Over the past thirty years, Todd Haynes has been one of the leaders of New Queer Cinema. His movies have focused on housewives whose worlds have collapsed (Safe, Far from Heaven, Carol), Bob Dylan (I'm Not There) and forever chemicals (Dark Waters). Now he brings us a fictionalized account of Mary Kay LeTourneau, who infamously raped one of her students and started a family with him.

Haynes regular Julianne Moore plays the LeTourneau character, now getting interviewed by an actress (Natalie Portman) about to play her. The movie deserves credit for Haynes's direction, Moore's and Portman's performances, and the Academy Award-nominated script and cinematography (which deliberately gives the movie a fuzzy look). The downside is the music. It gets played loudly throughout much of the movie, and ends up dominating. This doesn't add anything to the movie, and it distracts from a lot of the action. They really could've done without that.

If you're looking for a good story, then this will be the movie for you, just as long as you remember that it has some of the most obnoxious music ever.

PS: LeTourneau was the daughter of John Schmitz, a congressman from Orange County and member of the John Birch Society.

This movie is based on subtext and doesn't have an overt narrative that progresses like most films.

This movie is about the about one of the worst crimes that exists - CSA (look it up). If you understand it's generational and also very difficult to comprehend this movie will hit you HARD.

That being said, this is a very well done movie about adults who are really just children. They never healed from their traumas and what ensues is a vision of how life is when you ignore that stuff.

I personally have dealt this this crap, and ignoring it is the easy way out...but leads to a unlived life. You have to put the bright lights on it which is what Natalie Portman's character does.

The movie is for people that love film as art - not narrative. It is very well done. All the acting is based on nuanced subtext. The score and the cinematography are also very well done (I love slow zooms...sue me).

Overall it's a great film if you can just absorb the artform of a well paced uncovering of the aftermath of a crime and what happens when you steal innocence. It's a truly remarkable movie that will impact people that understand this dynamic in life. 8/10.

"May December" finds Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore in an unsettling character study (literally) about an actress researching a role in a movie where she will play a 36 year old woman who had an affair with a 12 year old boy and then ended up marrying him.

This is being billed as a dark comedy, and I've seen more than one person talking about how funny it is. It's not funny in the conventional sense, but I suppose there is a certain (extremely dark) joke played on the world of actors and how they go about preparing for roles. Portman's actress character is ostensibly doing so much research because she wants to truly understand Moore's sex offender and show a sympathetic side. But at the end of the movie, Portman -- and us, the film's audience -- are no closer to really understanding Moore than we were at the beginning. So what was Portman doing, really, with all of that "research?" Is it really important to her understanding of this woman and her upcoming performance that she knows how Moore applies her makeup? I imagine this movie might seem funnier to people in the movie industry than to the casual movie goer.

What makes "May December" so unsettling is that at the center of all this is the boy, now a grown man, but who in many ways is still stuck at twelve. Are movies about subjects like this really trying to get at "truth" as they claim, or are they exploiting other people's pain? And if the latter, what role do we as an audience play in being complicit in that exploitation? This seems to me to the be crux of what director Todd Haynes is exploring in this film, and it doesn't come to a conclusion about it. It asks the question and leaves us to ponder it.

The trio of Moore, Portman, and Charles Melton as Moore's husband are giving great performances in this. Moore's is especially a fascinating creation. What if there isn't a lot of depth to this woman that Portman is trying so hard to unravel? What if she's actually just a crappy person? Where does that leave Portman and her desire to tell the other side of the story. Moore walks a knife edge with her character, and we're never completely sure whether she's the villain or the victim. Portman gets an Oscar moment of her own, a monologue delivered directly to the screen. Is she an actress truly committed to her craft, or is she just a narcissist using other people's pain and confusion for her own gain? Are all actors narcissists to a certain extent? And Melton has a few moments of heartbreaking vulnerability where the lost little boy peeks out from the facade of the man.

A juicy film that gave my wife and I a lot to chew on after we watched it.

Grade: A.