Harden easily pulls off Jane’s frumpy to fabulous transformation with understatement and compassion, but the transition is so stereotypically handled by Silverman’s script that it becomes almost wholly unremarkable.
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Read more ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ Named Fandango’s Most Anticipated Movie of 2015 Whether Jane owes her eventual transformation to her eye-opening travel experience or more to a badly needed makeover and Juan’s encouragement to try cutting loose for a change is perhaps debatable. Working with screenwriter and filmmaker Joel Silverman ( Nailed), Feldman seeks to craft a transformative adventure for Jane, but in actuality the customized package tour that Juan leads for her is fairly tame by Costa Rica standards. Feldman opts for the latter, indulging in comfortably familiar, romance-novel melodrama. With nowhere to turn for a quick infusion of cash, he proposes to guide Jane on a week-long tour of the country in return for a substantial fee, but first she’ll have to decide if she’s willing to live a little, literally.Įxtricating a protagonist from such an awkward situation requires either plotting imaginatively or falling back on commonplace cliches. Far behind on his payments, Juan gets an unpleasant wake-up call when the school principal demands he settle his account in short order. A brief jungle tour with younger local guide and single father Juan (Oscar Jaenada) opens her eyes to Costa Rica’s abundant wildlife and flora, although she remains unaware that Juan’s primary source of income involves bedding single foreign women on holiday to support his daughter Anna’s (Jenna Ortega) private schooling. Once she reaches the Central American country renowned for its natural beauty and laidback lifestyle, the tropical vibe begins to erode her determination. See more Summer’s 23 Most Intriguing Indie Films In Costa Rica she can die practically unnoticed, rather than returning to her monumentally uneventful lifestyle. Single, 50ish, with a mat of long unkempt hair, granny glasses and a distinct absence of personal style, it may not seem like plain Jane has much to live for, other than her beloved cat. What her few acquaintances don’t know is that after a brief holiday, Jane is planning to kill herself, despairing at the apparent purposelessness of her life.
It’s no coincidence that Jane Taylor (Harden) departs for Costa Rica the day after getting laid off from her position as a Los Angeles city librarian. With Marcia Gay Harden in the lead, the film clearly aspires to theatrical validation, although smaller screens may prove more suitable for this day-and-date release.
Based on the biography JACKSON POLLOCK: AN AMERICAN SAGA by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith, the film has an uplifting musical score and a soundtrack that includes some of Pollock's favorite jazz-blues tunes, both of which are welcome counterpoints to the movie's darker moments (From amazon.Making his feature debut after a substantial career in other filmmaking roles, director Juan Feldman delivers an awkward dramedy that hews closely to TV-movie conventions in its account of a distraught middle-aged woman seeking escape from her unremarkable life. Other highlights of the film include a handful of high energy painting sequences that demonstrate Pollock's technique-the fluid straight-from-tube strokes of his earlier work and the more radical throwing, drizzling, and splattering of paint from the brush to the canvas in his later works along with amusing depictions of the New York and Long Island art worlds with Peggy Guggenheim (Amy Madigan), Clement Greenberg (Jeffrey Tambor), Willem de Kooning (Val Kilmer), and Howard Putzel (Bud Cort) in the major roles. In its best moments, POLLOCK shows Krasner (a strong, dynamic, and fascinating Marcia Gay Harden) and Pollock (a stern Harris) conversing about the progression of the modern movement while criticizing each other's work from their adjoining studios in a tiny apartment in Manhattan's East Village. A serious alcoholic who was married to Lee Krasner, another prominent painter, the film illustrates Pollock's rise to art world fame in the last 15 years of his life, and his subsequent surrender to the bottle which brought his death in 1956. Painting Synopsis Ed Harris's POLLOCK is a moving portrait of artist Jackson Pollock, a leader of abstract expressionist painting whose work had major influence on the modern art movement. Sony Pictures Classics Genre Drama | Biography.