Beau Bridges

From the studio that brought us classics like Spirited Away and Howl's Moving Castle, this animated drama feels unusually low-key and realistic. But while the lack of fantastical elements leaves it somewhat dry, as if it should really be a live-action movie, the animation is still a lavishly detailed feast for the eyes.

It's set in 1963 Japan, where orphaned teen Umi (Bolger) lives with her grandmother (Hendricks) atop a hill overlooking a fishing village. She raises flags every morning as a signal her fisherman father, who died in the Korean War, then heads to school where the topic on everyone's lips is the impending demolition of the ramshackle clubhouse. As the nation prepares for the Tokyo 1964 Olympics, old buildings like this must go, but the students band together to protect it, and Umi teams up with student journalist Shun (Yelchin) to clean up the building and make a plea to the corporate boss (Bridges). Meanwhile, Shun is having a personal crisis: as he begins to fall for Umi, he starts to suspect that they have the same father.

The film never really weaves these two plot strands together, so as Umi and Shun try to save the clubhouse and work out their parentage, each storyline feels like a distraction from the other. But they both raise intriguing questions about the past, present and future in a nation still recovering from WWII. And the beautifully rendered backgrounds bring the period to life with artful detail. On the other hand, the characters are more basic anime shapes, inexpressive and a bit stiff, which makes it difficult to identify with them even when their stories turn extremely emotional.

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Director-cowriter Megan Griffiths refuses to sensationalise the tabloid aspects of this harrowing true story about human trafficking within the USA. As she follows the central character into a nightmare of forced prostitution, the film could have easily exploited the sexual situations. Instead, she takes a matter-of-fact approach that's deeply unsettling. The filmmaking may sometimes feel a little simplistic, but it raises issues in ways we never expect.

The true story begins in 1994 New Mexico, where 18-year-old Hyun Jae (Chung) goes on a date with a seemingly nice guy (Mechlowicz) and is suddenly sold into black-market slavery. She's renamed Eden and forced to work as a prostitute alongside much younger girls. Living in a series of warehouses overseen by crooked cop Bob (Bridges), Eden continually tries to escape and is met with brutal punishment as a result. Finally, she decides that her only hope is to get close to their pimp Vaughan (O'Leary), a young veteran with a drug-addiction problem. But as she gets to know him, she realises that he's trapped as well.

The film explores much more complex aspects of the captive-captor relationship, as Eden becomes increasingly close to Vaughan, helping him with his work and even ratting out some of the other girls who break the rules. Of course, there's an event that snaps Eden back to attention, leading to the necessary confrontation. But all the way through, filmmaker Griffiths focuses on the psychological and emotional side of the story, leaving much of the actual violence and sexual abuse off-screen. Just a bit more detail, and a clearer sense of the chain of events, might have made the film's gut-punch much stronger.

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Audiences out for a bit of mindless fun will probably enjoy this raucous road movie, but only if they can look past comedy that relies on jokes about racism, sexism and homophobia. And if the characters are all paper-thin, at least the film is loose and enjoyably silly.

It centres on Charlie (Shepard), who lives in rural California with his girlfriend Annie (Bell). But when she's offered a job in Los Angeles, Charlie has to face up to his criminal past. He's currently in witness protection, and returning to L.A. is very dangerous. Still, he decides to take Annie to her job interview, while his protective agent (Arnold) follows close behind. But trouble is brewing because Annie's still-smitten ex (Rosenbaum) is also in hot pursuit, and when he figures out Charlie's secret, he gets in touch with the gang boss, Alex (Cooper), who wants him dead.

While the film looks whizzy and is packed with banter that sounds offensive, everything is pretty half-hearted. The dialog continually touches on sexuality and ethnicity in ways that are more lazy than inappropriate, and the discussions of serious issues like gender roles have no depth at all. This is a movie essentially made up of nothing but stereotypes. Bell and Cooper just about manage to give their characters personalities, but everyone else has essentially one note. Most of the men are mere chucklehead idiots, while the women are male fantasies.

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And Clooney has never had a role that was quite as emotionally resonant as this.

In sunny Hawaii, Matt (Clooney) has coasted through marriage and parenthood, focussing on his career and managing the estate of his family, which is descended from Hawaiian royalty. But now his wife (Patti Hastie) is in a coma, and he has to take responsibility for his free-spirited daughters, 10-year-old Scottie (Miller) and 17-year-old Alexandra (Woodley). Meanwhile, his cousins want to sell off a gorgeous tract of ancestral land in Kauai. Amid all of this, Matt finds out that his wife isn't going to wake up, and also that she had been having an affair.

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When his family's finances hit the skids, Colby (Mathew Botuchis, who doesn't even get his name on the DVD cover) decides to install webcams throughout his house and turn his family's life into an online web show. Dad (Beau Bridges) is a gross weirdo. Mom (Rosanna Arquette) is a sex-obsessed cougar with a penchant for betting big on the stock market. And the main attraction is sis Audrey (Baelyn Neff), a teen hottie with a plethora of sexual gadgetry and lots of free time on her hands.

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