Patron saint of the mid-major movie release Megan Ellison announced with her company Annapurna Pictures that a preliminary cast has been assembled for director Mike Mills‘ upcoming family drama 20th Century Women. Annette Bening, Greta Gerwig and Elle Fanning will lead 20th Century Women, a story of a mother (Bening) raising her teenage son in Santa Barbara, California, in the summer of 1979. Gerwig will portray a photographer immersed in the local punk scene while Fanning plays the son’s friend. Beginners and Thumbsucker filmmaker Mills will direct his own script.

Producer Megan Ellison has used her clout to help guide several interesting projects to the screen in recent years, including The Master, Zero Dark Thirty, Her, Foxcatcher and David O. Russell’s upcoming film with Jennifer Lawrence Joy. Ellison will produce the project alongside Anne Carey of Archer Gray and Youree Henley with Annapurna’s Chelsea Barnard on as executive producer. 20th Century Women will film in Southern California later in 2015.

In 2011 Michel Hazanavicius skyrocketed to the American consciousness with the delightful and charming silent film throwback, The Artist. The film took home a shelf worth of awards, including the Oscar for Best Director for Hazanavicius and Best Film. Before that film’s premiere Hazanavicius had been mostly working in the same feather-light register with the OSS 117 films. All of this is to say that there must be something rather intimidating about that Oscar looming down from the mantle, because the latest effort from the director is the bruising Chechen War film, The Search.

The Search—inspired by the 1948 film of the same name—takes place in 1999 during the outbreak of the Second Chechen War and opens with a found footage style video made by a Russian soldier that shows the senseless murder of a mother and father. Following the title credits we meet the near-mute 9-year-old, Hadji (newcomer Abdul-Khalim Mamutsjev), who takes his baby brother and flees only to wind up in an orphanage for Chechens run by Helen (Annette Bening). When Hadji can’t stand the presence of so many guns, he sneaks away and is taken in by Carole (Berenice Bejo–teaming up with Hazanavicius again), a non-governmental aid worker trying to get foreign attention for the conflict, and the two become a quick family.

While Hadji’s story is the core driving force of the narrative, two other plot lines are woven in to complete the picture from the opening scene. Kolia (Maksim Emelyanov) is a Russian teenager arrested for smoking pot on the streets of Perm and forced to join the army. His timid nature makes him the whipping boy for the rest of the new soldiers, as well as for the higher-ups, until little-by-little he is broken down and rebuilt by the horrendous monstrosity that is the film’s depiction of the Russian army. The third plotline follows Raissa (Zukhra Duishvili), Hadji’s sister, who is desperate to find her younger brothers. It is this thread, by a long shot, that gives the film much of its burdensome feel.

The essence of the film rests upon Mamutsjev’s shoulders as the young Hadji scrambles to stay alive and cope with his loss while still being a 9-year-old boy. For a large part of his screen-time, Hadji stays mute, and Mamutsjev and Hazanavicius use this silence to heartbreaking effect—mostly early on in the film. Bejo’s (The Artist, The Past) Carole is Hadji’s opposite, a neurotic and fast paced NGO worker who can hardly stop talking. The resulting relationship quickly becomes the emotional core of the entire film.

For the most part, the rest of the cast turns in similar work. Emelyanov is utterly convincing as he seemingly grows hollow and distant and then completely detached over the two-hour plus run time. The notable exception is the normally solid Bening (The Kids Are All Right, American Beauty), who instead of seeming exhausted and rundown by her tireless work, just feels lifeless.

The fact of the matter is, this film is likely a necessary one; how often has a Chechen War found its way into American cinemas? And in Chechen and Russian no less? The stories here are powerful, and, as exemplified by Carole’s interview subjects, by no means unique. The utter confusion and senselessness run rampant.

But that doesn’t stop the movie from stretching its net too wide and becoming overwrought. Much like the heavy-handed early films of this year’s Best Director winner, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (21 Grams, Babel), it’s easy to spot the connections between the seemingly random narratives early on. So, while the mass cold shoulder from the rest of the world, and the horrific human rights abuses that occur carry some sickening heft, Hazanavicius piles it on until characters basically start speaking to the audience— “It’s about understanding they’re alive and they have a right to a better life.” But perhaps this gets at the point. These tragedies undoubtedly do pile up, and back in the day the international community couldn’t be bothered to raise so much as a finger in support of Chechnya. But the film gets lost in its frustration, buried so deep that the proceedings starts to feel laborious, and even the pockets of hope and joy hardly resonate.

Somewhere in this overlong film is a very good and rather important story about the way the world can steal our home and how we still have to find ourselves in the mess; about the unspeakable tragedies that can’t continue going ignored; about how we lose our humanity, and how we find it again. In many ways it feels as though The Searchwas directed by a first-time director, lacking in that effervescent touch Hazanavicius brought to The Artist with such authority.

The Search is out in limited release in Canada today, March 13.

The Face of Love has a premise that would prove a challenging sell for any filmmaker. Annette Bening plays a widow named Nikki who, five years after the death of her husband Garrett (Ed Harris), sees a man who looks like him at a museum. Exactly like him, in fact. The sight of the handsome doppelgänger intoxicates her with both fear and ecstasy, and she feels compelled to stalk him around Los Angeles.

Now, this can either be read as the behavior of a mad woman, or the behavior of a woman tragically chasing the ghost of her lost love. Either way, it’s completely absurd, but a good filmmaker can make it work, make us suspend our disbelief and buy into Nikki’s dark fantasy. Director Arie Posin doesn’t make it work, but he comes close, mostly thanks to his leads, both great actors. Without their talents, the film–with its momentum-less, scrambled script and pedestrian camerawork–would shatter into a million pieces.

When Nikki finally tracks down Garrett’s double, a man named Tom (Harris again, obviously) who teaches painting at Occidental College, and talks to him face to face, she’s hit with a tidal wave of emotion that floors her. (Bening is wonderful in this moment, writhing in pain, disbelief, and joy, as if she’s standing inches from the sun.) Predictably, she finds herself gravitating toward him, and him to her, and they fall into a relationship, though Nikki mentions nothing of Tom’s uncanny resemblance to her dear Garrett.

Is this a morally compromising pairing? At least on Nikki’s end of things, it seems to be teetering on the edge. One can easily see why she’s fallen for Tom, and besides him looking like Garrett, he actually seems like a sweet, good-hearted man. But it’s a clearly indefensible decision to not tell him that he looks just like her dead husband. She even tells him that Garrett dumped her, for some reason. She starts bringing Tom to she and Garrett’s old haunts, an idiotic display that makes no sense. He’s going to find out, you silly lady! Sympathy wanes when we see her make mistakes as dumb as this.

The reveal the film ambles toward is too contrived to generate any real suspense. We can see it coming a mile away, and when it hits–at the site of Garrett’s death, an empty beach in Mexico–it’s underwhelming, and a little weird (Bening and Harris nearly drown in an ocean of melodrama). In an earlier, climactic scene, Nikki’s daughter (Jess Weixler) is floored when she sees Tom, and when she blows up in his face Nikki yells “I need him!”, an allusion to addiction that Bening delivers well, but again feels a bit irksome.

Despite the ridiculousness of the story, it brings up some compelling ideas. How would you react if you met a double of your dead lover? And on the other side of the situation, how would you react if you were Tom and discovered you were the spitting image of your girlfriend’s dead husband? The moral implications of the scenario are intriguing, but this kind of love story is incredibly hard to buy into. Hitchcock did it in Vertigo, which The Face of Love resembles in more ways than one, but Posin struggles here.

Robin Williams plays Nikki’s jealous neighbor, who’s been asking her out for years but keeps getting shoved back into the friend zone. He’s little more than a plot device, but he makes the most of it, just like the two leads. Though most of us would turn and run in his situation, Harris makes us believe that he’s truly falling for this woman, despite her erratic, suspicious behavior. Bening has some fantastic moments (mostly in the first half of the film, before all logic goes out the window), and her chemistry with Harris is expectedly dynamic.

The Face of Love has the ingredients of a good film: terrific actors, a thought-provoking premise, and a capable director at the helm. But what sours the pot is the film’s script, which tells the story in such a meandering, unfocused fashion that the film loses us as the character’s actions descend into nonsensicality. Still, it’s hard not to be at least a little invested when you’ve got such incredible actors playing off each other on screen.

In Arie Posin’s The Face of Love, we follow a widow named Nikki (Annette Bening) who meets a man named Tom (Ed Harris) who looks, impossibly, exactly like her dead husband. Memories of her husband come rushing back to her as she and Tom start a relationship. Is she falling in love with Tom, or falling in love with her husband all over again? The film also stars Robin Williams and Jess Weixler.

Director/co-writer Posin chatted with us about working with Bening and Harris, how the film is inspired by his mother, paying homage to Vertigo, making Los Angeles romantic again, and more.

The Face of Love opens this Friday in San Francisco and is playing now in select cities.

You have two incredible collaborators manning your lead roles. As a director and storyteller, what was it like having such seasoned talents at your disposal?

Arie: It was a gift, a joy. The summer that I spent editing this movie was the best summer I’ve had maybe ever. It was a season of pure joy. On set they’re just so true and authentic, take after take. I feel like my job on set is to be kind of a firs line lie detector. Do I believe what I’m seeing? Do I believe the emotions? In the editing room, you can see that there were 5, 6, 7 takes that are all true and identical in their believability, but they’re also all subtly different. [Annette and Ed] are able to shade things and give you dimensions. It gives me such freedom to shape the movie. But at the same time, the hardest thing to do was to edit, because there are so many wonderful takes.

The story of how the idea for this story came to light is pretty remarkable. It came from your mother, correct?

Arie: Yeah. Years ago, a few years after my dad had passed away, my mother would come over to see me. She said words that are pretty similar to what Annette’s character says in the movie. She said, “A funny thing happened to me today. I was by the museum, in a cross walk on Wilshire Boulevard. I looked up and I saw a man coming towards me who looked like a perfect double of your father.” I said, “What did you do?” and she said, “It shocked me. He had a big smile on his face…and it felt so nice. It felt like it used to.” That’s the story that stuck with me and that I began to obsess, dream, and eventually write about.

I imagine going through something like that, you must feel a little bit crazy inside. What do you think the relationship is between sanity and love?

Arie: I think it’s different for everyone. My thought on it for this movie was, in a sense, that kind of love you have…you know, she spent 30 years with her husband, and she had him ripped away from her violently, tragically, just when they were at this stage where they’re thinking, “What are the two of us going to do together for the rest of our lives?” Seeing someone again who wakes up those feelings would be almost like an addiction. You get a taste, and you want more, despite yourself and despite the fact that it’s a transgressive relationship. It’s a compulsion, an obsession.

In terms of sanity, that was one of the biggest questions for me in writing the script and even throughout production. Annette’s falling in love through the course of the story, but she’s also falling back in love with her late husband. The question is always, she’s on this journey towards madness, but where is she at? How do we chart that? Is she crazy here, not crazy here? And it went back to the story with my mom, which became a real touchstone for us. The truth in that situation is that my mom wasn’t crazy, you know? She wasn’t imagining it. She saw this guy that looked like my dad, and it shook her to her core. I thought it was important that Nikki be sane, but as long as we could bear it. Once she goes mad, the audience becomes an observer of that. But to really participate, I thought it was important for her to be sane, then spiraling eventually into madness, but being able to hold that off as long as possible.

There are obvious similarities between the plot of your film and Vertigo.

Arie: Vertigo is one of my favorite movies. Hitchcock is unquestionably the master. There’s so much film grammar that we take for granted that was first proposed and best used by him. We all owe a lot to him. Having said that, when we wrote the first draft of the script, we set it in a museum because my mom’s story happened at the museum. The best cinematographers ask, “How few lights can I bring to a location in order to catch the naturalness of it?” That’s where the museum came out of. It didn’t come out of trying to do a take on a Vertigo type story. It all evolved from a very natural, organic place. But once we had the first draft and read it, it occurred to us: there’s a double in Vertigo, and there’s a double here. There’s a museum in both. A friend of mine saw the movie last week and said there was more than that. He said, “Well, she jumps into the bay in Vertigo, and she jumps into the ocean in your movie.” There are other movies that we love, and we had to check and make sure that if we were stealing, we we’d be stealing deliberately. (laughs) Another movie we talked about was The Double Life of Veronique. There’s a double there, as well, and it takes this metaphysical look at people who look alike. It’s been done many times.

Although this is a romantic movie, I wanted it to be infused with tension and suspense. The premise doesn’t naturally suggests suspense and tension, and yet I love so many of those movies in the ’40s, ’50s, and ’60s that were romantic but also had a bit of tension. And that’s certainly true of Vertigo.

San Francisco plays a big part in Vertigo, and Los Angeles plays a big part in yours.

Arie: That was something that I was very much inspired by Vertigo about. San Francisco is so much a character in that movie. I’ve fallen in love with Los Angeles, and I wanted it to become a backdrop. I live here, and I feel the romantic side of the city. It’s beautiful, but I haven’t seen it in movies in a long, long time. That was my hope. There was actually a moment when a financier offered to make the movie with us if we shot it in Baton Rouge. We turned it down with hopes of staying in LA and using the city as the backdrop for our story, a character in itself.

What scene are you most proud of?

Arie: One of the most challenging scenes in the movie is the scene where the daughter comes in and discovers that her mom has been in a relationship with a man that looks like her father. From the moment Nikki keeps this secret, the audience is savvy enough to know that the secret is going to come out. The question is how and when, and who’s going to find out. On one level, you want to fulfill that expectation, but on the other hand also make it surprising. In that scene, you have three people in a very hot, violent confrontation, and what I wanted to convey was the three points of view. They’re each coming at it with their own point of view, and I wanted the audience to identify with all three of them. As we bounce around the scene, you know why each person is reacting the way they are, and you can see the story from their perspective. That was a real challenge in the writing, shooting, and editing.

It’s a big scene to carry on your shoulders. I had a director friend of mine say, “It takes some nerve to take potentially the biggest scene in your movie and put it on the shoulders of the least experienced actor in the scene.” On top of that, he said, “If that scene didn’t work, the movie would fall apart.” It was a really critical scene, and Jess (Weixler, who plays the daugher) played it so brilliantly, against two of the best actors that we have.

From the directors of Little Miss Sunshine comes Ruby Sparks, a whimsical film about a struggling writer who falls in love with a character he makes up. The film was written by Zoe Kazan who plays the lead role of Ruby Sparks. It is slightly ironic considering the film is about a writer bringing a character to life; which is essentially what she has done here for herself. You might go in expecting a standard romantic comedy and if so you will be pleasantly surprised that it is more than just that.

At one point (I will not say when) a character says “Just don’t tell me how it ends”, which is what I intend to abide. It is not really an easy film to spoil because the big “twist”, if you can call it that, is not really spoiling it. I do not believe it is a spoiler if that is what the entire film is about, enough to where they include it in the official synopsis and trailers. But thankfully, Ruby Sparks is much more serious than the trailers let on. However, if you are an absolute purist; which I would doubt you would be if you made it this far, then you should stop right here and read nothing more about the film. As always, I never try to ruin a film in my reviews for anyone who has not seen the film yet.

Calvin Weir-Fields (Paul Dano) is a famous writer who is struggling to find both inspiration for his next novel as well as romance in his life. The highly-acclaimed novel that made him famous is now ten years old and he has not made a very successful follow up since. So now he is currently working on what he hopes to be his next big hit and prove to himself that his career has not peaked. Not helping his confidence is his agent when he admits that living up to your first work is hard when it is a mega hit. And that “sophomore slump” syndrome does not happen when you are mediocre to begin with. Not wise words to tell someone when they are having a writer’s block.

Calvin mentions early on that he does not want to use his fame to get girls because he knows that they would not really like him for who he is. Instead, he uses some clever tricks suggested to him by his therapist to meet people such as, getting a dog so people stop to talk to him on the street. He is inexperienced in the dating world as he has only had one serious relationship in his life. Add that fact that he is awkward and shy makes it hard for him to meet someone.

It is not until Calvin starts having dreams about the character he made up for his new book that he gets inspired to write. Calvin creates Ruby Sparks (Zoe Kazan), as the girl he has always wanted to be with, the perfect girl in his eyes. He gets so inspired that he cannot stop writing. Then he realizes that the reason he wants to write so much is because he fell in love with the girl he created. Which is healthy for his career but not for his personal life.

Ruby shows up in his dreams more and more until one day he no longer has to dream about her because she suddenly shows up in his real life. Of course, he believes she is imaginary because how could she exist? It is a writer’s fantasy to create someone who is perfect for you then magically you meet that person. As time passes he realizes that she may not be completely perfect as he was expecting.

The great moral of the film is that even the perfect girl from your dreams is going to have faults and to try to change them is both dangerous and wrong. As the old adage goes, be careful for what you wish for, it just may come true. There are major drawbacks to trying to play God. Calvin’s brother pointed it out to him at the beginning of the film when he said that the honeymoon phase of a relationship does not last; women are different up close.

There is a great scene where we see Calvin on a sofa talking to himself. Or at least that is what it appears. There is a deep voice that seems like it is coming from his head until it is revealed when he lays down and the shot opens up to spot the man who was sitting in front of him. The man ends up being his therapist. The reason why this short scene is so interesting is it is before we start seeing the character he makes up appear in his life. So it sets the stage, if you will, for what was to come later in the film.

Ruby Sparks could have been a very different film if it had chosen to focus on what I feel like a lot of filmmakers would have focused on, which is the gimmicky part of the film. Instead, it pleads with you not to try to make sense of it because it does not even bother to explain how it happens. Similar to what Midnight in Paris did, it just embraces the magic of it all and asks you to imagine what if it could be true. Besides, the best part of the film is not the person he creates but rather the person he becomes.

The Kids Are All Right is a film about an unconventional family dealing with the struggles of marriage and raising children that any family can relate to. For better or worse the storyline is straightforward and safe, making it relatable but ultimately very predictable. The cast and screenwriting make it interesting enough to watch even though at times it feels like more could have been done.

Life is neither perfect nor easy but more specifically neither is marriage. That is the message The Kids Are All Right delivers. Nic (Annette Bening) and Jules (Julianne Moore) are a happily married lesbian couple who both have teenage children, Joni and Laser, from the same anonymous sperm donor. Nic is a doctor and Jules is currently trying to start up her own landscape design business.

Joni recently turned 18 years old and is spending her final summer at home before leaving for college. Joni and Laser are aware that they are half-siblings from the same father but different mothers and now that Joni is of age to request to get in touch with their biological father, she does so.

Their father is an easy-going hippie named Paul (Mark Ruffalo) who is in charge of an organic restaurant and garden. He receives a call out of the blue informing him that his two children would like to meet up with him. Even caught off-guard with this news he, as he normally does, has a nonchalant cool-guy attitude about the situation and eagerly accepts the children’s request.

Paul meets up and eventually bonds with the two children. Joni seemed to drawn closer to him than Laser did but I think it would be pretty typical for a 15 year old boy to be hesitant to open up to his father after just meeting him. Nic and Jules soon learn about the children bonding with Paul and are accepting of it although perhaps feel a little uneasy.

After meeting with the whole family, Paul learns that Jules is looking for landscape design work and hires her to do some work. Because Nic is territorial she becomes concerned that Paul is intruding her life. It turns out her instincts were not wrong when she finds out that Paul and Jules have moved on from just hanging out in the garden to hanging out in the bedroom.

The acting performances were solid and earned nominations at the Oscars and Independent Spirit Awards for both Annette Bening and Mark Ruffalo. While I understand Ruffalo’s nomination as he does a good job of playing the cool-guy father figure while giving some comedic relief, I do not understand Bening getting nominated for Best Female Lead over Julianne Moore. Moore deserves just as much recognition as Bening if not more for her roles as the heart and soul of the relationship who has her faults.

Lisa Cholodenko’s The Kids Are All Right is a very realistic and honest film, but I felt there could have been more done with the plot. I respect a film that contains as much honesty as this did and I do enjoy loose endings to a film but the emotional connection needs to be strong and deep to really be effective, which is where the film faltered a bit for me.

Ricky Gervais hosted the 68th Golden Globe Awards this year. Even though The King’s Speech had the most nominations with seven, it was rather unsurprising that The Social Network ended up with the most of the film awards that included; Best Picture, Best Screenplay, Best Director, Best Original Score. I was very happy to see Natalie Portman won Best Actress in Motion Picture Drama, it was very well deserved. Glee had the most awards for TV with three total wins. I was happy to see Jim Parsons win Best Actor in a TV comedy or musical. Not only do I enjoy The Big Bang Theory but it was nice to see someone in a comedy or musical get some respect other than Glee. Here is the full list of winners:

FILM

Best Motion Picture – Drama:
The Social Network

Best Motion Picture – Comedy or Musical:
The Kids Are All Right

Best Director:
David Fincher, The Social Network

Best Actress – Drama:
Natalie Portman, Black Swan

Best Actor – Drama:
Colin Firth, The King’s Speech

Best Actress – Comedy or Musical:
Annette Bening, The Kids Are All Right

Best Actor – Comedy or Musical:
Paul Giamatti, Barney’s Version

Best Supporting Actress:
Melissa Leo, The Fighter

Best Supporting Actor:
Christian Bale, The Fighter

Best Foreign Language Film:
In A Better World

Best Screenplay – Motion Picture:
Aaron Sorkin, The Social Network

Best Original Score – Motion Picture:
Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, The Social Network

Best Animated Feature Film:
Toy Story 3

Best Original Song – Motion Picture:
“You Haven’t Seen The Last Of Me”, Burlesque

Cecil B. DeMille Award:
Robert De Niro

TV

Best Drama Series:
Boardwalk Empire

Best Comedy Or Musical:
Glee

Best TV Movie/Miniseries:
Carlos

Best Actress – Drama:
Katey Sagal, Sons of Anarchy

Best Actor – Drama:
Steve Buscemi, Boardwalk Empire

Best Actress – Comedy or Musical:
Laura Linney, The Big C

Best Actor – Comedy or Musical:
Jim Parsons, The Big Bang Theory

Best Actress – TV Movie/Miniseries:
Claire Danes, Temple Grandin

Best Actor – TV Movie/Miniseries:
Al Pacino, You Don’t Know Jack

Best Supporting Actress – TV Series:
Jane Lynch, Glee

Best Supporting Actor – TV Series:
Chris Colfer, Glee