IFC Midnight
Ashley Hinshaw and James Franco star in “About Cherry.”

About Cherry
Film Review by Kam Williams

Naive Runaway Turns Porn Star in Cautionary Tale of Survival

Angelina (Ashley Hinshaw) is a naïve, 18 year-old with a blossoming body but a horrible home situation. Between a predatory stepfather (Stephen Wiig) with a creepy agenda and an alcoholic mother (Lili Taylor) too inebriated to protect her, it's just a matter of time before the poor girl has to vacate the premises.

Unfortunately, she proceeds to follow a lot of bad advice, starting with her boyfriend's (Jonny Weston) pressure to pose naked for pay. Although initially hesitant, the clueless coed goes along with the idea, unaware that nude photo spreads are apparently the adult entertainment industry's equivalent of a gateway drug to utter depravity.

The next thing you now, she's dropping out of high school and running away from L.A. to San Francisco with a Platonic pal (Dev Patel) who worships her. They rent an apartment together, with him landing a legitimate job at a bookstore while she finds work at a seedy strip club.

Soon thereafter, Angelina not only starts dating a customer (James Franco) but is recruited to appear in X-rated movies by a very-reassuring, retired porn star (Heather Graham). She adopts a stage name, "Cherry," and takes to performing sex acts in front of the camera like a fish to water, gradually graduating from soft porn to ever-increasingly salacious fare.

Not surprisingly, this development takes a toll on her personal relationships, as both her new beau ("What you do is disgusting!") and secret admirer roommate ("I'm just a foreigner you keep around to run errands!") eventually express their displeasure. But that doesn't necessarily mean that the trajectory of Angelina/Cherry's life has to turn tragic, especially when there's an empathetic lipstick lesbian waiting in the wings on the set of her latest explicit adventure.

Directed by Stephen Elliott, About Cherry's optimistic arc might be explained by the fact that he co-wrote the script with Lorelei Lee, a popular porn star-turned-NYU college lecturer. Lorelei's literary imprimatur lends considerable credibility to this presumably semi-autobiographical soap opera, since it would otherwise be impossible to fathom how the picture's terminally-suggestible protagonist wasn't left devastated by such a self-destructive string of degrading choices.

Pollyanna does ‘Frisco!

Very Good (3 stars)

Rated R for sexuality, nudity, profanity and drug use.

Running time: 102 minutes

Distributor: IFC Films

To see a trailer for About Cherry, visit

The Words
Film Review by Kam Williams

Plagiarism Exacts Emotional Toll in Tale of Overwhelming Regret

The latest stop on Clayton Hammond's (Dennis Quaid) whirlwind book tour has the renowned author in New York City to promote his latest opus. It's a cautionary tale of overwhelming regret recounting the rise and fall of a presumably fictional character called Rory Jansen (Bradley Cooper).

At the story's point of departure, he's an aspiring novelist under pressure to find a day job after years of relying on handouts from his father (J.K. Simmons). The young man grudgingly capitulates by taking a lowly 9 to 5 gig in the mailroom of a leading literary agency.

The steady pay does enable Rory to save enough money to propose to his longtime girlfriend (Zoe Saldana) who has been patiently waiting to start a family. Soon enough, they're newlyweds and honeymooning in Paris where the grateful bride impulsively buys her hubby a weather-beaten briefcase lying around a dusty antique shop.

Upon returning to the States, Rory opens the valise and discovers that it isn't empty but contains a yellowed, handwritten manuscript by someone far more talented than he. However, instead of trying to locate the owner, he succumbs to the temptation to submit the novel to publishers under his own name.

And lo and behold, the book, "The Window Tears," becomes a runaway best-seller, thereby belatedly launching the literary career he'd always dreamed of. But because of the possibility of the real author's (Jeremy Irons) stepping forward to expose the fraud, Rory faces the prospect of having to spend his life looking over his shoulder.

Co-written and co-directed by Brian Klugman and Lee Sternthal, The Words is constructed as a series of flashbacks narrated by a visibly-haunted Hammond as he reads excerpts from his new book. It gradually becomes obvious that he is emotionally agonizing over the material on the pages as the tension mounts around whether what his audience is hearing might be autobiographical rather than fictional.

Unfortunately, the problems with this glacial-paced production are plentiful. First, it's hard to swallow the film's farfetched premise, and harder still to fathom how its protagonist has managed to maintain the charade for so long, especially given his guilty conscience and being confronted by the aggrieved party he's impersonated.

Secondly, neither of the parallel plotlines is particularly engaging, the only issue of interest being whether Hammond's new book constitutes a confession that his debut novel had been purloined. For this reason, the film's biggest flaw rests in its ultimately ending on a cliffhanger, and thereby failing to resolve if Rory Jansen is indeed a thinly-veiled version of the author.

That anticlimactic conclusion proves to be quite unsatisfying after an investment of what feels like an eternity awaiting the resolution of the specific question "Did he or didn't he?" The only thing worse than a movie without an ending, is a ninety-minute endurance test without an ending.

Fair (1 star)

Rated PG-13 for smoking, sensuality and brief profanity.

Running time: 96 minutes

Distributor: CBS Films

To see a trailer for The Words, visit

Lawless
Film Review by Kam Williams

Prohibition Era Crime Saga Revisits Real-Life Exploits of the Bootlegging Bondurant Brothers

It is Franklin County, Virginia during Prohibition, which is where we find the bootlegging Bondurant brothers, Jack (Shia LaBeouf), Forrest (Tom Hardy) and Howard (Jason Clarke), running a thriving moonshining business with the help of a pal with colorful name Cricket (Dane DeHaan). But the siblings' blissful existence starts to crumble the day Jack sees Floyd Banner (Gary Oldman), a coldblooded gangster from Chicago, shoot one of their competitors dead with a Tommy gun.

Not long thereafter, a crooked Federal Agent, Charlie Rakes (Guy Pearce) pays a little visit to the Bondurants' bar to demand a cut of their ill-gotten gains. But hot-headed Forrest isn't intimidated by the attempted shakedown. In fact, he threatens to kill the corrupt cop with a meat cleaver should the greedy creep ever set foot on the premises again.

Of course, that's not the last the lads see of either Rakes or Banner, which soon proves problematical given that the ruthless newcomers are armed to the teeth and will stop at nothing to get their way. That is the ominous premise which sets in motion the grisly goings-on which ensue in Lawless, a picture dedicated to an almost senseless celebration of gratuitous violence.

Directed by John Hillcoat (The Road), the movie was adapted from "The Wettest County in the World," a supposedly-factual, historical novel by Matt Bondurant (grandson of Jack). The picture opens with a warning that what you're about to witness is "based on a true story," a claim presumably intended to discourage the viewer from questioning the veracity of the screen version, too.

However, what's served up is basically a comical cross of Sam Peckinpah and Looney Tunes so farcical that the audience at the screening this critic attended shared a few hearty laughs at moments when none was intended. An over-the-top indulgence in sadism strictly recommended for folks with a stomach for gangster fare so gruesome as to border on the cartoonish.

Fair (1 star)

Rated R for profanity, sexuality, nudity and graphic violence.

Running time: 115 minutes

Distributor: The Weinstein Company

To see a trailer for Lawless, visit

Elles
DVD Review by Kam Williams

Anne ( is a stressed-out investigative reporter for Elle Magazine, stationed in Paris, who's a good candidate for a lifestyle makeover, given the overwhelming demands of her job and her family. Her boss has been pressuring her to meet the deadline for the article she's currently working on about college students who moonlight as high-priced call girls.

Meanwhile, she has her hands full on the home front because her husband, Patrick (Louis-Do de Lencquesaing), shows no interest in bearing his half of the burden. Hence, she has to shoulder the full responsibility of motivating their stoner (Francois Civil) and couch potato (Pablo Beugnet) sons to do more than lounge around the flat with a view.

Although Anne also needs to attend to her bed-ridden father (Jean-Marie Binoche), her hubby still expects her to play the perfect hostess by whipping up a gourmet meal the evening he invites his boss over for dinner. And to add insult to injury, he goes out of his way to warn his wife not to embarrass him by making any unpleasant conversation at the dinner table.

Being married to such a cad, is it any surprise that Anne might start to take a personal interest in Charlotte (Anais Demoustier) and Alicja (Joanna Kulig), the two young prostitutes being profiled in her piece? That is precisely what transpires in Elles, a steamy, midlife crisis drama directed by Malgoska Szumowska.

Initially, Anne interviews her subjects in a professional manner, posing probing questions about whether they enjoy indulging the fetishes of their assorted clients, in the process eliciting very graphic descriptions of their kinky liaisons. But the miserably-married journalist becomes intrigued, once it's apparent that they've taken to the world's oldest profession like fish to water.

Then, against her better judgment, Anne shares shots of vodka with the seductive Charlotte, only to cross another line by experimenting with lesbianism. The glaring juxtaposition of the happy hookers with the pathetic plight of the unappreciated supermom seems to suggest that the wife taken for granted might actually be in a worse predicament.

Reminiscent of the incendiary offerings of the iconoclastic Catherine Breillat like Romance (1999) and Fat Girl (2001), Elles is a thought-provoking immorality play apt to stir up just as much controversy by virtue of its seemingly-gratuitous sex scenes alone. Does the fact that the director's a feminist and the star is an Oscar-winning actress provide sufficient artistic cover for carnal clinches which border on soft porn? Does the explicit eroticism serve to advance the plot or was it included purely for titillation purposes?

Those are questions you'll have to answer for yourself upon screening and introspection, unless you're the Puritanical type that considers any lurid depictions of copulation blasphemous. Let the endless debate begin!

Very Good (3 stars)
Rated NC-17 for nudity and explicit sexuality.
In French, Polish and Arabic with subtitles.
Running time: 99 minutes
Distributor: Kino Lorber
Blu-ray Extras: Edited and unedited trailers; and a stills gallery.

To see a trailer for Elles, visit

by Kam Williams
For movies opening September 14, 2012

BIG BUDGET FILMS

Finding Nemo (G) 3-D rerelease of the much-beloved animated adventure about a timid clownfish (Albert Brooks) who summons up the courage to embark on a perilous transoceanic trek to rescue a son (Alexander Gould) left trapped in a bowl in a dentist's office after being netted by fishermen near the Great Barrier Reef. Voice cast includes Ellen DeGeneres, Willem Dafoe, Brad Garrett, Allison Janney and Geoffrey Rush.

Resident Evil: Retribution (R for pervasive graphic violence) 5th installment in the grisly, sci-fi franchise finds Milla Jovovich reprising her role as an intrepid defender of the planet and forging new alliances in a high body-count fight against legions of flesh-eating zombies. With Boris Kodjoe, Oded Fehr, Sienna Guillory, Michelle Rodriguez and Bingbing Li.

INDEPENDENT & FOREIGN FILMS

10 Years (PG-13 for profanity, sexuality, drug use and alcohol abuse) Skeletons-out-of-the-closet dramedy about the shocking confessions shared by five best friends (Channing Tatum, Justin Long, Chris Pratt, Oscar Isaac and Max Minghella) upon returning to their hometown for their 10th high school reunion. Ensemble cast includes Rosario Dawson, Anthony Mackie, Jenna Dewan-Tatum, Ari Graynor, Kate Mara and Ron Livingston.

Arbitrage (R for profanity, drug use and violent images) Richard Gere stars in this Wall Street thriller as the philandering manager of a sinking hedge fund who implicates a friend of the family (Nate Parker) in the death of his mistress (Laetitia Casta) rather than risk damaging his marriage and reputation. With Susan Sarandon, Brit Marling and William Friedkin.

Bait 3-D (R for profanity, graphic violence and grisly images) Disaster flick about the residents of a beachfront community who find themselves surrounded by a swarm of great white sharks after a tsunami leaves them trapped inside a submerged grocery store. Cast includes Xavier Samuel, Julian McMahon and Phoebe Tonkin.

Barfi! (Unrated) Romance drama about the love triangle which develops when a woman (Ileana D'Cruz) has second thoughts about rejecting a hearing and speech-impaired suitor (Ranbir Kapoor) after he falls for a mentally-challenged maiden (Priyanka Chopra). (In Hindi with subtitles)

Francine (Unrated) Oscar-winner Melissa Leo (for The Fighter) plays the title character in this introspective portrait of an ex-con adjusting back to civilian life in a rural region of upstate New York after paying her debt to society. With Victoria Charkut, Dave Clark and Keith Leonard.

I'm Carolyn Parker: The Good, the Mad, and the Beautiful (Unrated) Oscar-winner Jonathan Demme (for Silence of the Lambs) directs this post-Katrina documentary chronicling the valiant struggle of a feisty, retired resident of New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward to rebuild her home left devastated by the hurricane.

Liberal Arts (Unrated) Romantic dramedy about a just-jilted 35 year-old bachelor (Josh Radnor) who falls for a teenaged college student (Elizabeth Olsen) upon returning to his alma mater to attend one of his professor's (Richard Jenkins) retirement party. Cast includes Zac Efron, Allison Janney, Kate Burton and Elizabeth Reasor.

The Master (R for profanity, sexuality and graphic nudity) Philip Seymour Hoffman handles the titular role of this tale of disillusionment, set in the wake of World War II, revolving around a devoted member (Joaquin Phoenix) of a burgeoning religious cult who gradually grows suspicious of the motivations of its charismatic founder. With Amy Adams, Laura Dern and Jesse Plemons.

The Stand Up (Unrated) New lease on life drama about a comedian (Jonathan Sollis) who retires after the tragic death of his girlfriend (Julia Dennis) only to get a second chance at love when he takes a job as a kindergarten teacher at a grammar school where he develops a crush on a cute colleague (Margarita Levieva). Supporting cast includes Aidan Quinn, Jennifer Mudge and Jonathan Reed Wexler.

Step Up to the Plate (Unrated) Haute cuisine documentary about renowned, French chef Michel Bras decision to hand over the reins of his three-star restaurant to his long-time assistant, his son, Sebastien. (In French with subtitles)

Stolen (R for violence and brief profanity) Nicolas Cage stars in this crime thriller about a recently-paroled master thief's frantic search for a daughter (Sami Gayle) kidnapped for a ransom he can't raise. With Malin Akerman, Josh Lucas and Danny Huston.

The Trouble with the Truth (R for profanity and sexual references) Bittersweet drama about a starving artist who (John Shea) takes some time to reflect with his ex-wife (Lea Thompson ) upon their failed marriage after their daughter (Danielle Harris) announces her engagement. With Keri Lynn Pratt, Ira Heiden and Rainy Kerwin.