Review: "Hillbilly Elegy"

How do you translate to the screen a book that’s not so much a narrative memoir as an evocation of a place, a culture and a mindset? This was the challenge facing director Ron Howard and screenwriter Vanessa Taylor (“The Shape of Water”) in translating J.D. Vance’s best-seller, “Hillbilly Elegy.”

The path they chose was probably the best one laid before them, resulting in a solid if somewhat constructed-feeling look at one man’s journey from the hollers of Appalachian Kentucky to Yale Law School graduate. It boasts a pair of spectacular performances by Glenn Close and Amy Adams, both of whom should get awards notice.

The book came out in 2016 and was quickly tabbed as a political artifact, a wayfinder to the reason why many rural, white lower-class voters chose the way they did. The filmmakers behind “Hillbilly Elegy” wisely eschew any outright political machinations, rightly guessing that any such attempt would come across as a bunch of Hollywood leftists looking down their noses at a bunch of hicks.

Indeed, the biggest strength of the film is that it approaches its characters at eye level. The main dynamic centers around the trio of Vance himself -- played by Gabriel Basso and Owen Asztalos in his 20s and teens, respectively -- his mother, Bev (Adams), and grandmother (Close).

The family moved north to Middletown, Ohio, when J.D. was small, but he spent most of his childhood summers in Kentucky and that’s where their roots lie. The Vances are dirt poor living among others just so, but every clan holds firmly to the belief they’re a bit better than their neighbors.

The story shifts back and forth between the years of J.D.’s childhood and a few days in his life in law school, bucking for an internship at a top Washington D.C. firm. In the latter frame, his motivation is both practical -- he needs the money from a high-end gig to make up the shortfall in his financial aid -- and personal, wanting to stay with his girlfriend, Usha (Freida Pinto), an Indian-American who already has a job lined up there.

In the earlier timeframe, J.D. ping-pongs back and forth between his mom and “Meemaw,” preferring the stability of the latter but emotionally tethered to the former. Bev is a nurse who lost her job due to drug addiction, and the film is unrelenting in depicting how a broken person can be simultaneously fiercely protective and outright abusive of their child.

His only protection is Meemaw, who has a corrosive tongue and rude manner but understands that family is the only thing that really matters. Close is spot-on playing a certain Southern type, the chain-smoking old lady with crazy witch hair who can barely walk but will pin anyone to their spot with a flinty stare and a few acid words.

In the later timeframe, set around 2011, the guileless but graceless J.D. tries to fit in with snooty Beltway types, not knowing the difference between varieties of white wine or which piece of silverware to use at a fancy dinner. At the same time he is summoned back to Ohio to deal with his mom’s latest overdose, as his sister (Haley Bennett) has her own passel of kids and responsibilities now.

We can practically feel the weight of the massive chip on J.D.’s shoulder, a guy who wants to do the right thing but feels blocked at every turn. Basso seems to positively slump onscreen before our eyes. He owes a responsibility to his mother, even though she neglected and abused him horribly, and a loyalty to Meemaw’s edict about being the leader of the family after she’s gone.

There are a lot of things to admire about “Hillbilly Elegy.” It really sings when it focuses on the twisted but unshakeable triad of J.D. and the two women who raised him. It also makes a genuine and largely successful attempt to portray the sorts of folks people in showbiz and politics usually see as zoological exhibits.

It’s also one of those movies where the lead character tends to be the least interesting person in the room. So anytime we wander too far from Bev’s pitiful, manipulative antics or Meemaw’s iron rule, the movie loses air.

Still, Howard, Taylor and company deserve credit for making this movie in the first place, and making it in a way that feels true to the author and the book he wrote. We live in a time where so many are ruled by hatred and fear, and here’s a film filled with those things -- but feels like a small spring of hope.

Video review: "The Shape of Water"

One of the best thing about Guillermo del Toro’s movies is they’re so difficult to cram into any box. Is it a horror film? Science fiction? Romance? Historical parable? Fairy tale? Musical comedy?

All of the above, I’d say. After its impressive win at the Academy Awards last week, “The Shape of Water” will surely go down as one of the kookiest Best Picture winners ever.

Sally Hawkins plays Elisa, a mute woman who works as a cleaning lady in a secret government laboratory circa the early 1960s. Her world is tightly bookended: the routine of her job, her friendship with Giles (Richard Jenkins), the gentle illustrator who lives next door, and another with Zelda (Octavia Spencer), who works with her in the dank underground facility.

One day, a strange aquatic man is brought into the lab, where he’s prodded and tortured like a curious science experiment. But Elisa befriends the creature, and even learns how to communicate with it using sign language. She discovers there is a gentleness behind his fearsome exterior, which is like a cross between the Creature from the Black Lagoon and a space alien.

Hawkins, Spencer and Jenkins all received acting nominations at the Oscars, and the movie could easily have gotten three more. Michael Stuhlbarg plays the chief scientist with conflicting impulses and loyalties; Michael Shannon is chilling as the military man running the operation, who sees the aquatic man as just another fish to be cut up; and Doug Jones, who elegantly plays the creature with the help of an elaborate costume and some CGI.

Perhaps the thing I liked best about “The Shape of Water” is that it manages to not only incorporate these six characters into the story, but it actually lets the audience follow each of them for a while, seeing how they became the people they are and how they will interact with each other, in commune or in conflict.

Bonus features are decent, but not great. They consist of five making-of documentary featurettes: “A Fairy Tale for Troubled Times,” “Anatomy of a Scene: Prologue,” “Anatomy of a Scene: The Dance,” “Shaping the Waves: A Conversation with James Jean” amd “Guillermo del Toro’s Master Class.”

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Review: "The Shape of Water"

The greatest compliment I can give to a filmmaker is they make movies that aren’t like anybody else’s.

I didn’t much care for director Guillermo del Toro’s first few American films, but then I discovered his early Mexican stuff and fell in love. Subsequent efforts like “Pacific Rim” and “Pan’s Labyrinth” are films I cherish deeply.

Even when he wandered into a hothouse of Gothic silliness with “Crimson Peak,” I appreciated that it represented a singular vision unlike no other.

Like all of del Toro’s films, “The Shape of Water” defies easy convention. It contains elements of fantasy, horror, science fiction, comedy and even, most surprisingly, romance. Like “Pan’s Labyrinth,” it has a timeless quality, as if the story could have taken place a long time ago or a few years from now.

It’s a deeply affecting film that makes us feel and also makes us think. And it boasts no less than a half-dozen terrific performances worthy of consideration during the awards season. Even characters at the edges of the story feel complete and fully drawn.

Sally Hawkins plays Elisa Esposito, a mute youngish woman. In the opening minutes we observe her go through the quotidian routine of her day: waking, getting dressed, boiling eggs, shining shoes, a quick round of masturbation in the bathtub -- timed to coincide with the eggs, no less.

I liked that del Toro, who wrote the screenplay with Vanessa Taylor, included this last bit. It’s shocking, and it’s meant to be -- watching the main character get naked and rub one out moments after we’ve meant her. But it clues us in that Elisa is not some sexless fawn who deserves our pity because of her handicap, but a vibrant woman full of corners and contradictions.

After her amazing turn in “Maudie” earlier this year, it seems clear that Hawkins’ biggest competition for the Best Actress Oscar is… Sally Hawkins. She shows us Elisa’s yearning and doubt, but also her bravery and pride. What women.

Her entire life seems to be taken up with two things: her job, working as a cleaning lady at a secretive military laboratory, and her friendship with her next-door neighbor, Giles. Played by Richard Jenkins with humor and grace, he’s a fussy, aging commercial artist who frets about his baldness and loneliness. He repeatedly visits an awful pie franchise simply to chat up the sweet young boy working the counter. We get the sense, without it ever being stated, that Giles lost his day job because of his romantic impulses.

The lab where Elisa toils with her loyal friend, Zelda (Octavia Spencer), is a dank underground steampunk denizen of white coat-wearing scientists and gruff military types tromping to and fro. We half expect to glimpse through an open door and see James Bond strapped down with a laser pointed at his nethers.

One day a hard man named Strickland (Michael Shannon) arrives with a secretive container holding a wild water creature that he has captured. Elisa is repulsed by the man but strangely drawn to the captive.

Strickland is a thoroughly nasty piece of work, the sort who wields his privilege as a weapon. He is the man who never fails, because he is always willing to take whatever steps are necessary to reach his goals. To him it’s a simple equation: do your duty, reap the rewards -- rank, prosperity, family, a glossy new 1962 Cadillac DeVille that is most definitely teal and not green.

Elisa starts spending her lunches in the lab with the creature, and soon finds he’s not the fearsome, mindless beast Strickland would have everyone believe. She starts to bring him eggs to eat, plays music to soothe and even discovers he can be taught to use her sign language.

Things go from there… though not in the way we expect.

Doug Jones, a master of costumed performance, plays the amphibious man, with the help of a little CGI. He slightly resembles the Creature from the Black Lagoon, with some outer space alien added in.

The other notable character is Dr. Hoffstetler (Michael Stuhlbarg), the chief scientist overseeing the creature. He objects to Strickland’s rough treatment, including the use of a cattle prod. He wants to learn from their captive rather than experiment upon him. At first coming across as a soulless technologist, Stuhlbarg’s wide, wet eyes clue us into a man whose heart is pulled in several directions.

The best thing about “The Shape of Water” is that we feel like the story could follow any one of these characters down their individual path and still feel satisfied with the journey. And to a large extent, the film actually does that.

It’s a story of two that is actually about many. We’re all connected -- sometimes in ways that are obvious, often more mysteriously.

Video review: "Divergent"

It may be too reminiscent of “The Hunger Games” for its own good, but “Divergent” is the superior young-adult story, with a sensation of fun and danger missing from that other, pompous franchise.

Given a choice between me-me-me District 12 girl Katniss Everdeen and Tris, the wallflower-turned-badass of the Dauntless tribe, give me Shailene Woodley any day.

Woodley plays Beatrice, a member of the selfless Abnegation faction in a dystopian future where America is split up into different vocations. Every young person is tested to see which one they’ll best serve, but the final choice is up to them.

Tris, as she renames herself, proves equally adept at three factions, thus rendering her a rebel Divergent whose life is in peril. She is advised to keep this a secret, and disappoints her parents by choosing to join the warrior tribe instead of sticking with the family.

There she is put through her paces, and learns the ways of combat with the help of her hunky instructor-cum-love-interest, Four (Theo James). Alas, other Dauntless are not so welcoming, and war appears to be on the verge of breaking out between the different factions, with Kate Winslet as the silky/steely intellectual leader behind it all.

It’s overlong at 139 minutes, and the silliness occasionally outweighs the thrills, but “Divergent” comes out as the clear victor in the YA fiction games.

Video extras are quite good, even with the basic DVD version. That includes a feature-length audio commentary by director Neil Burger, another commentary by producers Lucy Fisher and Douglas Wick, deleted scenes, music video and a temporary tattoo sheet.

Upgrade to the Blu-ray combo pack, and you add “Bringing Divergent to Life,” an expansive multi-part making-of documentary, and the featurette “Divergent: Faction Before Blood.”

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Review: "Divergent"

Stop me if this sounds familiar:

A spunky teen girl has grown up uncertain in a post-apocalyptic future America of meager resources and carefully controlled factions that do not intermix freely. While things seem orderly, it's only a mask for the totalitarianism that pervades their segmented society. She is drafted into a gladiator-like contest of physical and mental combat, where despite her apparent weakness she quickly demonstrates a killer instinct she didn't even know was there.

Also, hunky boys abound, both helpful and not.

Yes, "Divergent" is close enough to "The Hunger Games" in basic plot and tone to make you wonder if the novelists on whose books these respective movies were based, Veronica Roth and Suzanne Collins, did not share some kind of harmonic psychic tap while composing their YA tomes. It also begs the question of how this new dystopian thriller/drama can possibly still seem fresh.

Short answer: it doesn't.

But "Divergent," despite frequent bouts of tremendous silliness, manages to engage and entertain in a way that those turgid "Games" have not.

Shailene Woodley, who impressed so well in "The Descendants" awhile back, plays Beatrice, a member of the Abnegation tribe, which professes selflessness. Dubbed "Stiffs" by the others for their Amish-like reserve, they act as ruling party.

While close to her parents (Ashley Judd and Tony Goldwyn) and brother Caleb (Ansel Elgort), Beatrice has never felt like she belonged, more attracted to the Dauntless, the fearless warrior class who act as military for the remnants of Chicago, which they've protected from untold horrors out in the wasteland by a massive wall.

Other factions are the Amity, peaceful farmers; Candor, the forthright speakers of law; and Erudite, the scientists and intellectuals. (Though for some reason everyone pronounces it "air-ee-uh-dite," including the Erudites themselves, which makes one ponder how smart they really are.)

Every youngster is given a test to determine which faction best suits them, in the public Sorting Hat-like ceremony that brings in shades of Harry Potter. While they're still free to choose, most children stay in the faction to which they were born.

Beatrice tests as being equally strong in three factions (Erudite, Abnegation and Dauntless), which brands her as Divergent, who are generally killed upon discovery. She is warned never to reveal this to anyone, and follows her heart to the Dauntless clan, leaving disappointed parents behind.

The bulk of the story (screenplay by Evan Daugherty and Vanessa Taylor) is consumed by the indoctrination of Tris -- as she renames herself -- into the martial world of the Dauntless. She's spurred on by Four (Theo James), her instructor-slash-love-interest. Friends are made, foes are too, and it's one (over)long Lord of the Flies tale.

After a series of dream-like simulations designed to make Tris face her deepest fears, things finally build up to the brink of war, with the maddeningly serene leader of the Erudites (Kate Winslet) at the center of the conflict.

Directed by Neil Burger ("Limitless"), "Divergent" is a bit bloated at 139 minutes, with several extraneous characters in need of trimming.

But there's a giddy mix of fun and danger here missing from "The Hunger Games." Several sequences exist simply for the sheer thrill of it, such as a zipline ride down from the top of a skyscraper.

"Divergent" might better be titled "Derivative," but by besting is predecessors in sheer entertainment quotient, it stands atop the heap of young adult fiction-turned-movies.