Infinitely Polar Bear
Set in 1978, Maya Forbes’s Infinitely Polar Bear stars Mark Ruffalo as Cameron, a father of two young girls who has a nervous breakdown and struggles with bipolar disorder. The pressure on Cameron ratchets up when his wife, Maggie (Zoe Saldana), makes the difficult decision to pursue her MBA in New York, leaving the girls in his care in Boston during the week. Nail-biting moments—will Cameron be able to keep it together enough not to attract the attention of social services?—alternate with scenes of quirky family togetherness.
The autobiographical roots of Forbes’s story work to the benefit and detriment of the film: no crisis is manufactured to raise the stakes, but there’s also no dramatic catharsis. Instead, Infinitely Polar Bear presents an honest account of the family’s struggles to stay on track, and it proves heartfelt enough that there’s no need to manipulate the audience. While Ruffalo gives a characteristically strong performance, it is Saldana that really shines as the heart of the film. She creates a deeply nuanced portrait of a mother and young African-American woman in the Seventies who makes sacrifices to better the lives of her family while shouldering the burden of her wild-card husband and raising kids.
Blue Ruin
In Jeremy Saulnier’s Blue Ruin, a peaceful vagrant, Dwight, seeks out vengeance when his parents are murdered. But in doing so, Dwight and his remaining kin become targets for the killer’s wealthy, deadly family. As an action thriller, it’s a rarity, eschewing bombastic high-concept set pieces for the intimate tension of one man’s multiple moments of truth, as he faces down the unrepentant souls who destroyed his family. We’re immersed in a world where vigilante justice is a plausible reality and each bloody action will assuredly have an equally bloody reaction (if not worse), inevitably culminating in a tragic conclusion for all parties. Blue Ruin also puts on dramatic display the vicious mindset that the NRA and unchecked gun-loving culture have ingrained in a significant portion of our country. It’s a long, hard look into the abyss.
Obvious Child
Funny and sweet but never cloying, Gillian Robespierre’s Obvious Child focuses on Donna Stern, a 27-year old aspiring comedienne living in Brooklyn. Donna’s style, on stage and off, is to riff on every single thing that is happening to her; nothing is sacred. Her material grows exponentially when she is first dumped by a two-timing boyfriend and then finds herself pregnant after a one-night stand with Max, a sweet but square young professional (“He’s so Christian he’s a Christmas tree”) who under normal circumstances would never be in her circles.
What follows is Donna’s journey to Planned Parenthood to have an abortion, but Obvious Child is not an “abortion rom-com.” Anchored by an entertaining and charming performance by Jenny Slate and supported by a strong cast including Jake Lacy, Gaby Hoffman, David Cross, and Polly Draper, the film ironically sidesteps the lowest-common-denominator gags that are typically auto-tuned into standard romantic comedies. It also deftly portrays a stand-up comic doing raw material that comes out of her experiences; it’s a world where scatological and self-referential humor is part of life.
Cooties
Jonathan Milott and Cary Murnion’s horror-comedy Cooties tracks a group of schoolchildren who have turned into zombies after eating bad chicken nuggets. They’re bent on killing and eating the teaching staff who survived the initial outbreak—a motley crew of emotionally arrested and clueless adults. Although the cast is a motherlode of comic talent (including Elijah Wood, Rainn Wilson, Alison Pill, Jack McBrayer, Leigh Whannell, and Nasim Pedrad), the film lacks restraint and cohesion. Striking the proper balance between the “horror” and the “comedy” is always tricky, but Cooties has no real interest in horror, using its gross-out gore solely for jokes. There are brilliant and weird moments of hilarity, usually courtesy of Whannell and Wilson. But though the humor makes some commentary on what the education system is feeding kids today (literally and figuratively), the gags are middling.