Belle de jour

BELLE DE JOUR (Luis Buñuel, 1967)

Séverine (Catherine Deneuve) and Pierre (Jean Sorel) have been married for a year and are very much in love, yet she remains frigid toward her doctor husband. In BELLE DE JOUR Séverine holds sex and love as separate things but desperately wants to be intimate with Pierre. She fantasizes about being roughed up and degraded, secrets which she doesn’t dare share with him.

One day a friend tells Séverine about an acquaintance who is turning tricks. The notion repels her as a wealthy and refined woman, yet she is also fascinated by the idea and questions her husband about his familiarity with brothels. Her friend’s lover Henri (Michel Piccoli) mentions where high class women can work as prostitutes, so, unable to shake her curiosity, Séverine pays a visit to Madame Anaïs (Geneviève Page). Because Séverine insists on just working afternoons, Madame Anaïs gives her the name Belle de jour.

Although not explicit in depiction, BELLE DE JOUR’s subject matter was surely hot stuff upon its debut fifty years ago. The film retains its erotic properties because director Luis Buñuel and his frequent co-writing partner Jean-Claude Carrière rely on suggestion and mystery to convey Séverine’s fantasies and journey. It’s an acknowledgement that, like the clients with varied preferences and fetishes, what one may find arousing, another may not. So BELLE DE JOUR does not get hung up on what specifically fuels Séverine’s primal urges but rather concerns itself with how those fixations make her feel and act. The sound of carriage bells recurs in her sexual daydreams, but the meaning is entirely inscrutable to anyone but her. As Buñuel was a noted surrealist, the lack of definitive interpretation is part and parcel of his style, but it also suggests that her predilections were set in ways that even Séverine may not understand.

Fantasy and reality are inseparably blurred in BELLE DE JOUR. While some scenes are clearly dreams, it is difficult to say for certain how much occurs in Séverine’s inner life. Perhaps most or all except for the final scene are imagined. Then again, that last scene could be a vision of how she might feel once all of her guilt is laid bare and open communication with her husband is something she can finally engage in. Accordingly, Deneuve withholds telegraphing Séverine’s emotions for others, including the viewers. The pleasure and disgust the character experiences belongs to her. Whether intentional or not, Deneuve’s casting makes for an intriguing comparison with REPULSION, in which her character’s frigidity manifests in a more horrific manner.

Not to wield BELLE DE JOUR as a club, especially because it is considered a masterpiece of world cinema--and thus not a fair fight--but it is informative to view it in relation to something like FIFTY SHADES OF GREY and its sequel. The contemporary films employ representation as provocation, yet the lack of ambiguity is precisely why the most salacious moments seem dispassionate and mechanical. BELLE DE JOUR and the FIFTY SHADES movies are self-serious, but Buñuel’s work is more artful, personal, and intellectualized in a European manner while the FIFTY SHADES films have been reduced to their basest elements and homogenized for mass consumption.

Grade: A

John Wick: Chapter 2

JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 2 (Chad Stahelski, 2017)

After taking care of some loose ends from the first film, John Wick (Keanu Reeves) learns that returning to retirement from being a professional assassin is no easy feat. In JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 2, he must make good on the favor he was granted to get him out of the killing business in the first place. Italian crime boss Santino D’Antonio (Riccardo Scamarcio) wants to ascend in the underworld and thus calls in John Wick on the blood oath he made. He’s to kill Santino’s sister Gianna (Claudia Gerini). If he refuses, Santino will see to it that John Wick loses his life. If he succeeds, he will most certainly be hunted by any number of his merciless colleagues until they have delivered his death.

Composed with an eye for fight scenes and incessant gunplay that are coherent, JOHN WICK and its sequel aim to resolve the complaints that today’s action films are mostly a flurry of cuts among jostled cameras. Stuntman and stunt coordinator turned director Chad Stahelski showcases what he specialized in with frames that capture the combat from head to toe and sequences that connect the action rather than making them sensation at the expense of legibility. Stahelski highlights a love for stuntmen in an impressively long and funny tumble down multiple sets of steps. He finds humor when hitmen are firing at one another in a public space but using silencers and trying to shield their weapons to keep from drawing attention and setting off mass panic.

Like its predecessor, JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 2, brings a graphic novel aesthetic to Hong Kong-styled action of the 1990s. Draped in inky black and steel grey, plus the sepia tone for scenes in the assassins’ hotel The Continental, this is a dark, lush world befitting those populating it. Reeves is magnetic as an anti-hero whose ability to kill is beyond ordinary human ability but is as flesh and blood as those he takes out.

While there’s a lot to like about JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 2, there’s also a tedious quality to it that didn’t let the sequel lift off like the original did for me. The world-building in the first film is relatively minimal, just enough for a taste of how things function where killers find neutral ground at a hotel that accepts payment in large gold coins. Derek Kolstad’s screenplay doubles down on that mythology in the sequel, but it clutters what might have otherwise been a lean, mean hail of bullets and fists.

Grade: C

A Cure for Wellness

A CURE FOR WELLNESS (Gore Verbinski, 2016)

When a Wall Street financial services firm’s CEO writes that he will not be returning from the Swiss spa where he is vacationing, rising company star Lockhart (Dane DeHaan) is called upon to bring him back. In A CURE FOR WELLNESS Lockhart expects to pop into the sanitarium at the top of the hill, get his boss Pembroke (Harry Groener), and go back to New York City, but the staff are not inclined to make things so easy. The spa’s director Volmer (Jason Isaacs) relents somewhat to demands to talk to Pembroke but requires Lockhart to return later in the day to see him. As Lockhart’s driver is taking him down the hill, they are in an accident. Lockhart wakes up with a broken leg and discovers that he’s been admitted as a patient at the spa.

The facility specializes in hydrotherapy but does not seem like an ordinary wellness center, even if accepting that it operates like one might have a century or more ago. For example, it seems that no one who checks in appears to check out ever. Old movers and shakers in international business without family members make up the clientele except for a girl named Hannah (Mia Goth). This place in the Alps is built on the ruins of a castle supposedly burned down by villagers who were outraged by a purity-obsessed baron who wished to marry his sister.

With a mysterious retreat looming over a village populated by resentful residents, A CURE FOR WELLNESS is rooted in a mix of early literary horror and fairy tales. Director Gore Verbinski and cinematographer Bojan Bazelli find extravagant beauty amid the psychological terror at a resort that would have been the height of luxury in the middle of the nineteenth century. The pale blue and white interiors could function as soothing surroundings for those on the mend, but they also connote something sinister because of the rigid and blank uniformity. The tanks that patients use for rehabilitation look more like torture devices, although the film’s production design turn them into peculiar but aesthetically pleasing marvels of old technology.

The foundation and look of A CURE FOR WELLNESS are inviting in all their polished insidiousness, but the significant characters fail to make an impression. Although Lockhart suffers from a childhood tragedy and an advanced case of a corrupted corporate soul, he is not as complex as the screenplay’s structure tries to make him out to be. He’s also not particularly quick on the uptake regarding all of the strange goings-on at the sanitarium. Secrets surround Hannah, but she doesn’t know them. What gets revealed about her won’t come as a surprise. Isaacs’ Volmer stands out a little more in putting a calm face on a suspicious character, but his character is mostly surface, even if he isn’t to be trusted.

For a widely released major studio film, A CURE FOR WELLNESS has to be one of the weirder offerings to come down the pike in awhile. The sheer oddity helps to propel it through a nearly two and a half hours that aren’t needed. While Verbinski has a few memorably chilling images up his sleeve, especially one for those sensitive to seeing dentistry practiced, the emotional beats fail to connect. He’s striving to evoke the reactions of Grand Guignol but yields a more tepid response.

Grade: C+

I Am Not Your Negro

I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO (Raoul Peck, 2016)

Using the words of the writer James Baldwin, Raoul Peck’s Oscar-nominated documentary I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO looks back on race relations before and during the civil rights era in the United States and draws connections to the way things are today. The film is structured around Baldwin’s abandoned book about the lives and deaths of Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King, Jr., all of whom the author knew.

Baldwin’s eloquent and pointed commentary comes directly from him via archival footage of talk shows and speeches. Baldwin was a teenage preacher, and his performative talents are evident as his presence leaps off the screen when sharing his considered opinions. Here is someone who had been living abroad for a number of years but chose to return and become engaged with the struggle back home. There’s a snap to his point of view because of the passion and intelligence supporting what he has to say.

Baldwin’s words are also delivered through Samuel L. Jackson’s weary voiceover, a stark counterpoint to the “on” personality that comes across in Baldwin’s public appearances. That vocal quality suggests what Baldwin, who died in 1987, might sound like all of these years later when many of the fights he waged are still ongoing, even if the shape of the conflicts have changed. Fifty or sixty years have passed since these divisive issues came to a boil in American civilization. Old images of the outright hostility can be shocking for those of us who have only ever encountered it as history. While progress has been made, Peck’s film underlines the fact that the dream of the 1960s continues to remain elusive in some ways. Jackson’s narration conveys the aggravation and tiredness of the long wait for societal ills to be cured.

I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO is not a film that seeks to reassure, nor should it be. It’s a challenge to those in the majority who consider themselves to be good people yet whose actions, whether actively or passively, don’t back up such a self-conception. The defiance in the title slaps back at the nation’s original sin. It’s up to the recipient to determine if that smack should be taken as an affront or a wake-up call.

Grade: B

Lion

LION (Garth Davis, 2016)

Based on a true story, LION tracks a boy from rural India who gets incomprehensibly lost in 1986, is adopted by an Australian couple, and uses technology twenty-five years later to search for his family. Saroo, played by Sunny Pawar as a boy and Dev Patel as a young adult, falls asleep on a train platform while waiting for his older brother Guddu (Abhishek Bharate), who has taken off to work during the evening. When Saroo awakens, Guddu is nowhere to be found. He looks for him on a train but gets stuck on one that is not carrying passengers and takes him more than a thousand kilometers away from home.

The five-year-old boy arrives in Kolkata unable to speak the different dominant language in this part of the country. He doesn’t know his mother’s name, and no one can find the town he calls home on a map. For awhile Saroo must survive on his own on the streets, including eluding those looking to take advantage of him. Eventually a stranger takes him to a police station, but with no responses to the notices placed in newspapers, he is put in an orphanage. John and Sue Brierley (David Wenham and Nicole Kidman) adopt Saroo, so he is flown to Tasmania to begin a life with a new family. As a young man he feels the urge to find his biological family. With the emotional support of his girlfriend Lucy (Rooney Mara) and a landmark image from his memory, Saroo obsessively scans Google Earth to locate where his home is.

The events in LION are primed for the most persistent heartstring-tugging, yet director Garth Davis holds the story at a cool remove. It’s the difference between recognizing a dire situation and feeling it. The Dickensian first half features its share of harrowing moments. Saroo quickly learns that trusting anyone is dangerous, which only serves to keep him on the streets longer. Even when help of a sort is provided, the boy is trading one bad situation for another. His adoptive parents are extraordinarily kind, but moving from one continent to another is also laced with trauma. Davis expects these developments to be moving at face value. Instead LION flirts with a wallow in miserabilism.

In the second half Saroo is a young adult who identifies more with his Australian upbringing than his Indian heritage. His newfound longing seems more like dramatic convenience than something that has been eating at him every day for most of his life. The search itself, while an incredible feat, is not dynamically portrayed. LION gets caught up in the process of Saroo’s story. Here’s how he got lost, here’s how he was saved from bad circumstances, here’s how he tries to answer what has been a mystery for many years. The particulars aren’t uninteresting, but they come at the expense of empathizing with Saroo’s experience.

Saroo struggles at the two stages depicted, yet LION mostly shows him rolling with whatever he faces. Perhaps the person whose life inspired the film was so easily adaptive, but smoothing over his emotional journey robs the material of the power inherent in it. What Saroo endures as a kid is inconceivable, but it’s handled from the point of view of an uninvolved observer than the subject. Although Patel does the most with what he’s given to express the character’s anguish, he’s challenged to find multiple ways to keep striking the same note. What could have been a potent tearjerker in LION ends up resembling a skillful but unmoving recreation of a remarkable tale.

Grade: C

Split

SPLIT (M. Night Shyamalan, 2016)

Being abducted and locked in a cell-like room is terrifying enough for three teenage girls in SPLIT. Even more disturbing is discovering that Kevin (James McAvoy), the man holding them against their will, has multiple personalities. Like anyone would be in the situation, Claire (Haley Lu Richardson) and Marcia (Jessica Sula) are at wit’s end. Casey (Anya Taylor-Joy), who’s more of an acquaintance of than a friend with the other two, appears to have gone into survival mode as she assesses how they might escape.

Their best bet is through Hedwig, Kevin’s child personality. He taunts them with the information that they are there as sacrifices for The Beast, but he’s also naïve enough that he might be fooled into bringing Casey to his room, which he says has a window. On the outside the girls’ best hope is Kevin’s psychologist Dr. Karen Fletcher (Betty Buckley). She doesn’t know what he’s done, but she has a good relationship with him and senses that there may be a power struggle among Kevin’s personalities that could have caused him to do something terrible.

Although it’s probably unfair, writer-director M. Night Shyamalan has a reputation as a filmmaker whose works succeed or fail based on their plot twists. Not that there aren’t surprises in SPLIT, especially the exclamation point of a scene in the end credits, but in this film what you see is what you get. Shyamalan settles into the scenario to reap it for all of the possible terror. His use of close-ups and preference for longer takes than is typical for current Hollywood genre pictures creates a sense of claustrophobia. Cinematographer Michael Giouliakis captures horrific beauty in the musty setting where much of SPLIT takes place. Whether hinted at or depicted, the film’s brutality comes in bursts that conjure the feeling of helplessness.

People dealing with trauma, often poorly, recur in Shyamalan’s films. His characters tend to resist accepting the way things are through a kind of willful blindness. Whether questioning God or a stand-in authority figure, Shyamalan’s protagonists reject reality for a more comfortable but self-harming illusion. What differentiates SPLIT from his other films is that he weaponizes existential anger and confusion. Underneath the thriller elements are a story about coping with abuse and choosing whether mental and physical scars provide a means of protecting oneself or destroying others.

SPLIT’s portrayal of multiple personality disorder is not going to be supported by the DSM-5 or getting a ringing endorsement from the American Psychiatric Association. (It would be fascinating to do a detailed comparison of how the director portrays therapists throughout his filmography.) Still, McAvoy does an excellent job of being convincing and quietly menacing in Kevin’s various personalities. There’s nothing actorly about the performance, yet he crafts distinct individuals in his different guises. Shyamalan and McAvoy collaborate to hit the proper tone with a tricky character who could be laughable. When he’s dressed and acting as Patricia, it’s unsettling to see this guy with a shaved head who believes he is an officious woman. That earnest belief in the moment, regardless of the truth, is why SPLIT disturbs.

Grade: A-

Silence

SILENCE (Martin Scorsese, 2016)

In SILENCE Japanese authorities are persecuting priests and their Christian converts. Particularly distressing to those outside the country is the disappearance of Father Ferreira (Liam Neeson), who has not been heard from in years and is rumored to have apostatized. Jesuit priests Rodrigues (Andrew Garfield) and Garupe (Adam Driver) are convinced that their mentor would have never denied his faith in public and set out on a mission in 1639 to find their missing colleague.

Their guide into the hostile land is Kichijiro (Yôsuke Kubozuka). Although his manner causes them to question his honesty, he is their only option for sneaking into Japan, which has banned Christianity. Kichijiro brings them to a community of secret Christians that they minister to as possible until the villagers fall under suspicion of the inquisitor Inoue (Issei Ogata). Rodrigues and Garupe go their separate ways to protect the people and to continue their search for Ferreira.

SILENCE has been a longtime passion project for director Martin Scorsese, who co-wrote the adaptation of the Shûsaku Endô novel with Jay Cocks. It is sort of the inverse of the filmmaker’s THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST, which sought to understand Jesus as a human. In SILENCE Scorsese tackles the impossible struggle of a person to live according to the model of the divine. The trials and tribulations Rodrigues experiences are at first an affirmation of what he believes and bring him closer to God. He is following the example set for him and takes glory in being able to live and prove his beliefs in such an immediate way. The more he strives to be an imitation of Christ, especially as the challenges increase, the more he realizes that he is incapable of enduring such burdens.

Scorsese doesn’t shy away from depicting the horrible executions and torture of avowed believers, but for Rodrigues and the other priests the Japanese are abusing, the mental and spiritual suffering is as bad, if not worse. If God’s love is real, why would he allow such awful things to be heaped on those who worship him? Rodrigues is also faced with the question of whether it would be so unforgivable to make a public demonstration of rejecting Christianity by trampling a fumie if it means avoiding death or severe punishment. Is placing one’s foot upon a carving of Jesus or the Virgin Mary while under extreme duress something God cannot pardon, especially if humans were created as fallible? Rodrigues decides that it is OK for the Japanese Christians to deny their faith if it means saving themselves, yet his refusal to do the same means that miseries will be visited upon all of the people he sees himself as serving. Is he not exhibiting the sin of pride by not apostatizing and thus perpetuating the persecution?

Scorsese uses the sound of crickets and its absence to suggest something all around us whether it can be seen or not. The silence does not necessarily indicate something is not present, but it also doesn’t mean that it is there. For those who apostatize, they have acted in a way that says one thing, yet it is not possible to know what exists in their hearts. SILENCE studies religious commitment as a personal matter, one between a believer and the deity, regardless of the declarations in the square or the temple. Certainly such demonstrations cannot be discounted, but are they the only things that matter? Scorsese has made a monumental work of faith that defies easy answers to theological questions yet cuts to the quick of what it means to believe.

Grade: A

20th Century Women

20TH CENTURY WOMEN (Mike Mills, 2016)

Fifty-five-year-old Dorothea (Annette Bening) is raising her fifteen-year-old son Jamie (Lucas Jade Zumann) on her own in 1979 Santa Barbara, but as he is coming of age in 20TH CENTURY WOMEN, she worries that she isn’t doing enough to help him become the man she would like him to become. The only man with any consistency in her life is William (Billy Crudup), a handyman renting a room in Dorothea’s large home. While he is the kind of masculine and thoughtful type she’d like Jamie to model, her son doesn’t really have anything to do with him.

Instead Dorothea turns to the two other female presences around Jamie on a daily basis. Abbie (Greta Gerwig), a photographer in her mid-twenties, is also a boarder and fulfills something of a cool older sister role. Seventeen-year-old Julie (Elle Fanning) is Jamie’s closest friend. She often sneaks into his room late at night to talk and sleep by his side. Although Jamie wishes they were romantically and physically involved, Julie insists that their closeness is strictly friendship. Jamie listens closely to the guidance of these women, hoping in part that taking their advice will help him develop a closer relationship with his mother.

The communal atmosphere in Dorothea’s house extends to the perspectives the film collects. 20TH CENTURY WOMEN unspools like a memoir with multiple authors, as the most central characters contribute voiceovers about the situation at this specific point in time and what the future holds for them. Dorothea and Jamie are the nucleus, but those orbiting them for this fleeting moment adopt a primary role from time to time. Writer-director Mike Mills builds the fluctuating dynamic by being deliberate in revealing the protagonists’ connections, which often aren’t what they might appear to be on first glance.

Mills jettisons some of the affectations that marked his previous film, BEGINNERS, resulting in a looser tone that rides the wave these characters have caught. Although he shares how things will turn out for those in the household, there’s no sense of grand design in getting them there. 20TH CENTURY WOMEN takes a snapshot of a pivotal time but not one with an accompanying a map to follow. All of the characters share a rudderless quality as they live through a transition they might sense but are impotent to steer through.

Despite the stylistic flourishes that might stake a directorial voice, 20TH CENTURY WOMEN is rooted in the performances. As a first-time mother at 40 and a child of the Depression who feels attracted and resistant to a more freewheeling life, Dorothea straddles the generational line. She wants to understand the appeal of Black Flag but is more partial to the more tuneful songs of Talking Heads. Bening displays Dorothea’s struggle to integrate open-minded and more rigid parenting as loving and present yet emotionally cool and inexplicably distant. It’s a hard balance to strike but one that shows why Jamie searches for a tighter bond with his mother. Zumann plays Jamie with a sponge-like quality that is endearing rather than needy. Fanning finds the perilousness of the idealized, self-possessed girl who is racked with her own neuroses. Gerwig inhabits the restlessness of not yet living how you envisioned adulthood. Crudup exudes the nature of a blue collar sage, yet like everyone else, William is merely drifting. For as much uncertainty and tension they face, Mills uses the voiceovers, with their future knowledge, to reassure that it’s OK if we can’t plot every step through the world.

Grade: B

Sing

SING (Christophe Lourdelet and Garth Jennings, 2016)

Theater-owning koala Buster Moon (Matthew McConaughey) is on the verge of losing his prized performance space. Buster puts on a singing competition as a last-ditch effort to save the theater in SING, but a mistake on the flyers promises $100,000 for the winner than the intended thousand bucks.

The purse attracts all sorts of wannabe stars to the auditions. Among those making the final cut are Rosita (Reese Witherspoon), a pig who is unfulfilled as a mother and housewife; Johnny (Taron Egerton), a gorilla who’d rather be singing than helping with his mobster clan; heartbroken rocker porcupine Ash (Scarlett Johansson); and Mike (Seth MacFarlane), a crooning mouse with gambling debts. Shy elephant Meena (Tori Kelly) really wants to participate, but her stage fright holds her back.

SING is an animated comedy for two groups: those who love hearing five- or ten-second snippets of popular songs in celebrity karaoke and those who are really invested in AMERICAN IDOL’s audition episodes and storylines. It’s not bad per se so much as it is perfunctory. SING has a good tempo and enough familiar songs--or their hooks--to seem pleasantly mediocre. As it can be cut up almost infinitely into bite-size portions to promote it, a cynical view might lead one to see its value as a product to help pad a studio’s bottom line, not as anything with aspirations of being more than content. All it needs to do is look sufficiently cute amid the clutter of advertising to take the kids to it.

Some of the voice casting choices are curious, especially McConaughey as a koala. Wouldn’t Chris Hemsworth have provided the star power and a more geographically sensible pick? But then this feels like something created and assembled by a computer algorithm than by artistically motivated people. SING is the simulation of what blockbuster children’s entertainment is supposed to look and sound like.

SING's best joke by far is that brief moment when a sheep bleats the first word of the chorus from Seal’s "Kiss from a Rose", although the animal chosen to perform seems like a missed opportunity for the type of inside joke for adults that these movies love to wink with. The hammy, German-accented pig Gunter (Nick Kroll) is sporadically amusing. Parents who want to get out of the house or distract the kids would be better served going to MOANA again than patronizing SING.

Grade: C

Hidden Figures

HIDDEN FIGURES (Theodore Melfi, 2016)

The space race with the Soviet Union is at fever pitch in HIDDEN FIGURES, a historical drama that helps give due to some African-American women key to the United States effort in John Glenn’s launch into orbit. The three featured in the film work at NASA in a segregated pool where they are known as computers, meaning they confirm the math in the calculations. When the need arises for someone skilled in analytic geometry, Katherine Gobel (Taraji P. Henson) gets called up to a branch where she’s doing critical checks for manned rocket launches. Although she knows her stuff, Katherine still runs up against racism and underestimations of her abilities.

Back at the computer pool, Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer) is struggling to get recognition for being the supervisor in everything but title and compensation. She also foresees the installation of new IBM hardware as the imminent obsolescence of everyone in her unit, so Dorothy sets to learning how to program the computers that will likely replace her. Mary Jackson (Janelle Monáe) is encouraged to become an engineer but cannot take the necessary classes because they are taught at a whites-only school. She pursues legal means to allow for her professional advancement.

HIDDEN FIGURES gives the conventional treatment to the stories of three exceptional women whose contributions to the space program aren’t widely known. Like following the steps to solve an equation, director and co-writer Theodore Melfi executes a methodical approach. The technique in achieving the result can’t be blamed for getting the job done effectively. HIDDEN FIGURES is a heartwarming crowd-pleaser operating within the standards of prestige cinema, but a little more creative risk-taking would have been appreciated among the familiar rhythms and character arcs.

Henson, Spencer, and Monáe anchor the film with intelligence and appeal. Henson projects strength and resourcefulness as Katherine strives to do her best for the team. Even when she goes against the grain, it’s rooted in the mission, not her own acclaim. Spencer conveys a sharp, ingenious mind attuned to the surroundings. She’s not a fighter per se, but she perceives how to win the battles in a less combative manner. In small roles in HIDDEN FIGURES and MOONLIGHT, Monáe hints at a cinematic personality that can leap off the screen if given bigger parts. She doesn’t ooze attitude for its own sake but as a weapon and armor.

While there is a broad quality to how HIDDEN FIGURES depicts the open racism of the time, Melfi does well in allowing audiences to recognize what was considered acceptable without engaging in excessive scolding from today’s perspective. It’s more powerful to watch Katherine break down to her supervisor about the overt indignities and microaggressions she faces on a daily basis that the white men and women she works with don’t notice. Dorothy’s white counterpart played by Kirsten Dunst addresses her by first name while Dorothy responds with her co-worker’s title and surname. Melfi doesn’t draw attention to this distinction, yet it’s clear what the difference in how they refer to one another means in regard to power and respect.

Grade: B

La La Land

LA LA LAND (Damien Chazelle, 2016)

Through the unchanging seasons of Los Angeles the musical LA LA LAND follows the romantic ups and downs between aspiring actress Mia (Emma Stone) and jazz aficionado Sebastian (Ryan Gosling). Although their paths cross knowingly and unknowingly, their friendship doesn’t blossom into a love story until music and the movies brings them together in a way that seems predestined. Neither is living their dreams. Mia is auditioning for likely lousy television shows. Sebastian broods over his desired location for the jazz club of his dreams being occupied by a trendy business.

Together, though, they push each other to make strides toward what they want. Sebastian encourages Mia to write the one-woman show that can showcase her abilities. She persuades him to take a job in a band whose music doesn’t meet his purist standards but pays well enough so he can save toward opening the club he envisions.

An original musical for the screen and an unabashed throwback to those from Hollywood’s Golden Age and the French New Wave, LA LA LAND bursts with color and energy. The ebullient opening number, a single unbroken take on a gridlocked highway, serves as a dazzling introduction, and the staggering finale, which reimagines the film’s key moments, sends one reeling out of the theater from writer-director Damien Chazelle’s deft touch and Justin Hurwitz’s music. Everything in between proves swoon-worthy too, with the standout being Mia’s sung audition that puts the final act in motion.

Talk of the magic of the movies can be deserving of eyerolls, especially at awards time, but LA LA LAND merits such effusive praise. Through theatrical lighting, judicious editing, and heightened or fantastical sequences, it envisions a world of promise and joy even among the disappointments and hardships. The lighter than air spirit and exquisite beauty caress the mind and the heart, transforming LA LA LAND into an instant mood-lifter.

Part of the tension in LA LA LAND comes from Sebastian’s insistence on jazz continuing to exist per the terms of an old ideal. While the film may appear to side with his snootiness as he holds his nose playing more contemporary and accessible music, Chazelle challenges the notion that something was better or purer way back when. After all, jazz as Sebastian prefers it is more of hobbyist’s curio that is destined to near-extinction if it doesn’t adapt to the times. LA LA LAND views the film musical in similar terms, that without accounting for the tastes and realities of today, it too is as good as dead. Gosling and Stone are not Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers or Gene Kelly and Debbie Reynolds, but they are serviceable dancers and singers, with Stone the more at ease of the two. The system that existed for screen hoofers and belters has not been in place for a long time. Casting stars rather than more gifted but unknown performers is a compromise, but it’s one that allows something as wonderful as this to be made.

Grade: A+

Passengers

PASSENGERS (Morten Tyldum, 2016)

Everyone aboard the spaceship Avalon in PASSENGERS is to be in a state of hypersleep for most of the 120-year journey to Homestead II. Unfortunately for Jim Preston (Chris Pratt), he is accidentally awakened about thirty years into the voyage, meaning that if he can’t get back in that suspended state, he will live the rest of his life and die before anyone else comes out of their hibernation chambers. Jim has his run of the spacecraft, for the most part, but the company of just humanoid bartender Arthur (Michael Sheen) and the servant robots.

For a year Jim studies and works to no avail to figure out how he might save himself. Inconsolably lonely, he becomes enchanted with Aurora Lane (Jennifer Lawrence), a writer and fellow passenger he learns everything about. Finally Jim decides to awaken her so that he will have someone to share this doomed time with. Aurora doesn’t know that he is responsible for what has happened to her. She and Jim don’t become close right away, but considering the circumstances, their bond naturally becomes tighter, with Jim’s secret just waiting to be exposed and ruin everything.

The early section of PASSENGERS with Jim on his own cuts to the humor and terror in his predicament. He is relieved to send a message to someone who might be able to help, but the punchline is that it will take decades for his distress call to reach anyone. Jim essentially has his run of the ship, but he’s still at the mercy of the automated access provided by the price level at which he booked his ticket. Everything is so close and yet so far away in this TWILIGHT ZONE-like scenario.

That Jim would choose to subject someone else to the same fate is understandable even if it is a morally indefensible choice. Desperation can make fools of us all, and his situation would be enough to push anyone to the edge. The problem for PASSENGERS is not the decision Jim makes but how it deals with the repercussions of his actions. Morten Tyldum’s direction and Jon Spaihts’ screenplay view Jim as a romantic hero. They allow Aurora to have her time to feel angry and betrayed, but ultimately the film treats Jim as Adam if he didn’t need God’s intervention to provide him with a companion. PASSENGERS implicitly states that Jim deserves Aurora, an aspect that gets magnified with Pratt’s puppy dog charms.

PASSENGERS also bungles the ending. Even being exceedingly generous in allowing how Aurora might come to reevaluate the state of things, what she decides rings false. On a dramatic level it also clanks because the opportunity for Jim to atone for his sins is dismissed in favor of rewarding him. PASSENGERS’ tone deafness mistakes feelings of male entitlement for romance. The saying goes that all’s fair in love and war, but that sentiment can justify horrors. If the film were capable of viewing the story through Aurora’s lens, PASSENGERS might have succeeded. Instead it doesn’t notice the warped perspective.

Grade: C

Nocturnal Animals

NOCTURNAL ANIMALS (Tom Ford, 2016)

Art gallery owner Susan Morrow (Amy Adams) and novelist Edward Sheffield (Jake Gyllenhaal) were married while graduate students in New York City, but since things ended badly nearly twenty years ago, they have not been in touch. The intervening time has apparently provided Susan much of what she believed Edward could not give her, although in NOCTURNAL ANIMALS she shows no indications of living a more satisfying life. Susan enjoys professional success but appears to draw no fulfillment from it. Her marriage to Hutton (Armie Hammer) is chilled. While they keep up appearances, they are also in financial distress.

Susan has long had a problem with insomnia, a condition which becomes more pronounced as she reads the manuscript Edward sends to her out of the blue. In his violent novel she envisions her ex as the protagonist, Tony, a sensitive husband and father who becomes obsessed with revenge after three scuzzy men abduct, rape, and kill his wife and daughter. In the story within the film, Tony gets assistance from Bobby Andes (Michael Shannon), a police detective who wants to see justice done whether it’s achieved within the law or not.

With the structure of NOCTURNAL ANIMALS writer-director Tom Ford intends for Susan to experience the lingering anger Edward has felt since the dissolution of their relationship. Art is one way to feel empathy for others, and the novel functions as Edward’s passive-aggressive vehicle for breaking through the hard exterior Susan has accreted. Susan slices her finger opening the package before even reading a page, metaphorically foreshadowing the sharp-edged nature of the novel therein. From the story within the film to the framing device and flashbacks Ford uses match cuts and others edits to connect Susan to the fictionalized and past versions of a man intent on making her understand the rage she stirred within him.

In Edward’s book, also called NOCTURNAL ANIMALS, the inciting event results from his desire to defuse a situation in which he is essentially helpless. The men who drive Tony off the road and harass his family are not bound by the rules of civility. Knowing full well they intend to cross over and cause harm, the aggressors taunt him like playground bullies holding their fingers half an inch from their victims and feigning innocence by saying that they’re not touching them. In an extended and incredibly tense sequence the leader, Ray (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), and his cohorts menace Tony, his wife, and daughter by sinisterly going through the motions of politeness before advancing to more hands-on terrorizing. Through his character Edward lays bare the vulnerability and lack of a choice he suffered from at Susan’s hands.

Shannon adds hard-bitten humor as Edward’s opposite, the manifestation of the kind of tough, practical man who can facilitate revenge without damaging his conscience. Abel Korzeniowski’s darkly romantic score steeps NOCTURNAL ANIMALS in film noir. While Susan didn’t set out to make Edward her sap, she ultimately treated him like a sensitive fool. His long postponed response produces an indirect confrontation that is no less emotionally savage for his means of delivering it. Ford executes quite the trick in having this overdue and brutal conversation take place like a thriller in which the principals share only a mental space.

Grade: B

Manchester by the Sea

MANCHESTER BY THE SEA (Kenneth Lonergan, 2016)

The death of his brother Joe (Kyle Chandler) prompts Lee Chandler (Casey Affleck) to return to his hometown, but he intends to go back to Boston as soon as he can even though all that’s there for him is a handyman job. In MANCHESTER BY THE SEA, named after the town where he can hardly bear to be, Lee has funeral arrangements to tend to and, more importantly for the time being, needs to look after his sixteen-year-old nephew Patrick (Lucas Hedges) as his mother Elise (Gretchen Mol) has not been in the picture for years.

To Lee’s surprise his brother made him Patrick’s trustee and guardian. Although he loves his nephew, it’s a responsibility that Lee does not want, at least if it means coming back to live in Manchester-by-the-Sea again. The place is burdened with memories of life before his divorce from Randi (Michelle Williams) and the looks and reactions from those who see him around. Patrick understandably resists the idea of being uprooted. Lee assumes the caretaker role in the meantime while trying to find a solution that will be satisfactory for both of them in the long run.

Heartbroken and despairing, Lee refuses to forgive himself for the tragedy in his life. It becomes clear that he had a valid reason for moving away, but in doing so he also separates himself from the family support system that he needs. His small and dim basement apartment suggests that he has done the closest thing to burying himself. If it wasn’t for Joe pushing him to purchase some furniture, his living arrangement would be as spartan as a cell, which is what Lee acts as if he deserves. Affleck does extraordinary work occupying a character who hates himself on a deep level yet is compelled to honor the obligations he feels he owes and those bestowed upon him. Lee’s pain is genuine, and he accepts it as his cross to bear rather than something for him to perform. By not seeking empathy in his portrayal, Affleck attracts it.

Grief runs through MANCHESTER BY THE SEA like a fault, something abrasive grinding away that is ever present yet unexpected when the energy from it explodes. Writer-director Kenneth Lonergan explores the strain of life after death on the living with great sensitivity for how the sense of loss can emerge and how people deal with it. Grief can strike from encountering something innocuous or without any prompting whatsoever. It takes the form of outbursts and self-inflicted damage. The individualized nature of grief also means that there’s no single answer for easing it. Lee and Patrick’s interactions in the wake of Joe’s death are far from perfect, but there’s beauty in how they fumble their way through a difficult situation together.

Although MANCHESTER BY THE SEA can be profoundly sad, it features a fair share of humor. Lonergan recognizes that grieving isn’t constant wailing but pushing through the days and returning to routines. Laughter is a part of that, and the film finds a lot funny in the little ways people may try to distract from what makes them uncomfortable and the sarcasm that creeps into conversations.

MANCHESTER BY THE SEA opens with Lee, Joe, and a young Patrick out fishing. Lee asks the kid who he’d pick to be with if he could only have his uncle or his dad with him on an island. It’s a warm scene with him teasing the boy when he naturally picks his father. As circumstances play out, neither Lee nor Patrick will really have a choice in the matter. The film closes with Lee and Patrick on that same boat. It’s not what either would want, but they’ll make the best of it that they can.

Grade: A

Moonlight

MOONLIGHT (Barry Jenkins, 2016)

MOONLIGHT tells the story of Chiron through three stages of his life, each distinguished by the name he goes by. It begins with him in grade school referred to as Little (Alex Hibbert), a name thrust upon him by the other kids because of his small stature. Little tends to get picked on and not fight back. As the film begins, he outruns the other boys to hide in a boarded up apartment often used by drug users in the Miami neighborhood. Cuban drug dealer Juan (Mahershala Ali) finds Little and decides to look out for him until the tight-lipped boy tells him where he lives so he can take him home. Little lives with his drug-addicted mother Paula (Naomie Harris), but Juan and his wife Teresa (Janelle Monáe) take an interest in the boy and become like secondary parents.

Little grows into the gawky Chiron (Ashton Sanders), a quiet teenager who still draws his share of abuse from classmates. It has long been apparent to others, especially his mother, that he is gay, even if Chiron is just gradually discovering his sexuality. Longtime friend Kevin (Jharrel Jerome) is more assured in who he is and sees someone similar, if less confident, in Chiron, but the high school environment obstructs them being together in a way they both need.

Chiron develops into the bulked up Black (Trevante Rhodes), who looks the part of the drug dealer in Atlanta that he has become but remains the sensitive soul he’s always been. Out of the blue Black gets a call from Kevin (André Holland), who is working at a diner back home. Feeling the pull to see him again, Black drives back to Miami to reconnect.

The main character in MOONLIGHT is asked who he is, and that search for identity connects the three parts. Chiron first goes by that belittling nickname and then the birth name given by his often cruel mother. He adopts the name Black as an adult, but he doesn’t really have ownership of that tag as it was what Kevin started calling him when they were nine. At each stage he is known according to how others see him. He hasn’t really had a chance to assert his true nature, so the inner Chiron gets suppressed to conform to expectations or avoid drawing attention. Juan tells Little about a neighborhood woman who said that black boys look blue in the moonlight. The blueness extends to Chiron’s emotional composition.

Writer-director Barry Jenkins infuses MOONLIGHT with a sense of longing that gives Chiron’s maturation a tragic arc while it dangles the possibility of happiness. Juan, Teresa, Kevin, and, eventually, even Paula possess the potential for helping Chiron become actualized in a way that he’s not been able to do on his own, yet fear and passivity hold him back. The film’s superior final third swells with the nostalgia and restrained passion of Wong Kar-wai’s IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE. Black’s reunion with Kevin could break him free of the loneliness and uncertainty that has defined him. The question remains if he can finally submit to showing his genuine self and living like that.

MOONLIGHT boasts an outstanding ensemble. Jenkins elicits consistent performances across the three actors playing the central character so nine-year-old Little is visible through teenage Chiron and twentysomething Black. Ali humanizes what could have been a clichéd character into a complex individual who can see the damage his livelihood causes. He atones for it as he can by demonstrating love for Little. Jenkins makes smart choices in showing Juan living what passes for an ordinary life rather than the extravagant lifestyle that might be associated with a Miami drug dealer. In her brief time on screen Monáe makes an impact as the soft but firm mother figure Chiron needs while Harris uncovers the ugly and pitiable nature of a mother racked with too many of her own issues to support her son properly. Holland’s relaxed essence makes a lovely contrast with Rhodes’ tentativeness as they size up who the characters have grown into being. With MOONLIGHT Jenkins finds majesty in the search for self.

Grade: B+

The Edge of Seventeen

THE EDGE OF SEVENTEEN (Kelly Fremon Craig, 2016)

Smart and strong-willed seventeen-year-old Nadine (Hailee Steinfeld) has always felt like an outsider at home and among her classmates. Her brother Darian (Blake Jenner) is popular and can seemingly do no wrong in the eyes of their parents. She never seems to see eye to eye with her mother Mona (Kyra Sedgwick). Her father was one of the rare people who understand Nadine, so when he dies unexpectedly, she feels she’s lost her foundation. Now a high school junior in the comedy-drama THE EDGE OF SEVENTEEN, her longtime best friend Krista (Haley Lu Richardson) is virtually the only person who helps Nadine feel less alone.

This key relationship dissolves when Nadine discovers Krista being intimate with Darian. She considers it a betrayal of the highest order and thinks that demanding that Krista have nothing to do with her brother will right the wrong. To her surprise, Krista refuses to stop being involved with him, leading Nadine to cut off communication with the person she’s closest to. Now feeling more isolated than ever, Nadine reaches out to Erwin (Hayden Szeto), who has awkwardly shown interest in her. She also turns to her history teacher Mr. Bruner (Woody Harrelson), whose lunches she interrupts with her anxious chatter and a dramatic announcement that she’s going to kill herself.

THE EDGE OF SEVENTEEN writer-director Kelly Fremon Craig recognizes that people in general, and teenagers in particular, can get so obsessed with the stuff swirling inside their own heads that they fail to understand what others are dealing with and invite more of the problems on which they fixate. Nadine would likely deny that she’s a narcissist because she isn’t vain, but her self-absorption runs deep. She nurtures her aggrieved feelings and think they make her special, possibly even superior. Nadine clings to a limited and melodramatic worldview that is inward-looking to the point that she blinds herself to the misery she’s generating in her life and those around her. It’s apparent that she’s always been uncomfortable with herself and takes that out on others too.

Nadine is a complicated character, both self-hating and sharply funny, sometimes cruelly so. Steinfeld does a remarkable job of molding the self-involved teen into someone who can be exasperating without snuffing what’s inherently likable about her. She makes her into someone that can be empathized with yet never pitied. When she does something that embarrasses her or who she’s with, her actions evoke laughing and cringing. Nadine has a tendency to be her own worst enemy. Steinfeld doesn’t try to ingratiate herself for the audience’s benefit but inhabits Nadine’s naked neediness and confusion as the natural state of teenage existence.

To that end, Nadine’s interactions with Mr. Bruner go a long way in humanizing her and gaining perspective. To someone overhearing parts of their conversations in the hallway, the teacher’s sarcastic give-and-take with his emotional student might sound grossly insensitive. It’s funny and at least a little alarming when THE EDGE OF SEVENTEEN opens with him brushing off her intention to commit suicide, but the more we come to know about how they talk to one another, the more his dry humor in serious conversations is how he’s able to signal that he cares without getting touchy-feely, which neither of them seem oriented toward being. THE EDGE OF SEVENTEEN doesn’t dismiss what Nadine is going through as a phase, but through Mr. Bruner it is capable of taking the long view to relate to her anxiety and know that in time she can get past it.

Grade: B+

Allied

ALLIED (Robert Zemeckis, 2016)

Canadian operative Max Vatan (Brad Pitt) and Marianne Beauséjour (Marian Cotillard), a member of the French Resistance, pose as husband and wife in 1942 French Morocco for a mission to assassinate a German ambassador in ALLIED. Marianne has been busy befriending the Germans in Casablanca prior to Max’s arrival. The partners are previously unacquainted and know the danger of becoming close, but the intensity of their assignment and playing of their roles in a convincing manner leads to their relationship developing into something more personal than noble work for the cause.

Max and Marianne succeed at their bold task and survive, but rather than going their own ways, they decide to get married. Back in England Max gets approval for Marianne to join him there. Although World War II still wages on, they settle into a life together with a baby girl. Marianne trades intelligence work for being a wife and mother while Max continues to play a key role in the fight from London. After a year or so Max is called in thinking he’s going to be offered a promotion but instead is told that Marianne is suspected of being a German spy. He refuses to believe the accusation but grudgingly goes along with the operation to test her loyalty. Although he’s warned not to look into the question further, he desperately searches for answers that will ease his dismay.

The uncertainty of knowing who to trust and what to believe stand out as occupational hazards for secret agents. The design of ALLIED brings that to attention with sets and digital backgrounds that are convincing enough to seem like real settings and yet are also noticeable as constructed reality on a studio lot. This is not a matter of the special effects work not being up to par but a deliberate choice by director Robert Zemeckis to emphasize the thematic tension. The more deeply involved the viewer gets with the story, the more the illusion, or movie magic, takes hold that we can trust what is seen. Likewise, Max has greater difficulty separating what is authentic and what could be deception between him and Marianne as his commitment to believing in her innocence becomes more fervent.

Considering the filmmaker, this is an interesting twist in how he uses special effects. With films like THE WALK, FORREST GUMP, WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT, and the trio of computer-animated features in this century’s first decade, Zemeckis has strived to make the trickery invisible, to make the fake seem realistic. ALLIED doesn’t disguise the technical wizardry involved but instead leaves room for the viewers’ brains to blur the separation between practical sets and environments that exist as ones and zeroes on a computer hard drive. In this regard, belief creates reality despite what may be visible to challenge it.

Steven Knight’s screenplay also uses the scenario to explore marriage and the truths two people invest in a relationship to keep it strong. Without the suggestion of Marianne’s activities, she and Max could likely go on living happily ever after, but the doubt introduced gnaws at him despite what he thinks he knows. It calls Max to dispute everything between them even as he desperately wants to trust her. Still, how much can anyone really know another person? As a wartime and psychological thriller, ALLIED finds that most vulnerable point and examines the fallout when it is exposed.

Grade: B

Moana

MOANA (Ron Clements, Don Hall, John Musker, and Chris Williams, 2016)

A tribe on an island in the Pacific has everything it needs in MOANA and thus lacks the impulse to explore what is beyond their home. For the teenage Moana (Auli’i Cravalho), this conservatism can be frustrating, as she has an adventurous soul. When the coconut harvests yield spoiled crops and fish vanish from the waters inside the reef, Moana’s suggestions to go outside their comfort zone are overruled by her father, Chief Tui (Temuera Morrison).

Moana’s grandmother Tala (Rachel House), something of a free spirit herself, encourages Moana to follow her instincts. She sets her on a course to find the Polynesian demigod Maui (Dwayne Johnson) and help him return the heart of Te Fiti, an island goddess’ stone he stole. His theft, which he did to please humans, unleashed the darkness upon the world that is now causing the problems at home. With her own wits and the help of the ocean--her stupid pet rooster Heihei provides no assistance--Moana goes on her journey to save everything and everyone she loves.

MOANA fits safely within the Walt Disney animated musical tradition but makes enough variations on their princess movies to keep it from feeling stagnant. There’s no love interest around to sidetrack her from the matter at hand, and her animal sidekick is of negligible use. Johnson’s voice work as Maui and the gags with a mini version of the character tattooed on the buff demigod deliver much of MOANA’s humor. Despite his status in the universe, he’s often brought down to size by the film’s plucky heroine.

The South Pacific setting allows the animators to impress with the tropical landscapes, and as much of the film taking place on the ocean, they also get to showcase the latest and greatest in replicating water with computers. The songs by Opetaia Foa’i, Mark Mancina, and Broadway superstar of the moment Lin-Manuel Miranda provide an injection of bright fun. Mancina and Miranda’s “Shiny”, performed by FLIGHT OF THE CONCHORDS’ Jemaine Clement as a treasure-hoarding crab, is a highlight, especially with the funny and nightmarish visual accompaniment.

While the animation dazzles, MOANA can feel a little too familiar to stand out from its numerous competitors. In this regard the slender tale may be hurt somewhat by its economy of characters. Other than the two primaries, the ocean itself probably has the most impactful presence.

Grade: B-

Blue Jay

BLUE JAY (Alex Lehmann, 2016)

By coincidence former high school sweethearts Jim (Mark Duplass) and Amanda (Sarah Paulson) are back in their sleepy hometown at the same time when they spot each other at the grocery store in BLUE JAY. It’s been around twenty years since they last interacted, so this unexpected reunion is marked by the awkwardness of seeing someone for whom your feelings are complicated. Jim is single and, it would seem, not satisfied with where he is in life. Amanda is married with two stepchildren and appears to be in a good place but lets on that something undefined is lacking. Initially it looks like their encounter will be limited to small talk while shopping, but they decide to catch up over coffee and eventually go to his old house to keep the nostalgia trip going through the night.

The characters in BLUE JAY and BEFORE SUNSET have sharp differences between them, particularly regarding the duration of their old relationship and the span of time since they were last together, but both films circle around similar questions of wondering what might have been and being seduced by the possibility of rekindling what was. When Amanda first spots Jim and vice versa, they display a pronounced hesitancy over whether to say hello and exchange common pleasantries. While tentative at first around one another, they are obviously simpatico as they warm up through reminiscing about the good times they shared as teenagers. It’s apparent that both harbor unresolved feelings yet strive to carry on like there’s nothing uncomfortable. Still, tension lingers between them, presumably over some distant event that split them up way back when.

BLUE JAY hinges on the performances of Duplass and Paulson. They speak almost every line and, whether alone or together, occupy virtually every frame except for the pillow shots that establish location. Duplass and Paulson are marvelous in nonverbally expressing the strain that proliferates in their early attempts to catch up and funny in the tortured ways they say things to avoid emotional slip-ups. They’re walking through a proverbial minefield during the entire film, but in the initial scenes they’re doing so as though they can only take baby steps. When Amanda recognizes Jim at the grocery, you can practically hear the gears shifting in her head as she calculates if it is wise to draw his attention.

As Jim and Amanda gradually let their guards down, the chemistry that they surely had is undeniable. They listen to old recordings they made and goof off in a manner that lets them be their dorky teen selves again but is also fraught with the unspoken issues between them. For a time it is pleasurable to be the carefree people they no longer are. Duplass and Paulson carry themselves with awareness of the danger in their actions if they’re not careful. This balancing on the knife’s edge is what makes BLUE JAY so often thrilling. When the emotional time bomb that has been ticking in the background finally explodes, it envelops this intimate drama in poignancy.

Grade: B+

Trolls

TROLLS (Mike Mitchell and Walt Dohrn, 2016)

In TROLLS the tiny title characters are joyful creatures whose days are filled with singing, dancing, and hugging. Darkness enters their celebratory existences when the much larger, monstrous Bergen find the trolls and learn that eating them is the one way they can experience happiness. The Bergen set aside one day each year for eating trolls, but when the time comes for Prince Gristle (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) to taste his first troll, the scrappy little optimists escape and go undetected for twenty years.

Their safety comes to an end when Princess Poppy (Anna Kendrick), the happiest and most positive of all the trolls, puts on a massive rave noticeable from great distances. Chef (Christine Baranski), the Bergen who was banished from town when the trolls got away, sees the party. Excited at the chance to get back in the good graces of the Bergen, she tracks down the trolls and captures some. Poppy is determined to go to Bergen Town to save her friends and eventually is joined by Branch (Justin Timberlake), a pessimistic, survivalist troll who always suspected this horrible day would come.

TROLLS is rendered in eye-searing colors and features its share of trippy visuals, making the experience of watching it akin to mainlining Junior Senior’s impossibly peppy “Move Your Feet”, which Poppy sings as part of a buoyant pop medley. These small creatures with bright, upswept hair make no apologies for being cheerful, enthusiastic, and loving because they’ve identified that happiness comes from within rather than being consumed. There’s probably a mild contradiction in that message, as the film is based on toys after all. Nevertheless, TROLLS is more committed to being insistently upbeat and gloriously weird than shamelessly pushing product.

TROLLS’ unfiltered strangeness is one of its most appealing qualities. The humor holds appeal for adults because it’s so off-the-wall yet isn’t pitched at them. It simply indulges silliness to the nth degree. A sequence in which a cloud with skinny legs requests a high five from Branch in exchange for some critical information makes for a hilarious routine in which the gray troll is cajoled to make the smallest gesture of happiness. Kendrick’s perky voicing of Poppy and Timberlake’s glum Branch make a funny contrast.

The story in TROLLS is sufficient, although the film is best when it’s riffing and letting its freak flag fly. Pop music is cleverly incorporated and brings some additional energy to this sugar rush of a film.

Grade: B-