About (and for) American Families

It has everything, “Win Win,” everything you want in a feel-good movie: a familiar uplifting story, note-perfect dialog, warmth and — important in a sports film — heart. Oh, it also has Paul Giamatti and Amy Ryan in terrific, controlled yet intensely human performances. Writer-director Tom McCarthy (“The Station Agent” and “The Visitor”) strings together small but authentic moments of family life, stress and humor with unerring ease in an unusual take on a familiar but touching story. Elder-care attorney (and when was the last time you saw one of those in a movie?) Mike Flaherty faces financial worries as his practice falters, while the high school wrestling team he coaches never wins, its losing streak a metaphor for Mike’s professional situation. One day in court, Mike makes a sharp ethical turn and, taking financial advantage of his senile client’s needs, lies to the judge. All seems well until the client’s grandson, a diffident, bleached-blonde teenager named Kyle (played wonderfully by 18-year-old Alex Shaffer) arrives from Ohio, where he has fled his drugged-up mother and her most recent boyfriend. Kyle becomes part of Mike’s family when his wife, Jackie (Ryan), insists on taking the boy into their home. As Kyle hesitantly unwinds and bonds with Mike in halting steps, the film slowly blooms like a known but always surprising spring flower. And when Kyle shows interest in wrestling, finally revealing that he was a champion in Ohio (Shaffer was actually N.J. State high school champion in 2010), you’ll think you know the rest of the story and the ending. But you won’t. In Mike, Giamatti finally leaves the curmudgeonly, narcissistic, often saturnine characters of “Sideways,” “Barney’s Version” and even “John Adams” behind. Not that Mike isn’t driven to extremes, which Giamatti plays well, but mostly he is a man of spare dialog, looks and shrugs, suffering quietly for his subterfuges. He seems to melt, all double chin and fleshy flab, as the stress increases. Ryan is perfect: tart, grounded, protective, maternal without gushing. She is all sharp edges covering a big heart. Shaffer, of course, is the find. He will remind you of Sean Penn in “Fast Times at Ridgemont High”: Spicoli with blonde hair and heart. You never take your eyes off him nor get tired of his flat, slightly nasal film voice. (I heard Giamatti and Shaffer in a Q and A at the SXSW film festival in Austin, TX, two weeks ago. Both were shy but quietly assured.) What makes “Win Win” so appealing is McCarthy’s humanism: He creates no caricatures, is not blatant with emotions or laughs and he is never, never sentimental (like the mush of Sandra Bullock’s “The Blind Side”). This is a film about American families at their flawed best; and it is a film for the whole family, too. “Win Win” opens Friday at The Moviehouse in Millerton, NY, and elsewhere.The film is rated R for language, in another of the rating board’s head-in-the-sand decisions.When you hear little Amy Flaherty imitating her mother’s mild obscenity, you’ll know what I mean.

Latest News

South Kent School’s unofficial March reunion

Elmarko Jackson was named a 2023 McDonald’s All American in his senior year at South Kent School. He helped lead the Cardinals to a New England Prep School Athletic Conference (NEPSAC) AAA title victory and was recruited to play at the University of Kansas. This March he will play point guard for the Jayhawks when they enter the tournament as a No. 4 seed against (13) Samford University.

Riley Klein

SOUTH KENT — March Madness will feature seven former South Kent Cardinals who now play on Division 1 NCAA teams.

The top-tier high school basketball program will be well represented with graduates from each of the past three years heading to “The Big Dance.”

Keep ReadingShow less
Hotchkiss grads dancing with Yale

Nick Townsend helped Yale win the Ivy League.

Screenshot from ESPN+ Broadcast

LAKEVILLE — Yale University advanced to the NCAA men’s basketball tournament after a buzzer-beater win over Brown University in the Ivy League championship game Sunday, March 17.

On Yale’s roster this year are two graduates of The Hotchkiss School: Nick Townsend, class of ‘22, and Jack Molloy, class of ‘21. Townsend wears No. 42 and Molloy wears No. 33.

Keep ReadingShow less
Handbells of St. Andrew’s to ring out Easter morning

Anne Everett and Bonnie Rosborough wait their turn to sound notes as bell ringers practicing to take part in the Easter morning service at St. Andrew’s Church.

Kathryn Boughton

KENT—There will be a joyful noise in St. Andrew’s Church Easter morning when a set of handbells donated to the church some 40 years ago are used for the first time by a choir currently rehearsing with music director Susan Guse.

Guse said that the church got the valuable three-octave set when Harlem Valley Psychiatric Center closed in the late 1980s and the bells were donated to the church. “The center used the bells for music therapy for younger patients. Our priest then was chaplain there and when the center closed, he brought the bells here,” she explained.

Keep ReadingShow less
Picasso’s American debut was a financial flop
Picasso’s American debut was a financial flop
Penguin Random House

‘Picasso’s War” by Foreign Affairs senior editor Hugh Eakin, who has written about the art world for publications like The New York Review of Books, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and The New York Times, is not about Pablo Picasso’s time in Nazi-occupied Paris and being harassed by the Gestapo, nor about his 1937 oil painting “Guernica,” in response to the aerial bombing of civilians in the Basque town during the Spanish Civil War.

Instead, the Penguin Random House book’s subtitle makes a clearer statement of intent: “How Modern Art Came To America.” This war was not between military forces but a cultural war combating America’s distaste for the emerging modernism that had flourished in Europe in the early decades of the 20th century.

Keep ReadingShow less