Albert Nobbs

Passing Strange
Glenn Close Outdoes Streep
By Cole Smithey

Disclosure: I've never been a fan of Glenn Close. I always considered her a poor man's Meryl Streep. I can't think of a single role she’s played that wouldn't have been improved upon if Streep had played it instead. However, Glenn Close's muted, carefully nuanced portrayal of Albert Nobbs is a career-defining performance that commands the deepest regard and, for what it's worth, blew me away.

Director Rodrigo García’s exquisitely crafted period drama set in 19th century Ireland is based on a short story by Irish author George Moore. "Albert Nobbs" is a socially oppressed woman so desperate to survive economically that she dresses and behaves as a man. The asexual Albert has worked as a quiet live-in waiter/butler at the elite Morrison’s Hotel in Dublin for more than 20 years. Her androgynous looks make the subterfuge possible. Lonely Albert—the only name she goes by-- pinches every penny of her wages and tips, keeping careful record of the savings she stashes under a loose floorboard inside her tiny room. Albert's tightly held secret is threatened when she is forced to allow Hubert Page, a contract painter working in the hotel, to share her bed for a night. The problematic event sets into motion Albert's dream of arranging a marriage to her co-worker Helen (Mia Wasikowska) to enable her to open a tobacco shop.

Spoiler alert: Hubert (Janet McTeer) is as adroit at hiding her sexuality as Albert. So much so that she has succeeded in establishing a relatively comfortable lesbian lifestyle with her partner, sufficiently obfuscated from the public eye. Albert begins to imagine how she might create her own unique arrangement with fellow hotel service worker Helen Dawes (Mia Wasikowska). She imagines opening a tobacco shop where the couple can live and work together. The much younger Helen—she’s barely a day over 18—is already wrapped up in a fresh romance with Joe (Aaron Johnson), her unreliable boyfriend. Joe has recently been hired to work in the hotel as a handyman. Albert unwisely ignores the obvious obstacle Joe represents to woo Helen with practical-minded dates over which she hopes to advance her idea of entering into an arrangement that necessarily involves marriage.

As such, the story hits its stride of aspirational vitality in Albert’s active daydream of putting her life’s savings to use in a place where she can enjoy economic prosperity and companionship for the first time in her life. Rodrigo García’s flawless depiction of Albert’s suddenly awakened inner emotional life is the story’s treasured seed of hope and happiness that must be transformed under the constraints of a brittle reality.

Glenn Close famously played the same role in “The Singular Life of Albert Nobbs,” a 1982 Off Broadway production directed by Simone Bemmussa; she won an Obie. This time she is surrounded by terrific supporting efforts by Janet McTeer, Mia Wasikowska, and Brendan Gleeson.

“Albert Nobbs” falls into the zeitgeist of female-themed survival films such as the Angelina Jolie-directed Bosnian war examination “In the Land of Blood and Honey”. Equal parts character study and social commentary, “Albert Nobbs” is a melancholy film of enormous power that could easily slip through the cracks without the aid of the Oscar nominations it deserves to attract. The story is an original one that doesn’t pander to its audience, as Hollywood films are famous for doing. ”Albert Nobbs” is an uncompromising and rigorous movie that dismisses conventional compositional devices to the delight of audiences seeking intellectual and emotional depth in their cinematic adventures. Don’t miss “Albert Nobbs.”

Rated R. 114 mins. (A) (Five Stars - out of five/no halves)

The Grey

Chaotic Nature
Joe Carnahan Explores the Minds of the Walking Wounded
By Cole Smithey

A strand of “Moby Dick” runs through director/co-writer Joe Carnahan’s wild and wooly tale of survival in the Alaskan wilderness. Like “Moby Dick” this amorphous story is an anti-narrative made up of dark encounters with nature at her cruelest. The alpha male leader of a pack of hungry wolves becomes the focal point for a group of plane-crash survivors trying to walk out of a vast snow-covered trap. John Ottway (Liam Neeson) is an emotionally broken sharpshooter hired by an Alaskan oil company to protect its workers from bears and wolves, which attack without a moment’s notice. The ever-watchable Neeson easily fills the demands of his troubled character’s wolf-like place as the alpha to a group of flawed human males—whose number steadily diminishes.

Joe Carnahan (known for his uncompromising crime drama “Narc”) puts his audience through an episode of pure terror early in the film. After briefly contemplating suicide outside a rowdy oil refinery bar, John Ottway treasures memories of his eloigned wife while riding a private airplane carrying oil workers. Jolts of vomit-inducing turbulence rattle the passengers’ quickly fraying nerves. Just as Ottway falls asleep the plane goes into a fuselage-ripping plunge. Gravity and velocity become monsters of colossal fury. Luggage and bodies are suspended in midair in one of the most spectacular plane crash scenes ever filmed. The effect is truly terrifying. Don’t look for “The Grey” to be shown as an in-flight movie. The cinematic experience is as close to the reality of enduring an actual plane crash as you’d ever want to get. Miraculously there are survivors amid the strewn luggage, twisted bits of metal, and bloody body parts which corrupt an otherwise peaceful expanse of snow-covered ground. Awakening from one nightmare into another, eight shocked men begin to pick up items of clothing and supplies they desperately need to go on living. Ottway thinks to collect the wallets of the corpses, to return to their family members should the opportunity arise.

The assembly of blue-collar roughnecks runs the gambit. Diaz (Frank Grillo) is a tattooed ex-con whose personal insecurities threaten to undermine Ottway’s obvious status as the group leader. Ottway’s uses his thorough knowledge of wolf pack mentality and behavior to counsel the group to quickly abandon the crash site in favor of shelter above the area’s distant tree line. The wolves, Ottway believes, are more interested in protecting their territory than hunting down the men as food. Stormy whiteout conditions threaten to bury the men in a 40-below-zero grave of snow.

Violent encounters between the wolves and their human prey allows Carnahan to dig deep into his bag of action tricks. Blood flies through the air like freezing mists of tempered humidity. The confident helmer displays a greater kinship to Sam Peckinpah’s muscular approach to cinema than any other filmmaker working today. Every gutsy action scene is crafted with gritty detail and a muscular unpredictability that dares the audience to guess where it will end up. Punch-drunk suspense sets in as the film’s subtext of thematic discourse about subjects ranging from self-deception to religious belief to what it takes to be a man get bandied about. Cinematographer Masanobu Takayanagi (“Warrior”) lends his keen eye for magnificent compositions to expertly contextualize the men’s excruciating journey of inexorable attrition.

“The Grey” is an old-fashioned survival movie in the vein of John Huston’s 1956 version of the Melville classic. The glory of the adventure comes from what lies buried deep within the psyches of its personalities, and branded in their facial expressions. John Ottway remembers the only poem his stoic father ever wrote as it hung framed on a wall in his dad’s study.

“Once more into the fray. Into the last good fight I’ll ever know. Live and die on this day. Live and die on this day.”

Watch this movie to discern the poem’s meaning for the wealth of import Carnahan and his filmmaking cohorts intend.

Rated R. 117 mins. (B+) (Four Stars - out of five/no halves)

 

Haywire

Slap Happy
Soderbergh Knocks Off Tarantino
By Cole Smithey

Proof positive that Steven Soderbergh can make a shamelessly fluffy action thriller, "Haywire’s” trump card is the estimable abilities of mixed-martial-arts-fighter-turned-actress Gina Carano. Though the movie is nothing more than a flashy debut showcase for the charismatic Carano to show she can act and kick butt, that's sufficient for much popcorn to be consumed.

Carano plays professional assassin Mallory Kane, on the run from a group of power brokers who set her up for a fall that doesn’t pan out. Told mainly in globetrotting flashbacks, the narrative traces Mallory’s problematic assignment to rescue a Chinese journalist being held in Barcelona. Fast-moving chase sequences mesh with flying bullets and plenty of hand-to-hand fighting between Mallory and various attackers who tend to underestimate Mallory’s killer instinct. Soderbergh’s camera drinks up stylish scenery in glossy action set pieces. The visual flare makes you want the movie to kick into a missing gear of Tarantino-inflected dialogue; sadly screenwriter Lem Dobbs simply isn’t capable of producing such delights. Still, there’s plenty of tongue-in-cheek humor inherent in the bone-breaking fights that transpire. A roll call of witty supporting turns from the likes of Channing Tatum, Michael Douglas, Antonio Banderas, Ewan McGregor, and Michael Fassbender spice up the flavor of the action. “Haywire” is a chamber piece action movie in which the athletic violence on display comes with kisses. If you don’t expect too much, you’ll be more than satisfied.

There’s a tendency to overestimate Steven Soderbergh’s abilities as a director. Since making an enormous independent splash in 1989 with “Sex, Lies, and Videotape” Soderbergh’s films have swung wildly between peaking hills and sea-level valleys. Stable Hollywood fare (see “Erin Brockovich” and the “Ocean’s” franchise), offbeat personal projects (witness the disaster of “Full Frontal” and the underachieving “Girlfriend Experience”), topical epics (see “Traffic” and “Che”), a daring remake (“Solaris”), and retro Hollywood (his best film “The Good German”) map out a consistently inconsistent career. Steven Soderbergh has a tendency toward making films that have a compartmentalized and brittle feeling about them. “Contagion” and “The Informant!” are prime examples. While the Atlanta-born filmmaker has threatened to retire from directing in recent years, he maintains a prolific output that puts lesser filmmakers like Alexander Payne to shame. His upcoming films include “Behind the Candelabra,” a Liberace biopic and “Magic Mike,” a comedy about an upstart male stripper played by Channing Tatum.

As the latest addition to Soderbergh’s challenging oeuvre “Haywire” is a minor addition that does little to dispel the sense that the filmmaker suffers from a crisis of commitment. You don’t get the feeling that he made the movie out of any deep-seeded artistic urgency. Rather, “Haywire” seems a flashy little one-off on the way to something else. If the movie serves its most apparent purpose, to turn the muscular Gina Carano into Hollywood’s latest female action star, then so much the better for movie audiences to relish in her innate ability to charm and surprise. But that still leaves an open-ended question about whether Steven Soderbergh has what it takes to create the filmic masterpiece that his work as a filmmaker seems to point toward. It’s anybody’s guess whether or not he’ll pull it off.

Rated R. 93 mins. (B) (Three Stars - out of five/no halves)

The Iron Lady

Profiling Thatcher
Phyllida Lloyd Plays it Safe
By Cole Smithey

Between Clint Eastwood's J. Edgar Hoover biopic and director Phyllida Lloyd's ill-told life story of Margaret Thatcher, it might seem on the surface there's a concerted effort to lionize two of the Right's most reprehensible examples of absolute power corrupting absolutely. On closer inspection however, each of the films reveal latent hypocrisies in their political subjects. Both movies feature iconic performances from enormously talented actors giving their all to embody tragically flawed political figures. Meryl Streep makes somewhat more of a big-screen splash than Leonardo DiCaprio given that Margaret Thatcher was a higher profile public figure. Her every gesture and facial expression comes across with an astounding degree of authenticity, thanks in part to some terrific prosthetic assistance by the film’s highly skilled make-up department.

Phyllida Lloyd last directed Streep in the 2008 musical “Mamma Mia.” Here, she depends on a less than solid script by British playwright Abi Morgan, the same woman screenwriter responsible for 2011’s most overrated film “Shame.” Morgan shapes the backward gazing biopic from the perspective of a decrepit Thatcher suffering from severe bouts of dementia that allow for flashback reveries that frequently slip into a realm of the absurd.

Suspended within its retired subject's senile vantage point, that constantly converses with hallucinations of her deceased husband (played by Jim Broadbent in full tweet-tweet-arf-arf mode), "The Iron Lady" quietly equates Margaret Thatcher's distorted mental state with that of Ronald Reagan's Alzheimer's disease. The obvious deduction is that she wasn’t entirely in charge of her mental faculties when she served as Prime Minister--aka “Britain’s Fighting Lady.” The film inadvertently gives a persuasive sense of how hated Margaret Thatcher was by British citizens, and by the IRA who repeatedly attempted to assassinate her. Protesters assail her in public, and bomb blasts follow her. Unfortunately, for fear of dipping its toe into politics, the filmmakers dodge Thatcher’s public policies. Still, an emphasis on Thatcher's heavy-handed military response in the Falklands rightly paints her as a warmonger. The film goes to great lengths to present Margaret Thatcher as a hardened woman battling for her place in a man’s world with the closet weapon at hand—stubbornness. It doesn’t however make mention of crucial aspects of her formative experiences as a research chemist or as a barrister.

It's easy to come away from the movie with an idea that Margaret Thatcher was at best a penny-wise-and-pound foolish woman guilty of turning on her own kind; she was the daughter to a family of grocers. At worst, Margaret Thatcher contributed to the world's current economic collapse with a cunning brand of daring cruelty that defies logic and reason. Not even Meryl Streep is capable of making Margaret Thatcher a likeable human being in spite of the film’s doting attention to the character’s frail human dilemma. While "The Iron Lady" doesn't give Britain’s former Prime Minister anywhere near the historical justice of Elvis Costello's contemptuous ode to the Iron Lady, "Tramp the Dirt Down," it does remind us of one of the primary contributors to the world's economic crisis. History will not be kind to Margaret Thatcher.

Rated PG-13. 105 mins. (B-) (Three Stars - out of five/no halves)

We Need to Talk About Kevin

All Talk
Lynne Ramsay Can’t Commit to Horror
By Cole Smithey

Forced, stultifying, and artificial beyond belief, "We Need to Talk About Kevin" is Scottish director Lynne Ramsay's off-key treatment of Lionel Shriver's novel. Ramsay co-wrote the screenplay with brother-in-law Rory Kinnear. The story is about a bad-seed son who terrorizes his mother Eva (Tilda Swinton) from the minute he's born.

Unsure of whether it wants to be a cynical drama or a horror thriller, the poorly paced film inches through Kevin's bad behavior from infant to teenager. The only thing more reprehensible than Kevin’s unwarranted hatred of his mother is his parents’ unwillingness to straighten the kid out even as his behavior spirals out of control.

Kevin plays nice when daddy Franklin (played by a miscast John C. Reilly) is around but he has a knack for methodically pushing his mom's buttons the rest of the time. As an infant, Kevin never stops screaming, except when dad’s around. At six-years-old, Kevin trashes his mom's newly designed home office with a squirt gun filled with paint. Discipline is off the table. Instead, daddy gives Kevin a toy bow-and-arrow set reinforced by readings from Robin Hood--the only book Kevin owns. Later, Kevin will graduate to a high-powered bow, also given as a gift from pops. The teenaged Kevin is bound for disaster. However, when the much foreshadowed crisis moment finally comes, it arrives with all the force of an overflowing bathtub—not the least because it occurs off-screen.

Production designer Judy Becker’s lazy approach relegates the film’s mise en scène to an afterthought. “We Need to Talk About Kevin” is a text book example of how not to design a film. Everything is bright shiny surfaces without texture or depth. Context is nowhere in sight.

“We Need to Talk About Kevin” plays like a narrative negative. What the viewer sees are all the extraneous scenes between what should be shown. It’s as if the editor confused what was on the editing room floor with what should have gone into the projector.

Filmed in stagnate fly-on-the-wall compositions, the film emphasizes Tilda Swinton's inscrutable performance as a woman unable or unwilling to come to grips with her nightmare spawn. In short, Eva is the same brand of idiot as her husband and her diabolical son. There’s no one to empathize with in the story-not even Kevin’s abused younger sister who barely shows up except to be inexplicably blinded in one eye by her hateful sibling.

Some people should never be parents; some children should never be born; some novels don't deserve to be made into films. "We Need to Talk About Kevin" is a minimalist mystery with no hook. Whether there’s more to Shiver’s novel of “maternal ambivalence” is immaterial. The movie sits at the opposite end of the spectrum from a well executed art film like "Melancholia," whose characters take action in a framework of fertile social commentary. Rather, “Kevin” falls into a pejorative category with half-films such as “Martha Marcy May Marlene” or “Shame” where the abstract narrative and underdeveloped themes never connect. It’s not enough to instigate suspense. There has to be a story. Moreover there has to be character development. You won’t find any such luxuries here.

The parents of a psychopathic child don’t even bother to have the conversation the film's title suggests. Perhaps the filmmakers hope their audience will do their verbal articulation for them in circular what-if conversations. Sadly, there isn't much to say about Kevin except that he wasn't properly disciplined as a child and so he went all Columbine without going so far as to take his own life. A year ago Mumblecore was the dumbest film movement around. Now dumb is the province of a minimalist subgenre that has yet to be named. Perhaps we should call it the “Shame on Martha and Kevin” movement. Let’s just hope it stops here. Film audiences should be so lucky.

Rated R. 112 mins. (D) (One Star - out of five/no halves)

Once Upon a Time In Anatolia

Nuri Bilge Ceylon Investigates
The Impurity of Human Motivation
By Cole Smithey

Turkish filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylon continues his minimalist yet universal exploration of society (in the meta sense of the word) with a fascinating police procedural that values story over plot and character over prejudice. The mastermind behind such instant classics as "Climates" (2006) and "Three Monkeys" (2008) uses every shaded detail of time, atmosphere, human condition, and verbal and non-verbal communication to tell a quietly complex story about a murder investigation and the imperfect methods of the men assigned to solve the crime.

Ceylon is one of the world’s few truly gifted filmmakers capable of using film as a broad yet clearly defined canvas for meting out staccato and legato pulses of narrative text and subtext. Patience is a key ingredient to his art. There are always multiple layers of crucial information seeping from the screen. His patience for storytelling matches Michelangelo Antonioni, whose films Ceylon must surly have studied.

“Once Upon a Time In Anatolia” is about the nature of human motivation, and how it folds back upon itself under the microscope of external pressures—whether from co-workers or from a natural flow of events. As in all Ceylon's films clouds play an important role in the landscape. There is nothing showy about Ceylon’s unique brand of cinema. Here is a filmmaker who creates a bond of trust with his audience, who are invited to interact with his films.

Ceylon’s regular cinematographer Gökhan Tiryaki supplies visually intriguing compositions that tempt the viewer to study the story’s dichotomy of rural and industrial landscape. You have the sense of being allowed to see every aspect of the story. Nothing seems to be hidden. The delicacy with which Tiryaki’s camera slowly zooms is a thing of precise beauty.

At night Doctor Cemal (Muhammet Uzuner) accompanies a group of police officers and a soldier as they drive around the dark outskirts of the Anatolian steppe. The group has with them two incarcerated suspects they hope will lead them to the grave of a missing man. Every distance is remote. Only car headlights cut through the blackness. The young doctor strikes up a friendship with the local prosecuting attorney. Surely justice will prevail. If the body is found, Doctor Cemal will perform the autopsy.

Police Commissar Naci (Yilmaz Erdogan) lets his temper flare at the uncooperative prisoner who leads the three-vehicle caravan on a wild goose chase in search of a "round tree" by one of the road's many fountains that provide water for travelers in the dark arid region. Prosecutor Nusret (Taner Birsel) reigns in Naci when the Commissar turns violent against the prisoner—not because he cares particularly about the prisoner, but because he understands the demands of the job. The cops joke about food and engage in a bland kind of non-specific repartee that diffuses tension even as it subtlety discloses fragments of personal information. Every character and theme line rings with authenticity. The time-consuming search takes its toll.

The men stop for food in the middle of the night at the home of man whose beautiful daughter momentarily entrances them. The respect her devastating beauty, yet know exactly how her life will unfold. All life is a cycle. Part of their job is to recognize patterns, even the ones that shame them about their own personal lives.

The story is about how detectives communicate. It’s also about how entrusted public servants wrangle with overpowering emotions and personal secrets. Anger and sadness are traits to be submersed under rote routines of professional conduct. Their personal sense of justice can be confused and arbitrary. And yet, these men are doing a job that must be done.

Nuri Bilge Ceylon is a lover of humanity. His great concern for every one of his characters goes beyond their innocence or guilt. He recognizes the balance of both qualities in their actions. As a sociological study, the film is edifying. As a drama, it is at turns enigmatic, revealing, and moving. The cinema of Nuri Bilge Ceylon is a transformative one. It is unique and honest. Most significantly, it offers a rare experience to be treasured.

Not Rated. 151 mins. (A-) (Four Stars - out of five/no halves)

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

A Remake by Any Other Name
David Fincher Takes One for the Team
By Cole Smithey

David Fincher can do a great re-make. Now, let’s hope he never does one again. By definition, remakes demand that audiences go back to the original to compare differences slight and large. I don’t put any credence in the faulty premise that a second film based on the same source material constitutes anything other than a remake. Indeed many of the compositions and sequences are similar enough between director Niels Arden Oplev’s version of “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” and Fincher’s that watching both is akin comparing apples with apples. Still, the significant difference between the two films is a big one. In Fincher’s version Lisbeth and Mikael Blomkvist get busy, and as such earn a level of intimacy sorely missing from Arden Oplev’s sill powerful film.

Audiences will split hairs over Noomi Rapace’s iconic Goth portrayal of Lisbeth Salander as compared to Rooney Mara’s savant-sex-alien rendition. It’s a fascinating comparison. Rapace kicked bat-shit-monkey-ass in the original, while Mara’s Lisbeth is more the type to ask permission before seeking lethal revenge—as occurs in a pivotal scene late in the film. Mara approaches a bland quality of androgyny whose asexual appearance is belied by her lustful intentions which she carries out with respectable focus.

There’s no question that David Fincher is a muscular director whose capacity for creating cinematic wonder is astounding. “Zodiac” (2007) is one of the most stunning police procedurals ever made. He understands the importance of seducing his audience right from the start of every one of his movies. His opening credit sequence here explodes with a shiny, oily-black sensual fury that announces the movie as an exploration in thoroughly modern style and sass. And to that end he succeeds full stop. Where he slips up is, surprisingly, in articulating Stieg Larsson’s story—something that Niels Arden Oplev did better. Some of the blame can be put on screenwriter Steven Zaillian, but editing decisions by Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall play a hefty role. You don’t care as much about the mystery of the missing girl as you do with the original film because the narrative isn’t enunciated with the same degree of passion.

Even the seemingly ideal casting of Daniel Craig doesn’t work as well for the role. With his downtrodden bearing and doughy charm Michael Nyqvist made for a more empathetic Mikael Blomkvist. Although the filmmakers wisely keep the action in Sweden, rather than transposing the story to somewhere like the Hamptons, the film refuses to soak up the European culture it’s submersed in. Here again miscasting plays a part. Robin Wright just isn’t convincing as a Swedish character. Her accent evaporates mid-sentence. In spite of her blonde hair and Nordic features, Wright feels like an interloper in the movie. An utter lack of romantic chemistry between her and Daniel Craig further distracts from the story.

David Fincher’s “Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” is a very entertaining movie. The credit sequence alone is worth the price of admission. Is it better than Niels Arden Oplev’s film? I’ll leave that up to you.

Rated R. 166 mins. (B+) (Four Stars - out of five/no halves)

We Bought a Zoo

Crowd-Pleaser
Cameron Crowe Does the Thing He Does
By Cole Smithey

Cameron Crowe casts a heart-warming cinematic spell that will milk many a tear from its widespread target audience. However calculated to meet the demands of family-friendly holiday movie fare, "We Bought a Zoo" does everything it sets out to achieve. Some supporting characters, such as Patrick Fugit's zoo-keeper Robin Jones, get short shrift but it's all in the interest of keeping the potentially overpopulated story moving toward its intended goal of family unity.

Matt Damon is likeable as ever as Benjamin Mee, a father of two attempting to reinvent his family after the recent loss of his wife. Benjamin's 13-year-old son Dylan (Colin Ford) is acting out at school. Dylan draws disturbingly violent pictures of things like decapitations and weird monsters. He’s been caught stealing. Seven-year-old Rosie (played wonderfully by the scene-stealing Maggie Elizabeth Jones) is emotionally better equipped to deal with the shifting reality around her. It goes without saying that, against conventional wisdom, Benjamin quits his job and purchases a rundown zoo as a way to reestablish a nurturing home environment for himself and his kids.

The run-down rural facility's 40-odd endangered animals face the threat of being put to sleep unless Benjamin can make the necessary renovations for the zoo to pass inspection. John Michael Higgins adds comic appeal as Walter Ferris, a quirky zoo inspector widely disliked by the staff Benjamin inherits when he purchases the property. Scarlett Johansson coasts through her role a zookeeper Kelly Foster, a dedicated young woman whose undeniable beauty causes simmering romantic tension with Benjamin. Indeed, romantic suspense is one of the film's trump cards. The anti-social Dylan tries to avoid the noticeable chemistry he shares with the zoo's youngest assistant Lilly (Elle Fanning). His failing attempts at skirting love's arrows give the movie a youthful sense of nostalgia that runs parallel to its idyllic sense of wonder regarding wild animals.

You never believe for a moment that Thomas Haden Church's playful character Duncan could be Matt Damon’s sibling. Yet you wouldn't want it any other way. Haden Church adds just the right amount of brotherly support to give the story the essential familial lift it needs. It doesn't hurt that he delivers every line with an infectious dose of good-humored intentionality. You can't help but love Damon and Haden Church as brothers even if they don’t share a single physical trait in common.

As with all of Cameron Crowe's films music plays an important part. Although the film slips into music video sequences from time to time it's difficult to challenge the director's pitch-perfect ability for matching perfectly contrasting yet complimenting pieces of rock music to the tone of the action at hand. Aside from songs from Tom Petty and Bob Dylan, Crowe tapped Icelandic singer/songwriter Jónsi from the rock band Sigur Rós to compose original music for the score. The formula works like a charm.

Without having even seen “We Bought a Zoo,” New Yorker magazine film critic David Denby famously slagged Cameron Crowe’s movie in emails to producer Scott Rudin regarding Denby’s faceplant decision to break a film review embargo on “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.” Such kneejerk critical reaction to solid holiday entertainment as “We Bought a Zoo” speaks volumes about corporate media’s attitudes that Hollywood is left to questionably interpret. As if there wasn’t already a dearth of G and PG-rated films, Denby’s malicious remarks reflect a damaging ideology of cultural condescension.

“We Bought a Zoo” never pays quite enough attention to the incarcerated wild animals we hear so much about throughout the story. The predictable climax comes across like so much melted peanut butter. Still, the movie wins in its ability create a glow of giddy movie pleasure that audiences crave. If that means you’ll tear up more over this movie than “War Horse,” well, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Rated PG. 131 mins. (B) (Three Stars - out of five/no halves)