2016 Roger Ebert's Film Festival recap

Having started classes toward a Master of Business Administration degree, it was necessary for me to miss opening night and the first full day of the 2016 Roger Ebert’s Film Festival. This was no small sacrifice for me, as I have attended every film at Ebertfest since 2001 and really enjoy the experience of being at it as part of each year at the movies.

As it turned out, I had already seen the first four films to play at the Virginia Theatre this year. Even though I yearned to be there, at least my familiarity with what was being shown meant that I didn’t need to feel like I was missing out. It would have been fun to see CRIMSON PEAK and THE THIRD MAN on the massive Virginia screen. I was less conflicted about missing GRANDMA and NORTHFORK, neither which I liked when watching them during their original runs, although I wouldn’t have minded revisiting the latter. Ebertfest has provided the space for reassessing films--some of which I did come around on after a second viewing--and as NORTHFORK was one Ebert championed, this would have been as good of a place and time as any to do so.

Ebertfest has a vibe akin to summer camp. Returning every mid-April provides the chance to reconnect with people you met there and may not have seen since the previous fest. That happens at other film festivals, but unlike the frenzied pace maintained in racing to one of multiple simultaneous options across a few square miles of a major metropolitan area, as with the Toronto International Film Festival, Ebertfest moves comparatively slowly, with screenings occurring at a common time and location for all in attendance in Champaign, Illinois. This allows for a relatively unhurried pace, aside from the free-for-all when the doors first open and passholders scramble to acquire their preferred seats for the day’s slate. I love the largeness and urgency of TIFF, but Ebertfest’s more deliberate state of being has its benefits. Attendees may be watching twelve feature films in five days, which would qualify as cinematic gorging for most people, yet here there is more time to digest them than the typical festival grants. The downtime between films is more likely to breed conversations among attendees and build the sense of community that clings to this festival.

As a longtime visitor to Ebertfest, I’ve wondered if the festival will be able to sustain itself without its namesake. Although my observations are anecdotal, I noticed that Ebert himself tended to be the biggest attraction regardless of what directors or actors were guests. Based on casual interactions with other passholders, his curation of and seal of approval for the selected films seemed to be of the utmost importance to those who bought passes and tickets. The crowds aren’t what they were when the festival was selling out passes quickly after going on-sale, but attendance appears to have stabilized to a healthy number that can support the annual event while not requiring one to be extraordinarily quick to ensure admission.

Ebert leaves a body of work that could easily serve as a guide to program a few decades worth of festivals. Co-founder and host Chaz Ebert and festival director Nate Kohn have always been involved with picking the films, so the task now falling to them, plus any directions left to them, is not as big of a shift in process as it might seem. Still, the difficult decisions surround what to play at the festival, especially if pass and ticket purchasers are accustomed to them having the critic’s endorsement. By my count, Ebert saw four of the films in this year’s line-up, with the two silent entries being ones he possibly screened during his life. At worst that’s a quarter of the selections; at best it’s half. Is that sufficient?

Clearly there has been a conscious choice for Ebertfest not to lock itself into being a purely repertory festival. Personally, I would prefer Ebert’s voice were a bit more prominent in the films chosen for this year. Assuming that rights issues aren’t a problem, it would be great if his old, pertinent TV reviews could play after each screening. Doing so would enhance the sense of his presence even in his physical absence. (It was a nice bonus when done this year.) Nevertheless, I also think they’re right not to keep the festival limited to films he reviewed or saw during his lifetime. If anyone has a right to surmise what new films he might have liked, it’s the two people in position to do so. Bringing in new films and talents keeps Ebertfest as an evolving thing rather than a museum piece, a quality that I intuit is important for this particular festival. Ebertfest has welcomed emerging filmmakers and critics rather than limiting those guests to a narrow group from one generation. If that is part of its mission, then it stands to reason that new films must play a significant role.

The highlights in this year’s line-up were BLOW OUT screened in a magnificent 35mm print and discussed in a post-film Q&A with star Nancy Allen; L’INHUMAINE with accompaniment by Alloy Orchestra; and EVE’S BAYOU with director Kasi Lemmons in attendance. At least where I live, Brian De Palma’s films tend to be harder to come by in revival screenings than other filmmakers of his generation, so seeing BLOW OUT like this was a treat. The Alloy Orchestra is an annual highlight of Ebertfest, and this year was no different. EVE’S BAYOU epitomizes the kind of film Ebertfest does well in showcasing. Ebert was a notable supporter of it, which makes it a good pick, but more importantly, it’s a film that may have slipped off the radar of cinephiles in the nineteen years since its debut. “Overlooked” was plucked out of the festival’s name many years ago because of its amorphous definition, but I think “overlooked” remains a valuable quality in what shows here. In a film culture increasingly driven by whatever’s newest, with canon titles getting the greatest attention for old films, there’s worth in shining the light on yesterday’s well-regarded films that have slipped through the cracks somewhat.

While I would prefer not to miss any days of Ebertfest, doing that this year permitted me to appreciate the respite it can be from everything else. Coming at the end of an academic term when I’ve been overwhelmed with homework, not to mention the day job, a few days of Ebertfest reminded that the movies can be an edifying escape.

Defending Your Life

DEFENDING YOUR LIFE (Albert Brooks, 1991)

Having been struck head-on by a bus after going left of center in his new car, Daniel Miller (Albert Brooks) comes to in a place that looks a lot like the western United States but is not on Earth. In DEFENDING YOUR LIFE the Los Angeles advertising man learns that he is dead and has been brought to Judgment City for a four-day review of his life. As all of his life has been recorded, the trial-like setting will feature the prosecution and defense presenting footage of his actions in an attempt to prove to two judges what motivated his actions. If he is determined to have lived with courage, he will proceed to whatever comes next in the universe’s design. If Daniel is found to have lived in fear, he will be returned to Earth to try again.

Daniel is a neurotic sort, so naturally this process, which his defender Bob Diamond (Rip Torn) insists is not a trial, makes him anxious. He can’t fully enjoy what Judgment City has to offer, from the chance to discover one’s past lives to the ability to eat all you want without gaining weight, because he wonders how his life will be assessed. Daniel is somewhat able to take his mind off of this whole ordeal when he meets Julia (Meryl Streep), a woman of the same approximate earthly age. He finds himself quickly falling in love with her, yet he resists to a degree because of his expectation that she will be moving forward while he will be sent back to Earth.

Perhaps the cleverest and funniest conceit of DEFENDING YOUR LIFE is that Daniel has no firmer grasp on how things are supposed to work in Judgment City than any of us do in our mortal lives. He can look for meaning in his surroundings, but without understanding how the place works, it’s all conjecture. Daniel is just as insecure in this way station, worrying about how the number of days being reviewed in his case and the modesty of his accommodations might be indicative of the verdict that awaits him. For this short period he is in a spot where fear should not be a factor, yet it continues to drive his choices and outlook. To make matters worse, everyone assures him that he doesn’t need to fret about anything. As writer, director, and star, Brooks taps into the nagging feeling that everyone knows something that you don’t, especially when they appear unconcerned.

Brooks has fun with the idea of a bureaucratic layover on the spiritual plane. Waiting room coffee table books are all photographs from God’s eye view, even of Judgment City. While the deceased are taken to places that resemble where they are from, there’s something amusing in the thought that mundane urban and suburban architecture would be soothing for souls in transition. Brooks also humorously envisions that even in death one can be made to feel small. Daniel has to sit through a blooper reel of his pratfalls and mistakes. Bob pokes fun at humans like for the low percentage of their brains they utilize compared to Judgment City’s residents like him. Insecurity, it seems, is something to be overcome to progress in the eternal.

While Brooks’ character has a nervous energy about him, DEFENDING YOUR LIFE provides a warm, funny space to consider larger questions of existence. Brooks challenges the notion that courageous and fearful behavior are clear cut from one another. Rather, what can appear cowardly may be a sign of internal strength and what seems brave may just be a survival instinct. Streep bestows a peaceful air upon Julia, who lived less fearfully than Daniel, yet even she is not wholly free of hang-ups. Typically an exploration of self doubt would wrap with a skeptical or ironic tone, but Brooks finds a way to conclude DEFENDING YOUR LIFE that feels hopeful and honest without betraying the protagonist’s cautious nature.

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

Miracles from Heaven

MIRACLES FROM HEAVEN (Patricia Riggen, 2016)

In MIRACLES FROM HEAVEN the Beam family appears to have as close to a perfect life in their spacious ranch house in a suburb of Fort Worth, Texas. Christy (Jennifer Garner) and Kevin (Martin Henderson) feel blessed to have three daughters and an ever-expanding number of dogs, although mom may not be thrilled every time a new one is brought home. Kevin has opened a big veterinary clinic. Christy worries a little that they might have overextended themselves in launching the business, but she and her family are regular churchgoers with faith that God will see them through whatever may come.

Christy finds that faith tested when middle daughter Anna (Kylie Rogers) becomes sick and seems to be getting worse despite medical professionals assuring her and her husband that there’s nothing seriously wrong. When Anna is finally diagnosed correctly with an intestinal disorder, the news could not be more disheartening. The condition is incurable and does not permit Anna to eat. Christy is distraught, finding her only comfort in the hope that a Boston specialist will take Anna as a patient and be able to alleviate her considerable pain.

MIRACLES FROM HEAVEN treads lightly as a story of tested faith, but it allows Christy to have the space to turn away from the church in a manner that makes sense even for believers. The strain of her daughter’s struggle, the lack of hope, and the cruel judgment of others as to her piety and how a deficiency in it might be responsible for the situation provide sufficient reasons for Christy to turn away from religion. Because this film’s purpose is to witness, MIRACLES FROM HEAVEN is careful to avoid Christy rejecting God outright but instead has her distance herself from a higher power, like putting something in storage that she does not have use for currently. God is there if she needs it, especially when she doesn’t think He can or will intervene.

While MIRACLES FROM HEAVEN makes room for that doubt, it is saddled with the narrative and filmmaking problems endemic to faith-based films, particularly those grounded in evangelical Protestantism. Primarily this is a matter of message above all. Randy Brown’s adaptation of Christy Beam’s real-life account of what happened to her daughter has two clear purposes. It is to assure those who are born again that their faith is the one true way, and it is to welcome non-believers to the light without being too Jesus-y. The first intention shows in doctors broadly dismissing Christy’s protests that something serious is wrong with Anna because, after all, they are the experts. This gets complicated when one doctor is a comfort to Christy and Anna, but the film reminds that he’s no match for God. It also comes across in the sense of superiority over a father who doesn’t his sick daughter tainted with that God stuff. In the film’s view prayer is like a wish slot machine that you just have to keep pumping enough quarters into until you hit the jackpot.

It’s no surprise that MIRACLES FROM HEAVEN plays best when it’s taking it easy on the sermonizing and merely letting the characters inhabit the stressful circumstances. The middle portion with Christy and Anna in Boston succeeds best because focuses on a parent and a child coping with hard things. A better film would have looked closer at the financial problems this medical predicament would put them in, especially when it just pays lip service to their stretched bank account mentioned early on. Although Anna’s illness is an emotional drain on the rest of the family, the film deals with them with a token scene or two. Perhaps most distressing is how MIRACLES FROM HEAVEN seeks to glorify God in on Anna’s unexplainable healing without fully appreciating the smaller kindnesses she and Christy received throughout the trying times. The message may be to open one’s eyes to how God is reflected in the words and deeds of others, but the film prefers something showier.

Grade: C-

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

Shotgun Stories

SHOTGUN STORIES (Jeff Nichols, 2007)

Long-held resentments and a feud between two sets of half-brothers is triggered when their father dies in SHOTGUN STORIES. To Son (Michael Shannon), Kid (Barlow Jacobs), and Boy (Douglas Ligon) their father has been dead to them since he abandoned the family and subsequently straightened up and started a new, respectable life. Their dad also produced three boys with his second family, and his preference for them is evident by the fact that they all have proper names.

Son stirs up the bad blood between clans when he crashes the funeral to speak ill of the recently departed. His words provoke a brief confrontation between the antagonistic half-brothers but don’t lead to anything of consequence by the grave. Still, the offense gets Mark Hayes (Travis Smith) and his siblings itching for a fight. Even if they do their best to stay clear of one another in the small, central Arkansas town, a clash seems inevitable.

Writer-director Jeff Nichols excels at capturing the shorthand that families, especially brothers, often communicate in. Terse conversations among Son, Kid, and Boy reflect a common understanding that allows them to discuss emotional matters without having to spill their guts to one another. Each inherently knows what the others are thinking whether things go unsaid or are spoken around. Nichols makes good use of the actors in letting their subtle facial reactions and lack of comments clearly fill in what is going on in the characters’ heads. The affection and protectiveness that Son, Kid, and Boy feel for each other isn’t proclaimed in any grand manner, yet it comes through in their actions and clipped discussions. The spare style, especially as it ties in with masculinity, is perhaps reminiscent of Clint Eastwood.

Nichols also has a strong grasp of location and social conditions in SHOTGUN STORIES. Part of the conflict between the half-brothers comes from the economic disparity between them. The younger Hayes brothers may not be rich, but they live in nice homes and have a family farm to attend to. Meanwhile, Son and Kid scrape by with jobs at a fish farm, and Boy coaches youth basketball when it’s in season. Son has his hopes for more money pinned on learning how to count cards so he can win at the casino. Kid sleeps in a tent outside Son’s house while Boy stays in a conversion van that he parks at the dam because it’s cheaper than getting an apartment. Nichols doesn’t gawk at their poverty or fetishize it but rather depicts it as the reality that the characters know and accept, even if they’d like to be better situated.

As his first film, SHOTGUN STORIES shows Nichols’ promise and his need to develop as a dramatist. The build-up to the showdown between the half-brothers is filled with tension, but the film loses intensity when the grudges boil over into violence. While the spartan nature of the screenplay mirrors how these men remain relatively closed off in their personalities, Nichols draws them in fairly broad strokes. He benefits from Shannon playing Son, as he suggests a complex interior life for the oldest brother. Shortcomings aside, SHOTGUN STORIES tells a Shakespearean tale by way of the American South and points toward better things to come from its talented filmmaker.

Grade: B

10 Cloverfield Lane

10 CLOVERFIELD LANE (Dan Trachtenberg, 2016)

Having left her fiancé, Michelle (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) is not in a good place emotionally as she drives across Louisiana in 10 CLOVERFIELD LANE. After being knocked out during a nighttime car accident, she awakens in a bad physical place. She finds herself on a mattress with her right leg chained to the wall of a locked concrete room. Michelle is visited by Howard (John Goodman), who informs her that he saved her life by pulling her out of her wrecked car and bringing her to his bunker while an unspecified attack has rendered outside uninhabitable. He isn’t clear on what specifically has happened. All he knows is that everyone Michelle knows is surely dead.

In time Howard grants her more movement around his well-stocked underground shelter. Also occupying it is Emmett (John Gallagher Jr.), who helped build the bunker and rushed to it for safety when the unknown event happened. Emmett and Michelle don’t fully trust Howard, who comes off as a paranoid survivalist, but with his broken arm and her injured leg, they are limited in their abilities to physically overpower him. The limited information they have about what’s going on above ground also discourages a possible escape. For now they’re better off playing board games, doing puzzles, and enjoying whatever other entertainment options are available while biding what could be a couple years until it’s safe on the surface.

10 CLOVERFIELD LANE exists within the same universe as Matt Reeves’ 2008 thriller CLOVERFIELD, although the films stand as separate works that lack overlapping characters. Such knowledge is a tip-off to the mystery about what the trio is burrowed away from, but the greater uncertainty lies in Howard’s motivations. By preparing for a doomsday scenario that seems to have arrived, his suspicious nature is validated. Howard is weird, but the limited evidence also means that he’s correct. Goodman plays Howard as a creep emboldened because his fears have become manifest and thus allow him to exert excessive influence on what Michelle and Emmett can do and say. Goodman is terrific straddling the line of acting like those around him have the freedom to do as they please while never letting them forget that he holds their fates in his hands. Sometimes it’s what he implies, like telling Michelle that she’ll learn to enjoy cooking. In other actions the threat is explicit, such as the fact that Michelle is still locked in that barren room at times. Goodman is often scarier as Howard when he’s putting on the appearance of being nice, which poorly disguises whatever pathology drives him.

Winstead is excellent at showing how Michelle maintains the peace around a volatile personality. She locates the character’s strength by having Michelle play along with whatever placates Howard even as she schemes to find out the truth of the predicament for herself. There’s not much meat to the part, but Winstead brings solid determination to it.

Director Dan Trachtenberg maximizes the tension in close quarters, whether it’s the stifling experience of bunker life or the claustrophobia of crawling through a ventilation shaft. Even if the three people living there were on good terms, at some point it would feel like the walls are closing in on them. Every word and movement is heightened in this tight thriller because upsetting the fragility of the environment can be the difference between life and death.

Grade: B

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT (Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, 2015)

With its title conveyed in the NATO phonetic alphabet, WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT hints at the main character’s heedlessness in becoming a war correspondent and astonishment at what she finds to be normal in that environment. Kim Baker (Tina Fey) is tired of spinning her wheels writing lightweight scripts at a cable news channel, so when her employer seeks on-camera talent to cover the war in Afghanistan, she grabs the opportunity even though she’s not prepared for the inherent hardships and danger. She has a boyfriend who is often traveling but no kids, which frees her to accept the initial six-month assignment.

Beginning in 2003 Kim sets up her base in Kabul in a place akin to a ramshackle hostel for international journalists. Tanya Vanderpoel (Margot Robbie) gives her a crash course in the dynamics of the place, particularly in regard to her high desirability in a spot with few western women and many men. Scottish photojournalist Iain MacKelpie (Martin Freeman) becomes a friend who would like to get more familiar with Kim. Interpreter Fahim Ahmadzai (Christopher Abbott) tries to be protective of her even as she takes unadvised risks. Kim gets hooked on the thrill of reporting from a war zone while the public back home increasingly is losing interest.

In WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT Fey stays largely true to the persona she’s developed in films and TV shows but adapts it for a setting more serious than audiences are used to seeing her in. Once again she’s a clever, funny, fortysomething single woman with an unfulfilling personal and professional life, but in this situation there’s little time to spend fretting about her disappointments. Kim’s intelligence and sharp wit function as shields, if not weapons, in a hostile land. She is quick with withering remarks and crude rejoinders, in part because it’s what survival in the male-dominated culture demands, yet there’s a limit to how much her verbal assertiveness can protect her. Fey is good at showing how Kim mounts her defenses while remaining aware of her vulnerability. Her funny performance demonstrates that her character can drink and swear like one of the boys but still faces disadvantages because of her gender.

Kim rediscovers herself during her time in Afghanistan, but WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT, based on Kim Barker’s book about her experiences, resists being EAT PRAY LOVE goes to war. The film is Kim’s story of personal growth, but it also depicts the lack of change where she’s reporting from. Robert Carlock’s screenplay observes the absurdity and sadness in war-torn Afghanistan. It’s funny that Kim doesn’t recognize the scam of a boy crying over the broken eggs he was going to sell on the street and heartrending to realize that he’s out there doing it out of necessity. There’s humor in a local mistaking an African-American soldier’s presence as meaning that the Russians are now black, yet it points out the decades-long, unresolved conflict in the region.

Directors Glenn Ficarra and John Requa maintain the tricky harmony of laughing at the strangeness of a war zone without demeaning those who endure bombings, searches, and gun battles. Alfred Molina’s portrayal of an upper Afghan official who drops thinly veiled come-ons to Kim is the one out-of-tune exception to WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT’s tonal balance. Molina’s performance contains menace as he implies receiving sex for secrets, but the threatening aspect of him is overshadowed by his clownish behavior. Otherwise WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT stays clear-eyed while taking an askew view inside the bubble of war.

Grade: B

Sunshine Superman

SUNSHINE SUPERMAN (Marah Strauch, 2014)

What compels someone to try to find an alternative to skydiving because it starts feeling ordinary? The documentary SUNSHINE SUPERMAN explores the answer in telling the story of Carl Boenish, who is known as the founder of BASE jumping. Boenish worked for an aviation company but was nudged toward his calling when asked to shoot skydiving scenes for the Hollywood film THE GYPSY MOTHS. He decided to focus his work on becoming a cinematographer who documented the aerial pursuit. When skydiving was no longer scratching his itch for excitement in the late 1970s, he and some friends turned to the next challenge: jumping off a cliff in Yosemite National Park.

The Yosemite jumps and the debate about the legality of them led Boenish and company, including his wife Jean, to find other high perches from which they could leap. TV antennas bridges, and high-rise buildings, especially those under construction, became other sites from which they could jump to get their adrenaline rushes. Boenish insisted that they film their jumps so that others could share in the experiences that were so important to them, and doing so meant jumping in daylight and thus heightening the possibility of being arrested. Jumping from high places may or may not have been legal, but trespassing certainly wasn’t.

SUNSHINE SUPERMAN features plenty of archival footage from helmet-mounted cameras and those on the ground. For those of us who would prefer to remain more earthbound than risk death, the film provides an exhilarating perspective of what it is like to freefall from thousands of feet up and then float to safety with the aid of a parachute. Boenish says that he doesn’t intend to inspire others to make these jumps but hopes his actions will give those who see them the courage to do whatever they desire. Boenish’s childlike enthusiasm and seemingly limitless ability to push himself testify to the wonders one can achieve when brave enough to chase a dream that others may think impossible or foolish. In this and its tale of adventure to get up in the air, SUNSHINE SUPERMAN bears a passing resemblance to MAN ON WIRE, the documentary of the high-wire walker who performed between the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers.

The message of believing in oneself is all well and good, but SUNSHINE SUPERMAN introduces an ominous tone to Boenish’s story at the outset. The promise of potentially bad things to come fades as the rise of BASE jumping is traced through Boenish’s footage, reenactments, and interviews. The fateful sense returns in the film’s second half as Boenish and his wife prepare for a world record-setting televised jump in Norway. Director Marah Strauch presents an admiring view of her subject but isn’t so blinkered to ignore that what made Boenish who he was also cost him his life. As someone less impulsive, it’s hard to understand the fearlessness to take such risks and how his wife responds in the aftermath of Boenish’s last jump. Chalking it up to different viewpoints may not be a satisfactory answer, but it seems like a fair way of assessing Jean’s reaction.

Boenish’s own words are peppered throughout SUNSHINE SUPERMAN. It’s apparent what he gets out of jumping from high places but less clear why he does it. The film suggests that a childhood brush with polio may have driven him to appreciate what his body could do when healthy. His technical interests reveal a drive for understanding how things work and may have steered him to reach for the human mind and body’s limits. One anecdote raises the possibility of how his religious beliefs may have guided him, and another calls into question how they played into his final jump. For whatever reason Strauch includes Boenish’s beliefs as a Christian Scientist briefly, yet that would seem to be a key piece of comprehending him.

SUNSHINE SUPERMAN concludes with a spectacular jump that, in a way, fulfills Boenish’s last. Some of us, myself included, don’t have the courage to do what Boenish and other BASE jumpers do, but we can thrill at their remarkable feats.

Grade: B-

Eddie the Eagle

EDDIE THE EAGLE (Dexter Fletcher, 2016)

Since he was a boy with a brace on his leg, Eddie Edwards (Taron Egerton) has dreamed of being an Olympic athlete, but his abilities don’t appear to match his aspirations. In EDDIE THE EAGLE the determined young man hopes to earn a spot on Great Britain’s 1988 Olympic downhill skiing team but fails. The setback doesn’t stop him from pursuing his goal, though. Eddie decides to become a ski jumper because his country hasn’t produced one in more than fifty years. More importantly, he doesn’t have to be great to qualify either. Sticking the landing on a jump from the 70m platform should be sufficient.

Eddie leaves his working class English neighborhood to train in Germany. What he lacks in ski jumping experience and knowledge, he attempts to make up for in enthusiasm. The best ski jumpers often start in early childhood, so observers scoff at the 22-year-old’s efforts with the expectation he’ll break some bones, if not kill himself. Onetime elite United States ski jumper Bronson Peary (Hugh Jackman) maintains the slopes and unsuccessfully tries to discourage Eddie. Bronson is now an alcoholic and a crank, but he agrees to become Eddie’s coach because of his protege’s perseverance and the British Olympic Association’s gambit to keep Eddie off the team. After Eddie meets the low bar for qualification, British officials change the rules to a competitive standard they don’t expect him to reach.

Based on a true story, EDDIE THE EAGLE takes a slightly different tack on the underdog sports movie. Typically the underestimated athlete or team in such films rallies to be in a position to win a championship, even if they fall short. Eddie isn’t competing for a gold medal, or even a bronze, but against himself and the presumptions of those who look upon his ambition with disdain. Finishing in last place is acceptable to him as long as he gets the opportunity to participate in the Olympics.

EDDIE THE EAGLE would be less inspirational without the pushback the ski jumper faced. How uplifting would the story be if getting to the Winter Olympics merely required exploiting a loophole? In a weird way the film undersells his achievement, depicting him as a pie in the sky wisher when he still had to do the hard and dangerous training. It’s not like any weekend warrior could try out a few jumps and be Eddie’s equal. The Eddie-eye view of him careening down the slope does a good job of conveying the speed, height, distance, and peril involved in the sport.

In a one hundred eighty degree turn from the cocky, underachieving lad turned spy he played in KINGSMAN: THE SECRET SERVICE, Egerton makes a sympathetic hero out of this optimistic, teetotaling nerd. With his glasses perpetually sliding down his nose, Egerton overplays Eddie’s naïveté somewhat. One could be excused for thinking Eddie is five to ten years younger than the character actually is. That simplicity is in keeping with the upbeat tone, primary colors, and ebullient synth score director Dexter Fletcher employs. There’s nothing particularly complex about EDDIE THE EAGLE, and the screenplay’s fictions, like the invention of the drunkard coach redeemed by his pupil, lean on clichés. Nevertheless, EDDIE THE EAGLE brims with the joy in pursuing a hard-won dream even if it looks like failure to bystanders.

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-

How to Be Single

HOW TO BE SINGLE (Christian Ditter, 2016)

Alice (Dakota Johnson) is in a happy relationship with longtime college boyfriend Josh (Nicholas Braun), but she wants to take a break because she doesn’t feel she knows who she is outside of a couple. In HOW TO BE SINGLE she begins this presumably temporary split from Josh while working as a paralegal in New York City. At the office she meets and befriends Robin (Rebel Wilson), a hard-partying, commitment-resistant dynamo who is eager to teach her new friends in the ways of the modern single woman. Robin encourages Alice to get christened into the world of carefree hook-ups with Tom (Anders Holm), a bar owner with a pathological compulsion for ensuring that no woman will linger at his apartment the morning after. It doesn’t take long for Alice to determine that she and Josh were right for each other, but when she’s ready to end this experiment, she discovers he’s found another girlfriend during their time off.

Alice’s older sister Meg (Leslie Mann) is unattached and appears content with focusing on being an obstetrician than having a family of her own. Whether it’s her biological clock or daily interaction with infants, she eventually realizes she wants a baby of her own and turns to in vitro fertilization. Tom has a thing for Lucy (Alison Brie), who is friendly with him but appears to see him for what he is. Lucy wants someone serious about getting married and is using analytics on dating sites to locate the perfect man.

HOW TO BE SINGLE plays as a less bawdy version of SEX AND THE CITY when it was a television show, although the main characters aren’t nearly as tight socially as those on the HBO series. Alice and Robin are supposedly fast friends--and best ones too--yet Robin vanishes for long stretches, returning only when the film needs a jolt of energy. The episodic nature carves HOW TO BE SINGLE into segments that withhold it from establishing a comedic rhythm or narrative flow.

What Alice elects to do is the solo version of couples on THE AMAZING RACE that say they want to put themselves through a high stress situation to test their relationships’ strength. At one point someone on screen wisely acknowledges that maybe this isn’t the smartest thing to try. Screenwriters Abby Kohn, Marc Silverstein, and Dana Fox also have a curious idea of what Alice’s journey of self-discovery should be. She continues to be defined through the relationships she has, even if they’re fleeting, which directly contradicts what the character states that she wants to learn at the film’s start. There’s no personal growth for Alice other than some lip service toward the end. Otherwise the insistent message is that when she finds the right guy, she needs to lock him down as soon as possible. The film upholds the importance of female bonds yet often has the gals pushing each other into the arms of some guy lest they contemplate the horror of being alone for one second.

HOW TO BE SINGLE comes from the production company Flower Films, which Drew Barrymore co-founded. Alice is the type of character Barrymore would have been playing about fifteen years ago. Johnson is funny when showing how bad or out of practice Alice is at flirting, but she can seem too innocent, inexperienced, or passive. The film is divided among too many characters as it is, so it would have been better to invest Alice with the certainty that Brie’s Lucy displays. Wilson’s devil-may-care attitude boosts the laughs. Mann brings some pathos to Meg’s longing for a child and gets a physical comedy highlight when crawling out of a cab’s window while on the verge of giving birth.

HOW TO BE SINGLE gets tripped up by the fantasy it wishes to indulge about independence and the struggle for interdependence rather than codependence. It could stand to get a do-over, which is something the lead character would probably appreciate too.

Grade: C+

Race

RACE (Stephen Hopkins, 2016)

In RACE Jesse Owens (Stephan James) arrives at Ohio State University in 1933 as an already established track star, but the time necessary to train and compete may interfere with work so he can send money back home to Ruth Solomon (Shanice Banton), the mother of his daughter. Coach Larry Snyder (Jason Sudeikis) sees Owens as more than just a star at the collegiate level. He envisions an Olympic champion. Having lost his opportunity to win on the world stage, Snyder is driven to get the most out of Owens’ potential.

Owens and Snyder have their eyes set on the 1936 Summer Games in Berlin, but political matters may interfere with their plans. The rise of Adolph Hitler and the Nazi Party force the American Olympic Committee to consider boycotting the event rather than giving an implicit endorsement by participating. Construction company executive and AOC member Avery Brundage (Jeremy Irons) is appointed to visit Germany to observe what is happening there, meet with officials regarding discrimination concerns, and report back.

RACE depicts the best-known events and achievements of Owens’ life at the expense of seeing who did it. For a drama that is ostensibly about the four-time gold medalist, a substantial amount of attention is focused on behind-the-scenes matters in Germany. RACE contains incisive details regarding the politics of athletics, especially the Olympics, yet the number of these instances tend to crowd out the protagonist from his own film. Even when Owens is confronted with a political choice when the NAACP asks him not to go, RACE merely shows his choices at various steps thereafter rather than why he decides what he does.

The sports biography also strangely prioritizes other parts of the story while not seeking to understand Owens. He has a fling with a California beauty, but other than injecting a little conflict into his relationship with Ruth, it’s the sort of thing destined for deleted scenes. In roughly equating Owens with filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl (Carice van Houten), RACE is really reaching to compare their bravery in the face of hatred. Riefenstahl made propaganda films for the Nazis, including TRIUMPH OF THE WILL, and directed OLYMPIA, which captured the athleticism at the Berlin Olympics. How complicit Riefenstahl was with the Nazis is debatable, but RACE draws parallels between Owens performing before hateful crowds and Riefenstahl defiantly filming him that are problematic at best.

James brings quiet determination and awareness to Owens. His initial deference to Snyder, with eyes down, conveys how society expected him to interact with white people. James shows Owens carrying himself as a hero whose actions make a greater impact than any words. Sudeikis struggles to seem sincere as Snyder. It’s almost as if he’s playing the caricature of an old-timey coach in a comedy sketch.

RACE is made with apparent good intentions, but in attempting to take a wider view of Owens at the 1936 Olympics, it’s closer to a false start than a victory.

Grade: C+

Hail, Caesar!

HAIL, CAESAR! (Ethan Coen and Joel Coen, 2016)

As Head of Physical Production at Capitol Pictures Studio, Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin) is an overworked executive who wonders if his efforts are worth all of the trouble. In HAIL, CAESAR! he’s not just overseeing the filmmaking on the backlot but primarily attending to the professional and private matters of Capitol’s contracted performers and directors. He’s more likely to be breaking up a starlet’s illicit photo shoot in the wee hours and managing images as he is to be behind a desk poring over spreadsheets.

HAIL, CAESAR! tracks an eventful, although not altogether atypical, day-plus for Mannix. Baird Whitlock, (George Clooney), the star of a Biblical epic, goes missing and is being held for ransom. Bathing beauty DeeAnna Moran (Scarlett Johansson) is in need of a husband to legitimize the pregnancy that isn’t yet showing or known by the gossip columnists. Singing cowboy Hobie Doyle (Alden Ehrenreich) gets plugged into a period drama that isn’t particularly suited to his talent for acrobatic horsemanship, thus testing the patience of the film’s director Laurence Laurentz (Ralph Fiennes). Amid this turmoil Mannix also has to fend off twin tabloid reporters Thora and Thessaly Thacker (Tilda Swinton) and slip out for a meeting with a Lockheed recruiter who promises him an easy and lucrative job.

Joel and Ethan Coen’s arch and affectionate send-up of early 1950s Hollywood provides plenty of surface pleasures for lovers of film history. Their gorgeous recreation of an aquatic musical scene analogous to one featuring Esther Williams evokes Technicolor movie magic in part through geometric design. A Gene Kelly-like routine with Channing Tatum leading a group of pent-up sailors in a song and dance number in a bar stands out as the sort of funny and joyous human spectacle that cinema excels at capturing. The latest and greatest computer-generated effects can be thrilling, but so too can men hoofing atop tables as tablecloths are pulled out from under them.

Although the Coens demonstrate fondness for classic Hollywood, they remind regularly of the artifice it is founded on. Stories about stars are planted with the press to match how the company wishes its employees to be perceived by the public. The studio bosses arrange dates between its actors and actresses solely for publicity and cover up legal matters as boosters and protection of the bottom line. The tops of sets and crews can be visible, sometimes from a distance, during these tremendous scenes of filmed entertainment. Dailies and rough cuts reveal the manipulation that goes into building an illusion of the projected dream world. As one of the Thackers says, people want to believe in something, not the facts, and the movies sell a kind of perfection. The Coens strive to undercut it while acknowledging the strange beauty all this fakery can produce. In a dark night of the soul moment for Mannix, he visits the Jesus film’s set of Golgotha. There’s nothing realistic about the crucifixes against the muted backdrop, yet the setting emphasizes a real yearning for spiritual enlightenment.

With its opening shot of Christ on the cross and first scene of Mannix in a confessional, there’s no mistaking that HAIL, CAESAR! is about the search for existential purpose and how it gets mixed up with art, commerce, and religion. Mannix’s turmoil comes from thinking that what he’s made his life’s work is frivolous and difficult. He isn’t wrong, yet Mannix isn’t quite ready to trade it in for something that won’t demand much from him while yielding greater rewards. How Mannix spends his days may be inconsequential in the grand scheme, yet isn’t he fulfilling a higher calling if going about his job with enthusiasm in spite of the struggles? Plus, there is a time and place for the minor. A lasso fashioned out of a string of spaghetti is effectively useless, yet there’s something to be said for the fleeting delight in seeing one in action.

Grade: B+

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+

Jane Got a Gun

JANE GOT A GUN (Gavin O’Connor, 2016)

Jane Hammond (Natalie Portman) tends to her bullet-riddled, fur-trapping husband Bill (Noah Emmerich), but it’s only a matter of time until the Bishop Boys find and kill them at their home secreted on the New Mexico Territory’s frontier. In JANE GOT A GUN she hides their daughter with a friend and goes to gunslinger Dan Frost (Joel Edgerton) to hire him for protection. Jane and Dan are former lovers who were engaged to be wed when he returned from the Civil War. He still nurtures a resentment after coming back to discover she fled from their Missouri hometown and has taken up with another man. That she replaced him with Bill, whose head carries a bounty from the law and the local gang, wounds him even more grievously. Despite his objections, Dan agrees to assist Jane with fending off John Bishop (Ewan McGregor) and his scurrilous band of men.

To say that JANE GOT A GUN had a rocky road to get into theaters is like comparing traveling by wagon train with flying on the Concorde. Within days of the production’s start it lost two leading actors and the original director. One of the replacement actors eventually withdrew too. Edgerton switched from playing the villain to the hero. The actual release date ended up being almost a year and half after one was announced when the dust settled over cast and crew defections. Plus, a distribution partner went bankrupt.

None of that matters in terms of determining if the finished film is good or not, but it helps to explain why JANE GOT A GUN feels so ragged. The film is often at odds with itself. Director Gavin O’Connor attempts to incorporate the feminist point of view and lyrical style with the traditional western plot but comes up lacking a distinct perspective, poeticism, and narrative fluidity. The nonlinear structure does the story no favors as it ping-pongs between 1871 and the recent past for the characters. With minimal scenes McGregor’s Bishop gets lost in the shuffle, standing in as a monstrous villain known for the fearsome way he’s spoken of more than any impression he leaves. The tension between Jane and Dan suffers as well. Rather than flashbacks adding to the sense of tragedy in their relationship and the triangle, the scenes from a few years before merely fill in the blanks that the film has left unanswered until those points. The ending definitely does not seem earned.

Although afflicted with dullness, the film revives momentarily with Dan’s ingenuity in trying to level the fight between the vicious attackers and the badly outgunned and the initial outburst on the Hammond homestead. Still, as so-called cursed films go, JANE GOT A GUN is notable for being so ordinary in its flawed realization.

Grade: D+

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-