By Susan Granger
In “Brooklyn,” the emotionally tempestuous, Irish immigrant experience serves as the basis for a sweetly poignant, assimilation story.
In 1952, the local Roman Catholic Church arranges for demure, 20’ish Eilis Lacey (Saoirse Ronan) to reluctantly leave her widowed mother (Jane Brennan) and older sister (Fiona Glascott) in Enniscorthy, County Wexford, to live and work in Brooklyn, New York.
Naïve and bewildered after her long ocean voyage, she arrives at a small boardinghouse run by stern, sharp-tongued Mrs. Kehoe (Julie Walters) and starts to work at a local department store, where her shy, prim demeanor doesn’t exactly encourage customers.
Wretchedly lonely and homesick, Eilis is sponsored by a sympathetic priest (Jim Broadbent), who suggests that she take night courses in accounting and attend church dances. That’s where she meets Tony (Emory Cohen), an impetuous Italian-American plumber who has a penchant for Irish girls.
When Tony invites Eilis home to meet his family, the boardinghouse girls insist on giving her lessons on how to properly eat spaghetti – and the results are hilarious.
Then, just as Eilis makes a romantic commitment to Tony, tragedy strikes and she’s summarily summoned back home, where she’s ardently pursued by a highly eligible suitor (Domhnall Gleason).
So Eilis is faced with a dilemma: should she remain in southern Ireland, where she’s comfortable, or return to Brooklyn to forge a new life for herself?
Director John Crowley, working from a script by Nick Hornby, based on Colm Toibin’s popular novel, has created a classic, sensitive love story, propelled by Saoirse Ronan, using her natural Irish accent to deliver low-key, yet powerful, Awards-caliber performance.
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Brooklyn” is an escapist 8, enhanced by a superbly confident ensemble.
“The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2” begins where Part 1 left off. After brainwashed Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson) almost choked her to death, bruised and battered Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) is recovering.
While Katniss vows to kill despotic President Snow (Donald Sutherland), resistance leader Alma Coin (Julianne Moore) says she more valuable as the iconic Mockingjay, inspiring others to band together, ending district rivalries in Panem. But this reduces Katniss to a primarily passive figurehead.
As a propaganda tool, she’s assigned to the Star Squad, infiltrating the Capitol, which has been booby-trapped against the rebels. That leads to lots of violent, often fatal CGI skirmishes, particularly when they take a claustrophobic, underground route, battling slithering sewer slimes.
According to many, the third book in Suzanne Collins’ trilogy is the weakest and never should have been split into two parts. But greed prevailed, as in other young-adult adaptations like “Twilight” and “Divergent.”
With longbow in hand and an arrow-filled quiver on her back, Jennifer Lawrence is stunning – and the odds are still in her favor.
But even she seems to sense that this slog has become stale, even with support from Donald Sutherland, Julianne Moore, Stanley Tucci and the late Philip Seymour Hoffman, whose last Gamesmaker Plutarch Heavensbee’s message is read aloud by Woody Harrelson’s Haymitch.
As Katniss’s suitors, Josh Hutcherson and Liam Hemsworth are dismally dull lumps. Were their roles deliberately diluted by screenwriters Peter Craig and Danny Strong and director Francis Lawrence?
On the Granger Gauge, “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2” is a somber, insipid, slavishly faithful 6, as the Girl on Fire becomes a glowing ember.
It’s not surprising that Julia Roberts rose to the bait of “Secret in Their Eyes,” the remake of Juan Jose Campanella’s 2009 Buenos Aires-based crime thriller – “El Secreto de Sus Ojos” – that won an Oscar as Best Foreign Language Film.
Once America’s smiling sweetheart, Roberts plays an entirely different role, as complex Jess Cobb, a grungy, grief-stricken investigator for the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office, working for impeccably elegant Claire Sloan (Nicole Kidman).
In 2002, Jess’s teenage daughter was brutally raped and murdered, her body found in a dumpster near the local mosque, but the suspected killer, Marzin (Joe Cole), was never brought to justice.
Obsessively determined to track him down, Ray Kasten (Chiwetel Ejiofor), an empathetic, former F.B.I. terrorism expert, has doggedly pursued each and every lead for 13 years.
Adapted and directed by Billy Ray (“Captain Phillips,” “Shattered Glass”) with cinematography by Julia’s now-estranged-husband Danny Moder, this recycled police procedural suffers from problematic characters and too many contrived coincidences, veering back-and-forth in time.
One of the biggest disappointments is how the original crowded soccer-stadium chase sequence has been dumbed-down to a boring, poorly staged pursuit in Los Angeles’ Dodger Stadium.
Obviously encouraged by her Academy Award nomination for “August: Osage County,” Julia Roberts seems determined to defy expectations by pursuing meaty, off-beat characterizations – without glamorous makeup.
On the Granger Gauge, “Secret in Their Eyes” is a tepid, forgettable 4, a pulpy, inferior imitation of its Argentinean predecessor.
( Editor’s Note: Westport resident Susan Granger grew up in Hollywood, studied journalism with Pierre Salinger at Mills College, and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with highest honors in journalism. In addition to writing for newspapers and magazines, she has been on radio/television as an anchorwoman and movie/drama critic for many years. See her reviews at www.susangranger.com.)
