Every Secret Thing

Forget the movie.

Don't mean to be blunt, but that is reviewer-speak for a film which has great ambitions but never quite gels. The sound track is horrible. It gets under your skin from the very first scene and makes you wish you were anywhere else but in the threatre. Fanning and Lane, ordinarily two standouts, seems lost to a director -- formerly specializing in documentaries -- who goes out of her way to make each scene "authentic" but in fact ends up making merely them awkward and uncomfortable and atonal.

I believe this film will be remembered -- if it is remembered at all -- as another feather in the cap of Elizabeth Banks who seems determined to show Hollywood her range. She did a solid job in the under-rated screwball comedy WALK OF SHAME, she has a production credit in Pitch Perfect II (where she gave herself the role of the unctuous color commentator, a trick that goes all the way back to Rocky) and here she pulls a "Rachel McAdams" goes no-makeup in the role of a detective ... and pulls it off nicely.

Banks is the one to watch.