Movie Reviews: An American Affair, Phoebe in Wonderland, 12

EXPLICIT ILLS A tender ensemble slice of inner-city Philly life to wash out the foul taste of Crossing Over’s far more explicit ills, The Hottest State star Mark Webber’s directorial debut is also, not surprisingly, stronger than either of Ethan Hawke’s stints behind the camera. Having spent time squatting while being raised by a single mom, Webber has been an outspoken activist against urban poverty, thus his all-star indie cast tends to serve as collective mouthpiece for his lefty politics. The lived-in performances include Lou Taylor Pucci as the artist who has to sell pot to survive, Paul Dano as a struggling actor battling the melancholia of an unhelpful world, Rosario Dawson as the working-class mother of a young asthmatic (newcomer Francisco Burgos, a tad too precocious for his own good), and Tariq “Black Thought” Trotter as Jimmy Fallon’s new house-band MC — but also, a vegan entrepreneur. Executive produced by Jim Jarmusch and lensed with luminous saturation by Patrice Lucien Cochet, the film is confidently polished, and thankfully more sweet-tempered than preachy, given that every narrative thread has an underlying theme of social injustice. As it leads up to a neighborhood-wide rally that brings every character together, it’s a shame that Webber (in a marching cameo) has already surrendered his drama over to a last-act tragedy (poverty’s fault, of course). For that, I too protest. (Aaron Hillis)

GO  HARVARD BEATS YALE 29-29 marks a particular 40th anniversary — not Richard Nixon’s election, but the scarcely less astonishing event that occurred a few weeks later in Cambridge, Massachusetts, when the undefeated Harvard football team met undefeated Yale and, trailing by 16 points with 42 seconds left in the game, scored twice to confound its arch rival with a tie. Filmmaker Kevin Rafferty, then a Harvard undergrad, was an eyewitness to The Game, as this miracle was dubbed, and his account is enjoyably steeped in ambiance and ambivalence. As interviewed by Rafferty, the Crimson are definitely more salt of the earth — or at least less preppy — than the Bulldogs. One guy survived Khe Sanh; another, admitting to long-ago Progressive Labor Party tendencies, maintains that the Crimson essentially coached themselves: “In the spirit of ’68, we took over the team.” Harvard lineman Tommy Lee Jones is on hand to intone the requisite ’60s clichés with exquisite sanctimony, and a very young Meryl Streep makes an unexpected cameo, albeit in a photograph. The talking heads are intercut with The Game — an excellent way to watch it, especially as the first half consists of Yale crushing the vaunted Harvard defense. Yale draws a few penalties, calls a bizarre time-out, and fails to adjust for an onside kick, but it’s a disputed instance of pass interference that cues the movie’s Zapruder moment. This may or may not be the greatest instance of college football ever played but, Brian’s Song, Jerry Maguire and The Longest Yard notwithstanding, Rafferty’s no-frills annotated replay is the best football movie I’ve ever seen: A particular day in history becomes a moment out of time. (Nuart)

Harvard Beats Yale 29-29: Al Gore’s ex–dorm mate tells all.

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GO  PHOEBE IN WONDERLAND Nine-year-old Phoebe Lichten (Elle Fanning) is every parent’s dream and nightmare — a talented child for whom school presents few challenges but also a troubled girl prone to flights of fancy and self-abuse. She cannot process the real world, in which she finds no “hope,” so instead loses herself in a make-believe one: Wonderland, courtesy the drama teacher (Patricia Clarkson) who encourages the lost little kid to “jump” lest she suffer a more brutal fall. And yet, even as Alice wandering a magical kingdom, Phoebe’s condition deteriorates; her parents, writers played by Felicity Huffman and Bill Pullman, find it easier to blame themselves than to allow outsiders (shrinks, principals, drama teachers) to interpret the source of Phoebe’s anguish. A Lifetime Network production, writer-director Daniel Barnz’s film is profoundly stirring, if also occasionally maddening; its excursions into whimsy (Phoebe in conversation with the Mad Hatter and Red Queen, say) are clumsy, like scenes from Coraline injected into a far more serious drama about the fine line between illumination and despair. Yet the performances are transcendent — especially Fanning’s, as the little girl who wants to get better, who wants to be better, as she slowly disappears through the Looking Glass. (Sunset 5) (Robert Wilonsky)

SHERMAN’S WAY Director Craig Saavedra and writer Tom Nance’s collaboration plays like something out of an indie-film paint-by-numbers. Take a richie-rich, straight-laced stuffed-shirt (Michael Shulman as set-for-life college student Sherman), stick him in a beat-up roadster heading cross-country that’s piloted by a wacky wash-up (James LeGros as forgotten Winter Olympian Palmer “The Bomber”), toss in a few eccentrics and hotties-to-trot along the way, and, voila, off to the film festival circuit we shall go in search of shallow-end enlightenment. The acting doesn’t help—just how many cue cards were used in this production, anyhow? And, though no fault of its own, the film now feels like a rinky-dink redo of HBO’s new Eastbound & Down series, starring Danny McBride in more or less the same role as LeGros—the former star athlete who thinks he’s big shit but is nothing more than a dumb shit on his way to the footnotes. (R.W.)