One Liners: Quiet Rebellions

A QUIET PASSION (B) - Terence Davies bounces back from the interminably dreary "Sunset Song" for this dour but powerful biography of poet Emily Dickinson, starring Cynthia Nixon in a role she seems to have been born to play.

Davies crafts a gorgeous period piece, delicate and moving throughout. Nixon rattles everything around her as the rebellious poet and social dissident, with a firm assist from Jennifer Ehle as Emily's sister, Vinnie, and Catherine Bailey as their free-spirited friend.

Events unfold at a glacial pace, but so elegantly and passionately that it holds your attention for a full two hours. The lighting is often dim, and rooms claustrophobic, no surprise coming from Davies, the hand behind "Distant Voices, Still Lives" and "The Deep Blue Sea."

Nothing that he throws at Nixon is too much for her to handle. Even her suffering from Bright's Disease somehow rises above standard TV Movie of the Week fare. Meantime, Dickinson's poetry -- along with her quirky style (involving many dashes) -- are celebrated with on-screen graphics and reverent narration. (Right up to the inevitable "Because I could not stop for death ...")

"A Quiet Passion" is a slow-burning family drama, with a rare sighting of Keith Carradine as the stern patriarch. It is a powerful and enduring character study.

LITTLE MEN (B-minus) - A sober but occasionally twee little comic drama pits two families in a business dispute, with the two adolescent sons

From the Ira Sachs earnestness factory -- see also "Keep the Lights On" and "Love Is Strange" -- comes this low-key slice of life about small businesses and class distinctions. The Jardine family, led by Brian (Greg Kinnear), owns a building in Brooklyn that houses a mom-and-pop (without the pop) tailor shop run by Leonor Cavelli (eminent Chilean actress Paulina Garcia), who has a son, Tony, who has a strong Brooklyn accent and dreams of being an actor someday. When his father dies, Brian assumes control of the building and discovers that his dad had been letting Leonor slide on ridiculously low rent for years, something Brian intends to rectify in the now-hip neighborhood.

Tony befriends the Jardines' son, the sensitive budding artist Jake (Theo Taplitz), setting up a generational battle between the wise-beyond-their-years boys and the squabbling adults locked in a gentrification showdown. Expect the boys to teach the adults a lesson or two in human kindness.

Sachs fusses over his characters and their dialogue with mixed results; at times he finds some fundamental truths while occasionally coming off as stagy. (It doesn't help that Brian is a local theater director.) Like "Love Is Strange," this one can be a little too tidy at times, and its impact fades fairly quickly. This is another solidly entertaining slice of life.

With Jennifer Ehle, mostly in the background as the loyal wife, making this an inadvertent double feature.