who can look through the cracks and illuminate for the rest of the world the beauty that continually attempts to grow.

Sunshine Cleaning

There is one thing for certain regarding the producers of Sunshine Cleaning, coming on the heals of the critically acclaimed Little Miss Sunshine they are not here to merely blow sunshine up your butt. Life is hard, life is messy. You will find moments of levity, support from your family and friends that will keep you going, but life will never go as you plan. Anybody who tells you differently is probably selling something.

Of course the rub is they are selling you a film. Because Little Miss Sunshine was so successful, it was probably hard to resist following a similar formula. Alan Arkin once again plays an off-the-wall father/grandfather mentoring a misfit grandchild. If it wasn’t such an endearing combination, it would already be old. What doesn’t get old is the family strife and dysfunction that no matter how many times it is mined can always be approached from a different angle.

The approach Sunshine Cleaning takes is a heart-wrenching trip into some humorous instances of life’s macabre moments. With a premise that could have easily fallen into insensitivity, Amy Adams finds the perfect balance as a single mother cleaning up life’s worst moments. The humor is ever-present but subtle, allowing the story to develop without distraction, the gravity of the situations to be fully understood.

The weight of those situations found a lift in Sunshine Cleaning. They never disappear because the film stays clear of Hollywood cliché. Life is hard so the film doesn’t condescend by blowing sunshine up your butt. But it does give you a moment to pause and smile; a reminder that life can be good when you clean some of the muck of living.