If you have ever seen the first episode of seminal seventies feminist situation comedy The Mary Tyler Moore Show, then you may remember when Ed Asner, as the gruff newsman Lou Grant, first meets the titular head of the show, Mary Tyler Moore as plucky optomistic Mary Richards. Lou tells Mary she has spunk, then, followed by a slight pause, exclaims "I hate spunk!". Now, you may be wondering what connection The Mary Tyler Moore Show has to Adrienne Shelly's Waitress, and my answer is none really. I use this opening salvo merely in order to explain my own thoughts on Waitress. It surely has spunk, and I surely hate spunk. Okay, perhaps hate is a rather strong choice of words, especially while describing such a sweetly demeanored film as this one is, but there it is anyway - no matter how bad I feel about using it. In all actuality, probably the best word to describe this film is quaint. Whether one takes this as a good descriptive or bad I suppose depends on one's artistic sensibilities. Whether one takes to Norman Rockwell or Noel Coward. Mayberry or Metropolis. Being perhaps (no strike that, make it say definately) in the quite jaded category of society (though I am fully an optomist in some strange way) I find the term quaint to be rather laden with insult. But somehow here, the eternally sunshiney manner of this film - and perhaps a quiet nod to director Adrienne Shelly who was murdered just after finishing filming Waitress - I am almost won over. Almost. Predicated on a taste for another seventies sit-com, Alice, and bubbling over with a rather fervant hope, Waitress is not nearly as bad as one might expect someone like me to think it is. Well acted - especially by the sheriff of Mayberry himself, Andy Griffith, as the cantankerous diner owner - and not altogether nauseating, Waitress is, albeit rather backhandedly complimentary, not that bad. Now how was that for faint praise indeed. [04/15/07]

* opens May 2, 2007

There is a certain moody apparitional feeling with which Australian auteur Ray Lawrence layers each of his films. A feeling almost in tune with that of a Fritz Lang or a Murnau, or even a somewhat more pedestrian David Lynch. Of course neither Jindabyne nor Lantana (the much better, more complete feeling of his films) can compare to the best of Lang, Murnau or Lynch, but then Lawrence has only made three films (he debuted with a toss-off black comedy called Bliss way back in 1985) and counting. Considering the lapse of time between his first and second films, perhaps a comparison to Terrence Malick is more in order, but then again, still out of his league - for now?

The story of four men who find a dead girl during their annual fishing trip and the socio-racial reprecussions of what follows, Lawrence's moodpiece plays to a perfect pitch with the similarly haunted acting styles of both stars, Laura Linney and Gabriel Byrne. A spectral ghost story of sorts (without any actual ghosts mind you), both Linney and Byrne, as semi-estranged husband and wife, hand in performances worthy of Oscar (of course we all know how that works, he said with a jaded tongue in cheek). Emotionally wallopful, Jindabyne (named after the town it takes place in) may not be the fully realized mini-masterpiece Lantana was, but then thanks to Linney and Byrne, and the phantasmal manner in which Lawrence puts together his shots, it is quite the startling little film indeed. [04/17/07]

* opens April 27, 2007

REVIEW COMING SOON

* opens May 9, 2007