RodReels-2

Using many of the same techniques used in the recent "All Quiet on the Western Front," director Edward Berger and composer Volker Bertelmann create a thriller using little more than actors' faces. The shots are beautiful, the dialogue intelligent, the issues timely, and the twists and turns non-stop. It's been a long time since I've experienced a film like this in a theater with a large and hushed crowd (although people, do something with your cell phones, please).

Not enough great things can be said about this ensemble. Ralph Fiennes leads it with solid support from Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow, Isabella Rossellini ( looking more like her late, great mother than ever). I would encourage everyone to see this before people start revealing some of its secrets. At the crucial climax of the film, it was amazing to hear the audience's reactions, and I heard one elderly man sum it up with, "I didn't see that coming."

True. Based on the novel by Robert Harris, an author I admire although I hadn't read this one, this movie makes a good case for CGI never replacing good actors telling a good story.

What a disappointment. Not having seen this play but knowing some of its history, I was truly looking forward to seeing this. But the playwright doesn't seem particularly interested in sharing his work with us. Instead, we get his leading a group of actors through a series of readings filled with far too many jump cuts to form any impression of what's going on. When that doesn't work, he shows the rough cut on a laptop to another group of actors, tosses in clips of the Broadway or off-Broadway production and random shots of porn and old movies that apparently influenced his "play." I was left with the impression his play was controversial, but I knew that before I sat down to watch this.

A warm, intimate view of a subject that has become, by the documentary's definition, less controversial over the years: single parenting. In fact, the term "single parent" is even less toxic than the old moniker, "unwed mother," which gets used less and less in our society. The documentary does not bore you with statistics or sweeping generalizations. Rather, it sees the issue through the personal lens of the documentarian, a single mother herself, who was also the offspring of a single mother. The doc does not shy away from presenting the views of people who hold firm religious beliefs on the issue. But since the people can be found within the families of the individuals being portrayed, their views are presented very sincerely and without presenting them as comic fodder. "Sunshine" does not present a political agenda, but I will raise one. I thought as I watched this about Dan Quayle running for office with George H.W. Bush and how during their 1992 campaign, one of the silly issues was the TV character Murphy Brown's single mother status and how Quayle objected to that televised presentation. Fast forward to the McCain-Palin campaign of 2008... and the pregnant unmarried daughter of the vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, was the televised presentation. Same political party. How times change.