Wonderstruck (C-), the new film by Todd Haynes from a screenplay by Brian Selznick, who adapted his prestigious book of the same title, feels like walking into an unfinished exhibit at a museum. There are some glorious visuals and some hints of breakthrough ideas, but it all simply doesn’t hang together. Child actors Oakes Fegley and Millicent Simmonds unconvincingly play runaways in two interlocking stories, each mysteriously lured to NYC on inexplicable parallel quests in the ‘20s and ‘70s, respectively. Both kids are afflicted with hearing loss and a yearning to discover a missing parent, but there’s a stunning lack of urgency to their collective plights. Haynes fails to adequately plumb the mind and motivations of his young protagonists, and wisps of cameos by great actresses
Julianne Moore and Michelle Williams don’t get us any closer to satisfaction. It’s all fetishized set pieces built with loving care and little regard for what it’s all supposed to mean. For a director generally so in command of his craft, this seems to be a wasted opportunity, a pretty curated vessel of secondary outtakes and idea fragments.
Tag Archives: Drama
“The Florida Project” is Gritty and Genuine
The kids aren’t alright in their postcard-perfect paradise in an insightful new dramatic film. Sean Baker’s The Florida Project (B+) depicts an often underrepresented underbelly of America with a timely, tragic, twisty Technicolor tale. A seriocomic summer idyll from a child’s POV ultimately blurs into an illuminating fantasia on the new working class of America. Set in Kissimmee, Florida in a community of extended-stay motel guests, the film is anchored by brilliant child star Brooklyn Prince who portrays a 6-year-old girl who lives in a castle: the Magic Castle motel, that is. Despite the tyke’s perennially upbeat disposition, she and her juvenile friends hold court over a strip mall and souvenir store laden landscape with scruples not too far off from the thuggish droogs of A Clockwork Orange. It’s clear that her role model in casual crimes is an aimless single mother, poignantly played by Bria Vinaite, helpless to know how to guide her daughter while continuously devising the next scam to procure the next meal for themselves. Willem Dafoe has never been better as the saintly manager of the dystopian paradise where he endeavors to hold the place together with the paltry powers he possesses while facing incredible odds. Despite some issues with plot and pacing, this is an extraordinarily important and unforgettable film. A supporting off-screen character is the famed “Florida Project” itself – Walt Disney World Resort – a vestige of privilege and fantasy, which seems to be surrounded by a sinking swampland. The little girl clutching her orange plush doll is the film’s sweet songbird trapped in a cage within the maddening marsh. Baker demonstrates a magnificent mastery of human observation and imbues his characters with incredible empathy. His Almodovaresque color palette and the resilient spirit of his featured denizens disguise the unexpected potency of his morality playhouse.
Alan Cumming is Strong in Vincent Gagliostro’s Gay Drama “After Louie”
Vincent Gagliostro’s After Louie (B) is ostensibly a “May-December romance” between Alan Cumming as an artist and Zachary Booth as his muse. Through the lens of an engrossing inter-generational relationship, the film spotlights attitudes about the AIDS crisis reflected through those tethered to the heights of its tragedy and those buoyed by a renewed and sometimes more casual outlook on dealing with the disease. The film centers on Cumming’s character getting out of his own head as he clings desperately to the crusades he once championed. His young companion challenges many of his mores and expectations. Both men in the center of the film give sage performances. Don’t let Booth’s matinee idol looks eclipse what a well modulated performance he offers. Some subplots are better developed than others, with a sequence involving some creative painting as a highlight. Character driven with moments of poignancy, it’s a thinking person’s film with some imaginative flourishes.
“Beach Rats” Examines Machismo Culture
Eliza Hittman’s Beach Rats (B-) is a dreamlike Brooklyn-set character study about an aimless young man who struggles with his sexuality as he tries to be macho for his seaside buddies and girlfriend while leading a furtive double life of Internet hook-ups and drug-crazed dalliances. Breakthrough actor Harris Dickinson is mesmerizing in the central role, and his character’s heartache is palpable as he makes a series of regrettable choices. The film offers frustratingly few tidy endings to the protagonist’s plight while posing an absorbing series of moral hurdles. The film is a sometimes graphic but also intimately picturesque love child of Moonlight, Shame and Crimes of Passion with a plot point or two and hyper-masculine pack mentality that recalls A Clockwork Orange; but like its central character, it sometimes gets stunted on its jarring journey. The film is nonetheless a sleeper discovery and will reward those looking for an arty alternative from recent multiplex fare.
“Detroit” Just Misses the Dramatic Heft For Which It Aspires
Although its historic events are lavishly recreated and the cinematography and production values top-notch, Kathryn Bigelow’s panorama about the racially charged 12th Street Riot of 1967, Detroit (C), struggles to finds its dramatic POV or emotional center of gravity. The events depicted clearly resonate with modern times, what with the painstaking portrayals of police brutality and the themes of injustice and inequality in an urban powderkeg, but Bigelow’s fastidious chronicle fails to get in the heads of a cavalcade of underdeveloped characters. With some of the most authentic acting in the film, Algee Smith fares best as a Motown musician caught up in a crescendo of incidents after mid-riot sniper fire turns a group of people holed up at a hotel into brutalized suspects. John Boyega and Anthony Mackie are reduced to small parts as Will Poulter gets most of the scenery chewing as a wicked bad cop. He’s intense but feels miscast. It’s not completely clear why Bigelow lingers so long on certain incidents and not others; and while she creates flashes of pulse pounding tension, the story isn’t superbly served in the aggregate. The director’s formula that worked so brilliantly with soldiers diffusing land mines and raiding terrorist cells works only in fits and starts this time around.
“The Beguiled” Doesn’t Live Up to Its Dramatic Promise
A tepid Southern-gothic melodrama about a wounded Union soldier harbored in a small Confederate girls’ school during the Civil War, Sofia Coppola’s The Beguiled (D+) explores the effects of an intrusive and intriguing outside force on a tight-knit group. It’s part hot and bothered but mostly “why’d she bother?” as Coppola pours on curiously long camera gazes at plantation columns and Spanish moss. Colin Farrell doesn’t really have a prayer in the thankless role of the charming invalid, and Nicole Kidman comes across as campy with a touch of trampy as head mistress of the schoolgirls. As a strange relationship rhombus begins to emerge, there emerges virtually none of the payoff for which one could hope. Kirsten Dunst and Elle Fanning are distinguished primarily by being pale and wearing poofy dresses and pearls. The cinematography technique is somewhere between Vaseline on the lens, a light candlelight flicker through gauze or an Instagram filter called Sepia Baroque. With set, soundtrack and staging laid bare of most frills, it was surprising there were fairly few twists and turns of note. The premise was here for a barn burner of a tale, but the fuse never ignites.
“Beatriz at Dinner” a Dramedy Surprise
With a timely script by frequent collaborator Mike White, Miguel Arteta’s Beatriz at Dinner (A-) is billed as a dark comedy but is actually one of the most arresting dramas of the year, anchored by a title performance by Salma Hayek that will become an indelible part of the cinema canon and the actress’s defining role. Hayek plays a Mexican immigrant holistic healer who ends up as an unexpected guest at a ritzy celebratory house party hosted by Connie Britton’s character where a business real estate tycoon played by John Lithgow becomes a singular foil and object of obsession. Hayek fully inhabits nearly every frame of the film and is a stunning observer for what it means to be an American living in Trump’s 2017. She is as focused and feral as Lithgow is pompous and proud. This is one of those films sure to be referenced by academics who will note how fully it captures the mood and zeitgeist of a nation grappling with the specific politics of the here and now. Supporting actress Chloë Sevigny is always a delight, as is Jay Duplass as her increasingly drunk husband. The film captures the syncopation of conversation well, especially the ability of groups to change the subject. Given the gourmet feast of acting and reflection that abounds, the final ten minutes were a bit “dine and dash.” It’s otherwise a blissfully enjoyable if surprisingly melancholy trip to the thinking person’s table.
“The Circle” is Undercooked Social Media Commentary
Despite being imminently topical as a meditation on privacy in the age of social media, James Ponsoldt’s The Circle (C-) manages to misfire in its major story arch, acting choices, thematic intensity and ultimate resolution. Emma Watson bears the burden of an underwritten role as the protagonist who joins an all-encompassing social networking company that takes an increasing interest in her personal life regardless of moral implications. Tom Hanks phones in a role as the is-he-smug-or-isn’t-he? company visionary. None of the actors in the ensemble is immune to the film’s deadly direction and trite dialogue. The film’s far-fetched plot points are made even more preposterous by their gaping holes. At least two incidents of miscasting lead to less than satisfying dramatic results and at utter lack of suspense. This movie is a major missed opportunity to connect and contemplate with the world of the here and now.
Book blogger Ashley Williams reviews the novel and the film, and we do a joint Q&A here on The Book Fetish blog.
“Gifted” is a Lovely Surprise
The actor Chris Evans superbly inhabits the role of his young lifetime as a caretaker uncle of a child prodigy in Mark Webb’s moving melodrama Gifted (B+). It’s easy to dismiss the film as Good Will Hunting: Junior Edition, Kramer vs. Kramer: Special Girl Genius Unit or even what happens next if Manchester by the Sea were just a wee bit less melancholy; but under Webb’s assured direction, the drama about whether Evans is the right person to rear a precocious first grader (solid child actor Mckenna Grace) plays out with freshness and even some third act surprises. Evans’ character, the beach bum brother of a deceased math genius, shines in his role opposite Grace, and the bond they create is indelible. The cast is roundly excellent, from Jenny Slate as a quirky teacher to Octavia Spencer as a supportive neighbor and maternal figure. But it is great stage actress Lindsay Duncan (last seen as the acerbic critic in Birdman) who steals her scenes as the controlling grandmother whose dreams of solving the great mathematical challenges of our era fall on her pint-sized progeny. You can see much of the conflict coming from a mile away, and yet the characters are real, the dialogue crisp and the tearjerking earned. It’s ultimately an uplifting tale of the sacrifices one makes for family. It’s a smart film about smart people and should enrich those who discover it.
Hebrew Film “The Women’s Balcony” is a Winner
Emil Ben-Shimon’s The Women’s Balcony (Hebrew Title: Ismach Hatani) (B+) is an often jubilant dramedy about taking a stand, especially when oppression manifests with a seductive face. After a flimsy women’s prayer balcony in an aging Jerusalem synagogue topples and the temple’s senile rabbi is too infirm to oversee the renovation, the men of the tight-knit congregation turn to a charismatic young ultra-Orthodox leader, convincingly played by Abraham Aviv Alush, to guide the rebuild. His new ideas are actually old ones and involve setting the women of the church back in terms of their ability to think, pray and express themselves with any sense of modernity. Radiant actress Evelin Hagoel is the primary protagonist, magnificent in her decency and defiance. The entire ensemble of feisty women is remarkable, and it it is in their light and often humorous approach that a powerful parable comes to compelling life. A bit more muted than the similarly themed Spike Lee movie Chi-Raq, this Israeli film handles gender and religion with a deft touch and a splendid depiction of community. Ultimately it’s a celebration of enduring traditions and the power of progress in standing up for equality.
Note: The Women’s Balcony is the closing night presentation of the Atlanta Jewish Film Festival and is making appearances at many film festivals around the world this season.
“The Shack” is a Highly Effective Faith-Based Film
This is the film that finally answers the question, “Papa, can you hear me?” Octavia Spencer plays “Papa,” who quite possibly created the heavens and the earth. And the answer is “yes” in Stuart Hazeldine’s moving faith-based fantasy drama The Shack (B). Sam Worthington is an effective Everyman, and if viewers can get past his accent inconsistencies, they will appreciate his journey from desperation to hope in the wake of tragedy. The film offers a parable in the vein of The Wizard of Oz within the confines of what seems like standard-issue melodrama; and despite some mawkish moments and a bit of a “preaching to the converted” mentality, this spiritual tonic somehow washes down with grace. The diverse cast including familiar faces such as Tim McGraw and Graham Greene and game new talent such as Aviv Alush and Sumire is uniformly committed, and the film’s contemplative pace gives oxygen to its major messages. You’ve never seen many Christian themes depicted quite like this, and even the big budget effects and imagery are quite memorable. This film provides a positive and reassuring message to be cherished about heeding ancient calls to address and learn from contemporary pain.
“The Founder” Shows Origins of Fast Food with Keaton as Kroc
In John Lee Hancock’s biopic of McDonald’s executive Ray Kroc, The Founder (B), the hunger of the protagonist is so palpable you can almost taste it. It’s a rather ruthless portrait of a business tycoon with Michael Keaton in fine serpentine form, part Midwest milkman charm, as wily as a Music Man, relentless as a cattle driver. While it’s ironic a man named Hancock fails to leave much of a signature in his ambivalent lens on the historical figure responsible for spreading the world’s most famous hamburger stand beyond its humble California origins, it is a fascinating business case and mostly compelling in its story (gulp) arch. As the humble and inventive McDonald’s brothers, Nick Offerman and John Carroll Lynch are fabulous foils to Keaton’s Kroc. The film’s best sequence, although awkwardly placed in flashback, depicts the McDonald’s brothers designing a kitchen schematic in chalk on a blacktop, with crew “blocking the scene” like theatre directors would do. Kroc’s troubles on the domestic front including an estranged marriage (Laura Dern simply has to look sad a lot) and a fixation on a bottle of his own form of special sauce get short shrift as business machinations take center stage. The cynical themes about persistence and ambition trumping actual genius or invention, juxtaposed against sunny nostalgic art direction, are timely and prescient; but after more richly textured tales such as The Wolf of Wall Street and The Social Network, this film could have used a bit more super-sizing in ambition.
