Somewhere on the cinematic patriarchs continuum between Captain von Trapp and the Great Santini, Viggo Mortensen gives a sensitive, soulful and indelible portrayal of a flawed but well-meaning dad in Matt Ross’ incredibly engaging Captain Fantastic (A-). Mortensen is the draw here, summoning a rugged loner charisma that at this point can just be called “Mortensenesque” as a man raising his six children off the grid in the mountains of the Pacific Northwest with unconventional techniques to teach them self-sufficiency, critical thinking, peak physical performance and a global worldview. His headstrong homeschooling, an ongoing ropes course and debate society in the woods, wins him no favor with his in-laws (well played by Frank Langella and Ann Dowd) but makes him a hero in the eyes of his neo-hippie children, all beautifully played. George MacKay is an earnest delight as the oldest of the offspring, incredibly moving as he experiences a date for the first time after being shrouded in the wilderness. Ross makes an assured directorial and writing debut, showcasing the central family’s confrontations with society in a way that keeps you guessing of whether or not it will all work out. There was a melancholy moment I thought would be a pensive ending, but I liked the extended epilogue – including an unforgettable family jam session – even more. The film is a cult sensation challenging American mores in the tradition of Easy Rider and Into the Wild and highly recommended.
Justin Kelly’s King Cobra (D+) is a mystery thriller with little mystery or thrills. Set in 2006 as YouTube was coming of age, the film purports to bring a Boogie Nights type allure to the goings-on behind the firewall of an adult film industry in transition. Newcomer Garrett Clayton plays a fresh faced Californian who gets swept up into the porn industry by a closeted amateur producer who makes movies out of his innocuous suburban home, played by Christian Slater. Meanwhile, James Franco and Keegan Allen play rival provocateurs who seem to be acting in a completely different movie universe, like Magenta and Columbia with a death wish. Kelly clearly believes his work is sexier and edgier than it turns out to be. Aside from Slater’s occasionally unhinged performance, there’s very little worth watching here. Fans of Clayton, who is featured in NBC’s Hairspray Live, will get the eye candy they seek but little substance.
Jesse Plemons and Molly Shannon might not be anyone’s first casting choices as a gay comedy writer and his dying mom, respectively; but boy are they a moving and marvelous duo in Chris Kelly’s alternately hilarious and heartbreaking melodrama Other People (B+). Plemons, masterfully playing a sad sack hybrid of Matt Damon and Philip Seymour Hoffman, anchors the film as a young man having a very bad year, unlucky in love and work and summoned home from NYC to Sacramento to care for his ailing mom. Molly Shannon is a force of nature as an idiosyncratic and intuitive mother fighting an aggressive bout with cancer. The film’s structure is basically a year in the life, but it colors outside the lines in splendid and droll ways. Like Terms of Endearment and other classic tearjerkers, the ache is earned. Folks will appreciate Bradley Whitford as the stoic father and June Squibb and Paul Dooley as eccentric grandparents. A smart script and surprising characters make this an offbeat indie worth watching.
For those yearning for a solid Hollywood film with something to say, “brace for impact!” Director Clint Eastwood’s solid biopic Sully (A-) turns convention on its head with an interior examination of an American hero who followed his instincts and famously saved 155 people with a famed plane landing on the icy Hudson River and then doubts himself in the wake of evidence and scrutiny. Against the backdrop of an obsessive culture in which we meticulously pour over footage of pivotal events including the “Zapruder Film” of the JFK shooting, Eastwood’s clinical study of an unlikely emergency water landing combined with a quiet, restrained and mighty performance by Tom Hanks in the title role, makes for an emotionally exciting adventure wrapped in a contemplative piece of cinema. Minor quibbles include a discordant score (Eastwood wrote his own theme music) and a moment or two when the flashback-laden structure does a disservice to forward momentum. But it’s ultimately a stand-up-and-cheer/think experience, made even better by Aaron Eckhart as a charming first officer. Those who think they know the whole story already will be enriched by what Eastwood does here. It’s also an essential big screen theatre experience with magnificent sound and visual effects. With a tip of the hat to the pilot, his crew, the passengers and the first responders, it’s the hero story we may not have known we needed at this exact moment in time.
Tim Kirkman’s Lazy Eye (B) advances one of my favorite genres of film: the talky, plaintiff romance. This two-decades later 
Jacques Martindeau and Oliver Ducaste’s French language film Paris 05:59: Theo and Hugo (B-) can’t quite sustain the energy of its kaleidoscopic first act as it depicts an unexpected chronicle of young love with unfathomable origins. The central gay couple meets in a sex club in a series of sequences that might make the Marquis de Sade blush. It’s like Ken Russell, Baz Luhrmann and Spike Lee’s styles fused in a bathhouse burlesque. What follows is a sentimental love story à la Before Sunrise as the young men wander the streets and canals of Paris. The story is sweet, but some of the dialogue is forced. The magic of the storybook romance is not altogether convincing, and some of the plot points about unsafe sex feel vaguely like a cinema length public service announcement. Geoffrey Couët is passable as the naïve first-timer in the nightclub but not altogether comfortable in his character. François Nambot is the more capable actor who is clearly working harder to make the romantic connection palpable. The real-time nature of the story slows it down to a crawl while chance encounters with denizens of the city don’t really enhance the narrative. The film works best when the young lovers are sprinting through the Parisian streets, blissful about the “morning after” and what dreams the future may hold.
It’s like Thomas Hardy crafted two thirds of an epic and let Nicholas Sparks finish the final chapters. Derek Cianfrance’s The Light Between Oceans (C), itself an adaptation of M.L. Stedman’s popular post-WWI Australian romance, features Michael Fassbender as a former soldier turned lighthouse keeper and Alicia Vikander as his new bride on an isolating island where intrigue about their offspring becomes the stuff of tempestuous melodrama. The presence of veteran Aussie actors Bryan Brown and Jack Thompson and a few verses of “Waltzing Matilda” are basically the clues you’re down under (thankfully no koalas) long before the narrative seeps below sea level. Fassbender and Vikander are wonderfully charming until their character motivations require them to become a bit stupefying. They commit to their craft well after the story strains credulity. A thankless supporting role does Rachel Weisz no favors. What starts out pulpy, electric and suspenseful simply becomes sudsy, irritating and overlong. Add to this mix an inconsistent narration, an overuse of reading letters and an awkward framing device, and you have the formula for a tepid September studio release.
Although many viewers may be feeling “no más” to the prospect of another boxing movie, Jonathan Jakubowicz’s Hands of Stone (A-) turns out to be stunningly good and one of the most unexpected character dramas of the year. The film is a sports biopic about the career of Panamanian former professional boxer Roberto Durán, and he is fiercely portrayed by Édgar Ramírez in one of those performances that defies every expectation. His brute deconstruction of machismo, his hunger for victory and justice and his nationalistic zest for life seeps out of every frame. The character is often hard to like, and that makes it even more intriguing. Through superb period detail and art direction against a backdrop of a revolutionary time period in Panama paralleling a transformation in the boxing industry through television and sponsorships circa late 70’s and early ’80s, the filmmakers create a soaring narrative that turns the tables for American audiences expecting to root for their native son. Usher Raymond is a delight in a small part as U.S. boxing hero Sugar Ray Leonard, conveying magnanimous authority. Ana de Armas is remarkable as Felicidad Durán, imbuing the spouse role with grace and verve. Magnificent in other supporting parts are Ellen Barkin and Rubén Blades, the latter legend contributing mightily to the soundtrack as well. But it is Robert De Niro who reclaims his mantle as one of the cinema greats as champion trainer and narrator Ray Arcel. He is splendid in the supporting role; and like Ramírez, you can’t take your eyes off him. De Niro’s corner of the ring pep talks with the Panamanian boxer are part inspiration, part confessional and part master class in quiet dignity. Whether you love sports movies or actively resist them, you will find this story – and the style of telling it – captivating.
In the tradition of the talky and compelling Before Sunrise trilogy, a new movie takes a similar approach to the fateful first date of one of the most historic and captivating couples of modern times. Writer/director Richard Tanne’s Southside with You (A-) stars Parker Sawyers and Tika Sumpter as a young Barack and Michelle Robinson Obama, respectively, circa 1989 in Chicago. This slice of life – literally one day in the life – is buoyed by radiant performances by the two leads and a timeless tale of a young couple challenging each other to become their best selves. Sawyers brings charisma and persistence and Sumpter a fierce intelligence and drive to the love story. Both are indelible and delightful in the roles. The incidental nature of a first-date-in-the-making that involves a picnic, an art gallery, time in The Gardens, an organizing meeting, drinks, a screening of Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing and a trip to an ice cream parlor illuminates so much more about a future First Couple than a traditional montage-filled biopic ever could. It is a lovely story, gorgeously filmed and beautifully acted. It’s gimmick free and groundbreaking in its own way as a chronicle of history unfurling before our eyes.
It’s an inspired idea indeed to have celebrated actress Meryl Streep perform in a most meta Emperor’s New Clothes style homage as an infamous no-talent. But as the titular character, a songstress oblivious of her pronounced vocal limitations, in Stephen Frears’s 1944-set biopic Florence Foster Jenkins (B), Streep’s seriocomic riffs are often on the mark even while the notes are all over the map. It is clear Frears finds his mercurial Manhattanite subject endlessly fascinating; and like Ed Wood, Bullets Over Broadway, Grey Gardens or The Producers, he finds fits of dry wit amidst the Schadenfreude. Hugh Grant as Florence’s conflicted husband is serviceable and occasionally sentimental, despite the actor’s limited range. Simon Helberg is a bit of a misfire as the songbird’s pianist, registering on the nebbish scale somewhere between Alan Cumming and Jason Schwartzman but with little of the charm. Nina Arianda is funny as a gangster moll type but is given strange motivations during a critical sequence. At the film’s heart is Streep herself, demonstrating with droll doses of heart and high-note heinousness that throwing yourself into an artistic passion with gusto, even when all the pieces aren’t altogether effective, can still be somewhat satisfying.
At this point watching Woody Allen’s late-career films is a mild act of punishment, and the auteur’s latest Café Society (D+) is a pretty package of nothing. It’s got all the elements of a Woody Allen but no pulse. Set in the Golden Age of Hollywood and Manhattan, the film wins points for art direction and costumes; but alas it’s all dressed up for going nowhere slowly. Jesse Eisenberg is a remarkably dull leading man who falls in love with two women named Veronica – one in L.A. at the start of his career and one in his native New York where he returns to run a nightclub. The two ladies are played by the better-than-expected Kristen Stewart and the pleasant but bland Blake Lively. Allen fails to build any sustained momentum for some mild subplots about love and infidelity and has very little new to say about his go-to subjects. Moreover, there’s precious little to care about about the protagonist’s would-be career either. Steve Carell barely registers as a glib movie mogul, although perhaps he’s as bored as the man behind the camera seems to be. The only surprise in the whole movie is that, despite the delight that it’s actually over, Allen also delivers an unsatisfying ending. When you’re left pining for that Woody Allen film starring Jason Biggs, you know you’ve hit pretty close to rock bottom.