Big Game

BIG GAME (Jalmari Helander, 2014)

Although exceptions exist, there should probably be a rule that the more self-consciously outrageous a film description sounds, the more likely that the synopsis is all it has going for it. That’s certainly true of BIG GAME, in which a Finnish boy on a solo rite of passage hunt protects Samuel L. Jackson as the President of the United States from would-be assassins. Writer-director Jalmari Helander isn’t striving to make an ironically bad film that winks nonstop at an audience presumably in on the joke. Instead this action comedy appears inspired by fantastical 1980s movies in which kids become involved with something much larger than themselves and grow through their adventures.

On the verge of his thirteenth birthday Oskari (Onni Tommila) is sent alone into a Finnish forest for one day and one night to track and kill his prey with a primitive bow and arrow. His father passed this initiation into manhood, and the same is expected of him, although he isn’t strong enough to pull the string back fully on his weapon. Deep in the wilderness he comes across an escape pod containing unpopular U.S. President William Alan Moore (Jackson). Disgruntled Secret Service agent Morris (Ray Stevenson) disabled Air Force One’s security system to permit his associates to blow the plane and its escorts out of the sky. Killing the President is on their agenda, but Hazar (Mehmet Kurtulus) wants to make a big show of capturing the leader of the free world before having him stuffed and mounted like a trophy.

After determining that the President is not an alien, Oskari brings William along on his expedition. They’re too far from anywhere for the President to get to safety on his own, and Oskari isn’t going to bail on his mission. Unbeknownst to them Morris, Hazar, and his men are in the forest looking for them with the intent of finishing what they’ve started.

As silly as the impression BIG GAME’s recap gives, the film resists following through with the campy concept. Jackson’s performance is restrained, which results in a tender moment with Oskari as he explains the difference between looking and being tough, but is a film this patently absurd when he should be holding back? And what are Victor Garber, Felicity Huffman, and Jim Broadbent doing in this? It’s as though they signed up to appear in a goof, but Helander forgot to make it funny out of concern for not being taken seriously as a filmmaker.

BIG GAME’s earnestness also confuses because of how cheap it looks. The cut-rate special effects are more in keeping with direct-to-video blockbuster knock-offs, which reinforces the absence of expected humor. The good and bad guys spend a lot of time walking and talking in the woods, so action scenes are few and unremarkable. Helander’s send-up of big-budget conspiracy thrillers and boys’ quests fails to register as anything but a wacky idea. It’s too mundane to entertain as a willfully bad effort with some name talent.

Grade: D+

Mistress America

MISTRESS AMERICA (Noah Baumbach, 2015)

In MISTRESS AMERICA eighteen-year-old Tracy Fishko (Lola Kirke) is having trouble fitting in as a freshman at Barnard College, so she’s relieved to find someone to hang out with in New York City when she meets thirty-year-old stepsister-to-be Brooke Cardinas (Greta Gerwig). Brooke appears to live a glamorous urban life and dabble in seemingly everything. She works as an interior designer and SoulCycle instructor, came up with a t-shirt design that she claims her friend Mamie-Claire (Heather Lind) stole, is kicking around an idea for a television show, and is entertaining investors for a restaurant she plans to open.

When Brooke’s boyfriend pulls out of the restaurant deal, she is in desperate need of financing. Prompted by a fortune teller, Brooke goes to Greenwich, Connecticut with Tracy, her friend Tony (Matthew Shear), and his girlfriend Nicolette (Jasmine Cephas Jones) in tow to make a pitch for money to her wealthy ex-fiancé Dylan (Michael Chernus), who’s married to her nemesis Mamie-Claire.

The soon-to-be sisters in MISTRESS AMERICA are simpatico in sarcasm and self-obsession. Their conversations consist of pathological feedback loops in which they speak disparagingly of those not of their caliber or who have wronged them in some way. Brooke spots a captive audience to dazzle in Tracy, probably because she has not bore witness to Brooke’s trail of professional flameouts. Tracy enjoys being around Brooke, who is fun, brash, and accepting of her company even as she doesn’t seem to listen, but in her the literature major also discovers a rich source of inspiration for the thinly fictionalized short story she has started writing. Both yearn to make their marks on the world. The comedy comes from the symbiotic relationship between these miserable people searching for the answers, reassuring each other of their superiority, and yet failing to achieve their dreams. They can virtually complete each other’s sentences, not so much from closeness but because of their shared disdain.

Gerwig plays Brooke as a force of nature, the type of person who becomes the center of attention in whatever situation she finds herself in. The character is a marked contrast from her notable roles in GREENBERG and FRANCES HA, her previous collaborations with director Noah Baumbach. As in those films Gerwig plays a young woman seeking where she belongs, but in MISTRESS AMERICA, which she co-wrote with Baumbach, she’s a screwball egotist. In a strange way she remains a sympathetic figure because her big talk is clearly indicative of compensating for feeling inferior.

Baumbach has always been very good at guiding actors to convey his caustic wit. With MISTRESS AMERICA he demonstrates a deft ability for choreographing farce. Relationships are tested after Brooke and company barge into Mamie-Claire and Dylan’s home and bring most of the film’s second half to a furious pace powered by incidents and accusations. The speed with which these scenes move relate to the flurry of distractions the protagonists bury themselves in to make it easier to ignore the failure of their pursuits. As unbecoming as Brooke and Tracy’s behavior can be, MISTRESS AMERICA emerges as a funny film about the painful path to maturity through accepting one’s shortcomings and committing to being a better person.

Grade: B

Z for Zachariah

Z FOR ZACHARIAH (Craig Zobel, 2015)

After the apocalypse Ann (Margot Robbie) must fend for herself at the family’s apple farm in the valley. Her parents left to search for survivors. Eventually her thirteen-year-old brother departed to look for their mom and dad. Getting by day to day isn’t easy, especially without electricity and no companion but a dog, but Ann is resourceful and keeps the faith in a place the closest thing to Eden in Z FOR ZACHARIAH’s harsh, radioactive world.

One day she comes across the first person she’s seen in a year. John Loomis (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is a civil contractor who was in a bunker a mile underground when the disaster occurred but becomes unwell from bathing in the poisonous water Ann finds him in. She nurses John back to health, and they become close, as might be expected of a man and a woman who may well be the only people around for a great expanse or anywhere. Although Ann shows desire for becoming physically intimate, John suggests they wait because it will change things.

Then Ann stumbles upon Caleb (Chris Pine), a miner who has traveled from fifty miles away and is planning to go south to the gulf where he believes others may be. Ann is glad to welcome more company, but John is suspicious of this newcomer. Caleb does not intend to stay long but grows comfortable there. He assists with John’s project to restore power to the house and bonds with Ann through their shared Christianity. While their situation has improved, a strained competition exists between the men for Ann’s affection.

Faith looms large in Z FOR ZACHARIAH. As the daughter of a minister who moved the family to this spot because he believed it would be protected, Ann has good reason to trust that God has a plan even in terrible times like this. Loneliness and winter’s coldness have made Ann question her will to continue, but her belief gives her the encouragement to press on. Despite the hardships, the land and tools available to her meet her needs. Ann recognizes that for all of the rewards promised in the Bible, the holy book never claims that life will be easy. Caleb’s view is less nuanced. He is convinced that they survived because they have faith, as though their convictions earn a kind of cosmic immunity, although his logic doesn’t account for a non-believing John.

There’s also a non-religious faith held by characters and the audience at work in Z FOR ZACHARIAH. Ann is the least guarded of the three, and thus there is no reason not to take her at her word. Robbie gives a strong performance in expressing the necessary toughness to endure this scenario while maintaining the youthful naiveté that may also be an asset to her mental well-being. The inclination is to rely on John’s story as being true while nurturing some skepticism about Caleb’s, at least at first. Ejiofor oozes decency and intelligence, yet he plays John as though an unspoken darkness gnaws at him. Pine challenges the first impression of Caleb, making him seem dangerous or authentic depending on the angle he’s seen from.

Director Craig Zobel’s previous film COMPLIANCE hinges on individuals accepting at face value what they’re being told and following through on it with horrible consequences. In Z FOR ZACHARIAH there is no way of knowing for certain if anyone is being honest, just the reliance on gut instincts. Zobel wrings tension from the scenario by toying with how actions might appear based on available information. John viewing Ann from a distance through a rifle’s scope brings his trustworthiness into question early on until we learn Ann suggested he watch her through it. Before their paths cross Caleb presumably is the one eavesdropping on Ann playing the organ, which, fairly or not, leads to a conclusion about his credibility. He also aims a gun near John while the two are out hunting, although he does so to hit his target, not his potential romantic rival.

For viewers the test of whether to believe the best or worst about Ann, John, and Caleb extends through Z FOR ZACHARIAH’s ending. Regardless of how the conclusion is interpreted, it seems to be an argument for giving people the benefit of the doubt. For the characters putting trust in each other may mean something as critical as the difference between living and dying or valuable as upholding social stability. In this extreme circumstance they have no one to place their faith in but one another. These are active players in determining their own fates. Whether their trust proves to be misplaced or not, they are likely better off giving than withholding it.

Grade: B

The Myth of the American Sleepover

THE MYTH OF THE AMERICAN SLEEPOVER (David Robert Mitchell, 2010)

For teenagers in a Michigan suburb the end of summer is a time for regretting the fun not enjoyed and worrying about what is to come with a new school year. In THE MYTH OF THE AMERICAN SLEEPOVER overnight parties around town provide the opportunity to relish the season’s last idle day. Incoming high school freshmen Maggie (Claire Sloma) and Beth (Annette DeNoyer) ditch a sleepover in search of slightly older guys at a party being thrown by Steven (Douglas Diedrich), a junior they’ve admired while he works at the pool.

Rob (Marlon Morton) will also be starting high school soon. Rather than hanging out with the guys watching movies and egging houses, he wants to comb the neighborhoods for a blonde girl he was checking out at the grocery store. Sophomore Claudia (Amanda Bauer) is relatively new to the area and hopes to make friends at a sleepover that junior Janelle (Shayla Curran) is holding. College senior Scott (Brett Jacobsen) is moping about an ended relationship and decides to track down twin sisters Ady and Anna Abbey (Nikita Ramsey and Jade Ramsey) because one of them might have had a crush on him years ago.

Writer-director David Robert Mitchell’s THE MYTH OF THE AMERICAN SLEEPOVER and his subsequent film IT FOLLOWS share an observational style regarding adolescent American vulnerabilities, thematic similarities, and locations. Although THE MYTH OF THE AMERICAN SLEEPOVER sticks to slice of teenage life than the sliced and stalked teens in IT FOLLOWS, both explore the quiet terror felt during this transformative time. Characters in both films express a longing for the innocence that they have lost or recognize will be diminishing as they grow toward adulthood. Because MYTH adopts DAZED AND CONFUSED-like drop-ins with the town’s youths rather than taking on horror movie form, a wistful quality permeates the tone.

Mitchell excels at capturing fear and confusion about the future, especially when it’s bound up with hormones and urges in overdrive. The characters in MYTH are all sorting through social pressures and biological changes that make this such an emotionally perilous period. Humor from situational recognition of pokes out occasionally, although any cringing on the viewer’s part comes more from dramatic matters than comedic ones. Identifying with these teens comes more easily as Mitchell strives for a timeless feel by eliminating technological signifiers that would place it in any particular year or decade.

For all of the anxiety associated with passing through adolescence, anticipation and infatuations can make it exciting. Why else are these years more mythologized in art than others? THE MYTH OF THE AMERICAN SLEEPOVER conveys a keen understanding of how kids at this time are trying out appearances and personalities and gradually ease into finding themselves. None of the kids or young adults have a firm conception of what they want or would like to be, and clearly nothing is going to be settled after the one night depicted. Mitchell studies the attrition through courage and cowardice that leads to self-definition. The cumulative effect of his film results in compassion for the beauty and volatility of youth.

Grade: B-

Mad Max: Fury Road

MAD MAX: FURY ROAD (George Miller, 2015)

MAD MAX: FURY ROAD presents a vision of the future as an environmental hellscape, but in filmmaking terms it looks to the past for the rejuvenation of action cinema. From practical effects and stunt work to an editing strategy that allows the viewer to remain oriented in spite of some quick cutting, director and co-writer George Miller gives an audience what it needs to cleanse the system of a diet of CGI-cluttered action and chaos cinema transitions. Make no mistake that plenty of digital technology has been used to manipulate the images into the eye-scorching display that is MAD MAX: FURY ROAD. The difference here is that it is not employed at the expense of visual comprehension or awe-inspiring feats.

Neither a reboot or a sequel per se, MAD MAX: FURY ROAD functions as a continuation in the series of one man’s quest to deliver justice to a land where it is in short supply along with fossil fuels, cash crops, and water. The opening voiceover is reminiscent of how MAD MAX 2 briefly establishes how the Earth became barren and tribes fought for the dwindling supply of fuel. The difference in this instance is that Max (Tom Hardy), the policeman turned renegade, supplies the information while conceding he is losing his mind.

At the start Max is captured by the war boys under the command of Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne). Max is prized as a blood bag for these suicidal, starkly white warriors. When a convoy led by Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron) in a war rig veers off course, Joe and some war boys take off in pursuit. Max is mounted like a hood ornament to provide transfusion for Nux (Nicholas Hoult) as he joins the car chase.

MAD MAX: FURY ROAD stands apart from much of contemporary action cinema with an unabashedly feminist perspective. Furiosa, who has degenderized herself, has attained a position of trust within a corrupt society and uses that privilege with a plan to transport Immortan Joe’s five sex slaves to the verdant community of women from which she and her mother were stolen many years ago. Furiosa and the those she’s trying to save seek shelter from where women are treated as livestock for breeding and milking. MAD MAX: FURY ROAD is a film of few words, and with an arsenal of looks Theron--who probably is more of a main character than Max, title notwithstanding--imparts the profound sense of rage and compassion that drives Furiosa.

In his souped-up action epic Miller also draws parallels to contemporary factions warring over fuel and the religious conviction imparted to those doing the fighting. The war boys do not fear death but welcome it with the promise of living again in Valhalla. The political aspects of MAD MAX: FURY ROAD sound blunter in description than in depiction, mainly because Miller lets the imagery and actors’ expressions do most of the talking. The screenplay is a model of efficiency, suggesting a broader world beyond what gets explained. MAD MAX: FURY ROAD pushes ever onward with an intense and dazzling display that engages the eyes, ears, and mind.

Grade: A-

Lost Highway

LOST HIGHWAY (David Lynch, 1997)

LOST HIGHWAY follows the dual stories of tenor saxophonist Fred Madison (Bill Pullman) and mechanic Pete Dayton (Balthazar Getty) and the women in their lives who bring about their ruination. Patricia Arquette plays Fred’s brunette wife Renee and Alice Wakefield, a gangster’s blonde squeeze who initiates a torrid affair with Pete. Fred suspects his wife may be cheating on him and becomes disturbed when videotapes with footage shot inside and outside his house are left on his home’s front steps. Pete struggles to explain how he is found in prison having taken another man’s place.

In David Lynch’s singular style the Möbius strip of a film addresses the insecurities men have about women. Dark interiors hint at endless mental corridors to get lost in as these curdled souls obsess over the true motivations of the femme fatales they’ve fixated on. The low, persistent white noise on the soundtrack suggests a nagging concern hissing inside the protagonists’ heads that the women they love will do them wrong even as they are helpless to resist. The pale-faced Mystery Man (Robert Blake) who greets Fred and Pete familiarly seems like a manifestation of the anger and fear they’ve invited into their thinking. LOST HIGHWAY is suffused with dead of the night dread, a half-lucid, creeping sensation that one’s doom awaits in the shadows.

Lynch’s mastery of sustaining an unsettling tone carries the film through patches when the opaque plot confuses, yet watching this film not quite two decades later reveals his use of doubling and dream logic and atmosphere as a rough draft for the greater achievement to come in MULHOLLAND DR. LOST HIGHWAY’s mystery does not grow as it continues to befuddle. Pete’s section builds to confirmation of the horrible things both character’s believe their women are capable of doing to them, yet Getty doesn’t convey the torment inside of him as tangibly as Pullman does in Fred’s scenes.

When Fred has the police searching his house for signs of unlawful entry, he’s asked if he has a video camera. Fred responds that he hates the devices because he likes “to remember things my own way”. The tension in LOST HIGHWAY comes from the disconnect between the way things are and how they are recalled or imagined. With memorable and disquieting imagery, Lynch’s terror-fueled exploration of how latching onto the virgin/whore dichotomy can destroy men’s minds, but LOST HIGHWAY also plays like a less coherent version of the director’s better work.

Grade: C

Hot Pursuit

HOT PURSUIT (Anne Fletcher, 2015)

In HOT PURSUIT San Antonio police officer Cooper (Reese Witherspoon) grew up riding in the back seat of her father’s patrol car, so it’s deeply disappointing for her to be reassigned to run the evidence room after an embarrassing misunderstanding while working in the field. Cooper’s chance to prove herself again arrives when she is paired with a federal marshal transporting a drug cartel’s top lieutenant and his wife to Dallas in preparation for testimony to the grand jury against kingpin Vicente Cortez (Joaquín Cosio).

Shortly after Cooper and the federal agent get to the home of Felipe and Daniella Riva (Sofia Vergara), two pairs of killers descend upon it and kill Cooper’s partner and Daniella’s husband. The women escape in the Rivas’ red vintage 1968 Cadillac convertible, but trouble soon finds them when Cooper realizes two of her colleagues were masked assassins at the crime scene and are out to clean up loose ends. They pin the deaths on Cooper and spin the story that she and Daniella are on the run. In reality the two women are reluctant travel companions, as Daniella tries to slip away every chance she gets rather than be delivered to give testimony she refuses to offer.

Buttoned-up, by-the-books Cooper and the high-spirited and volatile Daniella make a classical mismatched pair in a road comedy, but HOT PURSUIT offers little in the way of humorous possibilities for their differences to produce laughs. Director Anne Fletcher and screenwriters David Feeney and John Quaintance focus on getting Cooper and Daniella from place to place at the expense of settling in with the characters. Content to let the co-leads exist as types, neither transcends the simple character descriptions to generate any legitimate comedic combustion or agreement.

Witherspoon and Vergara are up for whatever but don’t have much to work with. Half of the intended humor seems to reside in the accents. Witherspoon’s molasses-thick take on a Texas twang is a distraction. Vergara acts as though directed to crank up her Colombian heritage in a more exaggerated version of her MODERN FAMILY character. With both actresses it’s like the vocal equivalent of flop sweat. Who can blame them, though, when they’re forced into one unfunny scenario after another?

HOT PURSUIT’s regressive portrayals of women in film is more discouraging than its lack of subtlety. Comedy often flows from incompetent actions, but neither Cooper nor Daniella are shown to be particularly capable until the plot forces them to be. The low point comes when the women pretend badly to be lesbians to distract a good ol’ boy who’s about to call the cops on them. Rather than them being funny because they’re unconvincing, the scene plays as one of a few ill-conceived, pandering moments for which embarrassment for the performers is the main reaction.

Grade: C-

Mad Max

MAD MAX (George Miller, 1979)

The Halls of Justice are in shambles and anarchy reigns on the streets in the near-future depicted in MAD MAX. Roaming gangs terrorize citizens who risk straying far from home, especially those who dare to venture onto the roadways. Max Rockatansky (Mel Gibson) is the Main Force Patrol’s top pursuit man on a skeleton crew of law enforcers. Despite his skill behind the wheel in taking down bad guys, Max considers walking away from his calling. He’s not fearful of the sociopaths, like the motorcycle menaces led by Toecutter (Hugh Keays-Byrne), but concerned that he may enjoy the chaos out there as much as the maniacs he’s chasing.

MAD MAX’s dystopian vision of the Australia of tomorrow puts a contemporary spin on the classic western. It’s easy to see director and co-writer George Miller’s film in that tradition by swapping the motorbikes and cars for horses and Max’s leather uniform for one including a cowboy hat and bolo tie. The townsfolk are too scared and officials too ineffectual to challenge the tormentors in their midst. It’s up to a reluctant Max as one of the last righteous men to try and bring some justice to a land where lawlessness has taken over.

Miller and co-screenwriter James McCausland use the familiar genre foundation as a means for delivering chases and stunts. MAD MAX lacks any semblance of explaining why society has broken down as it has. That information comes more in MAD MAX 2, although it’s equally as unnecessary for films that function best as car chase and stunt delivery systems. This is primal action predicated on survival of the fittest and fastest motorized transportation. The action scenes tingle with the thrill of feeling the weight, speed and danger as these vehicles careen across the asphalt hunting grounds. The damage inflicted on the cars is not done lightly. One scene of a hot rod being destroyed is shot and edited as if it’s a body getting dismembered. Revving engines provide a chorus of wailing souls.

MAD MAX plays like a dry run for a bigger and better film, which happens to be the case when comparing this to its first sequel. The economy of story and character and abrupt ending make it feel as though this is just the first two acts of a fuller narrative. The interval with Max, his wife Jessie (Joanne Samuel), and their son on vacation drags down the pacing even as it sets up critical motivation for its conflicted protagonist. As villains go, Toecutter lacks the defining qualities to make him a worthy adversary for the hero. The B-movie genetic code keeps MAD MAX from achieving greatness, but the action Miller choreographs so well compensates for such shortcomings.

Grade: B-

Clouds of Sils Maria

CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA (Olivier Assayas, 2014)

In CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA middle-aged actress Maria Enders (Juliette Binoche) is en route to accept an award in Switzerland on behalf of the reclusive playwright and filmmaker who provided her big break at the age of 18 when news comes of his death. The occasion provides cause for reflection on her life’s work and faded youth, especially when a director (Lars Eidinger) wants Maria to commit to his restaging of the career-making play but in the older woman’s role. Opposite her in the part she made her name on will be 19-year-old tabloid regular and Hollywood ingenue Jo-Ann Ellis (Chloë Grace Moretz).

In the play within the film Maria broke through as an intern who seduces, uses, and dumps the 40-year-old married businesswoman who falls for her. Now she’s being asked to switch positions to the part that more closely reflects her age yet still identifies with the younger character. Writer-director Olivier Assayas layers CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA so that the script being rehearsed and parts being played within it explore the similarities between the characters doing the reading and the roles they are taking on. When Maria and Valentine are deep in a scene, they could just as well be discussing the dynamic between them. Assayas also introduces a meta level in which comments about the industry, image-making, and gossip could just as well apply to the lives of Binoche, Moretz, and especially Stewart. This blurring of the lines isn’t a cute postmodern trick but a profound means for looking at aging, power, and celebrity.

Binoche is predictably great. As Maria she makes clear how to strive to stay viable in a business that probably gives her a shelf life of twenty years tops before brushing many like her aside. Binoche handles the dialogue-driven portions with incomparable artistry, but the greatest pleasures are often found in seeing her react. Whether it’s the unforced nature of her laugh or fiddling with 3D glasses at a banal blockbuster, she lives in the character’s skin. Stewart matches Binoche’s intensity and technical skill with an affectless performance that her highest profile role in the TWILIGHT films never tapped. She hides her character’s ambition in her attentiveness to Maria, almost like a child to an elderly parent, yet Valentine is willing to push back when she feels unheard or unappreciated. CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA offers complex gratification as the story snakes along and enjoyment as a superior acting showcase.

Grade: A

White Bird in a Blizzard

WHITE BIRD IN A BLIZZARD (Gregg Araki, 2014)

Kat Connors (Shailene Woodley) is 17 years old in the fall of 1988 when her mother Eve (Eva Green) disappears without a trace in WHITE BIRD IN A BLIZZARD. Eve was unhappy in her longtime marriage to Brock (Christopher Meloni) and did not disguise it. Kat’s father even tells her that her mother never loved him. Although Kat doesn’t appear overly distressed about Eve vanishing, Brock insists that she speak to Dr. Thaler (Angela Bassett) to deal with the unexplained loss.

Kat recalls her mother as anything but a maternal ideal. Eve could be brusque and seemed to resent a maturing Kat when she reminded her of her younger self. As Kat reflects on the last days when Eve was around, she admits that it is possible her mom could have been having an affair. In retrospect it certainly seems as if Eve was flirting with Kat’s stoner boyfriend Phil (Shiloh Fernandez).

Writer-director Gregg Araki presents WHITE BIRD IN A BLIZZARD’s sometimes lurid story as a mix of 1950s melodramas, 1980s teen movies with a decidedly harder edge, and a little bit of camp. Outsized emotional currents sweep the drama along to where words and developments can be tragic and laughable. Taking notes from John Hughes, Araki douses the film in a post-punk/New Wave soundtrack emblematic of feeling like wanting to dance and cry.

The suburban southern California settings look as if they have been preserved in Lucite. Araki maintains the spaces as though the homes and communities are hermetic places as inescapable as one’s inner conflict about the unremarkable life. The bright and glossy visual texture lends an artificial feel to scenes no one will mistake for the epitome of domesticity. In Kat’s memories Eve resembles Joan Crawford with her glamorous appearance and ability to wreak emotional havoc. Green gets just a moment here and there to leave her mark and indeed makes a striking impression as if Kat’s mother is a star of the silver screen trying to steal the spotlight in her daughter’s life. She’s a presence even when unseen.

Eventually Woodley will age out of these coming of age roles, but again she does good work playing a teenager trying to sort out a murky future. Kat is not naϊve about her sexuality and the power it gives her, but when it comes to understanding who her parents are, WHITE BIRD IN A BLIZZARD shows her to be more sheltered. Kat’s narration, which is hard to place in time, carries the wisdom of years later when she has processed revelations about her parents’ dreams, passions, and disappointments. Perhaps it comes when she can empathize with her 42-year-old mother because she recognizes the mental state and worldly knowledge inaccessible to her as a high school student.

Grade: B+

While We're Young

WHILE WE’RE YOUNG (Noah Baumbach, 2014)

Each generation tends to look at the next one with some suspicion that they don’t live up to the standards they hold dear. As the saying goes, youth is wasted on the young. With Generation X in middle age, the time has come for them--us, in my case--to judge the habits, interests, and attitudes of millenials. In WHILE WE’RE YOUNG 44-year-old documentarian Josh (Ben Stiller) and his 43-year-old producer wife Cornelia (Naomi Watts) strike up a friendship with 25-year-old couple Jamie (Adam Driver) and Darby (Amanda Seyfried). Josh and Cornelia are childless and feeling increasingly alienated from their friends because of it, so they are drawn to the burgeoning filmmaker husband and his ice cream-making wife. Josh is especially taken with Jamie’s relentless optimism, DIY ethos, and unconstrained tastes and tries them on for size.

Writer-director Noah Baumbach opens WHILE WE’RE YOUNG with a passage from Ibsen’s THE MASTER BUILDER about being fearful of young people outside but encouraged to open the door followed by James Murphy’s toy box-sounding cover of David Bowie’s “Golden Years”. The film ends with the Bowie original and Wings’ “Let ‘Em In” on the soundtrack. The quotation and songs provide mirror bookends representing the aspirations Josh and Cornelia examine when faced with younger adults’ ways. Are they serious and cultured or sentimental and domesticized? When discussing their lives early in the film, Josh says, “Maybe the point is we have the freedom. What we do with it isn’t so important.” The pointed comedy of the comment is that the freedom they profess to cherish is really just a wasted resource they cling to rather than admit they’ve entered another time in their lives.

Baumbach mines the humor in the resistance to adapting to a new life stage, the foolishness of trying to act younger, and the perceived ridiculousness of how millenials assert their independence and preferences. Editor Jennifer Lame cuts Cornelia attending a mommy and me music class as if she’s entered a house of horrors. Josh suffers the indignity of looking older than he is by borrowing today’s youth fashion as if it suits him. WHILE WE’RE YOUNG practically drips contempt for what twentysomethings consider cool. Baumbach obliterates some easy targets, but the film is no less funny because of it.

Driver’s embodiment of a stereotypical hipster is a consistent source of jokes. After Josh’s infatuation with Jamie has ended, he describes his counterpart as imitating a sincere person he once saw. Baumbach doesn’t withhold any criticism of a younger generation he thinks can be vacuous and disingenuous, yet he doesn’t spare those in middle age. Where Jamie lacks boundaries and hides his careerism, Josh prizes the purist notion of not selling out and retaining authenticity, which are fine ideals until they become stifling to the point of inaction. WHILE WE’RE YOUNG soaks in the bitter comedy that comes in realizing that everyone is searching for answers.

Grade: B+

Ebertfest 2015: Opening Night

Ebertfest holds a special place in my moviegoing life because it was the first film festival I attended. The experience could not have been better. The 2001 festival, it’s third edition, featured an exceptional mix of good to great films, was hosted by a film writer I admired and aspired to be, and was down to earth in a way that felt identifiably Midwestern. This was not an industry event but a populist celebration of cinema in a university town. I was hooked, and It’s why I’ve come to Champaign, Illinois every April for fifteen years now.

It may seem strange to see a movie before going to opening night of the 2015 Roger Ebert’s Film Festival, but the Art Theater, a short walk from festival central at the Virginia Theatre, was playing GREY GARDENS, which I hadn’t seen. Ebert mentioned the Art as being important to him , and he certainly encouraged locals at the festival to patronize it those weeks when Ebertfest wasn’t co-opting their moviegoing time. Inside the lobby over the entrance is a mural with the hometown critic sitting in the front row to the side next to Groucho Marx. The seating location isn’t where you were likely to find Ebert when he was at the movies, but it seems right for him to have such a place of prominence, if not the best viewing angle, in a picture featuring stars of the screen. When he attended his own festival, Ebert was always the biggest star in the room no matter what Hollywood performer or filmmaker was present.

Perhaps it was my own reservations about this year’s festival lineup--I’ll explain those feelings on another day--but opening night felt more muted than any other year I can recall. It could be that the lack of a “big” film or guest tamped down some of the excitement in the crowd. Maybe it was that I knew what was coming. To start things off, a 3-D film was being shown for the first time in the festival’s history. Not just any 3-D film, mind you, was beginning the 17th festival but Jean-Luc Godard’s GOODBYE TO LANGUAGE (ADIEU AU LANGAGE). Unlikely as it seems to me, I’d seen it twice before. While I have enjoyed it primarily as an aesthetic experience, GOODBYE TO LANGUAGE struck me as a uniquely terrible choice to start the festival. Late Godard can be hard to penetrate intellectually. Playful as it can be, this rigorous cinematic essay fits the description of a difficult film to a tee. I did not expect GOODBYE TO LANGUAGE to go over well with this audience, which isn’t to say that I doubt their tastes but that this is no one’s idea of a widely appealing film that might ordinarily fill the first slot on the festival schedule.

On viewing GOODBYE TO LANGUAGE a second time I found it extremely helpful to have read David Bordwell’s unpacking of the dense film. Knowing how to watch can make a huge difference in appreciating it. My third viewing didn’t yield any major revelations, but it confirmed that Godard captures images of exceptional beauty. The shot of one hand washing another looks clearer than reality. During a shot of a boat going away from the dock the undulating water looks so blue and welcoming. The doubling and overlapping of images and use and locations of sound make for a thrilling cinematic experience even if I have a hard time making heads or tails of it. To the Ebertfest crowd’s credit, I noticed just a few walkouts from my vantage point in the balcony. Opinions may be voiced more strongly against it while folks wait in line to enter the theater over the next few days, but on this evening my impression is that people wrestled with the challenging work rather than dismissing it outright. Could it be my doubts about the film's reception were unfounded?

Todd Rendleman, Peter Sobczynski, Goodbye to Language's Héloise Godet, and Matt Zoller Seitz

The night’s second session was also something unprecedented at Ebertfest. Instead of showing a film, a Harold Ramis tribute took place. Clips were shown from ANIMAL HOUSE, CADDYSHACK, STRIPES, NATIONAL LAMPOON’S VACATION, BACK TO SCHOOL, CLUB PARADISE, GHOSTBUSTERS, and GHOSTBUSTERS 2. Ramis’ widow Erica Ramis and producer Trevor Albert then joined Chaz Ebert and critics Glenn Kenny and Susan Wloszczyna to discuss his work from the earlier half of his career. Following the conversation were clips from GROUNDHOG DAY, STUART SAVES HIS FAMILY, ANALYZE THIS, MULTIPLICITY, THE ICE HARVEST, BEDAZZLED, ORANGE COUNTY, AS GOOD AS IT GETS, KNOCKED UP, WALK HARD: THE DEWEY COX STORY, and YEAR ONE. This portion was capped by a clip of Ebert and Gene Siskel reviewing GROUNDHOG DAY on their television show. The same people returned to the stage to talk about this part of Ramis’ filmography.

Context-free clips don’t exactly serve the work well, so I could have done without them even though I realize why they were incorporated into the program. I would have been content to listen to those Ramis knew and those who appreciated his talents talk about him. I really enjoyed seeing the Siskel and Ebert clip and would suggest knitting them into the festival when possible. How great would it be to watch the films at Ebertfest and follow them with pertinent reviews from the long-running TV show? Granted, these won’t exist with every film selected, and if there was a disagreement between the critics, some of the reviews might make for uncomfortable situations with a festival guest. Still, if done with care, this seems like a natural way of keeping Ebert’s voice in the festival.

The Longest Ride

THE LONGEST RIDE (George Tillman Jr., 2015)

Although Nicholas Sparks film adaptations don’t cross over with one another like superhero movies, they might as well constitute their own cinematic universe populated with men and women resisting and desiring the love that comes into their lives. The male protagonists tend to have prototypically masculine professions, like soldier or oil rigger, while displaying acute emotional sensitivity. Female leads are often strong and independent yet in need of the right relationship to feel whole. Daily life is slower and quieter in these soft focus, sun-dappled romances, but the capricious forces at work usually demand a third act death. Happy endings are tempered with the bittersweet knowledge of the sacrifice necessary to achieve them. THE LONGEST RIDE sticks to the formula but eases up on the melodrama that has smothered some Sparks adaptations.

Wake Forest art major Sophia Danko (Britt Robertson) is two months from graduation and an internship with a Manhattan gallery when she meets professional bull rider Luke Collins (Scott Eastwood). Sophia doesn’t need the distraction of dating someone in North Carolina when she’ll soon be moving, so she ignores his calls and texts for awhile before agreeing to a date. They spend a pleasant night together, but on the way home Luke spots where a car is crashed through a guard rail. He pulls the dazed old man from the burning vehicle. Sophia retrieves the box on the front seat that the driver mumbles about wanting to save. After taking him to the hospital, Sophia elects to stay until the injured man, Ira Levinson (Alan Alda), is stabilized.

While waiting she opens the box to find many old letters that he wrote to his beloved. She reads the first one, composed in 1940, and is deeply moved by the story of a young Ira (Jack Huston) pining for Ruth (Oona Chaplin), whose Jewish family has relocated from Vienna to North Carolina to escape the war in Europe. Sophia offers to read the letters to Ira. No longer able to read them himself, he gladly accepts. Sophia is visiting with him when Luke drops by the hospital to return an old photo of Ira and Ruth that was left behind in his truck. Sophia is glad to see Luke again, and they decide to discover where a relationship might take them in the time she still has in the south. While they fall into an easygoing rhythm, Sophia’s intention to start her career up north and well-founded concerns over his well-being riding bulls threaten to break them apart.

Needing to attend to parallel love stories separated by seventy-some years, THE LONGEST RIDE is unable to develop both equally. Ira and Ruth’s World War II-era courtship and marriage produce the richer storyline, in part because their flashbacks observe a lifetime of experiences that essentially dramatize UP’s tear-jerking Carl and Ellie montage. Trying to draw comparisons between Ira and Ruth’s joys and disappointments with the thrills and challenges Sophia and Luke go through simply isn’t fair to the younger generation. Despite the obstacles to their long-term happiness, Sophia and Luke’s romantic conflict is also too tidily resolved via a plot point that is very much like one in the last Sparks adaptation, THE BEST OF ME.

When used as narration Ira’s letters sound like they were written to someone who has forgotten everything he’s telling her. The seemingly present-set film perceives World War II as being in the more recent past than it is because otherwise Alda’s Ira should likely be in his mid-90s. These are screenwriting nitpicks, though, for a romance that mostly works regardless of such shortcomings. THE LONGEST RIDE allows characters to spend time getting to know one another and build the natural progression of their relationships. The film prefers to savor Sophia and Luke bonding by sharing tales of their vastly different childhoods and Ira and Ruth finding gladness in their fleeting time caring for a boy as their own child than fixating on the lightning bolt of mutual attraction.

Credit goes to director George Tillman Jr. and the cast for investing lightweight characters with humanity without getting soppy. Robertson and Eastwood exhibit the laidback chemistry of people drawn to each other but not obsessed with whether they may match their preconceived ideas of The One. Huston and Chaplin are attuned to the give and take in a couple for whom interests and personalities differ. As Ira recalls the great love of his life, Alda exudes warmth with Robertson, and she meets with compassion free of pity. Certainly THE LONGEST RIDE is a kind of fantasy, but it indulges the longing for a love story with the complexities of life while avoiding piling on needless twists to make it appear more urgent.

Grade: B-

It Follows

IT FOLLOWS (David Robert Mitchell, 2014)

In IT FOLLOWS Jay (Maika Monroe) is enjoying her time as a teenager in a Detroit suburb until the night she chooses to sleep with her 21-year-old boyfriend. After their coupling, he reveals to her that a previous sexual partner passed along a ghost or monster to him that he has now given to her. It can change its appearance but isn’t visible to those not infected. It approaches at a slow, steady pace, so there can be time to escape it, but whatever it is remains unrelenting in its pursuit it catches you or is passed along to someone else. If that person doesn't give it to someone else or is killed, it returns down the chain to the previous person.

IT FOLLOWS achieves great success as a horror film with an antagonist that can be anyone and anywhere. Is that just a stranger shuffling along in the distance, or is it a mortal threat slowly creeping up? The need to remain vigilant scanning the background for any person coming near Jay and her friends is part of the fun writer-director David Robert Mitchell works into the film’s fabric. In this instance a slow approach is a virtue in developing a sense of perpetual unease. The unnamed menace in IT FOLLOWS scares because its presence does not attract attention and can be escaped for an indefinite period of time but not forever. The camera hunts the characters with frequent slow push-ins.

The thematic richness points toward this thing representing the fear of death itself. Before Jay’s boyfriend infects her, they play a game in which they try to guess what person around them each would like to trade places with. He doesn’t choose the guy with the hot date or the dad with a seemingly happy family but the kid. He says that the boy has his whole life ahead of him, also suggesting that he has not yet lost the innocence of youth. Other conversations revolve around recalled incidents when they lost some of their naiveté. IT FOLLOWS appears to be set during the summer, that seemingly endless time of joy for kids. The vintage quality of its unspecified era, like a slightly futuristic past, gives it a dreamy atmosphere out of time that accretes with reminiscing.

To draw out the metaphor, worrying about mortality is something that can be defended against and delayed, especially through sex according to the Freudian view, but short of a religious perspective, a finite end is in store for everyone. Mitchell presents a good mix of primal anxiety and intellectual deliberation, making IT FOLLOWS terrifying whether looking to be jolted while in one’s seat in the theater or much later when thinking about it all.

Grade: A-

World of Tomorrow

WORLD OF TOMORROW (Don Hertzfeldt, 2015)

Don Hertzfeldt reflects on mortality with his first digitally animated short WORLD OF TOMORROW. Four-year-old Emily (Winona Mae) receives a communication from a third generation clone of herself (Julia Pott) who lives in the distant future. Using time travel she brings the child, who she calls Emily Prime, to 227 years from now.

WORLD OF TOMORROW considers a time in which the technological singularity resulting in the immortality of human consciousness has been achieved. Physical death is overcome through uploading memories to clones or, if one so chooses, a hard drive. As he similarly studied in his three-short compilation feature IT’S SUCH A BEAUTIFUL DAY, Hertzfeldt provides a humorous perspective that seeks to balance the existential despair of what is to come for every living being and childlike wonder at the beauty surrounding us.

Clone Emily has experienced some generation loss, which is more common with analog media than the digital sources from which she has derived. Her desire to regain and relive in lost memories strikes a poignant note representative of the times when wishing to appreciate better those moments that may have been undervalued as they were being lived. Emily Prime, on the other hand, operates on a more instinctual level. She blurts out direct, simple responses to the stimuli in her environment and possesses no concept, and thus no fear, of the abstract ideas and concerns her future self shares. While not as polar opposite in ages like the caricatures of the old man whose year is ending and the New Year’s baby, these Emilys are essentially the same person concurrently contemplating the life behind and ahead.

Hertzfeldt teases humanity’s fondness for devoting precious minutes to inanity, something increasingly driven by the technological distractions around us. Working in the digital realm for the first time allows the stick figure animator to crowd his frames with all manner of slick distractions in light and color. His imagined outernet, an externalized, three dimensional version of the internet, makes tangible the ephemeral things that can remove us from the space we occupy. In WORLD OF TOMORROW Hertzfeldt frets about what forthcoming days, weeks, months, and years hold, yet he reminds himself and us to retain the openness for awe and discovery through mundane and troubling times.

Grade: B+

The Guest

THE GUEST (Adam Wingard, 2014)

The Peterson household is still reeling from the death of their enlisted son Caleb when David (Dan Stevens) turns up at their door out of the blue in THE GUEST. He tells Laura (Sheila Kelley) that he and Caleb were good friends. Now that he’s been discharged from the army David is checking on the Petersons to fulfill the request his deceased fellow soldier made. Laura invites David to stay with the family for the time being and allows him to stay in Caleb’s untouched room.

David’s presence in their home becomes therapeutic for each of the family members. Laura’s husband (Leland Orser) can knock back beers with him and rant about how he’s been passed over at work. The Petersons’ 20-year-old daughter Anna (Maika Monroe) entertains the notion of him as a mature boyfriend to move onto while their son Luke (Brendan Meyer) finds a protective big brother who will defend him from the bullies at high school. Still, there’s something off about the unfailingly polite and even-tempered David.

Director Adam Wingard uses triangles as a visual motif in THE GUEST, suggesting that there are two people or sides fighting for the same thing. In this case David is defending a family in mourning and possibly all of those who have lost or could lose loved ones in military service, but his specific motivations and who he’s resisting are unclear for a substantial amount of the film. When the primary mystery is dropped, it still leaves more questions than answers. The lack of details is only an issue in terms of the social commentary, which seems integrated in a slapdash manner. Otherwise Wingard and screenwriter Simon Barrett milk David’s unpredictability and the expectations surrounding his character type from other movies for tension and humor.

With David’s cool exterior, there’s the prevailing anticipation for him to snap. Shots of him alone staring dead-eyed at nothing certainly support the suspicion that all is not as well as he tries to make it seem. Steve Moore’s synthesizer score reflects David’s mental state in its control. The skittering notes suggest a mind in a constant state of calculation while maintaining the appearance of composure. Stevens is playing a familiar outsider role, the tough guy with an unknown background, and Wingard and Barrett have him toy with the preconceptions audiences bring. When David is using a knife around the house and calling out a guy at a party who says he supports the troops, Stevens wears an air of danger about him, perhaps even more when he’s messing with someone. To some extent Stevens is giving a comedic performance. His embodiment of a ruthless killer is often arch. The hilarious thumbs up that he gives, while possibly a reference to TERMINATOR 2: JUDGEMENT DAY, encapsulates the funny sensibility riding shotgun in this thriller.

THE GUEST isn’t entirely satisfying in telling a story but makes up for some narrative shortcomings by virtue of delivering well-crafted genre cinema. The climactic sequence inside and outside of a maze for the Halloween dance mixes anxiety and laughs in nearly equal measures. The exclaimed ending stresses that it is not to be taken too seriously. It may not provide a conventional sense of closure, but THE GUEST strives for good, bloody fun while being sure not to overstay its welcome.

Grade: B-

Home

HOME (Tim Johnson, 2015)

The stout, six-legged, purple alien species Boov excel at running away, and they’re doing it once again as they are being pursued by the planet-demolishing Gorg in HOME. Feckless leader Captain Smek (Steve Martin) relocate the Boov to Earth, where they promptly ship out all humans to congested neighborhoods in Australia dubbed Happy Humanstown. Oh (Jim Parsons), so named because of the groans he is greeted with, is excited for a fresh start, but when he sends his party invitation to the entire galaxy, it’s only a matter of forty hours until the Gorg receive it and attempt to destroy them.

Meanwhile, seventh grader Gratuity Tucci, better known as Tip (Rihanna), is looking for her mother after being missed during the Boov’s relocation phase. She encounters Oh when he’s a fugitive from Boov authorities and strikes an uneasy alliance with him to find her mom. Oh intends to take them to Antarctica, which is the only place on Earth with no Boov, while Tip thinks they are headed to Boov Command Central in Paris to search for her mom in the database.

There’s a subtle, if unelaborated, message about colonialism running through HOME. Oh says, “Boov do not steal and destruct. Boov liberate and befriend.” While Happy Humanstown is a colorful, cartoonish place, there’s no mistaking it for a giant ghetto. HOME doesn’t directly comment on these aspects of the story, which makes their inclusion kind of awkward in the grand scheme of things, especially because the primary theme is about not feeling like one fits in. Tip and her mother are immigrants from Barbados, and the challenges they’ve experienced color how they relate to the Boov.

HOME doesn’t push its theme too insistently, and the relationship between Oh and Tip has an easygoing feel that keeps the mismatched pair from becoming grating. Because Oh talks like THE BIG BANG THEORY’s Sheldon Cooper with traces of Jar-Jar Binks’ patois, the character runs the risk of becoming insufferable. Director Tim Johnson is careful to have Parsons not overdo his alien on the autism spectrum act.

 If studios have identifiable characteristics, HOME is readily noted as a DreamWorks production. It’s irreverent, which can be fun to a point, but it’s also indistinguishable from other bright, loud entertainment for kids.

Grade: B-

Cinderella

CINDERELLA (Kenneth Branagh, 2015)

Kenneth Branagh’s CINDERELLA is a mostly faithful live-action adaptation of Disney’s 1950 animated story of the girl who rises from the ashes to become a princess. Ella (Lily James) is a charming young woman who abides by her deceased mother’s gentle insistence always to have courage and be kind. When her father (Ben Chaplin) eventually remarries, Ella cheerfully accepts her new stepmother (Cate Blanchett) and bratty stepsisters Anastasia (Holliday Grainger) and Drisella (Sophie McShera). After he dies while away on business, these family members take even greater advantage of her, but she continues to accommodate them while guided by her mother’s words. Her face is often sullied with ashes from needing to sleep by the hearth to keep warm. Stepmother and stepsisters seize on this and dub her Cinderella.

One day while needing an escape from the cruelty she endures, Ella goes to the forest where she meets the prince (Richard Madden). He is enchanted with her but doesn’t get her name. He’s being pressured to make a politically wise marriage but prefers this simple country girl to the elite and powerful invited to his imminent royal ball. To find her again he wins a concession to invite all maidens to attend in the hope that Ella will come. Although her stepmother forbids her to go, Ella’s fairy godmother (Helena Bonham Carter) provides some last minute solutions.

Branagh finds use for some CGI transformations in his version of CINDERELLA, but otherwise he stays true to a solid, old-fashioned vision of this well-known fairy tale. Contemporary interpretations or subversions of the source material are not welcome here, and that is perfectly fine. In fact, the most modern touches, like the morphing of the coach and footmen, look anomalous among the quaint and opulent backdrops.

Branagh made his name in film with Shakespearean adaptations rooted in their period settings. In CINDERELLA he’s particularly adept at staging scenes of castle intrigue in Chris Weitz’s screenplay. With the prince’s father ill and desiring a secure transition of power, the romantic aspect of the royal ball is tested by prudence and strategy. Branagh seems most in his element navigating the negotiations amid the hustle and bustle of the biggest and most important event in all of the land.

The elimination of the songs in this lavish remake represent the most notable deviation from the cartoon. Considering the overwhelming familiarity with the story and the massive success of FROZEN, it’s a curious change not to have this CINDERELLA be a musical. Ella is unerringly true to the principles she was raised to honor. While Ella doesn’t have much agency in her story, James never plays her as though she’s a pushover. It’s also nice to see a protagonist who, when given the opportunity to deliver a comeuppance to her oppressors, chooses to forgive. There’s not a lot of magic in the events of CINDERELLA, but it certainly exists in this touch of grace.

Grade: B-

Frank

FRANK (Lenny Abrahamson, 2014)

Art in general--and rock and roll in particular--fosters the image of the tortured genius, but in the age of the internet it’s now harder for the cult musician to build and maintain an aura of mystique than it was even twenty years ago. Except for the rare few, like the fame-indifferent group in FRANK, unknown and emerging bands establish social media presences to reach the music-obsessed. The art they produce matters, but being savvy about gaining awareness may be as critical to success as good songs. Because anyone with a laptop has the ability to record a single or an album, knowing how to cut through the clutter has become an important skill.

Jon (Domhnall Gleeson) desires to be a songwriter, but the best he can muster are fragments of basic compositions with insipid lyrics literally describing what he sees. He catches a break when he comes upon the members of the alphabet soup-named band Soronprfbs watching their keyboardist being taken away by medical personnel after trying to drown himself. Jon’s offhanded mention that he plays the keyboards earns him an invitation from their manager Don (Scoot McNairy) to perform with them at their next gig. He has no idea what to expect, least of all that the avant-garde rock band’s singer Frank (Michael Fassbender) wears a big papier-mâché mask that he never takes off.

Although their concert doesn’t last more than a minute or two because theremin-playing Clara (Maggie Gyllenhaal) gets into a fight on stage with guitarist Baraque (François Civil), Jon learns that Frank likes him and wants him to join the group. Jon thinks he’s tagging along for a couple shows in Ireland but finds himself moving in with them to a house on an island as Soronprfbs prepare to record an album. Everyone else in this band of misfits regards Frank as brilliant. Don and Frank met in a mental institution, and the others have their own eccentricities. The conventional Jon doesn’t exactly get it but rolls with the situation and tries to assist as he can. He ends up bankrolling their nearly year-long stay away from society, yet his most significant contribution is documenting their process. Jon’s posts, tweets, and videos attract attention online and lead to an invitation to play at South by Southwest.

Jon is a striver who simply may not have what it takes, and FRANK expresses humorous contempt for dilettantes like him who possess more of an aptitude for promotion than artistry. He mistakes experiencing crisis for expanding creativity. Frank stands in as a mascot of sorts for Jon’s conception of the artist, but as more comes to be known about Frank, his weirdness is revealed to be something other than an affectation. The quirks Frank and the other band members exhibit inform their work but can also be the obstacle to completing it.

Jon Ronson and Peter Straughan’s screenplay has fun poking the music scene, even if it’s tough to let the air out of absurd band names when acts like !!! exist. Frank’s attempt to make his music more accessible yields a hilarious version of a supposedly likable song. Clara’s insistence that she will not take up the ukulele clobbers an easy but merited target in the current state of indie rock. While FRANK takes aim at untalented careerists in the industry, the film’s experimental rock music credibly demonstrates the filmmakers know what they are critiquing

Grade: B-

Focus

FOCUS (Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, 2015)

In FOCUS seasoned con artist Nicky (Will Smith) knows the tricks of the trade so well that he can easily spot the hustle Jess (Margot Robbie) and her partner try to pull on him in a Manhattan restaurant. Seeing an opportunity to better herself, Jess follows Nicky to New Orleans, where she works to convince him to let her join his den of thieves. After capably proving her skills in a packed French Quarter, Nicky takes her on as an intern with his thirty-person team stealing money, valuables, and identities during Super Bowl week there.

The pleasure of a film about con artists resides in how smoothly it can fool you when you’re already on guard for some narrative chicanery. FOCUS co-writer/directors Glenn Ficarra and John Requa are adept in keeping attention on the scams at hand so that the bigger design isn’t glimpsed or considered. They do a slick job of tying everything together in a satisfying way without spoiling the surprises and retroactively correcting some third act issues.

Ficarra and Requa are also quite clever in how they use The Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil” as a cue on the soundtrack. When it first pops up, it seems like a lazy selection in terms of the classic rock song’s overuse and direct comment on the action at hand. A little later on, though, the employment of it is shown as being crucial to the scene in a way that’s essentially invisible to the audience the first time. Using such details in ornamental and pivotal ways provides regular gratification in this fizzy film.

As long as Nicky is grifting, Smith channels the suave movie stars of yesteryear. He’s also a good verbal sparrer with Robbie, but the romance and heat that is supposed to exist between Nicky and Jess isn’t especially convincing. Smith displays some of the Cary Grant comedic lightness called for in the part, but he seems too invested in work to get distracted by Robbie’s harder edged Grace Kelly. Robbie gives the more varied performance as she adapts to the situations. It’s a potentially star-making turn in a film that hasn’t enjoyed the kind of success to push her to that level.

Grade: B