NYFCS: Every Secret Thing (Rhoades)

Front Row at the Movies

 

NYFCS Advance Screening:  "Every Secret Thing" Tries to Keep Its Secrets

Reviewed by Shirrel Rhoades

Moviegoers aren’t just into instant gratification these days. Rather than waiting in line for a film’s scheduled opening, we’re jumping the gun by going to test screenings, attending premieres and festivals, and catching advance showings.

Tropic Cinema offers that with its participation in the New York Film Critics Series, monthly advance showings of films accompanied by interviews with stars and directors.

NYFCS Producer Mark Ehrenkranz picks the films. Then he turns it over to Rolling Stone film critic Peter Travers to conduct the après film interviews.

This Tuesday is the latest NYFCS offering, a suspenseful crime film titled "Every Secret Thing."

 

A police detective (Elizabeth Banks) is despondent over having failed to save a missing infant seven years earlier from two young monsters (Dakota Fanning and Danielle Macdonald), and is now

worried that tragedy may strike again when another youngster disappears on the day this dangerous duo is released from prison.

The mother of one of the girls (Diane Lane) offers the solution to this whodunit. There are lots of plot twists, flashbacks, deus-ex-machina gimmicks, and unreliable narration that require Lane to explain what’s happened.

A pet project of actress-turned-producer Frances McDormand, she bought the option to Laura Lippman’s same-named book, hired Nicole Holofcener ("Enough Said") to write the screenplay, and tapped Amy Berg ("Deliver Us From Evil") to direct.

Mostly a female cast, the sex scenes have a LGBT bent. Little Dakota Fanning has grown up. The twist ending depends on this cinematic permissiveness.

But if you catch this advance screening at the Tropic, don’t reveal the ending. McDormand and Company have worked real hard to fool the audience, so let them try.

srhoades@aol.com