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-

2016 Movie Report Card

Jackie - A+
Manchester By the Sea - A+
Don't Think Twice - A
The Edge of Seventeen - A
Loving - A
Moonlight - A
The BFG - A-
Hidden Figures - A-
The Jungle Book - A-
Lion - A-
The Meddler - A-
The Nice Guys - A-
The Secret Life of Pets - A-
Arrival - B+
De Palma - B+
Fences - B+
The Founder - B+
Hell or High Water - B+
La La Land - B+
10 Cloverfield Lane - B+
13th - B+
20th Century Women - B+
Zootopia - B+
Christine - B
Florence Foster Jenkins - B
The Girl on the Train - B
Hello, My Name Is Doris - B
The Shallows - B
The Conjuring 2 - B-
Deepwater Horizon - B-
Nocturnal Animals - B-
The Witch - B-
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story - C+
Rules Don't Apply - C+
Sausage Party - C+
Sully - C+
Bad Moms - C
Hail, Caesar! - C
The Purge: Election Year - C
Sing - C
The Lobster - C-
Suicide Squad - F

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: "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-

Review: "Sing"

Earlier this year, I fawned over Illumination Entertainment's The Secret Life of Pets, an endearing roller coaster ride of an animated feature that was exquisitely drawn, enthusiastically performed and sported one hell of an Alexandre Desplat original score to boot.

The studio's latest effort, I'm afraid, is lacking in all areas where Pets excelled, a haphazard, pedestrian film that rarely even stimulates a smile.

Writer-director Garth Jennings' Sing starts off on a decent-enough note, as we see the theater-owning koala bear Buster Moon (Matthew McConaughey) come up with an idea to save his failing, once-extravagant venue - a singing competition. The event draws far more attention than anticipated when Moon's bumbling secretary misprints the contest as having a grand prize 100 times the actual amount. This draws in a host of characters, few terribly interesting or funny, voiced by the likes of Reese Witherspoon, Scarlett Johansson, Seth MacFarlane and Nick Kroll, who belt out new and old Billboard hits.

Each A-lister has their own little subplot but there's not much to write home about. Only MacFarlane, as an arrogant mouse who croons like Sinatra, interjects some life into the proceedings. Perhaps superfans of American Idol and/or The Voice (or - sigh - the Pitch Perfect films) will get a kick out of the musical performances here but I was left mostly unmoved. And where Pets crafted a breathtaking Manhattan setting that really popped off the screen, Sing feels curiously claustrophobic and isn't all that visually striking.

Sing is animated cinema for only the most undemanding of moviegoers.

C

Review: "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story"

Fingers crossed this does not spur the wrath of franchise fanboys - I am not much a fan of Star Wars. I respect The Empire Strikes Back and get a real kick out of Return of the Jedi (largely on account of Jabba the Hut and those irresistible Ewoks) but A New Hope mostly bores me and I felt Episodes I, II and III often teetered on the hideously awful. I was entertained by last year's The Force Awakens but trust me, there was no urgency felt to revisit it anytime soon.

So, as you might imagine, I was not terribly pumped about the latest picture to sport the Star Wars name. There is, however, some good news to report - Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is not a complete miss, on the level of The Phantom Menace or Attack of the Clones. It is still, I'm afraid, not an especially great film.

Rogue One opens with scientist Galen Erso (Mads Mikkelsen) being plucked away from his peaceful home life by the malicious Orson Kreenic (Ben Mendelsohn) to work for the Empire. Years down the road, he is the lead engineer for that notorious, seemingly unstoppable weapon, the Death Star. Galen's daughter Jyn (Felicity Jones), who fled the scene when Orson took her father, teams up with a Rebel spy (Diego Luna) and other members of the resistance to take on Orson and hopefully destroy the Death Star. There are, of course, plenty of bumps, explosions, one-liners and half-baked action sequences along the way.

Despite an accomplished cast and screenplay by the usually reliable Tony Gilroy and Chris Weitz, Rogue One never quite takes off. It's not a bad film but rather one that just kind of sits there, as you wait for something fabulously exciting to happen (it never does). Jones, who was superb two years ago in The Theory of Everything, has a nice screen presence here but isn't given a whole lot to do. Even less meat is on the bone for her talented co-stars to devour. Only Mendelsohn really shines, as the film's one truly compelling character.

Michael Giacchino's original score is no John Williams but also not half-bad. Visually, the picture is not as striking as the last entry, or the first three pictures released, but at least it's not the same wall-to-wall, head-inducing CGI of Episodes I, II and III. Even as someone not enamored with this series, I sorely missed past characters, so much more memorable and fun than this bland crowd.

Could someone please make a spin-off for me with just Jabba, the Ewoks and Yoda?

C+

Review: "Fences"

The two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning August Wilson was, I would argue, one of the finest American playwrights of the 20th century. Prior to his death at age 60 in 2005, he had penned 16 plays, including a collection of 10, dubbed "The Pittsburgh Cycle," depicting the African-American experience in Pittsburgh in each decade of the century. His piece set in the 1950s, Fences, won Wilson his first Pulitzer and only career Tony Award in Best Play.

Now, Fences has been adapted to the big screen by leading man and director Denzel Washington, who brought along with him most of his fellow cast from the immensely successful, Tony-winning 2010 revival of the play. This marks the first time a Wilson play has been brought to the silver screen and the result, while imperfect, still packs a solid punch.

Fences focuses on the Maxson family - father and breadwinner Troy (Washington), his wife Rose (Viola Davis) and their son Cory (Jovan Adepo). There's also Troy's brother Gabe (Mykelti Williamson), whose head injury in World War II left him mentally impaired; Bono (Stephen Henderson), Troy's best friend and a constant presence in the Maxson house; and Lyons (Russell Hornsby), Troy's estranged son, whose dreams of becoming a musician don't sit well with his father. That's largely on account of Troy's failing earlier in life to become a professional baseball player, something he believes was on account of the color of his skin but, in actuality, was due to his age. That sentiment creates great conflict in the home when Cory gets scouted by a college football team - something Troy is adamantly against - and blood further boils among the Maxsons when Troy reveals something to Rose that will forever alter their marriage.

Wilson's words are stirring as ever in Fences and the acting is dazzling all-around. Davis, who is largely relegated to the background in the film's first half, walks away with the picture's back half in a powerhouse, enormously empathetic turn. Adepo is a great find and Henderson a real charmer, managing to steal moments with a simple smile. In the demanding and commanding role of Troy, Washington does fine work selling Wilson's brilliant dialogue. His performance does, however, seem more tailored to the stage than screen - where Davis has toned down her delivery a bit to fit the new medium, Washington is still playing the back row of the balcony.

Washington's direction of Fences is a bit on the staid side - considering this, The Great Debaters and Antwone Fisher collectively, he certainly seems a more compelling force in front of, as opposed to behind the camera. The picture recalls recent stage-to-screen adaptations like August: Osage County and Doubt that, without a great filmmaker calling the shots, got all of their mileage out of the screenplay and performances.

That isn't to say Fences is a bad film in the least - it's a must-see for Davis's performance alone. And I would love to see additional Wilson works adapted to the screen, except preferably with another, more daring director at the helm.

B+

Review: "La La Land"

Ah, the movie musical. When done right, it can create more magic upon the silver screen than any other film genre. Singin' in the Rain, All That Jazz, even Little Shop of Horrors - all make me swoon. I've been all too often underwhelmed, however, by recent offerings - ho-hum stage-to-screen adaptations of the likes of The Producers, The Phantom of the Opera and Les Miserables, among others. Even the Oscar-winning Chicago I felt missed the mark, albeit to a lesser extent than those three.

So, I was of course ecstatic when I first heard about filmmaker Damien Chazelle - whose Whiplash I was completely head-over-heels for - collaborating with the endlessly charming Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling on an original (!) musical for the big screen. Oddly enough, the result, La La Land, is something I think works a bit better as a love story than it does a musical.

The story - Mia (Stone), an aspiring actress who works as a barista on a Hollywood studio lot, meets Sebastian (Gosling), a brilliant jazz pianist who makes ends meet playing uninspiring Christmas jingles at a restaurant. Their brief first encounter is during a moment of road rage on a busy Los Angeles highway. Mia later discovers Sebastian playing a gorgeous composition at the restaurant (which gets him fired from that gig) and sees him perform again (a not-so-gorgeous tune this time) at a party months later.

At this point, they (at last!) start to warm up to each other, and Mia and Sebastian create plenty of adorable moments, but the relationship is greatly tested by their careers. Mia finds herself rejected in audition after audition, while Sebastian is pressured to abandon his classic jazz sound for something more mainstream and pop-heavy. The love between these two is palpable and undeniable but hey, we're talking about a city infamous for building dreamers up, only to tear them down.

Scattered throughout the picture are, of course, an array of original songs, composed by Justin Hurwitz, who also worked on Chazelle's Whiplash. There are some goodies here - I particularly liked "Audition (The Fools Who Dream)," performed by Stone, and "Mia and Sebastian's Theme," a key piano composition of Sebastian's - but I have to admit, I did not leave the theater humming a whole lot. The splashy opening number "Another Day of Sun" was all too reminiscent to me of those cheesy late-'90s Gap commercials that brought swing music back to the mainstream. Other tunes are well-choreographed on the screen but fail to much resonate beyond the dancing. Still, the Hurwitz orchestrations on the whole are pretty great and Chazelle has a fine grasp on how to effectively shoot a musical.

Beyond the music, there are of course the film's stars, Stone and Gosling, both of who truly dazzle here. Yes, they're irresistible to watch, and can sing and dance pretty darn well to boot, but these are two powerful, subtle, even often times heartbreaking turns, worthy of all the attention they've garnered thus far. When Mia abandons a dud of a date to join Sebastian at a screening of Rebel Without a Cause? Talk about sparks flying.

From a technical perspective, the picture looks terrific, with lovely cinematography by Linus Sandgren and production design by David Wasco. The film is edited by Tom Cross, who won a richly deserved Oscar for his work on Whiplash.

Is La La Land among the all-time great movie musicals? Not in the least. I don't even think it's Chazelle's strongest film or quite among the best pictures of 2016. It is, however, a real charmer and an immense delight to sit back and watch Stone and Gosling take over the screen. And hey, even if it's not a great musical, it'd still be pretty sweet if this film inspires non-musical lovers to check out some of the older, better stuff.

B+

Review: "Jackie"

Not long after the assassination of her husband, First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy invited acclaimed political journalist and historian Theodore White to the Kennedy Compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts to discuss the 35th U.S. president's legacy. The interview resulted in a Life Magazine essay that famously, at the suggestion of the first lady, drew a parallel between the late president and King Arthur of Camelot.

Director Pablo Larrain's captivating Jackie - one of the year's finest motion pictures, if perhaps not the best - utilizes this conversation as a means to delve into the psyche of the first lady (Natalie Portman, in a dead-on, tour-de-force turn that somehow manages to outdo her Oscar-winning Black Swan performance), before, during and following the tragic events of November 22, 1963.

We watch as Kennedy films her immensely successful A Tour of the White House with Mrs. John F. Kennedy television special and are treated to select few, rich moments of the glory days of the Kennedy presidency, when the White House was filled with grand entertainment and joy. Then, of course, there are the horrors of that fall day in Dallas, Texas, the gruesomeness of the assassination itself and the whirlwind nature of the events to follow for the first lady, from Lyndon B. Johnson's abrupt swearing-in to the presidency to the countless and complex arrangements Kennedy needed to make over the days to follow. There are powerful scenes between the first lady and the grieving Robert F. Kennedy (Peter Sarsgaard), her longtime friend and assistant Nancy Tuckerman (Greta Gerwig) and the warm and enlightening Father Richard McSorley (John Hurt).

While there are a number of impressive, convincing performances to be found throughout Jackie - beyond those mentioned, John Carroll Lynch (as LBJ), Beth Grant (as Lady Bird Johnson) and Billy Crudup (as White) are also memorable - this is of course largely still a one-woman show, and Portman completely nails it. Not a false note is struck as Portman goes through a plethora of emotions, and she's greatly supported by Larrain's brilliant, often Kubrick-like direction and a marvelous screenplay by Noah Oppenheim.

Jackie is a true sight to behold, and to listen to, for that matter. The look and feel of the time is captured beautifully by costume designer Madeline Fontaine, cinematographer Stephane Fontaine and production designer Jean Rabasse. Mica Levi's dazzling, often overwhelming original score is surely one of the year's best.

Natalie, go get that Oscar #2!

A+