The Monuments Men [2014]

MPAA (PG-13)  CNS/USCCB (A-III)  ChicagoTribune (2 Stars)  RE.com (2 1/2 Stars)  AVClub (C)  Fr. Dennis (3 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (J. Mulderig) review
ChicagoTribune (M. Phillips) review
RE.com (M. Zoller-Seitz) review
AVClub (A.A. Dowd) review

The Monuments Men [2014] (starring, directed and screenplay cowritten by George Clooney along with Grant Heslov, based on the book by Robert M. Edsel [IMDb] and Bret Witter [IMDb]) is a reasonably well made, _intentionally lighter_ than it could have been, film about a group of people (largely "egg-headed" architects / art historians) who most would not necessarily immediately consider "heroes" who did, in fact, do much to _save the world_ as we know it during World War II.

And my guess is that EVERYONE associated with this film understood how tough the calls being made were: Landing on the beaches of Normandy ONE MONTH AFTER THE INVASION... (some beach obstacles still present both as a reminder to the arriving soldiers back then and for viewers here for cinematic effect), Col. Frank Stokes (played by George Clooney) has a tough time convincing a(n actually) lower-ranking field commander of the validity of his "Monuments Men's" mission.  The captain tells the colonel: "Look, you're telling me to save a (1000 year old) church (in the approaching town).  But if the Nazis decide to use its bell tower (as a sniper's nest), we're going to blow it up.  Understand?"  We all do ...

BUT as Frank Stokes explained to President Roosevelt in the months before this field encounter in Normandy: "Mr President, (God willing) in the coming months our troops are going to be liberating Florence, Italy and Paris, France, and who's going to assure the world that when we do, Michaelangelo's David is still going to be standing and Da Vinci's Mona Lisa is still going to be smiling?"  And _most of us_ can understand the stakes involved here as well... WHAT AN ABSOLUTELY HORRENDOUS WAR WW II WAS ...

And so it was, despite being a unit of OLD, mostly OUT-OF-SHAPE, "EGG HEADS" (played among others by Bill Murray and John Goodman at their character actor best) with FDR's reluctant and Churchill's presumed blessings, this multinational unit of architects / art historians was sent out to Europe to try to bring some semblance of order and decency to a "gun fight in a china shop."

AND IT WASN'T EASY.  The Nazis were first out to plunder occupied Europe and then out LARGELY "to burn it all" (while squirreling away bits and pieces of Art for themselves and to help finance their escapes).  And the Soviets marching on Nazi Germany from the East had their own agenda: Having lost 20+ million people in this conflict, they felt that they had the "moral right" to simply CART AWAY EVERYTHING THAT THEY COULD as "Reparations."  Finally, AND IMHO MOST INTERESTINGLY, THE FRENCH, weren't necessarily all that trustful of the Americans / Brits either.  Parisian curator Claire Simone (played by Cate Blanchett) initially did not trust American James Granger (played by Matt Damon) who prior to being recruited for this unit had worked as a curator for New York's own Metropolitan Museum of Art: "Oh, you're here SIMPLY to 'save our art' and NOT to take it back to YOUR 'MET'" she said in a disbelieving French puff. 

AND yet the crime, indeed CRIMES, was/were SO LARGE. 

This film will frustrate purists, who'd perhaps wish that the film was _more eggheady_ (that is MORE like a documentary).  But there's the book for that.  Instead, George Clooney, et al, seemed _to choose_ to make a _lighter film_ that acknowledged that on a superficial level most viewers really "wouldn't care" about the sacrifices made by this unit -- and two of its members, Brit Donald Jeffries (played by Hugh Bonneville) and Frenchman Jean Claude Clermont (played by Jean Dujardin), did DIE in the war -- BUT ON THE OTHER HAND MOST VIEWERS WOULD ALSO APPRECIATE THE LOSS TO THE WORLD IF THE ONLY "Mona Lisa" image that we would have today would be the caricature drawn of it by SIMPSONS' creator Matt Groenig.  IT IS GOOD THAT THE REAL THING STILL EXISTS.  And this film celebrates the folks -- of the Bridge on the River Kwai [1957] / "Greatest Generation" -- who helped keep it so.


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Labor Day [2013]

MPAA (PG-13)  CNS/USCCB (L)  ChicagoTribune (2 Stars)  RE.com (1 1/2 Stars)  AVClub (C-)  Fr. Dennis (3 stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (J. Mulderig) review
ChicagoTribune (M. Phillips) review
RE.com (C. Lemire) review
AVClub (A.A. Dowd) review

Labor Day [2013] (screenplay and directed by Jason Reitman, based on the novel by Joyce Maynard [IMDb]) is a lazy / sappy, "don't really try this at home" romance for (my guess is) 30-something and above women.  Throughout the film, I kept thinking of The Bridges of Madison County [1995] another lazy / sappy romance directed at (again my guess ...) the same basic target audience.

That said, those who've read my blog would know that I don't necessarily find "sap" to be a bad thing (in a movie anyway ...).  But picking up a wounded, indeed, still bleeding, escaped convict (even if played in appropriately studly / sweat-covered muscle, yet also circumspect / gentleman-like fashion by Josh Brolin) on a lazy late summer afternoon somewhere in the New Hampshire countryside is almost certainly not a particularly wise thing to do. 

But then, this is a story (and stories do often have a "wouldn't it be nice..." quality to them).  So what the heck ...

Henry (voiced as an adult by Tobie Maguire, played as a 12-year old by Gattlin Griffith) recounts the story of how one lazy Labor Day weekend (just before school is supposed to start again), he and his worn-down by life, basket-case mom, Adele (played actually IMHO remarkably well by Kate Winslet) encountered said escaped convict named Frank (played again in appropriately studly yet circumspect fashion by Josh Brolin) in a super-market in their small New Hampshire hometown.

Now why was Henry's mom, Adele, a basket case?  Well she was left a number of years back by her somewhat a-holish husband / Henry's dad, Gerald (played by Clarke Gregg) for his (as they always are) younger, also divorced with her own son, 1980s-era big haired/big-glassed secretary who wasn't necessarily outright "evil" but didn't mind that (after her own home/marriage was smashed) was able to "win" (by smashing the home/marriage of Adele).  Ah, the "games" of the early decades of "no fault divorce ..." back here in the States.

Of course, the situation was actually a bit more complicated than that, as we learn later in the story.  Adele had already become worn-down by life and a basket-case BEFORE Gerald left her.  And Gerald (as well as his big-glassed/big-haired second wife) weren't completely a-holes either.

Nevertheless, we learn that Adele's life had really been quite awful until this encounter with the still bleeding, wounded, escaped convict, in the random supermarket somewhere in their small town in rural New Hampshire.  And so ... "what's she got to lose?"  (AGAIN, PLEASE FOLKS, DON'T DO THIS IN REAL LIFE...)

It turns out (in the story) that 'scaped-con Frank "wasn't that bad of a guy."  He too "had a story."  And for the sake of the film ... it's probably worth buying this (BUT AGAIN, PLEASE DON'T DO THIS AT HOME ... AT LEAST NOT UNTIL HE'S "DONE HIS TIME"...).

Anyway, much eminently circumspect (mostly off-screen) but "sweaty muscled" romance ensues...

Again, this is a LAZY, "WOULDN'T IT BE NICE" ROMANCE ...

Would it be a "good idea" to take home a still bleeding escaped convict with your 12 year old kid?  Most would PROBABLY say "no."  BUT THEN THIS IS A MOVIE. 

And what approaching middle-aged woman, worn down by life, feeling worthless and abandoned, would not want to hear a buff, sweaty t-shirted man, who hasn't been with a woman for a LONG, LONG TIME tell her: "I'd gladly serve another 20 years for 3 more days with you?" (Oh, Iah dew declare, let mah heart stop palpahtaytin dear Sir ... ;-)


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2 Autumns 3 Winters (orig. 2 Automnes 3 Hivers) [2013]

MPAA (UR would be PG-13)  Fr. Dennis (3 stars)

IMDb listing
Allociné.fr listing*

LeParisien (H. Lizé) review*
Critikat (C. Graminiès) review*
Libération (J. Gester) review*
LaCroix (S. Betbeder) review*

2 Autumns 3 Winters (orig. 2 Automnes 3 Hivers) [2013] [IMDb] [AC.Fr]* (written and directed by  Sébastien Betbeder [IMDb] [AC.Fr]*) is a very uncomplicated French "indie" comedy that played recently at the Gene Siskel Film Center here in Chicago.  The film's about four very, very average young Parisians, made in the style of "reality TV."  Hence we get to hear and see the film's very, very average main protagonists -- Arman (played by Vincent Macaigne [IMDb] [AC.Fr]*), Amélie (played by Maud Wyler [IMDb] [AC.Fr]*), Benjamin (played by Bastien Bouillon [IMDb] [AC.Fr]*) and Katia (played by Audrey Bastien [IMDb] [AC.Fr]*)-- sharing (often in interview format, after the fact...) with excruciating seriousness their exact thoughts and feelings (as they remember them) at various "key" points in this very, very, very mundane story.

IMHO it works, it's funny and serves to prove that "an unexamined life" need not be an altogether bad thing ;-).

My favorite character in the film is Benjamin's "New Agey" sister Lucie (played by Pauline Etienne [IMDb] [AC.Fr]*) who's so into herself that she won't even pick-up the (cell)phone to call her brother.  Instead, she tries to communicate with him "telepathically."  So every so often, she's pictured fading into (and out of ...)  Benjamin's consciousness (the connection's _rarely_ particularly good...) with a message that's generally _not_ particularly important ;-).

Probably the most irritating plot point in the film (though it _could_ actually be intentional) is that Amélie at one point shares with viewers (but not with Arman ...) that she's pregnant (with his child) and after not altogether a great deal of reflection (but that which she does, she shares with the viewers...) goes and gets an abortion. 

When Arman eventually finds out (from Amélie, though after the fact...), despite his being quite aware that he's not exactly a "genetic masterpiece," he appears quite hurt.  So the two "break-up."

One wonders then ... will there be a sequel? ;-)


* Foreign language webpages are most easily translated using Google's Chrome Browser. 

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A Touch of Sin (orig. Tian zhu ding) [2013]

MPAA (UR would be R)  ChicagoTribune (3 1/2 Stars)  RE.com (3 Stars)  AVClub (A-)  Fr. Dennis (3 Stars)

IMDb listing
AsianWiki listing

NPR (M. Jenkins) review
CCTV (Zh. Rui) article

ChinaFile (Asia Society) extensive video discussion / program w. director

ChicagoTribune (M. Phillips) review
RE.com (M. McCreadie) review
AVClub (A.A. Dowd) review

A Touch of Sin (orig. Tian zhu ding) [2013] (written and directed by Zhangke Jia [IMDb] one of China's best known contemporary film-makers) is provocative and often quite violent film that if not for it having been made in China by a Chinese film-maker (basically ignoring that country's censors) and serving-up a absolutely scathing indictment of corruption and money-worshipping excess among many of that country's petty elites today, many American and Western viewers would, with eyes-rolling, dismiss the film as a Charles Bronson [IMDb] / Death Wish [IMDb] style "revenge flick."

It's of course more complicated than that.  The makers of the various American 70s+ era vigilante justice films (think of not just the Charles Bronson" [IMDb] / Death Wish [IMDb] films but also those featuring Clint Eastwood [IMDb] as "Dirty Harry" [IMDb] to say nothing of most of Quentin Tarantino's [IMDb] early films) would all say that they were heavily influenced by the Bruce Lee [IMDb] and other "martial arts films" coming out of Hong Kong at the time.  Those stories, in turn, didn't come out of nowhere.  Instead, they come out of a surprisingly long (Dynasty-to-Dynasty...) Chinese storytelling tradition of wuxia (martial arts) and youxia ("wandering force") heroes who rise-up "out of the masses" to challenge wicked overlords and restore justice to the land.  

So film-maker Zhangke Jia [IMDb] strung together four vignettes based on actual events widely reported-on and commented-on by users of China's "Weibo" (Twitter-like) social networking site in which wuxia or youxia like heroes "rose up" out of Chinese society TODAY to challenge local injustices that "cried out to heaven."

These included the story of a former miner named Dahai (played by Wu Jiang) who went on a killing spree in a sleepy provincial town after being humiliated for complaining after the town's mayor sold-off the town's publicly owned mine to a private firm and then the mayor used the public moneys gained from the sale to buy himself and his wife a private jet (so that they could more easily travel to Hong Kong and other wealthier parts out "south east.")

The second vignette told the story of a young man Zhao San (played by Boaquiang Wang) returning on his motorbike to his hometown somewhere presumably near the recently built Three Gorges Dam for the occasion of his mother's 70th birthday.  After the party, his mother reprimands him as he's supposedly traveling about, working "odd jobs" and to send money "back home" (to her).  But he's not exactly sending back a "steady income."  Well there's a reason for that ... he's not holding back on her, but ...

Another vignette involved a young woman named Xiao Yu (played in the film by the director's own wife Tao Zhao) who while herself a flawed person (introduced to viewers as the girlfriend of a traveling businessman and one who worked as a receptionist at a seamy hotel "sauna" rest-stop in another provincial town between two major cities, one inland and the other along China's thriving south-east coast) found herself bullied two extortionists who wanted to "buy her."  "Gentlemen, proceed indoors, we're a sauna, you can have ANY WOMAN you want here, but I'm just a receptionist."  But they wanted HER.  One of them took out a big wad of bills AND BEGAN HITTING HER WITH IT saying that he could "buy anything" and that he wanted to BUY HER.  Well, good old Xiao pulled a knife out of her handbag, the same knife that her businessman lover couldn't take on the train with him when he went off on his way that afternoon and ...

The final vignette involves a young, good-looking man named Xiao Hui (played by Lanshan Luo) who lives and works in the glamorous "south east" of China, BUT ... he finds himself better-looking than competent.  In his struggle to find a job that he's both GOOD AT and PROUD OF, he becomes friends with a young similarly attractive _buddhist_ prostitute.  Yup, she plays the games (dressing-up at times as a tight plunging-necklined, micro-mini skirted, stiletto heeled jack-booted "Red Guard" for visiting Hong Kong/Singaporey businessmen) and partly enjoys them (she's got a pink-"skinned" iPad).  But she also does truly "random acts of kindness" (saves gold fish ...).  Why?  She tells Xiao Hui, "I have to do a lot of good deeds to stand a chance in my next life ..."  Xiao Hui helps her "liberate" said gold fish from the hotel / night-club where they work, but it all seems hopeless to him ...

So this then is the image of China that Zhangke Jia [IMDb] presents in his film, one that is both NEW and OH SO CORRUPT in the TIMELESS, OLD-FASHIONED WAY.  And interestingly enough he suggests that ALL THE SAGES from YES EVEN MARY AND JESUS, to the BUDDHA, to the CHINESE SAGES OF OLD, to MAO ZEDONG (there are pointed references to ALL OF THEM) would be APPALLED by the money-worshiping SOUL-LESSNESS of much of CHINA TODAY.

But then, should one be surprised?  It's all, like it's always been: "touched by Sin ..." An interesting, thought-provoking if often quite violent film ...


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The Invisible Woman [2013]

MPAA (R)  ChicagoTribune (3 Stars)  RE.com (3 1/2 Stars)  AVClub (C+)  Fr. Dennis (3 Stars)

IMDb listing
ChicagoTribune (M. Phillips) review
RE.com (G. Cheshire) review
AVClub (M. D'Angelo) review

The Invisible Woman [2013] (directed by Ralph Fiennes, screenplay by Abi Morgan, based on the book by Clarie Tomalin [IMDb]) tells the story of the 13 year affair of the super-star 19th Century (Victorian-Era ...)  English author Charles Dickens (played in the film by Ralph Fiennes) and Ellen (Nelly) Ternan (played in the film by Felicity Jones).    Charles Dickens was 45 and Ellen (Nelly) Ternan was 18 (only a few months older than Dicken's oldest daughter) when they met.  Dickens left his wife Catherine (played in the film by Joanna Scanlan) and their many children over her.  And apparently though "Nelly" was the first person mentioned in Dicken's will after his death, he was able to keep her (largely) a secret until then.

Not that this was always easy... the two apparently had a child (in France ...) who died young (and was buried under a false last name ...) AND the two were traveling together on a train that derailed and Dickens had to pretend that the two weren't "traveling together" then... One gets the sense that a lot of women would probably like to throw things at the screen at points in the story like those.

But then, that's the story's point: No matter how one slices it, affairs are ugly.  One wishes that Catherine could have taken Dickens to the cleaners (as she would today) in a divorce proceeding and that even Ellen would have been able to say: "Sorry Charlie, but no matter what even my ma' (played in the film by Kristen Scott Thomas) may say (she arguably pressured her own daughter into the affair suggesting that Dickens would probably be very good to her) ... YOU'RE OLD ... and I'd much rather just hang out with / go to the beach occasionally with some of your older sons and daughters."   

Still, Charles Dickens did write a lot about the struggles of every day and lower class people of his time, and this story helps one get a window into how Dickens was able to know as much as he did about their lives and difficulties.  Sigh.


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That Awkward Moment [2014]

MPAA (R)  CNS/USCCB (O)  ChicagoTribune (2 Stars)  RE.com (2 Stars)  AVClub (C+)  Fr. Dennis (Not Applicable)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (K. Jensen) review
ChicagoTribune (M. Phillips) review
RogerEbert.com (S. S. Wloszczyna) review
AVClub (K. MacFarland) review

That Awkward Moment [2014] (written and directed by Tom Gormican) is one of those films that I simply could not bring myself to see.  Yet its premise -- after one of the three leads, Micky (played by Michael B. Jordon), is dumped by his wife, he and the other two leads (played by Zac Efron and Miles Teller) decide that they are not going to get involved with women anymore.  Sure, they'll sleep with them, just not get "emotionally involved" anymore, "bros before hoes" they say -- does deserve some comment here.

Now yes, it would certainly suck being dumped, betrayed and all.  And one would certainly understand not wanting to get invested rapidly with someone new.  BUT WHY THEN SLEEP WITH PEOPLE ONE DOESN'T WANT TO GET INVOLVED WITH?  DOES ONE NOT CARE THAT ONE MAY CREATE A CHILD WITH SAID PERSON THAT ONE DOES NOT CARE ABOUT?  To make this approach "work" requires EXACTLY the "contraceptive mentality" that the Catholic Church has been lamenting in our time one where a child ceases to be seen as a Gift (from GOD) but rather as a Curse.

TALK ABOUT AN "AWKWARD MOMENT" ("Molly/Earnie, now don't take this the wrong way, but I never liked your mom/dad.  Sure he/she was hot, I think (you know I used to get drunk a lot back then...) but I don't know where he/she is or what he/she does. I know nothing about her/him and I don't really want to.  But, hey, you may have your dad's/mom's eyes.") OR WORSE (a trip to an abortion mill).  

It brings to mind one of the "Confessions from Hell" scenarios that I as a Priest sometimes play out in my head:

"Father, I'd like to confess the sin of Abortion, or this may really be Infanticide, Father.  Honestly, you be the judge.  You see, I'm a journalist who writes reviews for a 'Players website' (if you know what I mean...) in our town.  Now, I don't normally get involved with anyone anymore.  I mean Father, I've seen it all.  Trust, me, I've seen it all.  But you know last year, I was at this club and this stripper, I mean she was fine.  She was really, really fine.  And again, I don't normally get involved.  But with this one, I really had to get it on.  And we hit it off just fine... 

"Now, Father, I thought had a vasectomy (in fact, as I'm talking to you, I'm SERIOUSLY thinking of filing a complaint against that doctor who said he gave me one a few years back...) and she told me that she had her tubes tied.  And in our lines of work Father, we're careful.  Between the two of us, we must have been using, SIMULTANEOUSLY, 45 different methods of Birth Control.  I mean, I myself, never wear LESS than THREE CONDOMS and between the two of us, we had like the Berlin Wall, the Korean DMZ, MINE FIELDS FATHER of contraception lined up there between us.  BUT SHE GOT PREGNANT.  I don't know how.  It had to be a Miracle.

"At first, I thought it had to be a hysterical pregnancy of some sort.  But the kid had a heart beat.  And it just kept BEATING AND BEATING AND BEATING.  And then the kid just kept KICKING in there.  I mean Father, it was like IT KNEW that it was in trouble in there and was just trying to get the hell out of there ...

"But neither one of us wanting a kid, we decided to end it.

"But this then brings up another problem, Father.  Both of us are TERRIBLE PROCRASTINATORS.  I mean we kept putting it off, putting it off.  I mean that's why I 'write' for that 'Players' Website' ... If I could meet a deadline, I'd be working for the Times...  Anyway, she finally calls, and gets an appointment.  I finally get around to depositing my checks into the ATM.

"And so there I was, getting my $300 bucks out of the ATM, and she calls out to me THAT HER WATER BROKE.  So now I'M IN A PANIC.  I take the wrong turn, then another.  By the time we get to the abortion clinic, the kid's head is already almost completely out of her.  But the attendants, they were really professional.  They threw her into a wheel chair and raced her inside.  The doctor then asked the nurse to run over and get the axe next to the fire extinguisher down the hall and with one maybe two swings, they put the kid down....

"... SOOO for these Sins and all the Sins of my past life, I'm heartily sorry Father and ask for Penance and Absolution..."

Yup, "just hooking up" is NOT EXACTLY GOD'S PLAN ... ;-)


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Gimme Shelter [2013]

MPAA (PG-13)  CNS/USCCB (A-III)  ChicagoTribune (1 1/2 Stars)  RE.com (2 1/2 Stars)  AVClub (D+)  Fr. Dennis (4 Stars)

IMDb listing

CNS/USCCB (J. Mulderig) review
EWTN interview with Director Ron Krauss / Kathy DiFiore
National Catholic Register (D.M. Cooper-O'Boyle) review
National Catholic Reporter (R. Pacatte) review

ChicagoTribune (M. Phillips) review
RE.com (S. O'Malley) review
AVClub (I. Vishnevetsky) review

Gimme Shelter [2013] (written and directed by Ron Krauss) is an extremely well-written and well-acted film "based on true events" about a 15-year old teenager named Agnes/Apple (played magnificently by Vanessa Hudgens) who runs away from her drug addicted mother (played again magnificently by Rosario Dawson) in search of her suburbanite father Tom Fitzpatrick (played with appropriate initial cluelessness by Brendan Fraser) who she had never met.

When she arrives at his home (all she has is an old envelope and an address) the housekeeper calls the police on her.  Fortunately, as the police are cuffing her, Tom arrives with Joanne, his wife (played again quite credibly by Stephanie Szostak) and two small kids.  With a pierced nose and a pierced lip and a "hairstyle" looking just like it was (cut short by her own hand looking in a mirror -- we saw her cutting her hair in the film's initial scene) Agnes/Apple looks utterly out-of-place out there in some upscale New Jersey suburb outside of the New York where she had been born and had lived all her life previously.  But she protests her innocence and her reason for being there (and she has the envelope with her ...).  So mild-mannered Tom and confused (and perhaps even a bit angry) but well-mannered Joanne eventually tell the police that "It's okay" that they'll "handle things from here."  And they take her -- along with their two other kids, who had watched the whole incident with mouths gaping wide open from their parents' car -- into their stately upscale suburban home, large enough to require the housekeeper who had initially called the cops.

What now?  Well ... while unclear, it would seem that Tom had some now urgent autobiographical details about his life to tell his rather blindsided wife, either that or "Well you know how I told you when we first met that ... well ..." Either way, that conversation that takes place off screen must not have been easy.  And even if Joanne would have wanted to beat her husband senseless with a shovel now, they still had a scared 15-year-old in their house now, who except for the biographical detail that she was Tom's daughter, they knew absolutely nothing about.

What to do?  Well, dinner was awkward.  Thankfully, Tom and Joanne dismiss their younger children from the table when they begin to ask childish, inappropriate questions of "Apple" (which they find to be an "odd" name) as one _could_ expect young children confronted with a situation _way outside_ their previous (and necessarily limited) range of experience.  Hearing her tale of abuse and having been passed on from one foster home to another, Tom and Joanne decide to let her spend the night.

The next morning Agnes/Apple has another surprise.  She throws up (one gets the sense that she herself didn't know that she was pregnant).  Well, keeping her composure, Joanne takes Apple to a clinic (while Tom heads off to his Wall Street job) where it's confirmed.

The next day, it's Tom's task to sit down with Agnes/Apple to tell her what he and Joanne have decided to do with her.  Joanne had drawn the line -- "I'm not going to have a 15 year old that I do not know have a child in my house." -- Tom tells Apple that Joanne has made an appointment for her at the clinic for an abortion, that she'll even go with her, to hold her hand through it all, but that simply "this page must be turned" before ALL their lives "return to normal."  Agnes, a cauldron of so many levels of anger that one honestly would have trouble listing them all here, responds, "Oh yes, 'turn the page,' just like YOU 'turned the page' ON ME."  Still what's she gonna do?  She reluctantly goes with Joanne to the abortion clinic to "make this go away."

But ... of course, she finds THAT SHE SIMPLY CAN'T GO THROUGH WITH IT.  She's SOOO ANGRY at SOOO MANY PEOPLE.  And yet she HAS A PHOTO of the ONLY UTTERLY INNOCENT PERSON IN THE ENTIRE SITUATION (an ultrasound of her unborn baby).  And so she can't do it.  She runs out and away from the abortion clinic.  To where?  She doesn't have a clue ... BUT AWAY.  (Joanne, pointedly DOESN'T go out to "LOOK FOR HER...").

Wandering in a stew of confusion, Agnes/Apple, she gets stopped by a would be pimp, and with some gumption, she actually STEALS HIS CAR.  But she's a 15 year old "from the hood" so she CAN'T DRIVE.  Some 15-20 seconds into her getaway, she SMASHES the car into something ... and wakes-up HANDCUFFED to a hospital bed somewhere in presumably Newark, New Jersey.

It's actually HERE that her story BEGINS TO CHANGE for the better.  The first person she sees when she wakes up is a kindly EXPLICITLY CATHOLIC CHAPLAIN Fr. Frank McCarthy (played dead-on by James Earl Jones) who SLOWLY, over several days, is able to calm her down.  And he gets her into a home for unwed mothers run by Kathy DiFiore (played in the film again, dead-on precision, by Ann Dowd).

The rest of the film still follows and there are a lot of loose-ends that still need to be resolved, the main among them are that Agnes/Apple is 15-years-old and has parents.  One may be struggling with drug addiction and the other may have been completely absent and still generally clueless.  But despite that, they still have rights over her.  So there's still a lot here that needs to play out.

My ONLY, ONLY, ONLY CRITICISM of this otherwise EXTREMELY WELL WRITTEN AND WELL ACTED FILM is that the actual Agnes/Apple on which the film was based was WHITE, while AS GOOD AS Hudgens' and Dawson's performances were in the film, they are both people of color (while suburban Tom and his wife are white) resulting in the film playing itself out in a direction that reinforces stereotypes that would not have been present if the film-makers had just stayed with the original story where EVERYONE in the story was white.

That aside, I agree COMPLETELY with the critics that have written that if there was ANY DOUBT that Vanessa Hudgens could act, she proves here that she can.  And it was a gutsy decision on her part to play in a self-evidently pro-Life film.  Good job Vanessa!


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