Class struggle

Grandma

Crit

Few actors can do as much with 10 minutes of screen time as Judy Greer and Sam Elliott, and both get their licks in here. And it goes without saying (he said, saying it anyway) that Lily Tomlin holds up her end of the bargain. Furthermore, if there's an Oscar® for Best Vehicle in a Road Picture, the vintage Dodge in this one is a lock. Oh, and one more thing: the film gives us a chance to say goodbye to Elizabeth Peña. But ultimately what we have here is a lazily written, mechanically plotted melodrama that telegraphs its every step.

Que horas ela volta? (The second mother)

Crit

Like Grandma, this could be read as anti-career womanist, but I prefer to think of both as anti-bad parenting-ist. Val (Regina Casé) has done an excellent job of raising Fabinho (Michel Joelsas), for whose neglectful parents (Karine Teles and Lourenço Mutarelli) she keeps house. Meanwhile, her own daughter, Jéssica (Camila Márdila), has been raised by a friend far from São Paolo. Jéssica's arrival in hopes of pursuing an architectural degree--and, more to the point, her stubborn resistance to the antidemocratic assumptions her servant mother has internalized--drops the snake in the middle of the garden, or perhaps the rat in the swimming pool.

The first two acts present an appealing clash of cultures and sympathies, which the third act ties up rather too neatly. 

Trailers

• About Ray--Elle Fanning as a transitional boy; I'm eagerly awaiting this, but I hope the film is more complex and less affirming after-school-special than the trailer suggests.
• By the Sea--Unhappy marrieds; written and directed by a new name: Angelina Jolie Pitt.