Cake (2014)

Jennifer Aniston in "Cake."

When we meet Claire (Jennifer Aniston), the main character in “Cake”—a mournful, moving elegy of suffering and despair directed by Daniel Barnz and written by Patrick Tobin—she's about a year removed from a horrific car accident that claimed the life of her young son and left her with severe physical and emotional scars.

The film is set in an affluent suburb of Los Angeles, where this formerly successful and vibrant attorney now barely gets around and winces in anguish at the slightest movements. Claire has all but dismissed her husband, become misanthropic and would be living alone except for the loyal, sympathetic housekeeper, Sylvana (Adriana Barraza), who sticks around and drives her over the border to procure illicit painkillers.

Claire’s icy detachment and insensitivity get her booted from the chronic pain group she’d been attending after derisively mocking the suicide of another member. Subsequently, the former member, Nina (Anna Kendrick), begins showing up in Claire’s nightmares as a pretty but vengeful spirit, ostensibly and diabolically inching the protagonist towards the beyond.

Claire dives into Nina’s backstory and discovers that she left a husband (Sam Worthington) and young child behind. She goes to meet the husband and finds a lost and tortured soul not unlike herself. Wondering why she hasn’t left her expensive but gloomy house, he asks in one of the movie’s darkly comic lines, “Don’t you feel like you’re surrounded by ghosts?”

In a lesser movie, this kinship might be an excuse for romance to develop. But the tragic characters in Barnz’s film are too wounded to derive any pleasure from sex. Instead, they develop a peculiar friendship rooted in the sharing of painful memories. The film is like a sad dirge, funereal, haunting and morose. Claire's only other ‘friend’ isn’t even human, but rather seems to be a single opossum who exits the shadows and turns up poolside, accompanying her during late night swims—the nocturnal creature becoming an apt metaphor for her dark, lonely existence.

Anchoring “Cake,” Jennifer Aniston gives her best performance as the interminably angry, bitter and wholly unpleasant Claire. It’s a joyless character, full of hopelessness and deep reserves of pain, sadness and hate. Having had her world turned upside down, she now feels little compassion for anyone else, expressing herself through hurtful turns of frigid apathy and caustic sarcasm, as if she’s determined to return all the cruelty life has dealt her to others. “Anger feels so good,” she says unapologetically at one point.

It's a bit surprising that Aniston didn't get an Oscar nod for her work. Maybe the Academy ultimately found the character too unlikable. Still, it’s some performance—honest, uncompromising, expressive, nuanced and fearless—and the former TV sitcom star looks the part, exchanging her usual cover girl appearance for one that’s nearly lifeless, washed-out and colorless.

Fortunately, the movie wisely avoids the clichés of false redemption or a phony happy ending. The last few scenes, as Claire confronts her grief, offer only a glimmer of hope that she might be on a path to healing. What's far more authentic and believable is not that she’s getting better, but just capable enough to carry on.

Ask Me Anything (2014)

In "Ask Me Anything," Britt Robertson plays Katie, a smart but aimless recent high school grad taking a year off class before starting college in hopes of finding her passion. A guidance counselor suggests she start a blog to keep her verbal skills sharp, so Katie comes up with one and changes her name to hide her identity and avoid questions from nosy parents.

  

And while it doesn’t stretch her verbal skills the way it does other parts of her body, the blog becomes quite popular thanks to Katie’s explicit content, which turns out to be a catalogue of her mostly inappropriate sexual conquests, some with older men—one is a film school professor (Justin Long) who shows her foreign films before sleeping with her; another is a seemingly happily married father (Christian Slater) with a new baby whose wife hired Katie to be nanny.

The other adults in Katie’s life include a frazzled mom (Molly Hagan), whose desperate attempts to steer her daughter in the right direction are seen as meddling; a well-meaning but thankless soon-to-be stepfather; an alcoholic dad (Robert Patrick) with deep, dark secrets that might feature child molestation; and even a kindly old bookstore owner (Martin Sheen) with a checkered past who gives Katie a job.

As Katie’s voiceover narration frequently hovers over the story, “Ask Me Anything” unfolds as though lifted directly from her laptop screen. In this sense, the movie—written and directed by Allison Burnett and based on his own novel, Undiscovered Gyrl (also the name of Katie’s blog)—functions as an intriguing social commentary about the lives of contemporary millennials playing out to a captive audience in cyberspace.

That kind of popularity, even if only from a nameless gaggle of anonymous fans, is seductive. But Katie’s not just uploading funny cat videos or writing about the latest fashion trends, and her messy life is carelessly careening towards misery and self-destruction. The movie works as a cautionary coming of age tale, although the surprise revelation at the end—sounding like the beginning of an episode of Dateline Mystery—comes across as clumsy and confused.

The film features a great performance from Britt Robertson. The expressive young actress, on camera nearly every moment, is a commanding screen presence capable of being smart and sarcastic, feisty and vulnerable. In “Ask Me Anything,” she’s remarkably able to create a character that remains believable and fascinating without ever being very likable. It’s an outstanding, revelatory performance. (Her latest role, unseen by me, is in the George Clooney-led Disney movie “Tomorrowland,” now in theaters.)

“Ask Me Anything” was fittingly released last December to video-on-demand, its target demographic of online viewers. It’s currently playing over the Netflix streaming platform and is worth a look.

Tracks (2014)

Mia Wasikowska takes the walk of
a lifetime in "Tracks."

“Tracks” tells the compelling true story of Robyn Davidson's famous 1,700-mile hike across the Australian desert in 1977. The 27-year-old writer headed south, accompanied by a dog and four camels, from Alice Springs in the central part of the continent and finished—nine-months later—at the edge of the Indian Ocean.

The movie, directed by John Curran, is evocative of “Maidentrip,” the excellent chronicle of teenage mariner Laura Dekker and her courageous, grueling, nearly two-year long solo circumnavigation of the globe by sailboat. Both films are inspiring tales of grand, physical adventures by smart, capable, fiercely independent young women.

Mia Wasikowska plays the introspective Davidson, whose travels are largely motivated by disillusionment with the world and the pain of her childhood. Growing up, she lost her mother to suicide; subsequently, her father, rather than taking over parental duties, banished her to live with a relative. At times during her journey, she is haunted by memories of grief and loss. In a way, her solitary quest seems like a response to her own deep feelings of isolation and abandonment.

Before departing on her trip, she helps on a ranch and negotiates acquiring camels as part of her pay, learning to gain the trust, work alongside, and care for the huge animals she’ll need to carry essentials. As news of her trek across the desert of Southern Australia spreads, curious outsiders begin to call her the Camel Lady. Diggity, a bubbly black lab, is her most faithful companion—and expressive enough to be a supporting character—staying by her side and even using its nose to find the way when she becomes lost.

National Geographic agreed to sponsor Davidson’s trip; consequently, the other key character in the film is Rick Smolan (Adam Driver), a bespectacled photojournalist sent from the magazine to cover the story and snap pictures along the route every month or so. Robyn often finds Rick’s presence intrusive, but the two become friends and even have a surprising, brief sexual encounter one night—an episode that, particularly for Robyn, seems driven more by a physical need than any emotional feeling.

The National Geographic essay that Davidson would eventually write became part of the record of her trip—newspaper articles and finally her own memoir which “Tracks” is based on were others—that led to an unexpected and, at least initially, uncomfortable celebrity. The irony of the movie is that for all of the interest it captures and publicity it spawns, Davidson’s epic sojourn seems far less about attention-seeking than about the author’s own search to quell demons at once very private and deeply personal.

The Boxtrolls (2014)

Eggs (left) with some friends in the darkly funny,
imaginative animated feature "The Boxtrolls."

The weird title characters in “The Boxtrolls”—an exuberant, imaginative and darkly funny animated fantasy directed by Graham Annable and Anthony Stacchi and based on the book “Here Be Monsters!” by Alan Snow—get their name because they wear boxes for clothing, pulling them over their midsection and sliding their thin arms through the handle slots as if fashioning makeshift Halloween costumes. The diminutive creatures look like the cartoon cousins of monsters from various live action movies like “Gremlins,” “Ghoulies” and “Critters.”

In a city called Cheesebridge that looks like nineteenth century London, the boxtrolls are forced to live underground because the population thinks they are a malevolent, hungry, snaggle-toothed bunch that steals and devours little children. But one kid, an orphan named Eggs (voiced by Isaac Hempstead-Wright) who grows up with the boxtrolls, knows better.

Indeed, even though the boxtrolls look menacing with their big, glowing yellow eyes, they are mostly harmless, only slightly mischievous and even timid. At night, they emerge from the sewers to forage for discarded items that they bring back to their inventive, artful subterranean world that looks like a cross between Willy Wonka and the “Frankenstein” laboratory. Fish and Shoe, the most prominent of the boxtrolls, are clumsy and childlike, named (hilariously) after items stamped on their boxes.

Meanwhile, an evil opportunist named Snatcher (Ben Kingsley) offers to rid the town of the boxtrolls in exchange for a seat on the exclusive White Hats council headed by the mayor of Cheesebridge, the pompous Lord Portley-Rind (Jared Harris). Later, Portley-Rind’s plucky young daughter Winnie (Elle Fanning), who initially fears the boxtrolls as well, discovers their secret and befriends Eggs. Together, they move to save the misunderstood creatures by convincing the adults that they are peaceful.

The citizens of Cheesebridge all live up to the town's nickname by loving cheese of all kinds, nobody more so than Snatcher, who also happens to be wildly allergic to the stuff, so much that his face swells up like an over-ripe tomato whenever he eats some. As the villain, Snatcher's quirks add up to the right combination of cruel and bumbling.

The impressive look of the film, achieved using a combination of stop motion animation and digital effects, is its best asset. Viewed from a long shot, Cheesebridge appears as a towering, cantilevering mountain, leaning at oblique angles. At street level, the abstract city comes alive with imaginative detail—such as sloping cobblestone streets lined with side-by-side buildings that tilt and curve like sets from a German Expressionist film.

The last act runs on a little long with frenetic mayhem that threatens to drown out the pleasures, but otherwise "The Boxtrolls" is sprightly and consistently entertaining.

Julie & Julia (2009)

Foodie and blogger Julie Powell (Amy Adams) takes on
another of Julia Child's recipes in "Julie & Julia."

Julie Powell is a struggling writer turned call center operator whose day job involves taking calls from frustrated loved ones of 9/11 victims at a government office in Manhattan. The work, along with a droning subway commute, understandably leaves her feeling emotional and stressed. Her only respite from the uncertainty and chaos is getting home at night to her tiny apartment in Queens and making dinner.

“You know what I love about cooking,” she says to her husband while whipping up a chocolate cream pie early on, “after a day when nothing is sure, you can come home and absolutely know that if you add egg yolks to chocolate and sugar and milk, it will get thick. It's such a comfort.”

Thank goodness for the simple things. Julie (Amy Adams) represents one of the two true stories in the late writer-director Nora Ephron’s effervescent “Julie & Julia”; the other is cooking icon Julia Child (Meryl Streep). The movie is based on a pair of books, including My Life in France by Child, as well as on Powell's blog in which she documented cooking her way through Child's second book, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, a quotidian, yearlong task that led to Powell’s loyal following on the web, sudden literary acclaim and television offers.

The movie volleys back and forth between present-day New York with Julie, who rises from the drudgery of her boring cubicle job to launch a blog in which she writes about cooking all 524 recipes in Child’s book in one year; to Paris in the 50s, around the time when Julia Child herself was first learning to cook, attending Le Cordon Bleu and later writing the landmark English book on French cuisine.

The strength of the film lies in its performances. Ephron always was been a better screenwriter (“When Harry Met Sally”) than director, so it helps to have a bravura cast. Adams alternates between bubbly optimism and frenetic exasperation with a charming enthusiasm that’s irresistible. And Streep once again burrows so uncannily into a character that the result is almost spooky; she mimics Child’s high-pitched vocal quirks with such virtuosity and aplomb that it's hard to distinguish between actor and the real thing. Extra points go to supporting players Chris Messina, as Julie’s ever-patient husband, Eric; and the great actor and sometimes director Stanley Tucci as Julia’s doting spouse, Paul, who knows a legend in the making when he sees one.

Along with the steady performances, the strong source material keeps Ephron from falling into the formulaic trappings of her clichéd romantic comedies (“Sleepless in Seattle” and “You’ve Got Mail”). Moreover, although it’s a lighthearted comedy, the idea of two smart women chasing their dreams—both as writers and cooks, though not necessarily in that order—introduces a subtle feminist slant and legitimate themes about ambition and creativity.

“Julie & Julia” is fun and frothy, sometimes a little sassy and ultimately, much like the food prepared by its dual heroines, highly palatable.

Page One: Inside the New York Times (2011)

A scene from Andrew Rossi's enthralling documentary
"Page One: Inside the New York Times."

We learn early on that the title refers to the Page One meeting, a morning ritual in which the editors of each section meet with the executive editors to carefully consider what stories will be on the front page the next day. For reporters and columnists, getting your byline on the coveted front page is a big deal just about anywhere, but perhaps nowhere is it a bigger deal than at the New York Times.

Watching the nostalgic first few frames of “Page One: Inside the New York Times”—dozens of hard copy editions roll out from printing presses and delivery trucks carry them away—offers a quixotic glimpse of a romantic, ink-stained past. Indeed, with more and more of the masses shifting to the Internet, dwindling circulation and plummeting advertising revenues forcing some newspapers into bankruptcy, the reality is starkly different. The movie poses a dark question—will the Times eventually go out of business?

The answer and the paradigm shift of traditional media into the digital age is comprehensively contained in this revealing, enthralling and masterful documentary directed, co-written and photographed by Andrew Rossi, whose largely unfettered access to the Times leads to a smart and sometimes very funny behind-the-scenes look at the inner workings of the venerable newspaper.

Several writers are prominently featured, including the late David Carr, the acerbic and charismatic old-school reporter who joins Twitter during the movie and explores the ways in which social media has changed the information landscape; Brian Stelter represents the new breed, an online whiz-kid whose digital savvy helped transform the young upstart from anonymous blogger to hotshot Times reporter; and Bruce Headlam, whose movie star good looks contradict his status as the pragmatic and harried media desk editor.

Among its many fascinating topics, the film explores the controversy surrounding WikiLeaks and founder Julian Assange; argues whether newspapers are still relevant in an age of ‘citizen journalists,’ when anyone with a camera phone can shoot shaky, hand-held footage and post the blurry results to sites like YouTube; and, by examining both Judith Miller’s dubious reporting for the Times in the early stages of the Iraq war as well as the plagiarism scandal of Jayson Blair, it even turns a fair-minded, critical eye on the paper itself.

As soon as “Page One: Inside the New York Times” was over, I wanted nothing more than to open up the laptop and search for some of the stories that were featured. Some of them I had already read—like Carr's sweeping expose on the crass, reckless new management at Tribune Company lining their pockets with big bonuses while losing millions, destroying careers and running a once proud business into the ground—but would joyously re-read nonetheless, like a favorite book.

Some movies are great because they inspire you to think. This one inspires you to want to read a newspaper.

The Exploding Girl (2009)

Zoe Kazan deep in thought in "The Exploding Girl."

Ivy doesn't say much, but spend some time with the main character in “The Exploding Girl” and you quickly realize that what she lacks in loquaciousness, she more than makes up for in quiet, thoughtful contemplation. As portrayed by the expressive, excellent Zoe Kazan, Ivy is a girl with a lot going on beyond those bright blue eyes of hers.

The title of the movie—a lovely, ruminative character study with a hint of romantic longing written, directed and edited by Bradley Rust Gray—refers to all of Ivy's superfluous inner anguish which seems to put the complicated young adult in danger of bursting at the seams at any moment.

The movie covers the week of her college spring break in New York, where Ivy struggles to have a social life in between increasingly heartbreaking cell phone calls with a physically and emotionally distant boyfriend who drifts from and finally breaks up with her. If that weren’t enough, she also must take medication to control epilepsy, which leaves her feeling tired.

Meanwhile, fellow college student Al (Mark Rendall), Ivy’s childhood friend, returns to her life and they begin spending more time together. Al is one of those ordinary-looking guys, bookish and smart but skinny, halting and awkward, who wouldn’t seem to stand a chance with a pretty girl like Ivy. But as the movie unfolds, we notice hints that his feelings have grown deeper over time; he’s desperate to get past the “just friends” stage and inch closer to a relationship. If only she would notice.

Whether they get together is a surprise better left unrevealed. Worth noting is that true to spirit of this gentle and airy film, when something does eventually happen, Gray handles it with a sense of exquisite subtly that is rare, genuine and refreshing. This is one of those movies where day dreaming and quiet moments in a conversation—and the characters’ facial expressions—are as important and illuminating as what’s ever said.