The Kids Are All Right

Julianne Moore, Annette Bening and Mark Ruffalo deliver some of the year’s finest performances in director Lisa Cholodenko’s funny, emotional tornado of a movie. Moore and Bening play Jules and Nic, a married couple with two children (Mia Wasikowska and Josh Hutcherson) conceived through artificial insemination. The kids choose to meet their biological father (Ruffalo, who has never been so good), and all sorts of complications, both funny and heart-wrenching, ensue. This is just a great movie about a family and the hardship of keeping a marriage afloat, as the years pile on, and the kids get older. Bening and Moore are so good it hurts, and they have some major chemistry in this movie. Ruffalo, who just got the role of The Hulk in the upcoming Avengers movie, gets high marks for his portrayal of a super-charming bastard of a man.