Borrowed Family

SHOPLIFTERS (A) - Hirokazu Kore-eda ("I Wish," "Nobody Knows," "Like Father, Like Son") puts it all together in this perfect narrative of a makeshift family that gets by via grifting.  IMDb succinctly boils down the plot:  "A Japanese couple stuck with part-time jobs and hence inadequate incomes avail themselves of the fruits of shoplifting to make ends meet. ... The unusual routine is about to change from care-free and matter-of-fact to something more dramatic, however, as the couple open their doors to a beleaguered young girl."

That little girl, Yuri (Miyu Sasaki), is rescued from an abusive home by Osamu (Lily Franky) and his wife, Nobuyo (Sakura Ando), who have wrangled their children into the fold. Older daughter Aki (Mayu Matsuoka) earns money doing peep shows, while their shaggy-haired adolescent son, Shota (Jyo Kairi), carries out the main shoplifting in tandem with Osamu. The matron of the family is kept around but not for entirely charitable or loving purposes. 

Kore-eda unravels his sophisticated narrative with impeccably timing, dividing the two-hour film into three distinct acts tuned with precision. Humor mixes with heartbreak, as the quaint domestic set-up is smudged with dark undertones. As the true nature of this family structure is revealed, frivolity morphs into a bland menace. This is an entertaining and touching story about how we get by and how love can conquer insecurity. It is beautifully rendered, with powerful performances, most notably by Kairi as the rudderless boy in the emotionally fragile embrace of his kin.

BONUS TRACK
The trailer:


  

Self Control

THE MISEDUCATION OF CAMERON POST (B+) - Chloe Grace Moretz turns in a strong performance as a 1990s teen dispatched to a Christian conversion camp for gay teens.  This is Desiree Akhavan's long-awaited follow-up to her perfect debut, "Appropriate Behavior," and she mostly shrugs off the threat of a sophomore slump.

Akhavan strays into After-School Special territory here (especially with the period setting) but she has a sharp point of view, and she carves out distinct characters that serve a talented cast well. Moretz ("Clouds of Sils Maria," "Laggies") plays it cool as Cameron, who gets caught at prom making our with her best friend, Coley (Quinn Shepherd), and gets shipped off to the lame camp, run by a wimpy chief counselor, Reverend Rick (John Gallagher Jr. from "Short Term 12"), and his creepy sister, Dr. Lydia (Jennifer Ehle).

Akhavan also avoids the cliches of teenage homosexuality and queerness, recruiting strong young actors in the process.  Forrest Goodluck, Sasha Lane and Emily Skeggs (playing wonderfully repressed) all carve out their own corners in the horrorscape that is Christian conversion camp. Akhavan doesn't quite ratchet up the tension like she could, but her tale here offers a glimmer of hope for the future that we now live in.

BETWEEN US (B) - Another sophomore effort (from Rafael Palacio Illingworth) takes a clear-eyed snapshot of a young couple panicking over the make-or-break decision staring them in the face: commit forever and wed, or defy the onslaught of monogamy and break up.

Ben Feldman (TV's "Mad Men") and Olivia Thirlby ("Nobody Walks") go all-in as the restless couple. Each one is tested by outsiders who represent their attractive ideal: Henry falls for sexy artsy Veronica (Annaleigh Tipton from "Two Night Stand"), and Dianne weakens in the presence of a client, the dull but conventionally handsome Robert (Scott Haze) before a bad boy (the always welcome Adam Goldberg) cuts the line. Alcohol lubricates both potential cheating scenarios.

Illingworth employs intimate intense close-ups to insinuate his camera into the relationships, and his raw edits give this a jangly feel. The script is smart, and this doesn't always go in the direction you might expect, keeping us on our toes to the very last shot. It can be clunky and strained at times, but it is served well by a strong guiding hand and above-average performances from a talented cast.

French Cheese

IF YOU DON'T, I WILL (2015) (B-minus) - Two great actors -- Emmanuelle Devos and Mathieu Amalric -- make this drama about a failed marriage watchable for 102 minutes. The glum wife, Pomme, gets little energy back from her husband, Pierre, who doesn't even try to seem interested in continuing the relationship.

On a hike in the woods, Pomme sends Pierre home alone, and she roughs it on her own. This isn't so much a journey of self-actualization as a meditative opportunity to leech some poisons out of one's system. Amalric and Devos could play these roles in their sleep, and they almost do. Like she usually does, Devos, with her puppy-dog eyes and an exaggerated slump of the shoulders, rescues the script and makes the movie her own.

Quirky bits give the proceedings an occasional jolt, such as when Pierre visits his son for a heart-to-heart and must sit on a corner of the bed while the son's girlfriend sleeps naked under the covers inches away. And the ending hits the right note.

MY PIECE OF THE PIE (2011) (C+) - Pulp melodrama with a fairly far-fetched idea almost works thanks to zippy direction from Cedric Klapisch and a spirited lead performance from Karin Viard ("Polisse") as a laid-off factory worker who takes a job cleaning and nannying for a high-powered financier. And wouldn't you know it, he's the renegade trader who executed the scheme to take over her company and close up the shop.

Viard, in her mid-40s, nails the angst of a struggling single mom, named France, trying to fend for her family. She reluctantly abandons her fellow aggrieved workers to go to paris and work for asshole Steve (Gilles Lellouche), who not only needs a cleaning lady but -- after his ex drops off their 5-year-old son on her way to a monthlong vacation -- also a nanny ASAP. The money, of course, is too good for France to pass up, even though it means more time away from her kids, who are looked after by her sister.

Steve soon grows dependent on his new charge, and an underlying spark of romance also flickers, even though France can see that he treats the models that he dates like disposable income. (Marine Vacth ("Young & Beautiful") plays his most pathetic victim.) Steve is insufferable, and it's a stretch to tolerate the aptly named France as the giant symbol of the working class. The final reel turns into a suspense-thriller plot to kidnap Steve's son. It's difficult to care for Steve or the kid, and Viard's charm goes only so far.

New to the Queue

Every day a good one ...

An adolescent girl struggles with absentee parents and an autistic sibling in the Polish documentary "Communion."

Two women descended from wealth struggle to keep up their standard of living in the Paraguayan film "The Heiresses."

Fathers abandon their families in a California desert town, leaving behind disaffected teens, in "Don't Come Back From the Moon."

Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (the perfect "The Lives of Others" from 2007) returns to cold-war Germany for a drama based on the life of artist Gerhard Richter, the three-hour "Never Look Away."

Jean-Luc Godard's latest visual collage of gloom and doom is "The Image Book."
 

Happy?

THE FAVOURITE (B) - This bawdy royal romp could be a little more focused and a lot more peppy to help us navigate the direction of the quirky director Yorgos Lanthimos. The Greek auteur made two arch art films nearly a decade ago -- "Dogtooth" and "Alps." He then bombed in 2015 with "The Lobster," and so we didn't even bother with his outre follow-up, "The Killing of a Sacred Deer." Lanthimos has gotten over his affection for Colin Farrell and now turns to Queen Anne and her female suitors, lighting up an engaging trio of actresses to prop up the stuffed script from TV writer Tony McNamara and newcomer Deborah Davis.

Olivia Colman is wonderful as the loopy Queen Anne a somewhat dim and sickly monarch at the dawn of the 18th century who focuses most of her attention on pet rabbits and on two women vying for her affections. The first is Lady Sarah (Rachel Weisz), who has quietly shared her highness's bedchamber on the sly while calling the shots during the war with France. Along comes a commoner to work on staff, Abigail (a sharp Emma Stone), whose Machiavellian maneuvers quickly into Anne's affections.

The first hour creeps along setting up intrigue. The second hour picks up the pace a bit. Insults are hurled, and they sting when they land. Double-crosses occur. The military twists in the wind out on the front lines while the politicians dither. Colman nails the mood perfectly, and Stone has the perfect pitch as the scheming little wench. Weisz is her usually steady self. They are fun to watch. The men not so much. As period pieces go, this one at least has some heft to it. There's not much aftertaste to consider with "The Favourite," but it's a pleasant romp.

THE INQUIRING NUNS (1968) (B-minus) - This curiosity from 50 years ago sent a pair of young nuns onto the streets of Chicago ca. 1967 to ask the simple question: Are you happy? Along with follow-ups such as "What would make you more or less happy?" The results don't reveal much. The nuns are polite and technically clumsy. The folks on the street cooperate but add little insight beyond the obvious token answers you'd expect from people back in the analog dark ages.

This is more interesting for the sociological study of Chicago at this point in time. Many of the nuns' outings seem to take place on a Sunday, when people are attending church or enjoying a museum. (Such quaint excursions.) Folks are neatly dressed, with women in dresses and hats, and men (and boys) in jackets and ties. The old actor Stepin Fetchit randomly shows up. Most people are concerned about the war in Vietnam, which probably is the most prominent reason interfering with the achievement of happiness. Race gets mentioned only once and tangentially; otherwise, the diverse group of participants ignore one of the great concerns of the age. Maybe that would have changed a year later.

Barely an hour long, this crude production comes from Kartemquin Films, which would later go on to produce "Hoop Dreams" and more recently "Minding the Gap" and other compelling documentaries. This is where they started. With stripped-down space age keyboard/computer noodling from Philip Glass.

BONUS TRACK
The trailer for "Nuns":


  

Doc Watch: Life Stories

OK, so we're a bit shallow ...

ESCAPES (B+) - This documentary consists, essentially, of former B-actor Hampton Fancher telling tales about Hollywood, leading to his transition to writer and producer, eventually shepherding "Blade Runner" to the big screen. Who is Hampton Fancher, you say? That's part of the point. He flew below the radar, appearing in a lot of westerns in the '50s and '60s. And he was quite the woman chaser, courting, among others, Teri Garr and Barbara Hershey way back in the day. He had been a bit of a drifter and grifter in his teens, striving in vain to make it big as a flamenco dancer.

Writer-director Michael Almereyda, who last scored with the sci-fi drama "Marjorie Prime," has a blast using old clips of Fancher on-screen to playfully illustrate and punctuate Fancher's Hollywood stories. Meantime, Fancher drones on telling tall tales that are most likely mostly true. An extended section pays tribute to Brian Kelly (the father on TV's "Flipper"), Fancher's close pal known for his sense of humor and his huge thirst for female companionship before being seriously injured in an accident in the early 1970s, ending his acting career.  But Fancher and Kelly bought the rights to Philip K. Dick's 1968 novel "Do Androids Really Dream of Electric Sheep?", shaping it into Ridley Scott's "Blade Runner" over the course of a decade.

Akin to "De Palma," this simple construct plops a septuagenerian in front of the camera (or merely in voice over) and lets him ramble for our lurid enjoyment. The 89 minutes fly by.

BIG SONIA (2017) (B-minus) - Heartfelt and well meaning, this biography of a holocaust survivor suffers from a case of the cutes. It's a love letter to Sonia Warshawski from her granddaughter, Leah, who co-directed this quaint family album. Sonia, who was ripped from her mother's arms at the gas chamber, lost her family during World War II but eventually found her husband, also a Holocaust survivor, and started a family.

The film has two tracks: we follow along with Sonia, a spry 92-year-old, as she speaks publicly about her experiences, and we observe as she begins dismantling her beloved tailor shop, which was the last surviving business in an abandoned mall in Kansas City. Each track distracts a bit from the other. The audiences she addresses are mostly captive ones -- dull school children and sympathetic prisoners. There's plenty of emotion, but some of it feels forced and overdone. We hear from Sonia's children, and there are hints that she could be a handful -- one son lives in northern California and seems somewhat estranged.

Sonia is a pistol, and her story is inspiring. This documentary, however, rounds her edges and puts a Lifetime Channel spin on the last 75 years of her life. The 93 minutes tend to drag.
 

Life Is Short:

Life Is Short is an as-needed series documenting the films we just couldn't make it through. We like to refer to these movies as "Damsels in Distress." Previous entries can be found here.

Title: IF BEALE STREET COULD TALK

Running Time: 119 MIN

Elapsed Time at Plug Pull: 75 MIN

Portion Watched: 63%

My Age at Time of Viewing: 56 YRS, 1 MO.

Average Male American Lifespan: 76.7 YRS.

Watched/Did Instead: Went home and eventually did a jigsaw puzzle.

Odds of Re-viewing This Title: 98-1

About two years ago, we reviewed "I Am Not Your Negro" by observing that, halfway through the documentary based on James Baldwin's essays, we wanted to leave the theater and go read one of Baldwin's books instead. Oh, was that painfully evident during the screening of "If Beale Street Could Talk," Baldwin's '70s tale of a young couple dealing with her pregnancy and his incarceration. And so we walked out of the theater after more than an hour of squirming.

Barry Jenkins, whose "Moonlight" was really good but not great, offers up Hallmark Channel fluff, one of the most cloying loves stories you can find. The giddy couple, Tish and Fonny (the physically perfect pair KiKi Layne and Stephan James), make tender first-time love and repeatedly -- repeatedly -- exchange vows of undying love. Supporting characters are paper cut-outs -- the rascally fathers who are going to run a scam to help out the lovebirds; the Jewish landlord in the slums; and the sneering racist cop who almost certainly is railroading Fonny on a rape charge. Regina King, as Tish's mother, gets zero to work with. Narrative twists sometimes don't quite make sense. A scene filled with trash talk stands out as vulgar but refreshing.

This fairytale storybook narration is for the birds. The pace is agonizingly slow. Maybe Baldwin's prose just doesn't translate to the big screen. Maybe Jenkins is just an old-fashioned softie who is out of step with reality. Either way, this treacly melodrama about two absolute angels falls disappointingly flat.

GRADE: C-minus

BONUS TRACK
One redeeming factor was a couple of the tracks on the soundtrack by Nicholas Britell. Here's the lovely "Eros":



... and "Encomium":


  

New Year's Streamers

A couple of Netflix productions:

ROMA (B) - This stylistically stunning wank from Alfonso Cuaron has little substantive use beyond the writer-director's own re-enactment of his home movies growing up in Mexico at the dawn of the 1970s. The cinematography (handled by Cuaron himself) is immaculate, with a crisp black and white that makes the film look like a restored documentary from 40-plus years ago. Even a pile of dog crap getting smushed by a car tire has an elegance to it.

You could easily get bored stiff by the antics of this bourgeois family near Mexico City and the minutiae of their existence. The parents are surreptitiously going through a separation. The kids are in love with their housekeeper/nanny, Cleo (newcomer Yalitza Aparicio), and this movie is ostensibly about her.

Very little happens in the first half. A plot develops in the second half, between Cleo and her boyfriend, but it's rather trite soap-opera stuff. A police/military crackdown on protesters (pinpointing this section around June 1971) is rendered with a jarring vitality. Every frame of the movie is meticulously imagined and presented, like the opening credits of the hosing down of a floor, punctuated with the faint image of a passing airplane (a recurring theme) reflected in the swirling water. Even rooftop clotheslines seem to be infused with meaning.

It can be a mesmerizing two hours or a crashing bore; your mileage may vary.

HAPPY AS LAZZARO (B) - This fable about the fate of the working class in a rapacious capitalist system is as much of a head-scratcher as a thinker. A bunch of tenant farmers live a rough-hewn existence in rural Italy, not knowing that such indentured servitude had been outlawed years earlier. Their mascot is Lazzaro, a simple-minded ox of a worker. When the Marquess visits one day, she brings along her son, Tancredi the Marquis, who plots with Lazzaro in a fake kidnapping scheme.

A bizarre twist occurs midway through, and a time jump (with a twist) vaults us not only into the future but into the realm of magical realism.  Here, though, it might be better described as mysticism, as filmmaker Alice Rohrwacher borrows elements from Christianity and native beliefs. Lazzaro walks the Earth wide-eyed, like Jesus Christ -- or maybe Forrest Gump as if played by "Taxi"-era Andy Kaufman.

It's difficult to discuss the plot, because, while the film can be slow and frustrating, part of the joy in watching comes from Rohrwacher toying with narrative conventions. Suffice it to say that the indentured servants' existence in more modern, urban Italy doesn't change much when they become full-fledged members of the underclass. Events build to a contrived ending, involving a fable that will either charm you or make you roll your eyes.

Parental Guidance Suggested

PRIVATE LIFE (A-minus) - Good writing and great acting propel Tamara Jenkins' latest slice of middle-class angst into a wonderful roller-coaster of emotions in an intricate character study. The pairing of Kathryn Hahn and Paul Giamatti was probably destined to happen someday, but Jenkins is the lucky recipient of that magic concoction. They portray Rachel and Richard, 40-something Lower East Siders frustrated by their failures -- despite medical assistance -- to conceive. When Richard's step-niece, Sadie (Kayli Carter, TV's "Godless"), temporarily drops out of college and crashes in their apartment, the couple get a wild idea -- ask Sadie to donate one of her vibrant young eggs.

It's a rather hare-brained scheme, but it's plausible enough to launch an amusing, if nerve-wracking narrative about a couple in crisis. You can fairly easily predict how Thanksgiving dinner will go with Sadie's parents, Richard's brother and wife (a laid-back John Carroll Lynch and a wonderfully Type-A Molly Shannon). The fireworks among the five lead actors are often just below the surface.

Jenkins knows what she's doing here. She makes a movie once a decade, and they've each been memorable. "The Savages" (a tour de force starring Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman) was one of the best releases of 2008, and 1998's "Slums of Beverly Hills" still holds up well, thanks to the father-daughter pairing of Alan Arkin and Natasha Lyonne. With "Private Life" the dialogue rings true, and the expressions and reactions of Hahn and Giamatti, in particular, feel totally lived-in. Aside from the occasional wavering of the basic premise, there are no false moves here.

WHO WE ARE NOW (B) - Another powerful performance, this time from Julianne Nicholson as a woman doing everything in her power to hold things together as she fights for custody of her son from her sister a year after getting sprung from a 10-year prison sentence for manslaughter resulting from a youthful mistake. Nicholson's Beth is a hardened ball of suppressed rage as she does battle with her sister, Gabby (Jess Weixler), who raised Beth's son while Beth did time.

Beth suffers a series of indignities trying to find work, debasing herself with a sleazy manager of a coffee shop for a waitressing job. Her lawyer, Carl (a laid-back Jimmy Smits), flirts with malpractice as the head of a do-gooder legal-aid clinic. Meantime, Carl's underling, idealistic young lawyer Jess (Emma Roberts, just right), fights on behalf of a teen mother hoping to get her own life back on track.

Little goes right for anyone in this scenario, and Nicholson and Roberts keep the train on its tracks in writer-director Matthew Newton's at-times rickety production. Zachary Quinto mumbles through the role of Beth's love interest, an Afghanistan veteran also trying not to lose his shit on a daily basis. It all builds to a surprising and satisfying conclusion to a sharply observed character study.
 

Look Alive

THEY SHALL NOT GROW OLD (B+) - Peter Jackson takes original jumpy, black-and-white footage of British soldiers on the Western Front in World War I and restores it to an amazing modern look. He overlays archival recordings of interviews with British vets, conducted in the 1960s and '70s, as narration. The results (we saw it in IMAX) are stunning. A WWI buff (he happens to own a vintage cannon, but of course), the "Lord of the Rings" and "Hobbit" director dives head-first into the project. And Jackson spared no expense. The attention to detail is meticulous, from the varying shades of grassland to the tint of the uniforms of specific regiments to the hiring of lip-reading experts to approximate the comments of those filmed so that voice actors -- matched vocally based on the surmised hometown of the various soldiers -- could replicate suspected dialogue.

The result is somehow both artificial and disturbingly authentic. It both glorifies war and lays bare its horrors. Jackson brings to life both the camaraderie of the men (who, decades later, generally look back fondly on the experience) and the nightmare not only of the weapons of war but the day-to-day indignities experienced by Britain's young men engaged in tedious trench warfare. It's both eerie and oddly joyful to see century-old footage spring magically to life.

BONUS TRACK
After the final credits in the theatrical release (and presumably as a DVD extra someday), Jackson hosts a half-hour examination of the techniques used in making the film. He's a genial host, betraying his WWI geekdom as well as his devotion to film restoration. The secrets are fascinating and are worth the price of admission.

And the song over the credits, the bawdy "Mademoiselle from Armentieres," sanitized here for PG sensibilities:


 

Western Drama

THE BALLAD OF BUSTER SCRUGGS (B) - An unnecessary but entertaining melange of western tales, told storybook style and with meticulous imagery by Joel and Ethan Coen. The six stories roam the range -- from ho-hum to highly amusing to suspenseful. With a mixed bag, you're going to have your share of clunkers and gems. For example, no western, no matter how short, should have James Franco in it. But even his story -- about a bank robber rescued from a hanging only to find himself back on the gallows -- delivers a memorable punch line.

Tim Blake Nelson starts things off as the chipper songbird Buster Scruggs, a slick gunslinger who can do no wrong -- until, this being a Coen brothers movie, his luck seems to run out. Tom Waits is fine in a solo scenario as a wise old gold-digger in a bucolic setting, determined to find (and keep) his fortune, no matter what.  Liam Neeson and Harry Melling never gel as, respectively, a carnival huckster and his meal ticket -- a young man with no arms or legs who spins stories and re-creates Abe Lincoln orations -- though, again, the dark Coen twist at the end is beautifully executed.  Zoe Kazan's modern mien is both a distraction and a refreshing change of pace as a newly widowed member of a group of settlers hiking the Oregon trial. She is wooed by Bill Heck but is not immune to the dangers of the wild west, some of which are brought on by her ill-advised devotion to her pet dog.

The final sequence is probably the best. It consists almost entirely of a carriage ride by five strangers. It offers the Coens the chance to knock out some killer dialogue and a group of actors -- including Tyne Daly, Brendon Gleeson and, especially, Chelcie Ross (Conrad Hilton on TV's "Mad Men") -- to show off their chops. It's a highly entertaining conclusion to two-plus hours of storytelling by a couple of masters who make it all look easy.

WRITTEN ON THE WIND (1956) (B) - A blockbuster cast delivers a sordid story, penned by George Zuckerman and directed by Douglas Sirk, about a drunken playboy who steals his best friend's gal. Robert Stack (TV's "The Untouchables") chews scenery as Kyle Hadley, heir to an oil fortune. Rock Hudson is solid as his buddy Mitch, of humble origins. Kyle jumps ahead of Mitch for the affections of Lucy (Lauren Bacall), and Mitch keeps a torch awaiting the inevitable meltdown of the marriage. Meantime, Kyle's loose sister, Marylee (a saucy Dorothy Malone), pines for Mitch, whom she's known since childhood.

Mix these characters well in a Technicolor setting, toss in a pistol at least once in each act, and you build the melodrama to a satisfying conclusion. The dialogue is zippy, if a little cliched. Hudson and Malone are particularly sharp in this classic love quadrangle.