A little too much of a good thing: Greta Gerwig in Noah Baumbach's FRANCES HA

As are so many of us independent-film (including mumblecore) movie-watchers, TrustMovies has been a big Greta Gerwig fan, almost from the time he first saw her work seven years ago in LOL and Hannah Takes the Stairs. Since then, it's been nothing but up, with the high point being, in his estimation, Alison Bagnall's The Dish and the Spoon (2011), in which Ms Gerwig does just about everything: makes us laugh, cry, think, feel, the works -- in a story that succeeds on all levels, surprising us, even as it moves and entertains. Do view this one, if you haven't already. (Ms Gerwig also graced Whit Stillman's latest delight, Damsels in Distress, which you undoubtedly did see.)

In 2010 Gerwig worked with writer/director Noah Baumbach, shown at left, in his most commercial movie yet, Greenberg. The two are now a couple and Baumbach is back, directing her again in his latest film, FRANCES HA, on which Gerwig, shown below, also has co-screenplay credit.

His leading lady possesses, as ever, her own distinct personality, which she has proven able to employ in the service of various directors and roles, while maintaining that special Gerwigian spark and style. There are times, in fact, when she may remind you of a less adorable and mainstream but rather more intelligent and independent Goldie Hawn. Consistently quirky, she always manages to keep that quirk within the bounds of reality.

Initially, the new Baumbach/Gerwig endeavor looks a marriage made in heaven. The actress gets to use her fabled moves (half clunky, half charming) and her stop-start vocal pattern at the behest of some bizarre dialog that maybe only she could make work (she does).

Her character, Frances, is a young woman approaching middle age with not much to show for it. She's an almost dancer/almost choreographer, with an almost-best female friend and a bunch of male almost-relationships that go nowhere. The woman doesn't even have her own permanent place to live. And yet she perseveres with a kind of attitude that you might, on a very good day, call hopeful.

As it bubbles and bumbles along, the movie begins to seem like a fairy tale about either a completely deluded young woman with almost no social skills or an equally deluded director gone bonkers over his leading lady. For a time all this works nicely, with the occasional terrific line that makes you grin and chuckle ("You smoke inside?!") and events that continually turn darker and give Gerwig the chance to hunker down and rise up.

The movie will delight Brooklynites (it's so place-specific); it's filmed in that new mode-of-choice, black-and-white; and it gives a couple of other actresses -- Mickey Sumner (above, left) and Grace Gummer (below, right) -- the chance to shine.

When our heroine, with no money to pay for anything, uses a new credit card to take a weekend trip to Paris by herself, with no prior planning, the result is staggeringly stupid. While Baumbach cap-tures the utter loneliness of being in a foreign country all by one-self, he also hammers the biggest nail of all in Frances Ha's coffin.

Eventually, all this becomes too much of a good thing, for Gerwig's pluckiness is no match for Baumbach's punishment. When your main character appears headed irreversibly down the pathway to institutionalization, it's time to reassess. Spoiler ahead: The filmmakers (I'm including Gerwig here, as she co-wrote) do this by plastering on one of the easiest but least believable (given all that's come before) happy endings in movie history. Yes, we all want to see our heroines succeed -- but come on!

There is, however, one final, very dry and delightful visual joke regarding the movie's title that any urban apartment dweller will understand and appreciate. Frances Ha -- from IFC Films and running 86 minutes -- opens today, Friday, May 17, in Manhattan at the IFC Center and Lincoln Plaza Cinema and in Los Angeles at The Landmark, with, I expect, a limited nationwide rollout to follow.

A tardy Q&A with The Happy House filmmaker, D.W. Young

When THE HAPPY HOUSE opened a couple of weeks ago, it was greeted with mostly pleasant reviews, mine included. Then I found out that its director was also the filmmaker who made one of my favorite documentaries of the past decade, A Hole in a Fence. So I arranged to have a Q&A with the fellow, the result of which appears below, with TrustMovies' questions in boldface and the filmmaker's responses in standard type....

We’re talking with D.W. Young -- shown below -- a relatively young filmmaker (he's 40), who is married, with one child. 

Yes -- a 15-month old baby girl named Nora.

Wow—the baby changes everything. At least I found it that way, when my daughter was born. 

She sure does!

First: thank you for opening up my world to First Run Features. It was your documentary, A Hole in a Fence, that first got me aware of that terrific little distribution company. As it’s been a while between movies for you, I am wondering how you support yourself when not making films?

Right now I do freelance film work to pay the bills. Sometimes I direct, but mostly I edit. Sometimes advertising and more commercial type jobs, but preferably I work on stuff closer to home - film trailers, non-profit documentary, things like that. The last year or so I've been doing a lot of editing for the Criterion Collection, which is great.

So you do try to keep it mostly film-related? 

Whenever I can. I also helped produce a friend’s film last summer called All Roads Lead. And I was an assistant editor on the upcoming HBO documentary, Casting By – which is about the history of casting directors. It's the only time I've ever assisted. They had a massive amount of archival material and I learned quite a lot on many levels. The film is excellent. It gives you a new perspective on the business and really makes a strong case for the essential role of casting directors in the creative process.

Let’s talk about A Hole in a Fence. I still remember that little film as the one that kind of helped politicize me about “growth,” “gentrification,” and “development.” It really opened my eyes and made me look at things a little differently. 

With A Hole in a Fence I wanted to do something more poetic and quiet, more micro-scale than broadly political. In every way it's a very small film. I did everything myself on that movie. It’s even small in its length. But as a result I had the freedom to make in my own personal way.

It is small – but for me, only in its length. 

Its length was certainly a tricky one at 46 minutes -- too long for a short, too short for a theatrical feature.

But it is a good length for a documentary, I think, because it is just the right length for what it has to say. 

Thanks! I think that oddball middle length is totally under-utilized. In any case, I just wanted to make it the length that felt right.

And so be it. It opened me up to so many things: politics, life, the idea of a neighborhood: It was like opening me up in a way to things I didn’t know were even there. 

That was definitely one of my goals: to provide a slightly different kind of understanding of events and place than the more conventional journalistic approach. But we touched on certain specific issues too. For example, for me what was interesting was not so much the debate about the Ikea store coming to Brooklyn (which was a very complicated issue) but the more specific battle to save the shipyard. That was much more coherent to me, but also somehow representative of the other kinds of less visible but also irreplaceable elements that inevitably get swept up in the wave of massive development.

What happened with all that? Did Ikea finally arrive? 

Ikea did get built and the shipyard was razed. Ikea’s now become a permanent part of the neighborhood -- though other big box stores have not come in yet. The crash of 2008 happened, and of course that changed a lot. Eventually things will no doubt pick back up and there will be more large scale development - of what sort time will tell. In any case, my movie wasn’t trying to fight change in a general sense or take a knee-jerk anti-gentrification stance. But I do believe that as urban change is happening, we need to be aware of what the consequences will be on many levels and also take a little time to preserve a record of what is being lost. Which, with the tools at our disposal, is more possible now than ever before.

OK: Let’s move the conversation to your new film, THE HAPPY HOUSE, which opened a couple of weeks ago here in NYC and last week in Ohio. What was the impetus behind this new movie? It is so different from your other documentary. 

At face value I guess that's so, but the truth is I'm generally more focused on narrative filmmaking than documentary. I came to film-making as a writer of short fiction, so for me, writing my first narrative screenplay was the critical moment. It was an enormously liberating experience. Unexpectedly so, and I immediately felt far better about that process than writing prose. So, apart from always having been a cinephile, that's what really pushed me to start making films, a bit later than most.

After A Hole in a Fence, I wrote and directed a short called Not Interested, which is a dark comedy with some horror overtones. We first screened it at SXSW and then it had a very good festival run and audiences really responded to it. After that I had a feature script I thought was going to get funding but it fell through, and I really didn't want to wait around for years hoping to develop it all over again. The Happy House had originally been written as a low-budget short, but when I considered it as a possible feature, I liked the potential and I quickly hit on an idea to expand the story and ran with it. We then managed to pull together some primary investors and scraped together the rest, along with Kickstarter to help fund post. And it got made quite quickly -- we shot it in two weeks.

Wow—two weeks is really short. The movie doesn’t look it. Or sound it, either. I only read a few reviews, but they were generally pretty good, right? 

Well, The NY Times hated it! I think unfortunately that particular writer totally misinterpreted the film. Hey, you can't win them all. But otherwise, yes, they were mostly positive, many very much so. I do think it plays better in theaters, with an audience.

It has a bit of a slower, quieter pace, so it seemed to me that maybe home viewing might be the way to go.

As the filmmaker, I’m just happy that anyone wants to watch the film in whatever way they come to it. That’s all you can really ask. But of course as a purist I prefer they see it in the theater. Which is the fundamental dilemma for us indie filmmakers right now: we’re making movies as if they will be seen theatrically - they're still aesthetically constructed with that traditional mindset. In our film this is very much the case. For instance, there are a lot of long, wide shots where part of the pleasure is hopefully to explore the frame and discover what’s going on simultaneously. A bigger screen provides a much better chance to do this. But of course this is not how most people will ever watch this or similar-level indie films.

The audience, too, is so often a valuable catalyst. You have fun laughing collectively – in joining in the laughter that is already there. Some films benefit a little more from this, particularly comedies with very particular tones, I think.

Yes, and the theater in which I’ve most experienced all of the above is the FSLC’s Walter Reade. 

My current favorite theater in New York is the Museum of the Moving Image. It shows a great range of 35 and 70 mm classic films, many of which are often hard to see projected, and it offers special screenings of new stuff too. The seats are ideal because they are semi-comfortable, just hard enough not to let you fall asleep but with excellent leg room and viewing angles. And the theater also serves no food or drink. So there’s no crunching sounds to distract you. And they have stellar programming.

Since The Happy House (stills from which are shown immediately above and below) will not becoming to that many theaters, how can my readers see it? 

It will be coming to VOD first, and then DVD, with everything via First Run Features, hopefully within a few months for VOD. We're still finalizing those dates however. Your readers can also add the film to their Netflix queue here: and/or they can sign up for First Run Features' newsletter here for more info about release dates.

Before I let you go, is there anything you’d like to talk about that most journalists don’t ask you. Here’s you chance to pontificate…. 

Well, one thing I could talk about in reference to your review is the pacing and tone of The Happy House. That slower pace really factors into the tone of the film. This, I think, is part of the disruption of the expectation of events that I wanted to achieve. In so many horror movies today, you are faced with a very standard and predictable set of events. And so being thus conditioned you presumably expect this film to conform to that progression fairly precisely too.

Like the hostess (below) of the B&B – and her son, and what you imagine they’re up to? 

Yes. Normally speaking they would be just what they seem, what Joe and Wendy interpret them as. But they're not. And suddenly the rules are being, if not broken, then bent. And then there is a long middle interlude, a slow one, in the film, where you, the audience, become sort of like the characters: stuck at this B&B. Which is really moving outside the standard structure. But hopefully you don't resist that shift but go with it. Hopefully you start to doubt everything, and that doubt is what makes you sort of want to re-engage with all the intentionally super conventional tropes in a fresh way. In other words, if you come to these things with your expectations disrupted, the formula itself breaks down in some critical ways. Maybe you came in expecting to want to see these people killed off but….

I wanted no one killed off! I discovered that I liked everybody, once the real killer showed up. 

These days in so many horror movies, it seems unimportant that characters die. It’s instead all about the ways in which they die. For me, how they die is not the point, rather than the fact they die.

Me, too.

This concentration on how seems juvenile to me on some level. The great horror movies don’t do this. Not to say you can't have fun with that - of course you can and that's part of the tradition too - but that when it becomes the central narrative focus I lose interest.

So you do subvert what’s going on in most horror movies today? 

Yes, but the movie is not meant to be primarily a parody of most horror movies today. Rather it's a kind of fun reconfiguration of how you engage with a stock scenario. For me the slow pace serves an essential purpose, it's a certain means to an end. It’s a chance to develop character, and then grow fond of the characters and therefore respond a little differently to the mayhem when it finally arrives.

As we do with the B&B owner's sister (below), once she arrives, and her relationship with the lepidopterist (shown above and at bottom)... 

I hope that horror fans will pick up on this in their own way, and will see some of the subtler points of it. But I don't see that aspect of it being paramount either and hopefully the movie will offer something to both sides: horror fans and non-horror fans.

I also wanted to subvert things a little regarding expectations of style, too. The challenge of making a low-budget movie is always the decision of which set of constraints you'll accept. It’s almost accepted today that you'll shoot handheld, and not use much stylized lighting - adopt a cinema veritesque mode. This is perfectly legitimate and lots of very good movies get made that way, but there's a lot of uninspired homogeneity too. I think a lot of opportunity is being lost, particularly to revive some classic or what some would call old fashioned, approaches as alternate options for low budget film-making.

There's a disconnect with the past, with the full range of cinematic language. It's like cinema pre-French New Wave is irrelevant. Of course the content needs to be suited to the particular approach. And our sometimes quite rigid composition and longer takes and wider framing in the The Happy House are all meant to be in the service of creating a slightly different kind of experience within the limitations of such a small budget. And tied into this is how our film embraces a kind of theatrical mode; at times it almost plays out like a drawing room comedy. There are many theatrical layers within the movie. But not in an anti-cinematic sense.

This is interesting. And I could see that in your film, though I didn’t explain it that well in my review. One more thing before we close: How did the Q&As go with your audience last weekend? 

Both Q&As went well, and both were after sold out shows with great audience response. So I’m happy on that level. But I don’t think I will watch the movie again for a long time now! When you edit your work you see it too many times. It’s a little unhealthy. You turn numb.

Final question (I know: I keep saying this...): What might be next for you? Any new project in the works? 

I have a couple of screenplays I'm going to start trying to get off the ground now. And I'm always interested in making another doc, but only if I come across another story that I feel strongly about and want to pursue.

BIDDER 70: The Gages' very necessary documentary about civil disobedience

What can a single person do to halt the encroaching rule by corporations in collusion with government? Plenty, as shown in the new documentary, BIDDER 70. Back in 2008, when President G.W. Bush tried to "gift" the energy and mining industries with thousands of acres of Utah wilderness via a much-disputed federal auction, a college student named Tim DeChristopher, on the spur of the moment, decided to try to stop this. Attending the auction as a protester, he suddenly bid $1.7 million (which of course he did not have) and effectively threw a monkey wrench into the proceedings -- which were, in any case, illegal.

When the Obama administration took over the following year, the "sale" did not go forward, but the prosecution of Mr DeChristopher did. (Obama and his minions have shown themselves to be anything but progressive on behalf of civil disobedience and/or whistle blowers.) The minor and relatively short (73 minutes) documentary made about this important event by prodcers/
directors Beth Gage and George Gage (shown at left, with Beth credited for writing) tells the tale at hand and some of the back story in cursory fashion but is still quite important because it brings the story to our attention and in the process forces us to understand what a single act of civil disobedience can accomplish.

Via the Gages' film, Tim DeChristopher (shown above, center, and below via a courtroom sketch) proves a bright, thoughtful and very brave young man whom American progressives have to thank for his intelligence and sacrifice. He ended up serving two years in prison for his action. This is somewhat of a spoiler, and I am sorry for it because the Gages attempt to milk as much suspense as possible out of the outcome of  the much-delayed trial (it took ten scheduled dates before the case actually went to court) -- even though that trial is long over and, in fact, the theatrical release of their documentary has been scheduled to celebrate DeChristopher's release from prison just last month.

In the course of the film we meet DeChristopher, his mom and brother, and see a glimpse of what the "mountaintop removal" that the mining companies are doing actually looks like and what this does to our mountains. We also learn how important it is to have a decent and fair judge on the bench (there are less and less of these in our current times). DeChristopher's judge allows nothing that might help his defense to be told to the jury. Here, the rule of law seems more like a gag order.

In the course of the film, you'll come to see Tim as a real American hero (a moniker he would undoubtedly deny) and his trial as something akin to the Soviet show trials of the century past (or to the recent Pussy Riot trial in Moscow, the documentary about which is soon to be released and will be covered here) where judges simply follow the dictates of their rulers. All the government delays, however, had an unintended result: Tim's cause grew in attention and support, as the young man founds the organization Peaceful Uprising and garners support from Nobel Prize-Winner Terry Root and environmentalist/celebrity Robert Redford (both of whom appear in the film).

His cause brings forth the likes of the photos above and below, national press attention and marches on the White House. The film even offers a little humor. As he prepares breakfast on the day of his sentencing, "I probably should have done the ketchup before I got dressed," Tim opines. The statement he makes post-sentencing is both smart and moving. This kid puts to shame those of us who email our congressmen, make phone calls, speak and write.  He put his words into action. We should be grateful--and learn from him.

Bidder 70, from First Run Features, opens this Friday, May 17, in New York City (at the Quad Cinema), and in Auburn ,New York at the Auburn Public Theater. On May 22 it hits Oakland, California, at the New Parkway theater, then comes to Los Angeles on June 7 at Laemmle's Music Hall.

Alice Winocour's AUGUSTINE: the doctor-patient relationship gets a feminist slant

Maybe "slant" (see the headline above) is too strong a term. In AUGUSTINE, the quiet, thoughtful and surprisingly masterful first-full-length film from Alice Winocour (who was a co-writer on Ursula Meier's Home), we observe the relationship between the famous 19th century doctor, Jean-Martin Charcot, and his star patient, the titular Augustine, a girl in her late teens working as a kitchen maid who suffers from seizures and is taken to the hospital where Charcot is in charge. For me, this movie seemed a hugely feminist piece of art, though it never raises its voice or even speaks its theme aloud. Instead it simply shows us the state of women in the mid-1800s, particularly those in the lower class. And how, in every way, the male rules the roost, whether that roost be at work, play or in the domicile.

Ms Winocour, shown at right, captures the time, place and people with remarkable veracity and ease. She creates a generally dark piece, especially in terms of theme, and then executes this via the script (in which words are used sparingly yet count for much) and in the circumspect digital cinematography (by George Lechaptois), muted music (Jocelyn Pook) and beautiful, rich and oddly bleak art direction and production design (Arnoud de Moleron). Everything works toward the idea of repression, expected and carried out. Women were, in every way, available for the amusement, use, entertainment and experimentation of and by men. Nowhere in the film itself does Winocour tell us that her film is based on a real incident (in fact, on an entire slew of them). We grasp this, even so.

The filmmkaer has wisely chosen her three leading players with an eye for ability, class and in the case of the woman who plays Augustine, surprise. In this role, the singer/actress Soko (above, seen previously by me only in A l'origine) proves a wonderful choice. She has qualities both feral and elegant, intelligent and enormously sensual. Augustine appears initially needy, but uses every opportunity to learn and grow. She wins us over completely and does this by not trying. She never asks for sympathy and hence gets it in spades.

As Dr. Charcot, one of France's leading actors, Vincent Lindon (shown above and below, left), proves an inspired choice (though not, it is said, the first choice; that would have been Belgian actor Benoît Poelvoorde). Lindon does "interiority" and repression about as well as anyone, and he uses that ability here to help us understand this doctor's sense of entitlement, along with his slow coming-to-terms with his buried feelings.

Chiara Mastroianni uses her strength and her own quite special ability to indicate interior hurt to create the doctor's sadly misused wife. This woman comes from money and class and gives her husband the career connections he so needs. (Ms Mastroianni also looks sensational in mid-1800's garb.)

Augustine is open-ended, beginning in media res (ending there, too), with not everything explained or underlined along the way. Yet all you need to know -- and feel -- is here. This is a very fine first feature.

From Music Box Films and running 102 minutes, the movie opens this Friday in Manhattan at the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center and Film Forum, and in Los Angeles at Laemmle's Royal, Town Center 5 and Playhouse 7.

Philipp Stölzl's ERASED gives its cast--and its audience -- a speedy, thrilling workout

If you're looking for a nifty suspense thriller with a intelligently convoluted premise and some great action/fight set pieces, you could do a lot worse than ERASED, the new film from Philipp Stölz (shown below, the Bavarian filmmaker who earlier gave us the fine North Face and the just-OK Young Goethe in Love). An example of one of those internationally created, funded, cast and executed movies that actually works pretty well, Erased was filmed in and around mostly Belgium (with a little Montreal tossed in), using locations that are scenic and photogenic, as well as pleasantly different from the sort we most often get.

The film's original title was The Expatriate, which, once you know the story, proves a much better choice for both its meaning and irony. Undoubtedly the movie's marketing mavens decided that those extra couple of syllables in this fifty-cent word would prove too much for mass audiences to handle. So Erased it is, and erased (or nearly) are our hero and heroine. The former is played by the always reliable Aaron Eckhart (below), as, yes, an expatriate working in Belgium for a company that makes a very interesting product, about which a glitch has just been discovered.

Into Eckhart's care has come his somewhat estranged teen-age daughter, played with grace and grit by Liana Liberato (below, of Trust and Trespass). The movie begins with a gunshot and the trail of corpses the shooter has left in his wake. Something is stolen, then passed from hand to hand.

By the time, shortly thereafter, that father and daughter are running for their lives (below), the audience is piecing together plot strands like crazy, trying to figure out, as is the Eckhart character, what is going on and why.

Into the mix comes the lately-often-seen Olga Kurylenko (below, of Oblivion, To the Wonder, Seven Psychopaths) as a suspect ex-compatriot of Eckhart, and Garrick Hagon (further below, with Eckhart), as a naughty corporate head.

As the body count increases -- it's huge, for the bad guys are relentless and remorseless -- betrayals both planned and accidental occur, while father and daughter alternately spar and join forces to stay alive.

If the finale proves somewhat less exciting and worthwhile than what has come before, this is unfortunately par for the course of most of these international thrillers. On the plus side, I would say that Erased builds up enough good will and excitement during its first hour or so that you won't mind tagging along for the duration.

The movie -- from Radius-TWC and running 104 minutes -- is currently playing the L.A. area at Laemmle's Town Center 5 and will open this Friday, May 17, in Manhattan at the Village East Cinema and perhaps elsewhere. But, as it's been playing VOD since the beginning of April, you'll be able to gain access to it fairly easily.

Gals go horror/slasher in Katie Aselton's and Mark Duplass' numbskull BLACK ROCK

Have you ever asked yourself why it's always the guys who get to go slicing and dicing their way through the gals in almost all these horror/slasher flicks? Nor have I. (It's fairly obvious, no? Brute strength and predisposition, plus increasing paternalism, fundamentalism and the congregating of wealth and power in the western -- hell, the eastern, too -- world.) Actress/
producer/writer/
director Katie Aselton has clearly been wondering about this, and she has persuaded her hubby, actor/producer/writer/director and sometimes editor Mark Duplass, to help her turn the tables, so to speak. The result is BLACK ROCK.

Last year Ms Aselton, shown at left, wrote and directed her first film, the not-bad, love-cum-infidelity tale, THE FREEBIE, so hopes, on my part, were high for this new one. Plus, the idea behind the film sounded at least interesting and a little different. Alas, the result (to re-coin a phrase) proves an embarrassment of wretches.

From the first, as our three gals get together, their chat is realistic but lame. (Realistic ain't enough, screenwriters; make at least one of your characters intelligent and/or unusual enough to hold our interest.) This pre-event time is our one chance to get to know, maybe even like, these women prior to the "action" starting up. Instead, despite a few moments, as we (along with two of the three characters) are given a small surprise, we're soon bored and tired enough of their companionship to want to get on with the violence that we know from the movie's trailer is coming up.

The three are heading out to an island on which they used to spend time as kids. Once there, they encounter three young men, just out of the military and back from our middle-east wars, one of whom they remember from their school days. What happens is both expected and not. The way it happens is the best thing about Ms Azelton's film. For the fault initially lies as much with the gals as with the guys -- until the point of no return is suddenly reached and then breached.

We've been told often enough how many of our young men come back from our current wars in terrible mental and emotional shape. The movie make a nod to this -- and then uses the guys' precarious state as an excuse for blood, gore, stupidity and sleaze. Think of Black Rock as a kind of paean to our boys who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and come back as cretinous killing machines. And while our three gals -- played by Kate Bosworth (two photos up), Lake Bell (above) and Ms Aselton -- are pretty stupid, the guys, it turns out, are infinitely dumber.

Our three ex-soldiers are played by Will Bouvier (above), Jay Paulson (below) and Anslem Richardson (partially shown at bottom, who is definitely the least seen-and-heard member of the cast). The whole group does as well as it can with the material given. Which is never better than pedestrian and eventually works its way into dreadful.

The movie's worst sin is simple unbelievability. You don't buy much of anything in it, particularly once the violence begins. The worst scene is one in which two of our heroines, naked and wet in the dead of night, instead of readying their necessary weapons, decide to have a heart-to-heart. Oy. Black Rock is a movie in which all involved are out of their element and way over their heads.

The film, from LD Entertainment and running a thankfully short 80 minutes, opens this Friday, May 17, in 23 theaters across 17 cities. Click here to find the one nearest you.

The photos above are from the film itself -- 

except for that of Ms Aselton, which is by 

Kevin Winter for Getty Images,