A recap of reviews
left hungry or unhappy. And we’ve been for lunch and were just as satisfied with the burger, sandwiches and fajitas.
Mia’s sits over the Pawcatuck River where Connecticut meets Rhode Island and is a great stop for folks with business in either Pawcatuck or Westerly or those heading to Watch Hill or Misquamicut.
If parking on the street is in short supply, there’s a free lot at the end of nearby Coggswell Street. — Ann Baldelli
and how the film’s villains are coded as rapacious gay predators. That many racial epithets can’t be swept away as merely rough British slang. — Katie Walsh, Tribute News Service
MARRIAGE STORY
PG-13, 118 minutes. Friday only at Garde. Noah Baumbach is a keen observer of life’s banalities. His films relish in the strange and wonderful and awkward things people say and do in the course of the day. But his real magic is turning ordinariness into cinema. He can take that feeling of post-graduate paralysis or middle-age stasis, topics that are not exactly unexplored in film, and make them feel fresh and more lifelike and lasting than even your own memories. His worlds are ones you feel like you already live in, even if he’s exploring an ugly moment that everyone would rather forget as soon as possible, as in his latest “Marriage Story ,” which is actually about divorce. It’s a subject that Baumbach has taken on before, in “The Squid in the Whale,” although this time he’s not coming at it through kids’ eyes, but the adults. And it is a devastating and hilariously authentic look at a fracturing marriage, the casualties, the misunderstandings, the feelings and the absurdities of the legal system around it. The center of this story is a couple, Nicole (Scarlett Johansson) and Charlie (Adam Driver). She’s an actress from Los Angeles. He’s an acclaimed New York theater director. They met in the middle, when she was looking to escape her trajectory after a teen sex comedy and a too-young engagement and he was a promising nobody. She moved to New York and their lives for the next decade became intertwined, through work, marriage and a child, until it broke. There’s not exactly one inciting source for the split that we’re ever privy to, more like the culmination of 10 years’ worth of life that adds up to an untenable unhappiness. We meet Nicole and Charlie in this moment of separation, but we’re already invested after hearing letters they’ve written about what exactly they love about the other person. But even knowing these things, the film lets you quickly understand that this relationship has fully curdled. She’s going to Los Angeles with their 8-year-old son Henry (Azhy Robertson) to film a television pilot. He’s staying in New York and taking the play that once starred her to Broadway. They’re breaking up and they want to do so as painlessly as possible. No lawyers. Equal splits. Dream on, Charlie and Nicole, even nice divorces get ugly — there’s a whole industry there to make sure of it. “Marriage Story” takes the audience deep into this world, showing how two people fully invested in splitting amicably can get swept up so easily in animosity and legal challenges. And Baumbach has written and cast the divorce lawyers brilliantly, with a crackling Laura Dern as Nora, Nicole’s lawyer. Alan Alda plays the sweet, coddling option for Charlie. His alternative is an expensive bulldog played by Ray Liotta. — Lindsey Bahr, Associated Press
THE TWO POPES
1/2 PG-13, 126 minutes. Sunday only at Garde. Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio (Jonathan Pryce), the future Pope Francis II, is summoned to the Vatican for a meeting with Pope Benedict XVI (Anthony Hopkins). It’s 2012 and the cardinal, having trouble sensing where his humanist approach fits into the modern Catholic Church, is seeking permission to retire and serve as a simple parish priest. Over the course of an extended conversation that lasts several days, the longtime theological rivals become better acquainted with each other and Bergoglio learns the true reason the pope will not accept his departure from the church: his impending retirement. “The Two Popes” belongs to the rich cinematic tradition of the two-hander, in which quiet conversations and subtle moments serve to elucidate the complex depths of the soul. That it pulls off what can be a difficult endeavor is only more impressive considering that the characters are a current and future pope at a moment of profound crisis, rather than friends at a cafe (“My Dinner with Andre”) or romantic lovers (“Before Sunrise”). The stakes in telling this story could not be higher. — Robert Levin, Newsday
THE TURNING
PG-13, 94 minutes. Starts tonight Waterford, Stonington, Westbrook, Lisbon. A young governess is hired by a man who has become responsible for his young nephew and niece after the deaths of their parents. A modern take on Henry James’ novella “The Turn of the Screw” directed by Floria Sigismondi and starring Mackenzie Davis, Finn Wolfhard, Brooklynn Prince and Karen Egan. A review wasn’t available.