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Author:
Sheila Benson
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Sheila Benson was the principal Los Angeles Times film critic from 1981-91, following which she was their Critic At Large, writing on all aspects of the cultural life of that city. She also has written for Cinemania/msn.com for which she was chief film critic and many other papers.
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If critics can be said to have favorites -- and they have -- early on Sheila was a particular champion of independent films, as they were finding their voice and their power. As a result, her reports from the earliest days of Telluride, Toronto, Mill Valley and the Sundance festivals found their way into what was then the "Industry"-centric Times.
Moving online, she was chief film critic for Microsoft's invaluable Cinemania from its birth to its death, 4 ½ years later. She has also contributed coverage, essays and interviews to Interview, Elle, Premiere, Film Comment, Variety, the San Francisco Examiner, the Seattle Weekly, London Telegraph's Weekend magazine, Canada's Globe and Mail American Film Magazine and the New York Times.
Affiliated with the National Society of Film Critics, FIPRESCI (the International Film Critics Association) and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association (1981-95), she has taught Critical Writing at UCLA and has been a jury member at the film festivals of Berlin, Toronto, Chicago, Montreal, Hawaii, Manila, Seattle, Aspen, Sundance/Park City, Taos, Banff and Palm Springs. In 1987, she was given the Vesta Award for Journalism for her contribution to the arts in Southern California. She wrote the narration for Chuck Workman's "The First 100 Years: A Celebration of American Film" for Bravo, and in 2004 wrote the critical essay for the DVD of Horton Foote's Tomorrow for Home Vision Entertainment.
Having moved to Washington in 1996, she now reviews for the Seattle Weekly.
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Lovely and Amazing
If one trait can be said to define a family, then warm, well-meaning matriarch Jane Marks (Brenda Blethyn) seems to have been more than generous in sharing her fluttering insecurity with her three daughters. Of course, living in Los Angeles, the epicenter of insecurity, gives all four of them daily reinforcement for their (groundless) fears in Lovely and Amazing, Nicole Holofcener''sglowing, insightful character-comedy.
Jane, divorced and comfortably off even by Beverly Hills standards, is sure that liposuction will be her quick fix. So, soon after we meet her, she's undergoing the humiliation of having her stomach diagrammed like a football play by a doctor her own age, on whom - inevitably -- she develops a crush.
Michelle (Catherine Keener), Jane's vaguely "artistic" eldest, peaked as
homecoming queen and now, nearing 40, seethes about life in general and her marriage in particular. (Her mothering skills seem limited to trimming her young daughter's nails by nibbling them.)
Wafer-thin middle daughter Elizabeth (Emily Mortimer), who takes in every stray dog she sees, is a rising actress. Perhaps. Although she's already had small parts, she has no defenses against the callousness of the movie biz. Bad enough when she has to do a "chemistry read," a spot-test of whether she turns on reigning hottie Kevin McCabe (Dermot Mulroney) enough to be his co-star. Worse, every time she gets turned down, she's sure they're right.
Annie (Raven Goodwin) is the youngest and the newest addition. Jane, who adores her, has adopted the chubby black 8-year-old from a crack-addicted mother. In some ways Annie is the most self-possessed one in the family, although she's developed some pretty scary defenses against questions of race, class and overweight.
The action turns on the days following Jane's surgery, which does not go quite as smoothly as the unctuous doctor promised. As Michelle and Elizabeth work Annie's care into their daily lives, we see those lives and their fragility up close.
Why should we want any part of this nest of near-neurotics? Because Holofcener has a diabolical ear and a generous spirit; add her ability to give these hand-picked actors room enough to expand and you have a combination rare in the increasingly predictable world of independent filmmaking.
In a bigger arena, writer-director Nora Ephron has a pretty damn good ear too, but no measurable warmth; for her, it's smartness over depth every time. Let Holofcener stretch and broaden just a little more; let her not have to wait six years, the way she did between Walking and Talking and Lovely and Amazing, and you'd have wit, skill and heart in one artist. (Maybe throw in a few cans of film next time, no matter how persuasive the digital work is here.)
This is a killer cast. The divine Keener, for whom the part of Catherine was written, has a transparent defenselessness so touching it almost balances Michelle's vast self-absorption. When that finally gives way, in her first-ever act of generosity, the moment is pure enough to bring on tears. At the other end of the scale are Keener's delicately hilarious scenes with teenager Jake Gyllenhaal as Michelle's On oeur Photo co-worker.
Emily Mortimer's quality is shy tenacity. The scene in which Elizabeth stands, naked and flawless, begging McCabe, whose bed she's just left, to catalogue her imperfections is, for women, a high-water mark of horror. Men may not forget it either, although possibly for different reasons. Only Mulroney's intrinsic good-guyness makes the scene as bearable it is memorable.
Finally, how can you not love a movie whose pivotal moment comes at a Beverly Hills McDonald's?
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