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.