Category Archives: 2018

The Miseducation of Cameron Post

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The Miseducation of Cameron Post          4 stars

I recently saw The Miseducation of Cameron Post, a little seen movie from last year by director Desiree Akhavan and recipient of the Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize.  The film tackles the subject of gay conversion therapy for wayward teens in 1993, which was a prevalent thing then.  It stars Chloe Grace Moretz as Cameron Post, the teen girl caught making out with her female best friend who then gets sent off to a Christian gay conversion camp by her relatives.  The topic has been tackled before but feels real here as Moretz gives a convincing performance that is aided by two costars playing teens that she connects with at the camp.  The camp directors (John Gallagher Jr. and Jennifer Ehle) use half thought out methods on their subjects that seem to mainly make the kids feel badly about who they are.  (Each has to create an iceberg on paper that lists what they don’t like about themselves.)  One nice thing about it is how the film is not all heavy drama but includes several moments of comedy (making it different from Boy Erased also from last year).  Miseducation does show us the pain that these young people go through as they experience what can only be described as abuse.  One scene near the end involving a troubled teen is especially shocking.  See it if you can find it.  It is just too bad that so few people saw it when it hit the theaters.

Capernaum

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Capernaum        4 ½ stars

Capernaum is a very intense depiction of life in a poverty stricken city in the Middle East by Lebanese director, Nadine Labaki.  The film was awarded the Grand Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival.  It tells the story of a young boy of about ten or eleven, Zain, who leaves his negligent parents and lives on the streets to be eventually taken in by illegal Ethiopian immigrant Rahil, where he helps her take care of her baby.  The story is tragic and hard to watch at times as you see this young boy struggle to survive and see how this shapes his attitude toward the world.  The movie has a non-linear structure as it starts showing us a civil trial where Zain is suing his parents for the crime of allowing him to be born into such a terrible place.  It then shows us the background of the immense struggle the characters have to face each day.  The director used all non-professionals as actors in making the movie and allowed the actors to improvise some of the scenes.  The result is a compelling story and one that is hard to watch at many points.  I recommend it for those that can take in such a tragic but real story.

Can You Ever Forgive Me?

Can You Ever Forgive Me?            4 ½ stars

Last year’s fascinating “Can You Ever Forgive Me?” tells us the true story of Lee Israel, a down on her luck celebrity biographer who upon losing her job embarks on a new career of fabricating personal letters of notable writers like Dorothy Parker and Noel Coward.  Written by Nicole Holofcener, directed by Marielle Heller and starring usually comic actress Melissa McCarthy, this dark comedy drama has some of the best writing I have seen in years.  McCarthy plays Israel like a woman that you love to hate.  The character speaks with some very sharp in that comes from a place of rudeness and a bad temper like I have never seen.  The best scenes are those that she shares with her friend in crime Jack played by Richard Grant.  The two of them can trade insults like masters of the craft.  You get the feeling that McCarthy really is Israel including the fact that she is never really repentant about the crimes she has committed.  Melissa McCarthy received a well-deserved Best Actress Academy Award nomination for this one.  Good for her.  The movie also was nominated for best Adapted Screenplay as the movie is based on Lee Israel’s book.

Never Look Away

Never Look Away                                             4 ½ stars

Never Look Away is an epic storytelling of a young German artist who lived through the time of Nazi Germany and Communist controlled East Germany growing as an artist and developing his own special kind of painting.  Its three hour length covers a great span of time from the thirties to the sixties, starting with 10 year old Kurt witnessing a display of “degenerate art” and the horrors accompanying the Nazi’s waging war against the world.  After the war, Kurt, the young man (Tom Schilling) works as an artist for the Communist regime of East Germany producing art of the Socialist workers, but you can tell his talent calls for him to be something better.  Fortunately, he meets Ellie, a young pretty woman supplying new pencils to the artists.  Of course the two fall for each other having secret night rendezvous destined for disaster, given that her father is a former SS Nazi in hiding.  Eventually, the two of them escape to the West at the time of the wall going up where Kurt’s artistic career is advanced with the help of prominent artists of the growing movement of contemporary art.  The movie is at its best when we see Kurt being inspired to do his best work by the beauty of the world around him, but also influenced by some of the horror he has experienced from his younger days.  He develops a way of painting photographic images while blending them together in haunting black and white images.  The story is apparently loosely based on the life of real life artist Gerhard Richter, an admired painter of the 20th century.  Never Look Away was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards and is one that should not be missed.

Crazy Rich Asians

Crazy Rich Asians                              4 stars

Last year’s Crazy Rich Asians was one of the big hits of the summer, a return of the rom-com that seems to have been missing from Hollywood for years.  Only this time it’s one featuring an all Asian cast, something extremely rare in mainstream Hollywood.  Rachel Chu, a young New Yorker is persuaded by her boyfriend, Nick to accompany him to his best friend’s wedding in Singapore.  But the thing she didn’t realize is that Nick’s family is rich, but not just that. They are insanely rich or crazy rich.  Also, Nick happens to be one of the most sought after bachelors in the country.  She meets his family and friends including Nick’s former girlfriend and learns about the trappings and baggage that goes along with belonging to a fabulously wealthy family.  She faces some sobering challenges and ultimately faces them making some tough choices.  The film is definitely a comedy with very funny moments featuring some funny cast members.  Included among these is Awkwafina who plays Rachel’s best friend, a role that seriously raised her profile in the industry.  Crazy Rich Asians doesn’t have a political statement to make but is special because of its all Asian cast which shows they are to be taken seriously.  It’s a light enjoyable movie that appeals to a wide audience and is something of a throwback to classic Hollywood comedies.  Among the notable cast is Michelle Yeoh (Captain Georgiou of Star Trek: Discovery) as Nick’s controlling mother in an especially outstanding role.

Mary Poppins Returns

Mary Poppins Returns   3 1/2 stars

I finally got to see last year’s Mary Poppins Returns, the long overdue sequel to the original Mary Poppins from the sixties starring Julie Andrews.  This time around it is Emily Blunt taking on the title role, a daunting task that she lives up to very well, capturing the personality and always in control attitude of the magical nanny.  This time she is back to take care of the new Banks family with young Michael (Ben Whishaw) who is widowed and Jane (Emily Mortimer) all grown up and in a crisis as Michael’s own employer is about to foreclose on the family house.  Mary takes the three children on some thrilling adventures through animated lands much like in the original movie and finds time to rescue the family from their troubles.  It is also fun to see Lin-Manuel Miranda as the always smiling and cheerful lamplighter, Jack and Dick Van Dyke in a brief special role as the owner of the bank.  There also memorable appearances by Meryl Streep, Colin Firth and Angela Lansbury.  It is very tough to be compared to such a masterpiece as Mary Poppins, a movie I loved watching repeatedly as a child.  The musical numbers may not be quite up to the level of the creations that made the original movie so memorable.  The tunes don’t stick with me the way they did, but then I’m not a nine year old anymore.  Maybe today’s kids will find Mary Poppins Returns to be as enchanting as the original seemed to me way back then.

Colette

Colette                 4 ½ stars

Another movie from last year that I just caught up to is Colette, a film that created a lot of buzz at Sundance in 2018.  This film stars Keira Knightley as Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette, the acclaimed female French writer of the early twentieth century.  In the film, the young Colette from rural France marries the successful Parisian writer, known as Willy (Dominic West) and is transported to be among the intellectuals in Paris.  Willy is not really that much of a writer but he has created an industry of creating literary works by having writers ghost-write under his name.  Soon he figures out that Colette has a talent for writing and persuades her to write about her experiences creating the series of novels about “Claudine”.  What follows is a story of redefining gender roles and telling of stories that overcome the societal restraints of the time.  Some of these norms that are overcome even involve women in bisexual or homosexual relationships, quite a break from the traditions of the early 1900’s even in France.  Eventually, the couple reaches a crisis when Colette asks that she be given the rights to her own work.  The film was directed by Wash Westmoreland and was co-written by him and his partner, Richard Glatzer.  Sadly, Glatzer did not live to see his project reach the screen.  But you can have the opportunity to see Keira Knightley’s acting talents in this film based on the true story of one of France’s finest female writers.

Mirai

Mirai                      2 ½ stars

Mirai is a Japanese animated movie that came out last year by anime director Mamoru Hosoda.  The story is about a young boy of 5 or 6 who has to deal with the addition of a baby sister to the family, one that he has a hard time accepting.  There is a lot of misbehaving on the part of young Kun until he is visited by the young teenage version of his little sister who guides him through some odd crisis with his family.  He is also visited by the human version of the family dog who joins in the adventures.  Kum also goes through some other strange adventures when he leaves the house and encounters people that have key roles in his life.  I haven’t seen any of Hosoda’s previous work but I wasn’t thrilled by the story of a little boy who is something of a brat and is slow to respect others in his family.  It’s not up to the level of work by Hayao Miyazaki who brought us Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle, Princess Mononoke and The Wind Rises.  Those were truly exceptional animated movies that I still remember.  Animation is a way to tell a story with some very fantastic elements that can’t be done with live action.  I hope that Hosoda can succeed in coming up with some truly fantastic stories with a moral message.

A Quiet Place

A Quiet Place                     2 ½ stars

Last year’s hit monster movie, A Quiet Place, was a type of post-apocalyptic movie in which humanity has been nearly wiped out by ravenous creatures that have ultra-sensitive hearing, but are completely blind.  Thus, the remaining humans can only survive by remaining absolutely quiet in all that they do.  The story focuses on one family living in a house in the woods who have learned to live without talking and raising food without making any sound.  This movie was well received by critics and audiences, but there was too much for me to get over.  There were good performances I am sure, but the holes in the plot were obvious, like how could they possibly raise a field of corn without making any noise.  And there is no real background about how this all came about.  Any good horror movie has to provide some explanation for how the disaster came to be.  I actually enjoyed this year’s Bird Box more than A Quiet Place.  The movie earned an Oscar Nomination for Sound Editing, presumably for the sounds that the monster makes, but I feel like I’ve seen this before in horror movies.  It may have been the best horror movie of 2018, but then I couldn’t find one from last year that I really liked.

Monsters and Men

Monsters and Men          4 stars

Monsters and Men is one of a string of recent movies addressing police brutality against unarmed black men.  This one takes an approach similar to Crash where separate independent lives intersect around a common event, here the killing of a young black man at the hands of a white police officer.  Each of the three young men have their own way of dealing with the tragedy.  Manny, a hustler has just started a new job in security when he happens to be at the scene of the shooting capturing it all on video.  Now he must decide whether to release the video and subject himself to retaliation or keep quiet and be complicit in the crime.  Black police officer Dennis knows what the offending police officer is like and must decide how to respond to the ensuing investigation.  And young star athlete, Zyrick has to decide if he should participate in the resistance against the police which may jeopardize his chances at becoming a pro athlete.  These are situations that have been portrayed in many crime dramas, but it feels like a fresh approach here.  The director/writer, Reinaldo Marcus Green is completely new to the industry.  I hope we see more from him.  This film received much praise at Sundance two years ago as it took on this very hot topic.  I missed it back then but am glad I finally had the chance to see it.