The Bait and the Fish

Here's a family movie for the 21st century. Forget cuddly animal adventures and commercial toy spin-offs. Live the daily reality of the thousands of kids who have just gotten divorced. If your parents' match wasn't "made in heaven," you often find yourself going through the same hell they're experiencing when the parting's over. In The Squid and the Whale writer-director and Wes Anderson collaborator Noah Baumbach presents a semiautobiographical tale of two young boys grappling with their parents' divorce in middle-class '80s Brooklyn. Hailed by critics at the Sundance, New York, Chicago International and Toronto International Film Festivals, this "convincingly tender [and] bitterly funny" (according to Premiere's Glenn Kenny) story is a testament to the resilience of children trying to understand—or just survive—their parents' most difficult decisions. Don't bring the kids to this R-rated jewel—it's more a fixer-upper for our "child" inside. Squid is part of the Magnolia at the Modern film series, winner of the Fort Worth Weekly's Reader's Choice Award for Best Film Series of 2004.
Jan. 6-8