The Long Dumb Road

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Nat (Tony Revolori) is driving his van across the American Southwest toward L.A., and art school. He’s a little sheltered and a little naive due to a cushiony upbringing, but with his trusty camera (with real, actual film, a relic from his granddad) by his side, he’s ready to turn this drive into a sight-seeing tour to get into the right head space before his education properly begins.

18544-1-1100Nat does not count on bumping into Richard (Jason Mantzoukas), a mechanic just out of a job when Nat’s van is in desperate need. They trade labour for a ride, and soon the two are unintentionally road tripping together. Richard is an odd duck; he’s volatile but sensitive, impulsive and oddly sweet. Richard gets them into a LOT of trouble, from failed romance to successful highway robbery. But his constant need to put himself out there means they also meet a lot of interesting characters along the road, and a lot of “wisdom” gets dropped. Richard is much more worldly and experienced, but he’s probably not the role model a young man such as Nat needs. But he’s the one he gets.

Tony Revolori could have easily been a Wes Anderson flash in the pan but I’m constantly glad to see him crop up elsewhere. Nat does his growing up, coming of age thing in this film, which means Revolori is in turns adorably nervous all the way to confidently heroic. That’s quite an arc. Richard might be further along the hopeless scale, but he’s confronting his own issues head on, even if he never learns the lesson. Jason Mantzoukas has so far been pretty one-note as an actor – he always turns in these rambunctious, beastly, off-colour characters, but he gives such a committed, over the top performance you can’t help but love him.

Richard is an erratic juggling act for Mantzoukas, and it’s a thrilling to watch.

I’m happy to report that director Hannah Fidell turns in a movie that is neither long nor dumb. It’s just funny and clever enough to be spent amiably. While I wouldn’t want Richard in my car, or heck, even on my bus, and definitely not on my plane, odd couple road trips are a tried and true genre for a reason, and these two put forth a solid, likable entry.

Submergence

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Danielle is a privileged professor, studying the deep, deep depths of the ocean. She spends Christmas at a swank hotel in France, where she meets James on the very cold beach, and they go for a swim. James is a hydraulic engineer who drills wells in third world countries. He dreams of Nigeria, but I’m not sure they’re always sweet dreams. They fall in love, of course. Danielle (Alicia Vikander) and James (James McAvoy) have a whirlwind hotel romance, but eventually they’ve both got to go back to work.

Danielle ends up on a deep-submergence vehicle where the tiniest mistake may mean death. But she’s seeing parts of the ocean that inspire her research and scratch her science itches. It’s too bad that she’s constantly distracted – James, you see, has been out of touch for weeks, then months. She doesn’t know whether he’s dead or just ghosting her. Unbeknownst to her, he’s been taken hostage in Somalia by jihadist terrorists, who suspect he is a British spy. He suffers months of torture all the while dreaming of their idyllic Christmas refuge.

Submergence is, therefore, two very separate movies, and its only strength is the chemistry between the two leads, which is very brief indeed. Once they’re isolated, they’re very isolated – he in a windowless cell, she in submarine miles underwater. It’s lonely and cold.

Here we have a salt water spa experience called Källa . In its 12% salinity, you float, weightless. The tomb is quiet, and pure. With little other sensory input, you are alone with your thoughts, which seem to float along the surface just like you. This movie is a little like that. It’s got no real weight, just snatches of remembrances and memories that paint a lovely flashback but that’s about it.

I suppose there’s a metaphor here – how love is a refuge in a violent world – but it’s just so darn inaccessible, and frankly, it tries one’s patience. And that’s really too bad because McAvoy and Vikander are doing gorgeous work that’s just gone wasted. Sad face.

Valentine Road

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Larry King (not that Larry King) had a pretty rough life. His adoptive parents had 22 complaints about abuse against them. Larry wore jackets at school to hide the bruises. But no one came to save him. When he was finally removed from the home, it was because he had “stolen” food from his adoptive parents’ refrigerator. How hungry was Larry? How sore? He went to a shelter for abused and neglected children where he struggled to identify his orientation. Small for his age, biracial, he experimented with makeup, crocheted scarves, and wore heeled boots to school. Everyone knew him as the gay kid, though he was possibly more accurately transgender, and it didn’t sit well with everyone.

On February 12, 2008, Larry King was shot and killed by a fellow 8th grade classmate – the classmate he’d chosen as his Valentine. A classmate who was so provoked by Larry’s sexuality that he brought a gun to school and shot him in the head, a hate crime that “shocked the nation” (except not really, as Americans have decided that adopting school shootings into their culture is just easier).

The documentary interviews not just students who discriminated against Larry, but teachers as well – one who is religious piece of shit and believes that Larry’s “actions” had “consequences” and a special ed teacher obsessed with weapons. The one teacher who supported him was summarily fired, and now works as a barista. The school has done nothing for grieving students and is tried its best to bury the execution that took place on school grounds.

Yeah, this shit is really difficult to watch. There are too many failures, too many shitty grownups doing nothing. Not just excusing homophobia, but espousing it. It made me sick. But this documentary does something unexpected. It has two victims, not one.

The boy who shot Larry was a white supremacist. But he was also occasionally homeless, with an abusive father and a drug-addicted mother. At the time of the shooting, he was living with his grandfather, who had a lot of weapons lying around. Is he just as much a victim as Larry?

The documentary looks behind the headlines but how much compassion can we really afford to expend here? This shit is unbelievable, and I think we all need to confront what goes on in it, because this film from 2013 was a better predictor of the 2016 election than any of the polls.

This movie made me mad, as it should. It upset me, as it should. It shocked me, as it should. But stories like these continue to fail to galvanize the dirty half of America who breed hatred and value guns over human life.

Creed II

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Since Ryan Coogler was busy making Black Panther, Sylvester Stallone took back the writing responsibilities (with Juel Taylor) for the eighth instalment of the Rocky franchise. As a result, Creed II is as much a continuation of 1985’s Rocky IV as a sequel to 2015’s stellar Creed and as much Rocky’s story as Adonis Creed’s.

In Creed II, Adonis Creed (Michael B. Jordan) has won six bouts in a row and is about to fight Danny “Stuntman” Wheeler for the world title.  Creed wins the fight and then, shortly after, proposes to his girlfriend Bianca (Tessa Thompson), and she says yes!  At that point, Creed should be on top of the world but he’s about to learn that creed_iithe championship belt is heavier than it looks, because he’s now the target of a bunch of wanna-be champs, including a Russian whose father killed Creed’s dad in Rocky IV. Creed will need Rocky’s help to beat the younger Drago, who so far has brutally beaten every boxer he’s gone up against.

Rocky’s part in this story is an important one.  In fact, several pivotal events that happen to Creed are shown from Rocky’s point of view, suggesting this is Rocky’s franchise again. Which makes sense when Rocky himself is writing the story.

Is that a bad thing? Kind of, which is hard for me to say  as a fan of the Rocky franchise. There’s something magical about the super cheesy and entirely predictable Rocky lovefests from Rocky II through to Rocky Balboa (Rocky is excluded because being the original, it is only predictable in retrospect). And Creed II captures that same magic at all the right moments. It’s a solid addition to this four-decade-old franchise.

But it’s a step back from Creed and that regression is further proof of Ryan Coogler’s genius (as if we needed any). With the first Creed, Coogler took the Rocky franchise in a new direction and included a ton of callbacks that riffed on the original formula without feeling derivative.

Unfortunately, Creed II doesn’t ever get to that same level because it is content to recycle the tried and true Rocky formula: a win at the outset, followed by a setback at an opponent’s hands, and then after a super-sweet training montage, a well-earned victory over that same opponent. Creed II executes that formula as well as any of the Rocky-titled films, but it never separates itself from that pack.  Rocky fans will leave Creed II satisfied, but fans of Creed may be in for a bit of a letdown.

The Cleaners

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Content moderators are the world’s defacto censors.

Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Instagram have bigger populations than any country or state. Their editorial rules and standards moderate how the world communicates.

But who scrubs the Internet of all the dirt that shouldn’t be there?

The answer lies mostly in the Philippines, where tens of thousands of content moderators flip through 25k images per shift,deciding which to allow, and which to delete. Algorithms can’t scan a picture for what’s appropriate; that’s still a human judgement call. They stop child exploitation, cyber bullying, and terrorism. And, depending on the platform, they may stop a breastfeeding mother from sharing a picture of her son eating or an artist from sharing her painting of Donald Trump and his teeny tiny penis. Though this big business employs many, the content operators must do their work anonymously, for fear of corruption and reprisals. This work goes unseen, unrecognized, and for many of us, unconsidered. When you post an image, do you picture the person tasked with sorting through them? Someone on the other side of the world, unfamiliar with our politics and context – unfamiliar, until their training, with butt plugs and ISIS.

This documentary was fascinating to me because though it directly affects me, and how I navigate and experience the internet, I’ve never spared more than a thought toward these hard working people. It inspired me to imagine what kinds of images and videos they’re forced to watch: none of the flagged images are good, but which are acceptable and which are not, which are morally wrong, which are illegal, which will scar you for life? Because these people have SEEN SOME SHIT. 25 thousand images per day. Think about that. Think about how many beheading videos they’ve witnessed, how many torture videos. Or how much child pornography. For lots of us, even one image is too many. What does it do to your brain – your soul – to see image after image, and to be in charge of keeping the rest of them safe from them?

This documentary asks so little of us – only that we acknowledge that these people exist, and they’ve made our lives easier. But perhaps a thought or two should be spared for these new giants of social media who are deciding our values and attitudes for us; not merely hosting what we share, but shaping it and curating it. It’s dangerous work.

The Christmas Chronicles

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Kate Pierce is reviewing videos from Christmases past. Her father’s in all of them but he won’t be there this year, and the family’s taking it hard. Her older brother Teddy’s been acting out in dangerous ways and her mom is overworked and stressed out. When Kate’s mom (Kimberly Williams-Paisley) gets called in to work on Christmas Eve, she leaves the kids in a house that feels emptier than it should, but with a video that contains more than it has any right to. Just before a video cuts out, someone’s arm is seen placing a gift beneath their tree. Kate is ecstatic: proof of Santa, caught on tape! But the video is vague and an arm is not really enough, so she begs her brother to pull an all-nighter to collect more evidence.

MV5BMTYyNDE4MjI4Nl5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTgwNTc4NDY2NjM@._V1_SY1000_CR0,0,1499,1000_AL_Long story short, Kate (Darby Camp) and Teddy (Judah Lewis) end up as stowaways on Santa’s sleigh, which causes a derailment (I don’t know the technical term for throwing a sleigh off its course while flying through the air), and a crash, and the loss of Santa’s magic sack of toys, and the temporary misplacement of the reindeer. Catastrophe! Santa (Kurt Russell, in absolute bearded glory) isn’t too happy on a whole lot of fronts, but he recognizes in Kate a true believer, so together they concoct a plan to save Christmas.

The Christmas Chronicles involves police chases, gang activity, Elvish, jingle bells, literal jail house rock, and an archive system to die for. And like any good Netflix original, it has a scene of someone watching some other Netflix original. But mostly it has Kurt Russell, who brings everything to the role. Like me, you may be a little bit squeamish about our dear Kurt Russell playing Santa. Is it really the time in his career for this? Worry not. This is not the rosy-cheeked, elderly Santa that Coca Cola is pimping (in fact, this Russell’s Santa is particularly peeved by that depiction). Russell’s Santa is a little cooler, a little leaner, but he’s still 100% magic, and that’s what counts.

Here in Ottawa, we’ve already had frostbite warning and record snowfall, and it isn’t even winter. What we need on cold nights such is these are great holiday movies to warm and soothe our souls. And while this one isn’t an instant classic, it’s a pretty decent entry into the catalogue.

The Holiday Calendar

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In the month leading up Christmas, Abby dons an elf suit to take pictures of kids sitting on Santa’s lap. It’s not exactly the kind of photography work she’d imagined for herself, but every time her parents ask if she’s ready to come work for the family law firm, she defers. Besides the humiliating elf costume, 3 key things happen to Abby just as the holiday season kicks off:

  1. Her best friend Josh returns from his globe-trotting adventures.
  2. Her grandfather gives her an antique advent calendar, an inheritance from her recently deceased grandmother.
  3. She meets Ty, a cute new guy and potential love interest.

To be honest, Abby (Kat Graham) and Josh (Quincy Brown) are adorable together and have great chemistry, so you almost root for them to hook up, though the writers have MV5BZTE0MzQ4MmEtMjJiYi00YmE3LWIyMjEtMTg5YThkYWY0ZDg3XkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyOTA5NzQ0MDQ@._V1_SX1777_CR0,0,1777,937_AL_other ideas. Let’s respect their friendship! Plus, the antique advent calendar from Gramps (Ron Cephas Jones, the dead dad from This Is Us – no, not that one, the other one!) may or may not be predicting the future with the little trinkets it presents to her each day. They’re adding up to a romance with Ty (Ethan Peck), the handsome single dad doctor who plans great dates and works with the homeless. That plus the magic of the holiday season makes for a pretty compelling case.

If you’re surprised at the lack of sarcasm in my tone, well, so am I. I’ve never met a Netflix or Hallmark holiday movie I didn’t hate on sight, so I wasn’t prepared to find this one kind of charming. Graham is a glowing, sweet as pie reason for this – she and Brown lead a surprisingly solid cast. They elevate the material beyond the normal Christmas cheese. And I liked that the romance didn’t start improbably from a negative place – finally a boyfriend who isn’t a jerk! Which is fortunate because we get to know Abby enough to know she has a good head on her shoulders and a lot of support from family friends – not the kind of woman silly enough to confuse condescension for caring.

Abby’s family and friends are exactly the kind of people you won’t mind sharing part of your holiday season with. Glass of wine and cozy socks optional but recommended.

I Do…Until I Don’t

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Vivian, a pretentious documentarian, has a thesis to prove with her new film: that marriage is basically prison, that married people are largely unhappy, and that the institution of marriage should be capped at 7 year contracts. So she finds 3 American couples to expose their marital problems on camera, and boy do they.

Alice (Lake Bell) and Noah (Ed Helms) are in dire financial straights; their business is failing and they’re in danger of losing their house. Meanwhile, they’ve been trying to have a baby for years, but their lacklustre sex life is not cooperating.

MV5BMTU0NDI2ODIzM15BMl5BanBnXkFtZTgwMDM5Mzc3MjI@._V1_SY1000_CR0,0,674,1000_AL_Fanny (Amber Heard) and Zander (Wyatt Cenac) are a non-traditional couple with an open relationship.

Cybil (Mary Steenburgen) and Harvey (Paul Reiser) married when each had a specific need, but now neither one are fulfilling it. They seem to be drifting into separate lives, and Cybil barely tolerates Harvey’s quirks.

Vivian exploits and also orchestrates events to fit her documentary’s narrative but these couples have too many real problems to play her game satisfactorily. Cybil’s semi-estranged daughter shows up, pregnant. Alice has lied about money and tries to cover it up by doing sex work on the side. Noah may be hiding a drug problem. On Vivian’s “emancipation day,” who will divorce, who will walk away, and who will choose to tough it out?

Written and directed by Lake Bell, I Do…Until I Don’t starts out subversive and satirical but simmers down to a sweet little comedy that feels more like a defense of marriage than a challenge to it. There are plenty of great lines to go around but almost nothing new to say about love and relationships. The performances are pleasing and there’s nothing wrong with the film, it’s just a lot less rebellious than I’ve come to expect from Bell. Movies are crowded with stories about relationships, and this one never finds the footing to rise above.

Please Stand By

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Wendy went to live in a group home when her sister got pregnant. Wendy (Dakota Fanning) has never been allowed to meet her baby niece for fear of her (autistic) tantrums, but under Scottie’s (Toni Collette) care, she’s doing much better. They work on routines, sustained eye contact, and interpreting emotion. Wendy lives by the rules she carefully writes down in the notebook around her neck. She has a job at Cinnabon, a pet dog, and a penchant for speed-knitting sweaters for said dog – Pete, a chihuahua. In her spare time, she has written a 400+ page manuscript, a Star Trek episode. She’s a fan of the show and a particular fan of Spock’s, a dude whose half-Vulcan blood means he too has trouble understanding human emotion.

A visit with her sister (Alice Eve) that’s meant to be celebratory turns sour when Audrey MV5BMmQ5MzJlNmItNzg3MC00MTZjLTkwNTUtYzllOTdlZGM4ZjdhXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyNzQxNzUzNzQ@._V1_has again not brought baby Ruby, and hints that she may be selling the family home and moving away. A meltdown seems imminent, but Wendy is fixated on her script, and getting it to Paramount Pictures on time for a contest. When she’s mysteriously not in her bed the next morning – well, let’s just say it’s not much of a mystery.

I love Toni Collette and she’s faultless in this, but it’s not her movie. It belongs to Dakota Fanning, who is Dakota Fantastic. Her portrayal may not be 100% authentic to autism, and could never be representative of everyone’s experience, the material is revived by using Star Trek as a tool for talking about her challenges. Dream sequences serve to reinforce this.

The story is slight but the heart is big. I really enjoyed Please Stand By, its attempt to show a different kind of coming-of-age, its commitment to keeping things light and fun but true. In an age where super heroes overcome astronomical, impossible, unbelievable things in at least 3 different acts of each movie, it’s refreshing to see a young woman overcome such humble obstacles and know that they mean so much more.

 

 

The Grinch

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The original, made-for-TV How The Grinch Stole Christmas! will always be the version that’s near and dear to my heart. It’s as old as my mother, and like her, it’s a classic. That’s the one I’ll always need to rewatch. But I can see how 2018’s The Grinch will be a favourite for kids in the years to come.

It’s a safe retelling, sticking fairly closely to the original story, with a few embellishments here and there to puff it out to 86 minutes. The Grinch is a mean, green dude who lives in a cave with no one for company but his faithful dog, Max – and that’s the way he likes it. In the town down below, however, the Whos of Whoville are a happy, joyful people, who eagerly and lavishly celebrate the holiday The Grinch most despises: Christmas.

Whoville is an orgy of colour and action. Imaginative details abound – from the mouse skating by on candy cane skates, to the machine that cleverly collects snow MV5BNjJhYmE0NGYtOThhMC00ZGIwLWExNDUtZmU3NWI3NmNlNmViXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMjgxNTQwNw@@._V1_SX1777_CR0,0,1777,740_AL_and poops out snowballs for the trail of excited children behind it. The animators have outdone themselves drenching everything in lights and tinsel and Christmas cheer. The Grinch himself looks better than ever, his green fluffiness rendered hair by hair. And Max, half companion, half servant, all wonder dog, has fantastic and recognizable doggy traits.

A couple of noticeable differences: The Grinch doesn’t seem to be entirely bad, even while still misunderstood. He can be quite sweet to his pal Max, and he’s compassionate with new addition Fred, a rubinesque reindeer, dopey with good intentions. And The Grinch’s “nemesis” Cindy Lou Who is now the adventurous daughter of a hardworking single mother, a detail that helps move this timeless story into this century. I didn’t mind any of the new stuff, but I did miss just a few details from the original film, which I know and love so well.

A lot of the voicework was fantastic: Angela Lansbury, Pharrell Williams, Rashida Jones, and especially Kenan Thompson. Nothing against Benedict Cumberbatch but I found him terribly mis(voice)cast as The Grinch. And I found it baffling that they hired him only to make him do an American accent – he might have sounded better in his own voice. Ah well.

All in all, kids will love this movie. I know this for sure because my theatre was filled to the brim with some sort of organization’s boatload of kids. Their joy and mirth brought an extra layer of fun to the screening – not to mention squeals like “He’s naked!” followed by every single kid dissolving into giggles, the sound of which is sure to grow anyone’s heart by two to three sizes at least.