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The Best in Film 2018

21 Dec

Besides “Black Panther” and “Avengers: Infinity War” it was pretty much a down year domestically for films, critically and at the box office. But there was a surge of compelling foreign-language films (“Zama,” “Cold War,” “Capernaum” and “Border” to name a few not listed below)  – a segment largely underrepresented in the recent past – and a remarkable (if not stunning) return to the black-and-white format (“Roma” and “Cold War”). Mostly it was a strong year for women behind the lens, with notable entries from Marielle Heller (“Can You Ever Forgive Me?’’), Debra Granik (“Leave No Trace’’), Chloé Zhao (“The Rider’’), Josephine Baker (“Madeline’s Madeline”). Tamara Jenkins (“Private Life’’) and Lynne Ramsay (“You Were Never Really Here”), among others. The year saw an uptick in socially minded films (“If Beale Street Could Talk,” “Sorry to Bother You” and “Blackkklansman”) and the rising presence of streaming platforms Amazon and Netflix as major studio players who look poised to alter how the game is played. Below are my Top 20 of 2018.

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1 Blackkklansman
2 Isle of Dogs
3 Roma
4 Shoplifters
5 Burning
6 Can You Ever Forgive Me
7 The Other Side of the Wind
9 Cold War
9 If Beale Street Could Talk
10 Sorry to Bother You
11 The Favourite
12 The Rider
13 Won’t You Be My Neighbor
14 You Were Never Really Here
15 Brisbee 17
16 A Star is Born
17 The Sisters Brothers
18 The Old Man & the Gun
19 Annihilation
20 Eighth Grade

Also strong in the running, “First Reformed,” “First Man,” “Capernaum,” “Bohemian Rhapsody,” “Leave No Trace,” “Border,” “Zama,” “Lean on Pete,” “Madeline’s Madeline,” “Museo,” “Caniba”

 

Aquaman

21 Dec

‘Aquaman’: Once we’re in the swim of things, there’s too much for newly hip hero to handle

By Tom Meek
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On film, DC Comics heroes seem to have heavier backstories than those from the Marvel Universe. You know: Most comes from another planet or an isolated island or underworld and could crush a human with a super burst of flatulence, yet somehow they love us, and there’s deep lore and rules we must be spoon-fed for at least 45 minutes before they ingratiate themselves into our society and ultimately take on the noble task of saving us from certain annihilation.

“Aquaman” is no different. Even before the buff surfer dude – Jason Momoa, who looks like The Rock draped in long tresses and with an extra battery of tribal tats – dips his toe in the water, we get a lighthouse caretaker named Tom (Temuera Morrison) toiling away in the chilly northern coast of Maine and one stormy day finding a beauty washed up on the rocks, glistening trident still in her clutch. This fantastic vision, something of a blend of Daryl Hannah in “Splash” and Gal Gadot in “Wonder Woman” is, in fact, Nicole Kidman with a touch of CGI to make her look more in her 20s than her current vintage – not that she needs it. Kidman is Atlanna, the escaped sea warrior daughter of one of the kings of Atlantis. After eating much of Tom’s goldfish Daryl Hannah style, the two become lovers and bear a son: Arthur, who on a class trip to the New England Aquarium is able to summon the biggest shark in the tank to scare the bejesus out of the class bullies.

The film, directed by James Wan – who cut his teeth on the “Saw” and “Fast and Furious” franchises – is a busy, busy affair. Think of it as swimming through an endless school of silvery fish. Atlanna is kidnapped from the rocky coast of Maine, a pirate by the name of Manta (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) is out to kill the now mature Arthur/Aquaman in a poorly justified blood feud and there’s the seven kingdoms of Atlantis that Arthur’s half-brother King Orm (Patrick Wilson) wants to unite to destroy us land dwellers because of all the plastic and shit we dump in the sea. I can’t say I disagree, and in a neat payback trick he sends wave after wave of plastic bags, bottles and beer rings awash onto our beaches. Willem Dafoe has a role as Aquaman’s avuncular counsel and Amber Heard, toting a shock of Christmas-red hair, gets wedged between the bros as love interest. Dolph Lundgren even lends his square-jawed mug for a few nanoseconds as one of the seven kings.

Since this is an “aqua”-tale, much of it takes place below the ocean’s surface, except those early scenes in Maine and and one later in Sicily where the senseless destruction of ancient relics and structures will make archeologists in the audience reach for a vomit bag. The big undersea finale turns into the kind of wham-bam animated affair we’ve become accustomed to with films such as “Ready Player One” and “Avatar.” The wow factor is gone – it’s a bubbly undersea yawn.

Aquaman traditionalists, yearning for the stiff and square-jawed incarnation from Saturday mornings, are unlikely to be roped in. Momoa, who played the beefy barbarian incarnation Drogo in “Game of Thrones” as well as Conan in an ill-advised “Conan the Barbarian” reboot (2011), plays the part with a hip, feral flair. The character’s never given much of an opportunity to speak before his hands are busied. In shards, we know he has a sense of humor, making a “Fight Club” crack to break the ice with Heard’s undersea princess. The film’s funniest moment comes when our wet superhero walks into a New England biker bar. He can drink like a fish and the scene’s wrap-up is a smart departure, but after that it’s all down the drink.

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Mary Poppins Returns

20 Dec

‘Mary Poppins Returns’: Grown-up Banks tots need their nanny back, and really we did also

 

By Tom Meek 
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It’s been almost 55 years since Julie Andrews and her magic umbrella descended on Cherry Tree Lane in “Mary Poppins” back in 1964. Given that jubilee-plus swath of time, it’s amazing no one attempted a sequel, but perhaps the real snag was trying to find an actress with the right blend of creamy, wholesome strictness Andrews so imbued into that beloved nanny role. The wait, however, proves worthwhile, and the casting of Emily Blunt in “Mary Poppins Returns” is something of an inspired choice. She mixes in a dash of sass and sauce to make the role her own while paying respectful homage to Andrews.

The story, penned by David Magee from P. L. Travers’s 1935 novel, “Mary Poppins Comes Back,” revolves around the now grown-up wee ones from the original, Jane (Emily Mortimer) and Michael (Ben Whishaw), with Michael widowed and living in his parents’ old home with his own charges to care for. It’s a busy house, fraught with near chaos but full of love and integrity – and the bank Michael works for (a barbed twist) wants to repossess it. The time is the economic downturn in London known as the Great Slump, and while the cruel circumstance feels like something from the pages of Dickens, it also suggests something executed with cold military precision by the current administration.

You could imagine Magee and director Rob Marshall wrestling with the idea of trying to update the tale for contemporary times, but smartly the pair hold fast. Remember, this is the Marshall who made the Jazz Age sing in the raucous Oscar-winning “Chicago” (2002); and it’s also still Disney, which built an empire off wholesome family fare before the blockbuster wham-bam of Star Wars and the Marvel Universe. For folks who know primarily about the derrière lifts of Kardashians and the assorted dealings of former presidential attorneys, “Mary Poppins Returns” is destined to be a pure wintergreen breeze of prim revelation. In short, it’s transportive, with apt dashes of magical digression. Buttoned-up fantasia, if you will, lush and infectious.

Marshall knows musicals and gets the sets, staging and numbers down to a science, but it’s Blunt – who’s partaken in such diverse works (and with mixed results) as “The Devil Wears Prada” (2006), “A Quiet Place” (2018) and “Sicario” (2015) – who powers it all with her indelible Poppins’ resolve, finding a whole new gear here the way Renee Zellweger and Catherine Zeta Jones did in “Chicago.” Her nanny’s aloof affect and strong nature endears from the get-go, and she slips into into the musical numbers seamlessly. If there was any question she could sing or dance, they’re put to rest.

There’s also the funny, silly magical excursions – remember Dick Van Dyke and those penguins back in ’64? – such as a bath time under-the-sea adventure that add to the film’s frothy, innocent lather. The cast has many little charms as well. “Prada” co-star Meryl Streep shows up in gypsy garb as Poppins’ Cousin Topsy, who can fix anything and lives in an upside-down emporium. There are also cameo turns from a spry Van Dyke and Angela Lansbury, who sells balloons with an uplifting sense of justice; Colin Firth rounds out the cast with suavity as a stately banker who may have a foot in some devious subprime doings.

The wonderful thing about this “Poppins” is its innate infectiousness. It’ll win over the cynical and charm the faithful. Dour and bleak times call for a nanny with a stiff upper lip and take-charge can-do fixes for everything from untidy bedrooms to dicey doings in the boardroom. She’s a marvel we could use now. 

Post-review note: I attended the “Mary Poppins Returns” press screening with my 9-year-old daughter, Jane, who reported that Emily Blunt was fine, but no Julie Andrews. She also observed that this Poppins seemed less “responsible” than the 1964 nanny.

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Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

15 Dec

‘Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse’: Bite later, heroes abound and with so much in common

 

By Tom Meek 
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“Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse’’ is a wild spin with a web of plots that not only passes the torch but also reinvents the Marvel comic on screen for a new generation and set of eyes. For starters, it’s animated, a cool blend by directors Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey and Rodney Rothman that’s a bit of the old TV cartoon, a bit of the blurry three-color printed comic and a lot of the creamy rich CGI we’ve come to know since Pixar punted out “Toy Story.” Also, there’s more than one Spider-Man – in fact, there’s a posse of spider-people, but more on that later – and this “Spider-Verse” includes a coming-of-age tale about a Brooklyn kid name Miles (voiced by Shameik Moore) who, like Starr in “The Hate U Give,” is an African-American kid attending a private school outside the neighborhood. Dad’s an overly cautious cop (Brian Tyree Henry, so good in “If Beale Street Could Talk”) and uncle Aaron (Mahershala Ali, “Green Book” and “Moonlight’’) strikes a hip big-brother figure, though pa considers him something of a black sheep.

Miles is a kid at the crossroads of figuring out who he is and who he wants to be. Uncle’s tips on how to woo the other new kid at boarding school, a cute, sassy girl named Gwen (Hailee Steinfeld) doesn’t work out so well. But by now you’re probably wondering what any of this has to do with Spider-Man? Well, one night Aaron and Miles break out to tag a wall in a subterranean annex and Miles, after laying down his final aerosol flourish, is bitten by a radioactive spider. Paper, a girl’s hair and even some pigeons stick to his palms – talk about adolescent confusion – and he can walk on walls. In a return to the site, Miles encounters Peter Parker/Spider-Man (Chris Pine) fighting a giant demon goblin and a someone known as the Prowler. Spidey wants to shut down a collider set up by a mad mastermind with the self-aggrandizing tag of Kingpin (Liev Schrei­ber), but needs Miles’ help, while Miles needs Spidey’s help to make sense of his new powers.

Long and short, the collider goes off and uni-“verses” (Marvel’s, something Looney Tunes adjacent and slivers from the past and future) blend and merge. Now we’ve got a new Peter Parker/Spider-man (Jake Johnson), a paunchier, saucier version. The quest to shut down the collider remains, though this gruffer Spidey has ill-timed glitches the way Venelope does in the “Wreck it Ralph” films. Also now there’s spider folk from the pulpy noir past (Nic Cage, voicing an incarnation that seems right out of “Sin City”) a Japanese anime lass (Kimiko Glenn) and her trusty spider-bot and a wise-cracking spider-pig-toon (John Mulaney) who carries a massive mallet in his pocket. Lily Tomlin’s also in there as Peter’s take-no-shit aunt; Katherine Hahn is naughty and nice as a dour lab director with a deviously far-reaching grasp; and Stan Lee’s voice and countenance make a perfect last appearance in perhaps his best cameo ever. 

The directing trio and writer Phil Lord (“The Lego Move”) do a deft job deconstructing both the film franchise and the comic series with wit and verve. If you’re a Spider-Man fan, there’s lots packed in here for you as insider nuggets while it all shoots off in a new direction. It’s packaged to cut smartly across cultural and generational lines, with animation that’s also something new and something old. “Verse” takes the web-head series to a new level that looks bound to catch on.

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Vox Lux

15 Dec

‘Vox Lux’: A little more comfortably numb, please, for traumatized girl turned pop diva

By Tom Meek 

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Bradley Cooper’s not the only Hollywood A-lister this year to challenge his acting chops by playing rock ’n’ roll (well, country) royalty on screen. Here comes Oscar winner Natalie Portman as some kind of a Lady Gaga-esque incarnation in Brady Corbet’s rise and rebirth pic “Vox Lux.” The film’s a curio, unconventionally told in two stark chapters the way Stanley Kubrick’s great Vietnam dissection “Full Metal Jacket” did in 1987 – though it must be stated that similarities between the two disparate films begin and end there.

In the first chapter, a lithe and angular teenager by the name of Celeste (Raffey Cassidy, nothing short of amazing) survives a school shooting – she’s shot in the neck but is pretty much the only one who makes it out of the room – and composes a song with her older sister Eleanor (Stacy Martin) to get her heart around the ordeal and come to terms with the pain and trauma. They perform the tearjerker before their small-town crowd gathered for healing in the local church; since this is clearly modeled after Newtown (and Columbine, for that matter), cameras and the national eye are there. Not long afterward, Celeste’s got a hunky manager (Jude Law) and a European tour. Her music – hip, alternative pop songs like a haunting blend of Britney Spears and Fiona Apple – soars critically and commercially, but the violence of the day that gave her lift still lingers in traumatizing wafts. The tatted rocker she beds down with one night plays the kind of music the shooter liked.

Celeste gets pregnant, 9/11 happens and we jump to 2017, with Celeste now played by Portman and, as a neat parlor trick, her teen daughter Albertine played by Cassidy. Through it all, the hops in time, there are eruptions of senseless violence (though far less graphic and viscerally felt) and the ebbs and flows within Celeste are put into context by an unseen narrator voiced with cagey wisdom by the increasingly ubiquitous Willem Dafoe. In this chapter, Celeste is far less likable or empathetic; she’s become something of an entitled diva, dropping thoughtless bombs like those Lena Dunham has become notorious for. Sure, she’s taxed and fearful of failure on her comeback attempt – and wants so desperately to connect with her daughter – but you ask yourself what happened to that precocious, reflective lass from chapter one. Is this what fame and fortune does? The backstage ramp-up to the big concert event is a kickass trip, even if the actual show pales by comparison, Portman is game and the direction by Corbet, along with intimate camerawork by Lol Crowley, is tight and well focused. The film manages to get its finger on the pulse of the music world and the egos involved as well as the toll it can take, but somehow in its angling for something more, something else, it lose sight of the 14-year-old survivor that gave it birth.

There’s a lot to drink in. “Vox Lux” is a haunting mashup you can’t avert your eyes from, except maybe when Celeste is having a diva meltdown on her daughter, sister or manager. One of the film’s key undercurrents – that it’s important to remember where you came from – seems to get lost along the way. Corbet, relatively new to the director’s seat, becomes obsessed with the power and pomp of pop. There’s plenty of kinetically catchy tunes (by Sia) belted out as Celeste triumphs, but many families from many sad days no longer have daughters to take a shot at “American Idol.”

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Ben is Back

14 Dec

‘Ben Is Back’: This addict son’s homecoming takes bad turns from family drama to thriller

By Tom Meek

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It’s a family affair as dad Peter Hedges directs son Lucas Hedges in “Ben Is Back,” an edgy if overwrought melodrama about a family caught in the crosshairs of addiction. Similar material was explored this year in “Beautiful Boy,” a based-on-real-life yarn that worked inner sentiments with solid fervor but somehow failed to kick it over the moon.

The result’s about the same here, but the film moves in very different strokes. For one, “Ben Is Back” is much grittier and edgier in texture and context. The addicted son, Ben (Lucas Hedges, nominated for an Oscar for a “Manchester by the Sea”) makes a surprise return home from rehab as Christmas nears and becomes an immediate source of tension between his mother (Julia Roberts) and stepfather (Courtney B. Vance). His presence is a clear code red. Sure, they’re fearful Ben will use again – but there seems to be something more. Holly (Roberts) puts down some hard rules and Neal (Vance) agrees reluctantly. There are other kids in the house whose welfare is at stake: Ben’s sister Ivy (Kathryn Newton) and Neal’s two children from a prior union. It’s something of a “Brady Bunch,” but there’s no laugh track and nothing funny in what’s to come.

Holly and Neal’s concerns seem a bit over the top initially. Holly won’t let Ben go to the bathroom or try on a shirt in a retail store without her constant supervision. After a group meeting you realize why: Ben’s not only at risk to use again (“all addicts lie,” he forewarns Holly), but was an active dealer in the upstate New York hamlet that’s a harried mix of sugar plum nice and badass vice – the tentacles of which threaten to drag him back in. Neal and Holly’s quaint homestead is soon burglarized, the dog’s gone missing and unsavory sorts start to lurk out from the dark shadows of Main Street. A wonderful life this is not.

By the third act the film shifts into thriller mode – something of a tough-love saga by way of “Breaking Bad.” It’s too bad, too, because the homestead dynamic between the father who bought into this little shop of horrors and the protective mother caught in conflict gets lost. The film comes out of the gate wobbly, and just when it find its feet and we begin to get invested, Hedges the writer and director takes one mean street turn after the next. Only the first few might be plausible.

The fraught chemistry between Roberts, Hedges and Vance sells much of it for a while – the whole ensemble is quite convincing – but what they’re given to work with is palpable, unbridled anger without ownership or remorse. As Holly sees it, her family’s troubles are tied to one person, and when she gets her moment of confrontation, it’s ugly, with little upside. Addiction’s no doubt nasty and impactful beyond the veins of the person using, but bleak tales close to the edge don’t necessarily need to go over it. Sometimes family affairs need to just be more intimate.

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Chilly Bike Lanes

9 Dec

Pack of end-of-year actions on street safety anticipates bike, pedestrian work in 2019

 

By Tom Meek 
Saturday, December 8, 2018
Ground was boken Wednesday for a Watertown-Cambridge bike path expected to be complete in early summer of 2020. (Photos and video: Tom Meek)

The city will have a more comprehensive schedule of bike infrastructure rollouts early next year, Community Development spokeswoman Bridget Martin said, and the state is joining in with a Dec. 18 meeting to discuss options for bike safety improvements on some of its own roadway in Cambridge.

Even before that, the Cambridge Bicycle Safety group is calling for city staff to report back by the end of January on how common speed limit violations are in Cambridge and how the city can better engineer traffic calming; a policy order written with Mayor Marc McGovern, vice mayor Jan Devereux and city councillor Quinton Zondervan will make the request official Monday.

“For example, we know that changing paving surfaces and raising crosswalks helps slow traffic in busy areas,” the group said Thursday, explaining the urgency behind the order: “Over the past 10 years, 16 vulnerable road users – either walking or biking – have been killed in our city. This is a public health crisis.”

The mayor and City Manager Louis A. DePasquale are also set to attend a community meeting next week on pedestrian safety and safer streets, planned for 6:30 p.m. Thursday at the Amigos School, 15 Upton St., Cambridgeport.

There have already been several steps taken to separate cyclists from motor vehicles and connect major destinations by bike lane since an October rallyby the bicycle safety group, including a priority bus and bike lane on Mount Auburn Street; separated lanes on Massachusetts Avenue from Central Square through the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to the Charles River, opened late last month; and Wednesday’s groundbreaking for a Watertown-Cambridge bike path.

The Watertown-Cambridge path, expected to be complete in early summer of 2020, leverages an old railway running parallel to Huron Avenue to better connect cyclists coming from Watertown and West Cambridge to Fresh Pond destinations including the pond, mall and Danehy Park, as well as the Alewife T station and Minuteman Bike Path – good for families and other cyclists unwilling to tangle with vehicles on Huron Avenue and the Fresh Pond Parkway.

The separated bike lanes (alongside a dedicated Boston-bound bus lane) south of Central Square provide more safety in a congested area notorious for its perilous intersections. The project is still undergoing tweaks, said Joseph Barr, director of the city’s Traffic, Parking & Transportation Department, though the bulk of the project was completed and opened for use just after Thanksgiving.

Data from the installations will show whether they increase public safety and get more people out of their cars, traffic officials have said.

The bicycle safety group and other advocacy groups, including Livable Streets and the Boston Cyclists Union, have been loud advocates for safer streets since the Cambridge deaths of cyclists Amanda Phillips and Joseph Lavins in 2016. In November, another cyclist was struck and killed by a dump truck at Museum Way and Monsignor O’Brien Highway, across from the Museum of Science, and state Rep. Mike Connolly called on the state to make changes.

A public hearing at 6:30 p.m. Dec. 18 at the Museum of Science – the location may change as the expected size of the audience grows – will discuss the details of Meng Jin’s death and safety improvements from infrastructure and vehicle safeguard perspectives, Connolly said.

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Roma

8 Dec

‘Roma’: Calling on the maid to be a mother when chaos strikes a family and ’70s Mexico

 

By Tom Meek
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Alfonso Cuarón, the Mexican-born director who’s made a reputation of tackling a wide variety of subjects and milieus, hopping from the depths of outer space (“Gravity”) to barren, post-apocalyptic futures (“Children of Men”) and even Harry Potter and Dickens (“Prisoner of Azkaban” and “Great Expectations”), returns to his homeland – where be crafted his signature tale of taboo sex and betrayal, “Y Tu Mamá También” – to forge the semi-autobiographical contemplation “Roma,” something of a nostalgic dream cut with historical incident and unhappy reality. Folks who could never bite into the floaty neorealism of Fellini’s “8½” or “Amarcord” will struggle with the director’s languid sense of place and time, hoping for more of the disruptive chaos of the earthquake, wildfire and class revolt that punctuate the film. The central dilemma of a pregnant housemaid abused and abandoned by her lover and trapped by her unenviable station in life might not jump off the page, but for those who give it time, there are rewards.

The time is the early ’70s (aptly Fellini-esque) in Mexico City, as the camera swirls around the doings of an upper-middle-class family. Dad (Fernando Grediaga), a doctor, works long hours at the hospital while mom (Marina de Tavira) and the housemaid, Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio) maintain the homestead and look after a brood of corrigible youth. Mom and Cleo care, but are not the most effective homemakers. Mom dings up the car every time she takes it out and Cleo allows mounds of canine fecal matter to amass in the driveway – cars skid and people slip on poo, it’s a running thing. The film’s driving factors are the father’s sudden and prolonged absence as well as Cleo’s pregnancy: How she gets pregnant, the father’s reaction and the end result of which provide for surprising turns.

“Roma” moves in subtle, wispy ebbs fueled by undercurrents of class and gender oppression. There’s a poignant yin and yang in every frame. Fate and circumstance factor large too as the action moves from the cloistered streets of the city to the bourgeois countryside, even a muddy hillside slum and ultimately a riot (the Corpus Christi Massacre of 1970). Throughout it all Cleo and Sofia rally frantically to keep the children safe, despite considerable setbacks. “Roma” is clearly a love letter to the women who made Cuarón the person he is today.

The film, shot by Cuarón himself in black and white – an artistic high-dive against the grain but in good company (think “Schindler’s List,” “The White Ribbon” and “The Artist”) – is a scrumptious wonderment to behold. If there’s any subversion, it’s that “Cold War,” another foreign language film in a similar format yet radically different style, could give Cuarón a run in the best-cinematography category.

Artistic merits aside, the key to “Roma” is the patiently quiet and soulful performance by Aparicio. Clea’s fleeting optimism amid repressed pain amid continual reminders of her subservient role are heartwarming and heartbreaking. You want her to break out and do something bold, but in her quiet resolve there’s a deeper dignity that transcends.“Roma” is not about good or bad, but about connecting and persevering.

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Prospect

30 Nov

‘Prospect’: Dad, daughter aim to make killing, but there are far deadlier competing interests

Movie Review - Prospect (2018)

By Tom Meek

A deep space mission to harvest something called Aurelacs – a highly valued gem that grows in slimy organic sacs that would make David Cronenberg proud – goes horribly wrong in “Prospect,” stranding a father-daughter team in a future where space travel across galaxies is relatively common. Made arty and moody by rising filmmaking duo Christopher Caldwell and Zeek Earl, expanding on their 2014 short of the same name, the themes and atmosphere echo that of “The Martian” (2016), “Interstellar” (2014) and even “2001: A Space Odyssey” (1968) – if not for the retro space suits, then at least all the heavy breathing.

Pulling from familiar tropes, the landing party (descending in a neat little capsule that looks something like a lunar module or whatever it was Matt Damon cruised in on in “The Martian”) hope to make one big “prospecting” score and move on to a better, less perilous lifestyle. Dad (Jay Duplass, co-director of the 2006 indie surprise, “The Puffy Chair”) and his teenage daughter, Cee (Sophie Thatcher, the film’s revelation) descend on a bucolic planet that’s as verdant, dank and lush as the Pacific Northwest forests were in Debra Granik’s “Leave No Trace” this year – still, as gorgeous and inviting as it is, you need to be suited and with a full tank of oxygen. 

Funny, as far out as they are and in the middle of nowhere, they barely get started on their quest when they bump into two malcontents who prove none too welcoming. Shortly enough, Cee and the one named Ezra (“Game of Thrones” actor Pedro Pascal) set out to find the the Aurelacs  mother lode (aka the “Queen’s Lair”), despite the nagging matter that Cee’s lander has malfunctioned and Ezra and his cohort have no means off the planet either. For all the riches to be had, folk seem too intently focused on it despite the looming dilemma that there’s no way to realize the spoils. 

You could think of “Prospect” as something akin to this year’s unheralded “The Sisters Brothers,” in which the gold at the center of the quest is little more than a MacGuffin and the characters sail through a lawless terrain with nothing but themselves to rely on for salvation or justice. There’s other beings, mostly human we assume, that Cee and Ezra encounter along the way, including a dominatrix who gets her charges on their knees by blasting distorted disco rhythms into their helmets. It’s a weird world to wind up not-so alone in, and given greater impact by tight, intimate camera work. 

Beyond Thatcher, who pulls the film along the way Anya Taylor-Joy did “The Witch” in 2015, the best part of Caldwell and Earl’s collaboration becomes the hellbent “Godot”-esque mission to nowhere. If you caught “Annihilation” earlier this year, you’d have a pretty good idea of the psychological fabric as the normal plunges headlong into chaos. “Prospect” also moves in bends and inflections that are largely – and pleasantly – unpredictable. Sure, it’s odd that folks amid an evergreen paradise can’t breath the air except in unseemly yurts, but “Prospect” rises on character, mood and a derivative tang that glances just off the penumbra of homage and avoids shameless lifting.

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Green Book

22 Nov

‘Green Book’: Tour through segregated South drives a buddy movie that follows a true tale

 

By Tom Meek 
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Peter Farrelly, best known as half of the brother tandem who made “Dumb and Dumber” (1994) and the chaotically uproarious “There’s Something About Mary” (1998), pulls something of an unexpected about face with “Green Book,” real-life saga about a white man chauffeuring a black man through the Deep South during the early 1960s.

The boss is Dr. Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali, a deserving Oscar winner for his work in “Moonlight”), a renowned jazz pianist tired of playing the Upper East Side who decides to take his talents south – in part to see the world, and also to make the world see him. His driver, a Bronx-bred Italian-American name Frank Anthony Vallelonga, aka Tony Lip (Viggo Mortensen). Tony is something akin to Robert De Niro’s fat Jake LaMotta – boy can he eat, he’s not one to take too much shit and he’s got a mouth. It’s “Driving Miss Daisy” (1989) in reverse in so many ways, with its racist backdrop still far too similar to what pervades our country now. Once difference is that the current “green book” is an app with historical insights; from 1936 to 1966, it was a vital guide to safe spots in the segregated South.

For the most part, the film’s a buddy bonding road movie, as the aloof intellectual and motor-mouthed lout with a heart of gold break down cultural and personal barriers. At its best, Tony doesn’t judge Don Shirley after bailing him out of several compromising and potentially explosive situations where the jazz pianist dips into the bottle too much and wanders outside the lines. At its worst, Tony lectures Shirley about “his people,” Motown stars the classical musician hasn’t heard (Little Richard and Aretha) and the virtues of fried chicken – a cringeworthy scene, if just for the risky proximity of grease to a neatly pressed white shirt. 

Farrelly lays it on a bit at times where films such as “Hidden Figures” (2016) “Miss Daisy” and “The Butler” (2013) respectfully observe and allow character and history to make points on their own terms. His actors, though, do a great job selling it, and forge a genuine chemistry, despite such overwrought handling – Ali welling with dignified resolve and Mortensen adding a ton of weight and tackling new emotional territory with a screwball sense of humor. Shirley has to stay in seedier hotels and can’t use the same restroom as white people, even though he’s the allegedly well-respected main attraction. Ultimately there’s the big end-of-tour performance in Birmingham at a white-glove country club (where Nat King Cole was once assaulted). The maitre’d, trying to appeal to Tony, explains that when the world champion Boston Celtics came to town, “even the big one didn’t get to eat in the club” after polite use of such phrases as “it’s a tradition” and “that’s how we do things down here.” Sign of the times, and one not to be forgotten.

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