The Worst Film Ever

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Best movie of this year hands down!

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

The wry tone of "All Is Bright," a sardonic, smart screwball comedy that teams Paul Giamatti and Paul Rudd as professional thieves trying to "go straight" by selling Christmas trees in New York City, is defined by its droll soundtrack of holiday favourite's. Familiar carols are reduced to bouncy instrumental elevator music with a hint of jazz and a smirk on its face.Dennis (Mr. Giamatti), recently released from prison after serving four years for robbery, and his partner, Rene (Mr. Rudd), a safe-cracker, live in rural Quebec. Rene didn't show up for their last escapade, abandoning Dennis, who was arrested at the scene. While Dennis was incarcerated, Rene hooked up with his wife, Therese (Amy Landecker), who told their 7-year-old daughter, Michi (Tatyana Richaud), that her father had died of cancer. Rene is still married to another woman but has promised to wed Therese as soon as his wife agrees to a divorce.How can Dennis bear to work with the man who left him holding the bag, then stole the woman for whom he still pines? As they say, beggars can't be choosers. The two are also longtime buddies, and Dennis, who is penniless, unemployed and on the brink of homelessness, is desperate. Laying a guilt trip on Rene, Dennis pressures him to take him on in the Christmas tree business. Even though Dennis is not allowed to leave the area while on parole, they load up a truck with trees and drive to New York.These oddballs couldn't be more dissimilar. Dennis, a splenetic sad sack with a hangdog expression and a temper that could explode at any second, is very smart. The maddeningly goofy Rene is a compulsive talker with a streak of the ham actor in him. When their tree-selling enterprise gets off to a slow start, he affects the accent and rustic airs of Quebecois woodsman to charm potential buyers. Just when their business seems about to go bust, the last-minute rush for trees delivers a horde of customers."All Is Bright" is the first movie in eight years directed by Phil Morrison, who made a splash with his 2005 debut, "Junebug," a bittersweet family drama set in his home state, North Carolina. On the surface, the new film has little in common with "Junebug" except for its attention to psychological detail and its fondness for offbeat characters and respect for actors.With its affection for downscale characters who dart in and out of the men's lives, "All Is Bright" has an openhandedness reminiscent of a Preston Sturges film. The screenplay, by Melissa James Gibson, a playwright who is a story editor of the TV series "The Americans," is devoid of laugh-out-loud jokes, but it has a continuing thread of bittersweet humour as Dennis and Rene interact with people in the neighbourhood, many of whom are struggling.The most endearing character, Olga (Sally Hawkins, in a scene-stealing role), is the tough-tender Russian maid and house sitter for a pair of well-to-do dentists who are out of town. Olga befriends Dennis after she becomes his first customer, and he delivers and helps her install her tree. She doesn't seem to mind that his casual, compulsive thievery leads him to pocket expensive items from the dentists' well-appointed apartment.Olga plays the piano, as does Dennis's daughter. Dennis's decision to steal a piano for Michi is the story's paradoxical moral fulcrum. His reversion to criminality enables a genuinely selfless act.

Rather depressing film with Paul Giamatti coming out of prison to find that his wife has told his daughter that he is dead. In order to earn money, he agrees to sell holiday trees with a friend. Of course, he finds out that the friend is going to divorce his wife to marry Giamatti's.The two argue in front of customers but eventually the business takes off. They make quite a bit of money only to fall victim to a robbery.The picture becomes somewhat more dramatic and poignant as the two steal a piano to give to Giamatti's daughter. The ending reminded me of Barbara Stanwyck in "Stella Dallas."

Caught this last night on cable, expecting at the very least a decent film, considering the two Pauls. Giamatti is one of my favorite actors, I even created a yahoo group called talkpaul after he was overlooked for an Oscar nod for Sideways a few years back. Paul Rudd ain't no schlub either; he's always good no matter what he plays as well. The problem here, as it usually is, begins with the script. A lot of critics have mentioned how implausible most of the goings-on are in this mess, which they are. I was willing to overlook a lot because I found myself invested in Giamatti's character. But by the time -=- SPOILER ALERT -=- the money box from the Christmas tree sales gets lifted in the most unbelievably contrived manner and the two Pauls resort to their old thievery habits, stealing, of all things, a grand piano, out of an apartment window, so that Giamatti's young daughter (who's been told by her mother who's now engaged to Rudd's character that her daddy died of some unnameable cancer) can have a piano for Christmas (he promised one to her in his head, see) I was shaking my head in disappointed disbelief. -=- END OF SPOILER -=-Something else that bugged me: If you are aware of karma, you will know that what you do to others will be done to you in one form or another eventually. Here we have the two Pauls resorting back to thievery after they've just been stolen from, with no awareness whatsoever, of course, of the karma law. This is understandable considering these two ain't the most enlightened characters on the planet, but it bugged me because they hadn't learned anything, especially Giamatti's sad sack, who'd spent four years in the slammer for a theft crime. Just sayin'.The movie ended up this way -=- SPOILER ALERT -=- (the stealing of the piano, with his daughter running outside her house to play it in the snow, still never knowing about her father, who skulks off into the sad, lonely night) -=-END OF SPOILER -=- to keep the heavy-handed contrivedness going. This is a shame, because with more care given to the details of the story - letting it unfold in a far more organic, believable fashion - this could have been very decent, poignant, even moving. Everything was heavy-handed, including the title: All Is Bright, which of course is supposed to be ironic considering the anything-but-bright situation these guys are in, and the tagline is even more heavy-handed. The original title, Almost Christmas, is almost better, but obviously it doesn't matter since the film was so disappointing in so many ways.

what an startling film this is. delicate, crystalline, complicated, pure. there are four motifs repeated here... smoking, theft, poverty, and humanity. the first three are agonies. they twist us, they defile us, they make us smaller and darker and less able to realize ourselves and to see each other. the fourth is our only hope, and surprisingly, it is not out of reach. even now, even here. i guess the original title of this movie was Almost Christmas, and now All Is Bright, but i would have called it that... Even Now, Even Here. the writer, Melissa James Gibson, must be a remarkable person, well traveled if not in the world then in her head and heart. she gives us fresh tasty layers of french Canadian, (tabarac!), and a little Inuit and black African and such a wonderfully precise, carved and sculpted Russian individual that i found my inner voice speaking in her hauntingly wrong accent for days after meeting her. "You must have Russian blood." Sally Hawkins says ruefully, sadly. "Why?" Paul Giamatti asks, "Because you do what you must." some movies leave you wanting to see more of the movie, this one left me wanting it to not be a movie at all. i wanted to meet and to continue to be with these people. i still wonder and worry about them, even now. that these big stars would find this script attractive is impressive and gives me hope because surely there is no box office here. turn away ye tweens in your millions, there are no lusting vampires here. and nothing is 3D. there is one gun in the movie, but it needs to be there and it only exists to break hearts, it isn't sexy just as real guns never are. i had forgotten what a precise and life affirming artist Sally Hawkins is since Happy Go Lucky years ago. a poet also needs to be a surgeon, and this actress whose characters are so much like poems would no more betray a gesture or slaughter a syllable than a surgeon might misplace a vein. just to see her work again is worth the time. i remember one scene... a man is trying to talk another man into doing a burglary and when he resists, he grabs a saw and holds it against his friend's throat. whats next? karate chop? car chase? CGI zombies with Mr Pitt in dull pursuit? no. the threatened man reaches over and touches his friend's face. he gets it. he feels the humanity in himself and the other, and he knows the desperation and the cause. that's a good thing. straight men should be able to touch each others face if the need arises, but how often are we allowed to in real life, much less in film? the peevish puny pecking side of me wants to criticize when the movie is unreal, i am too big a fan of realness, i confess. like the absurdity that a Steinway grand piano is a portable gift that plays well in the snow, or that a dingy disloyal woman who sits on her front steps and smokes would have hair that anyone would want to smell. and that loud and glaring final song, although pretty enough, makes us feel that we are being preached at under a neon sign instead of just simply being shared with, which is all we ever wanted. but these are small complaints when all i really come away with is gratitude for amazingly intelligent work. if you have no soul or mind, or want to abandon yours, go see Now You See Me. if you want to spend real time with our flawed and fragile human mirrors, artfully portrayed, see this. jusboutded/salon/blog