More Trailers Videos
- Video duration
- 02:29
Trailer: The Family Fang
Trailer: The Family Fang
Adult siblings Baxter and Annie, scarred from an unconventional upbringing, return to their family home after their parents suddenly go missing under troubling circumstances.
Up Next
Trailer: The Mummy
- Video duration
- 02:21
- Video duration
- 02:21
Trailer: The Mummy
Trailer: The Mummy
An ancient princess is awakened from her crypt beneath the desert, bringing with her malevolence grown over millennia, and terrors that defy human comprehension.
Up Next
Trailer: Guardians of the Galaxy (trailer 2)
- Video duration
- 02:12
- Video duration
- 02:12
Trailer: Guardians of the Galaxy (trailer ...
Trailer: Guardians of the Galaxy (trailer 2)
Set to the backdrop of Awesome Mixtape #2, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 continues the team's adventures as they unravel the mystery of Peter Quill's true parentage.
Up Next
No Strings Attached
- Video duration
- 01:27
- Video duration
- 01:27
No Strings Attached
No Strings Attached
The awkward world of online dating is explored in a genre-bending mashup of equal parts documentary, comedy and puppet TV.
Up Next
Trailer: Passengers
- Video duration
- 02:35
- Video duration
- 02:35
Trailer: Passengers
Trailer: Passengers
The first look of the science fiction mega-blockbuster 'Passengers' starring Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence.
- Video duration
- 01:44
Trailer: Underworld: Blood Wars
Trailer: Underworld: Blood Wars
Vampire death dealer, Selene, fights to end the eternal war between the Lycan clan and the Vampire faction that betrayed her.
Up Next
Trailer: Mad Sheila Virgin Road
- Video duration
- 00:54
- Video duration
- 00:54
Trailer: Mad Sheila Virgin Road
Trailer: Mad Sheila Virgin Road
Bounty hunter Xi Liya rescues a group of virgins from a band of steam-punk desert warlords.
Up Next
Trailer: Midnight Sun
- Video duration
- 00:59
- Video duration
- 00:59
Trailer: Midnight Sun
Trailer: Midnight Sun
A brutal murder leads French homicide investigator to Kiruna, Sweden, where her investigation soon takes on staggering proportions.
Trailer: The Family Fang
Adult siblings Baxter and Annie, scarred from an unconventional upbringing, return to their family home after their parents suddenly go missing under troubling circumstances.
★★★
One rule of film criticism is that surprises can come from anywhere, meaning that no genre can be completely written off. This even applies to quirky, independent comedy-dramas about dysfunctional families, such as Jason Bateman's The Family Fang – no masterpiece, certainly, but substantially more interesting than comparable productions such as Captain Fantastic.
Adapted by playwright David Lindsay-Abaire from the novel by Kevin Wilson, The Family Fang tells the sad story of Caleb and Camilla Fang (Christopher Walken and Maryann Plunkett), controversial performance artists known for stunts involving their children – in the Candid Camera vein, but with a threatening edge.
These family conspiracies, shown in flashback, are the film's comic set-pieces: a fake bank robbery, or a musical performance disrupted by pre-arranged heckling.
Decades on, the younger Fangs have done their best to break away from their beginnings, asserting themselves as artists in their own right.
Annie (Nicole Kidman) is an erratic but respected movie star, while her brother Baxter, played by Bateman himself, is a less successful novelist.
Still, both are marked by childhood experiences that could well be understood as psychological abuse, and Bateman as director is concerned with trauma more than quirk.
His instinct, a sound one, is to steer as far away as possible from Wes Anderson's bright colours and symmetrical framing: the look is naturalistic when it's not outright sinister.
The present-day sequences in the Fang family home are often dominated by darkness, as if to hint at some Gothic secret never brought to light – echoing Baxter's account of the novel he's working on, in which the young characters make a bid for escape only to be trapped once more.
This is an actor's film, though Bateman is modest enough not to hog the spotlight. Playing a variant of his usual sardonic, self-loathing persona, he serves as a foil to Kidman's more elusive character – a "difficult" personality, more skittish than manic, like an empty vessel waiting to be filled by her next role.
The pair often suggest potential lovers rather than brother and sister, and incest is explicitly joked about in one of the flashbacks. But this too is finally left up in the air.
Uncertainty is something that Bateman seems to value, in contrast with the tyrannical Caleb – played by Walken as thoroughly, satisfyingly detestable, whether laying down the law about artistic integrity or chortling at his inevitably self-flattering jokes.
0 reviews
New User? Sign up