Tag: Movie Review

Categories
Arts

Tween gaff: Good Boys pairs middle school kids with grown up themes

Sixth graders navigate sweet stuff and gross stuff in Good Boys, a comedy from the creative team behind Superbad, Pineapple Express, and Sausage Party. Photo courtesy Universal Pictures

The child performers in Good Boys are quite good, and the jokes can be very funny, but what do you do with a movie that forces you to compare it to something better? It’s Superbad for sixth graders in almost every way: Produced by Evan Goldberg, Seth Rogen, and Jonah Hill, Good Boys follows three friends on a quest to the big party so they can make a move on a crush. There’s some gross stuff, some sweet stuff, an encounter with indifferent police at a convenience store, and a few hard lessons about friendship and growing up—but with sixth graders.

Co-writers Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky come primarily from TV, most notably “The Office,” and that show’s trademark balance of sweet and silly can be seen here. Our three heroes, Max, Thor, and Lucas (Jacob Tremblay, Brady Noon, and Keith L. Williams), collectively known as the Beanbag Boys, do everything together. The group’s unity is tested when Max is invited to a kissing party thrown by the coolest kid in school, Soren (Izaac Wang). Max’s crush Brixlee (Millie Davis) will be there, so skipping the party is not an option, but neither is going without his friends, who weren’t directly invited.

The mission becomes learning how to kiss in time for the party. The movie becomes an odyssey of trying to replace a broken drone, returning accidentally stolen MDMA from high school seniors, beating up an entire fraternity, selling a sex doll, and lots and lots of misunderstood uses for sex toys.

Good Boys

R, 100 minutes

Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The overlap with Superbad is substantial, but the main difference is that those teenagers know what sex is, they just haven’t done it yet. These kids know there’s a concept called sex that grownups do, but have no context for any of the details. Googling “porn” is no help. Finding their parents’ dildos, bondage mask, anal beads, or sex swing doesn’t register. The only things they know about drugs are what they learned in D.A.R.E., and they don’t know the difference between Molly and heroin.

The movie shines when the kids get to be kids, and silliness triumphs over repetitious gross-out gags. Thinking anal beads are nunchuks is funny. Making the same joke about how they smell, even with slight variations, is a bit boring, and can smother the emotional investment we had in these kids. To compare it to “The Office,” imagine if an entire episode was Dwight jokes. Even if he’s your favorite character, it wouldn’t be fun.

There are ways Good Boys is more mature than Superbad. There are no real villains here. The teenagers might be an obstacle, but they understand that this whole thing could have been a lot simpler if the kids knew anything about the world. The closest thing to a bully relents when he’s shown up. The only actual bad person is a manipulative college guy who doesn’t respect his girlfriend’s independence or intelligence (he gets his in the end). Consent is also a major part of everyone’s actions, and though it plays a role in some jokes, it’s never a punchline. These kids know what consent is and how crucial it is before they even know what kissing is. We’ve come a long way since Revenge of the Nerds.

Good Boys is sometimes very funny and often sweet. The performances are terrific, particularly Williams as Lucas. But with redundant jokes coming too frequently, it’s all a bit too familiar to really resonate in the same way as its spiritual predecessor.

Local theater listings

Alamo Drafthouse Cinema 375 Merchant Walk Sq., 326-5056.

Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX The Shops at Stonefield, 244-3213.

Violet Crown Cinema 200 W. Main St., Downtown Mall, 529-3000.

 

Categories
Arts

Tarantino’s delight: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood defines an era through excellent performances

Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio deliver career-high performances in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Image courtesy Columbia Pictures

Delight is not a word you often associate with a Quentin Tarantino film, but damn if you don’t leave Once Upon a Time in Hollywood with a smile on your face. The delight is usually QT’s, who every few years gets to share his latest pastiche, a focused fever dream informed by childhood obsessions of exploitation films, Sergio Leone, and 1960s television. Most of his influences are reflections of the world around these subjects, tackling social issues through either literal-minded melodrama or metaphors set in a heightened reality—a hall of mirrors effect in which you can’t tell where the original begins and the copy ends.

This is part of the Tarantino experience; he truly enjoys the power of cinema and finds real value in mining its history for raw materials from which to forge new stories. He wants us to be as in love with his influences as he is, for our own sake.

As many of us remember from childhood, when someone wants to share their toys this badly they can become obsessed with the “right” way to play with them. A Tarantino story can take lengthy detours as his characters monologue about Superman comics (Kill Bill), or the minutiae of stunt driving (Death Proof). He’s at his best when his interests are crucial to the foundation of his cinematic world and not just window dressing. Inglourious Basterds used the Nazis’ self-aggrandizement through film propaganda and the flammability of film stock as narrative tools, and Tarantino squeezed every last bit of suspense he could from them, while employing his trademark circuitous dialogue as an interrogation tactic.

Because Once Upon a Time in Hollywood takes place in the time period most Tarantino films evoke, no one needs to wax poetic about the industry of old or what happens on a film set. They can just live it. Tarantino’s encyclopedic knowledge of entertainment history and love of Los Angeles forms the backdrop of the film, freeing his imagination to run wild with his characters and dialogue, allowing his two leading men (Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt) the space to deliver the best performances of their careers. Not a moment in its 165-minute runtime is wasted, and though it more than earns its R rating, it’s far from the epic journey of cruelty that his previous period pieces have been.

All this talk and nothing about the plot? That’s partially by design, but here’s just enough to pique your interest. Rick Dalton (DiCaprio) is an actor in the late 1960s who was once the star of his own Western television series, “Bounty Law,” but mostly works as the villain-of-the-week. His stuntman/housesitter/chauffeur/best friend is Cliff Booth (Pitt), a veteran with a possibly shady past. Dalton lives next to two infamous people from real life, actress Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie) and director Roman Polanski (Rafał Zawierucha, though he has almost no dialogue). All three actors are complete naturals in their roles, and the greatest sequence is the one that juxtaposes how they all spend one fateful day: Dalton’s artistic and professional redemption, Booth’s encounter with the Manson family, and Tate enjoying her rising star by watching a movie starring herself.

If you learn what happens next or how it ends, the experience won’t be ruined, but watching the story unfold is part of the joy. Tarantino knows your expectations, and figures out how to use them against you in the most effective way, from his tendency for nonlinear storytelling to the dread that comes from his character’s proximity to key figures in the Manson family murders. Once Upon a Time is partially a riff on two Sergio Leone classics, Once Upon a Time in the Old West and Once Upon a Time in America, but make no mistake: This is a quintessentially American fairytale.

Local theater listings:

Alamo Drafthouse Cinema 377 Merchant Walk Sq., 326-5056

Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX The Shops at Stonefield, 244-3213

Violet Crown Cinema 200 W. Main St., Downtown Mall, 529-3000

See it again: 

To Live and Die in L.A. R, 116minutes. Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, July 31

Categories
Arts

Finishing touch: Avengers: Endgame opens up a future of possibilities

Avengers: Endgame caps off 10 years and 21 movies for the Marvel Cinematic Universe while opening the door for the next chapter. Photo courtesy Marvel Studios

The release of Avengers:Infinity War last year felt like the grand payoff of our decade-long investment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Twenty years ago, most of the public hadn’t even heard of many of these heroes, but their erasure from existence by the snap of Thanos’ finger and our resulting shock showed how entrenched they’d become in our psyche.

The second part of this saga, Avengers:Endgame, is not only the narrative completion of Infinity War’s breathless conclusion, but also the necessary tonal counterpart. Part one was Thanos’ journey, the execution of his lifelong plan to bring devastation to the universe in pursuit of his brand of justice. From his point of view, he was the hero of this story, while the Avengers were mere supporting characters and temporary obstacles. Endgame puts our favorite superheroes back in the spotlight for a more familiar MCU ensemble adventure, bringing hope and humor back to a world that had lost its reason to live.

To avoid spoilers, we won’t describe the plot in too much depth, but suffice to say there was always going to be a way out in a story that involves time manipulation at either the cosmic or microscopic level. Infinity War did an exceptional job depicting the emotional reaction to the possibility that a solution is even possible. After five years of accepting their loss, optimism is a risky prospect. What if they only make things worse? What if they believe in the possibility that they might succeed, only to fall even farther?

While there is little point comparing Infinity War to Endgame in terms of quality—picking a favorite is like asking which piece of bread is your favorite when both are essential to the sandwich—there is a unique joy to Endgame that was missing in its predecessor. In Infinity War, as Thanos collects more stones, we discover how fragile the universe is and how helpless mortals are against cosmic forces. It made for a compelling and tragic space opera, but stood apart from the rest of the MCU. In Endgame, the power of working with one another to overcome past mistakes for the sake of future generations is uplifting. Regret and failure make us want to retreat into isolation, but sharing it with each other, searching for the things that unite us, is a powerful way to confront these challenges.

One last significant distinction worth mentioning is that Infinity War felt like a tightening noose on the entire cinematic universe, one that condensed all of these disparate narratives and forever changed them. Its ending left us wondering how anything could follow it (putting aside the fact that “comic book deaths” are notoriously impermanent). Endgame opens up the story to limitless possibilities, bringing together characters in very unexpected ways and pulling others apart. This is a resolution to this chapter, but this is not the end of the story, not by a long shot. God help you if you’re a newcomer to the series, but if you care about these characters, even a little, Endgame will be the gratifying experience you’ve been hoping for.

Avengers: Endgame, PG13, 181 minutes. See it at Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX, and Violet Crown Cinema.

See it again

True Grit

PG, 135 minutes. See it May 5 at Regal Stonefield Cinema.

Local theater listings:

Alamo Drafthouse Cinema 377 Merchant Walk Sq., 326-5056

Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX The Shops at Stonefield, 244-3213

Violet Crown Cinema 200 W. Main St., Downtown Mall, 529-3000

Categories
Arts

Amazing Aretha: Queen of Soul documentary elevates a historic evening

The release of Amazing Grace, a documentary of Aretha Franklin performing at the New Bethel Baptist Church in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles in January 1972, is amazing in itself, considering the red tape surrounding the film’s production. Image courtesy Neon

Aretha Franklin’s Amazing Grace, released in 1972, remains to this day the highest-selling live gospel album of all time, a stunning display of raw talent, passion, and emotion. Regardless of your beliefs, or lack of them, you can’t help but have a near religious experience while listening to Franklin’s interpretation of gospel classics “Mary Don’t You Weep,” “How I Got Over,” and the showstopping title track. Recorded in front of a live audience over two nights, the record captures the sophistication of a genre that is typically overlooked (or shunned) by the mainstream. The album also captures the vital role that community plays in its creation, all coalescing around one of the greatest American artists in her prime.

The journey of the film Amazing Grace, which chronicles the recording of the album, is one that spans decades, all owing to a preventable technical error. Director Sydney Pollack was hired to film the event, but his camera crew failed to use clapboards with each new take. With so many cameras, so much footage, and no visual reference to sync the audio, the film went unfinished. Legal wrangling prevented its release, then Pollack died in 2008, leaving Alan Elliott to complete the movie. Pollack’s estate requested he not be credited as director, and Elliott did not put his name in Pollack’s place, which leaves the documentary without an author. Subsequent lawsuits over Franklin’s image kept the film on the shelf until now, eight months after her death. Intended as the chronicle of an electrifying moment in music history, it is instead, with the passing of its two chief creators, a tribute to the forgotten minutiae of great events.

Amazing Grace

G, 87 minutes

Violet Crown Cinema

The principal reason to see this film is to witness Franklin, aided by Reverend James Cleveland, the Southern California Community Choir, and a band of musical powerhouses, in front of a crowd that elevates the experience even further. The chaos of the filmmaking itself may actually be part of the movie’s appeal. Franklin’s unwavering perfection and grace is juxtaposed with the film crew running around, adjusting cables, attempting to point the camera in the right direction as the beauty and elation of the crowd and performers is coming at them from all angles. Pollack is often shown, once even directing the cameraman away from himself. Members of the audience (including Mick Jagger) notice they are being filmed, unsure how to act until they redirect their attention to Franklin, and the cameras follow suit.

The impeccable performance and messy documentation thereof makes Amazing Grace a fascinating experience. Franklin is in her element, delivering the performance of a lifetime, while Pollack is struggling to keep everything together. The assembly of this footage after four decades was a herculean feat (maybe on par with The Other Side of the Wind), and adds another dimension to the spectacle of the concert. But even audiences that are totally unaware of this background will be treated to the best music documentary in quite a long time. The fact that Amazing Grace exists is a welcome miracle.

See it again: Chances Are

PG, 108 minutes

April 24, Alamo Drafthouse Cinema

Local theater listings:

Alamo Drafthouse Cinema 377 Merchant Walk Sq., 326-5056

Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX The Shops at Stonefield, 244-3213

Violet Crown Cinema 200 W. Main St., Downtown Mall, 529-3000

Categories
Arts

Artistic endurance: Never Look Away weaves slightly off course

Best Foreign Language Film and Best Cinematography Oscar nominee Never Look Away, starring Tom Schilling, juggles fact and fiction to tell the story of German visual artist Gerhard Richter. Image courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics

Many times, a film based on true events will inspire you to seek out the source material once it’s over. Not necessarily to test the movie for accuracy—facts are sometimes changed for clarity or artistic license—but as a way of further engaging with a story. Even a film à clef based on actual events but presented as fiction (All That Jazz, The Devil Wears Prada), can inspire the same curiosity if it’s compelling enough.

Never Look Away will leave you interested in the true story of the gifted artist who lost family to the Nazis, whose creativity was stifled by ideologues in East Germany, and who then struggled to find his voice in the avant-garde world of the capitalist West. It’s a tale about pursuing honesty and beauty against the odds, and what happens when it’s finally within your grasp. Our hero begins his life being sold the fascist line on “degenerate” modern art, loses the one family member who encourages his imagination, is further discouraged by rigid “socialist realism,” then struggles with how to harness his freedom while setting himself apart from money-chasing charlatans.

Never Look Away

R, 189 minutes

Violet Crown Cinema

It’s a worthy saga, no doubt, but one that diminishes the more you learn about Gerhard Richter, the inspiration for Kurt Barnert (Tom Schilling). Director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (The Lives of Others) has said the film was not intended to be a biopic, and we can certainly allow the same freedom from facts that’s given to the aforementioned film à clefs. The issue is that the rough sketch of Richter’s biography is used—schizophrenic aunt murdered by Nazis, becoming a successful muralist, fleeing west to forge his own signature style based in photography, the secret identity of his father-in-law—but instead of using this as a foundation, Donnersmarck remains true to the narrative points. Why rename everyone if you’re just going to tell their life story anyway? Isn’t there somewhere else this can go once you’ve freed the narrative?

In All That Jazz, we see aspects of Bob Fosse that a factual biopic couldn’t convey. Then our own research is made more exciting when we learn why he depicted certain things the way he did. You don’t need to know the first thing about Federico Fellini to appreciate 8 1/2, but it does enhance the experience. After researching Richter, all three hours of Never Look Away become redundant.

The film does find energy in sequences that depict the physical, mental, and emotional labor of creating art. Kurt actively creates, whether or not his heart is in it. Then when he does find inspiration, he is bound by the technical considerations of bringing his vision to life. Depicting form and function as equally crucial to the artistic process has been a stumbling block for many films. These moments are appropriately paced, but in a film of this length, they end up as footnotes for an overstretched narrative. Never Look Away is not without its merits, but it does not ultimately earn its conceits (or its duration).

See it again: Jesus Christ Superstar

G, 107 minutes

Alamo Cinema Drafthouse, April 19 & 20

Local theater listings:

Alamo Drafthouse Cinema 377 Merchant Walk Sq., 326-5056

Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX The Shops at Stonefield, 244-3213

Violet Crown Cinema 200 W. Main St., Downtown Mall, 529-3000

Categories
Arts

Hard landing: Tim Burton’s handling of Dumbo doesn’t fly

Despite the star power of Michael Keaton and Danny DeVito, the live-action remake of Dumbo falls flat. Photo courtesy Walt Disney Pictures

The hollow shell where human joy ought to be is a fantastically creepy thing. It’s what Tim Burton spent his early years satirizing—the self-satisfied stability (read: stagnation) of suburbia through the eyes of an outsider who finds no satisfaction in it. The smiling husks felt like prison guards enforcing order in a void of lawns and checkered pants, crushing the artistic soul of Burton’s characters. His films became a rallying point for anyone who felt like they didn’t belong.

Somewhere along the way, Burton’s films themselves began to hollow out, retaining the form of his whimsical grotesques but with a deadness inside (and not a fun Beetlejuice kind). His work seemed more about delivering on his brand, and less about connecting with like-minded people across the world. Inspired insanity gave way to predictability; of course he’s doing Willy Wonka, of course he’s doing Sweeney Todd, of course he’s doing Alice in Wonderland.

Dumbo, his latest for Disney, may be a less obvious choice, but as soon as you heard it announced, you knew how it would look—and you are absolutely right. The carnival setting, the exaggerated characters, the cute protagonist who is initially shunned as a freak, and the beginnings of a clever satire are all there, but never coalesce into anything worth recommending. The least interesting parts end up overtaking the charming elements, like a delicious garnish on a bland entrée. The cast is well-assembled but also totally misused, which is disappointing when you have Eva Green as a plucky French acrobat and a Batman Returns reunion of Michael Keaton and Danny DeVito with hero and villain switched.

Dumbo

PG, 112 minutes

Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX, Violet Crown Cinema

The film begins with former three-ring star Holt Farrier (Colin Farrell) returning from World War I having lost an arm, no longer able to ride horses, and therefore a gimmick in Max Medici’s (DeVito) circus. In Holt’s absence, Max bought a pregnant elephant so they could train the baby from birth. When baby Dumbo enters the world, his giant ears are a source of derision, until it’s discovered they enable him to fly. Meanwhile, V. A. Vandevere (Keaton) seeks to purchase Max’s entire operation and fold it into his theme park, Dreamland—but his murky intentions and ruthless business tactics endanger not only the circus troupe’s careers, but Dumbo’s very life.

The extent to which Vandevere and Dreamland are a dig at the Disney operation is enough to raise an eyebrow—he is a razzle-dazzle showman who acquires other people’s intellectual property and capitalizes on public domain stories, then subjects them to his own corporate culture. The intent is clear, but it bites about as hard as a teething puppy. For a movie about a flying elephant, the spectacle is surprisingly reined in, and the go-for-broke performance by Keaton has nowhere to go. Holt’s kids, ostensibly the heart of the story and the ones who discovered Dumbo’s gift are bad even by Disney standards—this may be a script and direction issue, because it’s not the actors’ fault that their characters have no defining characteristics.

The elephant is cute, though.

See it again: The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus

NR, 70 minutes

Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, April 3 & 5

Local theater listings:

Alamo Drafthouse Cinema 377 Merchant Walk Sq., 326-5056

Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX The Shops at Stonefield, 244-3213

Violet Crown Cinema 200 W. Main St., Downtown Mall, 529-3000

The least interesting parts end up overtaking the charming elements, like a delicious garnish on a bland entrée.

Categories
Arts

Second that: Jordan Peele thrills again with Us

In the Jordan Peele psycho-thriller Us, starring Lupita Nyong’o, Winston Duke, and Evan Alex, a traumatic childhood event resurfaces during a family’s summer vacation. Image courtesy Universal Studios

With Get Out, Jordan Peele electrified the world of modern horror filmmaking, reinvigorating the potential for strong socio-political messages in harrowing and entertaining packages. The message amplified the scares and vice versa, sending shockwaves all the way to the Academy Awards. With Us, Peele cements his position as a genuine auteur with far more to offer than we saw in his huge debut (as if that were ever in doubt). Us is not as revolutionary as Get Out—and thank God. How boring would it be if he tried to break the mold every time? Like if every song on Led Zeppelin IV was a variation on “Stairway to Heaven.” The worst thing Peele could have done would be to emulate his previous breakthrough, and with Us, he proves that he is worth the hype.

Us follows the Wilson family: mother Adelaide (Lupita Nyong’o), father Gabe (Winston Duke), daughter Zora (Shahadi Wright Joseph), and son Jason (Evan Alex) on their annual trip to their summer home—the house in which Adelaide grew up.

A trip to the nearby boardwalk and carnival revives memories of a traumatic event from Adelaide’s past that she has never shared. When she visited this same carnival as a child, she wandered away from her family and saw her doppelgänger in a house of mirrors—not a reflection. Bit by bit, we see glimpses of the event and the emotional consequences to her and her parents. Little coincidences lead her to believe that her double is coming for her, until one day copies of her and her entire family appear at their house during a power outage. The strangers have mysterious origins and unclear motives, but Adelaide must fight for her family’s lives, and her own right to exist.

Us

R, 121 minutes

Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX, Violet Crown Cinema

There are as many twists and turns in Us as there were in Get Out, but if you happen to hear an unwanted spoiler, the fun will not be ruined. In Get Out, the audience’s ignorance of the larger plot was crucial to the film’s air of creepiness, and put us in the shoes of the protagonist. In Us, everything is bad, it escalates, and there is no easy way out. I happened to predict some crucial twists, but when they came to be, they were still scary, satisfying, funny, or all three.

In addition to the scares and jokes, Us is a tribute to social relics of the past. The film opens in 1986, with Adelaide watching an old TV set with various VHS cassettes on either side (watch for references to those films throughout; some are obvious, some are subtle). Among the things she witnesses is an ad for Hands Across America—if you’re old enough to remember, you’ve also likely forgotten this massive non-event by now. But, like many of the best horror films, Us seizes on the shadows of memories either buried or cast aside. Just because we never talk about it anymore doesn’t mean its traces have disappeared, and so too with personal memories and trauma.

The film works on almost all levels: visually, thematically, and even comedically. Nyong’o is spectacularly creepy in her dual roles, while Duke is a revelation as the goofy dad. The performances from child actors are terrific, and supporting turns from Elisabeth Moss and Tim Heidecker prove surprisingly resonant. There are a few narrative hiccups that interrupt the flow, including at least one twist that might actually be impossible, but they don’t drag the film down. Us is a great sophomore film from a gifted filmmaker who has many more stories to tell

See it again: Napoleon Dynamite

PG, 96 minutes

The Paramount Theater, April 2

Local theater listings:

Alamo Drafthouse Cinema 377 Merchant Walk Sq., 326-5056

Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX The Shops at Stonefield, 244-3213

Violet Crown Cinema 200 W. Main St., Downtown Mall, 529-3000

Categories
Arts

Port of entry: Oscar-nominated Swedish film Border reframes the fairy tale

Border, which stars Eero Milonoff and Eva Melander, is a highly original fairy tale with a thrilling twist. Image courtesy Neon

As Disney finds the next title from its vault to adapt, Border explores what it means to truly update a fairy tale for modern audiences. What is a fairy tale, after all, but a story that explores the space where our world and the realm of spirits, demons, monsters, and other mythological beings overlap? It would then stand to reason that a fairy tale should be set not in the heightened reality of a magical kingdom, but in our own, with all of the moral ambivalence, absurdity, ennui, and horror that comes with it.

Films like Tigers Are Not Afraid and Pan’s Labyrinth explore magic as an escape from the atrocities of war, poverty, and violence. What sets Border apart is that this is a creature in our world that does not know her true nature, who has been living an uneventful human life with a feeling that she is different but does not know how to discover the truth.

Tina (Eva Melander) works as a customs officer in Sweden, selecting people to search for attempting to smuggle contraband into the country. She lives a relatively quiet life, though obviously stands out physically, with a face and physique that are evocative of a Neanderthal. She performs her job by sense of smell, far more advanced than any animal because she can smell more than substances; she also sniffs out emotion, intention, and guilt. She is able to detect a phone case with a hidden drive containing child pornography, and is recruited by the local police to locate the creator and distributor.

Meanwhile, she meets Vore (Eero Milonoff), the first person she has ever encountered who looks like her. He appears to know the truth about both of them, and understands his place in the world more than she ever has. Vore is intriguing and confident, but his exact goals in Sweden, and with Tina, are unclear.

Border

R, 110 minutes

Violet Crown Cinema

Though there is a mystery at the heart of Border, co-writer-director Ali Abbasi does not treat its secrets as a puzzle to be solved by the audience, or its characters as pawns in a grand conspiracy. We experience the story from Tina’s point of view, feeling her emotions with her, processing new information as she does, and sharing her curiosity about her origins and purpose. The truth is shocking, but when the twist is revealed, it does not become a different story. Everything we experienced before instead becomes recontextualized. It’s a marvelous way to handle a reveal such as this; once we know the truth, we still want to see what happens next. The emphasis is on the storytelling, not the gimmick.

Border was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Makeup and Hairstyling, and though the transformations are truly remarkable, the film is so much more than that. The quiet beauty of rural Sweden is the perfect setting, both visually and thematically, for Tina’s journey. Though its moral is more ambiguous than other fairy tales, it does convey the idea that the truth is not always the answer, and magical beings do not always bring solutions with them. Border isn’t always an easy film to watch, but it is quite gripping, and unlike anything else you’ll see this year.

See it again: Cruel Intentions

R, 97 minutes

Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX, March 23

Local theater listings:

Alamo Drafthouse Cinema 377 Merchant Walk Sq., 326-5056

Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX The Shops at Stonefield, 244-3213

Violet Crown Cinema 200 W. Main St., Downtown Mall, 529-3000

Categories
Arts

Suitable effort: Captain Marvel strikes a balance among hero flicks

Captain Marvel stars Brie Larson as Carol Danvers, who becomes an intergalactic superhero through a journey of self-discovery. Image courtesy Walt Disney Studios

Films by or about women don’t need to be masterpieces in order to have the right to exist. It’s a point that should be obvious by now, but sadly needs to be made every single time some group with nothing better to do decides that X movie is the next battleground because God forbid a woman straps on a proton pack, a performer has a real-world opinion, or a director uses her platform to make a point. Remember Iron Man 2? Tony Stark is still beloved after that movie didn’t land. Thor had two full releases to get wrong before Ragnarok. Captain Marvel has a balance of strengths and weaknesses, but the desire for it to preemptively fail, the enjoyment in wanting a superhero story led by a woman to fall on its face is, in a word, sexist. In three words, it’s really fucking sexist. Get over yourselves and let someone else try to have fun—it’s not ruining yours.

Captain Marvel tells the story of Vers/Carol Danvers (Brie Larson), a Kree soldier in the interplanetary war against the shape-shifting Skrull. At least she thinks she’s Kree; brief flashes of a life she can’t remember point to a different origin. The Kree chase the Skrull to Earth in the 1990s, where Vers must locate the infiltrators while discovering the truth about herself, and the mentor in her visions (Annette Bening), and questioning the wider context of a war she believed to be so simple and justifiable. She is joined by S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Nick Fury (a de-aged Samuel L. Jackson), who has not yet started the Avengers Initiative and is not even aware of the existence of extraterrestrial life, though he’s quick to catch up.

Captain Marvel

PG-13, 124 minutes

Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX, Violet Crown Cinema

A major current that runs through Captain Marvel is the notion of discovering your inner strength and reaching your full potential. While this is common in almost every movie with a hero and a villain, Vers’ struggle is distinct in that she’s trying to reclaim power that she has been deprived of, and she is controlled by others. Her commanding officer (Jude Law) trains her to combat without using the energy that blasts from her hands, which can be turned off remotely by an implant on the back of her neck. “What has been given can be taken away,” he likes to remind her—but the question arises of whether it was someone’s right to take it away in the first place. People don’t need to prove their inherent worth to anyone but themselves; if you believe in someone and support their journey, you both benefit. If you scorn and manipulate, you may as well get out of the way before you’re left in the dust. It’s a good message, especially for young women, and it is gratifying to watch Larson stuff it back in her opponents’ faces when her time comes.

As a movie, Captain Marvel is fine. The good: the chemistry between Larson and Jackson is wonderful. Larson is aware of the weight the role is carrying but is not afraid of the fun that superhero movies provide, and Jackson clearly needs to be cast in more comedies or let loose more often. A climactic reveal regarding civilians who suffer in wartime makes the film weightier than most Marvel movies have been, at least pre-Black Panther. The not-so-good: the action can be limp and unclear. A key fight near the end should have brought down the house. The script and dialogue do no favors to the committed performers. The ’90s aesthetic is joyless, content to take potshots at easy targets (Blockbuster, pagers, Alta Vista), and punctuated by a tacked-on Now That’s What I Call Music soundtrack. Directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, better known for dramas like Half Nelson, lean too heavily on subtext and charisma, leaving potentially exciting moments to die on the vine.

To be clear, there are worse things than a not-great movie. It never condescends, it never berates, and the worst thing about it is that it’s not as good as Black Panther. Most superhero movies aren’t. Captain Marvel is not as good as it could have been, but that’s true of lots of blockbusters whose sequels go on to do interesting things.

See it again: Brave

PG, 93 minutes

The Paramount Theater, March 17

Local theater listings:

Alamo Drafthouse Cinema 377 Merchant Walk Sq., 326-5056

Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX The Shops at Stonefield, 244-3213

Violet Crown Cinema 200 W. Main St., Downtown Mall, 529-3000

Categories
Arts

Crazy good: Isabelle Huppert steals the show in Greta

Greta stars Isabelle Huppert as a lonely stranger who draws Chloë Grace Moretz into a seemingly harmless friendship. Photo courtesy Focus Features

It’s a thin line between glorious camp and total trainwreck, and Neil Jordan’s Greta may be the new gold standard for the former. A storyline that wouldn’t be out of place in a Lifetime original is elevated by the clear delight of Jordan, his crew, and the top-shelf cast bringing their collective pedigree together to revel in the trash. When a performer of Isabelle Huppert’s caliber wears sunglasses to a restaurant and flips over the table in a spectacular way, or blithely ballet-dances away from a horrific act, you know you are in the presence of magnificence. Imagine Fatal Attraction by way of Mommie Dearest, where everyone is giving it their all, but also in on the joke.

Chloë Grace Moretz plays Frances, a young woman from Boston living in her wealthy friend Erica’s (Maika Monroe) apartment in New York. One day she finds a bag left behind on the subway, and returns it to the owner, the titular Greta (Huppert). Greta is, by all appearances, a lonely old woman whose isolation from her family has left her a bit quirky and desperate for company. The recent death of Frances’ mother and subsequent strained relationship with her father leaves her vulnerable, and she overlooks Greta’s strange mannerisms and even a few red flags. Soon, Frances discovers the shocking (to her, not to the audience) truth about her peculiar friend, at which point the full spectrum of Greta’s craziness comes out: stalking, appearing at her house and workplace, following Frances’ friends, all while insisting she is the mother Frances needs.

As in the best thrillers, Jordan plays Greta’s narrative hand early because the fun of this movie is not specifically what happens next, it’s how far things will go. Once the truth about Greta’s modus operandi is revealed, we’re not subjected to lengthy explanations about her previous victims, or convinced that she’s a criminal mastermind. As a disturbed person, she’s created a gambit that skirts the law and exploits societal sympathies, but as an irrational person, she has not thought through an endgame. We discover, along with Frances, her roommate, and her father, just how drastic their countermeasures need to be to combat this level of crazy.

Jordan understands the difference between fun suspense and upsetting horror. Both have their place in film, but there’s a cheapness in the lowest common denominator shockfests that pass themselves off as schlocky fun. One thing that elevates camp from crap is when clearly silly or messy ideas are executed with artistic flair and a careful balance of irony and sincerity. For example, there are several moments of explicit violence, but the camera never dwells on the gore because the more exciting parts are the moments before and after.

Everyone in this film appears to be clear on what this movie is and what part they play in the audience’s mind. Huppert steals the show, but a cat-and-mouse game needs a mouse, and that role is terrifically embodied by Moretz as susceptible but not helpless, and capable of some extreme measures of her own. Perfectly paced and definitely rewatchable, Greta may be the best treat of 2019 so far.

Greta

R, 99 minutes

See it at Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX, Violet Crown Cinema

See it again:
How to Marry a Millionaire

G, 96 minutes

March 11, Alamo Drafthouse Cinema

Local theater listings:

Alamo Drafthouse Cinema 377 Merchant Walk Sq., 326-5056

Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX The Shops at Stonefield, 244-3213

Violet Crown Cinema 200 W. Main St., Downtown Mall, 529-3000