The Father

I had a suspicion that The Father would generate a lot of buzz at the Sundance Film Festival last year because it stars Anthony Hopkins and Olivia Colman who are both absolutely brilliant.  I was correct because tickets proved to be impossible to get!  I finally had a chance to see it now that it is in wide release and the hype is real.  Anthony (Hopkins) is in the late stages of dementia but he adamantly refuses to leave his flat and refuses to have a nurse care for him.  His daughter Anne (Colman) has been struggling to cope on her own but things become critical when her partner Paul (Rufus Sewell) wants them to move to Paris.  The narrative is told from Anthony's perspective so the audience is able to experience all of his confusion first-hand.  Just like Anthony, the audience is never entirely sure what is real as his perception of his environment and the people who come and go becomes jumbled.  The production design is incredibly clever because the differences between Anthony's flat and Anne's are very subtle and there were moments when I actually wondered where Anthony was (I am really looking forward to watching this again so I can pay more attention to the details).  The introduction of Olivia Williams and Mark Gatiss into the narrative also keeps things off-kilter and at one point I really did wonder which Olivia was actually playing Anne (this is a brilliant bit of casting because both actresses have similar features and it is completely plausible that someone suffering from dementia might mistake the two of them).  The script is really compelling because there are a few elements that keep recurring in various forms and in various timelines, such as Anthony's missing watch, the chicken that Anne is baking, and the conversation about Anne's move to Paris, which show the extent of his ongoing deterioration.  Hopkins gives a tour-de-force performance (one of the best in his long and storied career) in which he is simultaneously imperious, cruel, charming, and heartbreaking (sometimes in the same scene!).  Colman is also outstanding as a daughter who loves her father but is crumbling under the weight of the responsibility for caring for him.  There is one scene, in particular, where Anne is trying to paint an optimistic picture for a potential new caregiver (Imogen Poots) but her concern is betrayed by the welling of tears in her eyes.  It is so powerful!  This movie is devastating in its portrayal of dementia and I sometimes found it difficult to watch but I highly recommend it.

My Salinger Year

I read The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger when I was a junior in high school and it pretty much rocked my world (I really relate to themes of alienation in books and movies) so I was incredibly intrigued by the premise of My Salinger Year and went to see it last night.  It was not what I was expecting and I didn't enjoy it as much as I thought I would.  Joanna (Margaret Qualley) is an aspiring writer who decides to leave a graduate program at Berkeley to move to New York and live her dream.  She takes a temporary job as an assistant to a curmudgeonly literary agent (Sigourney Weaver) who represents the reclusive writer.  One of her duties is to respond to all of the fan mail written to Salinger with a standard form letter but she is moved by some of the letters and begins writing personal responses to them with varying degrees of success.  She also interacts with the author himself on the phone and, despite the fact that she is becoming more and more successful at the agency, he inspires her to leave to pursue her dream.  This outcome is a foregone conclusion and, even though the narrative takes its time to reach it, there is not a lot of dramatic tension.  The process by which Joanna finds her voice is very subtle and there are quite a few lesser subplots, such as a toxic relationship with another aspiring writer (Douglas Booth), a visit from a former boyfriend from Berkeley (Hamza Haq), and a best friend (Seana Kerslake) who gives up on her dream of being a writer to get married, that go nowhere and take away from the main conceit.  I also found the characterization of Salinger to be incredibly far-fetched because he is portrayed as a grandfatherly figure willing to give advice to a young writer rather than the idiosyncratic and enigmatic person he was.  I did, however, enjoy the production design because the literary world of New York in the 1990s is exactly how I pictured it with mahogany wood paneling, dusty bookshelves, portraits of authors hanging on the walls, and anachronistic equipment (I loved all of the typewriters).  Finally, both Qualley and Weaver give charismatic performances (even if their interactions are not as humorous as those of Andy and Miranda Priestley in The Devil Wears Prada) and I liked how the fans who write to Salinger are portrayed.  This movie, based on the memoir of the same name by Joanna Rakoff, is fine but I wish it had delved further into how she was inspired by Salinger.  It is really just a chronicle of a year in Joanna's life, which happens to include a few interactions with the author intermingled with other random events, that culminates in a decision to become a writer.  I was hoping for more.

Raya and the Last Dragon

Last night I saw Raya and the Last Dragon and I absolutely loved it!  In the mythical land of Kumandra there are evil spirits known as the Druun turning people into stone.  The dragons of Kumandra use all of their magic to create a gem before they are turned to stone and one dragon named Sisu (Awkwafina) is chosen to use it to defeat the Druun and revive everyone.  Many years later, the tribes of Kumandra are divided into lands known as Fang, Heart, Tail, Spine, and Talon over their jealousy to possess the gem which resides in Heart.  Raya (Kelly Marie Tran), a guardian of the gem, is betrayed when she befriends Namaari (Gemma Chan) of Fang who tries to steal it.  The resulting fight splits the gem into pieces, which are taken by each tribe, and reawakens the Druun who turn her father, Chief Benja (Daniel Dae Kim), to stone.  Six years later, Raya and her sidekick Tuk Tuk (Alan Tudyk) find Sisu and learn that all of the pieces of the gem might give Sisu the power to defeat the Druun once again.  Raya goes on a quest to retrieve the pieces and encounters Boun (Izaac Wang) from Tail, Noi (Thalia Tran) from Talon, Tong (Benedict Wong) from Spine, and her nemesis Namaari from Fang.  They must learn to trust each other to defeat the Druun and unite as Kumandra once again.  The animation is absolutely dazzling and I loved the distinct world-building for Fang, Heart, Tail, Spine, and Talon, especially the bustling street markets of Talon and the terraced rice paddies of Fang.  The character design of the dragons is so beautiful.  When I first saw the trailer I thought Sisu looked too cartoonish but, when all of the dragons take flight together, it is absolutely magical.  The theme of unity is brilliant and one that is needed right now because of all of the division in the world.  The stakes are surprisingly high for a Disney animated movie and there were actually three different times when I had tears in my eyes (I did laugh out loud many times, too).  Raya is an incredibly dynamic character because her motivation at the beginning of her journey is merely to revive her father but she ultimately applies his wisdom of trusting an enemy to bring about his dream of a unified Kumandra.  I love flawed characters who find redemption so Raya just might be my favorite Disney princess of all time!  Tran does such a good job in portraying Raya's strength and vulnerability and Awkwafina provides some welcome comic relief as the always optimistic Sisu.  I loved this movie so much and, whether you decide to see it in the theater (my screening was packed) or on Disney+, I highly recommend it!

Note:  I actually really liked the character of Rose in The Last Jedi and I was horrified by all of the abuse directed at Tran by fans who didn't.  I am so happy to see her receive some well-earned praise for this role!

Chaos Walking

As a huge fan of both Daisy Ridley and Tom Holland as well as the Chaos Walking trilogy by Patrick Ness (I think it is a brilliant examination of colonization, the treatment of indigenous peoples, resource allocation, the abuse of power, loss of innocence, and the futility of war), I have been looking forward to the movie adaptation of the first book, The Knife of Never Letting Go, for what seems like forever.  I was so excited to see a Thursday preview last night but I ended up being very disappointed.  I know that a movie adaptation cannot possibly include everything from the source material because of time constraints but it seems like the big ideas of the novel are excluded in favor of very generic action sequences.  Viola Eade (Ridley) is a member of a scouting expedition for a larger group of settlers from Earth on their way to a planet called the New World.  Her ship crashes on this planet and she is the only survivor.  She encounters Todd Hewitt (Holland) in a settlement of earlier colonizers called Prentisstown, where all of the women have mysteriously disappeared and the men have their thoughts on display in a phenomenon called the Noise. The Mayor, David Prentiss (Mads Mikkelsen), and Aaron (David Oyelowo), a mysterious preacher, view Viola and the new settlers on their way as a threat.  Todd wants to help her so his adoptive fathers Ben (Demian Bichir) and Cillian (Kurt Sutter) tell him about other settlements on New World and they go on the run so Viola can contact the mother ship.  However, Todd's Noise makes it difficult for them to hide leading to an epic confrontation and revelations about what happened to all of the women in Prentisstown.  Todd is very one-dimensional without any of the coming of age and loss of innocence character arcs from the book and his only motivation seems to be getting a kiss from Viola but Holland is appealing enough in the role.  Viola is a bit more interesting with a few throwaway lines about the indigenous species (there is a random scene involving the Spackle that makes absolutely no sense) and the abuse of power but she is mostly reactionary.  Ridley is also very appealing and she does what she can with the role but watching someone run from Point A to Point B gets boring after a while.  The Mayor's motivation is a bit unclear (although he has some great costumes) and there isn't any development of how he is able to rule over everyone or of his connection to Todd beyond a few throwaway lines.  The other characters don't have much to do and I was really disappointed with how Davy Jr. (Nick Jonas) and Hildy (Cynthia Erivo), in particular, are underutilized.  The action sequences are surprisingly bland but I did really like the visual representation of the Noise.  Finally, I really hated the conclusion (the biggest deviation from the book) because it is very rushed and certain events make the adaptation of the next two books impossible (which might be a good thing).  Fans of Holland and Ridley will probably really enjoy this but fans of the books will be disappointed.  Ugh!

My Zoe

Last night I saw the movie My Zoe and, while it is a fascinating and thought-provoking portrait of a mother willing to go to extraordinary lengths to keep from losing her child, I found it to be very anticlimactic.  It begins as a domestic drama as Isabelle (Julie Delpy) fights an acrimonious battle with her estranged husband James (Richard Armitage) for custody of their daughter Zoe (Sophia Ally).  Then it completely shifts gears and becomes a futuristic science fiction thriller as Isabelle requests an experimental procedure that is both illegal and possibly unethical after her daughter suffers a devastating brain injury.  This involves such a strange tonal shift that it almost seems like two different movies (the screen even fades to black in between the two).  I enjoyed the first act, particularly the passive aggressive bickering between Isabelle and James as they both try to prove that they are the better parent, because both characters feel very authentic in their love for their daughter and their situation is incredibly intense and compelling.  The final act is less compelling because it requires an almost comical suspension of disbelief despite the fact that the movie is set in the near future (with some really interesting tech gadgets).  Several new characters are introduced and their actions lack any sort of motivation.  Dr. Thomas Fischer (Daniel Bruhl), a fertility specialist to whom Isabelle turns in her desperation, adamantly refuses to help her because the experiment is morally wrong and almost certain to fail but then he inexplicably changes his mind and, of course, the experiment is a success.  His wife Laura (Gemma Arterton) is horrified that he has risked everything to help a woman he barely knows but even she eventually becomes sympathetic for no discernible reason.  In my opinion, the resolution is very disappointing because the timeline jumps several years into the future without an examination of the provocative questions that have have been posed about the outcome of the experiment.  Delpy gives a passionate performance as a mother on a relentless quest but it isn't enough to keep this movie from derailing in the end.