Coal-mining country comes to life -- and death -- in Sara Colangelo's film, LITTLE ACCIDENTS

The first thing that came to mind as the credits began to roll at the end of LITTLE ACCIDENTS -- a film about which I had read nothing, except that it starred an actress whom I enjoy seeing, Elizabeth Banks -- was that it must have been directed by a woman. So full of feeling and empathy for the place, the people, the situation is this film that, unfair or not, I found myself thinking that a man simply would not have done it this way. When the director credit appeared, with the name Sara Colangelo attached, I was not surprised, though I knew nothing about the work of this young woman.

Little Accidents appears to be Ms Colangelo's first full-length film (the writer/director is shown at left), and although it's not a great one, it is a good one, worth seeing and quietly ingesting its feel for character and location. The movie moves slowly; you'll need to check your more typical expectation of fast pacing in order to fully experience this small town, propelled by the coal mine at its center that provides a living (and often a dying) for its men, disillusion for its women, and for its children -- unless they get out -- the chance to grow into one or the other when they reach adulthood.

The film begins as the miners go to work one morning, with some emphasis placed upon Amos Jenkins, (Boyd Holbrook, below), the character who is pivotal to the film because he soon becomes the only survivor of that morning's mine accident.

We don't see this accident, nor do we need to. We've by now seen and heard about so many of these that one simply follows in the footsteps of the next, though each also becomes a hotly contested battle ground between miners, owners and the union.

These accidents have left plenty of widows, one of whom is played by Chloë Sevigny (above), mother of the boy, Owen (Jacob Lofland, below, who was so fine in last year's Mud). Owen is responsible for the second, smaller accident that results in the death of another teenage boy.

How these two "accidents," both of which could have been avoided, come together and resonate in ways greater than either of them might have individually makes up the tale that Ms Colangelo tells. Class differences bubble up soon enough, for the missing teen is the son of the mine's "manager" (the under-used Josh Lucas, two photos below) and his wife, Diane (played by the always reliable Ms Banks, shown just below).

New liaisons are soon made, and various characters must confront their histories and their actions and take responsibility. All this happens very gradually. Nothing feels forced, and when we finally reach the finale, what we get is neither the usual feel-good closure or the rarer tragedy in the making. We see instead what looks awfully like life lived as it might be in a little town like this with people who seem sad and real and worth saving.  

If Little Accidents' snail pace at times threatens to derail our interest, the filmmaker gets back on track soon enough, and performances all seem genuine, place-specific and thus believable. 

The movie -- from Amplify and running a slightly long 105 minutes -- should make certain that this filmmaker is heard from again, and soon. It opens this Friday, January 16, in New York City at the Cinema Village and in the Los Angeles area at the NoHo 7 and simultaneously in another dozen cities throughout the country, with further playdates scheduled for the weeks to come. To see all currently scheduled playdates, cities and theaters, click here and scroll down.

Dan Gilroy's dark 'n devious NIGHTCRAWLER offers Jake Gyllenhaal's best performance yet

A just-about-perfect (if awfully long) double bill of current movies might be Gone Girl and NIGHTCRAWLER, the two films offering the most sociopathic leading characters in many a moon. If these two were married, whom do you think would survive? I'd bet on Jake Gyllenhaal's Louis Bloom. This is both a character, and the perfor-mance of that character, that is bizarre and memorable -- like just about nothing you will have seen previously. In retrospect, you might have some questions (few, I think, that you won't be able to answer on your own), but while you're watching, you're absolutely in thrall.

Writer/director Dan Gilroy (at right) is best-known for his screenplays (The Bourne Legacy, The Fall and the highly under-rated Two for the Money).This is his first directing job, and he does his own screenplay proud. Nothing showy, mind you, but all is in its place. This is also a long film -- coming in three minutes shy of two hours -- but it moves so quickly and interestingly that you don't realize the length. And Mr. Gyllenhaal, below and further below, is giving such a rapturous performance -- strange yet graceful, measured, and as real as you could ask for -- that he, in one scene, almost brought me to tears.

This is doubly odd, since his character is such a sociopath, and though we know this from the initial scene, we don't learn the extent of it until the movie gets much further underway. How this character discovers his metier, as it were, and what he does with it, make for the most fascinating tale movies have told us this year.

Into that tale arrive two important characters. The most important is a woman (played exceptionally well by Rene Russo, above, right, who I'm told is the filmmaker's wife) in charge of news programming at an up-and-coming local TV station in the Los Angeles area who gloms onto Louis' video work. The other is the younger man (a fine Riz Ahmed, below, center, and minus his British accent) whom Louis hires as his assistant.

All the other characters, many of whom die or are already dead when we meet them, are important to our protagonist only in so much as they can be of use to him. And as the tale proceeds, this use becomes more and more shocking, though it never leaves the realm of believability.

Nightcrawler is dark, certainly, and unsettling too, but it is so well conceived and executed that it is impossible not to recommend. Its plotting is also more believable than some of the twists and turns taken by Gone Girl, a movie I thoroughly enjoyed but found wanting in the mystery department, though not at all in terms of its being a crackerjack exploration of today's 30-somethings -- so entitled and narcissistic.

Released via Open Road, the film is currently playing in theaters across the nation. I recommend a visit; failing that, be sure to stick it on your must-see list for Blu-ray, DVD or streaming.

Catching up with one of last year's best: Kenneth Lonergan's surprising MARGARET

Given this movie's own back-story -- years in the making, law suits, a new score, and finally even a new cut that's half an hour longer than what was theatrically released (and that was already two-and-one-half-hours long) -- it would be easy to joke that the tale of the making and release of MARGARET is more interesting than the movie itself. Yet Kenneth Lonergan's film is so unusual, so riveting from scene-one onwards, full of some of the finest performances of the year, and about so much that is important to us in our post-second-millennium world, that it is a must-see for all these reasons -- and more.

Anchored by the star performance of Anna Paquin (shown at right, with Mr Lonergan) as Lisa Cohen, a smart, angry, envelope-pushing high school student coming of age in the midst of some traumatizing events, the movie, which was begun not that long after 9/11, asks questions that most narrative films don't get near -- What is our responsibility to ourselves, and to others? What is our place in the world? When (and when not) ought we take a stand against authority? -- and while it doesn't provide easy answers, it makes us at least consider these questions. To answer an immediate question: Yes, Ms Paquin looks older than most high school students, but as the movie was being made over a five year period, how could she not? (In any case, we should by now be used to films with too-old-looking high-school kids -- a staple since my first experiences viewing cinema back in the 1940s.)

This film is so very much better, and so much more important to the history of cinema, than Lonergan's first (and far too favorably received movie You Can Count on Me) that its minimal release in theaters strikes me as a terrible waste. Fortunately, enough critical acclaim at the time of release and continuing after has led to renewed interest in the film and will, I suspect, keep it percolating in the minds and hearts of film buffs for a long while.

The movie is full of terrific scenes, one after another, beginning with one of the film's strongest, an unforgettable accident (above: that's Allison Janney as the victim) brought about in part by Lisa and a bus driver, played by Mark Ruffalo, below.

From there we move in and out of the home and classroom, where scenes of family life, education and sexual initiation are shown us from angles we've not seen before.

Two fine actors, Matt Damon (below, left) and Matthew Broderick (above, right) play teachers in classes taken by Lisa, and both get very telling scenes to play --- one that pits the pomposity of the educator against the student's lesser knowledge but greater understanding, the other exploring responsibility when a student intentionally gets too physically close.

Best of all is the chance to see again that wonderful actress Jeannie Berlin, below, left, who has done almost no work in movies or TV over the past 35 years. Maybe the best thing in Margaret (and there is a lot of competition), Ms Berlin is indelible as the accident victim's good friend, an angry New Yorker who must "tell it like it is," everything else be damned. It occurs to TrustMovies just now, as I write this, that perhaps it is into just such a woman that our Lisa might grow up. Berlin's final speech to Paquin is about as memorable as anything I can recall from this past movie year.

On the home front, we have Lisa's hugely self-involved actress mom, played by J. Smith-Cameron (below, left), who brings to her role enough selfishness to annoy us and enough confusion to make us root for her (well, now and then). Lisa's dad, divorced and living in a nice beach-front house in what might be Malibu, is played by the writer/director, and Mr. Lonergan proves aces in this small but telling role. In the other more-or-less major role is French star Jean Reno, as an South American businessman smitten with Ms Smith-Cameron's actress, whose character demonstrates once again that, where love is concerned (to paraphrase Pascal), the heart has its own unreasonable reasons.

One of the joys of this movie is how rounded, real and pretty much equally right and wrong are all its characters. Lonergan allows us to understand the place that each of them is coming from,  whether or not we approve of their actions. This adds to the veracity of what's on display, at the same time as it reminds us again of how difficult it is to get at truth and justice -- let alone The American Way.

Margaret is available now on DVD and Blu-ray -- and in both the theatrical cut (which runs 150 minutes) and the extended-cut version, which I believe lasts 180 minutes. So you've got a decision to make before you view. Yours truly opted for a Blu-ray rental (the transfer's a good one), but on Blu-ray you get only the theatrical version. If you purchase the Blu-ray, it comes with a bonus DVD featuring the extended-cut version. I don't know if and how you can rent the extended cut, but I would certainly like to see it. Sitting through another half-hour of this movie would have been no problem. Hell, I could have sat through another three.