And in other films: Octavia Spencer accuses, Cate Blanchett breaks down, Julianne Moore manipulates, Leslie Jones faces the Angry Birds and four teen girls attract sharks
August is usually a dumping ground for lesser films that didn’t get a better earlier booking. Not this week. There are several first-rate titles you can read about below (plus some lesser ones). Note also two good ones I haven’t been able to cover. There’s a late add at the Rio, TONI MORRISON: THE PIECES I AM, a documentary about the beloved Nobel Prize winning author who died recently. It screens tomorrow at 5:15 pm and I’m told it’s very good.
At the VanCity, you have four chances (tonight, tomorrow, Sunday and Wednesday) to catch FAST COLOR an American drama about a woman with supernatural powers on the run. The New York Times tagged it a “critic’s pick” in their review.
And notice too that the Vancouver Queer Film Festival is now on until the 25th. One title I noticed there is LIZZIE with Chloe Sevigny and Kristin Stewart in the story of Ms. Borden. It got a lot of press when it was released almost a year ago but didn’t get here until now. There more on it and all the films at www.queerfilmfestival.ca/
And on all these, right here:
Good Boys: 3 stars
Blinded By the Light: 3 ½
Cold Case Hammarskjöld: 4 ½
Luce: 3 ½
Where’d You Go Bernadette: 3
After the Wedding: 3
The Angry Birds Movie 2: 3
47 Meters Down: 2 ½
GOOD BOYS: I was dreading this. Twelve year olds swearing like sailors? In a comedy produced by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, a tween version of their own hit Superbad? And yes, right in the opening line, spoken by Jacob Tremblay, there’s that word you don’t want your kids to say. And it happens over and over. The BC Film Classifier found “Approximately 170 instances of coarse and/or sexual language” and “Several scenes depicting sexual content.” We may be witnessing an advance in youth entertainment here. But you know, it’s funny. Cheeky and repetitive, but energetic and amusing.
Tremblay, Brady Noon and Keith L. Williams play best friends who call themselves The Beanbag Boys. They’re children who are about to be exposed to adult ways. They’ve been invited to a kissing party but for all their fake bravado don’t know how to do that. Googling “Porn” is no way to learn they find. Maybe spying on the teen girls next door with a drone can help? Not if it crashes. They have to find money to get a new one, steal the girl’s drugs (molly, to be specific) and try to sell them. Just like Superbad, it’s a momentous, eventful quest to get to a party. They have an encounter with a sex doll that they think is a CPR doll, handle an array of sex toys and pretend to know more than they do. That’s probably accurate and under the direction of TV veteran Gene Stupnitsky rather sweet but it sure does push the age boundaries for this kind of comedy. It’s set in Illinois but was filmed around here. (Scotiabank, Marine Gateway and suburban theatres) 3 out of 5
BLINDED BY THE LIGHT: The Beatles, Queen and Elton John all got nods in the movies recently, now it’s Bruce Springsteen’s turn. And it’s from an unlikely source: Gurinder Chadha who directed Bend it Like Beckham 17 years ago and Viveik Kalra who plays a young fan inspired by the can-do view of life that The Boss expressed in his lyrics. The year is 1987, in the working-class town of Luton, about 50k north of London. Immigrants are met with scowls from skinheads, “Pakis Out” signs and marches by the racist National Front.
Teenage Javed wants to be a writer. His dad, just laid off at the local GM plant and supported by his wife who takes in sewing, wants him to become a doctor. It’s a common dynamic in films like this. As he puts it: “In my house no one is allowed opinions except my dad.”
Springsteen, on a couple of cassettes played on his Walkman is an outlet to inspire his rebel instincts. And fire up two or three set pieces in which he and an entire street of young people sing and dance along. It’s an exuberant good time on the screen, full of life and energy and that overcomes the seen-it-before story of conflict with dad. It’s an enjoyable film based on a memoir by the real Javed, journalist Sarfraz Manzoor and it outlines exactly the power and influence of music in many young people’s lives. (Scotiabank and suburban theatres) 3 ½ out of 5
COLD CASE HAMMARSKJOLD: Cold but absolutely riveting. Dag Hammarskjöld was the Secretary General of the United Nations when he died in a plane crash while on a peace mission in Africa in 1961. Rumors rose immediately about a “conspiracy” that killed him but neither the UN nor South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission were able to investigate. Danish film director Mads Brügger and Swedish private investigator Göran Björkdahl do and what they reveal in this documentary is astounding. And chilling. (Also cleverly constructed).
They’re stopped from digging up the plane that had been promptly buried at the time but they speak to witnesses. They say it was shot down by a Belgian mercenary pilot, name him and show his picture. A mining company may have been behind it with input by British intelligence and the CIA, although that’s not clearly explained or proven. What else they found is seriously troubling, though. They got wind of a shadowy South African Institute of Maritime Research, found documents and ex-associates and heard all about a white supremacy movement that sought to sink the newly independent nations and spread disease among their people. One speaker calmly sits in a stuffed chair and tells all about it. This is how African history was shaped. (VanCity Theatre) 4 ½ out of 5
LUCE: Life doesn’t get quite this complicated. That was my first reaction to this film which is thoughtful, timely and relevant but weighted down with too much plot. The central story line is strong. A star high school student (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) is suddenly under suspicion for expounding radical ideas about violence and struggle. He had been adopted at a young age from a war-torn African country. Does he carry some dangerous psychological residue wonder his teacher (Octavia Spencer) and then also his parents (Naomi Watts, Tim Roth) who realize they may not know him as well as they thought.
The evidence is scant. Yes, he wrote that violence may be necessary to fight oppression but that was in an essay on an anti-colonial thinker, Franz Fanon, whose ideas he was repeating. Then, illegal fireworks were found in his locker. And there were rumors of an incident with a girl at a party. Taken together they produced only a cloud of suspicion but led to a series of hot arguments both at school meetings and at home. With a couple of extraneous story lines along for the ride, the film intelligently explores important ideas about race, class, provocation and interpreting your world properly. It’s quite talky, showing its origin as a stage play, but also quite involving, by avoiding a rush to easy answers. (5th Avenue) 3 ½ out of 5
WHERE'D YOU GO, BERNADETTE: Like in Blue Jasmine, for which she won an Oscar, Cate Blanchett plays a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Or maybe she’s already had it. She’s anxious, anti-social, rude and confrontational. It’s yet another meaty role fit for Blanchett’s talents. She’s the heart of the film which wobbles a bit too much to help her out and rarely feels solidly authentic but as a domestic melodrama with vaguely profound intentions does keep your interest.
It comes from a popular novel by Maria Semple and is directed by Richard Linklater, who after his winner Boyhood has made three films about adult problems. This one looks at a woman’s eccentric life and reaction to being shut out of a career of creativity. How? We only learn late how it happened and spend most of the film watching the results. She lives in Seattle. Her husband (Billy Crudup) works for Microsoft; her daughter (bright newcomer Emma Nelson) is about to go away to college, and a neighbor (Kristin Wiig) is immensely irritating to her. She likes to escape (“adjustment disorder,” her doctor calls it) and she does split for Antarctica when Russian hackers steal her identity and security officials get nosy. Improbable? Sure. But the result is encouraging about second chances. (International Village, Langley and Mission) 3 out of 5
AFTER THE WEDDING: 13 years ago it was an original film from Denmark. Now it’s an American remake with good intentions but not a great deal of vitality. The story evolves slowly, bit by bit and requires some patience to really appreciate. Also, there’s a complete gender switch from the original, in aid of differentiation at best. In itself it doesn’t add or detract. It just is.
An American woman played by Michelle Williams needs money to fund the orphanage she runs in India. She’s summoned to New York to meet with a potential donor, a high-powered media boss, played by Julianne Moore, who attaches strings to the offer and then invites her to her daughter’s wedding. Feeling out of her league at the luxurious estate where it’s held, she is cautiously gracious like a willing guest. But then she finds out a secret about the donor and meets her husband (Billy Crudup, in the second film he’s in this week) the story turns soap opera-ish. Interesting, I don’t remember that happening in the original. Not as strongly anyway. The acting is good though, notably by Abby Quinn as the young bride and not surprisingly by Julianne Moore. (Her husband Bart Freundlich directed the film). (International Village) 3 out of 5
THE ANGRY BIRDS MOVIE 2: That cell phone app by which you fling birds at egg-stealing pigs has inspired a second film and it’s better than the first, richer in both silliness and hipster humor. Not surprising really. I counted six current or former cast members from Saturday Night Live doing voices here, along with others like Peter Dinklage, Awkwafina, Nicky Minaj and Brooklynn Prince, who charmed us in The Florida Project. Oh and the children of Nicole Kidman, Gal Gadot and Viola Davis. But the big, flamboyant addition is Leslie Jones, as an angry eagle, embittered and jilted, looking for a warmer home than her chilly ice-covered island.
The birds, led by Red (Jason Sudeikis), their savior from the last film and the pigs, with their leader Leonard (Bill Hader) declare a truce in their on-going war to fight her off. They don’t have a plan but they do have a gadget guy, a brute and a smart scientist named Silver (Rachel Bloom) who they try to disregard because she’s a woman and what does she know about war? They’ll learn. There’s a parallel story now and then about three chicks protecting, losing and trying to reclaim three eggs before they’re destroyed. The film starts slow but as the funny bits increase becomes quite a hoot, though I wonder if younger kids will get many of the jokes. (International Village, Marine Gateway and many suburban theatres) (3 out of 5)
47 METERS DOWN: UNCAGED: Finally, a shark film. It looked like crocodiles would be it this summer. But two years after the original, here’s a sequel with the same 47 number, which means nothing this time, and a clear indicating that this time there’s no cage. Unfortunately there’s also less sense. Four young women go scuba diving down into a sunken Mayan village that an explorer (John Corbett) has found even though he cautions that he saw a great white shark down there.
The women are daring and reckless though and there’s some name recognition among the actors: Brianne Tju, Corinne Foxx (Jamie’s daughter), Sistine Stallone (daughter of Sylvester) and Sophie Nélisse, who debuted in the superb Quebec film Monsieur Lazhar seven years ago. Two play squabbling stepsisters and all are terrorized in the claustrophobia of the narrow, underwater passageways by the sharks. When they come on, the scenes are so chaotic and confusing you can’t tell what’s going on. A neat attempt perhaps to replicate the havoc that would surely be? I found it boring at the peak. A later sequence when one or two of them are trying to get to a tour boat cruising on the ocean nearby is far more tense because it’s open and clear and you’re striving with them. (Scotiabank and suburban theatres) 2 ½ out of 5