The Spectacular Now

The coming of age movie is a favorite genre of mine. I enjoy watching characters at pivotal times in their lives try to learn how to grow, watch how they change and hopefully develop into better people. Sometimes truly great examples of the genre come along, and some of them I’ve covered here in this space before, like Adventureland or Sing Street. Those movies are shining examples of coming of age movies, and I’m adding another to the list now, with James Ponsoldt’s great 2013 movie The Spectacular Now. It contains two of the best characters and performances I’ve seen recently, and is the type of movie I ache to watch again and again.

Sutter (Miles Teller) is the happy go lucky party boy of his high school, and we open as he informs us about his breakup with Cassidy (Brie Larson). They were always the life of the party, but they’re seniors now and she obviously doesn’t see any future with the party boy, leaving him for the star athlete and class president. Sutter is heartbroken and is one morning awakened by Aimee (Shailene Woodley), who has found Sutter passed out in someone’s front lawn after an all nighter of drinking and driving. Aimee is out early delivering newspapers, and she and Sutter have an instant report with one another. They go to the same school but don’t run in the same circles. She’s a smart, bookish kid, beautiful in a more plain, real world way than the more glamorous Cassidy, but Aimee doesn’t know she’s beautiful and she’s too quiet to be noticed too much. Sutter uses his outgoing charm to shield himself from the pain he feels at his dad having left the family, which he also masks with over indulging in alcohol. Aimee helps tutor Sutter in geometry, and the sparks start to fly immediately. Aimee is not his usual type, and he likes that. Sutter tells his best friend Ricky (Masam Holden) that he’s just trying to help this girl, but Ricky is afraid both that Sutter will hurt this nice girl, and also that he’ll get hurt by her leaving him when she realizes she’s too good for him.

I’m a sucker for a good romance, and the chemistry that Teller and Woodley have with one another is really terrific. And each really elevates their characters in different ways. Teller plays Sutter as the type of guy who is so aggressively charming it’s obvious he’s hiding loneliness beneath it. Obvious to everyone but himself. But he is also so genuinely charming that people go with it. Woodley plays Aimee as a girl not yet comfortable in her body. There’s an extraordinarily beautiful piece of acting during their sex scene, as each nervously disrobes in front of the other. Woodley subtly leaves her arms covering her torso, so as to hide from the attention she’s not used to receiving. And Teller lovingly grabs her hands and pulls them away, letting her know she’s safe and loved. It’s a gorgeous scene, perfect in every way, but the actors are what truly make it shine.

We’re not really sure where director James Ponsoldt and writers Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber are going to take us with the plot, whether it will be the standard “they get together, love each other, break up because of bullshit, and get together again as the music swells and we cut to the credits” take or not. While the movie does trod some familiar ground, it always does so with characters front and center, so that it feels like things happening to these people we care about and not just machinations of the plot.

But going back to Teller and Woodley for a moment, they are real people here. They create characters that live in our minds for much longer than just the length of the runtime (a brisk 95 minutes, by the way). Teller has a scene where Sutter goes to meet his father Tommy (Kyle Chandler) for the first time since he was a little kid, and as Sutter starts to see that his dad is a hard drinking loser of a guy you can see in Teller’s face the little kid just wanting to look up to his dad as a hero and instead being let down by the damaged man-child in front of him. You can also see that Sutter sees all the ways he’s similar to his dad and hates himself for it.

Woodley, through all of this, is there with support and an open heart and warm smile. She is so good for Sutter, if he would let her help him grow. But she’s not pushy. She truly does love him for who he is, not just who he could be. But she loves him while he doesn’t love himself. It’s not a healthy dynamic and one or both of them will eventually pay for it unless things change. But Tommy isn’t all that Sutter has, he has multiple great male role models in his life, like his geometry teacher Mr. Aster (Andre Royo, so good in his few scenes that you want more) and his boss Dan (the great Bob Odenkirk, also so good in a tiny amount of screen time), both of whom would’ve been terrific role models if they’d come along earlier. But Sutter is too set in his hard drinking fuck up ways to let anyone change him. But maybe Aimee could be the one. She’s not going to beg him, she’s going to let him be himself and she’ll be there by his side no matter what. She’s so much more complex and interesting than the type of manic pixie dream girl that too many romantic movies have. Aimee is a fully realized person. Even in that scene in the bar with Sutter’s dad, look at the loving way she touches Sutter’s neck and back, never insisting on her own presence or trying to make him feel or say anything, just always being there for support.

We expect them to break up, but again how it happens is organic because of the characters. We know why Sutter is insulting Aimee, in that moment he hates her for loving him when he doesn’t understand why or how, but we wish he would stop. Maybe he’s bad for her, she didn’t drink before he came along and now she’s got her own monogrammed flask like he does, but what about if she’s good for him? Sutter hasn’t quite figured that out yet. This movie is so affecting because we watch these real people going through these things. It’s easy to fall back into cliché and the usual tropes in this genre, and this movie certainly does it, but in mechanics only. Just watch these actors giving brilliant performances (I didn’t even get to Jennifer Jason Leigh perfectly playing Sutter’s mom, deeply loving but overwhelmed and overworked) and taking us through these characters lives in as beautiful a way as the coming of age genre has ever had. Catch up to this Hidden Gem if you haven’t already.

Cinema Spotlight: Michael Keaton in "Multiplicity"

Michael Keaton has been having a bit of a renaissance the last few years, with acclaimed work in Birdman, Spotlight, and Spiderman: Homecoming, but he has always been one of our best actors. Never is that more obvious than in his multiple performances in the Harold Ramis comedy Multiplicity. In it, Keaton stars as Doug, an overworked construction foreman who just wants to spend more time with his wife and kids. One day he's working on a laboratory remodel project and the lead scientist pulls him aside to say that he could clone Doug, that clone could take over the work stuff and leave Doug with more time to his family. Of course, Doug obliges and the results come out wonderfully.

Later, Doug finds himself overrun with things to do at home, having no time for himself, and clones himself again so that that Doug (#3) can take care of the home stuff and Doug #1 can have some time to himself for once. It isn't long before the clones decide they want some freedom of their own, and while Doug is away they clone #2, to make Doug #4. The three clones live in the abandoned apartment above Doug's garage and naturally hijinks ensue. Keaton gradually increases the amount of over-the-top he's willing to go to for each character, 2 more than 1, 3 more than 2, and finally the wonderful buffoonery of #4, which is the best thing in the movie. I still sometimes think "I like pizza, I LIKE it!" or "She touched my peppy, Steve." even though it had been many years since I'd seen the movie until recently.

Keaton is brilliant in different ways with each Doug. #1 is just a great smart everyman, something that Keaton is usually too manic to play, but holds the center of this movie so well with this performance. #2 accentuates Doug's masculine side, and so takes to the construction work easily and happily. However, he also becomes lonely, which isn't quite solved by #3 who is an exaggeration of Doug's feminine side, happy to do crafty projects around the house, as well as cooking and cleaning. #4, the most fun of the bunch, is described as like how if you make a copy of a copy of a piece of paper, it isn't quite right. #4 refers to Doug as Steve, and has to have his razors taken away for fear of accidentally hurting himself ("yeah, me and 2 just shave him while he sleeps" 3 says).

The movie isn't as good as Keaton is, the pace is too slow, the hijinks maybe not wacky enough, it doesn't capture the philosophical weight of the situation that it could comment on. The special effects multiplying Keaton are generally very obvious, and honestly the movie is just too long and doesn't seem to have enough on its mind for it to keep our interest. It's no Groundhog Day, I should say, Ramis's high point as a filmmaker, that's for sure. But it's really a great bunch of work from Keaton. It's up there with Beetlejuice as his best work as an actor.

Quick thoughts on Men in Black: International

 
It was good. Not great, not very good, just good. Tessa Thompson and Chris Hemsworth, reteaming after Thor: Ragnarok and Avengers: Endgame, are terrific together, even if the script and direction kind of waste their chemistry (not many two shots just letting them act together and off of each other, the script is very generic and not something worthy of these two together). Hemsworth is breezy, charming, and fun. Thompson believable and winning as the more straight (wo)man kind of role, while not being a stick in the mud or just plugging her into a Tommy Lee Jones kind of role. Good supporting cast, especially Kumail Nanjiani is fun (always been a big fan), Rafe Spall, Liam Neeson, Rebecca Ferguson, and I always want more Emma Thompson. There's not enough Emma Thompson in the world.

It misses previous series director Barry Sonnenfeld much more than it misses previous stars Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones, surprisingly. I think some directorial flair would've livened the thing up a lot. Thompson, Hemsworth, and Nanjiani are all doing as much as can be done. The humor? There’s some decent humor, and good fun chemistry between the leads that the movie doesn’t take advantage of. I don’t really remember anything that falls flat, humor wise, but nothing that really makes you belly laugh either.

So, great actors doing good work, but generic script and direction. It also just doesn't have the goofy fun of the other movies, especially the first one. It has action and aliens and whatnot, but not given that little tweak that has made the series fun in the past. It also doesn't have the heart that the third movie had. But still, overall I enjoyed myself enough. It's a big Hollywood blockbuster action movie with everything you expect from that. I hope they make another one, because Hemsworth and Thompson deserve a movie worthy of them in this franchise.

It’s more like a pleasant time at the movies. If you just go in expecting to be entertained you’ll be okay, but if you expect something great you’ll be let down.

A Little Princess

You might’ve heard Alfonso Cuaron’s name a lot this year, as he won an obscene amount of awards, including his second Best Director Oscar, for his autobiographical Netflix film Roma. But he’s been famous in movie lovers hearts for many years, with 2013’s Gravity (when he became the first Mexican to win a Best Director Oscar), before that his 2006 sci-fi masterpiece Children of Men (my vote as the best movie of the 2000’s), his entry into the Harry Potter canon with Prisoner of Azkaban (often pointed to as the pinnacle of the series), and his multi-Oscar nominated 2001 sex-comedy/road trip-drama Y tu Mama Tambien. But before all of those, in his English language debut in 1995, Cuaron gifted us with one of the great family movies of all time, his adaptation of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s A Little Princess.

10 year old Sara Crewe (Liesel Matthews) lives happily in India with her father, a wealthy British aristocrat (Liam Cunningham, almost unrecognizable so many years before he became Davos Seaworth on Game of Thrones). She loves telling stories to her friends based on Hindu mythology, playing and carefree and happy. But Sara’s exciting life is upended by the outbreak of World War I, and her father volunteering to serve in the military. Before he leaves, Captain Crewe sets Sara up in a girl’s boarding school in New York City. It quickly becomes obvious how much money the Crewe’s have when Sara is put in the schools largest room and given all the accommodations she needs. This wealth ingratiates Sara immediately to the school’s severe headmistress, Miss Minchin (Eleanor Bron). Ms. Minchin doesn’t like Sara, who even at 10 years old corrects Minchin’s lazy French and is lauded by the schools French teacher as a natural. But Sara comes with a lot of money, and Minchin likes money, so she mostly swallows her dislike of Sara.

Sara is an instant hit with the other girls in the school, with her exotic stories, imagination, advanced education, and relentless kindness. All of the girls, save for the school bully Lavinia (Taylor Fry), look to Sarah immediately as a leader. The girls even learn to start treating the school’s scullery maid Becky (Vanessa Lee Chester) differently. Becky is not only a maid, she’s also an orphan who lives in the building’s attic when she’s not cleaning, and she’s black. The girls don’t know what that means or why it means something, but it does mean something, right Sara? Sara doesn’t treat Becky any differently, and the other girls then follow suit. This makes the turn of the plot both more interesting, and more powerful, as Sara’s kindness is put to the test when her father is reported killed in action, and all of his financial assets frozen until a will can be sorted out. In Miss Minchin’s infinite kindness, she doesn’t kick Sara out of the house, but instead moves her upstairs with Becky into the rat infested attic where she’ll work as a maid as well.

A Little Princess is ultimately a movie about the power of empathy and kindness. Sara doesn’t let herself be dragged down when she loses everything. Her perspective changes, and she sees how life can be difficult for those without money, but she doesn’t lose her innate decency as a person. In fact, the girls still in school rally to her side whenever possible, as they begin all manner of shenanigans against the tyrannical Ms. Minchin, emboldened by Sara’s influence upon them. Even the neighbors, chimney sweepers, and others in the neighborhood take notice of this charismatic girl and her winning smile that can't be taken away. It’s not always so easy to smile and be happy when you’ve got nothing, but Sara keeps her head up and her heart open. It’s such a great moral lesson as a family movie, the powerful simplicity of inner strength.

The movie is absolutely beautiful to look at, as shot by legendary cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, who has shot all of Cuaron’s movies save for Harry Potter and Roma (which Cuarón shot himself, and won an Oscar for). It was Lubezki’s first Oscar nomination and it was well deserved. The production design (by the great Bo Welch, most famous for his work with Tim Burton) deserves attention as well, with the school/house acting almost as a character unto itself. The movie has a feeling of magical realism in the way Lubezki shoots it and Welch designed it, almost storybook like. We sometimes feel like maybe we’re inside of the fantastical stories that Sara loves to tell. This combined with Cuaron’s storytelling genius really makes for a truly magical experience. The movie feels like reading a book in childhood, a fairy tale set in early 20th century New York City, or remembering your favorite stories from your youth.

The movie isn’t perfect, as some of the acting from the young girls is as stilted as you expect even from the best child actors, but it always still works. This is a fantasy and we don’t require intense realism in order for the movie to succeed. Many of the supporting performances are just this side of caricature, but again it works, mainly because Cuaron finds the right tone in which to encase their arch-ness and still be effective to the story. Eleanor Bron, most widely known as the female lead in The Beatles’ movie Help!, is the best of the bunch as the heartless Miss Minchin. She’s cold and callous and hates Sara immediately, though we see in her eyes that she loves the money young Sara brings in. The turn in her eyes when she gets to treat the now penniless Sara like garbage is really chilling sometimes. But young Liesel Matthews, as Sara, really carries the movie well. Her 1,000 watt smile, piercing eyes, and compassion overcome any drawbacks the acting might present.

It might sound like a bit of a downer if you just read the plot description, but really it’s a childhood fantasy adventure story, and those rarely come and go without a happy ending. A Little Princess is a movie that respects its audience, doesn’t talk down to it, and doesn’t feel the need to pack a bunch of action in to try and keep your attention. Cuaron knows that we are empathetic creatures, and we innately want young Sara to succeed. “Beating the bad guys” just looks different in some stories than in others. Frances Hodgson Burnett’s other most famous story, The Secret Garden, was also made into a terrific family movie two years prior to this movie that would make for an amazing double feature if you wanted a terrific Hidden Gem night home with the family.

First Reformed

First Reformed nabbed Paul Schrader his first Academy Award nomination this year, for Best Original Screenplay. It was joyous and long overdue recognition for us film fans, and astounding to think that his scripts for Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, The Last Temptation of Christ, Affliction, and Bringing Out the Dead weren’t deemed worthy by the Academy. Now all of those but Affliction were from his long and fruitful relationship with Martin Scorsese, but Schrader is and has been an accomplished director in his own right as well. First Reformed deserves mention alongside his very best work as a director.

Schrader doesn’t make easy to digest movies. He makes movies that challenge and confront us. His movies have deep themes running through them, often tying in some way back to his strict religious upbringing and his struggle with spirituality once he reached adulthood. He’s also had a career long obsession with, uh, well, obsession. His newest main character, the Reverend Ernst Toller (Ethan Hawke) has lost his way. Not obsessed in the beginning of the film, but those that have lost their way often find it again once they find something to be passionate about. A former military chaplain, Toller convinced his son to sign up for the military as well, and within 6 months his son was dead in Iraq. He and his wife both blamed him for what happened, and divorced. He now spends his nights alone, drinking various liquors while he ignores the pain in his stomach and the fact that he’s peeing blood. During the day he gives tours of his upstate New York church, whose 250th anniversary is coming up soon. On Sundays he delivers his sermons to literally a handful of people.

Among those in the crowd are the pregnant Mary (Amanda Seyfried) and her husband Michael (Philip Ettinger). Mary one day asks Rev. Toller if he will counsel Michael, an environmental activist who wants Mary to abort their baby because he morally opposes bringing life into this world ravaged by chemical dumping and climate change. Michael arouses in Toller the kind of spiritual purpose he had previously lost. Toller becomes obsessed with the Christian notion of stewardship, the belief that God gave us dominion over the world and made it our responsibility to take care of it, something that we are desperately failing at and for which we will surely be punished by Him.

Toller has to also contend with the local megachurch, which subsidizes his own church. The megachurch is run by Rev. Joel Jeffers (Cedric Kyles, aka Cedric the Entertainer), whom Toller goes to see frequently and who acts as a sounding board for Toller, but who isn’t with him on his newfound passion. Jeffers would rather placate the big donors like local chemical company CEO’s, or the mayor/governor, or whomever. Schrader does something interesting here showing two good men both acting on their faith, but one being more flexible to the times, and the other acting on his newfound fundamentalism. Neither is shown to be right or wrong. I mean, we obviously don’t care for Jeffers and are on Toller’s side, but not in a good/bad way, Jeffers is a good man, it’s just that this is Toller’s story.
 
We go through much of the action while hearing Toller’s narration from a journal he’s decided to keep. Schrader uses the conceit of the journal just like he did in Taxi Driver, letting us in to the inner monologue of our protagonist, adding weight and interest to scenes that may not have had it otherwise. We know the Reverend’s thoughts and feelings, so we know and care why he’s acting the way he is. It’s a brilliant use of narration, something too many writers use as a crutch to cover up for bad storytelling but Schrader uses to deepen his characters.
 
Visually Schrader has said he drew much inspiration from formalists like Ingmar Bergman, Andrei Tarkovsky, and Robert Bresson. This ties back to a book Schrader wrote when he was still a film critic, 1972’s Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer, which was reissued around the release of First Reformed. Schrader has said those filmmaker’s sparse, contemplative visuals and storytelling were revelations to him. He’s said that those masters influenced him because “I sensed a bridge between the spirituality I was raised with and the ‘profane’ cinema I loved. And it was a bridge of STYLE not content. Church people had been using movies since they first moved to illustrate religious beliefs, but this was something different. The convergence of spirituality and cinema would occur in style not content. In the How, not the What.”
 
Schrader tries his best to reach moments of transcendence and while it won’t work for everyone, it did for me. I’ll admit that it took me a second viewing because the ending of the movie is unexpected, beautiful, and not immediately satisfying. Why does Toller do the things he does? Does he even do them? Is Toller alive at the end of the movie? The movie ends on a couple of notes of wordless transcendence and sometimes you have to be in the right head space for such an unconventionally bold choice from a filmmaker.

Paul Schrader has always been an interesting filmmaker. His terrific gritty first film, Blue Collar, had great central work from stars Harvey Keitel and Richard Pryor in a story of a group of blue collar workers planning to rob their employer. He followed it up with Hardcore, about George C. Scott playing detective and looking for the daughter who went missing, only to turn up in a porno. Then there was American Gigolo, with Richard Gere’s star making turn. Then he made his masterpiece, Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters. One of the most gorgeous movies ever made and a bold narrative that mixes biography of Japanese author Yukio Mishima with adaptation of some of his writing to further highlight aspects of his personality. Mishima is still Schrader’s magnum opus if you ask me, but First Reformed deserves mention alongside it. From the controlled visuals to the best work of Ethan Hawke’s great career, this Hidden Gem deserves to be revisited and studied just like the films of the masters Schrader feels himself indebted to.

Cinema Spotlight: Dash running from the Machines in The Incredibles

Just a quick little one today from one of my very favorite movies, The Incredibles. The moment is when Dash and Violet are being chased by the guys riding saw blade looking flying aircraft. Dash and Violet have been told their whole lives to hide their powers, to appear outwardly normal, not draw attention to themselves. This sequence is the first time they’ve really truly embraced their powers and are flexing those muscles for the first time. They’ve messed around at home, had little spurts of using their powers, but this is the first time really letting them loose.

The specific moment that has always struck me is when Dash is being chased by multiple flying machines through the jungle, but winces when he sees he’s about to hit water. He knows it’s over for him. Until that’s not what happens. Dash is running so fast that he can actually run on water. He lets out this devious, almost guttural, little laugh that kills me every time. It’s at once an “oh my god this is awesome” and “I didn’t know I could do this” and “this is crazy” and “holy shit I’m way more powerful than I even realized I was.” It’s such a perfect moment of filmmaking and voice acting that I almost tear up when I see it.

There are many great moments in The Incredibles, and I’m sure I’ll write about the others some day as well. This moment isn’t a big one, but I’ve not heard anyone else being touched by this quite like I was. So here it is, another great moment in cinema for me to spotlight

Cinema Spotlight: 3 Moments from The Mist

The Mist is almost a great horror movie. I think ultimately it’s too cheesy, awkward, searching for the right tone, and some of the actors are out of their depth (like our lead, and Andre Braugher seems to come from a different movie altogether), but there’s a lot of great stuff in there too. It’s another Stephen King adaptation from writer/director Frank Darabont, his third after The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile, and another worthy one. It's about a strange mist that befalls a small Maine community, bringing with it various monsters of untold origins (we later find it's through some inter-dimensional portal), who proceed to kill and terrorize the people of the town.

The first moment that comes to mind is during the oncoming of the titular mist. People look around confused and we start to hear sirens. Some call them air raid sirens, or tornado sirens where I’m from, but it’s the sound of oncoming danger and destruction, but it’s just mist, right? The mist even swallows the sound of the sirens, but that moment of hearing that sound filled me with a great sense of dread. That’s what you want in the beginning of a horror movie.

The next moment is a famous one from the movie, as the remaining survivors are driving along a road trying to escape the monsters in the mist and across their path comes a monster so large it shakes the ground all around it as it walks. It's covered in tentacles and makes a growling, roaring sound that is unlike anything we'd ever encounter in our world. This titanic god of a creature truly brings to mind the awe and scale of HP Lovecraft’s work, making us feel insignificant in comparison to this monster.

The last moment of the film I want to spotlight is the last moments of the film. After running out of gas as they’re driving away, seeing many grotesque bits of death and destruction around them, the group of 5 decide that it’s better to die at their own hand than be killed by the various beasts from the mist, so our lead David (Thomas Jane) shoots each one of the others with the gun they’d brought with them, including his young son. A devastated David lastly turns the gun on himself only to find it out of bullets. So David then steps out of the car, and awaits to get consumed by the mist. Instead, the mist recedes, and we see the US Army has closed the dimensional portal that allowed the mist and creatures to come through.

The Army has many survivors in tow, and they are exterminating any and all creatures they come across. David can do nothing but stand in shock as he realizes that not only were the groups suicides unnecessary and that they were only moments from being saved, but that they had actually been driving away from help the whole time. It’s a nihilistic and depressing ending, but handled extraordinarily well by Darabont. This is the moment that most feels like Jane is out of his depth as an actor, as his grief doesn’t feel believable and comes off a little goofy, but it doesn’t diminish this great and powerful ending, even as much of a downer as it is.

Whale Rider

2002’s Whale Rider was a movie that hit me like a ton of bricks when I first watched it. It’s the touching story of Paikea (Keisha Castle-Hughes), a 12 year old girl living on the coast of New Zealand with her grandparents. Her community is led by her strict grandfather Koro (Rawiri Paratene), who is searching for the next generation of leader, as Pai’s grieving father left the country after the death of his wife and Pai’s twin brother in childbirth. Paikea is obviously the best candidate to lead them going forward, but as Koro keeps telling her, girls can’t be the leader. It has to be a boy.

We’re first dropped into the story as Pai narrates her birth, including the death of her brother, who was destined to be the leader they needed. Her father, Porourangi (the great Cliff Curtis, playing his native Māori heritage for once instead of the Latinos or Middle Easterners that he frequently plays in Hollywood) named her Paikea, after the legend of the great leader that traveled from Hawaii to New Zealand on the back of a whale. Koro tells his son not to name her that, that’s a boy’s name and a leader’s name, but Porourangi insists. We then jump to 12 year old Pai and her lifelong struggle to connect to her grandpa who loves her but resents that she isn’t the boy he wanted to lead his community after he’s gone. Pai is comforted by her grandma Nanny (Vicky Haughton), but Pai is a sensitive kid who takes in all of her grandpa’s criticism and feels inadequate that she’s a girl. Koro decides to round up the boys in the community, teach them how to be men, and see which one is the best leader. Koro teaches them history, stick fighting, haka, and other traditions. The results are a mixed bag, at best.

We know from movie conventions that Pai will rise to lead the community and her grandpa will begrudgingly accept her even though she’s a girl. The pleasure of this movie isn’t in the surprises of the plot, but in the many details added to flesh it out. When Pai is turned away from the leadership classes and wants to learn stick fighting, she turns to her uncle, Rawiri (Grant Roa), who was a champion stick fighter in his youth but has degenerated into overeating and smoking pot with his girlfriend Shilo (Rachel House, who I was delighted to see turn up recently in fellow New Zealander Taika Waititi’s movie Thor: Ragnarok, as Jeff Goldblum’s irritable bodyguard). So Rawiri starts teaching Pai, and she learns faster than any of the boys. Meanwhile Rawiri starts exercising again, stepping up and finding himself after being spiritually awakened by helping teach Pai. You can see that Pai is unintentionally leading, just by being herself, inspiring those close to her to be better versions of themselves. The girl is a natural leader, but the one person who needs to see it is the one that doesn’t. Koro is too stuck in the old ways, the traditions. Those ways are dying because Koro is refusing to adapt.

All of this is handled so beautifully by writer/director Niki Caro. She handles her young actors very well, allowing some of the awkwardness of youth to shine through but not pushing it. The native traditions are all shown respectfully, affectionately. From the stories to the greetings to the respect shown to elders and the accompanying rebelliousness of the youth, so many aspects I recognize from our Native American culture here in the US are mirrored in this native culture of the Māori in New Zealand.

There are also gorgeously lyrical cutaways to whales swimming in the ocean throughout the movie. When I first watched it, I thought that these were just helping set a dreamy mood, but on my last watch-through I felt more like the whales were talking to Pai as she faced hard times in her life. At one point her father wants to take her back with him to Germany, where he’s living with his girlfriend, but as they’re leaving Pai stares off into the ocean and Caro cuts to the whales. You really get the sense that Pai is connected to this place, the whales are telling her not to leave. They need her. This place needs her. It adds a level of the almost supernatural to this story, which is again very connected to various native cultures, which have always been more accepting of the unexplainable in their stories.

Although not really similar, Whale Rider kept coming to my mind when watching Disney’s Moana a couple of years ago. Both are the stories of a young island girl learning her internal power and ultimately using it to lead her people. Of course, Moana is set in a fantasy world of myth and the islanders wear leis and hula skirts and all that kind of stereotypical stuff, while Whale Rider is set in modern times. Whale Rider deals with the gender bias of the native traditions, while Moana kind of side steps them as everyone just accepts that Moana will be chief and are fine with it. Both are ultimately great movies, I think, in different ways. They go different places but they’re almost like sister movies. Moana was definitely influenced by Whale Rider. It then strikes me that Niki Caro’s upcoming movie is next year’s live-action big budget Mulan remake for Disney. They’ve clearly taken notice of her work here in the story of a strong young girl.

The actors are all top notch here, headlined by Rawiri Paratene’s rigid Koro, whom we never doubt loves Pai, but he’s so stuck in his ways, so blind to her specialness, that he can’t see that his answer is right in front of him. He frustrates us in the audience, and Pai too, but she loves him anyway. Our lead, Keisha Castle-Hughes was, for a time, the youngest woman ever nominated for Best Actress at the Oscars, and she wholly deserved it for her sensitive, vulnerable, unaffected work here. In the best scene in the movie, a speech Pai gives in tribute to her grandfather, Castle-Hughes is heartbreaking. It’s a scene that has never failed to make me cry like a baby, and the biggest reason why is her brilliant performance.

Lastly, a quick word about the misleading PG-13 rating for the movie. Why was this wholesome family movie rated PG-13, you might ask? Bad language? Koro says the word “dick” twice. That’s it. Violence? There’s none. Sex? None. So why was it rated PG-13? Because when Pai goes to her uncle for help with stick fighting, we see a bag of weed and a pipe lying on his chest. We don’t see him smoke, we know that he did smoke, but it’s never given any dialog, any emphasis in any way, it’s just a thing sitting there. Boom, PG-13. It’s one of the most egregious ratings in the history of the MPAA that this perfect little Hidden Gem of a family movie was given a PG-13 rating. Please seek this movie out and watch with your family. I hope you love it as much as I do.

Cinema Spotlight: Cate Blanchett in The Aviator

I was very excited when I went to the theater to see The Aviator in 2004. Martin Scorsese has long been my favorite living filmmaker and this was going to be at least one part his tribute to classic Hollywood, with Jude Law as Errol Flynn, Kate Beckinsale as Ava Gardner, and most prominently Cate Blanchett as Katherine Hepburn. Blanchett was getting a lot of Oscar buzz and she is one of the best actresses on the planet and I knew she’d be great. So I was particularly disappointed when she came on screen, she and DiCaprio's Howard Hughes go golfing, and at one point she says "You're deaf, and I sweat. Aren't we a fine pair of misfits?" and I just thought “oh that sucks, she’s really fake. I don’t believe her in this role. I guess Hepburn is just too big an icon to believably portray.” I got used to her performance as the movie went on, but that feeling did stick with me. Upon rewatches of the movie, my mind changed.

The next year The Aviator played constantly on whatever movie channel I had at the time and I got sucked into watching it over and over again. It was during this time that I realized how genius Blanchett’s performance in the movie was. In those first scenes, of she and Hughes playing golf together, Blanchett isn’t being fake, Hepburn is. Hepburn is putting on a front to an aggressive man pursuing her. She’s barely listening to him, and they’re not really connecting. But it’s not a fault of the actress playing Hepburn, but of Hepburn herself. As the movie goes on, we see Hepburn let her guard down more and more in front of Hughes, until she’s one of his most trusted allies.

We also see the two of them visit her family in Connecticut and Hepburn falls into the kind of fakery that her family traffics in. None of them are listening to each other, they’re all making declarations and shouting their opinions and it overwhelms Hughes until he gets angry and leaves. He gets angry at her as well, telling her that she's being like a different person around them. She tells him that “the only real Kate, is your Kate” but in those first scenes I didn’t understand that at that point she isn’t “his Kate” and is being the fake person she so often is around people.

Blanchett fooled me just like Hepburn fooled Hughes. This isn’t a fake performance but one of our best actors doing some of her best work playing a fake person. Later, when she talks to Hughes of her brothers suicide or when they laugh together and tease each other, or when they break up, it’s real. Hughes even calls her out during their breakup, telling her to "stop acting." And at that point we can tell too, if we're paying attention. You can feel that Hepburn is acting, not being real. But when Hepburn was being fake, Blanchett was so brilliant that I forgot she was playing a character and thought she was giving a fake performance. I am so happy that I was wrong, and Blanchett really helps elevate The Aviator into becoming easily the most rewatchable Scorsese movie for me.

Cinema Spotlight: The Cereal Scene in The Hurt Locker

One of the most powerful scenes I’ve ever seen in a movie is a simple one in Kathryn Bigelow’s amazing Oscar winning movie The Hurt Locker. I’ve been told by soldiers that even though the movie doesn’t reflect the literal truth of what fighting in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars was like, it’s the best encapsulation of the feelings of fighting there and then returning home afterwards a changed person. It’s the returning home that’s often the problem. The Hurt Locker is hardly the first movie to deal with the issues of PTSD and the struggle of returning to civilian life after war, movies from The Best Years of Our Lives in the 40’s, to The Deer Hunter and Coming Home in the 70’s, to Born on the Fourth of July in the 80’s have all dealt with what it’s like to serve and to return home. But there’s a shot in The Hurt Locker that sums up the experience of Sergeant First Class Will James very understatedly and powerfully.

Will (Jeremy Renner, who owes his career to his tremendous work in this movie) has returned home from Iraq and is grocery shopping with his family. His wife (a thankless role for Evangeline Lilly) tells him to go get some cereal and meet her in the next aisle. We then see Will, blankly staring at this endless sea of cereal boxes, unable to choose one. This man who is a genius in the insane world of bomb defusing is overwhelmed by the mundane task of choosing a box of cereal. His skills are not applicable in this world. His ability to stay calm under immeasurable pressure is negated in regular civilization. He has been made into a specialist by the military and the situations in which he learned to thrive, and it robbed him, seemingly, of his humanity. He doesn’t make sense in this world.

The Hurt Locker opens with the quote “war is a drug.” This sounds insane, impossible, as we are taught to believe the line “war is hell”, and saying that it’s a drug seems counterintuitive. Who would want to keep going back to war the way that junkies go back to drugs? Exactly a guy like Will James, who has no life skills other than the very specialized ones he uses to defuse bombs. He can’t live in regular society, and sadly the movie ends with Will headed off to do another tour of duty in Iraq, not because he wants to fight, but because war is the only place he can feel normal.

The Hurt Locker is one of the greatest of war movies because it allows us into both the exciting action, as well as the hellish interior minds of the soldiers scarred by their service. The moment of Will standing dumbfounded in front of cereal has become the image most associated with the movie in my mind. One of the most powerful shots in cinema because of everything attached to such a seemingly innocuous task by the context in which Kathryn Bigelow expertly puts it in the story. She thoroughly deserved her Best Director and Best Picture Oscars for this movie.