STRANGE LANDS.(In America; The Triplets of Belleville)(Movie Review)

We are not told when "In America" takes place, but, given that a family is seen going to the movies to watch "E.T.," we are presumably being lured back to the early nineteen-eighties. The sense of period is far from overwhelming, although I can't deny a faint, Don Johnson-like itch to turn up the collar of my opalescent jacket and roll the sleeves back to the elbow. The family consists of Johnny (Paddy Considine), his wife, Sarah (Samantha Morton), and their young daughters, Christy (Sarah Bolger) and Ariel (Emma Bolger). They are Irish, and they have quit their native land in favor of New York. What they have come for, beyond illegal residence, is never quite clear, but ...