Shallow ‘Hide Away’ sinks
A grieving man takes refuge in a dilapidated heap of a sailboat in “Hide Away,” slowly restoring its seaworthiness while regaining his equilibrium. The brokendown vessel is an apt metaphor, but sometimes a metaphor is only seafoam-deep. This quiet, atmospheric drama (originally titled “A Year in Mooring”) feels padded even in its brief running time; it’s a slight mood piece posing as a character study.
Josh Lucas is the unnamed protagonist, a businessman who takes possession of the battered boat. The shattering loss that has led him to the secluded Michigan harbor is clumsily hinted at, until it’s revealed in a snippet of melodramatic flashback that has no emotional impact. Nor does the film as a whole.
Lucas’ contained performance goes only so far to plumb his character’s pain and guilt. As two marina denizens who observe and guide his healing, James Cromwell and Ayelet Zurer are more intriguing, if no more fleshed out. Along with their gentle advice they spout verses of Longfellow’s “The Children’s Hour.” And they, too, go without names, although in the credits, the central trio are dubbed the Young Mariner, the Ancient Mariner and the Waitress — indicative of the way Peter Vanderwall’s screenplay reaches, in vain, for a mythic quality.
Director Chris Eyre (“Smoke Signals”) relies on pretty scenery and papers together images with singersongwriter numbers. He conveys a strong sense of place and of solitude, but can’t replenish the story’s shallows.
— Sheri Linden “Hide Away.” MPAA rating: PG-13 for a scene of sensuality, brief strong language and thematic material. Running time: 1 hour, 20 minutes. At Laemmle’s Music Hall 3, Beverly Hills.
‘Like Water’ packs no punch
A portrait of Brazilian mixed martial arts fighter
Anderson “The Spider” Silva, the documentary “Like Water” feels wildly incomplete, a let-down for fans and initiates to the sport alike.
The film’s title comes from a quote from the late martial arts master Bruce Lee, in which he explains how water takes on the properties of the container that holds it. Perhaps meant to explain Silva’s mercurial nature, the brief glimpse of Lee only highlights how uncharismatic Silva is in comparison. He’s a curiously inscrutable character who never reveals an interior life except to pine for his wife and children during a long training period away from home.
The film, by director Pablo Croce, simply never gets inside Silva’s head. Silva can fight, it seems, though his soft belly and untoned physique don’t exactly give him a menacing appearance.
A 2010 fight in which he mocked an opponent during the bout — good showmanship if bad sportsmanship — becomes a dramatic turning point in the film. The confrontation turned Silva into a villain, but he never explains himself to fans, the press, his manager or the camera. Later, when his next opponent, Chael Sonnen, mocked Silva in the build-up to a bout, the fighter oddly chose not to engage.
That an upcoming rematch isn’t mentioned in the film makes it seem out-ofdate, in addition to its other deficiencies.
“Like Water” fails to truly explore and explain Anderson Silva, and it’s also a flop as a puff piece. Maybe just watch the man fight instead.
— Mark Olsen “Like Water.” No MPAA rating. Running time: 1 hour, 16 minutes. At AMC Block 30, Orange.
It’s not a rosy picture
The documentary is a sobering look at what effect pink ribbon campaigns have on fighting breast cancer.
Based on Samantha King’s book of the same name, Canadian filmmaker Léa Pool’s trenchant critique of breast cancer “culture,” “Pink Ribbons, Inc.” questions the lucrative partnership between the pink ribbon campaign, corporations and cause marketing.
Exploring how companies selling “everything from handguns to gasoline” — including those whose own products contain carcinogens — have cozied up to the movement, the film concludes they’ve bought a lot of good publicity but little in the way of medical progress.
Even after massive fundraising efforts ($1.9 billion in the last 30 years from Susan G. Komen for the Cure alone), a woman’s lifetime odds of contracting the disease have narrowed from 1 in 22 in 1940 to 1 in 8 today. Little of that money has made its way into research into causes, notably environmental factors like contaminants from plastics or livestock treated with hormones, the film argues.
Instead the push has been for early detection and developing a cure — two areas that benefit pharmaceutical companies but not necessarily patients, a mere 20% — 30% of whom come from high-risk groups. You can’t cure what you don’t understand is one of the film’s sobering messages.
Blending expert testimony with emotional appeals from a support group for women diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer, this stinging indictment raises an all-together different call to arms.
— Mindy Farabee “Pink Ribbons, Inc.” No MPAA rating. Running time: 1 hour, 28 minutes. At Laemmle’s Monica 4-Plex, Santa Monica, and Laemmle’s Playhouse 7, Pasadena.
More questions than answers
A scathing takedown of the United Nations, “U.N. Me” focuses in on dishonorable episodes in the organization’s recent history — the Oil-forFood scandal, tragic inaction when faced with genocide in Rwanda and Darfur — as part of its larger contention that peacekeeping and human rights efforts of the once noble enterprise have been rendered dangerously absurd by corruption, poor oversight of troops and selfpreservation for its own sake.
The film slickly packages its outrage. Co-directors Ami Horowitz, a former investment banker and contributor to the National Review and the Weekly Standard, and Matthew Groff, intersperse a parade of talking heads, including former employees and a damning interview with Nobel laureate Jody Williams, with film and cartoon clips put to ironic effect.
Traveling to locations including New York, Cote d’Ivoire and Geneva in search of accountability, on camera Horowitz, who co-wrote and co-produced the film as well (also with Goff), works hard to entertain, adopting a Michael Moore-style persona and snarky interview techniques.
The result is far from evenhanded, but capable of raising important questions.
— Mindy Farabee “U.N. Me.” Rated PG-13 for disturbing thematic material involving genocide and sexual abuses, and for violent images. Running time: 1hour, 33 minutes. At Laemmle’s No Ho 7, North Hollywood. Available on VOD beginning Friday.