Definition: In this task, you are given a text of many news articles seperated by special token "|||||". Your task is to summarize them.
Input: Enlarge Screen Media Films An Oscar- worthy turn: Keanu Reeves also stars in The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, but it's Robin Wright who drives this comedy/drama. ABOUT THE MOVIE ABOUT THE MOVIE The Private Lives of Pippa Lee 
  
 * * * (out of four) 
  
 Stars: Robin Wright, Alan Arkin , Keanu Reeves , Maria Bello, Monica Bellucci , Blake Lively , Winona Ryder 
  
 Director: Rebecca Miller 
  
 Distributor: Screen Media Films 
  
 Rating: R for sexual content, brief nudity, some drug material and language 
  
 Running time: 1 hour, 33 minutes 
  
 Opens Friday in select cities Every once in a while, a multidimensional role comes along that seems tailor-made for an actor. It happens less often for actresses, particularly those over 40 – which makes The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, featuring an Oscar-worthy turn by Robin Wright, a truly happy surprise. INTERVIEW: Wright keeps focus on her work, not her divorce Wright gives the title character a complexity and emotional shading often missing in this kind of ensemble comedy/drama. Pippa has the feel of a heroine in literature, rather than on the big screen. Pippa, 50, is the seemingly serene wife of successful publisher Herb Lee (Alan Arkin), who is 30 years her senior. She seems to have it all: a good marriage, successful twentysomething children, wealth, good looks and glowing health. She even weathers a move with her husband to a sleepy retirement community, his "pre-emptive strike against decrepitude." But things slowly start to unravel, and the tumultuous past she tried to ignore comes back to haunt her. It sounds like standard chick flick/Lifetime movie stuff, but because of the strong cast and a few surprising twists, it rises above expectations for the genre. While the plot can be a bit episodic and has a whiff of the familiar, the psychologically astute dialogue by writer/director Rebecca Miller (The Ballad of Jack and Rose) rings true. Keanu Reeves has an appealing, low-key turn as the lost-soul son of Pippa's neighbor, and Blake Lively does a nice job as the young and wilder Pippa. But the best performance, next to the nuanced and evocative portrait painted by Wright, is that of Maria Bello. She plays young Pippa's charismatic but deeply diet-pill-addicted mother. It's a particularly fearless performance. As the mystery of Pippa's character unfolds, her comfortable world topples around her. But she has the grace and wisdom to sway with it. Guidelines: You share in the USA TODAY community, so please keep your comments smart and civil. Don't attack other readers personally, and keep your language decent. Use the "Report Abuse" button to make a difference. You share in the USA TODAY community, so please keep your comments smart and civil. Don't attack other readers personally, and keep your language decent. Use the "Report Abuse" button to make a difference. Read more ||||| Robin Wright has her juiciest role since “Forrest Gump” in Rebecca Miller’s “The Private Lives of Pippa Lee,” a starry, semi-satirical version of ’70s feminist dramas like “Diary a Mad Housewife” and “An Unmarried Woman.” 
  
 If the title “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown” weren’t already taken, it would fit this uneven movie, and not only because of Wright’s Pippa Lee, who is coming apart after moving to a Connecticut retirement community. 
  
 Our 40-ish heroine has long been married to the much older Herb (Alan Arkin), a publisher who refuses to give up work entirely after three heart attacks — and increasingly vocally resents that Pippa has become his caretaker. 
  
 That — and the sudden arrival of Chris (Keanu Reeves), the hunky 35-year-old unemployed, emotionally damaged and newly single son of a neighbor (Shirley Knight) — triggers a series of sleepwalking episodes. 
  
 Pippa Lee’s façade as a perfect hostess — she’s described as “a mystery and an enigma” by a friend — is also cracking under the strain of memories of her turbulent youth. 
  
 Maria Bello once again pushes the envelope as Pippa Lee’s emotionally volatile, pill-popping mother, whose mood swings eventually force the teenage Pippa Lee to flee to a lesbian aunt in Manhattan. 
  
 But there, Pippa Lee encounters her aunt’s girlfriend (a nifty cameo by Julianne Moore), who offers a taste of “dangerous” fun. 
  
 Pippa Lee (played as a young woman by Blake Lively) falls in with a druggy art crowd in the 1970s. 
  
 But she gravitates toward the controlling Herb, even though he has a wife (Monica Belluci) who is arguably even crazier than even her mother. 
  
 Back in the present, Pippa Lee has a hyper-dramatic, untrustworthy best friend (a very funny Winona Ryder) and a daughter (the always excellent Zoe Kazan) who despises her, risking her life as a photojournalist in the Middle East. 
  
 Miller never really fleshes out all of these colorful characters in her emotionally facile script, leaving the heavy lifting to the actors. 
  
 Fortunately for “The Private Lives of Pippa Lee,” Wright is more than up to the challenge. 
  
 lou@lumenick.com ||||| Perched uncomfortably between flat whimsy and Lifetime movie crescendos, the coming-of-middle-age comic drama "The Private Lives of Pippa Lee" is rough going.Writer-director Rebecca Miller, adapting her own novel about a 50-year-old people-pleasing housewife's long overdue reassessment of her life, is after the elusive charm of a highbrow chick flick. To that end, she's shrewd enough to cast melancholic beauty Robin Wright as the title character, who upon moving into a well-appointed Connecticut retirement community with her retired publisher husband (Alan Arkin) begins to reflect on the various women she's been before her current perfect-spouse persona.To watch Wright's deceptively tranquil face process a humiliating family hiccup, or Arkin explore the contours of a professional grouch, is to know what pleasurably deep acting can do. But the trouble starts when Pippa's flashbacks -- to her pill-popping manic-depressive mother (an overwrought Maria Bello), to her rebel angel teen self (an ethereally pretty if lukewarm Blake Lively), and finally to her husband's crazy first wife (Monica Bellucci, doing her own thing) -- let loose a swarm of tonal inconsistencies that Miller never fuses into anything meaningful. Pippa's crisis of guilt -- about troubled lives she couldn't fix and parts of her personality she rashly abandoned -- is ultimately swamped by Miller's own sketchy grasp of what's funny or heartbreaking or illuminating about her characters.The kick is that she gets close enough at times with her material -- a cagey bit of casting here (Keanu Reeves as a prickly yet trustworthy neighbor), a good line there -- to at least warrant a sympathetic wince when it goes off the rails, as when she crams in an animated scene or swerves into head-scratching melodramatics (the less said about Winona Ryder's whiny character the better). Overall, though, it's a drearily off-kilter effort from a filmmaker who navigated humor and pathos well in her last feature, "The Ballad of Jack and Rose." Where Pippa has many inner selves, Miller is regrettably just all over the place. |||||
Output:
The ensemble melodrama The Private Lives of Pippa Lee is receiving largely lukewarm reviews, but most critics agree that star Robin Wright Penn's top-notch performance gives it a vital lift. Wright , as a former wild child turned desperately bored middle-aged housewife, "is the miracle this picture needs, helping the material achieve an emotional tempo it wouldn’t otherwise reach without her stellar contribution," writes Brian Orndorf. Writer-director Rebecca Miller, adapting her own novel, "is after the elusive charm of a highbrow chick flick," writes Robert Abele at the Los Angeles Times, but the movie has ended up perched "uncomfortably between flat whimsy and Lifetime movie crescendos." "The plot can be a bit episodic and has a whiff of the familiar," writes Claudia Puig at USA Today, but a strong cast, including Keanu Reeves as Pippa's intriguing next-door neighbor, helps it rise above the genre. "Miller never really fleshes out all of these colorful characters in her emotionally facile script, leaving the heavy lifting to the actors," writes Lou Lumenick at the New York Post. "Fortunately ... Wright is more than up to the challenge."