Rating: 
Summary: Brilliant!
Review: The Safety of Objects (Rose Troche, 2001)The first thing you're going to notice about this brilliant, completely overlooked littke gem is the quality of the cast. I mean, we're talking major starpower here, and Troche blended them together to achieve something close to perfection. The story centers on four star-studded suburban families, a mysterious auto accident, and a contest that involves keeping your hand on a car longer than anyone else. Oh, and it was all written by the sick, twisted, brilliant novelist A. M. Homes. How could you possibly go wrong? The Golds-- mother Esther (Glenn Close, giving a career-best Brandoesque performance),father Howard (Robert Klein), daughter Julie (Election's delicious chanteuse Jessica Campbell), and son Paul (Dawson's Creek alum Joshua Jackson)-- are the cornerstone of the piece. Paul was a victim of the car accident, and now spends his life in a coma. His mother dotes on him, his father can't bear to look at him, and his sister, well, she's a completely different story. Their next door neighbors are the Jennings. Mom (indie darling Patricia Clarkson, who is never less than great) is still perilously close to the edge a year after her husband (TV staple Andrew Airlie) left, raising a delinquent (Panic Room's Kristen Stewart) and a girl (Haylee Wanstall, recently found in Sugar) who is in some way mentally challenged; it's never said, but it looks like autism. Also involved are the Trains-- father Jim (Dermot Mulroney), mother Susan (Moira Kelly), and their two kids, and the Christensens, notably mom Helen (Mary Kay Place). All the moms want to sleep with the gardener (Timothy Olyphant). Okay, can you see the starpower radiating yet? As with most of Homes' work, the idea here is that modern suburbia is weird. Very, very weird. Little, normal incidents grow into crises of insane proportions. Assumptions are pushed to their logical conclusions and coincide with completely irrational behavior, so that everything looks normal when it is anything but. And eventually, of course, it all begins to break down. Troche keeps the viewer's interest by being extremely coy about the details surrounding the car accident that sets everything in the story into motion, revealing piece by piece in flashback what it is that everyone's hiding, or guilty about, or sick of seeing over and over again in their heads. Meanwhile, present-day life is going on, and it's just as strange. Eventually, it all makes sense, but you have so much fun getting there that by the end, you wouldn't be terribly peeved had some of the pieces never fallen into place. This is fantastic stuff. Very highly recommended. And watch for Jessica Campbell, the girl is going places fast. **** ½
Rating:
Summary: The Wonders of Women, Working
Review: THE SAFETY OF OBJECTS is a superb film directed by Rose Troche from an correlative collection of stories by AM Homes and delivered with touching dignity by a cast of some of our best actresses - Glenn Close, Mary Kay Place, Patricia Carlson, Moira Kelley - and supported by actors including Dermot Mulroney and Joshua Jackson and Timothy Olyphant. Just as in her book by the same name, there are many stories happening simultaneously and in the film adaptation they all interrelate even more closely than the book suggested. This is the suburbia madness Homes knows so well - four familties living adajacently and bonded in various degrees by the near fatal auto accident of Paul Gold, a youth in his prime who touched the lives of more people than he knew. In the film he continues in a vegetative state, binding his caregiving mother (Close), offering food for longing for his secret lover (Clarkson), and providing a seemingly endless search for normalcy by the one in the accident who wasn't physically injured (Olyphant). Secrets, longings, and fantasies play strong roles in the lives of all of the characters who are very realistically written and acted and it is to Rose Troche's credit that she keeps us involved and guessing until the final frame. A very fine, very challenging piece of film making.
Rating: 
Summary: In spite of good acting, the film plays like a soap opera
Review: This film is an attempt at compiling a collection of rather dark and disturbing short stories by A.M. Homes into some sort of a coherent tale. It should have been easy. After all, it's set in a suburban wasteland. And the characters all suffer in one way or another. All the screenwriter had to do was connect the stories. Right? Wrong. Problem is, the film just tells some surface stories. There's sadness in the film as the characters act out their problems but it lacks the deeply probing literary quality which comes across in the book as a needle torturing a festering wound. There's Glenn Close, cast as a mother with a comatose son. There's Patricia Clarkson cast as a divorced woman who's desperate for affection. There's a potential child molester with his own dark secrets. And there's a young boy who has fantasies about a Barbie doll. When it's all put together, the film plays as a soap opera. And in spite of some good acting, nothing can save it. The central theme seems to be simply how awful these people's lives are. I can't recommend this movie. But if the subject of suburban misery and angst intrigues you and you want to experience some good writing, read the book.
Rating: 
Summary: A BOOK ADAPTATION GONE AWRY...
Review: With a superlative ensemble cast giving note worthy performances, I expected this movie to be better than it actually was. Unfortunately, it was a sterile production, as none of the characters really grab the viewer emotionally. The normal rules of engagement seem to be lacking, leaving the viewer with the sense of having seen a shell of what was potentially a good film. Instead, the viewer gets a film with a few good hurrahs amidst a motley reel of celluloid. It is an ambitious film that does not see its ambitions realized. Adapted from a book of short stories by A. H. Holmes, the film attempts to weave these short stories into a collective, cohesive narrative. It is a strained effort, at best. It gives an ostensible slice of suburban angst through the stories of four middle class families, neighbors in a suburban community. All have some connection to a car accident that severely injured the son of one of these families, causing him to remain in a vegetative state. The film plods along, unraveling the accident in tortuous fashion as it takes the viewer to the final denouement. Some of the characters behave inexplicably without rhyme or reason as to why they would behave in such a fashion, leaving the viewer to wonder why. While the reasons may be of interest, there is not a clue as to such. It may simply be that the author's interrelated short stories simply did not adapt well to film, despite best efforts to make it into a cohesive entity. Yet, a pre-pubescent boy talks to his sister's Barbie doll, believing that they have some kind of relationship, and he believes that Barbie talks back to him. A man whose marital relationship is on the brink of disaster leaves his wife and family at a critical juncture in order to help a neighbor try to win an SUV contest at a local mall. Why they act in this fashion is the question. The answer is entirely shrouded and obscure, so that the viewer is left puzzled and grasping at straws, in the end not really caring at all why. So, despite excellent performances by the cast, the film is torpid at best, staying afloat simply because of the efforts of the cast not to go down with a sinking ship. The stories of the characters themselves simply cannot sustain the film sufficiently, despite the valiant efforts of the cast and the director. It is a somewhat depressing film that is unable to break away from its own inherent torpor. Still, it is worth a rental, if only for the fine performances of this stellar ensemble cast.
Rating:
Summary: A BOOK ADAPTATION GONE AWRY...
Review: With a superlative ensemble cast giving note worthy performances, I expected this movie to be better than it actually was. Unfortunately, it was a sterile production, as none of the characters really grab the viewer emotionally. The normal rules of engagement seem to be lacking, leaving the viewer with the sense of having seen a shell of what was potentially a good film. Instead, the viewer gets a film with a few good hurrahs amidst a motley reel of celluloid. It is an ambitious film that does not see its ambitions realized. Adapted from a book of short stories by A. H. Holmes, the film attempts to weave these short stories into a collective, cohesive narrative. It is a strained effort, at best. It gives an ostensible slice of suburban angst through the stories of four middle class families, neighbors in a suburban community. All have some connection to a car accident that severely injured the son of one of these families, causing him to remain in a vegetative state. The film plods along, unraveling the accident in tortuous fashion as it takes the viewer to the final denouement. Some of the characters behave inexplicably without rhyme or reason as to why they would behave in such a fashion, leaving the viewer to wonder why. While the reasons may be of interest, there is not a clue as to such. It may simply be that the author's interrelated short stories simply did not adapt well to film, despite best efforts to make it into a cohesive entity. Yet, a pre-pubescent boy talks to his sister's Barbie doll, believing that they have some kind of relationship, and he believes that Barbie talks back to him. A man whose marital relationship is on the brink of disaster leaves his wife and family at a critical juncture in order to help a neighbor try to win an SUV contest at a local mall. Why they act in this fashion is the question. The answer is entirely shrouded and obscure, so that the viewer is left puzzled and grasping at straws, in the end not really caring at all why. So, despite excellent performances by the cast, the film is torpid at best, staying afloat simply because of the efforts of the cast not to go down with a sinking ship. The stories of the characters themselves simply cannot sustain the film sufficiently, despite the valiant efforts of the cast and the director. It is a somewhat depressing film that is unable to break away from its own inherent torpor. Still, it is worth a rental, if only for the fine performances of this stellar ensemble cast.
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