James Rocchi At The Movies

An Early Look At Summertime Sleepers

CBS 5 Film Critic James Rocchi

(CBS 5) Blockbuster movie season may be here -- but if pirates, ogres and super-heroes aren't your thing, take heart: There are plenty of great films lurking in the shadow of the summer's giants, whether you're looking for comedy, drama or a good scare.

Waitress
3 out of 4 reels
Jenna (Keri Russell) doesn't want to be pregnant -- her husband Earl is an oaf, her diner-waitress job hardly where she wants to be. Her only outlet, it seems, is pies -- making them, baking them, creating them as ways of expressing he inner life -- creations like "I Don't Want Earl's Baby Pie" and "I Hate My Husband Pie." But when a charming new -- and very married -- Doctor (Nathan Fillion) comes to town, Jenna's love life is about to get a whole lot sweeter -- and a whole lot more complicated. Directed and written by the late Adrienne Shelly, Waitress is a funny, Southern-style comedy that's light on corn and long on warmth -- and the romantic-comedy chemistry between Russell and Fillion is wonderful.


Red Road
4 out of 4 reels
In Glasgow, closed-circuit TV cameras watch the streets; Jackie (Kate Dickie) is one of the police workers who watch the cameras. One day, she sees a man (Tony Curran) she obviously knows -- how and why, we don't yet know -- but her interest in his comings and goings is far from merely professional. Shot on digital video and filmed in a flat, natural style, Red Road combines the finely-captured characters of the best drama with the slow, crawling tension of the best thrillers; it unfolds like a cold fever, leaving you raw and shivering. Red Road is full of rough stuff -- explicit sex, unrelenting sorrow - but it's also, hands down, one of the best dramas of the year.

Away From Her
4 out of 4 reels
Grant and Fiona (Gordon Pinsent and Julie Christie) have been married for 44 years. It's a good thing they have, and it's fading -- not from lack of love, but because Fiona's slowly drifting into Alzheimer's. Tough decisions have to be made; those lead to even tougher ones. Written and directed by actress Sarah Polley (Go, Dawn of the Dead), Away From Her takes what could have been TV movie-of-the-week material and turns it into a tremendous, tragic yet always-real story of love, and loss -- and Christie's performance is truly Oscar-worthy. Away From Her doesn't have easy answers or a neat finale -- but it'll strike a chord for anyone who's loved and, yes, lost.

28 Weeks Later
3 out of 4 reels
This horror sequel to the groundbreaking 28 Days Later may not have the shock and the snap of the original -- but horror fans with an appetite for destruction will devour it. In the first film, a virus turned pretty much every man, woman and child in England into kill-crazed psychotics; in this follow-up, the US Army is helping re-populate London. Of course, nothing can go wrong. …. Featuring great performances by Robert Carlyle and Jeremy Renner, 28 Weeks Later is like watching the worst parts of the 20th century in one sitting -- everything from WWI gas warfare to the occupation of Iraq is in the mix of visual metaphors -- and it's hard to shake the bleakness of the film; 28 Weeks Later is made pretty much for horror buffs, but they'll love it unabashedly.

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