The Little Prince

THE LITTLE PRINCE (Mark Osborne, 2015)

The Little Girl (Mackenzie Foy) in THE LITTLE PRINCE is being groomed by her Mother (Rachel McAdams) to be a striver in a dog-eat-dog world. She bombs the entrance interview to get into the prestigious Werth Academie, but a move into the right house within its district and a meticulous and demanding summer schedule of preparatory work are anticipated to launch her on the path to success. While other kids might balk at a summer of intense studying while a parent is away at work, the Little Girl naturally takes to it.

Her focus is tested when she meets the old man who lives next door. The Aviator (Jeff Bridges) gets her attention to wander with the creaky, old plane he’s trying to repair and stories of his desert encounter years ago with the Little Prince (Riley Osborne), a boy who lives on an asteroid. The Little Girl and the Aviator’s friendship lead her to searching for the Little Prince when the old man grows ill and becomes unable to look for him.

THE LITTLE PRINCE adapts Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s classic novella of the same name and puts the book within a contemporary story, thus using it as a leaping off point for expansion. The framing device has practical reasons because without it there likely isn’t enough source material to mold into a feature film. There’s creative justification too, as the things de Saint-Exupéry bemoaned in 1943 have surely increased in today’s world. If he was worried about child-like wonder being stamped out on the path to adulthood, he probably would not be heartened by the emphasis on practicality in education and the culture today.

This reworking of THE LITTLE PRINCE complements the original’s concerns about how the process of growing up can result in the loss of curiosity and lack of appreciation for intangible pleasures with values hard to quantify in a market-driven society. Parental insecurities about their child’s future and the desire to optimize time to increase marketability and competitiveness are rightfully significant. Still, maligning play and contemplation, or treating them as goods only if they have discretely applicable ends, undermines development of the whole child.

THE LITTLE PRINCE employs two styles: three-dimensional computer animation for the contemporary portions and stop-motion watercolors for memories of the Little Prince. Scenes rendered in the newer method impress with their sleekness while the older style contains warmth and personality, qualities that often leak out when seeking to conform to look like every other CGI-animated film now. The standardized perfection of the contemporary scenes are not artless, but to a degree they represent what the film wishes to resist, namely efficiency prized over wonder. There can be beauty in both. In using different styles, THE LITTLE PRINCE integrate the practical and the dreamy as a guide to remembering how they feed one another.

Grade: B

The Invitation

THE INVITATION (Karyn Kusama, 2015)

After a tragedy and the subsequent dissolution of their marriage, Will (Logan Marshall-Green) and his friends don’t see his ex-wife Eden (Tammy Blanchard) and her new husband David (Michiel Huisman) for two years until they all are invited to a lavish dinner. The situation is especially awkward for Will in THE INVITATION as the party in the Hollywood Hills is being hosted where he used to live, which is also the site of the accident he’s still grieving over. His girlfriend Kira (Emayatzy Corinealdi) and social circle are especially concerned about Will’s frame of mind. Eden and David have a disquieting sense of calm about them that gradually unnerves everyone when they begin testifying about the group that have brought them inner peace.

For the last two years they were often in Mexico with The Invitation, a New Age-like self-help organization that some consider a cult. The presence of two other group members also adds stress to the dynamic of the gathering. When David leads their guest in a game learned from The Invitation, the party becomes more uncomfortable. Will is deeply bothered by the weird tone of the evening and suspicious of Eden and David’s tranquility, but friends reassure him that the reunion was never not going to be awkward.

THE INVITATION plunges Will and the others into a scenario that seems off from the get-go, yet by identifying with his traumatized character, it’s uncertain if feeling ill at ease is the product of personal anxiety or the hosts’ behavior. Director Karyn Kusama brings the film along at a slow boil and subverts distrust at enough points to call Will’s perspective into question. Is he actually disturbed, or is he right to be on alert? THE INVITATION feasts on the tension between trying to go along with the crowd while simultaneously feeling discontent. Even if the rest of Will’s friends aren’t entirely on board with the way the night is shaping up, they are convinced that restoring old relationships is worth the trouble.

For a significant portion of its running time, THE INVITATION provides the experience of being confronted with soft but insistent peer pressure. It’s like dealing with a salesman who is friendly, if a little too familiar, and won’t take no for an answer. The guests are being plied with expensive wine, which lowers their inhibitions, but when all want to heal old wounds, they will be inclined to adapt despite any objections they may want to make. Kusama understands that suggestibility comes gradually in a strained environment like this. Although Will’s friends are sympathetic to the resistance he puts up, they just want to make the circle whole again. The nerve-racking nature of the party emerges in weighing desires versus a flight response that is pinging like crazy.

Grade: B-

The Meddler

THE MEDDLER (Lorene Scafaria, 2015)

When her husband dies, it’s only natural that Marnie Minervini (Susan Sarandon) moves from New Jersey to Los Angeles to be closer to her television writer daughter Lori (Rose Byrne) in THE MEDDLER. Lori loves her mother, but she cannot take the constant calls and texts from her, not to mention when she drops by the house and lets herself in. Marnie means well, and although she wouldn’t admit it, she’s still grieving for her husband two years later. Nevertheless, Lori finds some relief in going to New York City to shoot a pilot and leaving her mother behind.

In her daughter’s absence Marnie lavishes her attention on almost anyone. Among other things, she volunteers at the hospital, babysits for Lori’s friends, and drives an Apple Genius bar employee to night classes and helps him study. There doesn’t appear to be room for another man in her life, yet she is gradually won over by Zipper (J.K. Simmons), a retired cop turned movie set security guard.

Lorene Scafaria writes and directs with great sensitivity and humor about the complications of love in various forms. THE MEDDLER deals with the loneliness of losing a spouse and parent and the tension found when the need to be close to a loved one can be the very thing that pushes her away. Although the film has autobiographical aspects, Scafaria pinpoints the general frustration that can exist between an adult child and parent when the latter has trouble giving space. The strain between Marnie and Lori is borne out of love. Scafaria empathizes with each as they engage in a delicate dance to stake out their own territory without stepping on each others’ toes. They need each other in the worst way but just haven’t been able to establish boundaries.

Sarandon projects such warmth as Marnie that it’s easy to see why she would be so wonderful and, at times, maddening as a mother. She means well to a fault and is so obviously fond of Lori that being the object of her affection is like being smothered in hugs. Marnie can be a bit of a snoop, but Sarandon plays her free of malicious or guilt-inducing intent. Her identity seems to have flowed from being a wife and a mother, so with one of those parts of her missing, she puts all her energy into the other. Marnie is selfless to a point that can be problematic, at least in how she compensates for the things she feels she doesn’t deserve. For the most part she’s not self-conscious, so it’s fun to see her interact with Zipper, whose non-threatening nature disarms her in a way that causes some necessary but unwelcome self-examination.

Like Scafaria’s excellent first film SEEKING A FRIEND FOR THE END OF THE WORLD, THE MEDDLER is based in sadness but isn’t so depressed that it can’t laugh at what life brings along. She sees what can be funny about being spotted by your ex on Valentine’s Day while having dinner with your mom, saying the right words without the proper context to a TSA agent, and disposing of a loved one’s ashes. THE MEDDLER charms not through force but by possessing a good heart.

Grade: A-

Knight of Cups

KNIGHT OF CUPS (Terrence Malick, 2015)

KNIGHT OF CUPS follows Rick (Christian Bale), a screenwriter lost in the wilderness of Hollywood and all of the temptations it has to offer. Writer-director Terrence Malick compares Rick’s experience with a story about a father who sends his son west to retrieve a pearl, except the boy forgets his mission as he is seduced by what this new land puts before him. Success has brought money and an unending flow of beautiful women to Rick, but it has separated him from his wife Nancy (Cate Blanchett) and brought tension between him and his father (Brian Dennehy) and brother (Wes Bentley). Like Rick, who is referred to in the title, every significant character is given a chapter named after their corresponding tarot card. Each segment looks at how each person affects the wandering dreamer.

Malick continues to push his style to greater abstraction in KNIGHT OF CUPS. This film may show the limits of its utility. Malick employs a thin line of narrative for hanging his meditations in voiceover about the pursuit of God and love and alienation from it amid a world that distracts from the eternal by making beauty and novelty easily accessible to stave off boredom. Characters are heard on the soundtrack before they’ve been introduced and often sound the same, so it can be difficult to parse whose thoughts we’re hearing, although Malick may be more interested in the totality of the statements than assigning any to particular voices. The technique is freeing in that it allows the viewer to float along with the experience and confounding when trying to understand specifically what Malick is saying. For better or worse, the actors are symbols, even more than in his previous film.

After THE TREE OF LIFE and TO THE WONDER, how much one is willing to submit to the ride probably depends on one’s tolerance for Malick’s mystical poetry. The film unspools like a waking illusion, with Rick hazily roaming through the dream factory rich in material things and impoverished spiritually. It helps that cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki’s ravishing imagery of manmade opulence holds interest even if one loses the threads of philosophy and theology that hold KNIGHT OF CUPS together. It’s a staggeringly beautiful film in which the camera swoops among the people and tilts upward as if in worship and humility.

Christian or faith-based cinema tends to be narrowly defined to the kind of pat homiletics in stuff like MIRACLES FROM HEAVEN. Certainly those very straightforward types of films are more accessible on an aesthetic level than the sound and image pastiche Malick favors, but both are searching for something higher. KNIGHT OF CUPS dwells in the sinful entertainment capital to understand how one can be led astray and might be led out. If there can be multiple denominations within the predominant western religion, why can’t there be different ways for art to contemplate the nature of the divine too?

Grade: B

The Brothers Grimsby

THE BROTHERS GRIMSBY (Louis Leterrier, 2015)

Although it’s been twenty-eight years since he was separated from his little brother, Nobby (Sacha Baron Cohen) continues to hold out hope that they will be reunited. In THE BROTHERS GRIMSBY Nobby is tipped off that Sebastian (Mark Strong) will be at a London charity event, but he’s unaware that his sibling will be in attendance as an MI6 agent intent on taking out an assassin. Nobby’s bumbling greeting of his long-lost brother leads to Sebastian accidentally shooting one of the very people he was supposed to be protecting.

With the nation’s security service in hot pursuit of him, Sebastian reluctantly agrees to let his eager brother hide him at the crowded flat he lives in with his wife Dawn (Rebel Wilson) and nearly a dozen kids. Sebastian’s return to their working class English hometown of Grimsby, sister city to Chernobyl, is short-lived as professional killers follow him there. Before long he and Nobby are traveling to South Africa and elsewhere around the globe to foil an evil mastermind’s plot to terrorize the planet.

Like THE DICTATOR, THE BROTHERS GRIMSBY features Baron Cohen’s antics in a scripted scenario instead of the mix of quasi-documentary and fiction in BORAT and BRUNO. He’s credited as one of three screenwriters on THE BROTHERS GRIMSBY, and it’s the funniest thing he’s made since BORAT, although, as with his other work, your appreciation depends on how high your tolerance is for the outrageous and offensive. Like the hardscrabble buffoons that Nobby lives among, this is a comedy of exceptionally low taste. For instance, one of the most memorable scenes features the brothers hiding in an elephant’s vagina while their host is visited by a line of amorous pachyderms. The extended bit is as filthy and uproarious as one might imagine.

As base and scatological as THE BROTHERS GRIMSBY is, the vulgarity seems cheeky and cheerful in large part to Baron Cohen’s amiable doofus. Perpetually clad in an England soccer jersey and resembling the lead singer of Oasis, Nobby is a genial family man who is willing to endure all sorts of indignities for the sake of being with his brother again. This sweetness is critical in striking a balance with all of the disgusting stuff that, while nasty, doesn’t come across as mean. Some may find that a couple jokes cross the line into racial insensitivity, but for a film that takes big risks for laughs, most don’t seem to come from a cruel place.

Director Louis Leterrier, possibly best known for THE TRANSPORTER and its first sequel, brings credibility to THE BROTHERS GRIMSBY’s action scenes. During the opening credits the first-person POV chase with Sebastian tailing a suspect serves as a good example of the breakneck excitement in such sequences and a funny riff on spy movie setpieces. The action matters in THE BROTHERS GRIMSBY, but ultimately the film strives, like the James Bond and MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE series, to find its purpose in showing the audience something it can’t believe it’s seeing. In this case that means howling at grotesquely swollen anatomy and an unconventional method for containing the threat of weaponized rockets.

Grade: B

Trumbo

TRUMBO (Jay Roach, 2015)

TRUMBO is the sort of bullet-pointed biographical profile that studios love to trot out at awards time. If the subject pertains to Hollywood itself, all the better. Whether the details of the showcased person’s life are familiar to the viewing public or not, they’ll be spelled out with all the subtlety of a grade school book report. In this instance the person at the story’s center was unfairly punished for his beliefs during a shameful period in which the industry and government behaved shamefully out of fear that Communists were working to bring down America from the inside. Despite the events and thematic richness in this tale of injustice, director Jay Roach and screenwriter John McNamara execute it with dutiful monotony.

TRUMBO begins in 1947 with screenwriter Dalton Trumbo (Bryan Cranston) considered to be among the best at what he does in show business. Although he signs a studio contract to make him the highest paid writer in the system, he is conscious that others who work on films are not getting what he believes to be their fair share. A staunch defender of workers’ rights and a member of the Communist Party, Trumbo is visible in supporting his colleagues. Such advocacy draws a target on him from gossip columnist Hedda Hopper (Helen Mirren).

The pressure on Trumbo and fellow Communist screenwriters increases when the House Un-American Activities Committee holds hearings to root out the insidious red influence on the nation’s entertainment. Trumbo and those in the so-called Hollywood Ten refuse to answer some of Congress’ questions about their beliefs and are convicted for contempt. Trumbo serves a jail sentence and, like the others, is blacklisted from working again in the industry. To make a living he cannot take credit for what he writes. He persuades a friend to claim to have written his screenplay for ROMAN HOLIDAY. Steady, albeit low-paying, employment comes from Trumbo writing and rewriting B-movies for a small studio that never could have afforded him previously but is happy to utilize his services anonymously. Swimming in garbage screenplays that need polished, Trumbo enlists other blacklisted friends to assist him.

TRUMBO perks up somewhat when the writer connects with Frank King (John Goodman), the co-founder of King Brothers Productions. Goodman portrays the producer as a no-nonsense businessman in the business of selling nonsense. He holds no pretense in acknowledging that he’s bankrolling low-budget product, not art. To him Trumbo and the other ostracized writers merely represent fast, cheap, and high quality labor, with those characteristics in order of their importance. In a film full of commonly known and unknown people, he’s the only one to pop out from those playing classic Hollywood dress-up.

Cranston does solid but unremarkable work that is mostly the byproduct of the script than his acting abilities. TRUMBO lacks fire about the unfair treatment foisted upon him and his associates. Perhaps Trumbo didn’t have time to stew over that when he faced with the pressing need to support his family, but the film is missing the sense of conviction that helped to put the protagonist in these circumstances.

Grade: C-

Anomalisa

ANOMALISA (Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson, 2015)

To Michael Stone (David Thewlis) everyone looks virtually the same, save for different hairstyles and clothes. More maddeningly, they all sound the same. In the stop-motion animated drama ANOMALISA Michael flies from Los Angeles to Cincinnati to give a presentation about customer service. After making an obligatory call home to his wife and son, Michael arranges to meet an old flame for drinks. She still resents how he left her without a satisfactory answer about their relationship’s end eleven years ago, and Michael doesn’t handle their reunion very well either.

Depressed and lonely he returns to his hotel room when he hears Lisa (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and her friend in the hallway. They’re in town from Akron to attend Michael’s seminar and are thrilled that he shows interest in them when he knocks on their door. MIchael is really only fascinated with Lisa, who sounds unlike everyone else (Tom Noonan). When he’s able to get her alone and listen to her speak and sing, it’s as though all of his problems have vanished.

The puppets used in ANOMALISA are startlingly life-like yet somehow off in a manner that unsettles. Seams that permit animators to change face plates have not been digitally erased, which emphasize the sentient android quality to the characters. The uniformity of all but Michael and Lisa manifests the psychological horror in the protagonist’s predicament and his potential salvation in finding an anomaly. Something this dour and emotionally naked is unusual for an animated feature, yet in this medium the eerie unreality to the detailed mundanity help to keep it from becoming too uncomfortable to watch versus if it were physically performed by actors. Having originally been staged for the ears rather than the eyes, animation proves to be an inspired way to adapt Charlie Kaufman’s theatrical work with a greater visual element.

The inability to escape oneself or find total relief in someone else runs through Kaufman’s work as a screenwriter, as in BEING JOHN MALKOVICH and ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND, and writer-director of SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK. With ANOMALISA co-director Duke Johnson, Kaufman creates a world in which ordinariness and familiarity suffocate yet are the natural state of things. Michael is an insufferable person, at times more than the film can withstand, yet his plight in pursuit of novelty that eventually fades feels tragic especially with the bombardment of the new in this technological age. There is no shortage of new products to buy or strangers to meet, but what is one left with after the fleeting thrill of the unknown disappears?

ANOMALISA may be more disquieting than anything else in Kaufman’s neurotic body of work, which is why the humor about common aggravations provides brief but welcome breaks from the heaviness. Michael’s difficulties with getting a hotel shower’s water temperature right and failures with his room’s key card are amusing nuisances that can be shared with him even if his mental breakdown can’t. The unimaginative recommendations of what to do in a city, like Cincinnatians suggesting going to the zoo and trying the local chili, may be so funny because they reflect the same responses one could get from anyone in a place. Noonan’s voice work amuses with the deadpan nuance he employs in speaking for the masses. For as critical as ANOMALISA may seem of the indistinct crowd, the anger and disgust directed at them are just deflected feelings of those who own them. For the malcontents and misanthropes, the problem is really in here than out there.

Grade: B+

Carol

CAROL (Todd Haynes, 2015)

In CAROL Therese Belivet (Rooney Mara) appears to be on the same track of many other young women in the early 1950s. She works in a Manhattan department store and has a boyfriend Richard (Jake Lacy) who is persistent in wishing to join their lives. Nevertheless, Therese entertains the notion of becoming a photographer and seems to hold Richard at arm’s length. She gives off the distinct sense of not yet knowing where she wants life to take her or how she might arrive at the destination.

That all changes gradually when she meets Carol Aird (Cate Blanchett). The glamorous older woman buys a train set for her daugher from Therese, and they have reason to be in touch again when the shopgirl mails Carol the gloves she left on her counter. Carol meets Therese for lunch as a way of saying thanks and is so intrigued by her that she extends an invitation to visit at her home in New Jersey. Carol is in the midst of divorcing her husband Harge (Kyle Chandler) and seems quite taken with the curious young woman that Therese is, even if the attraction goes unspoken. Therese is intrigued too, and eventually they depart together on a road trip west during the holidays.

Based on a novel by Patricia Highsmith, CAROL casts what would have been a socially forbidden romance at the time as a thriller. Phyllis Nagy’s screenplay opens the film in media res with a suspicious air around Therese and Carol conversing in a restaurant while seemingly under someone’s watchful eyes. On the surface there is nothing out of the ordinary about two women sharing a table in a public space, yet the images are charged with the hints of the clandestine. Director Todd Haynes often shoots scenes, particularly their first lunch, with an excess of space above and behind the women. While the framing violates presumed technical rules of composition, it implies the feeling of being observed from behind, of looking over one’s shoulders to be sure that one is not being spied on.

During a brief scene with Therese and friends crammed into a movie theater’s projection booth, one character taking notes remarks that he is tracking the differences between what those on screen are saying and what they are thinking and feeling. It’s as blatant a statement of purpose as possible to describe Haynes’ directorial approach and Nagy’s screenplay. The actions on screen and the dialogue tend to resist making plain the interior lives of the lovers. How Therese and Carol conduct themselves within the frame and what they convey through looks and body language are immeasurably more revealing.

Mara may seem a bit alien as Therese, or “flung out of space” as Carol remarks, but the quiet awkwardness she inhabits suits the part. Therese’s trajectory from impassive participant to controller of her destiny pulsates with the excitement of self-awakening. Still, in keeping with the period and the emotional exterior of the character, Mara’s terrific performance demonstrates her character’s development largely through the eyes. Blanchett’s regal bearing is used to great effect because Carol is somewhat like a queen, or one likely to be deposed. If her divorce is completed, she stands to be deprived of a lot financially and emotionally, yet she carries on how she sees fit unashamedly. Carol possesses the wisdom and scars that Therese has yet to receive. Like Mara, Blanchett is expert at employing glances to show how she envies Therese’s unformed qualities and desires to shield her from the pain that may come in the process. Despite the age and experience differences, Therese and Carol’s romance seems neither predatory nor imbalanced. Although unlikely companions who require time and circumstances to be on equal footing, their love story simmers with the passion of what it means to be seen and accepted in total by another.

Grade: A

The Hateful Eight

THE HATEFUL EIGHT (Quentin Tarantino, 2015)

A snowstorm is blanketing the Wyoming landscape in white in THE HATEFUL EIGHT when Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson) stops a stagecoach in the hope that he might catch a ride to Red Rock and get out of the elements. After the Civil War, Marquis became a bounty hunter. He has three bodies stacked and ready to be cashed in if he can find transportation. To get on the stagecoach he must persuade John Ruth (Kurt Russell) that he means him no harm. John is known as The Hangman because he doesn’t kill his bounties but rather waits to see them strung up by their necks, and he’s not too eager for company due to the fact that he is cuffed to Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh), whose bounty will fetch the high price of ten thousand dollars.

As it so happens, Marquis and John are acquainted, thus granting him a seat. On their way they also reluctantly pick up Chris Mannix (Walton Goggins), whose claim to be the next sheriff of Red Rock is greeted dubiously considering his involvement with a notorious southern militia during the war. With the bad weather increasing, they stop at Minnie’s Haberdashery, where they find Bob (Demián Bichir), who is watching the place in Minnie’s absence; Oswaldo Mobray (Tim Roth), the hangman en route to Red Rock; Joe Gage (Michael Madsen), a cowboy headed home; and General Sandy Smithers (Bruce Dern), an old Confederate in search of his missing son. Distrust and dislike runs high among this bunch of scoundrels, but whether they like it or not, the heavy snow requires they share the shelter.

Writer-director Quentin Tarantino confines this nefarious octet and waits patiently for them to kill each other. THE HATEFUL EIGHT filters Agatha Christie’s mysteries through Tarantino’s distinct sensibilities regarding violence, dark humor, cinema history, and savoring of language. In effect it is a chamber drama, just one that is bloodier, more vulgar, and angrier. It’s also as though he’s stretched the farm interrogation scene from INGLORIOUS BASTERDS into a three-hour plus film of its own. While the majority of THE HATEFUL EIGHT is bound to a single location, Tarantino finds numerous ways to explore the space and present those occupying it while keeping plenty of room for the unexpected. Much has been made of Tarantino shooting the film on 70mm and in a 2.76:1 aspect ratio, which some have shrugged off as overkill, but the wider frame and increased picture clarity are crucial to the actors’ blocking and detail awareness.

Tarantino’s preoccupation with screen violence is complicated and, depending on one’s perspective, problematic. As in his other films, he treats the bloodshed as something pleasurable to view and abhorrent, often concurrently. Perhaps more than anything else he’s made, THE HATEFUL EIGHT is concerned with that contradiction between our best and worst impulses, except here it’s under the guise of considering the difference between justice and frontier justice. If the title doesn’t make it clear that the characters are not good people, their actions should, yet it’s hard to resist the enjoyment in watching these silver-tongued devils behave horribly. Call such an attraction to depravity original sin if you like. As depicted in this film it’s very entertaining.

Extracting a clear thesis from THE HATEFUL EIGHT is a fool’s errand, although Tarantino seems to have followed DJANGO UNCHAINED with another exploration of this country’s racial history reflected in the present. Marquis’ Lincoln letter is a fantastic device for showing how he can pass in a society that is largely unaccepting of him because of his skin color. His anguished cry of “wake up white boy” near the film’s end echoes across the generations. With Tarantino’s work the subtext tends to be secondary to more immediate satisfactions and more muddled too. Still, it’s hard to ignore the seething rage in THE HATEFUL EIGHT behind the humor and impeccably lit images.

Grade: A-

Daddy's Home

DADDY’S HOME (Sean Anders, 2015)

As a relatively new stepfather to two kids in DADDY’S HOME, Brad Whitaker (WIll Ferrell) wants nothing more in the world than for the children to accept him as a paternal figure. It seems that his relationship with Dylan (Owen Vaccaro) and Megan (Scarlett Estevez) is finally reaching that point. Dylan wants to speak to him about his problems with a bully, and Megan asks him to accompany her to a father/daughter dance. When the kids’ biological father Dusty (Mark Wahlberg) calls Sara (Linda Cardellini), their mom and his ex-wife, to say that he’s coming for a visit, she resists the idea, but Brad welcomes the opportunity for him to maintain a role in Dylan and Megan’s lives.

It doesn’t take long for the mild-mannered, smooth jazz radio executive to understand why Sara expressed concerns about inviting his cool, fit counterpart into their house, yet Brad continues to give Dusty the benefit of the doubt even when he’s actively undermining his authority at home and upstaging him at work. Their competition for the affection of the kids escalates to absurd measures. More critically, it strains Brad and Sara’s marriage, which was Dusty’s intention all along.

DADDY’S HOME seeks to mine a stepfather’s insecurities and desire for total acceptance in a family in the way that MEET THE PARENTS found humor in wanting to impress future in-laws. While Ferrell’s Brad starts on a firmer foundation, he’s like Ben Stiller’s MEET THE PARENTS protagonist in that both face off with hostile, more stereotypically masculine men fending them off as perceived interlopers. Brad’s situation may be more specific than one about the universal anxiety in wishing to gain approval from a significant other’s parents, but what he struggles with is not significantly different than any outsider striving to get inside a group.

The opportunities to satirize the degrees to which an adoptive and biological father will passive-aggressively and nakedly combat for supremacy are seemingly countless, yet DADDY’S HOME contains about enough ideas to fill a film trailer. Although there’s some amusement in expected scenes of gift-giving one-upmanship and handyman prowess or lack thereof, the film lacks imagination. Dusty’s less showy efforts to erode Brad’s reputation, like his insinuations of racism, tend to be funnier than the more obvious gags.

The film’s stylistic tug of war is waged between the heart-warming, all-ages comedy it wants to be and the nasty streak residing in the hearts of its adversaries. DADDY’S HOME feels as though it’s restraining Brad and Dusty from unleashing hell on each other and, in its relative politeness, mutes the humor in their clashes. Ferrell has his moments as he tries to be a good sport while being humiliated. Wahlberg can be funny playing a caricature of male ruggedness and unflappability. DADDY’S HOME just doesn’t let them run as wild as they could and suffers for it.

Grade: C

Sisters

SISTERS (Jason Moore, 2015)

Amy Poehler and Tina Fey are funny, likeable performers, but they can’t appear in a film and make it golden by sheer force of personality. It feels as though that’s what is being asked of them in SISTERS, a slack comedy that wagers the audience will be tickled enough by seeing them behave irresponsibly and hearing them deliver a good one-liner every now and then. Their rambunctious dispositions shine in moments, like during their shameless, suggestive flirtation with a guy landscaping his yard and when they are confronted by an old school acquaintance they didn’t invite to their bash. Fey and Poehler’s characters, the Ellis sisters, know they possess power in the situations and aren’t ashamed to wield it with authority. SISTERS clicks when their naughty streaks emerge because they’re the aggressors and flails when the Ellises’ recklessness is like a party trick they’re called upon to impress everyone with.

Poehler plays the younger sister Maura, a divorced nurse who is preternaturally nice to seemingly everyone she encounters. Not only is she upset when her parents (James Brolin and Dianne Wiest) inform her that she and her older sister Kate (Fey) need to return to Orlando to clean out their bedrooms because they’re selling the family home, but it’s also put upon her to share the news with her irresponsible sibling. Maura gets Kate to accompany her on a trip to Florida without providing the underlying reason. The unemployed and virtually homeless Kate is happy to get out of town. When they arrive at their childhood home, they discover that their parents have already sold it.

If the sisters have to accept that a part of their past will no longer remain in family ownership, then they intend to say goodbye with a massive final party at it. They invite old high school friends, many of whom welcome a break from domestic predictability and a chance to relive their youthful recklessness. Maura and Kate agree to switch roles from when they were teenagers, with the younger sister free to cut loose and and seduce neighbor James (Ike Barinholtz) while Kate keeps a watchful eye on her and their guests. Things get out of hand, though.

Longtime SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE writer Paula Pell’s SISTERS screenplay lacks sting. Even as it trots out some vulgarity intended for shock value, it produces less of a zap than the static discharge after rubbing one’s feet on the carpet and touching a doorknob. The mushy quality to the jokes reflects how a comedy sketch writer pressed against deadline turns to the easiest punchlines than funnier options that need more time to be worked on. The scenario is set up and resolved rather quickly, leaving an enormous amount of time devoted to the party itself. These scenes of suburbanites shedding their inhibitions seem to last forever with diminishing comedic returns.

SISTERS’ underlying message is similar to NEIGHBORS regarding coming to terms with one’s age in life, but who cares about what a film is saying when everything wrapped around it is thoroughly mediocre? Poehler and Fey emerge unscathed from the lackluster film, even though this stands as yet another deflating reminder of the uninspired state of mainstream film comedy.

Grade: C-

Concussion

CONCUSSION (Peter Landesman, 2015)

Pennsylvania’s Allegheny County Coroner’s Office seems like an unlikely place for a challenger to the National Football League to emerge, yet that’s where Dr. Bennet Omalu (Will Smith) makes an important discovery in CONCUSSION. The Nigerian immigrant and absurdly well-educated neuropathologist has no particular interest in or objection to the American sport until he performs an autopsy on former Pittsburgh Steelers great Mike Webster (David Morse). Omalu believes that repeated blows to the head are responsible for causing the early dementia Webster experienced. He publishes his findings on chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, and naϊvely believes the NFL will be grateful to learn about risks to their players’ health.

Fair or not, CONCUSSION does not compare favorably to SPOTLIGHT, another recent process film about exposing a systemic problem that leaders have hidden or ignored. CONCUSSION well-assembled but indistinct scenes of research in the first half show Omalu working at personal and financial cost to find out why professional football players are exhibiting such unusual psychological distress that result in premature deaths. He pursues the answer to a question not being asked and arrives at a conclusion that could threaten a hugely profitable corporation. When it sticks to the work Omalu does in the morgue and at his kitchen table, CONCUSSION grants a glimpse into the thankless efforts that go into producing such a study.

After Omalu and colleagues have published, CONCUSSION falls prey to the trap of needing to make the NFL into the proverbial moustache-twirling fat cat villains with pervasive menacing influence like one of James Bond’s SPECTRE foes. There are intimations that the league may have a hand in the FBI leveling trumped up charges at Omalu’s boss Dr. Cyril Wecht (Albert Brooks) to remove him from office and coming after the good doctor too. CONCUSSION also suggests the possibility of he and his girlfriend-turned wife Prema (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) being followed. Such finger-pointing and dramatic turns pull CONCUSSION into thriller territory that is at odds with the research and policy matters at hand.

CONCUSSION succeeds in showing the toll football took on some gridiron heroes and their families, but ultimately the story belongs to Omalu. Smith portrays him as a gentle and generous man, but the film and performance struggle to develop him beyond being an honorable do-gooder. Omalu’s romance with Prema generates some nice moments, especially when he talks about being an outsider, yet these scenes stray from the film’s focus.

Grade: C-

Spotlight

SPOTLIGHT (Tom McCarthy, 2015)

At the urging of new editor Marty Baron (Liev Schreiber) in SPOTLIGHT the Boston Globe’s four-person investigative reporting unit directs its attention to the story of an area priest who molested children. The team, known as Spotlight, consists of Mike Rezendes (Mark Ruffalo), Walter “Robby” Robinson (Michael Keaton), Sacha Pfeiffer (Rachel McAdams), and Matt Carroll (Brian d’Arcy James) begins work on the story in 2001 and soon learns that the abuse isn’t limited to one bad man in the Catholic Archdiocese. Rather, they uncover a pattern of institutional cover-up in which the problematic priests are moved among parishes.

SPOTLIGHT presents a thrilling examination of how journalists research and report a story. Although the film contains mystery elements, its attention is focused on the method and dogged determination to reveal the horrible truth that, in this instance, seems to have been an open secret among certain people in power. Writer-director Tom McCarthy and his co-writer Josh Singer excel at retracing the Globe reporters’ steps to connect information hiding in plain sight and gain access to documents that have been buried or removed. This may be the first and last time creating spreadsheets from rooting through old church directories can be described as compelling viewing.

Clearly the abusive priests serve as villains in SPOTLIGHT, but none of them are the ultimate targets of the reporting. To borrow video game terminology, the big boss awaiting the print heroes is the Catholic Church itself. The Spotlight team is squaring off against an antagonist without a face, yet McCarthy finds subtle ways to remind of the size and prevalence of their opponent. Cathedrals and their spires are often seen in the rear of shots as if ominously looming over the city and across the street from the publication. Church bells are heard in the background, one more indication of how it permeates the community.

The members of the investigative unit identify as Catholic, even if they may not be practicing. The majority of their newspaper’s readership is Catholic too. McCarthy and Singer do well at using the coded language groups employ to stress and enforce rightly held attitudes among those within a circle. The screenplay and the actors are also on point in demonstrating how reporters have to talk, almost as confessors, to their interviewees so they can extract key information. As a process film, SPOTLIGHT is exemplary.

Grade: A

In the Heart of the Sea

IN THE HEART OF THE SEA (Ron Howard, 2015)

IN THE HEART OF THE SEA tells the story purported to have inspired Herman Melville’s MOBY-DICK. The author (Ben Whishaw) shows up in the film’s framing device as he interviews an old Tom Nickerson (Brendan Gleeson), the last survivor of the 1820s tragedy when a whale destroyed the ship the Essex. In the flashback scenes Tom (Tom Holland) is a boy who finds work on a whaling vessel along with experience-challenged captain George Pollard (Benjamin Walker) and first mate Owen Chase (Chris Hemsworth).

IN THE HEART OF THE SEA has the basics for a rip-roaring adventure yarn with the chase for magnificent beasts of the ocean and fight for survival in dire circumstances, but director Ron Howard and screenwriter Charles Leavitt are not able to locate a center for this incredible story. Although Tom is speaking with Melville, Hemsworth’s brawny sailor functions as the default main character, leaving the storyteller as a supporting player in his own life’s narrative. It’s likely why there’s a curious distance between the action and the emotional current. In his telling Tom doesn’t create much of an inner life for himself as a young man, let alone Owen or any of the various seamen aboard the Essex.

Howard demonstrates more interest in the day-to-day operation of whaling expedition. The most exciting sequence comes as the men capture and kill their first whale on the voyage. Howard pinpoints the dangers, from occupying tiny boats beside the enormous creatures to needing to allow for enough rope to a harpooned whale so it doesn’t drag them to their doom, and the disgusting reality of disassembling a whale into its saleable parts. It’s fascinating to observe what was required to succeed in this kind of living.

Toward the end IN THE HEART OF THE SEA strives to achieve meaning of some kind, but the attempt feels tacked on to a story that has never quite understood what or who it is about. The seafoam green visual palette, water level shots, and heavily scarred CGI whale add some verve to what is otherwise a frustrating account of tragedy.

Grade: C

The Night Before

THE NIGHT BEFORE (Jonathan Levine, 2015)

Fourteen years ago Isaac (Seth Rogen) and Chris (Anthony Mackie) took out their grieving friend Ethan (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) on Christmas Eve for a night of chemically-enhanced celebration in New York City. Ethan’s parents had died recently, and he needed a boost to his spirits. In THE NIGHT BEFORE the three made this raucous time an annual tradition, but it’s agreed that this year’s holiday revelry will be the last. The guys are in their mid-thirties, and two now have other obligations upon them. Isaac will soon become a father. Chris is enjoying the benefits of fame from a breakthrough late in his professional football career.

Ethan, on the other hand, remains adrift in menial jobs and is moody about his break-up with Diana (Lizzy Caplan). He seems reluctant to let go of the Christmas Eve debauchery, but if this will be the final year of it, he’s prepared to do it up big. Employing sticky fingers as he works in a coat check, Ethan procures passes to the Nutcracka Ball, the city’s preeminent party at a secret location. Although the friends are looking forward to an evening of mindless fun, circumstances cause them to confront their greatest fears about the future.

Although Rogen doesn’t have a screenplay credit, THE NIGHT BEFORE touches upon a theme that pops up in several of the comedies he’s starred in, NEIGHBORS in particular. Rogen and his on-screen buddies wrestle with being responsible grown-ups while wanting to hang onto the freedom and recklessness that marked their young adulthood. Rogen’s Isaac has been taking impending fatherhood seriously, so his wife Betsy (Jillian Bell) grants him a free pass--and gives him a box of random drugs--for the good and supportive behavior he’s demonstrated through her pregnancy. Rather than letting Isaac cut loose, the permission to be irresponsible makes him face up to his anxieties about the major life changes that await and for which he feels ill-prepared. Filled with existential panic while in an altered state, Rogen is funny as he tries to keep his composure while high as a kite at Midnight Mass and in front of a friend’s mother.

As the guys’ pot supplier Mr. Green, Michael Shannon counters Rogen’s hysterical energy with a dry wit filtered through a typically intense performance. Mr. Green and his product serve a purpose akin to the ghosts in A CHRISTMAS CAROL, making Shannon ideal as someone whose presence indicates menace streaked with ribbons of humor to help his clients’ get through their cloudy mental states.

While THE NIGHT BEFORE produces a decent share of funny moments, it runs into a fair number of bumps in the road. Director Jonathan Levine and his co-writers can’t quite find the right mix of outrageous humor and dramatic material. Ethan is kind of a downer as the adventure goes deep into the night. The film’s hedonistic attitude gets tempered as THE NIGHT BEFORE advances toward a sentimental conclusion. That’s par for the course for films like this one, but it makes for a weird fit alongside Chris’s subplot regarding his steroid use to become a star toward the end of his football career. Like a sampler box of chocolates, some of it is good, and some is better left untouched.

Grade: C

Creed

CREED (Ryan Coogler, 2015)

CREED’s Adonis Johnson (Michael B. Jordan) is the product of an affair and never knew his father, so he has plenty of conflicted feelings about the man the world knew and loved as heavyweight champion boxer Apollo Creed. Rather than going by his mythological name, he prefers to be called Donnie and doesn’t trumpet his heritage. He inherited physical gifts from his father, though, although he exhibits them on the sly by fighting on the weekend in Mexico than in a recognized organization.

Donnie decides that he must follow his heart to be a boxer, so he moves from Los Angeles to Philadelphia and tracks down Apollo’s old rival and friend Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone) in the hope that this other boxing legend will train him.

As the seventh film in the ROCKY series, it would stand to reason that CREED might play like a retread. Instead co-writer and director Ryan Coogler delivers a familiar but dynamic offshoot. CREED takes a comfortable position in the tradition of these underdog sports movies and builds upon it. The story beats are similar, yet as a character study of a different up-and-comer and an icon who moves from inside ring to the corner, it is surprisingly affecting. Stallone, who did not have a hand in writing a ROCKY-related film for the first time, is critical to the film’s emotional tug. Rocky isn’t the last of his kind but is the last from his circle, and in part CREED is about coming to grips with that. Stallone plays Rocky with a sadness about him. He isn’t looking to regain past glories. He misses the people who used to be around him, not the titles. Stallone wears the heartache well, revealing the soft spots inside the warrior’s body he still possesses. Coogler conveys Rocky’s melancholy with subtle touches. Paulie’s old room in Rocky’s house remains the way it was when he died. Rocky keeps a folding chair in a tree at the cemetery, a sign that he’s a regular visitor at his trainer and wife’s graves.

Although it’s inevitable that CREED will build up to a big fight, Coogler is more interesting in Donnie’s internal struggle to reconcile where he comes from and who he is. The fight is with himself, which Rocky wisely points out in a training exercise in front of a mirror. Jordan plays Donnie as someone at once confident in himself and insecure about a background over which he had no control.

The emotional beats achieve the strongest reactions, whether between fighter and trainer or Donnie and Tessa Thompson’s Bianca, a singer that he falls for. Still, the boxing scenes pack their share of thrills, especially Donnie’s first billed fight that Coogler stages in a single unbroken shot. The technique dazzles while serving a dramatic purpose of understanding what it feels like to step into the ring for a first professional fight.

Grade: A

The Good Dinosaur

THE GOOD DINOSAUR (Peter Sohn, 2015)

THE GOOD DINOSAUR considers what might have happened if the extinction event that wiped out the dinosaurs never occurred. In the animated film’s imagined millions of years after the devastating meteor misses Earth, talking dinosaurs have developed agricultural practices while non-verbal humans in roaming packs are among the pesky critters that try to swipe their stockpiled food. Arlo (Raymond Ochoa), an undersized apatosaurus among his two siblings, is tasked with catching and eliminating the pest. The feral boy is caught but gets away, leading Arlo’s father (Jeffrey Wright) to take the youngster in search of the thief and finish the job.

A flash flood sweeps away Poppa, so a grieving Arlo blames the boy for his father’s death. When he turns up again, Arlo shows no restraint in chasing after him, but he gets knocked out while in pursuit and awakens far from home. The boy proves to be Arlo’s means for surviving, as he provides him with food and protection. He shows dog-like loyalty to the dinosaur, thus leading to Arlo naming him Spot (Jack Bright). He’ll need the help as they encounter fierce creatures on the long journey home.

For better or worse, a new Pixar film bears the weight of expectations of being nothing less than great. With its visual elements THE GOOD DINOSAUR lives up to the high standards set by its predecessors. The natural scenery’s photorealistic rendering captures the beauty of land, vegetation, and geological formations untouched by civilization. It’s astonishing to compare how far computer animation has come since TOY STORY was released in 1995. Director Peter Sohn uses some lovely visual storytelling too, especially in the scene with Arlo and Spot finding a common language through sticks and sand to share their tragic family backgrounds.

As great as THE GOOD DINOSAUR is to look at, the story is a jumble of scenes in which a fearful dinosaur child matures through a daunting quest home. Arlo wanders through this archetypal western tale without clear markers of progress or picking up notable supporting characters. The narrative just sort of ends without any awareness of how close he’s getting to the homestead. The biggest threat on the journey come in the form of a trio of pterodactyls who aren’t as good-hearted as they initially seem. These nasty beasts introduce a fair amount of terror to their scenes but are in the film for so little time that their impact is diminished.

THE GOOD DINOSAUR doesn’t shy away from the hostile nature of the world and those encountered in it, which may make the film scarier for younger viewers than might be anticipated. Death and imminent harm hang over the film, yet the greater takeaways is the bond formed between a dinosaur and his pet boy as they face conflict. THE GOOD DINOSAUR does lighten the gravity of the situation with some loopy humor, such as Arlo and Spot’s awkwardness at bathroom time and their hallucinogenic visions after eating fruit. It’s unlikely to be anyone’s favorite Pixar film, but the majesty of its visuals and scattered idiosyncrasies are rewarding.

Grade: B-

Mr. Holmes

MR. HOLMES (Bill Condon, 2015)

93-year-old Sherlock Holmes (Ian McKellen) has been long retired to a house in the country where he tends to his bees and tries to bolster his failing memory in MR. HOLMES. It has been thirty-five years since his last case. Dr. Watson’s recounting of the matter of a man who wished for the renowned detective to follow his grief-stricken wife strikes Sherlock as a fiction lacking motive for the identified culprit, yet he struggles to recall the details of the case. He draws encouragement to keep working on the mystery from Roger (Milo Parker), the sharp and inquisitive son of his housekeeper Mrs. Munro (Laura Linney).

Sherlock is also using this time to reflect on a recent visit to postwar Japan at the request of Mr. Umezaki (Hiroyuki Sanada). Having written on the benefits of royal jelly, he has been summoned to help find the prickly ash, which, like the bees’ secretion, is thought to assist one’s memory. This encounter may have a connection with Sherlock’s past as well, although he dismisses ever knowing the man he is said to have consulted.

With Sherlock Holmes as the main character, the expectation is that MR. HOLMES will yield a good mystery. In this instance it is not so much within the case he is trying to solve but the enlightenment that he discovers regarding his nature. It is a film first and foremost about loneliness. Sherlock has devoted his life to the practice of logic, but in his current state he learns that it too has limitations. Nevertheless, screenwriter Jeffrey Hatcher includes plenty of marvelous details indicative of a larger design that can crack the drama’s secrets through Holmesian deductive reasoning.

McKellen is splendid as a brusque logician who can seem heartless with offhand remarks yet takes such apparent delight in a boy who wishes to hone his mind in a similar manner. McKellen’s eyes dance with the spark of a keen intellect underneath the elderly make-up. His Sherlock enjoys being the smartest person in the room, yet he also shows a patient teacher who becomes aware of how his cold, calculating manner requires the warmth and understanding of social courtesies.

Grade: A-

The Peanuts Movie

THE PEANUTS MOVIE (Steve Martino, 2015)

THE PEANUTS MOVIE takes Charlie Brown and friends from the comics pages and traditional 2D animation to the 3D computer-animated realm, albeit with a look that is not drastically different with what is familiar from Charles Schulz’s work in strip, TV, and film form. The animation has sort of a plush toy quality about it rather than the sleek, hyperrealist plasticity that is often associated with textures in the medium. Those warmer surfaces allow THE PEANUTS MOVIE to be approached as a security blanket rather than some flashy novelty.

The film revisits many of the touchstones found in other PEANUTS properties. Charlie Brown remains a regular, angst-ridden boy who nevertheless sustains eternal hope that his day to be in the spotlight may yet arrive. His loyal dog Snoopy imagines pursuing the Red Baron in his biplane. The other kids view him as unexceptional but good-hearted. He wishes desperately to impress the little red-haired girl who moves in across the street.

The visual style goes hand in hand with the earnest, humane tone the film strikes. THE PEANUTS MOVIE is funny in a gentle way, but it’s also attuned to the fears and insecurities that children and, for that matter, adults carry. Charlie Brown fails and gets embarrassed. He worries about how things might go for him. Through it all, he displays a fundamental decency that others notice, even if they criticize and laugh at him sometimes. THE PEANUTS MOVIE recognizes these crucial aspects of Schulz’s work and renders them in a format considered more accessible to kids today.

3D animation is really the only thing that differentiates this from other PEANUTS ventures. Story-wise it feels like a greatest hits compilation rather than something new, but it’s a modest charmer that benefits from sticking to what we’re used to rather than being modernized.

Grade: B

Burnt

BURNT (John Wells, 2015)

After a few years in the proverbial wilderness doing penance for his substance-abusing and womanizing past, chef Adam Jones (Bradley Cooper) turns up in London determined to earn a prestigious third Michelin star. He burned a lot of bridges in the Parisian culinary world, but by drying out and swearing off booze, drugs, and women, Adam hopes to be able to redeem himself. His composure and ability to escape a troublesome history are in question in BURNT, but his talent never is. It’s why he can appear years after making a mess of things for himself and colleagues and still be granted the opportunity to do something great.

Adam persuades his former maitre d’ Tony (Daniel Brühl) to let him take over the kitchen at his father’s hotel restaurant, even if it means submitting to a weekly blood screening to prove he’s living cleanly. He assembles a dream team of former associates willing to let bygones be bygones, including sous chef Michel (Omar Sy), and newly discovered top talent like Helene (Sienna Miller). Adam senses a kindred spirit in Helene, which is why he has no qualms about being merciless in criticizing her work when she initially fails to live up to his high standards.

BURNT plays like a dramatized version of one of the many reality cooking shows, particularly those involving volatile chef Gordon Ramsay. He’s a chef consultant on BURNT, which presumably means Ramsay suggested the fine dining dishes that are lovingly filmed rather than gave Cooper lessons on how to yell and throw food in the trash. Adam demands perfection and barks at those in the kitchen like a dog with its nose pressed against the glass as its explosive cries try to intimidate passing cars. That the staff tends to treat Adam as some bulletproof genius they’ll go to the mat for seems somewhat absurd based on temperament and history.

Cooper brandishes the chef’s swagger with gusto. Whether he’s getting in a jab at a competitor’s interior design or smashing plates bearing unsatisfactory food, he’s entertaining in his cockiness. Casting Adam as a tragic figure by his own hand doesn’t work as well. Adam’s backstory is often hinted at but never fully elucidated, which makes him an empty vessel for a redemption tale. The character’s trials and tribulations seem rote, if present at all, leaving Adam to rely entirely on Cooper’s charisma to feel for him.

Adam speaks of wishing to cook food so satisfying that it makes the consumer want to stop eating. BURNT is more like potato chips, something that is appealing enough to eat mindlessly but is otherwise insubstantial. Director John Wells and screenwriter Steven Knight keep events moving along briskly. They are most successful in detailing and depicting the workings of a kitchen and the trends that run through the business. There’s more drama in the contemplation between using the frying pan or sous vide than in Adam’s pursuit of his profession’s highest honor.

Grade: C+