NEW YORK — The following are capsule reviews of movies recently reviewed by Catholic News Service.
Irresistible
After a video of his impassioned speech to a meeting of the town council in his small, cash-strapped Wisconsin farming community comes to the attention of a high-powered Democratic Party strategist (Steve Carell), a retired Marine colonel (Chris Cooper) agrees to run for mayor if the Washington-based pol will stay in the Badger State and personally supervise his campaign. With the operative skillfully stirring things up, the race becomes the focus of a national media frenzy that only intensifies with the arrival of his longtime Republican adversary (Rose Byrne). TV comedian Jon Stewart writes and directs a clever satire that lampoons both the cynicism underlying the current electoral system and the cultural divide separating the coasts from the heartland. He also works in some innocent romance as the adviser falls for his candidate’s daughter (Mackenzie Davis).
Watch out for: A couple of profanities, about a dozen milder oaths, frequent rough and crude language, sexual references, obscene gestures.
Rated: A-III, adults; MPAA: R
Saint Frances
A grotesque treatment of abortion and a misguided view of faith are the most notable elements of this mix of comedy and drama charting the friendship between an adrift 34-year-old woman (Kelly O’Sullivan) and the little girl (Ramona Edith-Williams) she nannies for a summer. As written by O’Sullivan and directed by Alex Thompson, the would-be charming film groans under the burden of its own amorality as the main character has emotionless sex (with Max Lipchitz) that leads to an unwanted pregnancy and her charge’s lesbian parents (Charin Alvarez and Lily Mojekwu) find their relationship strained by the postpartum depression one, who is shown to practice Catholicism on her own terms, is experiencing. A strange preoccupation with the heroine’s menstrual cycle is just one more jarring note in this discordant salute to off-kilter values.
Watch out for: A benign view of abortion, casual sex and homosexual acts, graphic nonmarital sexual activity, irreverent humor, at least one use of profanity, considerable rough and crude language.
Rated: O, morally offensive; MPAA: Not rated
