Erich

A solid 6-star movie -- meaning it's entertaining enough to merit watching all the way through, even if it may not be **** stupendous. In addition, the star, Dominic Cooper, is a rare commodity: a handsome young actor who is not annoyingly glib & cheeky like so many are these days. Samuel L. Jackson delivers a nicely understated performance, for once not hamming it up as he tends to do. All the supporting cast is good, including Erin Karpluk and Ryan Robbins; and it was nice to see the lovely Gloria Reuben again (remember her as Dr. Jeanie Boulet of ER?).

In case you're wondering, I don't consider a 6 to be a bad review; to me a 6 can be a solidly entertaining, even touching movie, as this one was to me. It just didn't rise to higher levels. One thing i liked about it, a special quality and rather rare for cinema, was its deliberately (yet casually) slow pace. It was refreshing to see a movie that wasn't calibrated as though its audience had a slow attention span, condescendingly assumed to have little patience for scenes that proceed at the speed of... ordinary life. Granted, it was at times surreal to see Robert Redford and Jane Fonda inhabiting the roles of normal small town retirees, widower and widow, and neighbors for decades who had never before really gotten to know each other. But once you relax and suspend your critical faculties, honed over years of modern movie-watching to be expertly cynical, it becomes as heartwarming as a cup of cocoa from a grandmother you've taken for granted. As the movie unfolded its steady, calm story, I became quietly amazed at how deftly Redford underplayed his role, and came to appreciate it as an act of generosity on his part, breathing life into his character with zero histrionics; or, to put it another way, he seemed to have achieved the role without "acting". Fonda's persona, meanwhile, was delightful in small, circumscribed ways, she too avoiding the easy cliches that would have hammed it up. Together, in long scenes of merely talking to each other -- not with fast-paced, glib repartee, but through dialogues that allowed the beauty of our day-to-day banality an unstudied elegance -- they grew on each other, and on me. And I'm sure glad at the end... well, I don't want to spoil it.

I agree with the User reviewer "idbell" who wonders whether the Critics saw the same movie. I rarely rank a movie a 9 (and almost never a 10, for that is reserved for a one-in-a million work of art). To me, a 7 or an 8 can denote an excellent film that I find quite entertaining. I reserve 9 stars for rare exceptional films -- like "Scenic Route". This film is phenomenal. The writing is intense, amazingly copious -- a nearly steady stream of perfectly realistic exchanges between two old friends as they become increasingly tested almost beyond their endurance out in the California wasteland of desert where their truck has become stranded. Of course, no matter how good a script is, it won't work without good acting and directing -- which this movie obviously has in spades: Josh Duhamel and Dan Fogler are superb, and there is never even a hint of a false note in their performances. This is simply the kind of movie nobody is going to dislike (at least that's what I thought, before I saw the Critics on the left panel here...). Not only is it engrossing and often thrilling, it has moments that touch the heart with a common human pain. And on that note, it achieves what few American films do: it reaches the height of true, and classical Tragedy.

Usually I look for spy thrillers or murder mysteries, but occasionally I try out a movie that promises to be of "human interest" hoping it will be engaging (and bracing myself for something corny). Well, The Confirmation delivered completely and beyond my expectations. All the actors are impeccable, from the main star, Clive Owen, with deeply ingrained imperfection guided by decency playing the father of the kid, down to smaller parts -- Maria Bello, nicely filling out her role as a pious Catholic without any of the usual Hollywood snarkiness one is tired of seeing; Stephen Tobolowsky, known for his outrageous role as producer Stu Baggs on "Californication", here playing the Catholic priest who hears the kid's confessions and who plays the part sincerely (thank God!) and yet comically; Patton Oswalt as a dubious friend of Clive Owen's investing his small part with a touching streak of a loser; the fine Robert Forster as a reliable friend who helps out; and lastly Matthew Modine perfectly filling out the role of the well-meaning stepfather of the kid. Perhaps most remarkable is the actor who plays the kid, Jaeden Lieberher -- one hasn't seen a young kid act this well since the gold standard of the precocious child actor, Haley Joel Osment. All these actors and the director, Bob Nelson, combine to create a poignantly circumscribed, human story that while being searingly honest about human flaws, opens up breathing space for something worth living for: the love of a father and mother for their son.

I agree with the reviewer who loved the ending. That last scene (which I won’t describe, for fear of “spoiling” the movie) is a daring stroke of surrealism for a movie that is otherwise solidly realistic, but for some ineffable reason, it just felt so right -- a wonderful moment of unexplainable transcendence that would not have worked had the director, Sian Heder, not evoked it with such tender mastery. It comes as an unexpected climax to the rest of the realism of the movie, flawlessly realized throughout by the principal actors, Ellen Page and Allison Janney. Usually I find Ellen Page annoyingly smug; but in this movie she uses that part of her persona to excellent effect, and also shows a side of her that betokens a true actress. Allison Janney I recall from the series "West Wing" and this movie proves to be a subtly sublime vehicle for her to demonstrate a great range of emotions and dimensions of humanity. The scene with the turtle -- which also I will not spoil by describing -- was a masterful juxtaposition of the ridiculously mundane and the searingly poignant. We detect the invisible hand of the director here, Sian Heder, wisely letting Janney unfold that moment as a painful flower of insight into the pathetic paradox of a woman who has made a book-writing career out of helping other women handle relationships & divorce, yet unable to apply the same self-help to help herself in her own pathetic life. This paradox is deepened in the relationship of Janney to the messed up young woman played by Page who flaunts her inability to help herself, indulging in a careless nihilism about life -- and yet as Janney helps her, the girl helps Janney, and they form a bond of finding their own strengths in each other. And at the heart of it all is the helpless baby whom Page has "adopted" -- a helpless infant girl that draws out the strength of all three helpless women (the real mother, an alcoholic loser, well played by Tammy Blanchard, along with Page and Janney). Four helpless females floundering, finding themselves somehow in the seemingly random events that intertwine them together.

This is one of those "small" arty films that, going into it, may or may not be captivating. I soon was hooked by a number of qualities -- the freedom from background music (which I'm really getting tired of in movies), the gritty ambiance of actual street locations (in Detroit), and the fine acting. Also, it takes time to establish what exactly is going on, setting the mood & atmosphere of a low-life landlord in a bad area and his shady friends and contacts. We soon learn that the lead role (well performed by Nickola Shreli, a kind of an Albanian Vin Diesel) is a more complex character -- not perfect, a little seamy around the edges, but all the while cultivating an endearingly tender love for his little daughter (well acted by the child actress, either Maia Noni or Djelina Berishaj). The dénouement spirals out of control as Shreli's character (Elvis Martini) gets caught up in a ruthless crime ganglord's vendetta against him, and director Malik Bader handles the tension and climax well. One thread throughout involves Elvis's relationship with his daughter and at least to me, it wasn't clear why he would have a ritual of he and his daughter calling up his wife and leaving messages on her answering machine -- until the very end, when the touching reason was clear, and brought tears to my eyes.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]