Nell (1994)
Directed by Michael Apted
In a remote woodland cabin, a small town doctor discovers Nell — a beautiful young hermit woman with many secrets.
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What critics compared Nell to
His journey is a father figure arc that works thanks to the exceptional German child actress Zengel, who recalls Michael Apted’s “Nell” (1994) when she first appears in the wilderness.
(Given that she’s tied up through most of the picture, there’s little more she’s able to do.) It’s a brave, unglamorous performance that exposes Jodie Foster’s “Nell” for the goofy, theatrical sham that it is.
If all it was was 90 minutes of them reading the phone book, all would be well, especially since they’d do it in a made-up language that’s far cooler than Jodie Foster’s in “Nell” though not nearly as cool as Milla Jovovich’s in “The Fifth Element.”
The details of their quest are hazy because Hanks speaks a type of baby talk similar to Jodie Foster’s in “Nell.”
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Is this meant to be just a surface gag, and any noggin from any movie stand-up from the period would have served (say, Tom Hanks’ from Forrest Gump or Jim Carrey’s from The Mask or Jodie Foster’s from Nell )?
Even Foster's performance, good as it is, skirts self-parody when it recalls some of her other pictures (The Accused, The Silence of the Lambs, Nell) by positing her as some kind of middlebrow authentication of earnest female self-empowerment.
In her first role in three years (since 1994's embarrassing "Nell"), she brings to the screen what's possibly the most complete portrait of a scientist the movies have ever given us.