In theaters
THE READER, directed by Stephen Daldry, written by David Hare, 123 minutes, rated R. Starts tonight, Railroad Square Cinema, Waterville.
Stephen Daldry follows his Academy Award-winning 2002 film “The Hours” with “The Reader,” which is marked by superb performances by Kate Winslet and David Kross, a fine performance by Ralph Fiennes, and a cameo by Lena Olin that’s so searing in its sophistication and directness, just try looking away from her during her brief appearance onscreen.
Unfortunately, the film also is pockmarked by a shaky script that becomes less involving in its second half. That’s a disappointment, but it doesn’t ruin the movie. Throughout, the acting saves it, with Winslet, after this performance, almost galvanizing her chances for an Academy Award for either her work here or in “Revolutionary Road.”
Perhaps both.
Screenwriter David Hare based the story on Bernhard Schlink’s novel, and what he and Daldry crafted from it is a movie of three parts. The first is a coming-of-age tale that involves the sexual relationship between a 15-year-old boy named Michael (Kross) and a 30-something woman named Hanna (Winslet). The setting is Ger-many, the time is 1955, and the couple meet one day when Michael becomes ill just outside Hanna’s home. Briskly and with an edge, she cleans him up, sends him packing and likely thinks nothing else of the situation until, three months later, he’s on her doorstep with flowers.
So, where to go from here? For them, the answer is sex, which the movie doesn’t judge — it just explores. Soon, each is naked (in this film, quite liberally and often) and their affair has begun. This is Michael’s first sexual experience. For Hanna, that’s hardly the case, but in her dead eyes, which conceal complications we’ll only come to understand later, she goes through the motions, giving the “kid,” as she calls him, what he wants, so long as he agrees to read to her.
“Read to me first, kid,” she says. “Then we make love.”
In print, that line might sound amusing — you can almost hear Dietrich saying it, likely with ribbons of smoke curling from her mouth — but in the film, there is nothing funny about it. These are two people who grow to love each other over the course of a summer. And then, just when Michael is consumed most by Hanna, she disappears.
It’s in the second part of the story that Michael comes upon Hanna again. Now a 23-year-old law student, he attends a trial as part of a class retreat and is shocked to find that Hanna is among several women being tried for her role in selecting people to be murdered at Nazi concentration camps during the war. As he watches, he’s not only faced with the horror of who his first love was, but also with whether he should come forward with key information that could change her life forever.
If the latter half of the plot sounds vague, it’s meant to be — the movie is far more complex than anything discussed here, and it should remain that way. Threading throughout the story is its third element — Fiennes as the adult version of Michael, who is looking back upon his life, his experiences with Hanna, and how it all in-teracts with his relationship with his daughter, which proves to be the film’s dullest subplot.
In fact, it’s an unnecessary inclusion, particularly since her addition is too much for this already dense movie to contain. Moreover, unlike “The Hours,” which seamlessly fractured time, wended through it and used it to its benefit to construct a satisfying whole, “The Reader” feels labored in its telling. It’s trying so hard to stitch and construct something profound, the effort competes with the performances, stealing away some of the rawness of the emotions.
Though not all of them. Winslet, Kross and Olin (who appears at the end) are too good to allow that to fully happen.
Grade: B
On DVD and Blu-ray disc
PINEAPPLE EXPRESS, directed by David Gordon Green, written by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, 104 minutes, rated R.
For the pot-smoking stoner, there are some important messages to glean from “The Pineapple Express.” First up is the film’s broader message that smoking pot isn’t good for you. No surprise there. Second, because the substance is, after all, illegal, there are ramifications to chasing it down and becoming addicted to it that can lead to all sorts of havoc. It’s the latter that is the movie’s main focus, with the film’s characters either busy creating chaos or trying to avoid it. Usually both.
From director David Gorgon Green, the movie is a mix of “Cheech and Chong” crossed with an action movie crossed with the typical brand of loopy, male-bonding humor for which producer Judd Apatow (“Knocked Up,” “Superbad,” “The 40-Year-Old Virgin”) is known. That’s a lot to toss into one pot (pun intended), and in this case, the result is an occasionally funny film laced with likable characters and unseemly villains.
The downside, though, is considerable. It goes beyond the fact that the movie doesn’t have the nerve to fully embrace the counter-culture it promotes, which would have made for a more memorable, daring experience, but that it falls apart toward the end when the story launches into its disappointing third act. There, amid all the gun-toting action, the chase scenes and the explosions, the laughs fizzle as the characters fight for their lives.
In the film, life goes sour for Dale Denton (Rogen) and his dealer friend, Saul Silver (James Franco), when Dale accidentally sees drug lord Ted Jones (Gary Cole) shoot a man dead while a corrupt cop (Rosie Perez) watches it go down.
Because Dale is too stoned to function, he draws attention to himself when he tries to escape. And when that happens, Jones and his gang become determined to keep Dale quiet by killing him and those close to him, including Saul, their frenemy Red (Danny McBride), Seth’s high school girlfriend Angie (Amber Heard), and her parents (Ed Begley Jr. and Nora Dunn).
The standout here is Franco, who successfully plays so far against type, more comedies likely will be coming his way. His chemistry with Rogen is just as easy and as believable as it was when they starred opposite each other in the television show “Freaks and Greeks.” Turns out that’s good for “Express” because otherwise, without them in it, this “Pineapple” would have gone up in smoke sooner than it does.
Grade: C+
WeekinRewind.com is the site for Bangor Daily News film critic Christopher Smith’s blog, DVD giveaways and archive of hundreds of movie reviews. Smith’s reviews appear Mondays, Fridays and weekends in Lifestyle. He may be reached at Christopher@weekinrewind.com.