Tanner Hall - Storia di un'amicizia

We, the 99.9 percent of the world that wasn't in attendance at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival, have to consider the recent DVD release of Franny Gregorini and Tatiana von Furstenberg's gal drama, Tanner Hall, the film's public debut. So, despite being a movie filmed in late 2008 and not going public until late 2011, this super stylized drama is a 2011 film, and one of the most surprisingly fulfilling watches we sat for all year.

Staffed with a cast of A-level young talent (led by Rooney Mara, Georgia King and the sizzling Brie Larson), this New England boarding school ensemble flick rolls through scenes with no clear cut story arc, instead playing through as a glimpse into the lives of a group of A-level teen girls going through the way crazy stage of puberty, full blast. Pure fire.

We see details of relationships morphing when the new girl, Victoria (King), arrives and fearlessly stomps her way into the pack or sisters. The crew's soul captain, Fernanda (Mara), is the most powerful and interesting character, and she's brought to life with grace by the Girl With the Dragon Tats herself. It's a performance that could've maybe even been considered legendary, had only Tanner Hall been treated as a major release. Mara's moves are so good that we have to assume this was the film that helped David Fincher find his new discovery.

Imagine if Sophia Coppola rewrote the Little Women script for John Hughes in the late 80s and you'll have a good idea of the haunting appeal that is Tanner Hall. As far as film art and storytelling goes, this is one of the great surprises of 2011. An incredible mix of design, writing and performance. Better late than never.

Oh, that cold old new movie THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO. All excited about it, people flock to see. What for? What's so great about it? It's dark and stark and Rooney Mara had to cut off her hair for the part. An ugly, unattractive part. So, it brought her success. But it's a crappy movie. Well, to each their own, if it lights up your life, I'll try to be happy for you.

But I prefer my birds to be bright and chirpy and flying about fluttering like cute little angels. Which is not exactly the character Rooney portrays, but you get my drift. I mean, just look at lovely, lovely Rooney in the opening sequence as she gets driven to school by her mother, chewing a piece of gum, much to Mom's chagrin. She looks like a cuter version of Elisha Dushku. She has a cheekbone structure to die for. Has got to be one of the prettiest actresses on film. Hell, people, if I looked like that, and they offered me like gazillion bucks to appear in a hit movie, I'd think about what I'd miss every time I passed a mirror. And, on top of that, the even better part that would have come her way anyway, so scrooo your dragon tattoo offer...! That scene with Rooney with the guy and the car amidst the autumn leaves, makes me think of an ad campaign with the slogan 'it doesn't get any better than this.' This is a small movie, with a bad girl that really isn't well-defined, as the Georgia King portrayal turns out to be ultimately toothless. The more well-defined bad girl, the naughty one, the Brie Larson portrayal, as Kate, is more the one that does something awful. She gets banished from the script, unsatisfactorily so. Roller-skating in place, an untimely dismissal...

There are some laughable performances. Amy Sidaris and her weakling hubby should have been recast. What were they thinking, those two were a wrecking crew. Georgia King was a storm-in-a-teacup kind of adversary. She should have upped her game play at least tenfold. Brie Larson was excellent. Anybody who could come to class (barely-)dressed up for the plum female part of A Midsummer Night's Dream looking like that, wow! But apart from her obvious beauty, she was also entirely convincing.

Plot has its weak points, but for a dedicated girl-watcher, lots to cheer about. Loads more fun than TGWTDT.

The decaying, crumbling castle was an excellent choice of location. Does it really exist? No such place found on Google.

I forgot the actress's name, but the woman who played the mean mom, at the time of watching, I thought she'd have made a perfect Alexis Carrington had they done a DYNASTY remake.

As a young lad, I often fantasized about attending an all-girl boarding school in New England, or maybe someplace in Europe. However, there was always one obvious obstacle to my dream. One minor character in this movie has overcome this obstacle--he gets to attend the titular all-female institution because he is the head-mistress' son. The MAIN characters in the film though are four girls--three long-time school chums and a childhood friend of one of them, who transfers to the school and serves as kind of a catalyst for all the melodrama that follows.

There IS a goodly amount of melodrama--two of the girls get involved with older men. One (Brie Larson) flirts with her English teacher (Chris Kattan) mostly just for her own amusement, but ends up inadvertently causing great problems between him and his sexually frustrated fellow teacher/wife (Amy Sidaris). The other girl, the main protagonist (Rooney Mara) embarks on a much more serious affair with an expectant father (Tom Everett Scott), who happens to be married to her mother's best friend. A third girl has questions about her sexual identity. But perhaps the most troubled girl is the newcomer (Georgia King) whose obsession with cutting herself and history of suicide attempts are the result of childhood trauma that is alluded to early on, but not revealed until the end.

Let me say first off that if the very many high-school age girls looked like Rooney Mara and Brie Larson, pretty much all adult heterosexual men would be in jail right now. But this movie was directed by two women, so it never really veers too much into exploitation territory. This would not necessarily be a liability if it worked better as a straight drama, but all the characters remain undeveloped as individuals and never really gel as a group. The movie also really tries to cover too much in 90 minutes, going into the lives of all four girls AND several of the adults (particularly the two teachers played Kattan and Sedaris). It's hard to fault any of the actors here though. Rooney Mara, for instance, would go on to play another sexy schoolgirl in "Youth in Revolt" before hitting the big-time with the US version of "Girl with a Dragon Tattoo". She's achingly lovely in this movie, but--like everyone else--not a fully developed character you can care much about. Her character is kind of indicative of the whole movie--very pretty, but somehow not very substantial.

"Tanner Hall" is a Romance - Drama movie in which we watch a group of teenage girls staying on a private school, Tanner Hall, and we follow their lives. Their backgrounds are different but still they have some things on common.

I did not have high expectations from this movie and I was not disappointed by it. Despite its simple plot, it was interesting and very different from many other romantic movies since it consisted of some clever plot twists that made it very interesting. The interpretation of Rooney Mara who played as Fernanda was simply exceptional and I believe that she really reached her potential. Some other interpretations that have to be mentioned were Brie Larson's who played as Kate, Georgia King's who played as Victoria and Chris Kattan's who played as Mr. Middlewood. Lastly, I have to say that "Tanner Hall" is a nice movie to spend your time and I recommend you to watch it if you do not have anything else to do.

The draw card to Tanner Hall for me was Rooney Mara and Brie Larson, I really like Rooney in everything she has done and Brie is a scream in U.S.O.T, so I wasn't disappointed when I watched Tanner Hall. Yes it's kind of a story we have seen before, four young girls are facing the challenges of adult hood in different ways, they realize some things in life have consequences and sometimes those consequence aren't worth it. They are students at a country side boarding school that is very strict and only seems to inhabit star pupils.

To me this movie has a very Sofia Copploa vibe to it, it seemed to me like a cross between The Virgin Suicides and the Eva Green film Cracks, the music, the colors, the actors, the setting, they all have a very Sofia Copploa tone to them, it's very atmospheric in that aspect. Georgia King is really the only character I didn't enjoy, she's so selfish and unhappy in her own life that she decides to bring everyone else down with her, but I suppose she's not a character that you're meant to like, King should tread very carefully as she is in danger if being typecast ad the bitchy English girl at a boarding school as she played a similar role in Wild Child. If there was one story I would have liked to see more it would have been Lucasta's sexual acceptance, it's a story that is I'm sure very common in all girl schools.

Rooney Mara is so impressive, she is perfectly understated in her role, not too much, not enough, just right, and Brie Larson does her sassy attitude thing splendidly. I also loved Chris Kattan and Amy Sedaris, they brought so much humor to a serious film, and the director knew just when to have them in a scene, they were used to perfection.

I'm not a girl and I enjoyed this film, but I have to say this is really only one for the gals, but it's great no matter what, highly recommended.