Little Miss Sunshine (2006)

Fox Searchlight Pictures presents a Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris film, starring Greg Kinnear and Steve Carrell. Written by Michael Amdt. 101 min. R for language, some sex and drug content.

4.5 stars

Watching “Little Miss Sunshine” unfold is a bit like staring too carefully at that family portrait hanging over the mantelpiece.

At first glace, we’ll likely see what we’ve patterned ourselves to see: an idyllic representation of the nuclear family in the 21st century. The closer we get, however, the more we’re certain to notice that dad’s eyes show as much fear as happiness and that mom’s brother has a smile that’s painted on. And is that really powdered heroin underneath grandpa’s right nostril?

This is the portrait of the Hoover family, circa the month in which prosperity was usurped by pitfall for the charmingly dysfunctional sextet. The film opens as Sheryl (Toni Collette) is rescuing her brother Frank (Steve Carrell) from a hospital psych ward after a botched suicide attempt.

“I’m glad you’re here,” she says, careful to inspect his fresh bandages with furtive glances.

“That makes one of us,” he sullenly replies.

This dark humor is the product of first-time screenwriter Michael Arndt, who deftly finds a balance between each sobering insight and the corresponding one-liner nipping at its heels. “Little Miss Sunshine” also marks the feature film debuts of Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, both veteran music video directors, who know enough to let Arndt’s script speak loudest.

Frank is returned home, to endless nights of bucket chicken and dismal dinner conversation with Sheryl’s plumpish 7-year-old daughter, Olive (Abigail Breslin); taciturn teenage son, Dwayne (Paul Dano); ambitious husband Richard (Greg Kinnear) and acrimonious father-in-law (Alan Arkin).

Their torporific existence, evidenced by the 1970s décor that still engulfs their Albuquerque ranch house, is rattled by word that Olive has qualified for this year’s Little Miss Sunshine pageant in Redondo Beach.

With little foresight of the trip’s multitudinous complications, the family crams into their sole source of mass transportation, an antique Yolkswagen bus, for the interstate expedition. The friction felt around the dinner table resumes immediately in the tight confines of the canary yellow cruiser, as past disgusts and present disappointments are rehashed by family members to spite one another.

If there wasn’t a generous dose of levity to all this sniping, however, “Little Miss Sunshine” could feel more confrontational that it intends. But Arndt transforms the usual road trip problems – like each compounding car malfunction - into some of the film’s most memorable scenes.

Although the precocious pageant princess may not feel it, Olive will begin shouldering the crushing weight of her family’s expectations. After all, they all are historically losers, who dream earnestly but always fail. Richard peddles a nine-step self-improvement nostrum that only allows for winners, a group in which he has never been included. His condescension germinates from losing control, as he contemplates a future that finds him more a leech than a breadwinner.

In order to legitimize his self-help gobbledygook, Richard must vilify Frank for quitting early on his life. There’s little point, since the county’s now second foremost Proust scholar feels there’s no hope of returning to the top, no matter how insignificant we understand that denotation to be. Even Dwayne dreams big, self-administering a vow of silence until he can shake off the dust of his crummy little town and attend flight school.

With big round glasses that swallow her face and baby fat that peeks out of her tube top, Olive isn’t typical pageant material. That couldn’t be any clearer than it is this week, when the glossy cheesecake photos of JonBenét Ramsey once again graced tabloid covers. These stills were a terrifying reminder of how easily zealous parents can turn 6-year-olds into pint-size copies of beauty queens, complete with teased hair, a sprayed-on tan and generous slabs of makeup.

When it’s all said and done, the loser Hoovers may have the last laugh at the pageant’s “win at all costs” philosophy. But after the laughter quiets, we can’t help but feel as we did at the conclusion of “The Graduate,” another film that stuck a thumb in the eye of convention and expectation: Oh my, where do we go from here?

World Trade Center (2006)

Paramount Pictures presents an Oliver Stone film, starring Nicolas Cage, Maria Bello and Maggie Gyllenhaal. Written by Andrea Berloff. 125m. PG-13 for intense and emotional content, some disturbing images and language.

3.5 stars

An auteur, whose legacy lies in his provocation, is entrusted with the first big-budget film depicting America’s most gut-wrenching day. Yes, I was a bit unnerved by the idea of an Oliver Stone film about the Sept. 11 attacks.

What I found instead was a story with great heart and even greater restraint. “World Trade Center” does not regurgitate the dizzying din of the 24-hour news networks, opting instead to focus its insular attention on a pair of unlikely survivors.

Stone starts us in the break room of the Port Authority Police Department on Sept. 11, 2001, where early indications suggested this would be another routine Tuesday. While patrols man the busy bus terminal at around 8:45 a.m., the first plane strikes the north tower.

For Stone, who has both horrified and titillated audiences with grotesque shows of humanity at its most depraved, depicting the plane’s impact only in shadow and sound represents a true break from expected convention. I’m not privy to his ultimate motivation, just merely thankful that he spared us a recreation of that traumatic moment.

Of course, this act of self-editing lends credence to the film’s underlying mission. We’re suddenly reassured that Stone will not build the fertile foundations of “World Trade Center” with another ill-conceived conspiracy theory.

Through the PAPD patrolmen, we’re doused in the confusion that trailed the attacks. With the 110-story building burning in their midst and business documents showering their every step, the men are asked to accompany Sgt. John McLoughlin (Nicolas Cage) on a rescue mission. Of the four men who ultimately volunteer to go inside the towers, only Will Jimeno (Michael Pena) and McLoughlin initially survive the collapse of both towers.

The narrative is then reoriented, alternating between the trapped men and their respective families, who impatiently await word amidst the mass confusion. In separate parts of suburbia, both Donna McLoughlin (Maria Bello) and Allison Jimeno (Maggie Gyllenhaal) wonder: Did my husband go into the towers this morning?

With the film leaning heavily on the collective performance of the four main leads, Cage, Pena, Bello and Gyllenhaal studied their real-life counterparts to lend an authentic feel to their cinematic representations.

The sorrowful undercurrent is first apparent with Bello, who knows her husband’s extensive knowledge of the towers makes him a logical choice to lead a rescue mission there. Gyllenhaal reflects the torture of uncertainty, knowing that her husband isn’t at his usual post but not initially resigned to believe he entered the building.

Cage, who has perfected the uninhibited, jittery scoundrel in films like “Wild at Heart” to “Lord of War,” gives a decidedly more muted performance here. Pinned beneath hundreds of pounds of rubble and obscured by the chiaroscuro, Cage is compelled to create his character’s harrowing fears with only the use of his eyes. I was moved to tears several times as McLaughlin’s hope for survival slowly drained out of Cage’s baby blues.

There are heroes on the other side of the rubble as well. Dave Karnes (Michael Shannon), a retired Marine, watches the attacks unfold in Wilton, Conn. The film suggests he found an intensely spiritual call to help, donning his old Marine uniform and driving all day to reach Ground Zero before nightfall.

When 7 World Trade Center collapsed during the evening of Sept. 11, first responders were called off from coordinated searches of the nearby towers’ rubble. But Karnes maintained a low profile as he countermanded orders to abandon hope, with faith that there were still survivors. Although the film makes him out to be a religious zealot, albeit with deeply patriotic roots, Karnes is likely the film’s biggest hero.

The impact of the Sept. 11 events was diminished almost immediately by our government, who responded to the nation’s collective grief by launching into an invasion of Afghanistan. As the years pass, how we felt on Sept. 11 has mutated into how we feel about the unending war on terror.

“World Trade Center” is a good way to refocus that perspective. While the day will always be remembered for the evil that unfolded on our favorite morning news program, Stone successfully argues it should be remembered more for the heroes that emerged from the rubble.

Scoop (2006)

Focus Features presents a Woody Allen film, starring Scarlett Johansson and Hugh Jackman. Written by Allen. 96 minutes. Rated PG-13 for some sexual content.

3 stars

Every time I mention Woody Allen to my mother, she grimaces like she’s just been unwillingly force-fed a lemon. We then engage in this bad shtick, in which she shakes every skeleton in the director’s metaphorical closet and I defend him vociferously from the misguided attacks.

“No, mom, Soon-Yi is not his daughter,” I’d tell her, as if she hadn’t heard this same explanation a dozen times before. “And Mia and Woody were never married.”

Although she consistently garbled the facts, I understood my mother’s apprehension: Life had mirrored art too closely. Allen had pigeonholed himself for decades as a charming neurotic, which audiences considered to be a genuine reflection of his real-life persona. When Allen began his courtship of Soon-Yi Previn, who was 35 years his junior, it cast aspersions over his fictional character, who was also routinely dipping into another decade’s dating pool. Audiences now considered Allen – both real and imagined – as a lecher, who cast nubile starlets so he could prey upon their naivety.

For those who abandoned Allen over his tumultuous off-screen dalliances, consider “Scoop” to be the director’s olive branch.

I believe audiences responded favorably to “Match Point,” Allen’s last film, because the director opted not to cast himself as a lead character. It certainly wasn’t the first Allen film to be sans Woody, but it was the first film in which his kvetching persona wasn’t at least represented (actors as diverse in talent as Kenneth Branagh and Will Ferrell have been tolerable stand-ins).

When Allen returned to the front of the camera in “Scoop,” – to stand aside the bewitching Scarlett Johansson – I could clearly see my mother’s face in my mind’s eye. I could hear the nay-sayers too: This is Allen’s rampant narcissism again realized, casting himself as the suitor for someone nearly a half-century younger.

I’ve spent most of my life as an Allen apologist, so I’m sympathetic to the notion that he, in the words of another cherished comedian, gets no respect. In “Scoop,” he is not Johansson’s object of affection, but her surrogate father of sorts.

She’s Sondra Pransky, an aspiring journalist with the inquisitiveness of Nancy Drew and nerdy charms of Velma Dinkley on summer sabbatical in London. He’s Splendini (nee Sid Waterman), a Brooklyn magician making ends meet with children’s matinees overseas.

During a stint as an apprehensive participant in a trick closet gag, Sondra encounters the spirit of gonzo journalist Joe Strombel (Ian McShane), who received a hot tip about the true identity of the Tarot Card Killer while on deck a circuitous boat to purgatory.

He surmises that the serial killer, who has vexed authorities for weeks, is actually wealthy playboy Peter Lyman (Hugh Jackman), who descends from a line of famed English lords.

Sondra has never excelled at any form of journalism that didn’t involve sleeping with her source, so her plan is to woo the aristocrat while she snoops around his apartment looking for damning evidence.

Audiences could forgive Lord Lyman for looking twice at Sandra, despite her terrible choice in eye apparel. They may, however, have a hard time believing that he falls for such an inelegant American.

For fans of Allen, it may not seem so implausible. This is the director’s 37th feature film, so it’s not surprising that “Scoop” incorporates some of his better plots and characters. Sondra is cut from the same character cloth as May, the ditzy sister from “Small Time Crooks” who woos an unlikely millionaire with her off-beat sensibility. (Some critics may counter that Johansson, because of her scattershot performance, is actually playing the traditional Allen character. Frankly, I don’t see it.)

And who could forget Diane Keaton’s nutty theories about her next door neighbor’s murderous tendencies in “Manhattan Murder Mystery”? She wasn’t a detective, just a pedestrian New Yorker with an overactive imagination.

Critics tend to categorize Allen’s films into two groups: major achievements like “Manhattan” and “Annie Hall,” and minor trifles like “Anything Else” and “Hollywood Ending.”

Thankfully, the director has never subjugated himself to the whims of our expectations. After winning Best Picture for “Annie Hall,” he made “Interiors,” a chamber piece that evoked the style of Ingmar Bergman.

Although I don’t always enjoy the end result, I appreciate that Allen didn’t try to capitalize off the success of “Match Point,” his first well-reviewed film in almost a decade, by duplicating its tone and style.

“Scoop” isn’t as focused as “Match Point,” nor as riveting. But it has a lot of laughs, and Allen keeps some of the best for his character. In order to temper suspicions, Sondra and Sid adopt assumed names when infiltrating the Lyman estate. Sid can pretend to be Mr. Spence, oil baron and occasional real estate tycoon, all he’d like, but all he really knows how to be is a yokel from Brooklyn. We’re amused, therefore, by his choice of dinner party repartee. When the topic turns to religion, he tells the distinguished group that he was born into “the Hebrew persuasion, but I converted to narcissism.”

No Woody Allen film is going to feel absent of the director’s influence. But at 70, Allen can look in a mirror and know for certain he can’t be the character he was in 1966. He’s transitioning – both in the real and imaginary realms – from paramour to parent.

“Scoop” is a reflection of that evolution; for example, he resists foisting his persona on Jackman so that he can conquer Johansson by proxy. In essence, he’s stripped the film of all the elements that have made audiences increasingly uncomfortable over the years.

I think it’s time to call my mother.