Sophie Jones (2020) [NR] ****

An edited film review by Roxana Hadadi for rogerebert.com on Mar. 8, 2021.

Is there ever a point at which grief gets easier? 16-year-old Sophie Jones (Jessica Barr) is going through it. Her mother has recently died. She feels tangible distance from her sister Lucy (Charlie Jackson) and their father Aaron (Dave Roberts). Every day feels like a struggle that just bleeds into another, and another, and another. Nothing feels right - and that unease, when coupled with Sophie’s adolescent sexual awakening, makes for a complicated mix that Sophie Jones tracks with rawness, poignancy, and slightly too much vagueness.

The film is a family affair, directed by Jessie Barr and written by Jessie and her cousin Jessica, who also stars in Sophie Jones as its titular teenager. The Barrs drew from their own personal experiences as adolescents who each lost a parent to cancer, and the result is that Sophie Jones feels deeply authentic in its understanding of grief. There are no grand blowouts here, no massively emoting moments. Instead, Sophie Jones rejects linear storytelling to operate more as a series of vignettes, spread out over two or so years, which follow Sophie as she struggles to mourn her mother, develop her own personality, and explore her sexual identity. We jump forward sometimes days, sometimes weeks, sometimes months, but the focus is always two-pronged: the inner sadness Sophie carries that she rarely shares with anyone else, and the outer sexual confidence - tiptoeing into aggression - that she displays as she jumps from boy to boy.

On the one hand, this centers Jessica Barr’s organic, naturalistic performance, allowing the actress space to work out the myriad oppositional complexities related to mourning and desire. When we meet Sophie, she’s opening the bag of her mother’s ashes, sifting through them with her fingers, and putting some in her mouth (something she’ll do as a defensive mechanism throughout the film). Is it macabre that in the next scene, she’s swiping on some lip gloss and sucking on a lollipop while proposing a hookup with classmate Kevin (Skyler Verity)? Maybe, but this sort of vacillation is Sophie’s new normal. She hasn’t been doing drugs, drinking, or engaging in self-harm, she tells a therapist - but what she doesn’t share is that her sexual experimentation is gaining her a certain reputation.

No interaction is exactly the same. There’s Kevin, who clearly has feelings for Sophie that go further than just their hookups; she shuts him down. There’s Tony (Chase Offerle) a senior who tells a friend of an acquaintance Kate (Sam Kamerman) that he thinks Sophie is cute; suddenly she’s planning to lose her virginity to him. There’s Riley (Tristan Decker) Sophie’s closest male friend, who has been by her side since third grade and who has never made a move - but whom Sophie tries to forcibly kiss in her car. Sophie’s grief and her sexual choices are probably interlinked, as Sophie’s worried best friend Claire (Claire Manning) suggests, but Sophie doesn’t care about being looked down upon by her classmates. So what if other girls laugh at her? So what if a random acquaintance pulls her aside to tell her she’s embarrassing herself? Could any of that really be worse than losing her mother? Sophie Jones doesn’t shy away from the reactions Sophie receives, but it refuses to judge her, either.

That’s an admirable, arguably essential, quality for coming-of-age stories; think of how other recent films in this subgenre, like Lady Bird, Skate Kitchen, and Hala, also treat their female characters with the respect that previous generations of films about young women often lacked. Sophie Jones equates being inside its character’s headspace with being close to her physically: tight shots of her profile as she drives around, a floating camera in her bedroom as she somberly thinks about her mother, and well-edited hookup scenes that capture her gleeful abandon or painful regret. But on the other hand, Sophie Jones sometimes stumbles in this narrowness. The film’s alignment with Sophie is so thorough that there are no scenes without her, which makes some of these time jumps disorienting. If we’ve been with Sophie this whole time, how did weeks just pass? When did the relationship she suddenly has with one of these guys occur? What happened in the time between, say, New Year’s, and when Sophie is suddenly getting ready to leave for college? The narrative connections are sometimes so hazy that Sophie’s behavior reads more as erratic than it does spontaneous, and additional plot details in the Barrs’ script might have better contextualized some of her personality shifts.

Nevertheless, this approach favors Jessica Barr’s inhabiting of the character she helped write, and that is undoubtedly the greatest strength of Sophie Jones. Watching it, I was reminded of Margaret Atwood’s quote from the novel Alias Grace: When you are in the middle of a story it isn't a story at all, but only a confusion. Nearly every scene in Sophie Jones is either meditative or combative in some way, and Barr nails the flickering, shifting, visceral emotions of adolescence. The deadpan way she says of oral sex, I could just bite his dick off if I wanted to, and then her little laugh afterward; her utterly unimpressed delivery of, This is sex? This is it?; the way her face shifts from tense rapture to barely veiled perturbation when Kevin asks her, You’re on birth control, right?; how she lets her sentences trail off when she’s tired of a conversation. Even when the script relies too much on her affect, the actress remains impressively self-possessed, and the film’s framing of her is evocative. Sophie Jones is a promising effort from both Barr women. [Hadadi's rating: 3 stars out of 4]

Labels: drama, high-school, teenager
IMDb 54/100
MetaScore (critics=72, viewers=tbd)
RottenTomatoes Averages (critics=72, viewers=80)
Blu-ray
Roxana Hadadi review 

The Queen’s Gambit (2020) [TV-MA] ***** (updated January 25, 2023)

A film review by Allison Shoemaker for rogerebert.com on Oct. 23, 2020.

When you read the words Netflix limited drama series about addiction, obsession, trauma, and chess, the first adjective which springs to mind is probably not thrilling. But here we are, and The Queen’s Gambit, Scott Frank’s adaptation of Walter Tevis’ coming-of-age novel of the same name, absolutely demands the use of thrilling. Anchored by a magnetic lead performance and bolstered by world-class acting, marvelous visual language, a teleplay that’s never less than gripping, and an admirable willingness to embrace contradiction and ambiguity, it’s one of the year’s best series. While not without flaws, it is, in short, a triumph. And it is satisfying not just as a compelling period drama, a character study, and a feast for the eyes. It’s also, at its heart, a sports movie wrapped up in the vestments of a prestige TV series. Ask yourself this: When is the last time you fist-pumped the air over chess? Isn’t that something you deserve?

Odds are that Beth Harmon (the remarkable Anya Taylor-Joy) will earn quite a few fist-pumps as people discover Frank and co-creator Alan Scott’s excellent series. We meet Beth as an eight-year-old (Isla Johnson) when she’s left impossibly unharmed - physically, at least - by the car crash that kills her mother. Her father’s not in the picture, so Beth finds herself at the Methuen Home, a Christian school for orphans in Mt. Sterling, Kentucky. While there, she develops three things: a friendship with Jolene (newcomer Moses Ingram, excellent), a passion for chess, and a physical and emotional dependence on the little green tranquilizers fed to the children until they’re outlawed by the state of Kentucky. When she finally leaves the school, she’s got those last two things packed in her suitcase alongside a bunch of chess books, a sizable ego, some unexplored trauma, and no small amount of self-loathing. But it’s the game that drives her, sending her both to the heights of the competitive chess world and, increasingly, to her hoard of pills and the oblivion offered by alcohol.

In short, Beth has a lot to handle. Luckily, Anya Taylor-Joy is more than up to the task. Playing Beth from 15 onward, Taylor-Joy gives the kind of performance that only becomes more riveting the longer you sit with it. It’s a turn of both intoxicating glamour and precious little vanity, internal without ever being closed-off, heartbreakingly vulnerable and sharply funny, often at once. Much of the story hinges on when and how Beth is alone - and sometimes she’s most alone when surrounded by people - and Taylor-Joy’s performance is particularly remarkable in these moments. Scenes of Beth alone in her home, in a stranger’s apartment, on a plane, in her bed at night - they all hum with the kind of energy that only arises when one is truly unobserved. In this case, however, she’s creating that energy in a room full of cameras and crew members. That kind of honesty and release is the stuff of acting legend, like Eleanora Duse’s blush. It’s yet another high watermark in a young career already full of them, and somehow she’s never better than when Beth is sitting silently behind a chess board.

We’ll come back to those scenes, but it would be a mistake to assume that Taylor-Joy’s only great scene partner is the camera, gazing from across the 64 squares of the board. Frank and casting director Ellen Lewis assembled an ensemble of heavy-hitters, including the great Bill Camp as Mr. Shaibel, the isolated janitor who introduces Beth to the game, Thomas Brodie-Sangster (as Benny Watts) and Harry Melling (as Harry Beltik) two young men who are first chess rivals, then lovers and eventually allies in the chess world, the wonderful (if underused) Moses Ingram, and actor / writer / director Marielle Heller, who gives a hypnotic performance as the fragile, damaged, compassionate Alma Wheatley, the woman who eventually welcomes Beth into her home. There’s not a dud in the bunch; even the actors who show up for a scene or two at most give performances that feel fully inhabited. It’s a stunner of an ensemble.

And here’s a bonus: they all look incredible. The Crown is rightly praised for its sumptuous, detailed production design and costuming, and The Queen’s Gambit will likely find itself compared to its Netflix predecessor with some frequency. But for all the strengths of The Crown, it rarely showcases the kind of imagination on display here. Costume designer Gabriele Binder, hair and makeup head Daniel Parker, and production designer Uli Hanisch (the latter of Cloud Atlas, Sense8, and Babylon Berlin) do much more than capture the look and feel of the 1960s in the United States and abroad. They use that aesthetic to illuminate Beth’s mindset. When does Beth embrace the wilder aspects of ‘60s makeup? Why, when she’s balancing precariously on the edge and her thick eyeliner serves to make her look even thinner and more fragile. That’s one example of many. It’s incredibly thoughtful and stylish. Consider it isolated breakdown chic.

The aesthetic of Beth’s inner world is also explored, though to detail what that looks like and what it means is to diminish some of the pleasure (and anxiety) it engenders. Just know that it lends Beth’s struggles a visceral energy that most stories of addiction tend to either take for granted or overplay. And for the most part, that care and thoughtfulness is found in all of the tropes present in The Queen’s Gambit (and there are plenty of tropes - this is a sports movie in disguise, after all). That said, Frank’s largely excellent teleplays do occasionally stumble, particularly when it comes to race (Jolene deserves better) and gender. The latter is a shortcoming shared with Frank’s Godless - both have their hearts in the right place, but are perhaps not as thoughtful or insightful when it comes to sex, love, and the realities of a patriarchal society than they believe themselves to be.

Frankly, it’s hard to get too worked up about those shortcomings thought, especially when the chess starts. The chess! My god, the chess. Like any good sports movie, this character-driven period drama lives and dies by its editing. Editor Michelle Tesoro should go ahead and buy a bookshelf for all the hardware she’s about to pick up for The Queen’s Gambit right now; the chess sequences are all electric, and each in its own way. One will make you hold your breath. Two will likely bring you to tears. Some are funny. Some are infuriating. Some are, somehow, very, very sexy. Each is electric, and Tesoro and Taylor-Joy make them so through skill, talent, and precision. (Some credit here is also due to chess consultants Bruce Pandolfini and Garry Kasparov. I know very little about chess, but somehow The Queen’s Gambit convinced me otherwise and dazzled me all at once.)

Every truly great sports story has not one, but two beating hearts. There’s the sport itself, a game or competition in which the viewer becomes undeniably invested. And then there’s the player or players, someone whose life is much bigger than the game, yet is nevertheless somewhat consumed by it. The Queen’s Gambit has both those hearts, and both are racing. Frank, Taylor-Joy, and company never stop telling both those stories at once, and the result is a fascinating portrait of a young woman fighting to become the person she wants to be, battling for victory and for peace. When her journey brings her to Paris, she remembers the words of a woman who loved her and spends some time wandering museums, feeding her soul with something more than chess. Yet there’s never any doubt that somewhere, in some corner of her mind, she’s got her eyes on the board. What a privilege it is to see that corner and see the world’s beauty, all at once. [Shoemaker’s rating: 3.5 stars out of 4 = 88%]

Blogger's comments and links:

The ending scene takes place in Moscow early in 1968, the morning after Beth defeated Vasily Borgov to win the Moscow Invitational Tournament. She is on the way to the airport to leave Moscow, accompanied by her CIA handler, when she asks the driver to stop because she wants to walk. She walks down the promenade where she knows elderly gentlemen gather to play chess outdoors, and of course they recognize her and clearly they love her. For a girl who never knew her own father, and who had a father figure in the orphanage janitor Willian Shaibel who taught her to play chess, this is fulfillment - to be appreciated, even worshipped in Russia, a country obsessed with the game of chess. The first gentleman to recognize her then invites her to sit down. They set up the chess board, Beth removes her gloves, and the last word of the film is her saying sygrayem, pronounced sy.GRY.em, Russian for Let's Play. LINK

The Queen's Gambit ending explained; the major moments that wrapped up the story. LINK TO CINEMABLEND WEBPAGE

If the ending to the film made you tear up, you are not alone. It made Anya Taylor-Joy cry as well. LINK TO REFINERY29 ARTICLE

Beth Harmon's final word in the film is sygrayem which literally means Let's Play in Russian. LINK TO TRANSLATION WEBSITE

Magnus Carlsen (world chess champion since 2013) breaks down Harmon v Borgov final game from The Queen's Gambit LINK

 

The Queen's Gambit guide to Lexington, Kentucky LINK

Labels: chess, drama, Fifties, high-school, romance, rom-drama-faves, Sixties, teenager

IMDb 86/100 
MetaScore (critics=79, viewers=30) 
RottenTomatoes Averages (critics=96, viewers=94) 

Allison Shoemaker review 

Soundtrack

 

 

Blogger's comments on the novel:

The Walter Tevis novel of the same name strongly resembles the TV series, especially in the use of dialogue and narration from the novel. However, there are some notable differences (SPOILERS AHEAD). While Beth visualizes games in her head, she does not visualize them on the ceiling of her room. Townes has a much smaller part in the novel, he is not identified as gay and he does not appear at the 1968 Russian Invitational Tournament in the last episode. Cleo, whom Beth meets in Benny's NYC apartment, is an American girl named Jenny in the novel. She is not at the 1967 Paris Remy-Vallon tournament that Beth loses to Borgov. In the novel, Beth participates in the 1968 Kentucky State Chess Championship and loses. In the miniseries she goes to the tournament, has an argument with Harry Beltik in the parking lot and does not participate in the tournament. Jolene does not contact Beth; Beth gets her phone number from Mrs. Deardorff at Methuen. Jolene is living in Louisville. She was a Phys. Ed. major at Kentucky State University and through her efforts Beth goes to a gym every day for several months, gets in shape physically and gets her drinking and Librium addiction under control.

 

Being a visual person and loving film, especially romantic drama and comedy, I have to say that I much prefer the miniseries. Now, if we were comparing a 243-page paperback novel with a 2-hour film it might not be a fair comparison, but we are comparing it with a 393-minute (6hr 33min) 7-part miniseries. If a person read at 37 pages/hr it would take just about the same time to read the novel or watch the miniseries and the miniseries gives a MUCH richer experience. I don't ever need to read the novel again and I've watched the miniseries at least four times - so far.

 

Having thought about it a little more, let me say the novel provides intellectual understanding; it supports and enriches the experience of the miniseries. The miniseries gives significance to the intellectual understanding provided by the novel. The novel especially helps us understand what is going on inside Beth's mind and body before, during and after tournaments. Also, Beth's relationships with Jolene, Alma Wheatley, Harry Beltik and Benny Watts are developed a little better in the novel. What is absent in the novel? Well, there are very few details about how Alice Harmon, Beth's mother, dies. There's no Cleo at Remy-Vallon in Paris. There's no Townes in Moscow. Also, the novel helped me understand how Beth financed her life, was able to buy out Allston Wheatley's equity for $7,000 and make the mortgage payments, from her tournament winnings. So the novel does have value.

 

There are any number of delightful little cookies in this series. For instance, after Beth is adopted in Episode 2, she accompanies Alma to Ben Snyder's department store in Lexington, to shop for clothes. On the way upstairs to the bargain department she is attracted by two mannequins displaying dresses, before being captivated by the display of chess boards. We learn that Beth likes nice clothes. And after she wins the Kentucky State Chess Championship in October, 1963, she buys the blue dress with her winnings and we see her wearing it when she and Alma go to the Cincinnati Open Tournament. But the other dress, the white and black one? She wears that dress to the U.S. Open in Las Vegas in 1966.

 

Episode 1 "Openings": The film being shown in the orphanage auditorium is The Robe (1953) starring Richard Burton and Jean Simmons.

Episode 3 "Doubled Pawns", 30:39: Beth and Alma are in their hotel room at the 1966 US Open in Las Vegas. Alma is watching a murder mystery on the TV The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946). Martha (Barbara Stanwyck) is talking with Sam Masterson (Van Heflin):

Martha: What do you want?

Sam: I think I've got one. I think I've got a gimmick. A gimmick is an angle that works for you. To keep you from working too hard for yourself.

* * * * *

Being a hopeless romantic, I was naturally disappointed with the lack of romance in the series, and so I have envisioned an eighth episode which takes place first in Moscow and later in Lexington, Kentucky. Beth gets out of her State Department handler's cab on the way to the airport not only because she wants to visit the park where the elderly men are playing chess, but also because she and David Townes are falling in love and have agreed to stay in Moscow together after the tournament ends.

So he comes to the park, and after she has finished playing her chess game, which she wins of course, she and David take a cab to the airport, pick up her luggage and find a smaller, less-expensive hotel to stay in. After a few days together seeing the sights in Moscow they board a plane and return to the U.S. Beth invites David to stay with her and eventually they get married.

It turns out that David was not really gay, as he tried earlier to explain to her. He was just confused. Is he bisexual? Who knows?

Before I Fall (2017) [PG-13] ***/****

A film review by James Berardinelli for ReelViews.net on Mar. 3, 2017.

It takes a mediocre movie like Before I Fall to illustrate how brilliant Harold Ramis’ Groundhog Day is. Founded on the same premise, the movies show the variances that can result from different approaches. Groundhog Day uses comedy and wit to buffer its existential angst and cosmic sense of karma. Before I Fall, on the other hand, adopts an oh-so-serious tone and resorts to awkward melodrama to get the point across.

It’s Valentine’s Day and high school senior Samantha Kingston (Zoey Deutch) is doomed to live it repeatedly until she does whatever it is that Fate has decreed she must do to move on. It begins with her waking up to a song on her iPhone (not, by the way, I’ve Got You, Babe – the movie doesn’t have that sort of referential sense of humor) and ends with her dying in a car accident. Except, instead of waking up at the Pearly Gates, she returns to the beginning of the day with her memories intact. Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it. After acclimating, Samantha varies things a little - dumping her three Queen Bee friends (Halston Sage, Medalion Rahimi and Cynthy Wu), trying to hook up with a nicer boy, etc. She eventually figures out that getting out of the loop involves doing something related to outcast Juliet Sykes (Elena Kampouris), but what?

The kind of repetition necessary to Before I Fall’s narrative is not only inherently non-cinematic but potentially deadly to the movie. Who wants to see the same scene presented over and over again with only small variations? And, although it’s unfair to compare Bill Murray to Zoey Deutch, a case can be made that Murray’s performance keeps Groundhog Day from slipping into the rut that derails Before I Fall.  For her part, although Deutch (most recently seen as Bryan Cranston’s daughter/James Franco’s lover in Why Him?) is appealing, she’s too old for the part. Halston Sage (in the best friend role), who’s actually a year older than Deutch, seems more age-appropriate for a high school student. Both are viewed as up and coming actresses and will likely appear in more impressive projects than this one in the near future.

The saccharine message of savor every moment is driven home with sledgehammer-like subtlety. Director Ry Russo-Young’s unwillingness to give the audience even a scintilla of credit (a sentiment I can fully understand) results in not only a voiceover that emphasizes the moral but a final act that embodies it. Somehow, Groundhog Day is able to convey something similar without it becoming obvious or intrusive. Is it fair to catalog all the times when the Ramis film does things better than this one? Possibly not, considering that Before I Fall has been fine-tuned for viewers who have probably never heard of Groundhog Day, much less seen it.  This movie is intended for girls between the ages of 10 and 16 and anyone outside that demographic is likely to have issues with parts of the script (or, in my case, pretty much the entire thing).

To be fair, there are occasional moments that succeed dramatically. These are typically the quieter, less histrionic ones. I appreciated the scenes between Samantha and Kent (Logan Miller), the prototypical nice guy trapped in the friend zone. There’s also something elegant about the way the movie ends. Overall, however, the lack of a compelling narrative thrust and inability to maintain an internal consistency about how the time loop works condemn this film to a fall from which it can’t recover. [Berardinelli’s rating: 2 stars out of 4]

Labels: drama, fantasy, high-school, mystery, romance, teenager, tragedy

Internet Movie Database 64 

MetaScore (critics=58, viewers=65) 

RottenTomatoes Averages (critics=58, viewers=69) 

Blu-ray 

Lady Bird (2017) [R] *****

A film review by James Berardinelli for Reelviews.net on Nov. 9, 2017.

Lady Bird, the solo directorial debut of actress Greta Gerwig, is the intimate coming-of-age story of a young woman from Sacramento, California, who believes the world is happening out there while she is trapped in a dead-end existence. Highlighted by an awards-worthy performance by Saoirse Ronan and structured around a light, witty script by Gerwig, the movie delivers a well-targeted snapshot of a year-in-the-life of an ordinary high school senior.

Christine McPherson (Ronan), who prefers to go by the name of Lady Bird (and takes pains to correct anyone, including her mother, who uses her given moniker), believes she is living an uninteresting life in the most boring place on the planet. She dreams of going to a liberal college out East but, when she voices her hope of Yale, her guidance counsel laughs out loud. Lady Bird might have gumption but she’s lacking in the grade department. She and her mother, Marion (Laurie Metcalf), both strong personalities, get along like oil and water. Her relationship with her father, Larry (Tracy Letts), is more affectionate but he has lost his job, putting the already cash-strapped family under a financial cloud. Meanwhile, Lady Bird decides to try out for a musical but most of the drama occurs off-stage when she starts seeing her first-ever boyfriend, the too-perfect Danny (Lucas Hedges). She makes a push into the in crowd by befriending Queen Bee Jenna (Odeya Rush), but that ultimately goes about as well as one might expect.

Gerwig’s voice, known from past projects (Frances Ha, Mistress America and other), is so strong that we can hear her speaking through Ronan. It’s a little like when Woody Allen directs a younger stand-in for himself. Her off-screen relationship with Noah Baumbach has been creatively fruitful for both of them. Although she has frequently been called his muse, his influence can be seen in the structure and script even though his name doesn’t appear in the credits. Like Baumbach’s recent fare, Lady Bird is a character-based piece with a light tone that allows opportunities for drama and humor. Unlike Baumbach’s films, however, the perspective is decidedly female.

The central relationship is that of Lady Bird and her mother. There’s love there but it’s buried under layers of friction and bitterness. In the opening scene, the two are in a car together and an argument becomes so heated that Lady Bird opens the door and jumps out rather than continue to engage Marion. She wears a cast through most of the movie. Key scenes late in the proceedings offer a window into the depth of feeling that exists – but those are established and executed in ways that are neither mawkish nor overly melodramatic.

Many vignettes are too precise not to be genuine, opening up the question of the degree to which Lady Bird is autobiographical. There are some obvious parallels. Gerwig, like Lady Bird, was raised in Sacramento. (The movie was filmed on location and is as much a love letter to the city as any of Woody Allen’s pictures are of New York.) Also like the character, she went to an all-girls Catholic school and moved to New York to attend a liberal arts college.

Lady Bird has its share of memorable moments. One in particular has Lady Bird and her best friend, Julie (Beanie Feldstein), snacking on (unconsecrated) communion wafers while discussing masturbation. Another occurs during a pro-life assembly when Lady Bird makes her feelings known about the speaker. One of the film’s most relatable moments comes in the wake of Lady Bird’s first sexual encounter.

There’s nothing new or insightful about Lady Bird except perhaps the acknowledgment that the tribulations of adolescence are universal. The lead character is easy to relate to because of the precision of Ronan’s unaffected performance and the care with which the screenplay was written and developed. Every incident in Lady Bird’s life will be familiar to most readers in a general sense but the power of the movie comes through the details. Lady Bird is an original creation and comes to life in such a vivid fashion that we are enmeshed in her life. The production argues that a meaningful film doesn’t have to be about some great or historical personality – an ordinary person can be just as compelling and, in this case, she is. [Berardinelli’s rating: 3 out of 4 stars]

Blogger’s comment: Lady Bird was nominated for five Oscars: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress, and Best Original Screenplay.

Labels: comedy, drama, teenager

Internet Movie Database 74 

MetaScore (critics=94, viewers=76) 

RottenTomatoes Averages (critics=88, viewers=78) 

Blu-ray 

The Edge of Seventeen (2016) [R] ****/*****

A film review by James Berardinelli for ReelViews.net on Nov. 17, 2016.

Motion picture coming-of-age stories are touchstones. The best are capable of transporting older viewers back to a time of life that many of us now view through rose-colored glasses. High school was never easy and that constant hasn’t changed. Those four mid-teenage years represent a cauldron of raging hormones, exploding insecurity, and academic pressure. It’s a wonder that anyone survives them. The Edge of Seventeen reminds viewers of the good, the bad, and the ugly. With a smart, perceptive script from first-time director Kelly Fremon Craig and an arresting lead performance by Hailee Steinfeld, the film rises to the top of a crowded genre.

In high school, everyone (even the popular kids) feels like an outsider, but Nadine (Hailee Steinfeld) has earned the label. Over the course of the movie, which tracks a period during her junior year, she learns that the path of survival has less to do with doing homework, losing her virginity, or making friends than it does with becoming comfortable in her own skin. Unsurprisingly, when she embraces that conclusion, the dark mirror lightens up.

Nadine is afflicted with one of the most catastrophic ailments any nerd-leaning child can have: a popular sibling. Her sports-star older brother, Darian (Blake Jenner), is beloved by the entire student body. Nadine and Darian have a fractious relationship that isn’t helped by her mother’s obvious preference for her male child. Despite feeling isolated since the death of her father, Nadine has found solace in the friendship of Krista (Haley Lu Richardson), the sister-figure she never had. Krista isn’t just her best friend, however, she’s her only friend. When a series of unfortunate events results in Krista and Darian hooking up, Nadine’s world implodes.

With the élan of a profane John Hughes, Craig effortlessly captures Nadine’s mindset. Viewed from a neutral perspective, she might come across as weird, petty, and self-absorbed but The Edge of Seventeen makes her sympathetic. It helps that’s she’s witty (in a Juno sort of way). There are times when the screenplay veers into comedy. The scene in which Nadine tells her teacher (Woody Harrelson) that she’s going to kill herself is amusing as intended. We don’t believe her even though, on some level, she may think she’s semi-serious. For teenagers, every day is a new drama and Nadine has just raised the curtain on Act III.

Hailee Steinfeld brings forth a Nadine whose peculiar charisma is impossible to escape. She’s the outsider we all would like to be: introverted and shy yet tough and independent. She wears her cynicism like a badge of honor. Steinfeld is perfectly cast. Since breaking on the scene at the age of 13 with an Oscar nomination for her part in True Grit, Steinfeld has been on everyone’s to-watch list. This is another example of the actress fulfilling her potential.  She is ably supported by Haley Lu Richardson as her best friend-turned-brother’s girlfriend, Blake Jenner as the universally adored Darian, Kyra Sedgwick as Nadine’s mostly-absent mother, and Woody Harrelson as the teacher we all wish we’d had in high school.

This isn’t a romance (although there are romantic aspects); it’s a coming-of-age drama. The screenplay cannily presents the narrative through Nadine’s perspective and, as circumstances force her to grow and change, we see things more clearly: betrayals that aren’t really betrayals, perfect lives that aren’t quite so perfect, and people hurt by her actions who don’t deserve the pain. All of this is largely transparent and that’s what makes the film so strong. We’re getting a lot more than we initially suspect. It makes the characters and the circumstances seem real. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that there’s an autobiographical aspect. The details are too carefully realized and the emotional balance so perfect for there not to be a personal investment by the writer/director.

Tone is as important as story for a movie like The Edge of Seventeen. The film wants to be likable and entertaining. It wants to make us laugh at times and feel deeply at others. It needs to mirror the wave-like peaks and troughs of teenage life, when one day can seem like the best day of one’s life until, an hour later, it’s the worst. For a veteran filmmaker, navigating the tricky waters of Nadine’s world might have proven a challenge but, despite not having a previous feature under her belt, Craig accomplishes it and, in the process, brings us one of the best movies of this genre in recent memory. [Berardinelli’s rating: 3.5 out of 4 stars]

Labels: comedy, drama, high-school, teenager

Internet Movie Database 73 

MetaScore (critics=77, viewers=77) 

RottenTomatoes Averages (critics=79, viewers=79) 

Blu-ray 

O (2001) [R] ***

A film review by James Berardinelli for ReelViews.net.

There are two ways to adapt Shakespeare into a contemporary setting. The first is to take the story and dialogue (perhaps judiciously pruned) and dump them wholesale into modern times. The second is to extract the essence of the material and re-work it for our era. Two recent screen versions of Shakespeare's plays have provided a case study in the contrast between these methods. Michael Almereyda's sluggish, borderline-incoherent Hamlet attempted the former with decidedly mixed results. Tim Blake Nelson's O, based on Othello, takes the latter route, and the result is a stirring and affecting piece of drama that retains the basic structure and thematic grist of its source while developing a plot and characters that speak directly to current-day movie-goers.

In its re-telling of Othello, O re-locates the story into a United States high school, circa 2000. In keeping with the violent nature of Shakespeare, O does not shy away from bloodshed. Quite the contrary, in fact - it embraces it, but not in an exploitative manner. In fact, the film actually provides a measure of insight into how teen violence can be sparked. A simple emotion (in this case, jealousy, but it could be another), unchecked and stoked, forms the foundation. Mixed with the rampant hormones of the teen years, this combination becomes as explosive and unstable as nitroglycerine. Doesn't it make more sense for us to view a thoughtful motion picture like O, digest what has to say, and open a dialogue with our children rather than abdicate responsibility and attempt to blame movies/TV/music (anyone except ourselves and society in general) for school violence?

The Othello of O is Odin James (Mekhi Phifer), the god of the Palmetto Grove Hawks basketball team. He's the lone black student in an all-white co-ed prep school, but he has a good heart, is smart, and is unstoppable on the court. He has won the love of Dean Brable’s (John Heard’s) daughter, Desi Brable (Julia Stiles in the role of Desdemona), and the respect of his teammates - all except one. Hugo Goulding (Josh Hartnett in the role of Iago) is keenly jealous of Odin - not because he's popular or has the affection of Desi, but because Hugo's own father, basketball team head coach Duke Goulding (Martin Sheen), considers Odin to be more of a true son than Hugo. The coach lauds the young black man while pushing aside his offspring, often humiliating Hugo in front of his teammates. This breeds resentment and hatred, and Hugo puts a plan in place to destroy Odin by sowing seeds of doubt about the legitimacy of Desi's love and fidelity. Odin, who is on some level insecure, reluctantly takes the bait.

Obviously, the single most memorable aspect of any Shakespeare play is the dialogue - the Bard is arguably the most quotable author ever to write in the English language. Yet, in an endeavor such as O, where all of those lines have been stripped away, we see the strength and universality of the themes present in the play. Certainly, there are contrivances in the plot, as there are in the original, but these are easily set aside as part of the process commonly referred to as the willing suspension of disbelief. The intent of director Tim Blake Nelson is not to create some bizarre dream world like the one of Ian McKellen's Richard III or Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet, but to fashion a dramatic milieu that approximates high school in the '00s. At the same time, he is not looking for a hard-core, gritty reality - the story needs room to breathe.

Someone should introduce Julia Stiles to Kenneth Branagh. One could easily imagine the gifted, versatile Stiles fitting effectively into one of Branagh's Shakespeare adaptations. This is Stiles' third such endeavor, following in the wake of 10 Things I Hate About You (a modern-day telling of The Taming of the Shrew) and Almereyda's Hamlet. Josh Hartnett shows more range here as the tortured, manipulative Hugo than he evidenced in the whole of Pearl Harbor. And, in the title role, Mekhi Phifer allows us to see the good and the bad in Odin, the sports deity with the tragic flaw of jealousy. Supporting roles are filled by Rain Phoenix as Desi's roommate Emily, Elden Henson and Andrew Keegan as elements of Hugo's plan, and Martin Sheen, as the coach with the winning is everything mentality.

O was filmed in Charleston, S.C. in March-April, 1999. In fact, Julia Stiles, who was born on March 28, 1981, turned 18 during filming. The film was ready to be released in 1999, when Miramax Films, the company that owned the rights at the time, shelved it because they feared the controversy that would accompany it in the wake of the Columbine tragedy. Had the film been exploitative rather than thought-provoking, that would have been the right decision, but Miramax, fearing bad publicity, ignored the fact that this picture has a message. Eventually, Lions Gate picked up the rights and the movie was able to see the light of day. And that's a good thing for everyone who appreciates Shakespeare or a serious examination of the volatile issue of school violence. [Berardinelli’s rating: 3 stars out of 4 = 75%]

Labels: drama, high-school, Julia Stiles, romance, teenager, thriller, tragedy
IMDb 61/100 
MetaScore (critics=53, viewers=28) 
RottenTomatoes Averages (critics=61, viewers=68) 
Blu-ray 

McFarland USA (2015) [PG] ****

A film review by James Berardinelli for ReelViews.net on Feb. 19, 2015.

The gold standard for inspirational teenage sports movies is unquestionably Hoosiers and, although McFarland USA falls short of the mark set by the iconic '80s film, it comes closer than most would expect. The reason is simple: McFarland USA, like Hoosiers, makes characters a priority. The film, directed by New Zealander Niki Caro, focuses on the people involved in the drama. The narrative doesn't saddle them with cliché-riddled subplots; it makes them and their concerns real. There are no paper villains wearing black hats and twirling mustaches. There are competitions (this is, after all, a sports movie) but they consume less than 15% of the running time.

The sport in question is cross country track. Coach Jim White (Kevin Costner) arrives in McFarland, California in time for the 1987 school year with his family - wife Cheryl (Maria Bello) and daughters Julie (Morgan Saylor) and Jamie (Elsie Fisher) - in tow. He's not here by choice, however; after being fired from three different schools for insubordination and losing his temper, he has run out of options. McFarland High is the only place willing to offer him employment. After one week, he has been fired as the assistant football coach but is kept on as P.E. teacher. He sees something in his students, especially the fleet-of-foot Thomas Valles (Carlos Pratts), which leads him to believe a cross-country track team might be successful at McFarland. His first task is selling it to the board of education and principal. The more difficult challenge is selling it to his would-be participants.

A pitfall avoided by McFarland USA is the Great White Savior trap. The citizenry of McFarland is primarily comprised of immigrants of Mexican ancestry - a character observes while driving down one of the town's streets: Are we in Mexico? As the story progresses, it becomes apparent that this is as much about McFarland saving Jim White as it is about him infusing the town with a sense of pride and self-worth. Achieving this balance allows McFarland USA to come across as genuinely inspirational as opposed to being sanctimonious.

McFarland USA has a distinction in that it's the rare sports movie directed by a woman. Caro's perspective is invaluable to the film's trajectory. Not only does she leech some of the testosterone out of the mix but she fixes the focus firmly on the characters - and not just the seven competing boys and their coach. The movie extends meaningful scenes to the mothers and fathers of several of the teammates and transforms their concerns into more than two-dimensional obstacles to winning a championship. McFarland USA has more heart and less cynicism than many sports movies. The inevitable Big Win is important but it's not everything. The overriding theme isn't one of overcoming the odds but of learning the meaning of family.

The production is (of course) based on a true story. The somewhat fictionalized chronology transpires in 1987 - recent enough for people and settings to seem familiar yet far enough in the past so things like cell phones and the Internet had not come into being. The movie doesn't seem like a period piece; until a date was mentioned, I thought it was happening in the present day (although Coach White's car should have been a clue that this isn't 2015). Like the recent Spare Parts, McFarland USA focuses on the immigrant experience, but this version is more politically correct in that the characters are in the United States legally. They lead hard lives (as illustrated in an effective scene where Coach White spends a day living in the shoes of three of his boys) in order to make living wages but no one is hiding from the government.

This represents the second movie to arrive in theaters within a month to feature Kevin Costner in a drama about race relations (the previous one being Black or White). His patented form of low-key acting is effective in this arena and he is effectively supported by a cast of unknowns and first-time performers (aside from Costner, the only name in the cast is Maria Bello). If there's a nit to pick about the supporting players, it's that the men playing the members of the McFarland Cougars are in many cases too old to be accepted as high school students. Carlos Pratts is an example - he was 28 when the film was made. His interaction with Morgan Saylor (who is 20 but looks age-appropriate for the 15-year old she's playing) may seem uncomfortable to some.

Invoking Hoosiers when discussing McFarland USA places this film in august company even when acknowledging the gap between the two. Sports movies in recent years have become generic and mostly uninteresting, with the typical complaint being that the on-field recreations are well-done but everything off-field is forgettable. McFarland USA reverses this by making the competitions the least interesting aspect. It has heart and is inspirational and, although those may be corny admissions, this is Disney and the film works as solid family entertainment. [Berardinelli’s rating: 3 out of 4]

The supporting cast includes Johnny Ortiz (Jose Cardenas), Martha Higareda (Lupe), Sergio Avelar (Victor Puentes), Hector Duran (Johnny Sameniego), Michael Aguero (Damacio Diaz), Rafael Martinez (David Diaz), Ramiro Rodriguez (Danny Diaz), Danny Mora (Sammy Rosaldo), Valente Rodriguez (Principal Camillo), Vanessa Martinez (Maria Marsol), Chris Ellis, Jr. (Coach Jenks), Omar Leyva (Señor Diaz), Diana-Maria Riva (Señora Diaz) and Eloy Casados (Dale Padilla).

Labels: cross-cultural, drama, high-school, sport, teenager

IMDb 74/100

MetaScore (critics=60, viewers=73)

RottenTomatoes Averages (critics=67, viewers=84) 

Blu-ray 

Wikipedia McFarland USA
Wikipedia Coach James "Jim" White

Paper Towns (2015) [PG-13] ***/****

A film review by James Berardinelli for ReelViews.net on July 24, 2015.

Paper Towns is the third coming-of-age story to reach screens during the summer of 2015, following in the wake of the vastly superior Me and Earl and the Dying Girl and Dope. Based on the novel by John Green, Paper Towns is an exercise in artifice. The contrived storyline offers little opportunity for characters to grow and the meandering narrative trajectory and anticlimactic ending will have some viewers wondering why they bothered.

Coming-of-age stories work best when they are populated with relatable characters. In Paper Towns, the narrator and protagonist, Quentin (Nat Wolff), is grounded but uninteresting. He is defined by a single personality trait: his conformity. He's a studious guy who gets good grades, never cuts class, and doesn't sneak out of his house at night. He is seduced out of his cocoon by the girl across the street. She's Margo (Cara Delevingne), one of the most popular girls in school and Quentin's private obsession. Like Quentin, Margo isn't a real person - she's a wafer-thin movie confection defined exclusively by her free-spiritedness. Since Paper Towns is presented from Quentin's perspective, it's understandable that Margo would be so poorly drawn (we're seeing her as he sees her, not as she is). It's less explicable why the same is true of Quentin.

The movie opens with an interminable 30 minute setup. For about half that time, we are treated to glimpses of Quentin and Margo's childhood as they grow up as best friends. (Their differences are italicized in a scene where they are shown bicycling side-by-side with him wearing a helmet and her without one.) Through this, Nat Wolff provides a voiceover talking about how invigorating it was to be around Margo but how, in the end, they drifted apart.  Then, one night a few weeks before the Senior Prom, she hijacks him to be her accomplice on an adventure that includes a series of revenge-fueled pranks. After that, she disappears but leaves behind a series of clues for amateur sleuth Quentin to piece together. In order to find the love of his life, he must leave his comfort zone, even going so far as to skip school and embark on a 1200-mile road trip.

There's a saying about road trip movies that the journey, not the destination, matters. In Paper Towns, the journey is dramatically inert - an empty half-hour comprised of minor misadventures and inane chatter among the five friends in the car. The movie's final act is disappointing. I admire what the film is trying do with respect to defying conventions but the means to achieve this are awkward. After sitting through about 95 minutes, one deserves a little more than sermonizing about what it means to grow up.

Wolff, who was fine in The Fault in Our Stars (last year's John Green adaptation), shows little in the way of emotion or range here. It's hard to say whether the blame lies with the actor (and, by extension, director Jake Schreier) or with the character. Quentin is dull and his development as a person seems more cosmetic than organic. Has he really changed? British model Cara Delevingne imbues Margo with an intriguing quirkiness but she's not on screen long enough to make more than a fleeting impression and she and Wolff share no chemistry. The actors who portray Quentin's friends and traveling companions are as forgettable as the characters they play.

Paper Towns is perhaps best viewed as a flight of fancy. That's the only way to overcome the suspension of disbelief curve. Little of what happens in the movie - either during the initial night adventure, the subsequent investigation, or the road trip - could happen in the real world, so we must assume this is a parallel universe where adults are as relevant and intelligible as those in a Charlie Brown cartoon. This is, after all, a movie about teenagers. Why clutter it up with old people?

To an extent, Paper Towns is all about perspective. Seen through the eyes of Quentin, this is the story of how a boy, trapped by his own fears and insecurities, learns to break free as a result of his single-minded pursuit of love. A different but no less valid point-of-view might argue that this about how a boy, driven by an unhealthy obsession for a girl, acts recklessly and irresponsibly (nearly causing death or injury to five people) in his stalking of her. A better, more self-aware movie (consider The Spectacular Now, also written by the duo of Scott Neustadter & Michael H. Weber) would have found a way to fuse the two interpretations, but this rote screenplay lacks the necessary insight.

The success of The Fault in Our Stars has led distributor Fox to be bullish about the prospects for Paper Towns, but the films aren't comparable. The Fault in Our Stars is heartfelt and guileless - a touching depiction of what happens when youth clashes with mortality. Paper Towns is shallow and chokes on its own glibness. It's hard to believe both movies germinated from the pen of the same author. [Berardinelli’s rating: 2 out of 4 stars]

Blogger’s comment: Screenwriting duo Scott Neustadter and Michael H Weber co-wrote (500) Days of Summer, The Spectacular Now and The Fault in Our Stars. All of those are far superior to Paper Towns.

Labels: comedy, drama, mystery, romance, teenager

IMDb 63/100 

MetaScore (critics=56, viewers=63) 

RottenTomatoes Averages (critics=58, viewers=64) 

Blu-ray