Shot, magnificently in luminous black and white, by Robbie Ryan Mike Mills' new film "C'mon C'mon" is a 'bring-your-brain-to-the-cinema' movie that's a pleasure to both watch and listen to and it features a beautifully subdued performance from Joaquin Phoenix as a radio journalist whose unlikely job it is to go around the country interviewing children about their thoughts, lives and opinions, a subject you don't find everyday at your local multiplex. It's a deeply interior picture that brings us very close indeed into the lives of its central characters while at the same time giving us an expansive view of contemporary America as good as any in recent cinema.
Fundamentally, it's a three character piece as Phoenix takes to the road with his young nephew, (a terrific performance from 11 year old Woody Norman). Basically he's babysitting the kid after his sister, the boy's mother and the film's third character, (a superb Gaby Hoffmann), has to go to take care of her schizophrenic ex-partner and very soon it's Phoenix who finds it's his nephew who is interviewing him about his feelings, thoughts etc. As well as getting him to play weird games involving dead children.
If any of this sounds strange or off-putting, it isn't. This is a surprisingly sweet and funny movie that confirms Mills as one of the best, if least prolific, directors working today and as someone with the wherewithall to go his own idiosyncratic way. "C'mon C'mon" might look like an art-movie but this great, feelgood film deserves the widest possible audience which is what it would get if were shot in colour and sentimentalized except Mills doesn't do sentimental. Absolutely terrific.
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