'Austenland' & 'Ain't Them Bodies Saints' Reviews

Austenland is a light rom-com especially geared for Jane Austen fanatics. The film follows Jane, Keri Russel, a thirty something perpetually single woman obsessed with the works of Jane Austen. She cashes in her savings and goes on a trip to a week long immersive retreat to Austenland where the guests get to become part of an Austenesk story line.

The story is fun and all the actors are engaging. The comedy and romance are delicately balanced neither one overpowering the fanciful pleasant mood of the film. The jokes weaving in well with moments of flirtation. The cast plays their roles to perfection most notably in Russel's two love interests- JJ Field as the Mr. Darcey surrogate and Bret McKenzie as the more down to earth normal guy. Jane Seymour as the proprietress of Austenland is funny but under utilized.

Russel carries the film with an honest, grounded, empathetic, slightly quirky performance that makes you route for her and want to see where she ends up. The end of the film becomes somewhat formulaic but it is excusable because of the fun that is had with the genre proceeding the end. Nothing surprising but entertaining and heartwarming without getting into the vicinity of cliche or sap.

Rent It.

Ain't Them Bodies Saints is a faux concept drama borrowing heavily and badly from Terrence Malick in general and Badlands in specific. The movie follows what could be loosely described as the story of a rural Texas couple and the efforts of the man to break out of prison and get back to his wife.

The are innumerable problems with the movie. The score is overpowering at almost every point, the filmmaker seemed to want to make a T-Bone Burnett sound track but didn't have the money to get T-Bone or the finese to make a passable imitation.

The casting of the leads is all wrong. Casey Affleck is all wrong as the stoic-romantic outlaw. His performance has no charm, no finesse, and it's a relief when he is not on screen. It makes no sense why his friends help him out or why his wife loves him. He reveals no likable characteristics only selfishness and narcissism. Rooney Mara, somewhat better, suffers from a lack of direction. Her southern accent is so jarringly terrible it's difficult to believe any scene she's in. Ben Foster is the only bright spot of the film, moving through scenes with a gentleness and a silence that seem to belong in a different film. Foster seems to be the only actor confident enough to make something out of a script that is significantly lacking.

The story meanders but goes no where, implies meaning but says nothing, most likely has nothing to say. The story itself, the way the film is shot and scored stinks so heavily of Malick it would be wrong to say the filmmaker was "influenced" by him.

Ain't Them Bodies Saints comes off as a naive film-school-boy attempt to make some art by copying an idol.

Don't See It.