‘Drunks’ sharp study of alcoholism> Drama doesn’t take easy way out as it showcases members of A.A. Group

“Drunks” Directed by Peter Cohn. Running time: 88 minutes. Rated R (for nudity, sexual situations, adult language and content). Nightly at 5:10 and 8:55 p.m., Monday -Thursday at the Railroad Square Cinema in Waterville.

In Peter Cohn’s “Drunks,” a film about the lives of a dozen alcoholics sharing their bare-bones stories in a 12-step recovery program, there are moments that are so engrossing, you feel like a priest listening to a barrage of disturbing confessions.

The film never becomes a disease-of-the-week movie where everything comes together neatly in a triumphant, happy, everyone’s-sober-and-healthy-now ending. “Drunks” is smarter and more courageous than that. Instead, the film respects the addiction it showcases and focuses solely on one Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in the lives of its charcaters. It is honest, hard-edged, unsentimentalized, sometimes funny and unsettling in its portrait of each individual’s constant, minute-by-minute struggle with the bottle. The script demanded a strong cast to make it work, and it has one.

Comedian Richard Lewis, whom I’ve never liked, is surprisingly good as the central character Jim, an angry, recovering alcoholic who is so wired on caffeine and cigarettes (as are most of the film’s characters), he reminded me of a rabid fox, suddenly cornered, desperate and seeking a way out.

When Jim is asked by the group’s leader to deliver a “war story,” we learn that his beloved wife died three years earlier of a brain aneurysm. As one character points out, an alcoholic will use any excuse to return to drinking and Jim reacts to that observation by using his wife’s death to storm out of the meeting and take his first drink in several years.

The film then cuts from Jim’s drinking on the streets and in the bars of New York to the stories of those he left behind in the church basement. There are good performances here, three especially worth noting. Parker Posey, last seen in “The Daytrippers,” is again a standout as the chain-smoking Debbie, a funky young retro-woman who aspires to be “the Janis Joplin of the Holiday Inn circuit,” only she’ll do it clean and sober. Dianne Wiest is excellent as the quiet, struggling Rachel, a doctor who steals her patients’ Demerol and leaves her kids locked in baking-hot cars. And then there’s Faye Dunaway, who can’t seem to get away from boozy roles. First she’s knocking back drinks with Christina in the campy “Mommie Dearest,” then she’s leering over a highball glass with Mickey Rourke in “Barfly.” Now she rises to a unique dignity as the softer Becky, a woman who fears that if she loses custody of her son, she’ll start drinking again.

The film works because it shines a harsh light on ugly truths and offers no easy answers, something rather refreshing in a world searching for all things easy.

Grade: B plus

“Hollow Reed” Directed by Angela Pope. 100 minutes. Rated R (for nudity, violence, adult language and content). Nightly at 6 and 8:30 p.m., Tuesday-Thursday at Reel Pizza in Bar Harbor.

This film asks us to make a moral decision, one that will make a difference in the life of an abused child: Do we leave a child with its mother and her abusive boyfriend simply because they are a heterosexual (translation: normal) couple, or do we give custody to the child’s father, a doctor, and to his partner, a business-owner, both of whom are healthy, well-adjusted, monogamous gay men? That is the question posed in Angela Pope’s controversial new English film, “Hollow Reed.” The outcome will have people talking.

The film opens with 9-year-old Oliver (Sam Bould) running to his father’s flat after supposedly suffering a bike accident. Oliver’s father Martyn (Martin Donovan) takes Oliver to the hospital, which releases him to the care of his mother Hannah (Joely Richardson). When Martyn learns that the bike accident never happened, he questions his son, who retreats into himself and remains strangely quiet. Martyn’s worries quickly turn into suspicions when Oliver’s hand is mysteriously broken three weeks later. Though the boy says he shut his hand in a car door, doctors say that is impossible — and Martyn becomes alarmed.

As the movie unfolds, we learn that Hannah’s boyfriend Frank (Jason Flemyng) is beating Oliver. Even though Hannah is sickened by it, she cannot deal with another failed relationship, so she decides to give the man who beats her son another chance.

When Martyn discovers this, a bitter custody battle ensues. Martyn’s sexuality is brought into question in front of a judge. Which is worse? A genuinely good gay man raising his own son, or a woman who is willing to live with the man who continues to terrorize the boy she claims to love?

Even though its premise is a bit worn, I like this film. Until we come to judge people solely for their character — and not for whom they sleep with — people should see it.

Grade: B

Video of the Week

“Shine” Directed by Scott Hicks. Running time: 105 minutes. Rated: PG-13 (for nudity and adult content).

By now, you probably know the story of Australian pianist David Helfgott, who rose to international stardom last year when the story of his life was released in theaters. Geoffrey Rush won an Academy Award for his perfect mimicry of Helfgott’s obsessive, maniacal, forward-and-backward speech … and suddenly he, too, was a star.

But what about Noah Taylor, who plays Helfgott as a young man? The press and the Academy were so overwhelmed by Rush’s performance, Taylor, who carries half of the film, was overlooked. Not so here. Taylor deserved a Best Supporting Actor nod for his portrayal of the adolescent Helfgott, whose quiet descent into madness while learning — and then performing — Rachmaninoff’s emotional Piano Concerto No. 3 provides several of the film’s best moments. With John Gielgud as Helfgott’s piano teacher, and Lynn Redgrave as his wife, this film may suffer from an abrupt ending, but its stars do shine and I promise they will move you.

Grade: B plus

Christopher Smith, a writer and critic who lives in Brewer, reviews movies each Monday in the NEWS.