Wild

Director Jean-Marc Vallee follows up last year's Oscar fave Dallas Buyers Club with another blatant awards grubber in Wild, based on the memoir by Cheryl Strayed. Reese Witherspoon plays Strayed, who in 1995 hiked over 1,000 miles along the Pacific Crest Trail, exorcising the demons that occupied the space left by her mother's untimely death. Much like Dallas Buyers Club, Wild is a mix of unguarded rawness and mawkish calculation, equal parts honest inspiration and mercenary ambition. Witherspoon is very good, not just deglamorized but immersed, and Laura Dern is every bit her equal as Strayed's mother (another “dream Mom” role for Dern to match her turn earlier this year in The Fault in Our Stars). The editing, cinematography, sound design, nonlinear Nick Hornby script and PCT scenery are all exquisite, so perhaps the entire project is just a little too Hike, Pray, Love for this particular critic's taste.