Beneath the Harvest Sky takes a unique setting and stuffs it with drama that seems a little too familiar.  Starring Emory Cohen (The Place Beyond the Pines) as Casper, Harvest Sky takes us through the fall potato harvest season, undoubtedly the biggest time of the year for a town such as Van Buren, ME.

If “drugs” could be a main character, Harvest Sky nails it; the story revolves around drug trading across the Canadian border with nearly every scene featuring a pill or powder. To be fair, it’s not too far from the sad truth. Maine leads the nation in prescription drug abuse, and is a setting not too often seen on the big screen.

Casper and Dom (Callan McAuliffe) are best friends in their late years of high school. The two are opposites. Dom is the “good” boy, desperate to get the hell out of Dodge and start a new life in Boston. Casper seems to embody a self-fulfilling prophecy by falling into tough-guy spots and ultimately taking bad path after bad path.

Unfortunately we’re stuck with Casper and drugs for the whole film. He’s terribly unlikeable, and it’s a real shame that every glimpse of a shining light cast upon him is immediately shut down by powers outside his control. Dom and the surrounding town prove that the most clichéd drama can happen anywhere, save for a stellar performance from Aiden Gillen (“Game of Thrones”, “The Wire”) as Clayton, Casper’s drug-dealing father.

Yet, just as we get sick of the played out drama, the film takes a turn in the final act, ramping up energy we never knew it had, finally bringing us something of substance. The end is a little out of left field and might leave you scratching your head, but somehow still manages to fall in line with its predictable plot points. 

The camerawork is a nice touch. Cinematographer Steve Calitri is on point with shaky cam – nothing overbearing – and Maine’s natural landscapes are beautiful enough to keep watching.  Just don’t expect anything lifechanging.

Grade: C

Wednesday

We have not covered Beneath the Harvest Sky yet but will do so upon its Boston release 5/8. Marissa Marchese will review the film.


Thursday

Brandon Isaacson on Trap Street ***NUFEC Award Winner

Brandon Isaacson on Skeleton Twins

Brandon Isaacson on In Country

Brandon Isaacson on Wicker Kittens ***NUFEC Award Winner

Brandon Isaacson on Tough Love

Brandon Isaacson on Audience Award Winning Narrative Feature, Homemakers


Friday

Brandon Isaacson on Boyhood

Brandon Isaacson on Project Wild Thing

Carter Sigl on Project Wild Thing

Brandon Isaacson on Fat


Saturday

Brandon Isaacson on One Cut, One Life ***NUFEC Award Winner

Brandon Isaacson on Obvious Child ***NUFEC Award Winner

Brandon Isaacson on Calvary

Brandon Isaacson on Tough Love

Brandon Isaacson on A for Alex

Brandon Isaacson on Starfish Throwers



Sunday

Emily Fisler on I Believe in Unicorns ***NUFEC Award Winner

Brandon Isaacson on I Believe in Unicorns ***NUFEC Award Winner

Brandon Isaacson speaks with Leah Meyerhoff, writer-director of I Believe in Unicorns ***NUFEC Award Winner

Brandon Isaacson on 9-Man ***NUFEC Award Winner

Brandon Isaacson on Vessel ***NUFEC Award Winner

Brandon Isaacson on Freeload ***NUFEC Award Winner

Brandon Isaacson speaks with the director of Freeload ***NUFEC Award Winner

Carter Sigl speaks with the writer-directors of Fort Tilden

Carter Sigl on Fort Tilden

Brandon Isaacson on Fort Tilden

Brandon Isaacson on Starred Up

Brandon Isaacson on Web

Brandon Isaacson on Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter

Brandon Isaacson on Dear White People

Brandon Isaacson on Riot on the Dance Floor


Monday

Brandon Isaacson on Wicker Kittens ***NUFEC Award Winner

Brandon Isaacson on Dear White People

Brandon Isaacson on The Sacrament


Tuesday

Brandon Isaacson on The Double

Brandon Isaacson on The Trip to Italy


Wednesday

Brandon Isaacson on Mood Indigo


NUFEC Awards

The Lunchbox, Ritesh Batra’s directorial debut, is the most heartwarmingly relatable film you’ll see so far this year.

It follows a very simple plot. Based around India’s lunchbox delivery service (known as the dabbawalas), a young woman, Ila, expertly crafts her husband’s lunches every day in an attempt to reestablish the spark in their marriage. One day, the lunchbox ends up in the wrong hands – those of Sajaan Fernandez, an older lonely widower at another business. Ila and Sajaan start passing notes via lunchbox, forming a touching platonic friendship in which both vent to, and learn from, each other.

For a film that was first set out to be a documentary, Batra instead produces a fictional story relatable to any audience. After spending a week with dabbawalas, he overheard numerous personal accounts of the deliverymen and chose to transform the experience into a script.

It’s a predictable story of unlikely friendship, but that doesn’t make it any less meaningful. Composed of beautifully framed depictions of life in Mumbai, we get a glimpse at Ila’s struggle to maintain happiness in a land where women’s roles are clearly defined. We also see a lonely man, just weeks away from retiring, finding meaning in new friends and another side of life.

Batra cleverly keeps the story realistic, always adding a handmade touch yet often using clichés that work in his favor. The film was well-received at most festivals, and for good reason – it’s perfect in its simplicity.

Starring Irrfan Khan (Life of Pi, Slumdog Millionaire) as Sajaan and Nimrat Kaur as Ila, The Lunchbox will seem familiar and unique at the same time, leaving you feeling pleasant and with a new sense of perspective.

Grade: A+

If you’re thinking of taking your Valentine to see Winter’s Tale this Friday in the hopes of catching a sweet, romantic, magical love story, I implore you to reconsider.

Winter’s Tale will leave you exiting the theater in one of three manners: a) scratching your head, baffled by what you just saw; b) doubled over in laughter at the lameness of it all; or c) tearing your hair out wondering how four Oscar winners and a handful of blockbuster stars somehow agreed to make this travesty of a film.

Based on Mark Helprin’s 1983 fantasy novel, Winter’s Tale stars Colin Farrell as Peter Lake, an orphan-turned-thief/mechanic. He and his bizarre haircut are on the run from Pearly Soames, Peter’s ex-mentor and sort of demon mob boss, played by Russell Crowe. Within the first ten minutes, you’ll know what you’re in for: Peter escapes Pearly’s capture by flying away on a magical white horse – his new guardian angel.

While attempting one last heist before he skips town, Peter barges in on Beverly, a red-headed beauty dying from tuberculosis. Immediately smitten, Peter uses the powers of love, miracles, and the human spirit to try and save her from her impending death.

Any touch of magical sentiment is drowned in overbearing symbols of light and the stars, of magic and the battle of good and evil. It’s all incredibly lame and at some points laughable – like when Pearly visits his boss for permission to track down Peter, and his boss turns out to be Lucifer himself. Played by Will Smith.

But wait! It gets weirder. After a strange and befuddling turn of events, Peter survives and awakes in the year 2014, meandering through the five boroughs of New York City with no memory of his past. He meets Virginia (a cold and lifeless Jennifer Connolly) and all of a sudden his life has meaning again: he must save Virginia’s red-headed daughter from dying young. Somehow Virginia remains totally unphased; it seems Connolly would rather be anywhere else than in front of the camera. I don’t blame her.

Once again on the run from Pearly, Peter enlists the help of Virginia and her boss, who just so happens to be Beverly’s little sister all grown up. Seriously. She has to be at least a hundred years old at this point yet she’s as spry and with-it as Gloria Stuart’s Old Rose Dawson in Titanic.

By far the most disappointing thing about Winter’s Tale is the fact that so many big names are attached. With Colin Farrell, Russell Crowe, William Hurt, Will Smith, Jennifer Connolly, and Akiva Goldsman at the helm, you’d expect much better than this. Everything was off: the dialogue, special effects, suspension of disbelief, and screenplay adaptation.

The film’s tagline asks us to believe in miracles. Sorry, not this time.

Grade: D-

Jason Reitman’s Labor Day looks promising to an outsider – two strong leads in Kate Winslet and Josh Brolin would indicate a powerful back-and-forth in this tale of lost and found love.

But, while their strength holds up, Labor Day falls flat. Winslet plays Adele, a depressed single mom in the late 1980s, raising her son Henry and generally never leaving the house. While out shopping for new clothes for Henry, a strange and intimidating man named Frank (Brolin) all but threatens the two into taking him home where he can rest up his injured leg.

Surprise! Turns out he’s a convicted killer fresh off a prison escape and needs to lay low for the night.

As the story unfolds over a Labor Day weekend, we see the characters develop and grow, albeit a little too quickly in such a short amount of time with way too much melodrama for such a sappy plot. A spark lights anew in Adele’s eyes, and Frank plays Mr. Fix-it, slowly winning his way into Adele’s heart and stepping in as a father figure to Henry.

Visually, Reitman appeases us with beautiful warm autumn colors and slow, panning movements across suburban Massachusetts. Rolfe Kent composes the soundtrack, making this the fourth collaboration for him and Reitman: The others include Thank You for Smoking, Up in the Air, and Young Adult.

The film is all well and good and a little too Harlequin romance novelesque. A tall, dark, and handsome man with a dangerous yet misunderstood past – a lonely, broken, aging woman who thought all had been lost. An impressionable boy just hitting puberty. You do the math: this one’s about the performances, not the story.

Winslet gives it her all as a depression-riddled mother, though at times the dreariness was just too much to take. Brolin is his usual Brolin self, his physical presence just enough to up the ante and compound his role as weekend stepdad. And Gattlin Griffith, who plays Henry, does a decent enough job to carry the movie along, but he’s nothing special just yet. Give him some time.

With supporting appearances from Tobey Maguire (who narrates), James Van der Beek, and Tom Lipinski (who bears a scary resemblance to a young Brolin – excellent casting) Labor Day rounds out well. Just don’t expect many emotional stirs or racy plotlines – we’ve seen it all before.

Grade: C

Saving Mr. Banks is a sugary blend of contrived meaning, blatant lack of awareness, and Disney-fied corporate propaganda.

And it’s not that bad.

The film stars Emma Thompson as PL Travers –the original author of Mary Poppins. Thompson plays the part with such bitterness you’d think all she really needed was a spoonful of sugar. Travers desperately clings to her precious creation, butting heads with Disney’s happiest writers and refusing to budge.

Tom Hanks plays Walt Disney himself, a family man, a Midwest man, a happiest-place-on-earth-chain-smoking man with a great mustache and greater tan. You know exactly what you’re going to get with this one: Hanks plays dress-up and toys with an iffy accent, but he can do anything, so we forgive him. He’s rounded out by pleasant sidekicks including sweethearts Jason Schwartzmann, BJ Novak, Bradley Whitford, and Paul Giamatti.

Taking place in two different time periods, we’re given the Poppins negotiations and writing process in the 1960s, as well as a gorgeous family falling apart in 1920s Australia. Colin Farrell steals the spotlight as an alcoholic father fighting a losing battle. It’s heartbreaking, but a treat to watch. He is a shining light – if not a huge draw – for the film.

Unfortunately Saving Mr. Banks is a disjointed ball of irony. It’s prime focus is the struggle between maintaining artistic integrity and letting go of the past, all while not falling victim to Disney’s song-and-dance transformation – yet that’s exactly what happens. The harsh truths of Travers’ displeasure with the final film are silenced in favor of a happy ending. It all feels a little too surreal: a bit overacted, glorified, and, well, Disney-fied.

It’s tough to determine whom the film is marketed to, exactly. Make no mistake: this is not a children’s movie. Alcoholism and abandonment are the heavy ankleweights attached to the sunny façade and took me by surprise – but as an adult, you may not care.

Grade: B-

Out of the Furnace is the type of film that gets worse the more you think about it.

Director Scott Cooper gives us essentially zero backstory for main character Russell (Christian Bale). A gritty mill worker in Braddock, PA, he ends up in prison after a car accident. His brother Rodney (Casey Affleck) is a scrappy Iraq war veteran struggling to find work. With a penchant for fist fighting, Rodney enters fights under a bookie (Willem Defoe) to make some cash and pay his debts.

Rodney learns there’s an opportunity up in the mountains of northern New Jersey, where the mountain’s inhabitants live by their own set of rules: no police interference, no laws, no regard for humanity. It’s a secluded community. This group is based off a real-life Native American tribe that live in the Ramapo Mountains area of New Jersey. Read up on them if you get a chance – their story is quite interesting, but one terribly misrepresented in the film.

Enter the group’s ruthless druggie warlord, Harlan (Woody Harrelson). He’s disgusting and scary and everything you’d fear from the leader of a cultish enterprise. Harrelson lends himself to the role quite well; I physically cringed at some of his more gruesome scenes.

In a series of events that shift the film’s focus, Rodney goes missing up in the mountains. Russell, now freed from jail, sets off on a path of vigilante justice to find out what happened.

Out of the Furnace is visually pleasing, and the billed cast is stellar – Forest Whitaker and Zoe Saldana also star. While there is skilled acting onscreen, the script can’t keep up. Trying to sum up the plot is futile: There is none. Don’t be fooled: we’re given numerous shots of Bale looking down and dreary, but the fact that I didn’t walk out of the theater in immediate disgust is a testament to his (and the rest of the cast’s) acting abilities. Only after I got home did I realize how much the film was truly lacking.

It’s a shame – with a little more character development, this film could’ve turned out much better, and it’s not like they didn’t have the space. Total runtime? An hour and 45 minutes.

It’s stocked with gratuitous violence and some clichéd plot lines. The cast did the best they could with a shoddy script, but it didn’t pull all the way through.

Grade: C-

“What if you could relive any moment in your life until it was perfect?”

The latest (and supposedly last) British romantic comedy from director Richard Curtis (Love Actually, Notting Hill), About Time, explores the trials of love, family, a bit of sci-fi, and the importance of living in the now. The film stars Irish up-and-comer Domhnall Gleeson (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Anna Karenina) as Tim, a young man whose life changes when his father spills the family secret: the men in the bloodline can travel through time.

Of course, there are a few stipulations, including the granddaddy of them all: You can’t travel forward in time, so you can only visit events from your own lifetime experiences. Naturally, Tim sets his sights on what any reasonable 21-year-old would do with such a gift: a girlfriend.

After testing out his time travel sea legs, Tim lands the girl of his dreams when he meets Mary (Rachel McAdams). Perhaps McAdams has found her niche in the rom-com-time-travel corner of the industry, because as Gleeson’s partner in crime, she does just fine. Her adorable Zooey Deschanel-esque bangs and mousy demeanor paint her as quirky yet reserved: just what Tim needs. Unfortunately it’s difficult to root for the relationship to succeed, since Mary remains blissfully unaware of Tim’s unique ability.

Often times, things feel uncomfortably normal for a film about time travel; Curtis hands us a slew of stereotypical and terribly familiar supporting characters. However, Bill Nighy delights as Tim’s cheerfully animated father – would you expect anything else? – and lesser-known Lydia Wilson makes us wish we had a sister as wild and free as her.

Be prepared to scratch your head in confusion when a plot hole presents itself on a silver platter (hint: it happens a lot); Curtis has sacrificed sci-fi accuracy in exchange for a multitude of adorable half-glances and awkward social confrontations. But though Tim consistently breaks the rules, Curtis conveniently glosses over them in an effort to keep the film from dragging (in which he almost succeeds).

About Time will make you laugh, cringe, and maybe cry at the sentimentality of it all. Further, it’ll leave you wanting more from breakout star Domhnall Gleeson, whose ginger locks and charming presence will appeal to most audiences everywhere.

Rating: B

A small indie film from Pakistani-American filmmakers Omar Mullick and Bassam Tariq, These Birds Walk pushes us into the streets of Karachi, Pakistan, a section of the world so war-torn and impoverished that it’s near impossible to consider the concept of raising a child there. The co-directors highlight the difficulty of growing up here, where your choices are either to stay in a bare-boned hut with no electricity or gas, or run away to a children’s home where at least you’re guaranteed a meal.

We follow one particular housing location of the EDHI foundation, created by seasoned saint Abdul Sattar Edhi, who provides a safe haven and shelter for people with no better resources. As well as Edhi and the children, the film introduces us to the exhausted and jaded ambulance drivers in their quest to make a living.

These Birds Walk is much less a documentary than it is a portrait of modern-day Pakistan. Taking place over three years, we say hello and goodbye to the boys who are returned to their families – and sadly, in some cases, we want to protest (upon one boy’s return, his uncle states that it’d be easier if EDHI had returned a corpse instead).

Providing zero narration, backstory, or explanation, Mullick and Tariq make us understand the children’s desperation, kneeling us down to their eye level, watching them grow in an all-too-familiar manner of “boys will be boys,” except it hurts. Their play-fighting stems from a place of survival. Their insights put them way ahead of their time. They talk of being “real men”, the importance of religion, the desire to be safe at home.

At only 71 minutes, These Birds Walk is definitely something to check out. It’s gritty, natural, and all too real while handing you a dose of perspective – and it looks pretty while doing it. It’s definitely a tearjerker for the faint of heart.

Grade:  A-

After a brief delay at my local theater due to a fire alarm, I sat in my seat with no clue what to expect from the screen in front of me. Would I see a cheesy, twisted adaptation of a world-famous novel with little regard to its moral gravitas? Perhaps a unique approach to a story so intricate that studios have tried and failed to put it in theaters for over 25 years? Maybe a boring teenage love story intertwined with some pyew-pyew laser-y guns…

The lights dimmed and a quote from Ender, the titular character, flashed on the screen. Immediately I was thrust into the world of a future Earth still reeling from a global attack decades earlier that left its citizens—and more importantly, its military—in an unrelenting state of unease.

I sat back, grinning. This was going to be good.

Ender’s Game, director-screenwriter Gavin Hood’s first big budget film since X-Men Origins: Wolverine, captivates from scene one with its staggering visuals and booming sounds enveloping the theater (the IMAX doesn’t hurt, either.)

As we meet Ender, a sensitive and curiously icy young boy, we start to see why he’s the chosen one to lead an attack against the alien race that attacked Earth so many years ago: His perception of fight tactics and strategies are unparalleled among his peers.  Because of this, Col. Hyram Graff (always-gruffy Harrison Ford) whisks him away to a space station military school with the hope that Ender will become a decorated war hero.

Groomed by Graff to be Earth’s new savior, Ender suffers through the torment of his classmates and the challenges of his superiors, all while rising quickly through the ranks. He knows he’s different, but he struggles with whether or not he likes it that way.

The film would not have survived had Hood chosen the wrong Ender. English actor Asa Butterfield (Hugo) heartily tackles one of the hardest child roles to play in the past 50 years. Thoughtful, compassionate, yet distant from his peers, Ender is one complicated kid, and Butterfield deserves praise for trying – but unfortunately, Hood sticks him with a shallow and emotionless script, forcing Butterfield to reach beyond his means.

The biggest injustice here, though, is the lack of depth. The original story is an engaging commentary on war and humanity, and Ender is a treasure trove of conflict, genius, self-loathing, and love. Most of that doesn’t translate well to the screen; perhaps there’s a good reason studios shied away from the project. It’s tough to encapsulate such an introspective base story in under two hours. To Hood’s credit, he does the best he can, but it falls just flat, leaving much to be desired.

It’d be unfair not to mention the rest of the cast. For a sci-fi film about kids, Ender’s comrades pull through to deliver a convincing performance. Sixteen-year-old Academy Award nominee Hailee Steinfeld provides strong acting chops to the group of youngsters, while Ford, Viola Davis, and Ben Kingsley offer guidance as Ender’s superiors.

Ender’s Game is a complex piece of sci-fi; it’s no wonder it took 27 years to get it down. The film, a huge risk for director Hood, managed to grasp its source material’s flashiest aspects in a pleasing hour and 44 minutes. Though it may flop due to author and producer Orson Scott Card’s controversial public statements, it’s a good popcorn flick with fun visuals and solid cast.

Grade: C+