AWFJ Movie of the Week, Jan. 19-25: CAKE
Opening Jan. 23, the AWFJ Movie of the Week is Cake, the new drama from writer-director Daniel Barnz (Beastly, Won’t Back Down) which has been garnering huge critical buzz for Jennifer Aniston’s central performance. Am actress known for her comedy prowess, Aniston puts in a dark, dramatic turn as Claire Bennett, a woman caught in the throws of a very personal tragedy who becomes obsessed with the suicide of a young woman (Anna Kendrick) from her local pain support group with whom she converses with in hallucinatory sequences. Read on…
She may have been overlooked by the Academy, but Aniston’s emotional performance is the driving force of the film,and her scenes both with Kendrick and Adriana Barazza, who plays Claire’s deliciously acerbic housekeeper Silvana, make for some truly unmissable cinema. Raw, painful and utterly absorbing, Cake is a powerful and moving study of women truly on the verge.
AWFJ Movie of the Week Panelists Comments:
Nell Minow: Cake — Because when Jennifer Aniston has an opportunity, she has breathtaking honesty as an actor.
Anne Brodie: Jennifer Aniston is so nakedly viscerally vulnerable in Cake it hurts. This is her moment.
Film Details:
Title: Cake
Director: Daniel Barnz
Release Date: Jan. 23, 2014
Running Time: 102 minutes
Language: English, Spanish
Shooting Location(s): Eagle Rock, CA
Principal Cast: Jennifer Aniston, Felicity Huffman, Sam Worthington, Anna Kendrick, Camille Mana, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Chris Messina, William H. Macy, Britt Robertson, Lucy Walters, Manuel Garcia Rulfo
Screenwriter: Patrick Tobin
Production Company: Cinelou Films, Echo Films, We’re Not Brothers Productions
Distributor: Cinelou Releasing
AWFJ Movie of the Week Panel Members: Nikki Baughan, Anne Brodie, Pam Grady, Leba Hertz, MaryAnn Johanson, Loren King, Cate Marquis, Katherine McLaughlin, Jennifer Merin, Nell Minow, Rebecca Murray, Kristy Puchko, Sheila Roberts, Sara Vizcarrando, and Jeanne Wolf.
Other Movies Opening the Week of Jan. 19-23, 2014:
Jan 20
Veronika Decides to Die
Jan. 23
The Humbling
Song One
Son of a Gun
Black Sea
Mortdecai
The Boy Next Door
R100
Cake
Red Army
Mommy
Manny
Strange Magic
Against the Sun
The Duke of Burgandy
Americons
Edited by Sandra Kraisirideja, AWFJ.org Associate Editor
