Firebrand: The Story of Wife #6

Henry VIII was rather fickle in his affections. Just ask Thomas Cromwell, before Henry had him beheaded. That happened to two of his wives too. Old Cromwell never lived to see Henry’s final marriage to Katherine Parr, but she certainly takes his example, and those of her predecessors, to heart. Parr intends to keep her head on her shoulders and hopefully spur the Protestant Reformation further in Brazilian filmmaker Karim Aïnouz’s first English-language feature, Firebrand, which opens Friday in theaters.

Parr is not exactly happily married, but Henry VIII sort of left her in charge as regent while he was off, trying to lead his army. Unfortunately, his swollen, infected-looking leg ulcers forced him to return—and Parr must pretend to be happy to see him.

Of course, she isn’t. In fact, Henry’s return is rather ominous, especially considering his loyalists’ alarm regarding her “radical” Protestant inclinations. Rather rashly, she visited her “firebrand” evangelist friend Anne Askew. She even donated a necklace given to her by Henry to support her radical activism. Suddenly, she needs her allies to get it back. It is almost like the film turns into The Three Musketeers Part I, but without the swashbuckling.

For the most part, Firebrand unfolds like a decent BBC/PBS Masterpiece historical, once it finishes announcing its revisionist, feminist intentions. The history is hit or miss, but the intrigue is grabby. Aïnouz and screenwriters Henrietta & Jessica Ashworth fully capitalize on the historical ironies of Tudor history, culminating in the eventually ascension of the moderate-to-mildly progressive Elizabeth I.

Perhaps most memorably, Firebrand presents Jude Law as you have never seen him before: a puss-leaking, flatulent bag of diseased flesh. There is absolutely nothing romantic about his portrayal of Henry VIII. Instead, he plays him like the sickliest Bond villain ever. The film is mostly just okay, but this is some of Law’s boldest work ever.

Buozyte & Samper’s Vesper

This titular teenaged girl is a budding Dr. Frankenstein of botany. She has a talent for splicing together partially sentient plant-things. Apparently, that is a good thing, because her post-apocalyptic world is not dangerous enough already. Unfortunately, the world-building is solely concerned with visuals and has no regard for logic in Kristina Buozyte & Bruno Samper’s Vesper, which opens this Friday in New York.

In the dystopian future, people no longer act out of logical motives or incentives. They just behave the way screenwriters need them to. The elites in the mega-city “citadels” are going to be evil and Vesper, the plucky bio-engineering teen caring for her paralyzed father Darius, will be impossibly noble. He lost his mobility while serving in the Citadel’s army, so they fitted him out with a hovering drone to serve as his real-world avatar—and then cut him loose.

Father and daughter live in the no man’s land surrounding the Citadel. They even spurned the grubby survivalist community led by Vesper’s gangster-like uncle Jonas, but they are still forced to trade with him for the bacteria that powers her father’s life-support system. Vesper hopes deliverance might finally be at-hand when she gives shelter to a Citadel resident who crashed in the wasteland. She hopes her talents for bio-engineering will earn her a place in the mega-city, with a referral from Camelia. However, it quickly becomes clear the mysterious woman is in fact not the potentially helpful power-broker she made herself out to be.

Vesper is an amazing looking film, but the social systems it posits are simplistic at best. Why would the Citadel create these revolutionary potent seeds and then just keep them locked up, awaiting a dissident to steal them? What exactly is their end game? Being mean is not a sufficient answer. Yet, Buozyte and Samper clearly expect critics will reflexively accept and praise their crude class warfare, which has indeed been the case so far.

In a way, those awesome visuals are a bit of a tease, because we only see those striking behemoths featured on the poster from a distance and therefore are never allowed to explore their mysteries. Weirdly, there is also a crazy cult compulsively stacking objects, sort of like the zombies in Cell, but you have to admit lifting from one of the least prestigious Stephen King movies is an unconventionally original proposition.

The Contractor

For retired Special Forces operators (involuntarily so, in James Harper’s case), the private firms that hire their particular skill sets tend involve the dirtiest work. Rusty Jennings’ outfit was supposed to be different, but it wasn’t. When his first assignment goes bad, Harper becomes a dangerous loose end in Tarik Saleh’s The Contractor, which releases Friday in theaters.

Frankly, the circumstances surrounding Harper’s dishonorable, pension-revoking discharge are somewhat dubious, but he has to become the titular contractor somehow. Deep in debt, he accepts his old buddy Mike’s offer to join Jennings’ boutique mercenary firm. His first gig is in Berlin, where he and Mike are supposed to take out Salim Mohamed Mohsin, a terrorist-allied scientist and scoop up his super-virus formula. The thing is, Mohsin keeps calling it an antidote. Weird, huh?

Unfortunately, the job turns into a massive firefight that injures both contractors. Forced to separate, Harper finds Jennings’ people are actually hunting him. To his credit, this turn of events hardly seems to surprise him anymore than it does us, the viewers.

The Contractor is a serviceable if predictable film, but you have to wonder if it was severely recut at some point. After all, it seems like a waste to cast the great Nina Hoss (from Phoenix and Barbara) as their local contact Katia, just for a few “hellos” and a shootout scene. Despite addressing issues of PTSD and the veterans’ economic hardships, Contractor really does not really feel like the kind film we would expect from Saleh (who previously helmed The Nile Hilton Incident and Metropia). Still, if someone did a ”Scissors-hand” job on this film, they made pretty smooth work of it.

The Lost Empire: Shock the Monkey King

Media experts have observed China’s latest round of censorship guidelines would most likely prevent further adaptations of China’s most celebrated novel, Wu Cheng’en’s Journey to the West, if they were duly applied, since they prohibit subjects involving superstition, reincarnation, vengeance, and most forms of the fantastical. Where would that leave Chinese film and TV? Pretty damn impoverished. Sadly, this Western non-adaptation might sort of make their case. Xuanzang is gone (too religious), replaced by a Western scholar, but don’t bother getting worked up about whitewashing. The problems run deeper than that in the miniseries The Lost Empire (a.k.a. The Monkey King, trailer here), directed by Peter MacDonald, which releases today on DVD from Mill Creek Entertainment.

Nicholas Orton is a Sinophile-scholar reduced to hustling business consulting gigs in China. Journey to the West is fiction in his world, but its example has inspired China and all of mankind to greatness. Unfortunately, poor old Author Wu does not currently see it that way. For centuries, the brainwashed scribe has been held captive in the Heavenly realm by the demonic Five Masters, who would remove all traces of his novel, just as they tried to do when they possessed Ming era censors. Alas, few in the Heavenly realm understand the book’s merits, besides Kwan Ying, the love goddess. She half-tricks the bedazzled Orton into journeying into her world to save Wu’s disintegrating original manuscript.

Right from the start, the romantic tension between goddess and mortal is hot and heavy, but not so with Orton’s teacher, the newly freed Sun Wukong, a.k.a. the Monkey King. Of course, Pigsy and “Friar” Sand will soon join their merry band. Their challenge will be to convince the heavenly Jade Emperor to save the last remaining copy of Journey in the ethereal realm, in order to preserve it in our world as well.  Inconveniently, the duplicitous Confucius has rigged the proceedings in favor of the Five Masters and Kwan Ying is losing her powers, because she is following for the incredibly white-bread Orton.

The idea that censorship could be the earthly and cosmic Macguffin for our heroes to overcome is actually quite provocative. Presumably, that was the chief contribution of screenwriter David Henry Hwang, the well-regarded playwright of M. Butterfly fame. So much of Lost Empire is just too cheesy for words, but we can’t blame him for the chintzy special effects. They must be unspeakably painful for MacDonald to watch, considering he helmed Rambo III and did second unit work on blockbusters like The Empire Strikes Back and Superman.

Thomas Gibson has carved out a surprisingly long career on network television by being stiff and waspy, but it makes him a woefully underwhelming romantic hero. Russell Wong’s monkeyisms cause plenty of wincing, but the really embarrassing shtick comes from Eddie Marsan’s Pigsy and Ric Young’s horrifyingly prissy Confucius. Somehow, Bai Ling earns credit in the real Heaven for trying to elevate the film with her surprisingly warm (but wasted) portrayal of Kwan Ying and Kabir Bedi’s distinctive voice makes Friar Sand, unusually commanding. (“Sandy” is always the tricky Journey to the West character. Sometimes he is sand-like, other times not.)

Frankly, it is pretty lame they could not fit Xuanzang into the narrative, but maybe it is just as well for him. Journey to the West survived this miniseries and it will survive Xi-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed’s current censorship strictures. If you want a family-friendly introduction to Sun Wukong, check out the animated films, The Monkey King—Uproar in Heaven and Monkey King: Hero is Back, but skip The Lost Empire when it releases today on DVD.

I, Anna: Charlotte Rampling Rocks a Trench Coat

Architecturally, there are two Londons of note. There is the Old England of Big Ben and Buckingham Palace and the glass and steel London of Norman Foster and the Barbican. The latter is becoming increasingly more recognizable, thanks to structures like “The Gherkin.” This is the world Anna Miller and DCI Bernie Reid uncomfortably inhabit in Barnaby Southcombe’s moody noir, I, Anna (trailer here), which releases today on DVD, from Icarus Films.

Anna Welles is a divorced grandmother with misgivings—about the fractured union, not her granddaughter or her single-mother grown-daughter Emmy. In fact, all three live together, with Welles sleeping in the living room New York studio style, while the two younger generations share her one bedroom. Encouraged by Emmy to do a spot of speed-dating, Welles winds up accompanying a mature player named George Stone to his tony flat. Things get a bit haywire from there, especially for Stone, whose noggin is bashed in by a blunt object.

To viewers, Welles looks like an excellent suspect, who even returns to the building to retrieve her umbrella from the lift. However, that is not how DCI Reid initially sees her, but he definitely notices the stylish woman. Stone’s resentful stepson with extensive drug debts seems like a far more likely perp. Of course, the investigation will inevitably turn toward Welles just as she and Reid make an unusually deep emotional connection.

Southcombe adapted Elsa Lewin’s one-hit wonder mystery novel, which was also inspired the late 1990s German film, Solo for Clarinet. Presumably, the clarinet was a bit of German seasoning. In its present screen incarnation, the narrative sort of resembles Looking for Mr. Goodbar, as if James M. Cain had rewritten it. Yet, first and foremost, Southcombe clearly conceived the film as a star vehicle-character study for Charlotte Rampling, who also happens to be his mother.

It should also be immediately conceded Rampling and her co-lead Gabriel Byrne do not look anywhere near the seventy and sixty-six years their Wikipedia pages admit to. Still, they are indeed mature adults, which makes their romantic relationship rather refreshing, even though it is obviously doomed. Together, their chemistry smolders, while individually Rampling implodes spectacularly and Byrne absolutely personifies rumpled angst. Bond and Avengers fans will also enjoy seeing Honor Blackman kill it with a tart-tongued extended cameo. Similarly, Eddie Marsan gives the film additional mystery cred playing DI Frank Towers (frankly, it is about time somebody programmed a Marsan retrospective).

In all likelihood, Southcombe probably did not intend I,A as a commentary on contemporary architecture, but it is baked in nonetheless—and more successfully than in Wheatley’s artlessly didactic High-Rise. They both orbit ultra-modern neighborhoods like Canary Wharf, but they are uneasy in their navigation. Reid seems to be a respected guv’nor (or at least he was), but he prefers to patrol the streets at 5:00 rather than spend time in his fishbowl office with floor-to-ceiling internal windows. Likewise, Rampling’s ageless sophistication looks out of place traversing the endless external concrete stairways of Stone’s complex.

As a mystery, I, Anna is not all that mysterious, but Ben Smithard’s cinematography is seductively noir. Essentially, Southcombe’s film is all about style and Rampling, with some Byrne thrown in for good measure. For most genre fans, that will be more than enough. Recommended for mature mystery/thriller patrons, I, Anna is now available on DVD from Icarus Films.

Tribeca ’16: A Kind of Murder

Detective Corby assumes Mitchell Kimmel is an early 1960s Scott Peterson and he is probably right. He also assumes the same thing about Walter Stackhouse, but the mystery-writing architect is more of a Walter Mitty than a Bluebeard. Unfortunately, he will make every possible mistake to attract suspicion in Andy Goddard’s A Kind of Murder, which screens during the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival.

Stackhouse is indeed the title character of Patricia Highsmith’s The Blunderer. He ought to know better, since he has just had his second crime story published in a magazine—not that his wife Clara cares. Constantly scoldy but also prone to jealous delusions, she is difficult to live with. Poor Stackhouse dutifully intervenes during her latest suicide attempt, but he is not so sure he will do so the next time, especially after he meets the pretty and emotionally stable Ellie Briess.

For professional and perhaps also personal reasons, Stackhouse develops a fascination with the murder of Kimmel’s wife. It seems entirely possible the sleazy independent bookstore owner faked an alibi, in order to murder the woman during her intercity bus’s layover at a rest stop. He even ventures out to Kimmel’s store, but finds the proprietor rather unsavory. Acting on impulse, Stackhouse similarly stalks his own wife while she is on the same bus, but she rather inconveniently throws herself off a bridge before he can find her. At least, that is Stackhouse’s story, but the way he parses it out in piecemeal fashion will cast him in a decidedly guilty light.

A Kind of Murder is a blandly prosaic title compared to The Blunderer, but the film itself is wonderfully stylish Hitchcockian take on the early Mad Men era. Patrick Wilson is actually quite a good fit for the guilt-ridden and morally compromised Walter Stackhouse, while Jessica Biel makes an appropriately hot mess as the high-strung Clara Stackhouse. However, Eddie Marsan steals the show as the sociopathic Kimmel, which probably shouldn’t surprise anyone. Unfortunately, Vincent Kartheiser lacks the presence and heft to give Det. Corby any sense of menace. He is more like a Colombo who thinks he is a Dirty Harry.

Production designer Pete Zumba, costume designer Sarah Mae Burton, and the entire design team have crafted a wonderfully inviting period production, which cinematographer Chris Seager gives an uber-noir sheen. It is just a pleasure for genre fans to dive into this stylized New York that probably never really was. Goddard keeps the elements working in concert, fully capitalizing on the rich bourgeoisie trappings and Highsmith’s subversive motifs. Recommended with enthusiasm for thriller fans, A Kind of Murder screens again tonight (4/19) and Thursday (4/21), as part of this year’s Tribeca.

A Brilliant Young Mind: Mathematics & Love

G.H. Hardy said mathematics is a young man’s game and the world still believes him. This should therefore be Nathan Ellis’s time to shine. However, the young math whiz will always feel out of place in the world, even if he lands a spot on the UK International Mathematics Olympiad (IMO) team in Morgan Matthews’ A Brilliant Young Mind (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Ellis is “on the spectrum” to use the film’s preferred term for autism. He has a savant like talent for recognizing patterns, but human relationships are almost beyond his grasp. His father Michael was the only one the lad ever opened up to. Unfortunately, he was killed well before his time in an auto accident (it kind of looks like it was his fault, if that mitigates the tragedy for you). Regardless, his grieving mother Julie is now stuck raising a temperamental son, who refuses to let her touch him.

Despite the cold shoulder he is oblivious of, Julie Ellis devotes herself to Nathan and his math-based obsessive compulsions. She finally gets a break when Martin Humphreys agrees to tutor Ellis, with an eye towards the IMO. He too once competed at the Olympiad, but was undone by his self-sabotage and the onset of his MS. Somehow, Humphreys maybe gets through to Ellis just a little bit. There is also a burgeoning attraction between him and Julie Ellis, but he does not feel he can pursue it. Eventually, Ellis will join the other prospective UK team members to train in Taipei with other national teams. It is there that he will meet the charming young Zhang Mei from the Chinese team, who will get past even more of his defenses, much to his arrested adolescent confusion.

A Brilliant Young Mind is inspired by Matthews’ IMO documentary Beautiful Young Minds, which explicitly invokes the Oscar winning A Beautiful Mind. Clearly, title originality was not a priority. Regardless, there is plenty of room for another film that takes maths (as they say in Britain) seriously.

Yet, building a film around a confoundedly reserved character like Ellis is a challenge Matthews never fully licks. Asa Butterfield (a.k.a. Ender Wiggins, who arguably might be a tad on the spectrum himself) is actually quite convincing as Ellis, but it is mostly a one-note give-you-nothing performance. That’s a reality the film scrupulously observes, but it makes it feel wildly unbalanced, because everyone around him is so much more interesting.

Jo Yang is wonderfully smart and sensitive as Zhang Mei, somehow developing chemistry with someone who hasn’t any of his own. However, Rafe Spall really lowers the emotional boom during the scenes in which he wrestles with the indignities of his progressively worsening condition. Sally Hawkins also makes you ache for Julie Ellis, to the point that you would forgive her for resorting to a murder-suicide pact. Eddie Marsan also does his thing as the slightly obnoxious, but rather shrewd UK coach.

There are some truly fine performances in ABYM, but James Graham’s screenplay trots out way too many clichés. Let’s be honest, everyone is doing great if we can believe Zhang Mei is interested in Ellis. Adding another jealous UK team member is really pushing it, but it presents an easy way to advance the action. Still, the scenes in Taipei look great and take Ellis out of his comfort zone in a way that we can believe will be healthy for him. Mostly recommended for those who appreciate watching a cast of fine British character actors, A Brilliant Young Mind opens this Friday (9/11) in New York, at the Angelika Film Center.

God’s Pocket: South Philly at its South Philliest

Mickey Scarpato was not born-and-bred in this grim working class neighborhood. He married into it. That makes the locals dismiss Scarpato as an outsider. He also stands out because he has what passes for a regular job—boosting trucks for the local syndicate. Unfortunately, his modestly connected life will be completely upended in John Slattery’s God’s Pocket (trailer here), which opens tomorrow in New York.

Scarpato dotes on his wife Jeanie and gamely tolerates her thuggish grown son, Leon. When the knuckle-dragging Leon makes one racist joke too many at his warehouse job, Scarpato finds himself short of funds to cover a proper funeral. Determined to protect the wrench-wielding Lucien “Old Lucy” Edwards, the foreman attributes Leon’s less than tragic death to a workplace accident. However, for reasons that remain obscure, Scarpato’s grieving wife is convinced there is more to the story (maybe she has what they used to call the shine).

Of course, oily funeral parlor proprietor Smilin’ Jack Moran is not about to cut Scarpato a break. The small-timer’s partner, Arthur “Bird” Capezio also needs an infusion of fast cash to pay-off his loan shark. However, instead of pursuing caperish high jinks, Pocket is far too preoccupied with the boozy ruminations of local columnist Richard Shellburn, who will be writing a story on Leon to make up for the newspaper’s slipshod handling of his death notice.

Frankly, there are times Richard Jenkins’ in-character narration sounds like it might be intended as a parody of the PBS NewsHour’s pretentious video essayists. The fact that it is hard to tell whether the film is going for laughs or not is obviously problematic. Slattery often deliberately aims for absurdist humor (involving Leon’s corpse), but consistently falls short. Only John Turturro reliably hits his comedic marks as Capezio, a role he could probably play in his sleep.

Yes, the late Philip Seymour Hoffman completely transforms himself into the sad hound dog Scarpato, but the character is so dull on the page, it hardly seems worth his efforts. Likewise, Christina Hendricks, Slattery’s Mad Men associate, really has nothing to do as Mother Scarpato except cry and jut. At least Eddie Marsan does his weaselly shtick as Smilin’ Jack.

There are two or three truly electric scenes in Pocket (keep your eye on that foreman), but they are surrounded by a whole lot of blah. We have been to movie neighborhoods like the Pocket before and we have certainly seen them done better. Considering how undistinguished this petty gangster morality tale is and the galloping awfulness of Lee Daniels’ The Paperboy, perhaps it is time to declare a temporary moratorium on Pete Dexter adaptations. Sure to disappoint Hoffman’s fans hoping for something heavier and more significant, God’s Pocket opens tomorrow (5/9) in New York at the IFC Center.

Brit Thriller: The Disappearance of Alice Creed

Two average blokes at a big box hardware store might not appear sinister, but their shopping list is a bit suspicious. How much soundproofing material do regular folks really need? So begins J Blakeson’s dark little kidnapping thriller, The Disappearance of Alice Creed (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Alice Creed is estranged from her wealthy father, but since she is his only child, Vic and Danny are sure he will pay up. Vic is definitely the senior partner, calling the shots and dominating the younger man. It was Danny though, who suggested Creed as their potential victim. Despite their meticulous plans, the uncooperative Creed is a destabilizing presence in their midst. Naturally, in this taut three-hander, everyone has their secrets. Just who exactly is playing who, will be revealed in a series of revelations and betrayals that are surprisingly engaging.

Indeed, the twists and turns of the set-up are quite well executed and while the final act proceeds as it logically must, Blakeson effectively maintains the intensity as the film plays out the string. Fortunately, he is aided tremendously by the small but talented cast. Though she has been relatively good in awful movies (St. Trinian’s for example and the disappointing Clash of the Titans reboot), former Bond girl Gemma Arterton is surprisingly compelling as Creed. Her reactions are always utterly convincing and logical, regardless of the film’s convoluted circumstances, which is why it works so well as a thriller.

Perhaps even more unexpectedly, Eddie Marsan (recognizable from Sherlock Holmes, Red Riding, and a host of other films) turns out to be a great big-screen heavy as Vic. Indeed, he has that menacing charisma all memorable movie villains must have. The weak link would therefore be Martin Compston as Danny, but that is largely a function of his character’s submissive nature.

Though it only features three characters largely confined to a handful of claustrophobic sets, Disappearance never feels stagey. Rather, its economy concentrates the dramatic tension. Cinematographer Philipp Blaumbach gives it all a slick, cinematic look that also really distinguishes the film from workaday indie thrillers.

Nicely twisted, Blakeson’s story definitely gets nasty, but never to an extent that would ruin the fun. Nodding to other classic thrillers in ways that would be spoilers to reveal, Disappearance is a solidly entertaining British noir. It opens this Friday (8/6) at the Village East.

Tribeca ’10: The Disappearance of Alice Creed

Two average blokes at a big box hardware store might not appear sinister, but their shopping list is a bit suspicious. How much soundproofing material do they really need? So begins J Blakeson’s dark little kidnapping thriller, The Disappearance of Alice Creed (trailer here), which screens during this year’s Tribeca Film Festival.

Alice Creed is estranged from her wealthy father, but as his only child, Vic and Danny are sure he will pay up. Vic is definitely the senior partner, calling the shots and dominating the younger man. It was Danny though, who suggested Creed as their potential victim. Naturally, everyone in this taut three-hander has their secrets. Just who exactly is playing who, will be revealed in a series of revelations and betrayals that are surprisingly engaging.

Indeed, the twists and turns of the set-up are quite well executed and though the final act proceeds as it logically must, Blakeson effectively maintains the intensity as the film plays out the string. Fortunately, he is aided tremendously by the small but talented cast. Though she has been relatively good in awful movies, former Bond girl Gemma Arterton is surprisingly compelling as Creed. Despite her convoluted circumstances, her reactions are always utterly convincing and logical, which is paramount to the film’s success.

Perhaps even more unexpectedly, Eddie Marsan (recognizable from Sherlock Holmes, Red Riding, and a host of other films) turns out to be a great big-screen heavy as Vic. Indeed, he has that menacing charisma all memorable movie villains must have. The weak link would therefore be Martin Compston as Danny, but that is largely a function of his character’s submissive nature.

Though it only features three characters largely confined to a handful of claustrophobic sets, Disappearance never feels stagey. Rather, its economy concentrates the dramatic tension. Cinematographer Philipp Blaumbach gives it all a slick, cinematic look that really distinguishes the film from workaday indie thrillers.

Nicely twisted, Blakeson’s story definitely gets nasty, but never to the extent that it ruins the fun. Nodding to other classic thrillers in ways that would be spoilers to reveal, Disappearance is a solidly entertaining British noir. It screens again at Tribeca tonight (4/25) and Monday (4/26).

Opening in NY: Sixty Six

There was a time when British footballers were not the stuff of tabloid headlines and primetime soap operas. Before David Beckham there was the 1966 British national team, who would go deep into the World Cup tournament, ruining future director Paul Weiland’s Bar Mitzvah in the process. At least it provided the seed of the idea for his new film Sixty Six, opening today in New York.

Everything that can go wrong for Bernie Rubens, Weiland’s fictional alter-ego, does go wrong. Bullied by his own brother, in treatment for asthma, and embarrassed by a father who is not eccentric, but frankly just plain off, young Bernie has invested much in his upcoming Bar Mitzvah. In his fantasies, it will be the empowering moment when everything changes and his family finally gives him the respect and attention he deserves. Unfortunately, his parents have scheduled it on the same date as the World Cup final.

Since the unheralded England team was far from favored, his parents do not take his concerns seriously. They have more pressing concerns now that a supermarket threatens to put the family green grocery out of business. Fearing his destiny depends on a loss for England, the nebbish Bernie takes a crash course in international soccer. Simultaneously, he creates unrealistic plans for his Bar Mitzvah, hopelessly raising his expectations for the event.

Sixty Six is the kind of film that the dirty word of “quirky” is sure to be applied. Indeed, the family eccentricity gets laid on pretty thick. However, there is a refreshingly positive role for religion in the film, as personified by Rabbi Linov, Bernie’s blind Bar Mitzvah teacher, who just might have some real wisdom to offer, if his student will only listen.

Weiland’s film boasts an appealing cast of character actors (for lack of a better term) with some of its best performances coming in supporting roles. Richard Katz plays the kindly Rabbi Linov without turning him into a caricature of saccharine nobility. Stephen Rea is always interesting to watch on-screen, in this case as asthma specialist Dr. Barrie, the only other adult who seems to find time for Bernie. It is also nice to see Helena Bonham Carter in a film not directed by Tim Burton, here playing Bernie’s long suffering mother. How she ended up with such a weirdo husband is explained, but never really believable.

Frankly, it would be easier to maintain a rooting interest in the Rubens family if Bernie (Gregg Sulkin) was not so milk-toast and his father (Eddie Marsan) was not such an anti-social oddball. In fact, Bernie’s Bar Mitvah can not come soon enough, because the overly earnest protagonist could use some growing-up at times. However, the film gives him an epiphany about personal responsibility that lends some meaning to the “quirky” tale, helping to redeem his sad sack character.

As unapologetically sentimental as Sixty Six gets, it does not forget the underlying religious significance of the event in question. Ultimately, that is what keeps the film from descending into sitcom territory. It opens today in New York and next Wednesday in L.A.