Le Week-End (2013)

Rating: 4/5

Making a movie with no real storyline or key events to act upon is a daring manoeuvre: films of this kind tend to be portraits of people, and their relationships with one another, and their validity and credibility relies entirely on making these relationships tangible and sympathetic. Of course, with the wrong script and actors, this can turn into a tedious nightmare, but correctly done, it can be very entertaining indeed. Le Week-End has exactly the right script and exactly the right actors to bring a few days in regular people's lives on to the screen. The only real set-up for the film is that Meg (Lindsay Duncan) and Nick (Jim Broadbent) have returned to their beloved Paris, where they honeymooned, for a little fun and freedom. From there, it's really only the couple we care about. 

Lindsay Duncan has, over the years, fallen into a similar category as Kristen Scott Thomas, for often playing icy, hostile or resentful females, and Le Week-End epitomises this. Meg is very difficult to like, as her miserable persona fades from being comical to being off-putting: in the opening scenes, we see her storm out of their Paris hotel for it being "too beige." Her adorable husband Nick quietly retorts, "There is a certain light-brownness about it," before fleeing after her in desperation. This display seems to be the norm for their relationship, to the point where an onlooker may consider Meg's treatment of Nick abusive. She makes unnecessary digs at him, insults him, gets upset over nothing, even hits him, and all he can do in response is that sweet, teeth-baring grimace that Broadbent manages to squeeze into almost every character he portrays. Perhaps it is this passively vulnerable quality about his face that lands him such roles.

Poor Nick is "congenitally faithful to his wife",  and discontented with what his life has become. "I'm surprised how mediocre I turned out," the Cambridge graduate comments. He misses having "smart, bearded friends to listen to Joni Mitchell records with," and he does very little in defense against his wife's mood swings and emotional blackmail. We find out she has a habit of imagining she has some terrible illness or other, and actually says to her husband that should she succumb to one of her non-existent ailments, "You'll be sorry you never loved me enough." I suppose this kind of drama is an example of dry British wit, in which the audience laughs a lot more at people verbally abusing each other than at physical violence.

Now, along comes 6 feet 5 inches of charming loveliness in the form of Jeff Goldblum, as Nick's former classmate and associate Morgan. He is just what the movie needs to have some uplifting, or at least amusing moments without seeming entirely miserable. Goldblum is a real star; he has such a warming presence, and a way of using his voice and manner to make any words sound sophisticatedly amusing. Morgan's life has turned out great. He is wealthy, just moved back to a suave Paris apartment having impregnated his latest younger model, and holds snooty soirees attended by poets and philosophers and artists with polo-necked jumpers draped over their shoulders. His teenage son resides in his bedroom smoking pot, but who cares?! Morgan's life is great! ("Does he ever not shout?")

A dinner party at Morgan's place is the setting of an opportunity being passed to Nick. Whether or not the opportunity should be used is unclear, but it feels darn good. Morgan insists Nick make a speech, having just summed up his own awesome existence to everyone, and he starts to reveal how bleak his life is in reality. His disappointing son, his struggling finances while Meg splurges on whatever she wants, and generally just how awful she really is. As I watched this scene play out, I wrote in my notes, 'Is the point for Meg to feel as embarrassed and oppressed as Nick?' The episode is perfectly concluded when Nick looks straight at his wife and asks, "Was that it? Did I leave anything out?"

While the preceding drama between the couple, and Morgan, is entertaining, and certainly not dull, the movie's payoff is its closing scene. Meg and Nick have fled their lavish hotel, unable to afford the bill, and sit for hours in a little cafe bar. As they sit, I started to consider why it is that ageing couples often look so melancholy, when they are actually happy. They sit and sit, taking a sip of their wine every now and then, and eventually Morgan puts in a final appearance to solve their problems. The juke box is powered up, and the three perform a heart-warmingly brilliant recreation of the famous Dancing in the Cafe scene from 'Bande à part'. This is one of the nicest conclusions to a film I've seen in recent times. It reinforces the faint threads of happiness and sincerity hiding throughout the movie, and leaves a really positive after-effect.

Sunshine on Leith (2013)

Rating: 2.5/5

I wasn't sure whether or not I had high hopes for Sunshine on Leith. A new musical film based on the lives of two Scottish soldiers when they return home really held a lot of potential, if handled in the right manner. However, the music is really the biggest problem with the movie, and seemingly the biggest point, meaning that the best threads of the storyline are eventually lost among a flurry of cheesy Proclaimers remixes and humdrum dance numbers. The first ten or fifteen minutes are enjoyable and made to work: its establishing shot is a cooling blue dusky landscape, as a row of tanks roll into view, and within we are introduced to Davy (George McKay) and Ally (Kevin Guthrie), and as the rumbles of nearby explosion work up a beat, the soldiers one by one start singing in harmony. The context is believable - for a musical, at least - and this wonderful crescendo builds up to a shock.

The boys are discharged and sent back home. Harry is back to his family, dad Rab (Peter Mullan), mum Jean (Jane Horrocks) and sister Liz (Freya Mavor), who is Ally's sort-of girlfriend. From this point, they could have gone one of two ways: a decent, truthful, heartfelt story about how the boys adjust to life again, and how their absence and experience have effected their relationships, or...the way the film actually goes. Too bad. 

Towards the end of the fifteen-minute success streak, the boys break into their first real musical number (I'm On My Way) and it works. It garnered surprised chuckles from the audience, and it is genuinely joyous and introduced with natural flow. However, they are soon down the pub with their local buddies, and the needless, gratuitous, ill-fitting music starts pouring. And, from this point on, the music gets repetitive. Maddeningly so. Consider, for example, a three minute sequence filled almost entirely by the phrase "My heart was broken - sorrow" in some form or other, with the odd word in between to keep audiences from noticing. This is the formula that the rest of the musical score follows, and it is decidedly dreary.

The songs of a musical should fit into place perfectly, with normal life being led in a natural way into song. This is quite difficult to achieve, as the makers here have found. It's just not as simple as finding a place to drop a song every 10-12 minutes. These musical numbers feel wearing, and tiring. The boys throw back their arms and puff out their chests as they sing, and artificial mania ensues. One or two were better than others, mainly featuring other minor characters that should have been further developed, like the local barman, and Jean's boss Harry. I may also add that where a musical has to depend greatly on overall performances, almost every actor's singing is below average here.

So, if we can't like the music, there must be a great storyline to fall back on? No such luck. Now we go into major cliché mode, and I started to lose track of how many times I rolled my eyes or sighed. Every main fella in this movie has a woman he loves but is in some kind of trouble with. Rab, the most endearing and genuine of the characters, finds out he has a 25 year old daughter he never knew, Ally is turned down in his marriage proposal, and Davy's sort-of girlfriend he only just met gets mad at him for getting caught in a punch-up. Her reaction is the most ridiculous. After a cringeworthy moment when all three women storm out of a party together, leaving the three men standing clueless, Davy's 'lass' Yvonne (Antonia Thomas) decides that after a minor falling out with a man she only just got with, she simply must pack up everything, quit her nursing job at the hospital and leave Scotland forever the very next day. Then, of course, we get the "You're too late Davy, she's already gone" bit and the ensuing drama, and weaved throughout the movie are other such toe-curling clichés as Dad having unexpected heart-attack, What do you want - "I want the world" and "You cannae go along with things for others' sake, it'll turn out worse in the end. " We even get the shameful sight of police officers joining in with the manic final mass-dance number. By the end, I felt like crying of embarrassment.

The sad thing about Sunshine on Leith is that the one element that may have worked is totally thrown out. After the boys are home, the entire soldier plotline goes out of the window, almost like it never happened, almost like it was pointless. If they had carried on as a post-war story, I think it could have been great. Instead I came out with five definitive words written in my notebook: 'Musically repetitive and dramatically cliché.' I'm sure to those who are entertained by simplicity and phony upbeat, this movie is 'Simply glorious - the feel-fabulous film of the year' (Daily Mail), but as a lover of musicals, solid, original plots and decent movies in general, I was left feeling 'brung-down, run-down, hung-up and all kinds of mean, nasty, ugly things' (Arlo Guthrie). 

Blue Jasmine (2013)

Rating: 4.5/5

Perhaps one of the most renowned and tense dramas of the last century, Tennessee Williams' tormented stageplay 'A Streetcar Named Desire' has inspired copious theatre productions and film adaptations, the biggest and best starring Vivien Leigh and Marlon Brando. And now, almost 70 years after the story was written, it has been given a modern twist, and shot through the eyes of Woody Allen. It is unclear whether 'Blue Jasmine' is intended as an adaptation of 'Streetcar,' or whether it just inspired the idea, but various critics have noted the similarities, and they leapt out at me throughout. For anybody not familiar with Williams' play, it sees shamed, formerly-rich teacher and socialite Blanche DuBois move in with her now working-class sister Stella and her 'whelp of a Polack' husband Stanley Kowalski in New Orleans. Blanche has a traumatic past, which is revealed in time, and is evident throughout from her manic behaviour, but Stanley knows the Napoleonic Code, and exercises his rights as a husband to investigate what really happened to the DuBois fortune, and why Blanche is really there. The plot structure, characters and form are the same, except presented in Allen's darkly humorous fashion.

The firey Cate Blanchett stars in the Blanche role of Jasmine. The movie opens with Jasmine sat on a plane, chatting to an elderly woman next to her. She 'babbles' on and on, about every personal detail of her life, about how good a lover her former husband was, about the cocktails of anti-depressants she has been put on, and about how "the only cocktail that works is Martini." We assume from her intimate and open manner that the woman is travelling with her, but at the baggage carousel, the women makes a quick exit, with Jasmine still wanting to take her out to lunch sometime. Her luggage, of course, is Louis Vuitton, as she emphasizes several times, and she is dolled up like a celebrity on a day off. When she turns up at her sister's home, she looks as if she daren't touch anything for fear of disease. In a deeper-voiced parallel to the opening scenes of 'Streetcar,' Jasmine sniffs out her sister's booze like a pro, and is not shy in helping herself, while she tearfully rambles about the Government taking everything, and being in deep debt. But how could Jasmine fly first-class when she is broke, and had to sell all her worldly goods? "Iiiiiiii dooonn't knooooww," she retorts, as if pleading ignorance will close the case. Sister Ginger (the lovely Sally Hawkins) is quietly dissatisfied with Jasmine's vagueness about her situation, but in typical Stella-fashion, she defends her scatty sibling.

The story is told in a series of scenes that flash back and forth in time. We see Jasmine's current situation, and we see her former life, where she lived in luxury with her husband Hal (Alec Guinness) and partied the days and nights away. She was carefree, and being detached from Hal's 'business,' was ignorant to what was going on around her. "I sign anything, I'm very trusting," she comments at one point, while we periodically notice her husband shoving papers into her hands to be signed. There is present-time talk of Hal having been a 'crook' and lost everything, before hanging himself in jail. Her past is ambiguous, with lots of fishy things going on, all of which are revealed over the plot's development.

The main difference between 'Blue Jasmine' and 'A Streetcar Named Desire' is the overall tone of the piece. 'Streetcar' is a dark, chilling and ultimately depressing experience about scandal, family secrets and primitive aggression. Allen has taken the components of its story, and told it through a slightly lighter channel. The performances, particularly by Blanchett, are very dramatic and perfectly delivered, but humour is scattered where appropriate and realistic. One especially funny scene features Jasmine on a date at a cafe with Ginger, her boyfriend Chili and his friend Eddie, in which the fellas innocently enough try to find out a little more about Jasmine and her life. The conversation (with little input from Jasmine) turns to food, with Eddie eventually claiming, "Get a bad clam...you'll wish you were never born!"

Allen's writing is, as usual, witty and realistic, with actors talking over each other occasionally, as is natural. Jasmine, however unlikable she essentially is, is a very enjoyable character, providing unwitting humour alongside tense drama and delivery. This really is a very enjoyable film overall, for anybody with a taste for sophisticated or humanistic drama. It also features some of the best performances of the year. I expect Blanchett will be on the receiving end of many awards.

Ain't Them Bodies Saints (2013)

Rating: 4/5

The first time I saw a trailer for Ain't Them Bodies Saints, it stood out as something I really couldn't wait to review, and one thing about the trailer struck me in particular: the heart-breakingly tender voice of its male protagonist, played by Casey Affleck. When dear old Roger Ebert reviewed Vincent Gallo's infamous The Brown Bunny, he commented on Gallo's 'pleading tone of voice not one actor in a hundred would have the nerve to imitate.' I remembered this quote as I heard Affleck speak, and have to say, he may be the one out of the hundred.

Opening with an ornate title card that simply reads 'This was in Texas...' we are introduced to our tragic young lovers Bob Muldoon and Ruth Guthrie. In a breezy, sunbathed field, they argue, with Bob retorting each time almost with fondness, and certainly with patience. She is pregnant, and he is over the moon. Next thing we know, the lovers are caught up in a shoot-out with the police, and Ruth shoots a cop. Bob gives himself up, while demanding Ruth makes a run for it, and for a while their correspondences are reduced to brown paper and pencils.

Their daughter Sylvie is born and several years pass, during which time Ruth is supported by old man Skerritt (Keith Carradine) and becomes close friends with the cop she shot. But Bob's letters maintain that he will come for his wife and child. So, of course, he breaks out of prison, and starts on his mission to get back to his family. Bob's not a bad guy, but he's got places to be, and a preference for freedom. This combined with Skerritt's attempts to keep Ruth from harm lead to a lot of chasing, and gunshots captured so explosively your ears ring. Twice during the picture, Bob goes carjacking to get around, and these scenes were poignantly reminiscent of Patty Jenkins' masterpiece Monster (2003), in which Charlize Theron's character Lee desperately and despairingly hitches lifts and kills the drivers.

Ruth's character is given considerable attention, and she is wonderfully played by Rooney Mara.  She is a reserved person in terms of her feelings, and given her cavalier attitude towards her incarcerated lover around others, we as an audience as somewhat surprised to see her true emotions come out in the odd moment or letter. Her real self lies dormant, as she secretly longs and waits for Bob to come home, although she understands fully how impossible it really is. She is the most incredible mother, singing her little girl songs, reading her books and telling stories of how her pappy would "wrestle down bears and bop 'em on the nose!" The moments between Ruth and Sylvie are very touching.

The screenplay by director David Lowrey is fantastically crafted. I particularly enjoyed Bob's several monologues, in which he fondly remembers arguing with Ruth, of all things. Casey Affleck's performance is truly captivating, and that beautiful voice, which heightens in pitch and breaks at the end of each sentence, is a smartly-used tool which adds to the character's tangibility. Lesser actors may not have evoked such particulars. The final thing that pleased me as the lights came up, is that the movie serves its purpose, and its audience well; its ends at a reasonable 97 minutes, with a satisfying ending, and cut to title card that felt like shutting a book. No needless dribble, or unneeded extended resolutions. It ends exactly when it should, and after an emotional ordeal for all the characters, I smiled as the credits rolled. What a miraculous feeling.

The Croods (2013)

Rating: 3/5

As a last minute favour to Norwich parents during the final week of the summer holidays, Vue cinema are showing The Croods daily as part of their bargain Kids AM sessions. I took my daughter along the other day - her third viewing; my first - and one thing I couldn't deny was that she was entertained. She knew some of the dialogue, and a particularly cute little gesture by a furry rodent that occurs a classic three times. At least they seem to understand a rule of comedy.

The Croods is Dreamworks' latest feature, with the voice talents of Nicolas Cage and Catherine Keener, among others, centering around the last family of cave people left alive after the forces of their terrible hostile world pick off everybody else. Overprotective sitcom dad Grug (Cage) is the bulbous 'provider' who confines his family to the darkness of their cave day and night to keep wildly ridiculous predators out. Teenager daughter Eep (voice by Emma Stone) is the plucky tomboy who, of course, dreams of what her dad is keeping from her, and sneaks out at night. 

One night, she comes across another survivor; a young guy, called Guy, who can 'make fire,' and says its name as if it's well-established, and that the primitive family should know the name even if they don't know the object. He's the strapping, streetwise hunk who's obligatory to counterbalance, and eventually fall in love with, the teenage daughter. He tells of the approaching end of the world, and when a huge earthquake destroys the Croods' cave, they catch up with him on their way to discover a new home.

Where should I start with a decent analysis of actual content? Let's make a compliment sandwich. It may need several layers, though... The movie is nicely animated. Although some sequences are more fluid than others, textures are mastered, as are backgrounds; early rocky scenes are almost photographic. The opening scenes are also rapid, and dizzying. All the action is presented moving, zipping around, at a very fast pace, and although it's well done, it's almost maddening in its intensity.

In an aforementioned sitcom style, the family is presented in a way that is cliché and perhaps too detailed to be interesting to kids. Grumpy young Eep sleeps on her own ledge of the cave; Grug's complaints are futile, as the typical mother Ugga (Keener) coos that the kid is 'working through some things,' and 'needs her own space.' This is family entertainment, not Jerry Springer. Do the kids in the audience really care about a cavegirl's teenage angst?

Although comedy is not as strong a point for The Croods as it was for, say, Shrek, the main source of laughs is repeated hostility between Grug and the (once again typical) mother-in-law. Dashes of decent imagination are also displayed, particularly in the more colourful jungle terrain that the family eventually occupy. Little dandelion-type seeds float through the air, with two twiggy leg-like appendages which create an overall avian appearance. A mouse with an elephant's facial features also amused me.

The movie is mostly action. It rattles along on a shoestring of a plot, with no real point or purpose to any of the events that take place, except the eventual new-found paradise where we are sure everyone will live happily ever after. The countless obstacles in between, where it seems like all is lost, and our protagonists are about to die, or be left behind, or sacrifice themselves, are highly predictable, as in fact the whole movie is. It is such a standard formula by now. Sure, I struggled to figure out at the time how Grug would get across the huge crack that emerged in the earth, but I ultimately knew that he would.

Maybe I'm taking it too seriously for a kids' movie. It's, again, not as family-oriented as Shrek was. There is no particular portion of humour set aside for the inevitable parent population in the audience, that is politely-worded or discreetly alluded, and so maybe parents will share my views on the movie's overall quality. However, for a colourful, action-packed kids' movie with good, harmless fun, it is certainly worth a trip to Vue this week. Tickets are a mere £1.75 each!

What Maisie Knew (2013)

Rating: 3.5/5

What Maisie Knew is getting rave reviews, which praise it as a highly-charged emotional drama with deep understanding. It is certainly both of these things, but to a hugely depressing extent. It is painful to watch throughout, and the more I think about it, the more I begin to believe it falls into a similar category as 'Requiem For A Dream' and 'Gia': it should be watched because it is expertly crafted, but the skill involved makes it an absorbing, and therefore totally soul-crushing experience. The movie drops us right in the middle of little Maisie Beale's world. Her father (Steve Coogan, proving again he handles drama nicely) is some big-time businessman, who is always out of town or country on some trip, and her mother (Julianne Moore in easily one of her most powerful performances to date) is an unstable, nervous-wreck rock star, who is always out of town or country on some big tour. Through a shameful sequence of game-playing, negligence and forgetfulness, angelic little Maisie (Otana Aprile) is left in the lurch, time and time again.

At first glance you'd guess that Maisie has a very privileged life. Both her parents' houses are contemporary palaces, and she has all the toys and costumes she could want. At her mother's house, she has her lovely young nanny Margo (Joanna Vanderham), who is Maisie's only real friend: the other parents are repulsed by her mother Suzanne's outrageous ways, and never let their children play. The father is absent throughout most of the film, and the majority of the abuse comes from the mother. Julianne Moore absolutely nails this role. Surprisingly, she makes a believable rock musician, but not so surprisingly, she creates the most tangible of characters; I am still unsure, as I write this, whether or not I like her. She is childish about her separation, and manipulative of Maisie within it: "Remember when your dad threw you on the couch?!" The child says no. "Of course you do," she replies, "it was your most earth-shattering moment!" She later remarks that the father won full custody because of the female judge. This adult's every reaction to anything is that of a teenager. "It's a goddamn witch hunt, that's what it is!"

The mother comes out with the most unbelievable things, right in front of her little child. It's honestly shocking, and very upsetting. She goes on paranoid rants, her bony fingers always wrapped around a cigarette. She demonstrates mental abuse. She vents to her daughter as if she were an adult. She tells her demeaning, damaging, disgraceful things, with absolute disregard for her child's psychological wellbeing. She repeatedly makes a scene in public; at her daughter's school and on the street. She starts to abandon her daughter. She doesn't turn up to collect her from school, just to get one over on the father. It is almost unreservedly the mother's behaviour that makes What Maisie Knew so depressing to watch.

It gets worse. Maisie starts getting physically abandoned. Her parents' respective lovers (the father's now being the nanny Margo), eventually become the girl's sole guardians, and one night Maisie gets left by her mother at the bar her lover works at. Except he's not at work that night, and she eventually sleeps in a storage room at the bar, while she cries, "I want to go home." The torment just seemed never ending; I started to wonder what the conclusion would be and when it would blessedly come. And when it did, I suppose it was supposed to be uplifting and tie up all loose ends. Except it doesn't.

Maisie is living happily on the beach with Margo and barman Lincoln (Alexander Skarsgård) when her mother turns up one night in a tour bus, urging her to come and see all the presents she has brought. When the child refuses, she throws herself about and screams, "What, you're scared of me?!" We couldn't blame the child if this were true - the woman is a mess. Rejected, she goes, saying to her daughter, "You know who your mother is, right?" She does.

So, is that what the title means? Maisie knew who her mother was? Is that supposed to make everything alright? Because it really, really doesn't. Little Maisie - a wide eyed cherub with an adorable giggle - endures horrific manipulation and abandonment during our observation of her life, and I didn't leave the theatre feeling like her sufferings were at an end. So her mother's gone away...again. What happens the next time she turns up in the middle of the night with presents and promises of at least a whole night together? And when will her father finally make a reappearance? None of these questions are answered. I just left, still concerned for a domestic situation created so brilliantly that... well, that I worried about fictional characters.

Lovelace (2013)

Rating: 4/5

As with many a vintage icon (I found, also, with recent biopic Behind the Candelabra), half of a modern-day audience is likely to be ignorant about the people these films are based on, let alone the social or historical contexts within which they lived. This allows film makers an impressive degree of creative licence when it comes to rewriting somebody's life story - especially when that somebody is no longer around to tell their side. I feel this has taken place, to a certain extent, with new release Lovelace, which tells the story of the rise and fall of the biggest pornographic star ever...

Maybe I'll start this off on a more trivial note: leading lady Amanda Seyfried looks nothing like the real Linda Lovelace. They have added freckles for good measure, but as bad as it sounds, even the character's appearance has been romanticised. She was a rather average looking woman, making it kind of hard to believe little quips such as "She's gorgeous, but she ain't for this business." Along the same lines, a fleeting appearance by James Franco as Hugh Hefner baffled me. As has already been pointed out by other critics, Hefner would have been almost into his fifties when this movie is set, and Franco looks little over 30, even in make-up.

Seyfried stars as young Linda Boreman, who appears to have become somewhat 'prudish' since having her illegitimate child put up for adoption by her fanatically Catholic mother (Sharon Stone, I couldn't believe!). After being talked into dancing at a club by her friend (Juno Temple), she is eyed up by greasy deadbeat Chuck Traynor, who has the gift of the gab, and within a short space of time, has whisked Linda out of her parents' overprotective house and into an exploitative relationship.

Somehow (this part is mysteriously missing from the narrative), between taking her for an audition she doesn't know is for porn, and arriving on the set about to 'hook up' with a total stranger, Traynor manages to convince his wife to participate, and before she knows it, 'Deep Throat' becomes the biggest thing to happen to the industry - it brings adult entertainment into the mainstream.

Lovelace's incredible and harrowing story is rather an ongoing mystery, as her accounts, even during her lifetime, fluctuated quite significantly. Towards the end of the movie, Linda having endured her pain and suffering, attention is drawn to her book 'Ordeal'- actually published in 1980 - which documented said pain and suffering, and served as her initiation into the anti-pornography movement. It brought many serious allegations of abuse against ex-husbands and producers alike, and claimed everything she had done, was at gunpoint. However, as the movie fails to point out, she had formerly released two other books, teaching women how to feel sexually liberated, and passing on her techniques for good lovin'.

Another thing I don't think is really explored properly is the cultural impact 'Deep Throat' really had. The movie contained several practices that were reviled by the good law-abidin' citizens of the day, which by modern standards are rather commonplace. Had it not been for this movie, these practices may not be so acceptable today. This is not highlighted as much as it should be in Lovelace.

It's a well made movie though. Shot in that captivating, technicolor fuzziness of a '70s lens, the look of the film is wonderful. It nicely captures a colourful, characterful era, with all the unbelievable ideals that went along with it. In a scene when Linda runs home because Chuck has pimped and beat her, her mother stiffly tells her, "You want a divorce? What do you think we are, Protestant?!" The mother character is central to Linda's dysfunction. A poignant closing scene in which a reformed Linda is being interviewed on TV sees her tell the reporter, "I was raised to please my husband, for better or worse. That's what I did," while her shattered mother weeps at the screen. This line hits very hard on everybody.

There is a wonderful ensemble cast. Seyfried continues to hit new heights and explore edgier material, having formerly played an obsessed prostitute alongside Julianne Moore in 'Chloe,' and Peter Sarsgaard makes a terrifying Chuck. A one-liner appearance from the fabulous Chloe Sevigny sends a little wink-wink-nudge-nudge at us in reference to her famous appearance in 'The Brown Bunny,' but her talent is criminally underused.

A final interesting little piece of trivia for you: the parents of the very talented Thora Birch (American Beauty, The Hole) were both porn stars, and both acted in 'Deep Throat'. Every other person questioned about most of Lovelace's allegations denied them, and there has surely been ample opportunity for any onlookers to have supported such claims. There has been none. If the movie interests you, do read on about Linda Lovelace...there is a lot more to be known than it reveals.