The Films of Jodie Foster

Little Man Tate

Home for the Holidays

The Beaver (May 23/11)

The Beaver casts Mel Gibson as Walter Black, a severely depressed executive who begins speaking through a beaver puppet as a means of distancing himself from the world - with the film subsequently detailing Walter's efforts at integrating the beaver into both his home and work lives. (There's also an ongoing subplot revolving around the unlikely friendship that forms between Walter's moody teenage son, Anton Yelchin's Porter, and a pretty cheerleader, Jennifer Lawrence's Norah.) It's clear almost immediately that Gibson's stirring performance plays a significant role in cementing The Beaver's mild success, as the actor's engrossing, down-to-earth turn as the disturbed central character proves effective at grounding the proceedings on an all-too-regular basis - which, in turn, ensures that the decidedly off-kilter premise never becomes as oppressive as one might have feared. The movie's perfectly watchable atmosphere is perpetuated by scripter Kyle Killen's reliance on crowd-pleasing elements, although it's worth noting that the whole thing does peter out slightly in its uneven second act - as the film adopts an increasingly somber feel as director Jodie Foster begins to explore the consequences of Walter's actions. And though the erratic vibe persists right through to the conclusion, The Beaver admittedly does pack an unexpected emotional punch at its end - which effectively confirms its place as a better-than-expected drama containing one of Gibson's finest performances to date.

Jodie Foster's Money Monster casts George Clooney as Lee Gates, a financial TV host who is taken hostage by an irate viewer (Jack O'Connell's Kyle) and forced to explain why he recommended a disastrous stock - with the movie detailing the eventual investigation into the company (and its CEO) that lost hundreds of millions of its shareholders' dollars. It's ultimately clear that Money Monster fares best in its relatively riveting opening hour, as director Foster does an effective job of immediately luring the viewer into the briskly-paced proceedings - with the watchable atmosphere heightened by Clooney's typically charismatic turn as the central character. The movie's fairly tense atmosphere persists whenever it dwells on the Lee/Kyle dynamic, and it is, as such, not surprising to note that Money Monster's momentum takes a palpable hit every time it leaves the TV studio. There is, then, little doubt that the film's downfall is due entirely to a radical change of scenery in its second half, with the less-than-engrossing nature of these scenes compounded by an ongoing (and thoroughly tedious) emphasis on Lee's producer's (Julia Roberts' Patty) investigation into the crash of the aforementioned stock. The movie, which definitively goes off the rails in its final stretch, ends on as anti-climactic and underwhelming a note as one could possibly envision, which is too bad, really, given the potential of the premise and the effectiveness of the two central performances.