The Descendents 2011 (Movie Review)


Dir: Alexander Payne
Starring: George Clooney, Shailene Woodley, Amara Miller
Dur: 1 hr 49 mins
Genre: Family Drama
Rating: 2.5/5
PG: Occasional use of foul language.

Every family has a story. The story of the ‘King’ family is dramatic. Elizabeth, the wife and mother is in a coma, Alex (Shailene Woodley) the eldest daughter, is away studying; Scottie (Amara Miller), the youngest child is developing behaviour problems and Matt (George Clooney), the father is trying his best to hold the family together. The challenge the King’s face is not so much coping with the loss of wife and mother but with relationships. Hence the thrust of this film is on relationships, especially familial ones. The film is based on the novel of the same name by Kaui Hart Hemmings, who also makes an appearance as Matt’s secretary.
 
The family has grown apart and their responses to circumstances have set them on separate islands. Regaining their identity as a family will require their coming together. As this process gets underway, quite a bit of dust begins to rise and in the midst of this, Matt finds out about a secret that was better left undisturbed. Matt’s family is on the verge of selling a part of their vast inheritance but the last word rests with Matt, who has the ‘power of attorney’. As if there isn’t enough on his plate already, Matt finds himself at the hub of a wheel, with spokes all around.

George and Shailene deliver brilliant performances. The story isn’t very gripping and is quite slow. The drama isn’t very captivating either and so this one need be watched not for the plot but for the awesome performances. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Great Grand Masti 2 (2016) (Movie Review)

Image
Dir: Indra Kumar Starring: Vivek Oberoi, Riteish Deshmukh, Aftab Shivdasani, Urvashi Rautela Dur: 2 hrs 10 mins Genre: Comedy Rating: 1/10 Comment: The jokes, gestures and costumes are sexually suggestive. An absolute waste of time. “What an opening line”, you might think. But to say otherwise would be an absolute lie. This film is in fact, a great grand waste of time. It’s horrible whichever way you look at it. The story is weak and thrives on cheap thrills and sorry jokes. The actresses are no doubt eye-catching but the rest is all a blur. The comedy is in fact tragedy and the film attempts to play on the basest desires of man. It’s unbelievable that actors like Riteish and Vivek would do such a film. I am not a big fan of bollywood but I still feel bad when I see bollywood making films like these. All of a sudden, I see that sex is being propagated through Indian cinema. The views of sex are changing and filmmakers and actors are not hesitating to take on unconvent
Read more

St. Joseph: A Father after the Father's Heart (Book Review)

Image
  St. Joseph: A Father after the Father’s Heart , Hyderabad: Don Bosco Publishing House, 2021, Rs. 150, pp. 240. The book is a compilation of articles from various authors writing about qualities of St. Joseph. They have used the litany of St. Joseph as an index and have put together articles on each of the invocations. All the contributors are Salesians from different parts of India but there a couple of contributors from abroad as well. The book lends itself to be a souvenir of the Year of St. Joseph that Pope Francis declared. Let me start out by commenting on the quality of production. The paper is of good quality and so is the design and layout. It is neat and has an attractive cover. Coming to the content, it gets rather repetitive but that is understandable considering that there is so little Biblical foundation for an exposition of St. Joseph. The articles often reference Pope Francis’ letter Patris Corde and extensively utilize Pope St. John Paul II’s apostolic exhortatio
Read more

A Day with Don Bosco

                              Don Bosco was declared the Patron of Youth by Pope John Paul II in 1989. He received his mission: to be Father to the young, in a dream at the tender age of nine. He nurtured this call throughout his life and never wasted an opportunity to gather boys and direct them to God. He did not do this as a spiritual director, (at least no at first!) but rather as a friend, a companion and a seminarian. As a young boy, he would attract youngsters with his magic tricks, tightrope skills, games etc and then get them to recite the rosary with him or recount to them the Sunday sermon (which he remembered thanks to his prodigious memory). Already then, he had ingeniously found a way to combine religion and entertainment. His entertainment was necer for entertainment sake but rather a façade or an advertisment for religious instruction. Even as a young priest, boys would long for more than just a wekkly encounter with him. They loved him and found in him a friend w
Read more