Don't Think Twice

*** out of ****

Despite some rave reviews surrounding Mike Birbiglia’s latest dramedy, Don’t Think Twice, I was a little underwhelmed by its story of success-jealousy in the entertainment world - even if it succeeded in being the kind of truthful work that this artist is so well known for.

It is a good movie, considering that it is lovingly about improvisational comedy – an art that even at its most impressive fails to make me laugh most of the time. Its story follows a team of struggling comic actors, played by Keegan-Michael Key, Gillian Jacobs, Chris Gethard, Kate Micucci, Tami Sagher and Birbiglia.

When one of the team-members hits it big by winning a role on the movie’s version of Saturday Night Live, the group praises its member’s triumph before the inevitable anger and envy begins to tear apart the big friendship they all once shared.

While the movie is not quite as funny as Judd Apatow’s Funny People, a film that dealt with this theme among others, it is comparatively focused and more honest. It is also refreshing to get an R-rated film where adult themes like sex, drug-use, and language are all casually part of the characters’ lives, but not in an explicit or indulgent sense.

Birbiglia doesn’t seem interested in proving that these characters are funny, but he tries selling the love of a theater group like he’s trying to sell a religion. I’m sure there are people who can identify with the notion of a chosen family through the arts.

Maybe despite the film’s fun cast and This American Life-style quirky life observations (the film is produced by Ira Glass), I feel as though I didn’t get to know its characters well enough to care about them. Some of their dramatic confrontations feel like the machinations of conventionally scripted content, which is ironic, given the subject matter.

I recommend this movie for its wisdom and humor, but I am no closer to enjoying improv comedy after having seen it.

Hell or High Water

**** out of ****

Hell or High Water is the kind of movie that regains special qualities that the crime genre has lost. I wonder if writer Taylor Sheridan (Sicario) and director David Mackenzie (Starred Up) had this in mind when they conceived the project.

Crime films tend to glorify the violent actions of its criminal characters with an intentional or unintentional thirst for sadistic sensationalism. This story has its violence, but its characters become such a point of the story’s investment that we don’t desire their endeavors to lead anyone to harm, even though we know they will.

With similarities to the literary works of Cormac McCarthy or Arthur Penn’s film, Bonnie and Clyde, Hell or High Water is a present-day western, which captures two lawless characters with empathy. Chris Pine plays the poor heir to a dilapidated ranch in West Texas, who enlists the help of his ex-con brother, played by Ben Foster to rob different branches of the same bank in destitute towns. The plan isn’t exactly one of revenge for the hardships modern finance has caused families like their own, but more of a strategy to establish heritage.

Meanwhile, an aging Texas Ranger, played by Jeff Bridges, who is concerned for the safety of the small communities, follows the trail of the unidentified robbers with the assistance of his longtime partner, played by Gil Birmingham, whom he regularly taunts with hidden admiration.

The movie’s bold statement about Texas’ violent history of land acquisition slowly surfaces from the film’s visual subtext to some gracefully delivered dialogue. This is yet another movie about America from the fresh eyes of a foreign director interpreting some insightful writing from a man who knows the uncomfortable aspects our country’s problems better than most.

Pine delivers a calculated and calm persona as the film’s unlikely criminal mastermind; Foster plays an unhinged violent character who seems more like an untamed animal than an evil person; and Bridges continues to shine, even when playing a character who is the antithesis of “The Dude.”

Hell or High Water is among the best movies I’ve seen in 2016.

Kubo and the Two Strings

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

I’m still amazed that stop-motion animation survives to this day. The frame-by-frame photography of miniature figures has always been impractical, insanely time-consuming and unreal looking at its best. And yet, it’s unlike anything else. It’s special.

Laika Entertainment is probably at the forefront of the handful of studios still practicing this old craft. Ever since Travis Knight (son of Nike founder Phil Knight) took control of the former Will Vinton Studios (responsible for those California Raisins) his Oregon-based studio has slowly built a reputation comparable to the imagination powerhouse, Pixar. In their fourth film, Kubo and the Two Strings, the studio brings sensational imagery to an original fantasy story inspired by ancient Japanese mysticism.

Kubo, a boy living near a seaside village cares for his mostly catatonic mother who has given him a magic shamisen to make object-controlling music for the townsfolk. He puts on dramas starring origami-come-to-life telling of great adventures, which Kubo understands may connect with his own history. The boy is missing an eye, which was stolen by his grandfather, the wrathful Moon King, who was betrayed by his daughter when she fell in love with a mortal man and had a child. Kubo’s mother occasionally speaks to tell him these things and everything he must do to stay hidden.

Naturally, a child’s curiosity leads to a world of trouble when his wicked aunts with demonic powers find him. Kubo is whisked away to go on a quest to find his father’s magical armor with the guidance of a stern but wise monkey and the help of a giant warrior beetle they encounter along the way.

Their odyssey has many perilous obstacles where more secrets are revealed and… I don’t need to go on. No matter how weird my descriptions are, you know this is the stuff an imaginative kid of any age will eat up. Kubo is a wonderful experience with beautifully crafted characters and environments.

Thank goodness composer Dario Marianelli returned for another film with this studio. After suffering the inept orchestrations of Disney’s The Jungle Book, Alice Through the Looking Glass and Pete’s Dragon this year, I was beginning to wonder if Finding Dory was the only family movie with a score that could really pull at my heartstrings. The harmony between this movie’s concepts, visuals, and Marianelli’s emotional soundtrack had me holding back tears near the end.   

The only area of criticism I have toward Laika, which seems to be a constant, is with the voice acting –even though it continues to improve. I felt that their first film, Coraline, had a serious void in emotional direction for the normally talented performers they had contributing to its awe-inspiring sights.

Kubo features the voices of Charlize Theron, Art Parkinson, Ralph Fiennes, Rooney Mara, George Takei and Matthew McConaughey - all of whom do quite well, but there are times when their comic-relief interactions feel a little out of character with the mystical tone of the film. I suppose Pixar has set the bar rather high for the emotional potential a voice performance.

Laika has also utilized computer animation and other CGI tricks to build the environment in their films, but the opening sequence is one of many where it seems to dominate the screen. This is forgivable when considering the textural purity of the real characters in the foreground, whose facial expressions are so amazing in their range without any loss of consistency, thanks to the revolution of digital 3D printing.

Snobby nitpicking aside, Kubo and the Two Strings is the innocent escapist relief I’ve been craving all summer with the wholesome touch of a studio that makes family movies, which remember to suggest that knowledge and understanding are more powerful than any weapon when defending oneself against life’s threats.

Indignation

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

Indignation is a well-made movie about a young Jewish atheist attending an Ivy League university during the fifties through the insistence of his parents who have seen too many boys his age go off to Korea to die in battle.

I haven’t ever read Philip Roth, so I cannot confirm if the tone of the novel on which this film is based comes across in the film. I can simply say that writer/director James Schamus (normally an Ang Lee collaborator) makes a very good dialogue-based work out of his material. 

Like in The Perks of Being a Wallflower, actor Logan Lerman once again takes a role that doesn’t seem suited for his handsome looks and cool demeanor, but manages to make it work; Sarah Gadon brings her stunning and gorgeous energy to the film as his troubled love interest; and playwright Tracy Letts is riveting as the college Dean whose scene’s with Lerman take up a fair amount of the film’s time - which is nothing to complain about. 

I only question the film’s arc structure, which feels somewhat hackneyed and imposed. Regardless, I think we can expect this movie to be remembered during awards season as a tragic coming-of-age story about people too ahead of their time to make a good life in what most people would assume to be the best of circumstances.

Florence Foster Jenkins

*** out of ****

The latest Oscar-bait to star Meryl Streep, Florence Foster Jenkins, is honestly decent, thanks to the dependable humor and energy of director Stephen Frears. Set during World War II, the story is about a real-life New York heiress and classical music socialite who lived in the delusion that she had a beautiful singing voice, which… she… didn’t. 

The film mostly focuses on Hugh Grant as her platonic husband St. Clair Bayfield, who farcically works hard to insulate Jenkins from the reality of her reputation as a dreadful singer.

The audience surrogate is found in Cosme McMoon, a classically trained pianist, hired by Bayfield to accompany Jenkins' attempt to breakout as an opera singer. McMoon is played by the Simon Helberg, the thirty-six-year-old character-actor whose fame has gradually grown since Big Bang Theory premiered in 2007. His role as the perplexed young musician who is suffering the personal crisis of compromising his respectability for a huge paycheck compliments Streep's energy as a clueless lady with delusions of virtuosity. 

While the film's well-off title character, who could afford to be anything she wanted, is hardly an underdog story, there is a tragic side to this person worthy of our sympathy, but the movie focuses on the love of an art-form and how it can drive someone to give everything they have to be close to it, even if they're just no good at it.