Review: "Lion"

As director Garth Davis' Oscar-nominated Lion opens, five-year-old Saroo (Sunny Pawar, in a wonderful screen debut) is waiting at a train station for his brother Guddu (Abhishek Bharate) when he accidentally falls asleep aboard a dormant train and awakens in the morning, the moving vehicle now countless miles across India, in Calcutta.

With no understanding of the local Bengali language, Saroo wanders the city with impressive street smarts and is eventually placed in an orphanage. Not long after, with his family unable to ever track him down and vice versa, he is adopted by an Australian couple (Nicole Kidman and David Wenham), who whole-heartedly adore Saroo from the get-go.

This opening half of Lion suggests a masterpiece in cinema. It's sumptuously photographed, with cinematography by Greig Fraser, features a stirring original score by Hauschka and Dustin O'Halloran and boasts that delightful, engaging performance by Pawar, who has an enormous screen presence. Kidman is fantastic too, in scenes both early and later in the film, though I do wish her character was more fleshed-out.

Lion's latter half, I'm afraid, isn't quite on-par with its exceptional start. In this portion of the picture, set 25 years later, an adult Saroo (Dev Patel) is now residing in Melbourne, where he studies hotel management. Following an evening of Indian cuisine with friends and his girlfriend Lucy (Rooney Mara), Saroo finds himself overcome with flashbacks to his childhood. His friends suggest he utilize Google Earth to finally locate his hometown and before long, this search becomes an obsession for Saroo.

These scenes, while competently filmed and performed, don't pack the same punch as those featuring Pawar. Moreover, Mara, who should have won last year's Best Supporting Actress Oscar for Carol, is obscenely underused in a thankless role. Only toward the film's conclusion does it muster the same impact as earlier but these moments are also a tad dampened by the use of a bombastic original song by Sia.

Even if Lion overall does not live up to the sky-high promise of its first hour, the picture is still an immensely moving one and deserving of the recognition it's so far garnered.

A-

Review: "The Founder"

John Lee Hancock is not exactly among my favorite filmmakers. Sans a decent performance here and there, his The Blind Side and Saving Mr. Banks largely bored me to tears. These and other efforts struck me as heart-tugging mush, without a whole lot of style or ingenuity to speak of.

This lack of cinematic flourish, I'm happy to report, is not nearly as much on display in Hancock's latest picture, The Founder. This time around, the director is working from a fine screenplay (from The Wrestler scribe Robert Siegel) and alongside three marvelous actors, all operating at the tops of their games. It's a movie that marks a plenty respectable finish to 2016 in film.

The Founder opens in 1954 with the floundering, yet mightily determined Illinois salesman Ray Kroc (Michael Keaton) bouncing around from one drive-in restaurant to another, trying, with minimal success, to sell his latest milkshake mixers. At last, one eatery in southern California bites - a successful little hamburger joint called McDonald's. Kroc heads west and is head-over-heels for the place, established by brothers Dick (Nick Offerman) and Mac (John Carroll Lynch) McDonald. He sees their speedy method of making food as a winner, with enormous franchise potential. So, Kroc manages to get the McDonalds on board with expanding their baby but conflict between the entrepreneurs rises as McDonald's becomes a runaway hit and Kroc leaves the McDonald brothers in the dust.

All of the material here featuring the McDonald brothers packs a real punch. It's a mouth-watering delight watching the burger-making process, and there's a particularly inventive scene in which Dick and Mac, alongside their first employees, work on a tennis court to figure out the appropriate operation. There are also several moments of tremendous tension later in the picture, as the McDonalds become more and more irrelevant to the juggernaut that is Kroc's McDonald's.empire. It is a true pleasure seeing Offerman and Lynch with prime big screen roles like this, and Keaton is a blast to watch as the ruthlessly committed Kroc.

If The Founder has any real misstep, it is in the casting of top-notch actors like Laura Dern, Patrick Wilson and Linda Cardellini in thankless supporting turns that act more as window dressing than roles of real significance. That quibble aside, the film is a lot of fun, Kroc's warts and all.

B+

Review: "Split"

M. Night Shyamalan's The Sixth Sense is, for my money, one of the finest horror films of the past quarter-century, a stirring, unsettling, expertly filmed picture that deserved all of its half dozen Oscar nominations.

Ever since that 1999 release, unfortunately, it's been downhill for this supposed master of the supernatural. Unbreakable and Signs were watchable, albeit a remarkable step down from his breakthrough film, while subsequent releases just got worse and worse until Shyamalan entirely skid off the road into Razzie Award territory.

Shyamalan's latest effort is, I'm pleased to report, not an unqualified disaster, even if it never comes remotely close to reaching the heights of The Sixth Sense.

Split opens with Kevin (James McAvoy) abducting three teenage girls from a parking lot. They awaken in a windowless room and are quickly introduced to, among others, the likes of "Hedwig," "Patricia" and "Dennis" - that is, a few of Kevin's 23 alternate personalities. There are attempts to escape or trick Kevin but ultimately, only loner Casey (Anya Taylor-Joy) proves smart and resourceful enough to be a real match to their captor. When Kevin isn't tormenting his prey, he's visiting with his psychiatrist (Betty Buckley), who has come to know Kevin's many personalities all too well.

The opening half or so of Split is reasonably entertaining, if never, ever actually scary. It plays almost like a cross between 10 Cloverfield Lane and Raising Cain, though it's rarely as compelling as either of those two pictures. The opening credits are truly fantastic and Hitchcockian. The thing is, a little of Kevin/Hedwig/Dennis/etc. goes a long way and, by the one-hour mark, I was plenty ready to bid him farewell. And, as is all too often the case with the director's pictures, Split really takes a nosedive toward its end.

McAvoy's scenery-chewing performance, while amusing, is no Joanne Woodward in The Three Faces of Eve. More satisfying are the badass Taylor-Joy, who was also terrific in last year's The Witch, and Buckley, the legendary, Tony-winning star of the stage, in a rare big screen appearance, with a juicy supporting role.

Split isn't without its pleasures but still, wait 'til it's on HBO.

C+

Review: "20th Century Women"

In Santa Barbara, CA, circa 1979, adolescent boy Jamie Fields (Lucas Jade Zumann) is screwing around with his pals when he passes out and is rushed to the hospital, where he later awakens to the sight of his exasperated mother Dorothea (Annette Bening). A single mom who fears she's becoming more and more disconnected from her son, Dorothea calls on two young women, Abbie (Greta Gerwig) and Julie (Elle Fanning), to become more involved in Jamie's upbringing.

Writer-director Mike Mills' 20th Century Women finds this to be an eye-opening and challenging experience for all involved. The free-spirited photographer Abbie, who also happens to be a tenant of Dorothea's, introduces Jamie to the L.A. punk scene and teaches him about love, but it's Abbie's battle with cervical cancer that most shakes the young man. Meanwhile, Jamie has long been in love with neighbor Julie, who deeply cherishes their friendship and isn't so keen on taking their relationship to that level. There's also William (Billy Crudup), the ever-present handyman also navigating his way through this crazy and complicated time.

Given the era in which it's set and careful attention to dialogue and character detail, 20th Century Women often has the feel of something Norman Lear would have produced in his prime. It's a more compelling picture overall than Mills' breakout success Beginners, which was carried heavily on the shoulders of Christopher Plummer's exquisite, Oscar-winning turn, even if 20th Century doesn't sport a performance quite on that high level. The acting is still fine all-around, however, with Gerwig and Fanning both terrific in rich, intriguing roles.

Then, of course, there is Bening, truly the heart of the film, in perhaps her most memorable turn since The American President more than two decades ago. It's a warm, funny, lived-in performance that in most years would be a shoo-in for an Oscar nomination. While it won't be this year, someday, inevitably I would hope, this marvelous actress will at last take home the golden guy.

B+

Review: "Hidden Figures"

It was in a history textbook in high school that I first came upon the name Katherine Johnson. I can vividly remember the photo of her and the caption, which noted Johnson as a trailblazing mathematician who worked for NASA during the Space Race. In the years, following, however I hadn’t come across her name again – that is, until President Barack Obama honored Johnson in 2015 with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, in recognition of her efforts in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).

Now, more than half a century since Johnson calculated the trajectory for the space flight of Alan Shepard (the first American in space), comes an inspiring and plenty entertaining motion picture highlighting the tremendous accomplishments – and struggles – of Johnson and other African-Americans in the space program.

As the Hidden Figures opens, Johnson (Taraji P. Henson), Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer) and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monae) are working in the segregated, dungeon-like West Area Computers division at the Langley Research Center. With the Soviet Union making headway in the Space Race, through cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin becoming the first person to orbit Earth, the brilliant Johnson is recruited by Al Harrison (Kevin Costner), director of the Space Task Group, to conduct research and calculations that will lead to John Glenn (Glen Powell)’s orbiting of the planet. Johnson is beyond qualified for the job but that hardly makes this white sausage fest of an office all too welcoming of an African-American woman.

Meanwhile, Vaughan has a tense relationship with her cold-as-ice supervisor (Kirsten Dunst) and fears she and her colleagues may become disposable to NASA, given the rise of computers. The picture also focuses on Jackson’s strides to go from the title of ‘mathematician’ to ‘engineer’ – a feat that requires an advanced degree that locally can only be obtained at an all-white institution.

The film, directed by Theodore Melfi and written by Melfi and Allison Schroeder, is a genuine crowd-pleaser, packed with humor, delightful performances and – even when you know some of the outcomes – a fair share of suspense too. Spencer, as always, is a natural scene-stealer, and between this and Moonlight, 2016 has proven one hell of a year for Monae. (Moonlight star Mahershala Ali has a nice turn here too, portraying a suitor of Johnson’s.) Hidden Figures also offers a prime supporting role for Costner, nicely cast as a man whose entire life seems to revolve around the space program.

The true shining star of this film, however, is Henson, pitch-perfectly convincing and charming as can be as this amazing woman. Here is an actress who, frankly, does not always select the finest scripts, but here hits a grand slam. She’d make a fine Best Lead Actress Oscar nominee this year, crowded as that category may be.

When it comes to motion pictures about NASA, The Right Stuff remains tops but Hidden Figures really ain’t too far behind.

A-