Review: "Luca"

 

I don’t know how it is for girls, but for boys the friendships you have around age 12 tend to be the most important of your life. Boys at that age are this weird mix of bravado, shame, curiosity and mortification. Your body is doing all sorts of weird stuff and that’s nothing compared to what’s going on inside your head.

Movies have done a decent, though sporadic job at examining this time, with “Stand By Me” immediately coming to mind. I can’t recall a whole lot of animated movies to tackle pubescent boys, though “Luca” comes along to try to rectify that.

It’s a bright, colorful, energetic picture that is closer to “Up” in the Disney/Pixar oeuvre than some of their more fantastical fare. I’d put it about in the middle of the pack quality-wise, along the lines of “Wreck It Ralph,” a solidly entertaining flick that may not linger all that long in the memory.

Set in a gorgeous Italian coastal fishing town in what could be anywhere from the 1940s to 1980s, “Luca” stars Jacob Tremblay as a merman who lives under the water, tending to a flock of fish like sheep. It’s a very safe but rather dull existence, and his parents (voices of Maya Rudolph and Jim Gaffigan) barely pay attention to Luca -- other than warning him never to wander to the surface, where humans regard their kind as dangerous sea monsters to be harpooned.

So of course he does just that, and bumps into Alberto (Jack Dylan Grazer), who’s just as rebellious and cocky as Luca is fearful and shy. Alberto likes to collect (read: steal) cool items from the humanfolk and lives more or less on his own in an island tower, his dad being away on some vague job or mission.

This results in a shocking discovery for Luca: their kind are shapeshifters, morphing into human form once they emerge from the water. After shock training in how to walk and pass as a normal kid, he and Alberto soon form an instant but enduring bond. Tall and strapping, Alberto takes the lead and Luca follows.

They fall in love with the idea of buying a Vespa scooter a la “Roman Holiday” and traveling all around the world (where, to them, everything is adjacent to the sea). Circumstances arise that compel them to run off to the nearby human town and try to fit in.

They soon partner up with Giulia (Emma Berman), an independent-minded girl their own age, with the idea to join the big local triathlon -- swimming, biking and eating pasta -- as a team and win enough money for a shiny new Vespa. (Or, at least, a dilapidated old one.)

The heavy is Ercole (Saverio Raimondo), the local bully who has run the race five times in a row and is determined to go for another, age limits be damned.

Of course, Luca and Alberto must be constantly fearful of having any water splashed on them, lest they revert to their sea monster form. This can happen in little pieces, so an arm or leg that suddenly turns blue and scaly can be hidden, but not when the rain comes down and drenches all.

It’s a clever visual cue to shifting bodies and identities, and how youngsters going through the change can feel like an alien in their own flesh.

The story is based on the childhood experiences of director Enrico Casarosa, who made the similarly Italian-themed “La Luna” a decade ago, and makes his feature directorial debut here with a screenplay from Jesse Andrews and Mike Jones.

The animation is full of little details that catchy your eye, like the slight sun damage on everyone’s skin from the comforting but searing Mediterranean sea. I liked the contrast between the three kids’ hair, with Luca’s modest dark waves, Alberto’s proud blondish pompadour and Giulia’s fire-red mass of curls.

The movie is an exploration of childhood friendships, and shows more complexity and depth than you’d expect in an animated movie. Luca as the withdrawn kid who must find his inner strength is a pretty familiar theme, but we also get into Alberto’s head as the boy who long ago got tagged as “the bad kid,” and has let that define his identity.

I do wish the movie could have given a little more space to Giulia, who sort of just wanders between the boys doing standard-issue plucky-girl things.

But “Luca” still has some interesting things to say about the journey from child to adult, and has splashes of fun getting there.

Review: "Good Boys"

Just a quick mini-review today. Head over to The Film Yap to read Manuel Fernandez' "official" take on the comedy.

This struck me as a pretty conscious attempt to do "Superbad" for the tween crowd -- the running joke being that 12-year-olds want to be outrageous and grown-up but are still too kiddie to know how to do it right. And, of course, we've got to do some sober life-lessons moments.

The end result plays like a bawdy comedy version of "Stand By Me." There are a few good laughs, and I enjoyed Jacob Tremblay as the quasi-leader of the trio of kids who dub themselves "The Bean Bag Boys."

(Why? Because they met in kindergarten and there were some bean bags lying around.)

The setup is that they ditch school, accidentally find themselves in possession of some Molly (aka Ecstasy, or as they refer to it, a "sex drug") and destroy an expensive drone that belongs to one of their fathers (Will Forte). So the rest of the movie is spent trying to fix what they screwed up in the first act.

The boys are each a "type." Tremblay is Max, a young heartbreaker who's obsessed with his classmate Brixlee (Millie Davis), determined to kiss and then marry her, despite having never spoken to her.

Lucas (Keith L. Williams) is the bigger, older-looking kid who's actually the shyest and most sensitive of the troop. His parents are divorcing, and he's so honest and guileless that he keeps blurting out the truth, foiling the BBB's plans.

Brady Noon plays Thor, a talented singer who too often listens to the taunting of his bullying classmates, who dub him a "tryhard" for seeming like he cares too much about something. Heavens!

Molly Gordon and Midori Francis play the teen girls who are the main antagonists, swiping the drone that the boys were using to spy on them so they could learn how to kiss. There's a big party tonight at the house of Soren (Izaac Wang), the reigning king of cool, and word has it spin-the-bottle is on the menu.

Director Gene Stupnitsky ("Bad Teacher"), who co-wrote the script with Lee Eisenberg, has a good feel for what it's like to be 12 and wanting to grow up overnight. But the movie's main failing is repeating the same basic joke over and over again: the boys dropping a lot of f-bombs while being completely in the dark about the mechanics of sex.

For instance, we're supposed to believe that these lads have Googled the word "porn" for the very first time in the course of the story. And they keep mixing up terms like "feminist" and "misogyny" so they're basically interchangeable.

They have arguments about who's the nicest kid in their grade -- Lucas is affronted it's not him -- and play at being rebellious while fretting about their actions "going on our permanent record."

There's some good stuff in "Good Boys," but in the end I like the idea of the movie more than the one they made.

Review: "The Predator"

More than 30 years ago we had “Predator,” followed by its sequel, “Predator 2,” then “Alien vs. Predator” and its sequel, then the 2010 reboot, “Predators,” and now its sorta-sequel, “The Predator.”

Forget about whether any of these movies have been any good since the first one -- hint: they haven’t -- could we at least get some more interesting titles? What’s next, “A Predator?” “La Predator?”

The new one is directed by Shane Black, a longtime screenwriter of action movies who segued to directing a few years back. (A lot of people liked his “The Nice Guys,” but I didn’t.) With this movie, Black -- who co-wrote the script with Fred Dekker -- has achieved a level of discombobulation heretofore unseen in theaters.

Good luck following this story. The movie plays out as a bunch of people shouting a bunch of gibberish at each other, followed by shootouts and disembowelings, which somehow leads to more gibberish.

EveryonetalksreallyfastinthismoviehowfastOMGsofastit’sliketheactorswereplayingagameonsettoseewhocouldspitouttheirdialoguethequickest.

It seems the alien hunters with faces like a Venus fly trap and Rastafarian dreds are returning to Earth for the umpteenth time. A nasty quasi-governmental agency known as Project Stargazer wants to get their hands on the predator tech, which as you’ll recall can do things like turn you invisible or shoot lasers from a nifty little shoulder launcher.

A special forces dude named Quinn McKenna (Boyd Holbrook) helps capture a predator who has crash-landed in Mexico, yet for some reason this results in him being thrown into military prison by the Stargazer folks. But not before he ships the alien’s helmet and wrist controller to his P.O. Box in the States, which makes me think that when the post office worker tells me they may scan or inspect my packages that they’re just blowing a lot of smoke.

The tech ends up in the hands of his son, Rory (Jacob Tremblay), who is on the autism spectrum but is also brilliant. Quinn breaks out of prison with the help of a bunch of other military castoffs. Soon it turns into a big chase-chase-chase movie with the Stargazer goons chasing Quinn who’s running but also chasing the predator who’s chasing his son.

This is a really terrible movie with a really good and interesting cast. In addition to Tremblay (“The Room”), Keegan-Michael Key plays Coyle, one of the military misfits helping Quinn. Olivia Munn is the brilliant scientist who also knows how to shoot any kind of gun. Thomas Jane is Baxley, an unlikable mook with Tourette’s Syndrome.

Sterling K. Brown plays the Stargazer chief, who dresses very casually for a mastermind. He and Quinn can’t seem to decide if they hate each other or want to share beers and Bromance.

I also thought Gary Busey had turned up as a goofy scientist, but it’s actually his son Jake. I said this can’t be, that’s Gary Busey’s kid, but turns out Jake is creeping up on 50, and doesn’t that make us all feel old.

“Predators” is a very poorly staged action film. It looks as if Black directed the movie while looking in a mirror over his shoulder.

There’s a lot of gory violence, with intestines galore. And alien dogs that turn nice if you shoot them in just the right spot. I also learned that you can kill a predator with a bullet to the face, but something like 20,000 shots don’t hit him in the head until the one that does.

If you like a heaping helping of stupidity along with eviscerations, then this is your flick. As for me, I’m holding out for “Six Degrees of Separated Predator Heads.”

Video review: "Wonder"

“Wonder” is a tender-hearted flick that makes no bones about being a tearjerker. Julia Roberts and Owen Wilson star as the parents of Auggie, a 10-year-old boy played by Jacob Tremblay who was born with severe facial defects.

He’s been more or less hiding out his whole life, being home-schooled by his mom or wearing an astronaut’s helmet in public to ward off stares and comments. But now he’s attending school for the first time, and this is the story of his entering a broader, scarier world.

The screenplay by Steve Conrad, Jack Thorne and Stephen Chbosky, who also directed, is a straightforward string of encounters. We know the teasing and taunting is going to come, but it’s no less painful when it does. Auggie soon finds a friend in a scholarship student (Noah Jupe), but the inevitable setback is just around the corner. Mandy Patinkin plays the wise and helpful school headmaster.

The movie, based on the best-selling novel by R.J. Palacio, also follows around Auggie’s older sister, Via (Izabela Vidovic), for a bit, and we get to see the family dynamic from her perspective. She loves her little brother, but it’s hard to be teenager when your sibling soaks up all of the grownups’ attention.

It may not be the most original movie to come down the pike, but “Wonder” is decorated with nice, crisp performances and an authentic human story that’s hard to resist. Three hankies, at least.

Bonus features are quite good. The DVD edition has a feature-length commentary track by Chbosky and Palacio, music video for “Brand New Eyes” and a featurette on the soundtrack.

Upgrade to the Blu-ray version, and you add two more featurettes, “A Child’s Sense of Wonder” and “What a Wonderful World,” plus a five-part making of documentary titled, “Summer of Fun.”

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Review: "Wonder"

"Wonder" is an old-fashioned, straight up weepie. Tears will be jerked, you can be sure. I liked the fact that the movie is unambiguous about its intentions, and carries them through effectively without irony or coyness.

Jacob Tremblay, who was so amazing in "Room," plays Auggie Pullman, a boy of 10 born with severe facial defects. He's been through 27 surgeries -- his family displays the hospital wristbands as a collage -- and has been home-schooled all his life by his ferocious devoted mom, played by Julia Roberts. Now, as he enters 5th grade, it has been decided it's time for him to integrate into a regular school with other kids.

Well, sort of. In Hollywood parlance, a "regular school" is an exclusive New York City private institution, Beecher Prep, where families that live in multi-million-dollar brownstones pay something like the U.S. median household income to send their kids to rub elbows with the best of the best. But for the purposes of the story, which is based on the best-selling by R.J. Palacio, what's important is that he's around other children consistently for the first time in his life.

The underlying themes of the movie are bullying and otherness. Mom and dad (Owen Wilson) send Auggie to school with the full knowledge that he will be stared at and picked on. They figure it's something he's going to have to deal with sooner or later, and calculate he's reached a level of emotional stability to deal with it.

Also, there's a subplot about the mom wanting to complete her master's thesis that was put on hold a decade ago to be his full-time guardian and tutor. And, frankly, she rightly wants to reclaim a little piece of her own life. I admired that the filmmakers -- director Stephen Chbosky, who co-wrote the script with Steve Conrad and Jack Thorne -- included this dynamic.

I know it runs counter to commonly accepted precepts and hagiography about mothers, but I personally think it's unhealthy for parents to let their kids think they have nothing going in their lives beyond raising them. Part of being a role model is not being afraid to display ambition and individuality.

The makeup effects on Tremblay are very good, to the point I didn't recognize him until I read the credits afterward. Auggie is a smart, sensitive kid who likes science and Minecraft, and has adapted pretty well to life inside his family unit. He tends to wear an oversized astronaut's helmet in public to avoid stares; it's his armor, really. So he has a tough time when his parents ask him to relinquish it.

Auggie does face teasing and isolation, but also picks up a friend in Jack Will (Noah Jupe), a poor scholarship kid with a nice streak. The joy on mom's face when he brings home a pal to play is worth the price of admission alone. Still, old troubles soon follow and Auggie finds himself estranged again.

He's got an older teen sister, Via (Izabela Vidovic), and I was impressed the film devotes a significant amount of screen time following her life and seeing how it's impacted by having a brother who soaks up every ounce of attention from their parents. She's quiet and shy, and dealing with an unexpected fallout with her own best friend, Miranda (Danielle Rose Russell).

She starts to blossom when she joins the school theater club, and meets a cute, funny boy named Justin (Nadji Jeter) who takes a fancy to her.

I also greatly enjoyed Mandy Patinkin as Mr. Tushman, the headmaster of the school who understands the way kids actually think and behave, rather than the idealized regard in which their parents hold them. He is infinitely patient and kind, makes jokes about his name before the students have a chance to, and even manages to treat the bullies in a way that lets them know they are not irredeemable. He's basically the Santa Claus of educators.

"Wonder" plays out exactly the way we expect. Given the premise, we could practically write the ending ourselves. But it's still a touching movie that celebrates the weak and the meek, and shows there different kinds of strength.

Review: "Room"

"Room" falls into that rare category of movies that are truly miserable to watch, but you simply must.

By that I do not mean that it is terrible, but that it is so good at what it does that you will be miserable at times while viewing it. I guarantee that you will tear up during the screening and want to pull your hair, because experiencing raw human frailty at such a close remove is a taxing experience.

Like "127 Hours" or "Boys Don't Cry," the film's exhausting nature is intrinsic to its cinematic worth -- which is considerable.

Based on the best-selling book by Emma Donoghue, who adapted it herself for the screenplay, "Room" takes a tabloid headline premise and turns it into a highly remarkable study of the infinite layers of the human soul. Director Lenny Abrahamson sensitively takes us into a tiny enclosed space, and shows how terrifying that can be, and then lets us out of it into the world beyond, and shows us how frightening that can be.

Brie Larson is possibly the best actress of her young generation, and if you missed her in the excellent "Short Term 12" -- nearly everyone did -- then this movie should cement her status. She plays Ma, a young mother living with her son, Jack, who as the story opens is just turning 5. They are each other's entire world, because they have never left Room, as they describe their tiny, cluttered living space.

Without it ever being overtly said, we sense what has happened. Ma, whose real name is Joy, was somehow captured and imprisoned in this space. It was obviously a man, because that is how she got Jack. She has been there for years -- her ghostlike pallor and glum resolve instruct us so. She is long past the point of rebellion or despair, and has come to grudgingly accept her life in Room.

For Jack, she has built an elaborate ruse to keep him from yearning for the real world. Room is everything there is, he believes, except for the single window in the roof looking out on the sky, which is outer space. They have an old television that shows jumpy images, cartoons, shows, even newscasts, but he believes everything there is imaginary: "TV people."

The man, known only as Old Nick (Sean Bridgers), visits every now and then, always at night, to satisfy his carnal wants, and deliver food and supplies. Jack is put into the wardrobe on these evenings so man and boy don't interact -- they have never even met, by both his and Joy's choice, though Jack watches through the slats and is aware.

It's essentially the most depraved family unit in human history, where the father is keeping the mother and child locked up under his yoke.

Jack is played by young Jacob Tremblay, in one of those gasp-inducing child performances that is so unaffected and true that it only comes along once every generation or so. I think of Haley Joel Osment in "The Sixth Sense," and do not find Tremblay wanting in the comparison.

Jack is a creature of utter innocence, but also realistic 5-year-old petulance. He is beginning to question his world and push back against the way his mother defines it for him. One wonders how an adolescent would react to being in Room... which we won't know because they get out halfway through the film.

I won't say how, or why, but stating that their time in Room comes to an end will not spoil your experience. (The movie trailer gives away as much.) I don't wish to say too much about Joy and Jack's time after Room, other than it involves trying to integrate themselves into a family that is different from the one she left. Each struggles in their own way, but not the way we might expect.

This is one of the most emotionally wrenching experiences you will ever have at the movies. Larson and Tremblay form one of the closest bonds we've ever witnessed on screen, in a pair of performances that I'm sure will be remembered come Oscar time. Here is one of the year's best films.