Poor Kristen Stewart hasn't had an easy ride in the popular press. First she's constantly linked with - the pretty one-dimensional - Bella Swann from the Twilight franchise and then she gets her love-life in a tangle and everyone takes R-Patz' side.Somewhere, amid the mess of her personal life, she got round to making 'Welcome to the Riley's,' with Sopranos star James Gandolfini. Sadly, not enough people seemed to notice. It was an 'indie' film that never really got much of a mainstream release, therefore she remained 'Bella' in the press' eyes all the way through this.However, if you can give her a chance, you may get more than an hour and a half of her holding her mouth open and refusing to smile. James Gandolfini gives a - naturally - great performance as a man who had lost his teenage daughter in a car accident. On a work trip he gives his colleagues the slip and takes refuge in a strip club where he meets Kristen Stewart, who he beings a - plutonic - relationship with, treating her like a surrogate daughter.That's about it as far as the plot goes. At first (the beginning twenty minutes) I was pretty disinterested and was wondering what I got into. However, I was very pleased with how it transpired. It's actually quite a tender story of emotionally damaged people coming together.It's certainly not a laugh a minute and is the sort of film that you have to be in quite a deep, reflective, thoughtful mood to really appreciate (or just want to see Kristen Stewart not surrounded by computer generated monsters).Nice film. Give it a try.

Welcome To The Rileys premiered at Sundance in early 2010 and received a worthy amount of recognition. The film also received a little bit of notice from the press because of its young star, Kristen Stewart from the Twilight franchise but believe me, this isn't a fantasy or love story. What I loved about this film from the very beginning is that there was something unsettling about it, when you first hear the piano theme that runs throughout the film, it immediately made an impression on me. Also, the first shot of Doug (played by James Gandolfini) smoking a cigarette, it's a very tight close up that for reasons which I can't put into words, made me feel like I was in for a different experience. The style of the film through my eyes sort of feels like a dark horror film or maybe a film noir.Of course, I was surprised by this because I knew what the story was about but I was still surprised and stunned at how gritty this film is. The story sort of sounds like something that we have seen a lot in movies from the past but it's handled in a way that is completely different and it even stands out on its own. I won't give away character or story details but on the surface, this may seem like a predictable movie but watch the characters more and see how they think or feel, it's truly impressive.I will comment on the performances before I end this review, James Gandolfini gives a very mature adult performance that amazed me. I actually have never seen much of his other work but I'm curious to see more of his acting credits. Melissa Leo is heartfelt and sensitive, I really connected with it. She really plays the mother role to perfection. Lastly, there is Kristen Stewart who I am a big defender of. Some accuse her of being flat and emotionless in her films but the more I watch her work, I see that what makes her work stand out is that she is real. Never overacting or trying to play the heavily emotional scenes that someone like Meryl Streep would. That's what I like about her, it's like your viewing a real person in life. All of the actors in the film do this very well and to see them work together is something special.Either you will be amazed or disappointed with it and while the story is simple and the film does have a lot of heart and compassion, you feel a sense of gloom, melancholy or dread when you watch it. If you enjoy films like Badlands, Ghost World or Fargo then I highly recommend it.

Watching this film is like listening to Adele sing the Happy Birthday Song. It's the most beautiful version of something you've seen a billion times before. James Gandolfini, Kristin Stewart and Melissa Leo exquisitely perform a story that doesn't have a single original or unexpected moment from its opening scene to the closing credits. The direction of Jake Scott is a little manufactured at times but never gets in the way, letting you enjoy two modern masters and a young woman who is sure as hell a lot more than "that girl in the sparkly vampire movies".Doug and Lois Riley (James Gandolfini and Melissa Leo) are a 50something married couple in Indianapolis who are on the precipice of personal disaster. Doug is sleeping with a waffle house waitress and Lois is frozen in place, unable to even leave her home. They've never recovered from the death of their teenage daughter. Then Doug travels to New Orleans for a business convention and meets Mallory (Kristin Stewart), a teenager stripper/hooker who's trapped in a world of squalor and misery that she can't even imagine escaping. Doug is drawn into that world, selling his business and abandoning Lois to try and pull Mallory out of the gutter. The shock of Doug's decision is enough to force Lois out of stasis and she drives down to The Big Easy, only to fall in love with Mallory as well. But a 15 year old girl who's seen and lived the worst of the streets can't be fixed that easily.Now, there's not one surprising scene or line of dialog in Welcome to the Rileys and the concept of a woman so wounded by the loss of a child that she can't step outside her front door is treated a bit too comedically. That's about all I can find wrong with this motion picture and it fades to insignificance compared to all that's right with it.The three leads here are as close to perfect as any actor can get. If there's anything lacking in these roles, it's entirely due to how they're written and not at all how they're performed. Stewart is absolutely dead on in her portrayal of a girl who doesn't know the right way to live and bristles at anyone who tries to teach her. Gandolfini's stoicism and determination flows through a man who thinks he's found purpose again. Leo's portrayal of the most damaged person in the story transforming into the strongest is effortlessly believable. And while Ken Hixon's script does nothing new, he handles the integration of Lois into Doug and Mallory's world with great intelligence. Lois is a sharp and fast disruption to that relationship but Hixon makes you see that such a disruption was needed to let both Doug and Mallory move on to a healthier place in their lives. Director Scott also deserves credit for sustaining a consistency of emotion and behavior instead of jerking the characters in whatever direction the story moves.Gandolfini and Leo have already made their bones in the acting world but with Welcome to the Rileys and The Yellow Handkerchief, Stewart has laid claim to being THE actress to watch in her generation. I hope she can fulfill that promise and I hope I can see a lot more films as good as this one.

Jake Scott, son of Ridley Scott, directs "Welcome to the Rileys", an intermittently interesting drama which stars James Gandolfini as a grieving father who bonds with a young stripper as a means of overcoming the death of his daughter.It's a conventional film, and actress Kristen Stewart, too precious and self-consciously cutesy, never convinces as a grungy stripper, but there are nevertheless some interesting things scattered about. Scott nurses some atmosphere out of his New Orlens locations, the visual contrast between Gandolfini's huge, bulbous body and Stewart's near anorexic frame is morbidly interesting, and the film manages to skirt around the erotic fantasies these guy-and-stripper tales usually trade on.Like most films set in New Orleans, "Welcome to the Rileys" is creepily white and middle class. Here's a city with an almost 70 percent African American population, and a film with nary a black face in sight. A city wrecked by, and abandoned after, Hurricane Katrina, and a film in which our focus is on a rich white guy with daughter issues. What the hell?7.9/10 – Worth one viewing.