Word: derning
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...Ellen episode--filmed over two consecutive Fridays last month amid an atmosphere that seemed half party, half support group--an old college friend (male) comes on to Ellen, who slowly realizes that she is attracted to the friend's female colleague, played by Laura Dern, a close friend of DeGeneres' in real life (a description that should not be read into). Oprah Winfrey, in a surprisingly droll and low-key performance, plays Ellen's therapist. A whole flock of other celebrities--also friends of DeGeneres', including Demi Moore, Melissa Etheridge, k.d. lang and Billy Bob Thornton--showed their support...
Ruth Stoops (Laura Dern) has four kids she hardly ever sees and dozens of convictions for snorting paint thinner. Now she is pregnant again, and an exasperated judge has told her to get an abortion or go to jail. That's enough to make Ruth a human placard for rival zanies: a band of pro-lifers called the Baby Savers (led by Reynolds) and a cell of pro-choice lesbians (Swoosie Kurtz and Kelly Preston). You can expect the competing passions to cancel one another out. And you can count on Stoops to conquer...
Righteous people making miserable the lives they would save--that should be fun. But tyro auteur Alexander Payne cannot shape or propel his own good material. He lets things dawdle when briskness would be a boon, and defeats the gung-ho efforts of Dern and other worthy actors. Citizen Ruth means to evoke such '40s comedies as The Miracle of Morgan's Creek, but it is less Preston Sturges than depressed and turgid...
Abortion controversy? We got it: Citizen Ruth stars Laura Dern as a pro-choice icon who changes her mind. The I.R.A.? No problem: Some Mother's Son has flinty Helen Mirren playing the mother of a Belfast hunger striker. And American racism? Take your pick. Rob Reiner's Ghosts of Mississippi re-enacts the trial of Byron De La Beckwith, the murderer of Medgar Evers; John Singleton's Rosewood is about the attempt to dislodge an affluent black community...
Clint Eastwood is his counterpart on the "right" side of the law, and it is a regret the screenplay never puts the two characters face to face in a meaningful verbal interchange. Eastwood and Laura Dern work well together with their biting sarcasm and confidence in much the same kind of dynamic that Eastwood and Rene Russo depicted in "In the Line of Fire." The Clint "man-of-action" character has certainly progressed from the self-possessed, out-for-himself, ruthless justice seeker of his "Dirty Harry...