End of Sentence (2020)

Film: End of Sentence (2020)
Stars: John Hawkes, Logan Lerman, Sarah Bolger
Director: Elfar Adalsteins
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

We're going to continue our look at films of 2020 (that you might have missed) with End of Sentence, a film that appears to have been on the shelf for a while (supposedly it was shot in 2017 but hasn't been released widely until May of this year).  The film features two actors who are ubiquitous at the movies today, but aren't really at the "star status" they might be.  After Hawkes' Oscar nomination & Lerman's star-making work in Percy Jackson and Perks of Being a Wallflower, neither have graduated to a blockbuster franchise (one that hasn't expired...sorry Percy) nor to a hit cable drama series.  Instead, they're cranking out interesting work in tiny character studies, with Lerman, in particular, going the way of Robert Pattinson with (so far) no wearing tights or a black cape.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about Frank Fogle (Hawkes), who is picking his son Sean (Lerman) up from prison.  Frank and Sean have an estranged relationship, one that as we continue we understand was related to Frank's father, who beat and emotionally abused Sean as a child, and which we are left to assume Frank didn't stop.  Frank, though, comes with a proposition-he will pay for his son to go anywhere he wants after prison, but only if he honors his late mother's dying wish-that her ashes be spread at a lake in Ireland.  As the film progresses, Frank & Logan encounter a beautiful woman (Bolger), who turns out to be a grifter, and slowly learn more about each other & about the woman who wanted to unite them.

End of Sentence is slighter than you'd think given the heavy subject matter.  Hawkes & Lerman elevate the work (Lerman, in particular), but it doesn't have a lot of meat for pretty heavy subject matter.  When it comes to the fractured relationship between the two men, we're supposed to infer a lot of things that don't quite add up, particularly as the relationship both men have to Frank's father becomes clearer as the movie goes on...but in the process makes their own presents a bit murkier.  This results in the movie being kind of forgettable if never actively bad.

That said, I liked Lerman a lot in the movie.  Hawkes is fair, but considering what he talent he was in Winter's Bone or Martha Marcy Mae Marlene, it's hard to see him not give the role more.  Lerman, though, finds a danger & sexuality to his character we wouldn't have seen on the page (word to the thirsty-Lerman is in various states of undress for large swaths of the entire film for no obvious reason).  Lerman's relationship then with Bolger's Jewel is actually the film's best part-we see the ways that he wants to borrow the best parts of his parents' relationship, even if he won't announce it out loud.  This is all intriguing-it's a bit wasted in a movie so surface-level, but it's proof that good actors can make anything interesting if they try.

OVP: Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017)

Film: Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017)
Stars: Frances McDormand, Woody Harrelson, Sam Rockwell, John Hawkes, Peter Dinklage, Abbie Cornish, Lucas Hedges
Director: Martin McDonagh
Oscar History: 7 nominations/2 wins (Best Picture, Actress-Frances McDormand*, Supporting Actor-Woody Harrelson, Supporting Actor-Sam Rockwell*, Film Editing, Score, Original Screenplay)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Modern culture is strange in terms of how we assess film.  In a deeply, politically-charged world where literally everything anyone does can be met with the height of people screaming from the rooftops (I'm not even a little bit immune here, though I've been trying to check myself lately), it's interesting to watch how other people's reactions to a film can affect our own, and how something as immersive as sitting, alone, in a quiet theater can occasionally result in you not noticing the politics of what you're viewing until you're out of the theater.  This was my initial thought on Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, a movie whose rough edges don't hang well when you let them sit for a while, but undeniably has some interesting moments & framing devices.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film's plot is relatively straight-forward.  Mildred Hayes (McDormand), after her daughter is raped-and-murdered but the suspect is not brought to justice, puts up three billboards outside of her town calling out Police Chief Willoughby (Harrelson) for not making enough progress in the case.  As these things do in modern culture, the media picks up on the story and the police department are at a standoff of sorts with Hayes and the legality of her calling out the police chief, with one particular office Jason Dixon (Rockwell) taking a lot of chagrin to Hayes's actions.  The film unfolds with Willoughby committing suicide as he's suffering from terminal cancer, and both Jason & Mildred coming to terms with their shortcomings, eventually setting off to kill a man they suspect of raping a woman, though not Mildred's daughter (the film doesn't ever reveal who killed her daughter, and we're largely left to believe no one will ever know).

The film has a lot of complicated questions hanging over it, and this is almost certainly where the controversies surrounding the film started.  After all, we live in a world where we answer questions in a 140 (err, 280)-character soundbyte, and that doesn't really allow for nuance.  Some of these controversies I think are interesting.  I like the way that they handle McDormand's reaction to her daughter, and the fact that, she's right-the longer you keep a case in the public eye, the longer our ADD-addled media will focus on it (making it more likely that there's an arrest).  Some of the film's comments on the media are dead-on, and I think creative protesting is always interesting (and easily duplicated, apparently).

That said, the film's problems lie more in the controversies surrounding Sam Rockwell's Jason Dixon, and the film's inability to handle a heightened reality.  It's hard to judge Rockwell's performance (he's the strong favorite for this Sunday's Academy Awards), as his character is so poorly written, and I'm kind of flummoxed how this is the performance that both won the longtime character actor his first round of accolades as well as that he's besting both his (significantly better) costar Harrelson & the miles-ahead-of-him Willem Dafoe.  Dixon is outwardly, and near constantly racist, driven in part by an odious mother who has a nasty relationship with her son.  He's had multiple instances where he abused his power to hurt the African-American community in his town, and yet is still on the force.  That's not uncommon in this day-and-age (Black Lives Matter is a movement for a reason), but the film handles his racism callously.  In a lot of ways it reminded me of Matt Dillon's work in Crash, where we're expected to dismiss all of the hate that was in his heart earlier in the film because he has a sick father (in Rockwell's case, a domineering mother), but I'm not buying it.  No character gets away with being the proper hero here (only Lucas Hedges' Robbie can clearly be called innocent on all accounts in the film), but the ending where he is now tied to the "root for her" character of Mildred rang super false to me, and made me wonder what was the point of McDonagh's script.  Sharp banter and wordplay are injected in this film with relish, but that doesn't make up for some serious gaps in its plotting.

And while the dismissive attitude toward racism may be the film's most egregious sin, it's not the picture's only one.  For starters, it's never clear how grounded we are in reality here.  One could argue that in a highly-conservative rural town, that John Hawkes' character might get away with burning down the billboards or that Sam Rockwell might get away with mistreating the black community (this is wrong, but not without a toe in reality), but Mildred Hayes would have ended up in jail long before she and Jason became Thelma-and-Louise.  After all, she clearly burned down the police station, and assaulted three teenagers in broad daylight.  The film wants to be both a grounded drama AND be in the vein of some of McDonagh's past works like In Bruges, where it creates its own heightened reality.  You can't have it both ways, and the ending of the film doesn't jive with these moments.  Combined with a lot of very convenient plot points (Jason just happens to be in a that bar when he has a complete dead-end...I mean, come on!), this is lazy writing from McDonagh, a filmmaker who is way better than that as In Bruges proved a decade ago.

That said, this is not a film without merit, and I get why people like it.  A disappointing ending doesn't stop the fact that the story at its center is compelling.  McDormand carries the picture well, even if I didn't care for Rockwell (who is not a supporting part, and I'm not hearing enough people point that out), and I love some of the places she took the performance.  There's a great scene about halfway through when we get an insight into her relationship with her daughter Angela (Kathryn Newton), and realize some of her anger is aimed at herself, and that Angela wasn't the cherubic girl we assume earlier in the film when we assume she's similar to Robbie, but instead the "bad girl" who is so often blamed by the plot for her actions.  It seems odd that McDonagh takes a more progressive stance when it comes to his treatment of women than of race, but it's out there.  I also loved McDormand's unspoken history with John Hawkes, showing the strange pull of both loving-and-hating a man (both actors nail their parts), and while I wouldn't have nominated him, Harrelson continues to be one of the under-sung character actors of our era, giving a great first-half arc to his part.

It has to be said that while I'm giving this a low score, it didn't start that way.  Some movies age well in the memory, others you are forced to pick apart when someone points out obvious flaws in their structure and when you suddenly realize that you were swept up in the fine acting and quick banter.  Three Billboards is one of those pictures, so while I get why it might win the Oscar on Sunday (it's not a movie that's as obviously bad as say Crash was a decade ago), it's still not an appropriate Best Picture winner.

OVP: American Gangster (2007)

Film: American Gangster (2007)
Stars: Denzel Washington, Russell Crowe, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Cuba Gooding Jr., Josh Brolin, Ted Levine, John Hawkes, Lymari Nadal, Ruby Dee
Director: Ridley Scott
Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Supporting Actress-Ruby Dee, Art Direction)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Movie stars are a rare thing.  There are a lot of great actors out there, but very few movie stars, so when two bonafide, indisputable ones team up for the first time, it's noteworthy.  There's a reason that Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe managed to score a Box Office bonanza in 2007-both have been major draws on cinemas for decades now, and the two of them teaming up in that surest of film genres (the crime drama) meant Box Office gold.  It also meant, unfortunately, a batch of tepidity from both of the actors who seem to be a bit lazy in this movie which drags and while very occasionally it's exciting, it generally just sits there without any energy.  This is disappointing for multiple reasons, not least of which is because this is a 158-minute movie, which is already stretching my patience even if we're talking a quality picture.  But principally it's sad because these men can be electric onscreen-these are two true movie stars, men who can basically make any picture fascinating, and yet they at best coast and at worst seem to be just reading dialogue, waiting for a latte.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film follows Denzel as a crime boss in Harlem moving heroin from war-addled Vietnam while Crowe is an impossibly good cop/aspiring attorney that never bends the rules, and sees himself punished for his actions.  The film is based on a true story, but you know how it goes by heart even if you weren't already aware of that fact.  The film rarely goes off the beaten path of the cliched bad guy who turns good, the good cop who is eventually validated, and the countless bodies both amass in the process of getting to the top, all-the-while both being vindicated in the end because they're the ones cashing the $20 million checks.  Honestly, the film is so tired that I almost don't want to even get into some of the worst aspects of it, but this is a review so I shall.

For starters, what's the deal with Denzel's girlfriend?  Did we really need the 24-year age gap between he and his onscreen girlfriend Lymari Nadal?  Was that really necessary?  Honestly, there's a point where perviness sets in, and I think it's when someone could comfortably be their love interest's father.  That really felt like something that needed to be commented on, quite frankly.  Crowe and his love interest had an 11-year age gap which feels a little eyebrow-raising, but at least that doesn't border on the paternal.

The characters themselves are deeply problematic, as we know very little about what motivates Crowe's Richie.  The detective is straight-laced in a world of corrupt cops, but why?  Where does this morality come from, particularly considering that it would be easier to be a little more corrupt (he likely would have kept his wife and son if this were the case)?  I don't buy "he's just a good guy" as an answer, quite frankly-no one is as ambitious as him and sacrifices as much as him and still ends up a "good guy" without a purpose.  Without it, he enters that unrealistic saint trope, which I find unappealing in films-no one is all good, and even if they are, they need a reason presented onscreen to be so.

I also feel the same way about Washington's Frank Lucas.  Frank is not all good, in fact he's ruthless and daring.  In one of only two scenes in the film that actually sent a jolt into the movie that I wasn't expecting, Frank shoots his enemy of the first half hour of the film, a seemingly low-grade competitor played by Idris Elba, straight in the forehead in the middle of a crowded street.  It recalls in many ways Sonny Corleone beating up his brother-in-law in its brutality, but unlike Sonny who has been established as an impetuous hothead, we don't see Frank make risks and mistakes like this very often, so what drove this?  His mentorship with a dead man at the beginning of the film is a cheap writing crutch-we have to assume that a lot of his personality has been formed offscreen, but that's still no excuse for these sorts of inconsistencies in the plot and character development.

The film received a pair of Oscar nominations, one quite memorably and one I'd frankly forgotten about until I started viewing the DVD.  The first was for longtime character actress Ruby Dee, who passed away last year and who played Washington's mother in the film.  Dee is a legend of the cinema, one who has won pretty much every acting award imaginable outside of the Oscar, so it's hard to begrudge the Academy wanting to correct a lapse that probably should have been addressed decades ago, but this is a pretty routine performance.  Dee gets one truly great scene, surely the one that cemented the nomination where she slaps her son while scolding him, but the rest of the film is completely forgettable.  I will say, in Dee's defense, that that scene is miles away the best scene of the movie, and the desperation in her voice speaks to a lot of character-development by the actress, enough that I wished her character had a bigger part, but it's just a 3-minute scene.  That's hardly worth an Oscar nomination.  I was a little bit more surprised at the adeptness of the Art Direction, which was also nominated-the scenes are brimming with tiny details, and we cover a groundswell of 1960's New York apartments.  This isn't showy work and certainly isn't glamorous, but it's very accurate and so I'm quite impressed that the Academy nominated it, as it's surely the best part of the  movie.

I'm not giving up much more time for this tedious little film (I am almost inclined to give it 1-star, but it never crosses that line into awful so I shall resist), and so I'll turn it over to you.  This film was wildly popular, so I'm sure it has its fans-are you one of them?  Does anyone think that Dee deserved an Oscar nod (or even a win), or was this entirely about honoring a cinematic legend late in her career?  Share your thoughts in the comments!

OVP: Supporting Actor (2010)

OVP: Best Supporting Actor (2010)

The Nominees Were...

Christian Bale, The Fighter

John Hawkes, Winter's Bone

Jeremy Renner, The Town

Mark Ruffalo, The Kids Are Alright

Geoffrey Rush, The King's Speech

My Thoughts: And now we enter the Big Six Oscar categories.  We proceed into this category with a fairly typical lineup of supporting actors: a leading man slumming it in Best Supporting Actor (though he's arguably in the wrong category), an afterglow nomination for a recently discovered talent, a longtime character actor finally getting a role that matches his talent, an Indy actor getting a random nomination when he should be on number three, and a former winner.

I remember seeing John Hawkes in a play when I was a kid-he was native to near my hometown, and I was star-struck, despite him being just a bit player in Hollywood at the time.  Ten years later, he managed to win the character actor lottery and got a beautiful part in a movie that got him all the way to the Oscars.

The performance is exquisite, in a film that improves dramatically with time.  Hawkes knows the difference between what his character is saying and what he's doing-I love the way that he spends so much of the film warning Ree to stay away, to not get interested in what her father is doing, and then he largely does the opposite, helping her along the way and finding himself in trouble as a result.  Hawkes has such a gravel-y, decayed aspect to his movements, rundown from years of overwork and drugs, and yet has enough wit and nerve in him to prove that there's a reason he's survived all of these years in this hellish Ozark wilderness.

Jeremy Renner doesn't have the same connection with his manic bank robber that Hawkes does.  There is a strong chemistry that he has with Affleck's character; he gets that the friendship that they currently enjoy is out of comfort and obligation, not out of any sort of continued love or residing admiration.  Renner, however, doesn't have the restraint that Hawkes does, at least not in this particular role.  His performance oftentimes pushes a little too much into scenery-chewing villain, and as he becomes more and more unhinged, the performance shows less and less restraint.  He's the best thing about the movie, but that isn't saying a whole lot as there's nothing as eye-catching as him in the film, even if he's over-the-top.  Renner, since his critically-acclaimed two-year, two-nomination run in 2009/10 has gone the way of Nicolas Cage-blockbuster after blockbuster (some good, some Gone in 60 Seconds level), and I'm starting to worry that he, like Cage, is gone for good from quality films.  He's still got killer arms though.

Mark Ruffalo is an actor that I have loved for such a long time, to finally see him in an Oscar lineup is a treat, as I'd be on my third nomination for him by now.  His work as Terry in You Can Count on Me is one of those performances I watch over-and-over, marveling at its brilliance and the way he makes a thoroughly unlikable guy seem so appealing.  Seven years later, he would be just as wonderful as the tired, increasingly lost detective he played in Zodiac (a film that hardly anyone remembers anymore, and they should, as it's a billion times superior to David Fincher's latest serial killer film Girl with the Dragon Tattoo).

In this film, however, he ditches the detective and goes back to the laid-back, "whatever" bohemian we know him to be from other roles.  Ruffalo nails the initial reactions to the idea that he has kids-a springy mix of intrigue and reluctance, with intrigue winning over, of course (honestly, if you're in his shoes and discover you have a child, you want to meet them regardless of how surprised you are they may exist).  He also gives such realistic pain in the film's final scenes, as he pleads to be back in the children's lives.  He understands at that point where his road has been leading, and knows that he has been given a rare opportunity into this world that he was never meant to be a part of, and has wasted the relationship with the only children he'll ever really have.  Ruffalo's vocal cracks, the way he just sort of mumbles out his off-the-cuff responses-it's a hipster vocal intonation that only a seasoned character actor could pull off so well.

These three were likely just afterthoughts when it came to actual Oscar voting, as the obvious first and second places were filled by the final two men, both of whom one could argue were the lead, rather than supporting, actors in their films.  For Christian Bale, this nomination was a longtime coming.  After years of manic weight gains, cult followings (someday I will understand why every straight guy I was friends with in college wanted to grow up to be Patrick Bateman, but probably not today), and critical acclaim, he finally got a role that could combine both his transformative sensibilities with a film that was friendly enough for Oscar to latch onto it.

Bale is a good actor, but I never really loved him in this role specifically.  I found the scenes to calculating, too click-click-click.  He always seems to be Christian Bale playing Dicky, and not Dicky himself.  The way that he persistently flies off the handle, has entered into a state of delusion, it seems like he's working too hard to underline, bold, and exclamation point all of the tics of the character.  I think that Bale is better when he's subtler, and this role, while no one was ever going to play it subtle, would gain so much from making it harder for Mickey to disown his brother.  The screenplay makes him stretch it on and on, but as an audience we have trouble connecting so much that we believe that Mickey would struggle with the decision.  Family is family, but Bale's Dicky doesn't have the intoxicating magnetism or the overpowering moxie, that, say Melissa Leo's Alice does, and so I never quite bought his character in the way that I bought Leo's.

Unlike Bale, Geoffrey Rush has never had difficulty getting noticed by the Oscars.  Though he won his first Oscar as a leading actor, most of his best work is at the sidelines, spouting off bon mots and clever observations with the flare of a late-career John Gielgud (can't you just imagine him in this role with Richard Burton as King George?).  This is what fits him best-too much Geoffrey Rush is definitely a thing, and his scenery-eating ways often get in the way of the best moments of his performances.  He's actually far more appropriate in a film like Pirates of the Caribbean, where overacting is a good thing, than he is in costume dramas, where his loud, swinging work is a bit outlandish for the surroundings.  The overacting doesn't grind the way that Bale's does, to the point where you wonder why anyone would put up with him (they have vastly different character arcs as well, which helps), but it doesn't ring as a performance that merited inclusion in such a field.

Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes found room for both Andrew Garfield in The Social Network and in a clear case of celebrity-loving, Michael Douglas in Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, keepin Mark Ruffalo and John Hawkes out of the final five (Christian Bale was the victor).  The SAG Awards were actually a carbon copy of the Oscars (the only category they did that in in 2010), and also went with Bale as the winner.  Finally, the BAFTA Awards, generally favoring British actors, only had room for one American: Mark Ruffalo, cutting both Jeremy Renner and John Hawkes in favor of Andrew Garfield (almost certainly the sixth place in the field) and Renner's costar, the late Pete Postelthwaite.  The King's Speech was an unstoppable force at the BAFTA's that year, and so it carried Geoffrey Rush along for the ride.

Performances I Would Have Nominated: Supporting Actor is always the field I get the most disgusted with Oscar.  They typically will pick at least one of my best of the year, but Geoffrey Rush, Jeremy Renner, and I'm sorry, even Christian Bale are all fairly lazy "inside-the-box" picks in my opinion.  They're not bad, but they just aren't up to the level of some of the best work of the year.  It's partially because the category is surprisingly ageist, ruling out younger performances (it's odd because Supporting Actress almost gets to the point where they nominate too many younger performers).  Miles Teller, for example, may be in his screen debut, but his work in Rabbit Hole as a young man trying to come to terms with how he accidentally killed a little boy with his car, is a complicated role that he still manages to pull off in a way few veteran actors could even find success.  Even better is the dual roles that Andrew Garfield acted in Never Let Me Go and The Social Network.  I've struggled to figure out which one I like better, but I think it'd have to be the privileged, short-changed Eduardo that tops the doomed, lovelorn Tommy.  Whichever one you go with, it's hard to imagine how Oscar felt it appropriate not to include him in some capacity-his combined work is easily the best of the year for this category, and a great star-is-born turn for the future Spider-Man.
Oscar's Choice: Oscar made the relatively easy choice of honoring the never-nominated Bale over the already-winning Geoffrey Rush.  The better question for everyone was who was in third (my guess would be Hawkes, but that's based on nothing but intuition).

My Choice: It's a tough call between Hawkes and Ruffalo, tougher than I figured it would be when I started writing this piece, but I'm going to go with my initial gut choice of Ruffalo.  His character is tougher to pull off, and the blending of comedy with the dramatic makes me check my box for him.  In third would be Rush, followed by Bale, and finally Renner.

How about you-were you absolutely behind Christian Bale, or did you like me think the performance was overrated?  If you did, who was your choice for the big trophy?  Which performance was in third place (I'd love an argument on that one, as I'm at a loss for who would be the guess)?  And which Andrew Garfield performance was the superior?  Comment away!

Also in 2010: Original Screenplay, Adapted Screenplay, Foreign Film, Animated Film, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Original Score, Original Song, Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume, Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup, Previously in 2010

Past Best Supporting Actor Contests: 2011

OVP: The Sessions (2012)

Film: The Sessions (2012)
Stars: John Hawkes, Helen Hunt, William H. Macy, Moon Bloodgood, Adam Arkin
Director: Ben Lewis
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Supporting Actress-Helen Hunt)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Sex.  You'd be hard-pressed to find a subject more discussed, and yet seemingly just as taboo as this human obsession.  Seriously-there isn't a day of your adult life that it isn't mentioned, talked about, discussed, shunned, celebrated, and everything in-between, and yet, when a movie like The Sessions comes out, it's still cause for an eyebrow raise.  The fun of Ben Lewis's flawed but very capable film is that he basically ignores that eyebrow raise, gaining only a couple of laughs out of it, and instead, makes an honest depiction of one man's extreme hang-ups about sex (and the woman who helps him through them), and shows what happens when we let go of our insecurities and are just ourselves instead.

The film takes place in the late 1980's, and is about a real-life man named Mark O'Brien (Hawkes), who is in an iron lung due to polio, and has throughout his life, defeated the odds.  He has lived to be 38, an age no doctor expected him to reach, is a working writer and poet, has received his college degree, and overall has a routine, if not always fulfilling life.  He's the sort of man who survives things, finds ways to make things work.  He's also a man of deep faith, which plays throughout the film as a secondary storyline (the film is structured as he's giving confession to a priest, played by Macy), but truly shapes his character.  He believes in a higher calling, and is having a crisis of conscience.  You see, Mark wants what we all want-love and intimacy with someone he cherishes.  The film's opening thirty minutes focus on his growing affection, which he unfortunately declares, for a woman who is working as his caretaker.  Once she spurns his advances, and after a long consultation with his priest, Mark decides to seek out the advice and counseling of a sex surrogate.

For those unfamiliar, a sex surrogate is not a prostitute and is not a sex therapist, but if we're being honest, borrows a teensy bit from both and melds the idea.  It's here where Lewis gets his most provocative idea of the film going, though clearly the idea of sex surrogates have been around for decades now.  A sex surrogate is a person who helps to counsel those people who have sexual hang-ups (like Mark) and does indeed engage in sexual intercourse with Mark, but only for a maximum of six sessions.  This differs, of course, from a prostitute, in that the sex surrogate doesn't want your return business, and there is a limit to how long they will be seeing each other.  It's a hard concept, I admit, to getting around, which makes the job of Helen Hunt (who plays the sex surrogate, Cheryl), that much more difficult-can she both convince us that this is a real, therapeutic professional (and not a lady of the night), all-the-while establishing her own story arch?

It's here that The Sessions gets its best attribute.  While a lot of the focus on this film has been on the physically-demanding work being done by Hawkes, who plays his character with great charm and fun, and is one of those character actors I'm so damn excited has come to great success, it's Hunt that steals the film.  Hunt isn't necessarily an actress that I gravitate toward-she's always been a bit too methodical for me, and I, like many others, thought her Best Actress trophy was given prematurely for As Good As It Gets.  Here, however, we are given a performance that makes me rethink a lot of her career.  She plays Cheryl as a woman of confidence and professionalism, a therapist free of judgment but not necessarily free of opinions.  We see the woman in a sturdy but no-longer romantic marriage, drawn to her patient, but never really exhibiting it in front of him.  Hunt nails the way that a woman who had been in this tricky job for so long would be able to balance her emotions, even when they are overpowering, to ensure that she is doing what is best for her client.  One of my great pet peeves is when what is good for the story gets lost in what the character's ingrained personality and obvious reactions would be, and so I tip my hat to Lewis (and to Hunt) for not abandoning realism for the sake of an easy plot out.

(Spoilers to come) The work Cheryl and Mark do obviously helps (why else would it have become a movie?), and slowly Cheryl finds herself drawn to Mark, though he remains either oblivious or, being a gentleman, doesn't comment on it.  As Mark becomes more confident and encounters his sexual hang-ups, and his life's hang-ups, we see him start to assert himself more, and find more value in his life.  We also see Cheryl, whose marriage has a hiccup but doesn't falter, after their fourth session, encourage Mark to stop seeing her, because she's done all the good she can do.  The breakdown Hunt experiences in the car afterwards was so raw, and not necessarily pre-ordained, and so I found myself crying along with her.  Again, a triumph from an actress who hasn't had a lot of opportunities since the Academy crowned her fifteen years ago.

The film, for me, should have ended there.  The subsequent scenes, with Mark almost dying, and then meeting the love of his life, and then finally dying, and leaving a confusing message at the end of the film about whether or not Cheryl or this new woman was the love of his life, added unnecessary and murky complexities to the film that sort of kill the earlier scenes and really the purpose of the sex surrogacy.  In this case, a little ambiguity would have made the film better-we had received closure, we didn't need the neatly tied bow.

But that is not to say that this isn't a film worth checking out-you should soon, and see it with someone, if only for the inevitably thought-provoking conversation on the drive away from the theater.  After all, who doesn't love yet another conversation about sex?