Video review: "The Upside"

“The Upside” is a film of modest ambitions but obvious charms. It stars Kevin Hart doing his adorable false bravado thing, though with a role boasting more shadings than he’s been given before. And it shows off the under-utilized comedic skills of Bryan Cranston, best known for his dramatic roles. (This despite first coming to fame as a sitcom dad.)

Cranston plays Phillip Lacasse, a billionaire investor-turned-author whose life has been on a downward spiral the last few years, losing his wife to cancer and his mobility to a leisure sport accident. Worse yet, his will to live is at a low ebb, despite the bucking up of his faithful executive, Yvonne (Nicole Kidman), who runs his enterprise and watches out for him.

So when it’s time to hire a new “life auxiliary” -- aka personal assistant -- Yvonne knows right away that Dell Scott (Hart) is all wrong for the job. An ex-con who’s only halfheartedly looking for a job; he says and does all the wrong thing. But he impresses Phillip with his attitude, and lands the gig.

You can probably guess where things go: initial disaster followed by bare competence, which grows into a budding friendship that’s due for a major fracture right at the end of the second act. Director Neil Burger and screenwriter Jon Hartmere play things strictly by the numbers, with story beats and emotional catharsis timed down to the audience-tested minute.

And yet, it works. The trio of main actors share genuine warmth with each other, playing character who each have trouble connecting with the greater world in some way.

“The Upside” is a prototypical laughter-and-tears dramedy, a remake of a better French film. It won’t surprise you, but it will entertain.

Bonus features are middling-to-good. They include deleted scenes, a gag reel and five documentary shorts: “Onscreen Chemistry: Kevin and Bryan,” “Creating a Story of Possibility,” “Bridging Divisions,” “Embracing Divisions” and :Presenting a Different Side of Kevin Hart.”

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Review: "The Upside"

I did not expect to enjoy "The Upside" as much as I did. It's an American adaptation of one "The Intouchables," of the highest-grossing French films of all time, which in turn was inspired by a documentary about a real wealthy man who is quadriplegic and bonded with a caretaker of African descent with a troubled past.

It's been "Hollywooded up" to the nth degree, filled with easy emotional entry points and cathartic moments you can almost time with a stopwatch.

And yet, doggone it, I couldn't help being engrossed by the story.

It stars two accomplished funnymen, Kevin Hart and Bryan Cranston, who are at different stages of seguing into more dramatic material. Cranston was known -- and dismissed -- for years as "the dad from 'Malcolm in the Middle' before going dark in "Breaking Bad." After a recent Oscar nomination, he's now pretty much universally regarded as a serious actor.

Hart is just taking his first steps along such a path, but I like his stride so far. I wonder if he would ever completely leave behind his stand-up comedian roots in the way that, say, Robin Williams did. I tend to doubt it. But I liked watching him stretch for something more than a laugh.

Hart plays Dell Scott, who's been in and out of prison most of his life. He's currently half-heartedly looking for a job. Asked at a burger joint what his greatest accomplishment is, he says getting out of bed this morning. He's more interested in collecting signatures to prove to his parole officer that he made an effort than actually securing employment.

He wanders into a swanky apartment building after a janitor job and winds up in the penthouse, where billionaire investment expert/author Phillip Lacasse (Cranston) and his right-hand executive, Yvonne (Nicole Kidman), are interviewing candidates to be his "life auxiliary." This is fancy rich-people talk for a 24/7 caretaker, who will do everything from dress, bathe and feed Phillip to being his companion when he goes out in public in his high-end electric chair.

Phillip became a quadriplegic years earlier in a parasailing accident -- if ever there was a quintessentially wealthy person's endeavor, it's parasailing -- and lost his wife to cancer around the same time. Although he has an incredible penthouse, a best-selling book ("The Lateral Way"), a garage full of fancy cars and every wall has expensive art on it, Phillip doesn't have much zest for living anymore.

He impulsively hires the puckish Dell because he's the worst person for the job, and Phillip is looking to die. He instructs Dell about his DNR, immediately followed by explaining what a DNR is.

Dell is an interesting character. He's a guy who has never had much demanded out of him in life, and has fallen down to people's expectations. He's estranged from his son, Anthony (Jahi Di'Allo Winston), and ex-wife, Latrice (Aja Naomi King). Kicked out of his pad and way behind in child custody payments, he steals a book from Phillip's library to give to his son for his birthday.

"Which one?" Anthony demands, knowing that his father probably isn't even aware when it is.

Things go from there. Phillip and Dell slowly form a bond based on harsh truth-telling, which goes both ways. Phillip introduces him to opera and Dell helps him get funky. Yvonne is the hardcase looking for any excuse to fire Dell, but gradually warms up.

There's an implication of a potential romance between Yvonne and Phillip, which they both strenuously deny. The movie, directed by Neil Burger from a screenplay by Jon Hartmere, toys around with the idea without ever giving it a complete workout. I'd like to think they could share a deep and abiding friendship without there having to be romantic entanglements involved.

Meanwhile, Phillip does have a female pen pal he corresponds with, exchanging lovely poetry and sentiments. Phillip dubs it an "epistolary relationship," which is how smart, rich people pronounce "pen pal." Dell encourages him to take the friendship to a new level, but he worries that she'll be put off by "the chair," as he calls it. 

Being a famous mega-wealthy billionaire is kind of a hard thing to hide from Google, which Dell is quick to point out.

If it's possible to really like a movie without necessarily respecting it, then "The Upside" is it. I recognize its shortcomings and lack of higher ambitions. But Cranston, Hart and Kidman are marvelous together. There's genuine chemistry and, eventually, affection between them. I think of the scene where Phillip has been persuaded to attend his own birthday party, and Dell coaxes the wallflower Yvonne to dance. 

The look on Phillip's face as she comes out of her shell is one of pure joy. Rather than lamenting his inability to join in (other than a little melodic wheeling), he's filled with happiness for her chance to express herself in a way normally denied her.

It's hard to be happy for yourself if you can't be happy for others. Even a modestly agreeable flick like "The Upside" understands this.

Review: "The Birth of a Nation"

The most surprising thing about “The Birth of a Nation” is the quiet lyricism it brings to the brutal depiction of American slavery. We’ve seen the cruelty before -- the flesh-tearing whippings, the use of women as sexual chattel, the everyday degradation of men -- most recently in “12 Years a Slave” and the television reprise of “Roots.”

But Nate Parker, who stars, wrote the screenplay and directed, offers both tenderness and righteous anger in the story of Nat Turner, a black slave preacher who led a violent rebellion in 1831 Virginia.

It’s a film of exquisite beauty exploring the ugliest chapter in the story of America.

This movie is perfectly posited for this moment in time in our national conversation about race and violence, with too many African-Americans gunned down by police under often questionable justification.

Parker’s approach is biblical in tone without ever becoming preachy. He does not present Turner’s revolt as “right” -- seeing as it included the deaths of some 60 whites, including women and children -- but the inevitable outcome of generations of suppressing a people’s liberty and very humanity.

Nat Turner begins as a normal kid, singled out for his intellect and raised inside the plantation house, growing up the playmate of the owner’s son, Samuel. Forced to return to the fields after the master’s death, Nat becomes the slaves’ spiritual leader, exhorting them to follow scripture and submit to the will of their masters.

He is, in essence, a “safe” slave in a culture where whites are constantly fearful of reprisal from their slaves, who often outnumber them. Nat is so effective at keeping the peace that Samuel (Armie Hammer), now the master, agrees to rent him out to other owners to preach to their slaves and soothe them.

Samuel is presented as a fairly tolerant master, an ineffectual drunkard who barely bothers with the upkeep of the farm, so Nat is horrified at the treatment he sees at other plantations. In one painful scene, the teeth of a slave refusing to eat are casually knocked out with a hammer and chisel so a nasty gruel can be forced down his throat.

We witness Nat begin to slowly change, from a man patiently awaiting his kingdom in heaven to one who resents the hell he’s being forced to live through on earth. He’s haunted by visions, blood pouring from the crops, and believes he’s being called upon by God.

That feeling is accelerated when his beloved wife, Cherry (Aja Naomi King), is ravaged by some bestial slave hunters, with Jackie Earle Haley playing the leader who has a personal past with Nat.

The movie mostly follows the historical record, while fiddling with some details. For instance, Samuel Turner was the brother, not the son, of Nat’s original owner. And Nat was sold to another slave owner, Giles Reese, by the time of the uprising. But these are largely quibbles that do not detract from the tale.

The imagery in the movie will haunt you -- the feet of men and women gracefully swinging after being lynched; a young slave child skipping merrily while a girl uses a noose as a leash for her plaything. Its very gracefulness makes the horrors stand out further. The cinematography by Elliot Davis and the spare musical score by Henry Jackman are both wonderful.

“The Birth of a Nation” shares a title with a seminal 1915 film by silent film master D.W. Griffith, which is a technical marvel that established much of the cinematic language we understand today -- but also celebrated the rise of the Ku Klux Klan. Parker has made a conscious effort to reclaim the name from its racist past.

Normally I’d be inclined to call that an act of stupendous pomposity. Except that Nate Parker’s film truly is a rebirth, a new cinematic declaration for this young century. It is a chorus of rage, sung without malice but also without apology.