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*WARNING MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS* 

By: MARIUSZ ZUBROWSKI 

Ask a parent what their biggest fear is and most will reply, “That my child dies before me.” It’s just inbred in us: the security of knowing that one day, our children will take care of us, even bury us when need be. But what happens when the natural order of things is disrupted? What happens when your child has a serious, debilitating disease, and dies at the age of 10? What happens when your daughter kills herself after a long bout of depression? What happens when you see their cold, empty corpse just sitting in front of you, for the last time? Of course, it is the mother and father, their love, their mindset, and their future that takes the strain. 

Jake Scott’s (son of Ridley Scott) “Welcome to the Rileys” explores themes such as the loss of a child and the mending of the heart that follows such a death, through the story of Doug (James Gandolfini) and Lois Riley (Melissa Leo), whose child’s demise is presented in the film’s opening scene – a shot of a wrecked car, with flames engulfing it. Both Doug and Lois have different coping mechanisms. Doug is a gambling man who regularly cheats on his wife with a young waitress, and then hides in the garage of his house, cries and smokes. Lois has developed a severe case of agoraphobia, refusing to leave the house for years, thus acquiring a dependency for prescription medication. Both continue to neglect their marriage. 

There is a juxtaposition between Doug, whose loss at the hands of destiny makes him strive for absolute control over anything and everything he can, and Lois, whose newly-found fear forces her into blind obedience and paranoia. However, Doug meets Mallory (Kristen Stewart), a teenage runaway-turned-stripper, in New Orleans. With Mallory — who appears to be a scantily-clad, foul-mouthed, under-educated resurrection of their daughter, Emily — the dynamic equilibrium is quickly disrupted. 

Mallory is neither the anti-thesis nor compliment of either Doug or Lois; in fact, she retains features from both characters. She maintains the need for power, which she gets through sexuality, while still having the destructive paranoia of Lois. This balance makes both Doug and Lois, who ultimately conquers her fears in an attempt to rejuvenate her failing marriage, equally important in their journey to lead Mallory towards a brighter future. 

It’s hard not to commend Stewart for venturing into even darker territory than “The Runaways,” but it’s even harder not to praise her performance as Mallory, to which she gives it her all, thus making the character accessible to the audience, even through the tough subject matter. This makes her work in the “Twilight” series, though initially profitable, a professional blunder that will hurt Stewart’s credibility in the long-run. 

However, Gandolfini and Leo also have had their fair share of bad performances (“All the King’s Men,” “The Taking of Pelham 123,” “Everybody’s Fine,” “Righteous Kill”). Nevertheless, they both bring an immense level of talent to the film, working off the chemistry between the three characters — although Doug’s compulsive need for control makes his relationship to Mallory a tad creepy at times, which retracts from otherwise excellent acting. However, that is due to a script which could have used some fine tuning and revision. 

Penned by Ken Hixon, “Welcome to the Rileys” has its moments of flat dialogue, which almost border on laughable, and a cliché ending. But there is enough dramatic buildup and the great performances compensate for the less than polished screenplay. However, make no mistake, there are a couple of fantastic scenes, namely when Doug visits the cemetery were his daughter is buried and the camera focuses on three tombstones, two being reserved for Lois and himself, and one for their daughter, whose death date has already been marked. 

It’s scenes like these that really propel the film past Hixon’s rickety script and Scott’s bland direction. Admittedly, the overall film is beneath the standards that its leading performers set, but luckily, there is just enough for “Welcome to the Rileys” not to fall into the realm of Lifetime specials (aka faux-family dramas) and to satisfy its audience.



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Regardless of topic, themes or pedigree, a film starring Kristen Stewart is certain to draw a crowd. The programming staff at the 2010 Brisbane International Film Festival certainly think so, whilst incessant internet chatter does little to prove the proposition wrong.


Of course, the majority of hype that surrounds Stewart’s work has been generated on the back of her involvement as Bella Swan in the Twilight series, with Stewart-mania sweeping the teen demographic alongside the equally catchy and inexplicable Robert Pattinson craze.

In her latest film, Stewart shares the spotlight with two other actors also well-known for stand-out roles (James Gandolfini as Tony Soprano in New Jersey gangster opus The Sopranos, and Melissa Leo as Kay Howard in the under-appreciated classic cop series Homicide: Life On The Streets), in a feature from a director with his own share of entertainment baggage as well (Jake Scott, son of Robin Hood-helmer Ridley, and nephew of The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 filmmaker Tony).

Indeed, it is apt that reinvention is the name of the game in the film in question, withWelcome To The Rileys unravelling as an earnest and endearing feature that showcases the best of all involved.

Stepping out of his father’s shadow in his second effort, Scott (director of 1999′s Plunkett And MacLeane) delves into a world of second chances in a premise brimming with redemptive potential. Similarly, despite Stewart, Gandolfini and Leo having proven themselves as quite capable thespians in a range of previous efforts (Stewart in Into The Wild and Adventureland, Gandolfini in The Man Who Wasn’t There and In The Loop, and Leo in The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada and her Oscar-nominated performance in Frozen River), each too finally wades out from underneath the weight of the work that they are best known for.


One can only hope that the Welcome To The Rileys will make inroads into changing the public perception of the director and key cast, with each deserving of acclaim and attention in an exploration of the road less travelled for a trio of personalities united by grief but otherwise painfully alone.


After thirty years of marriage Doug and Lois Riley (Gandolfini, Where The Wild Things Are, and Leo, Dear Lemon Lima) are caught in limbo, unable to move on from the sudden death of their daughter years earlier. Doug turns to gambling (a weekly poker match) and adultery (a local waffle waitress, played by Law And Order‘s Eisa Davis), whilst Lois channels her grief into her home, with infrequent visits from her hairdresser, pastor and sister (Ally Sheedy, Life During Wartime) her only outside contact.


On a business trip to New Orleans, a strip club sojourn causes Doug to meet sixteen year old Mallory (Stewart, The Runaways), a streetwise runaway who wears her own share of hardships on her sleeve. Desperate for money, Mallory attempts to lure Doug in as a client, yet despite his refusal an unlikely bond forms between the plumbing salesman and the stripper.


Unable to return to his strained, static life with Lois, Doug offers Mallory $100 a day to stay with her, an offer that will have a profound effect on his marriage, her well-being, and his wife’s ability to process their loss and move on.

Under a layer of emotional padding that is never forced nor false, at its core Welcome To The Rileys is a coming of age story about a grieving couple and a self-destructive sex worker.
Although slow-moving at first, Ken Hixon’s (Inventing The Abbotts) script paints a deliberate and delicate picture of tortured souls (mourning for loved ones as well as for that sense of self that each has lost) and tragic paths, intersecting and connecting courtesy of inertia and fate.
As the film progresses, from humble beginnings the manifestation of latent possibility within each character becomes known, with perception (the cheating husband, the unresponsive wife, the cheap stripper) and reality (the father in suspended animation, the mother wracked with guilt, the little girl lost but too proud to admit it) augmented to poignant effect.


Heightened by outstanding performances from the three central actors (each worlds away from their better-known stereotypes), as well as considered and patient direction from Scott, though the themes may be familiar the end result is surprising, in a solid and sweet, honest and heartfelt examination of the mysteries of broken hearts and absent minds.
Welcome To The Rileys screens on November 6 and 13, 2010 at the Brisbane International Film Festival.


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4 out of 5 STARS


As the son of one of the most famous filmmakers in the world, some would think that you would have an easier time at becoming a filmmaker yourself than say the average guy on the street. Jake Scott, son of Ridley Scott (Gladiator) is releasing his second feature film ten years after his first, Plunkett & Macleane which was a disaster in the eyes of the press. While Plunkett & Macleane admittedly has many, many flaws, you wonder if this first time filmmaker was not the son of Ridley Scott if he would have been judged in such a harsh manor.

My guess is the film would have received bad reviews and then Jake Scott and his film would have been quickly forgotten, rather than the repeated lashings he received in the press.


Either way I am happy that he has dusted himself off and decided to give it another try, after all we learn the most from our failures. Welcome to the Riley’s is the absolute polar opposite to Plunkett & Maclean, the Riley’s is an intimate portrait of three characters who are coping with the tragedy of death. The Riley’s, Doug (James Gandolfini) and Lois (Melissa Leo) are trying to make it through daily life after the loss of their daughter. Doug a plumbing contractor suffers silently while Lois has locked herself in her own house. Doug while on a business trip to New Orleans meets Malory (Kristen Stewart) a runaway stripper who may be sixteen. Doug is drawn to Malory and the memory of his daughter and decides to save her.


Jake Scott sticks to small intimate shots for the film, despite the tempting backdrop of New Orleans. He is able to create a very intimate portrait of these three characters, while avoiding the pitfalls of the material by keeping the film form being too melodramatic. The story could have been filled with repeated scenes of sobbing but thankfully this is not the route Scott has taken. . Ken Hixon’s screenplay instead unfolds much like real life, with out a clean tidy package at the end, it is truer to life. The characters are kept real, their reactions are not magnified for the sake of the camera. The result is a connection with each character that hooks you into the film.


The casting for the film is simply brilliant. Gandolfini just has to smile and you like the guy, this was always a mystery to me, especially as I would find myself oddly drawn to his character Tony Soprano, who despite the many acts of violence he inflicts on screen is someone I like. It is that Ganolfini charm that makes the misguided Doug so lovable even as he shacks up with a sixteen year old runaway. Jake Scott has managed to captures the raw performances of James Gandolfini and Kristen Stewart.


Kristen Stewart may be on the road to redemption as a credible actress after her repeated role as Bella in the Twilight series. I could not decide whether I should credit Gandofini with her improved performance, as he is on screen with her almost the entire time. But to be fair Stewart deserves to have her performance noted and as we have seen in The Yellow Handkerchief and The Runaways this year there are possibilities for Stewart beyond Twilight and perhaps a depth to her abilities to be discovered. Stewart has raised the bar.


Melissa Leo gives one of the most powerful yet subtle performances of her career. It is through very small gestures and the use of few words that she is able to convey a mothers morning and sense of guilt surrounding her daughters death. Her performance is riveting.


As with Scott’s choice to keep the camera angle intimate he also smartly makes this choice with the films score. While New Orleans is a city filled with fun party music Welcome to the Riley’s is not. Scott entrusts the score to Marc Streitenfeld who creates a score that is quite and full of emotion and subtle enough to not undermine the story.


I am so pleased that Scott decided to “have another go at it” Welcome to the Riley’s is one of the few films I have chosen to watch twice this year. Let’s hope we do not have to wait another ten years for the next one.



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Although completed in 2008, it wasn’t until after Sundance 2010 and a tour on the festival circuit that Jake Scott’s WELCOME TO THE RILEYS found a distribution home and will now be welcomed into theatres around the country.



A little gem of a film that’s faceted on many levels but still with a few rough edges, WELCOME TO THE RILEYS is an emotionally complex character study of a family in crisis, with an interesting introspective story, visually stimulating look and performances that are at times, off the charts excellent.


Lois and Doug look like your average upper middle class, Midwestern couple. Lois is slender, immaculately groomed and coifed and wears her June Cleaver pearls everyday while puttering around the family home. Her hairdresser even comes to the house. Furnishings in the home reflect a woman of quality and taste. She appears to want for nothing, yet always looks sad and terse. Doug, on the other hand, looks like your average blue collar Joe. A bit portly, khaki Dockers and plaid cotton button down shirts with pens and other assorted items in the shirt pocket are his daily dress. A sport coat gets tossed on for those really important days.


Starting out in life as a plumber, he now owns a chain of plumbing stores, but has retained his work ethic, routine and simple style. He hides in his workroom in the garage when he wants a cigarette and one night a week he gets together with the boys for a friendly game of poker. After poker, for at least the past four years, he goes to the local waffle house. He sits in the same booth, is waited on by the same waitress - Vivian, tells the same stories, orders the same food, and then goes home with Vivian. A kindly nice woman, she has been Joe’s mistress for some time, filling a cavernous emotional void that exists between Doug and Lois.


Eight years ago, Doug and Lois lost their teenaged daughter in a car accident. Ever since, Lois has been crippled with agoraphobia, shutting herself away in the house, never even stepping out the door. Doug, himself suffering the emotional scars of his daughter’s death, has forced himself to go on, to roll up his sleeves and move on, try and fix his broken heart and to live life (thus his mistress), but he has been further damaged by Lois’ self-imposed hibernation and indifference to him.


Heading off to New Orleans for a plumbing convention, Doug has every intention of bringing Vivian with him but is then is dealt another emotional blow. Showing up at the waffle house for his usual night of food and frolic, and to bring Vivian an early birthday present she can use on the trip, he learns that Vivian is dead. Lost and alone, Doug begs Lois to join him, but to no avail. So he does what he always does. He puts one foot in front of the other and although going through the motions, is more emotionally lost than ever; that is until he gets to the Big Easy and meets Mallory.


A young runaway now working as a stripper and hooker, Mallory has had no easy life. She is as fragile and broken as Doug, something with which he quickly connects; not to mention the fact she strongly resembles his deceased daughter. Seeing Mallory as something he can “fix”, rather than do what most guys would do in his situation, he embraces her with a fatherly love, taking her under his wing, healing himself and hopefully her, as well. But the relationship also sparks some rash decisions by Doug that have a domino effect, not the least of which is spurring Lois to try to save both her marriage and herself. What develops is nothing short of miraculous.


I can think of no one who can bring the emotional and physical gravitas to the role of Doug but for James Gandolfini. He has a strength and power, balanced with a teddy bearish comfort and vulnerability that is embraceable. He makes you feel for Doug; feel his pain, his losses - losses that just keep on coming. You ache with him. On the flip side, he also draws you into Doug’s joyous moments. You smile with him.


Gandolfini brings a sense of pride and dignity to Doug that is almost touchable it’s so real. And his relationship with Kristen Stewart is brilliant. Seeing them on screen together, you find yourself believing this burly teddy bear of a man would be a great father - strict, but loving and kind. Surprisingly, where Gandolfini does falter is with his Indiana accent, which is intermittent at best.


If you have seen “The Yellow Handkerchief”, you have seen Kristen Stewart at her best - multi-faceted and textured, with emotional nuances one would never suspect she possessed had you only seen her in the “Twilight” movies. WELCOME TO THE RILEYS was lensed after filming of “Twilight” but before Stewart became a “star” and before “The Yellow Handkerchief.” It is evident that as Mallory, Stewart’s talents grow, serving as a stepping stone to her future work. You can see the transition and maturity of her performance from “Twilight” to “Handkerchief” through this performance as Mallory. With a defiant childlike innocence, like Gandolfini, Stewart also brings this vulnerability and emotional confusion to the part that not only serves as an interactive character catalyst but strengthens her bond with Gandolfini’s Doug. Watching Stewart, you feel her sense of fear - fear of life, fear of her past, fear of her future - all of which draws you deeper into the character. At the end of the day, you actually see that Stewart can act and steps it up when playing against superlative seasoned performers.


Melissa Leo gives one of her most textured and evocative performances as Lois. With a quiet awkward, uncomfortableness, midway in the film Lois blossoms with the exuberance of youth, like a kid in a candy store or ripping open presents on Christmas morning. Leo radiates joy and lightness and then slowly settles into a confident persona that you believe is how she would be had life not dealt her a bad deck of cards. Leo’s is perhaps the most fascinating and transformative performance of the group.


Written by Ken Hixon, WELCOME TO THE RILEYS is intriguing to watch unfold. Although cliched to an extent and often uneven and at times, unsettling in the pacing and story, the relationships and interpretations of the human condition are propelled by compelling performances that overcome the film’s pitfalls. With the relationship between Doug and Mallory at the heart of the film, the scenes between Gandolfini and Stewart are so powerful, it is impossible to turn away. You want to see what develops, how each impacts the other.


Enjoyable is Hixon’s insertion of cute comedic elements that are fed by the traits of Doug’s character. It’s easy to see any father of his generation toying with his daughter over use of foul language or playing “dumb” with words or situations, pushing her to think and come out of her own closed shell. Very endearing.


Fueling all of this is the direction by Jake Scott. Obviously calling on genetics for his visual eye (he is the son of Ridley Scott), Scott, along with cinematographer Christopher Soos, exhibit two very distinct looks, styles and energies; the first, the Riley home in Indiana - very cool, soft and soothing; the second, New Orleans and the world of Mallory which is post-Katrina, gritty, dark and nighttime neon. Lensing style in New Orleans also has a terse, hard, choppy look similar to many of Scott’s earlier music video works, while Indiana is shot with more fluid camera movements, particularly when concentrating on Lois. The camera truly celebrates Lois’ transformation throughout the film with almost and ethereal glow.


Surprising is Marc Streitenfeld’s score which is the complete antithesis of what we expect in a New Orleans set film. While staying true to the musicality of the region and its history, Streitenfeld brings a calming quiet to the score that is as uplifting and impactful as the performances of Gandolfini, Stewart and Leo.


With a subtle emotional build, intricately nuanced and believable performances that are deeply affective, touching the heart, WELCOME TO THE RILEYS rolls out the welcome mat to each of us.



Source / via: WTTR Saturday

3 out of 5 STARS

SCREENED AT THE 2010 BOSTON FILM FESTIVAL:





"Welcome to the Rileys" is not a tremendously complicated movie, but it is somewhat elegant in its construction.

Its characters, their backgrounds, and their actions fit together like two components of a model whose pieces have been precisely manufactured to have complementary shapes, which in a certain way is what they are. Still, the filmmakers do a good enough job of disguising some of the seams, keeping it from looking too prefabricated.


It's been a few years since the Rileys' daughter Emily died, and neither of them are really in good shape. Lois (Melissa Leo) has become acutely agoraphobic, never leaving the house; Doug (James Gandolfini) has settled on a different routine, one centered around a Thursday night poker game, followed by waffles at an all-night diner, followed by a tryst with waitress Vivian (Eisa Davis). This time, he mentions to her that he's got a business trip to New Orleans soon; would she like to come? Once there, though, someone else catches his eye: Mallory (Kristen Stewart), an runaway teen stripper who stirs his paternal instincts. When he sells his business to stay down there after the convention, Lois realizes that this may be it unless she does something.


What writer Ken Hixon is going for here is pretty obvious - these people have gaps in their lives that the others can fill, although the Rileys are soon going to realize that Mallory isn't Emily. It's constructed fairly well, though. The trigger for Lois's agoraphobia is very basic, but Hixon and director Jake Scott let the audience make the connection rather than force it.


Doug has a gratifyingly similar reaction to the audience upon seeing a pre-purchased cemetery plot. Scott and Hixon deftly avoid pointing out that Mallory allowing Doug to pay for the privilege of looking out for her is not far off from the stripping and prostitution that she regularly engages in, which would likely make the movie creepier than intended, but the idea is there to chew on if the viewer wants to.


For all that the larger structure of the movie is well-formed, with fitting parallels and metaphors, it occasionally hits some rather strange notes. Lois's attempts to leave the house are played as broad slapstick, sharply undercutting the desperation she must be feeling and making a character we need to respect look foolish besides. Similarly, Doug's first encounters with Mallory seem rather forced; a strip club seems and odd place to be writing in a notebook, seemingly annoyed by the disrobing young women trying to get his attention. It indicates something odd in Doug's head that bears investigation that doesn't happen. On the other end, there's something a bit off-putting about how, as the film goes on, Mallory is treated less as an individual with her own problems and strengths and more as a catalyst for the Rileys to deal with their issues.


The cast does well enough in their roles, although this movie isn't likely to be a career highlight for any of them. Gandolfini gives Doug the feel of someone who has attained a fair amount of success by hard work but has retained a certain amount of blue-collar openness. He's generally warm, but there's also a bitter, demanding side that can come out. Leo (with make-up and hairdo that makes me wonder if the producers originally wanted to cast Helen Mirren) does well in not over-emphasizing Lois's phobias in the first half, but letting her seem normal in her home territory. She's good enough that the forced comedy and surprising functionality in the outside world after five or six years in her house seem believable. Kristen Stewart also turns in decent work as Mallory; even as she gets pushed from lead to supporting character over the course of the movie, she keeps the girl an consistent but changing individual.


Between them, the cast and crew make a tidy-though-enjoyable drama which uses its New Orleans setting well without making it a NOLA-specific story. It's got decent performances, although I suspect that the actors could have delivered even more had the movie left some of its fits a little less perfect and polished its rough patches a little more.

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A Beautiful Honest Film...


"My friends and I talked for an hour about this movie after we saw it last night. We each were touched by the story and and connected in our own different ways. The filmmaker did not rely on pathos or tricks. We cared about each of the characters. It was quiet, lovely and real. The performances are Oscar worthy."


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Welcome to the Rileys soundtrack is now available for purchase.
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Get yours today!!

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