La La Land

**** out of ****

I may have said this before, but my regard for musicals is the same as my regard for science fiction films: When it doesn't work, it plummets into an abyss of unwanted awfulness. When it does work, it's the most wonderful thing that I could ask for.

La La Land is a dazzling escape for those who like to dream and a sobering wakeup for a genre that normally promises dreamers that they can have their cake and eat it too.

Its status as a Best Picture contender at this year's Academy Awards (among thirteen other nominations) raises questions sparked by Mark Harris' book, Pictures at a Revolution, which chronicled the making, release and Best Picture nominations of five movies released in 1967 and what significance each film held for the cultural changes that reshaped Hollywood.

I haven't always applied the question of cultural relevance to the biggest category at the Oscars, but we are living in an increasingly divisive point in history.

This year we're looking at several movies which were all made before Donald Trump even came close to taking office due to the support of many Americans who were clearly upset about one thing or another. Naturally, I look at these nominees and look for hints of what was coming.

It might be fair to say that Hell or High Water was unconsciously a movie about Trump's America. Arrival was almost timeless in its theme of communication and still felt relevant as ever given our world's difficulty at moving forward to survive as a species.

I have many things to say about the other nominees, but I'll jump back to the film I'm reviewing, which may be the most culturally irrelevant film nominated. La La Land is an escapist movie that is almost about looking backward -something one of the two main characters is criticized of doing. 

It's a big callback to classic dance numbers, old Hollywood, jazz music and innocent idealism -all captured on vibrant colorful celluloid. It's a make-movies-great-again experience and had it not subverted a few common genre expectations, it would have very little to say as a new movie.    

Its writer/director, Damien Chazelle, is toying with nostalgia that wins my sympathy and is evading reality in the same way that has allowed Woody Allen to thrive for years by giving filmgoers a world where no one dresses like a jackass and even the characters' idea of "bad music" is pretty catchy compared to the abominable dog shit I overhear on today's Top 40 radio.

Comparing his work to Allen's is appropriate since Allen is one of the few auteurs I can think of who made a film similar to this one [See Everyone Says I Love You]. However, Chazelle is a lot more cinematically ambitious. The aesthetics in this movie reminded me a lot of Paul Thomas Anderson's careful compositions and creative ways of silhouetting characters in Punch-Drunk Love. 

The movie is essentially a story of two artists in Hollywood trying to catch a break. Ryan Gosling is an anal-retentive jazz pianist who can't find gigs that allow him to play his compositions and Emma Stone is an aspiring actress bouncing between auditions while getting by as a studio backlot barista. After the two collide with one another enough times, they recognize each other's passion which binds them until the prospect of success down their respectively different paths threatens to tear them apart. The film's conclusion to this issue is refreshing, if not bittersweet and all of it being put in the context of a classic musical works.

This is a movie of few surprises, but it delivers the kind of feeling that I crave when light hits a big screen. The only sad feeling that comes when a movie like this ends, is that I can't escape reality forever. Knowing that is, I suppose, a good quality as a filmgoer.

The LEGO Batman Movie

***1/2 out of ****

It is what it is. The LEGO Batman Movie is the kind of wonderful thing that happens when things are bad. The current run of DC Comics franchise films are making money but I certainly don't value them and neither do the many comic book and movie fans with whom I associate.

In my Batman v Superman review last year, I've gone over what's wrong with these films, so I'll try and let that go here, because whether anyone at Warner or DC is willing to admit it, this new movie represents the institutionalization of a troubled series. It isn't the cure, but Batman, Superman and Joker all got sent to the nuthouse thanks to their benefactor, Lego, where we can see if a little self-parody can help these guys work out their issues.

Directed by Chris McKay (TV's Robot Chicken) this hilarious animated film picks up on the adventures of Batman's Lego incarnation (voice of Will Arnett) last seen in The Lego Movie and continues that particular film's aesthetic splendor where simple figures with choppy animation are given a comically epic context.

The movie does everything you can expect with a plot that portrays Batman as a hero so enamored with his awesomeness that he is unwilling to do a little self-exploration -despite the insistence of his loyal butler Alfred (voice of Ralph Fiennes). Why does Gotham City continue to have a dramatic crime problem, despite Batman's help? Why does Joker (voice of Zach Galifianakis) seem so insistent on creating problems for Batman to solve while Batman allows him to get away every time? Why does Batman prefer to work alone, when a little cooperation with others would be better for everyone?

These questions all come to the surface when the criminals of Gotham all mysteriously choose to voluntarily surrender to the police for their absurd schemes and are jailed, leaving Batman without a sense of purpose until Robin (voice of Michael Cera) enters his life as an orphan looking to assist the caped crusader, which Batman refuses until he realizes the boy has skills necessary to help him agitate the crime world back into operation. Naturally, Joker is counting on this. 

This isn't such a bad plot considering that this is the first tongue-in-cheek take take on Batman in cinema since Joel Schumacher made a couple of movies in the '90s which could have stood to embrace their campiness more in order to work. 

The movie is expectedly hyperactive with pop-cultural and meta humor running throughout its simulated plastic construction blocks and I had a great time watching it. But there is still the strange feeling that came with the realization in 2014 that one of the best movies of that year was essentially a 100-minute commercial. The fact that a toy brand name attached to a franchise brand name gets people swarming to the theaters feels kind of cynical. The fact that it delivered great entertainment is just... weird.

20th Century Women

***1/2 out of ****

Director Mike Mills caught my attention during my college years when I found a deep fascination with filmmakers interacting with the music world. Mills had filmed music videos for one of my favorite bands, Air, and was working as a graphic designer, often producing album covers.

After coming across a dvd of short films he'd made, I wished that he would follow in the footsteps of people like Spike Jones and Michel Gondry to make feature films. When he finally did this through the film adaptation of the novel, Thumbsucker, I was glad that the movie was good but a little disappointed that it lacked the dreamy quality of his short works.

His second feature, Beginners, was his first step into the autobiographical when he reflected on the memories of his father (Christopher Plummer) during his final years when he had terminal cancer and came out as a homosexual. That film also spliced in a few childhood memories of a peculiar mother, which seemed a little distracting to the narrative.

Maybe if he'd known he would make a film about his mother through 20th Century Women, he may not have bothered with teasing us with her odd behavior in the last film. Annette Bening picks up on Mills' last representation of her and despite the change in actress, we know it's the same woman.

Mills' place as a feature filmmaker is continuing to develop as this movie continues his knack for detached anthropological representations of social behavior without judgement but incorporates new editorial and stylistic choices that give this film a very unique tone.

Set in southern California in 1979, the film puts emphasis on three women in the life of a boy in his early teens: His single mother (Bening), her tenant (Greta Gerwig) and his best friend/love interest (Elle Fanning).

Many of the scenes take place in the large semi-dilapidated home where the mother rents space to Gerwig's feminist photographer character who has an affinity for new wave and punk rock music. The other tenant is played by Billy Crudup as a hippie handyman/grease-monkey who is always working on some corner of the home or one of the many old cars parked on the property.

Like A Christmas Story, Crooklyn, The Tree of Life and many other autobiographical films recalling youth, the film functions in more of an episodic fashion than one that tells a whole story. A lot of the story is a tribute to mother who keeps her emotions in check but has decided to find loose ways to manage her son after his distant and sometimes alarming youthful explorations seem dangerous and disturbing to her.

The movie seems to convey admiration for a mother who has a very open mind, but seems far from a cliche. She doesn't pretend to understand the ever-changing world of young people, but is trying so very hard in all the right ways. When he's out of the house, she listens to his records and she goes out to the local band venue to see how people respond to this music.

In the meantime, the son's attraction to his best friend becomes more intense. She stays the night regularly but will not have sex with him -even though she does quite often with boys for whom she has no emotional connection.

A great amount of the film becomes about a boy's search for manhood through feminism, as Gerwig's character guides him through literature, art and music that will allow him to understand women in ways that his peers will not.

Like Wes Anderson's quirky (and sometimes obnoxious) tendency to cut away to short biographies of his characters in the middle of a scene, Mills goes further by plunging into sincere and relevant stories that seem so absorbing that we may fail to notice when these mini-bios have caught up to the present and we're back in the loose narrative of everyone living in this partially-functioning home. The only complaint I have, is that these interruptions happen a few too many times. 

The title is defied by stopping to tell stories of the film's men, when I thought their backstories could have been shared through dialogue only. This isn't a bad thing but it's the only element that gives the film a direction that is as lacking as the film feels on the surface.

The cinematography is colorfully natural and the score combined with killer soundtrack selections make the movie a hypnotic experience. Very good film

Hidden Figures

*** out of ****

Hidden Figures examines unsung heroes during the early years of the space race by focusing on black women who worked in the computation department of NASA solving advanced mathematical equations that enabled the successful launches and returns of astronauts like John Glenn.

Taking plenty of dramatic license, the film tells us the true accomplishments of three women: Katherine G. Johnson (Taraji P. Henson), Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer) and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monáe).

Vaughan powers her way through the obstacles of her spiteful white superior (Kirsten Dunst) to have a hand in the giant IBM being installed in a room that may take the place of her job. Jackson struggles to become an engineer -which requires the completion of education courses not offered to blacks - or women - in the state. It is Johnson’s story that gets the most emphasis as the she is promoted to work with the Space Task Group on the Friendship 7 mission where she deals with daily adversity that slowly dissipates when the head of the division (Kevin Costner) realizes she is a unique genius capable of solving their most difficult problems.

I struggle with movies like Hidden Figures because they dare me to judge based on content more than form. This movie is the kind of cinematic fluff that deserves a pass because it is important enough to be worthy of school field trips to the theater until it charms families at home with its unchallenging –but relevant history lesson when it plays on cable TV.

This is the kind of glossy period film that gets romantically nostalgic by relishing in vintage Americana through colorful costume and set design – while simultaneously showing contemptuous regret for the time by rubbing in reminders of Jim Crowe era racism and the general sexism of the time. I’m rather sure that no one in this film is seen smoking, so I guess Virginia had some level of sophistication back then –or maybe the movie was trying to keep its PG-rating.

It is one of many historical films that is friendly to the senses, but has me wishing for a fact-driven documentary instead. However, lots of people –especially young people are likely to respond to its lesson in a positive way. 

The struggles and triumphs of these women in their personal and professional lives are demonstrated with an accessible cinematic fashion. Henson and Spencer expectedly bring a lot of wit and emotion to their roles as seasoned pros while Monáe brings a magnetic screen presence in her second film. This is a formulaic-but-fun movie.