The Visit

** out of ****

Through some critics and audiences, M. Night Shyamalan is seeing what I would call an unearned comeback through The Visit, which is his latest film after a long string of idiotic thrillers that had lost him a lot of respect. I’ve never seen a director’s career like his. His early films (mainly The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable) were so absolutely strong that I would have never anticipated such aimless fantasy (Lady in the Water) or such inept direction of human behavior (The Happening) from the same director in later films.

For a director whose career has been a needless letdown, the choice to delve into found-footage filmmaking is an obviously terrible idea since that entire subgenre has been almost as disappointing as Shyamalan. This trendy and inexpensive approach to making a movie seems rather desperate on his part, but it also seems to be paying off for him at the moment.

The Visit is about a couple of kids (Ed Oxenbould and Olivia DeJonge) sent to meet their grandparents for the first time. Their mother (Kathryn Hahn) is eager to go on a cruise with her new boyfriend and after reconnecting with her parents via social media, she has decided to send her children on a train to stay with them in rural Pennsylvania.

The “found footage” perspective is provided by the older sister, who is an aspiring filmmaker bringing along cameras to document their visit. After meeting the old couple (The amazing Peter McRobbie and Deanna Dunagan) at the train station, they’re taken out to a remote home where despite a welcoming impression, are provided a questionable curfew as well as boundary rules. When these rules are defied, the kids witness their grandparents displaying some very odd behavior, which is rationalized as senility.

This movie has three obvious problems: 1. The setup of a loving mother sending her own children to stay with their grandparents, from whom she ran away a decade ago, isn’t the typical first step for making amends with one’s kin. 2. The behavior exhibited by the old couple very early in the film would be enough to send any child running to the next closest farm house, even if it could be legitimized as dementia. 3. The documentarian ambition of the older sister to continue filming every terror she encounters defies any relatable sense of self-preservation.

With the suspension of disbelief ready to implode during most parts of the movie, there’s almost no involvement to be felt, but I will not deny the movie has a few big scares. A lot of situations, no matter how ridiculous are well staged and the actors all do great work.

There’s a major argument among some critics that this movie is a very dark comedy. The movie rests on an arc of sincerity that makes it impossible for me to see it as such. I see the humor in the insanity of its campy scares tapping into buried repulsion some audience members may feel about the elderly, but I found it to be in bad taste.

I take no issues with horror movies that aim for smutty politically incorrect concepts, as long as they commit to an R-rating so the movie may wink at its adult audience. This movie, however, is PG-13, which essentially invites the whole family to join in on the “old people are nasty” scares and I find that somewhat morally repugnant. Having the younger brother be a wannabe rapper as comic relief, so that he can do bad raps about the creepy old folks, is maybe as cringe-worthy as the R-rated gross-out moments that infiltrate the conclusion to the movie.

Shyamalan may have our temporary attention with this film’s weirdness, but this is not a return to form; it’s a product of weak storytelling with no concern for plausibility and continues to his abandonment of rich aesthetics and deep passion for well-constructed suspense - which he practically mastered once upon a time. My only hope is that a little positive encouragement from this movie’s success may inspire him to make good movies again.    

Mistress America

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

Only months after the release of the very funny While We’re Young, Noah Baumbach already has another film - this time returning for another collaboration with his girlfriend, actress/writer Greta Gerwig, with whom he made Frances Ha.”

I feel as though Baumbach is entering a stage where he’s aiming for a broader audience and I like this. His celebrated early films like The Squid and the Whale earned him acclaim, but they were so steeped in the world of problems faced by upper-class academics, that they could be a little alienating.

His older films also had an atmosphere of bitter realism, but Mistress America, like his last movie, seems to exist somewhere between the unflattering realistic details and dry humor often seen in indie films; and the absurd scenarios usually found in big budget comedies.

If there’s one conventional trope Gerwig and Baumbach thankfully dodge in this middle area, it is the warm-hearted manipulative score that gets applied to so many comedies. The two clearly have an affinity for eighties-style synth-pop music, which helps to enliven this film.

The story follows an aspiring writer, named Tracy (Lola Kirke), beginning her freshman year at a New York’s Barnard University and having a tough time finding a place among the students. She finds brief romantic interest in a fellow writing student (Matthew Shear), who then strangely starts dating someone else, just as they start becoming close. Out of loneliness, Tracy, whose mother is engaged, chooses to meet her soon-to-be stepsister, Brooke (Gerwig), who resides in Manhattan.

Upon their meet in Times Square the film picks up the manic pace of the ADHD socialite that is Brooke. Tracy’s fascination with Brooke is rather instant even if it’s obvious what a mess she is. When Brooke is around, her dialogue is rapid and often lacks any sense of direction, as she often says things like, “I wasn’t brought up that way,” to justify her objection to anything - whether the reasoning makes sense or not. Tracy acquires valuable writing material as words constantly spill from the mouth of this silly thirty-year-old.

The entire time I watched the movie, I found myself wondering if Baumbach might have improved the film by using a brighter aesthetic than his trademark dim and de-saturated look. Somehow, it’s easier to accept dialogue that’s more fun than realistic, if the look of the movie feels a little removed from reality as well.

The movie’s fun spirit climaxes at a strange point when all the characters find themselves in a large house for a long duration of the film, which takes the tone of an absurd one-act farce. It’s an amusing section, but it also feels like a movie (or play) of its own.

The cast is great. Kirke (who may possess one of the prettiest sad-looking faces I’ve ever seen) made a great impression last year, as a sleazy Ozarks thief in Gone Girl. Her beautiful straight-faced screen presence is a wonderful contrast to Gerwig’s wide-eyed obnoxiously cute shtick.

Overall, Mistress America is a fun, dialogue-heavy comedy that suffers a little from minor structural and stylistic flaws. I recommend it because it represents a lot of value that seems to be deteriorating from most comedy movies, whether they’re independent or mainstream.

The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

**1/2 out of ****

Somehow, I always seem to forget that Guy Ritchie films have value. He continues to be a style-over-substance director, but quite often, his style is very winning. I recall going to see his version of Sherlock Holmes dreading the very idea of it being turned into an action film. Somehow, he managed to pull it off -if not perfectly. The story was just good enough and the actors seemed to be energized by the power of their screen presence in those costumes. Such is the case with his cinematic take on the classic 60s spy TV series, The Man From U.N.C.L.E. -a show I've never seen. I suppose if I've seen enough James Bond movies, I've fulfilled a decent prerequisite.

Henry Cavill and Armie Hammer are both great looking guys possessing charm while Alicia Vikander and Elizabeth Debicki are a collective tease. I don't have much more to say. Their character's don't require much description aside from superficial observations.

This is a sharp-looking tongue-in-cheek movie with plenty of special effects but doesn't spare us some authentic exotic locations -all wonderfully lit. It's worth watching when killing time after dinner on a holiday.

The End of the Tour

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

We may want to leave it to the most intense bookworms out there to judge Jason Segel’s portrayal of renowned writer David Foster Wallace. My only experience with the author was through listening to him read his collection of essays, titled Consider the Lobster through an audiobook. He came across as a thinker, whose obsessive explorations of every subject he approached would be taxing, if his thoughts were not so engaging. Jason Segal plays Wallace as a man reluctant to go off on the tangents he will inevitably lunge into. If this movie doesn’t capture his real character, it still may reveal what he was like when under examination. No, I have not read his most celebrated work, Infinite Jest, which catapulted the writer into a world of fame.

James Ponsoldt’s new film is about Wallace’s struggle with becoming a star writer after that thousand-page novel was published. It is based on a novel by David Lipsky, which recounted five days during the winter of 1996, when he conducted a series of interviews with Wallace for Rolling Stone during a book tour.

Lipsky is portrayed by Jesse Eisenberg with the determination of a reporter digging for details about his reclusive subject, conflicted with the fact that he is a fan. Wallace comes across as a ball of discomfort, considering all the possibilities, intentions, and outcomes of having agreed to this interview.

As a critic, I tend to worry if I fail to represent most moviegoers, when I voice my preference of a good conversation movie to a shallow action flick, rom-com, or biopic. Every genre has potential, but when a drama focuses on the power of an engaging conversation, I feel closer to understanding what Roger Ebert meant when he called movies, machines that generate empathy. A conversation is a raw bit of reality similar to what we experience every day. When a movie gives me the simulated privilege of spending time with a great artist and to hear this artist’s thoughts on the allure of fame, the fear of it, and the struggle to exist with a brain that just won’t shut up, I feel grateful. Focusing on one little corner of a great man’s life can be more telling than the misplaced ambition to try cramming all the highlights into one cinematic experience.

As the movie begins in 2008, Lipsky hears of Wallace’s suicide, which provokes the flashback to 1996 as he listens to recordings of their conversations. I felt as though this movie could have been more daring, if it had committed those flashbacks to only where the cassette recorder was rolling and left the words spoken in between to be expressed by Lipsky’s character in the present day, as he writes his book. I’m getting off track when I explain what a movie isn’t as opposed to what it is, but it also seems so close to taking this stylistic shape, that I’m sure the filmmakers danced around with the idea before arriving at a more conventional form that would be easier on an audience.

The End of the Tour is still a well-acted and honest film that probably does most audiences a favor by simplifying the eccentric personalities on display and it is among the better movies I’ve seen this year.

Straight Outta Compton

*1/2 out of ****

Straight Outta Compton is the cinematic origin story following those who pioneered gangsta’ rap on the west coast. Unsurprisingly, F. Gary Gray, a director who can't think past conventional approaches, gives us a movie filled with the characteristics that I don’t typically enjoy in biopics –particularly the biopics attempting to cover the lives of multiple figures.

You don’t have to like hip-hop in order to appreciate this movie’s intentions. There's very little music from the genre that I truly like. However, I’ve always been infuriated by ignorance regarding the music’s existence. This movie is seeing success, because we still live in troubled times between citizens and law enforcement. The blatant brutal racism of the LAPD in the late eighties/early nineties is on display in the film and serves to remind us all of where the anger of these artists came from, and why it continues to this day.

The movie chronicles the glory, tragedy, and legacy of Ice Cube (O’Shea Jackson Jr. – Ice Cube’s son), Easy-E (Jason Mitchell), and Dr. Dre (Corey Hawkins) over 147 minutes of beautifully shot, decently acted material that is sadly unfocused in structure and boring in its dialogue. Other than the epic concert scenes, the re-enactments fail to be truly compelling and left me with a bigger appetite for something closer to the truth. When I can't tell the difference between the exaggerated stories and the true ones that are stranger than fiction, I find myself wishing that I was watching a documentary instead. 

I was convinced that I was watching a great movie at the beginning, but not too far in, I was losing interest due to its weak portrayal of the creative process. By the point the film was an hour in, and the lead characters were rolling in dough through the questionable advocacy of Jerry Heller (Paul Giamatti) managing the group, I was annoyed by the tired old tale of business conflicts corrupting collaborative art. The movie hadn't even reached the halfway point and I was sure it was past the point of recovering all the atmosphere and emotion it began with... and that's a drag.

Ice Cube, Dre, and Tomica Woods-Wright (the widow of Easy-E) co-produced the film, and while this is evidence of a lack of objectivity, there shouldn't have been a problem in making an old rags-to-riches story seem interesting. David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin approached this kind of drama in the heavily embellished, yet seriously engrossing The Social Network and made it feel fresh. Straight Outta Compton also doesn't come as close to humanizing the seedy side of hip-hop in the way that the great fictional film, Hustle & Flow did.

Essentially, this movie is no different than one of those godawful network TV movies about Madonna, Michael Jackson, or Steve Jobs from the nineties; it's just more polished in appearance by a great cinematographer like Matthew Libatique and some very uncanny casting to match its subjects.

There is an enthusiastic audience for this film, prepared to forgive its dull stretches that turned me off - and some people who know nothing of N.W.A's history, who will find the film informative; but I don't think it's primed to be the Scorsese-inspired American epic it wants to. It's the music that this movie is about, which will continue to live on - and if I can give this film any credit; it gave the nostalgia for the music a little boost.