Arts & Entertainment

This Week at the Movies

'The Place Beyond the Pines' is a gripping crime drama and 'Room 237' is a unique piece of critical analysis, but 'The Host' falls flat.

Director Derek Cianfrance’s “The Place Beyond the Pines” is the year’s most polarizing film so far. My advice is to disregard the naysayers, who have faulted the picture for its – heaven forbid – ambition.

It’s a rare thing for an American film to aim as high as Cianfrance (“Blue Valentine”) does with his third feature, so I’m more than willing to forgive its few faults.

The movie is a triptych that follows the plight of two families over the course of 15 years during which the sins of two well-meaning, but flawed, fathers are visited on their sons.

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In the film’s first segment, a tattooed and bleached blonde Ryan Gosling plays Luke Glanton, a daredevil motorcycle stunt driver who breezes into Schenectady only to find that a former fling (Eva Mendes) has given birth to his baby son.

Luke attempts to do the right thing, taking a job at a dive run by a mechanic (Ben Mendelsohn), but eventually realizing that knocking over banks pays much better.

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The robbery scenes are intense, but most of the Gosling section of the picture plays as a dream that we know is not going to end well.

Then, about 45 minutes into the movie, the focus switches to Avery Cross (Bradley Cooper), a rookie cop with political ambitions who happens to stumble across Luke following one of the robberies.

Cross, who also has a baby boy, is hailed as a hero, but his face shows ambivalence when confronted with the fact that he has torn apart another man’s family.

His fellow police officers attempt to draw him into several money-making schemes, one of which involves Glaston’s family, and his conscience leads him to challenge the corrupt system in which he works.

I will not divulge much information about the film’s third section, but I can reveal that it involves two characters who meet 15 years after the first two sections of the movie take place.

The picture works brilliantly as both a gritty crime drama and a family saga. The combination of its camera work, which often floats above the heads of its characters or follows them from behind, and use of music make for an atmospheric experience.

And virtually every performance in the film is worthy of praise, from Gosling and Cooper’s stellar star turns to terrific supporting performances by Mendelsohn, Mendes, a creepy Ray Liotta and Mahershala Ali, who acts as a surrogate father to Luke’s infant son.

With “The Place Beyond the Pines,” Cianfrance has taken a major step forward as a filmmaker. It’s the first must-see movie of the year.

Even more cerebral, but slightly more playful, is Rodney Ascher’s fascinating documentary “Room 237,” which chronicles the conspiracy theories of five obsessive fans of Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining.”

That 1980 horror opus was, at first, dismissed as a disappointment by critics, but has since been hailed as a masterpiece of the genre.

In an interesting move on the director’s part, none of the five subjects in the documentary are ever seen as talking heads. Rather, their voices narrate their specific readings of Kubrick’s film over shots from not only “The Shining,” but also “A Clockwork Orange,” “Eyes Wide Shut” and “2001: A Space Odyssey.”

For those who have not seen Kubrick’s version of Stephen King’s novel, the picture is laden with directorial flourishes that many have been led to believe are clues to its true nature.

In “Room 237,” which refers to the mysterious room that many believe lies at the heart of “The Shining,” the placement of a poster of a man skiing holds particular significance to one viewer, while the scenes of Danny riding his tricycle through the Overlook Hotel carries weight for another.

It should be noted that the interviewees have some manner of pedigree and are not loonies who have spent too much time locked up in a basement apartment. One is a history professor at Albion College, while another is a former ABC correspondent.

Their theories on the meaning behind Kubrick’s film include everything from allegories on the Holocaust or the massacre of the American Indian to the United States faking the moon landing.

Whether you believe any of the individual readings of the film is beside the point. If anything, “Room 237” explores the concept of any work of art being open to interpretation, regardless of its creator’s intentions.

The documentary is a witty and thoughtful piece of critical analysis.

Not all of this week’s new releases were successful, however. Andrew Niccol’s “The Host,” which is based on Stephenie Meyer’s novel, is an overlong sci-fi/thriller/romance with a central conceit that falls flat.

In the future, an alien race has taken over Earth, implanting souls in the bodies of people, so that invader and human being coexists in the same figure.

I haven’t read the book, but I’d imagine that the conversations between Melanie (Saoirse Ronan) and her alien intruder named Wanda do not come across as awkwardly as they do in this film. Melanie’s thoughts are spoken in voice over and then Wanda responds by speaking aloud.

The plot of “The Host” revolves around Melanie/Wanda escaping from the clutches of the alien race and, particularly, an interrogator known as The Seeker (Diane Kruger) and finding her way back to her younger brother, who is holed up in the desert with a gun-toting uncle (William Hurt) and not one, but two, love interests for the film’s protagonist.

In terms of the selected filmography of Meyer adaptations, “The Host” is probably better than the worst of the “Twilight” episodes, but not as good as the best of that series. I’m obviously not the intended audience for this film and if you’re questioning whether you are either, you’re probably not.

“The Place Beyond the Pines” is playing at Manhattan’s Sunshine Cinema. “Room 237” is screening at the IFC Center.

“The Host” is playing at The Pavilion on Prospect Park West.


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