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Directed by: Todd Field Starring: Kate Winslet, Jennifer Connelly, Patrick Nelson, Jackie Earle Haley Writer/director Todd Field is on an odd streak. This is his second masterpiece in a row (after In the Bedroom) that you might never want to see again. Like ItB, Little Children focuses on every day people depicted with startling and often squirm-inducing realism. Kate Winslet is an unhappy housewife bored by child-rearing and dealing with an inattentive husband who has picked up an unfortunate (and hilarious) hobby. Patrick Nelson plays a law school grad who has failed the bar exam multiple times while being a househusband not terribly happy with his marriage and life in general. The movie takes little time to start connecting its characters with Winslet and Nelson at the center, but several others intertwined, including a disgraced and disturbed ex-cop obsessed with a paroled sex offender. That Winslet and Nelson's characters embark on an affair is no spoiler, yet the string of decisions they make sends their lives in surprising directions. The threads that connect the characters and subplots are not fantastical and forced as in last year's Crash, and don't feel tacked on or unnecessary. Winslet is brilliant as she almost always is. She can convey more with subtle facial expressions and body language than most actresses can with ten pages of dialog. Jackie Earle Haley deserves attention for his performance as the pedophile just released from prison. You'll never be able to watch The Bad News Bears the same way again. It is a tribute to his skill and the writing that you will actually feel sorry for a pedophile. Enough can't be said about the writing. I spent a lot of the movie covering my face or wanting to plug my ears; you feel as if you are sitting in on real people's lives and seeing and hearing things you just aren't supposed to. There are fairly regular dollops of comedy, black and otherwise, including a masterful parody of NFL Films, yet even when you are laughing, you'll often find yourself wanting to leave the room. The movie lost perfection in my eyes with a climactic scene that asks a character to do something completely unbelievable for an unnecessary shot of melodrama, but thankfully, it's a brief mistake rather than a complete derailment. This is a great movie, definitely in my top five for the year. RATING: 4.5 PROS: Performances and writing are virtually perfect CONS: Big scene near the end nearly upends the entire movie, extremely uncomfortable throughout ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: http://imdb.com/title/tt0404203/
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Jan 13, 2007 22:39
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Loved this movie from top to bottom. The narration is excellent, the story flows well, and yeah, Kelly Leak is scary/creepy. Amazing performance from Jackie Earle Haley. Kate is hot as always. MMmm.. Rated 5/5.
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Jan 16, 2007 22:52
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Absolutely superb film. Very difficult to watch in parts, some of the scenes are absolutely uncompromising and unrelenting. It does not shy away from confronting issues that we usually try not to consider, mostly because they're unpleasant, and we'd rather deal in black and white than nuance. 5/5 Incidentally, after seeing the film, my girlfriend read the book. It actually lacked a lot of the depth and complexity of the film. One of the unusual cases of the movie being better than the book, perhaps.
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Nov 17, 2008 07:48
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