“Beyond the Lights” is a welcome return to the grand traditions of movie romance, with sizzling chemistry between gorgeous, fabulously charismatic stars Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Nate Parker. And it also has some very astute insights about family, ambition, and the pressure put on young women, especially those in the performing arts, to present themselves as sexually provocative and available.
Minnie Driver plays Macy Jean, a ruthlessly ambitious stage mother who sees her talented young daughter, Noni, as her ticket out of poverty and powerlessness. We first see them at a singing competition when Noni is a little girl (India Jean-Jacques). Her performance of Nina Simone’s “Blackbird” gets her a trophy that her mother smashes to the ground because she did not come in first. Then Noni is grown up (Mbatha-Raw), singing and dancing in a steamy music video, featuring a successful rapper named Kid Culprit (Richard Colson Baker, aka Machine Gun Kelly). Macy Jean is pushing Noni hard to do whatever it takes to become a star, and she is on the brink of a breakthrough, with an upcoming television appearance that should launch her into superstardom.
But in the midst of all of this sound and fury, Noni feels lost. The image her mother has created for her is so overpowering that she does not know who she is anymore. She is a singer with a million-dollar voice, but she is also a person who feels that it belongs to someone else, that she is lost somewhere beneath the glitter and fakery. Alone in her hotel room, she goes out the window and sits on the ledge, contemplating allowing herself to just fall off.
She is rescued by a cop assigned to her security detail. His name is Kaz (Parker) and he grabs her hand and looks into her eyes. He says “I see you.” And she believes he does.
Of course, the incident is spun for the press. “We’re selling fantasy here, and suicide ain’t sexy.” Noni jokes about the risks of combining champagne and stilettos and poses with her handsome savior. But Kaz did see Noni. He saw her the way she wanted to be seen. And she saw him, too.
Kaz has a demanding parent, too, a father (Danny Glover) who wants him to run for office, and knows that Noni is not first lady material.
Writer-director Gina Prince-Bythewood (“Love and Basketball”) keeps the love story glamorous but never soapy, through the subtle, moving performances by Mbatha Raw and Parker, and a script that respects the characters, with thoughtful details and easy humor. In the very beginning, Macy Jean is frantic because she does not know how to handle her biracial child’s hair. Later, Noni is wearing a purple-streaked weave for her music video. And when she begins to be happy again, she frees her hair as she finds her true voice. Prince-Bythewood’s confidence in her own voice as much a pleasure of this film as the love story and the star power, which add up to the best date movie of the year.
Parents should know that this film includes very provocative sexual imagery and musical performances with very skimpy clothing, sexual references and situations, strong and crude language, attempted suicide, and tense family confrontations.
Family discussion: What does it mean to “do small things in a great way?” How did Noni and Kaz help each other? Why did being on the brink of great success was Noni in despair? What can we do to protect girls from the overwhelming focus on appearance?
If you like this, try: “The Rose,” “The Bodyguard,” “Lady Sings the Blues,” “Dreamgirls,” “Love Me or Leave Me,” “Gypsy,” and “Mahogany”
We have seen many film biographies of great individuals (mostly men). But we have seen almost no films, fact-based or fictional, about great marriages. And we have certainly never seen any films about great marriages that end up with the couple married to other people. But that is what this is. It is the story of a “marriage of true minds,” an equal partnership in every way, with two very intelligent and committed people working as hard as they can to be the best they can for one another.
And they are portrayed by two people of enormous talent, with both Felicity Jones and Eddie Redmayne giving performances of enormous depth and understanding. Of course Redmayne has the showier, awards-bait role, and he is meticulous in Hawking’s physical decline. In his previous films like “Les Miserables” and “My Week With Marilyn,” Redmayne has shown a gift for the sensitive, doe-eyed young hero. But as Hawking, he shows a shrewdness and wit we have not seen from him before, even at the end, when Hawking has just one cheek muscle he can control. There is never a hint of stunt-ishness. It is always about the character whose mind is perhaps even freer to roam the farthest reaches of the universe and of human comprehension as his body is failing and he is completely physically dependant.
The luminous Jones matches him every bit of the way as Jane Hawking ages and as she grapples with finding a way to continue to relate to her husband as an adult and an equal while caring for him. She is also a scholar in her own right who wants to do her own work, while somehow caring for her children and her husband, an intellectual supernova who is becoming an icon.
The screenplay is based on the book by Jane Hawking, the first wife of the scientist many people think of as the greatest mind of our generation, the physicist Stephen Hawking, best known for his appearances on “The Big Bang Theory” and his mega-best-selling book for the lay audience, A Brief History of Time. (The book’s purported status as the most-bought but least-read best-seller has inspired the “Hawking Index.”) And so we get a rare glimpse into what it was like from the point of view of the “wife of.”
Jane met Stephen when they were both students. They had very little in common. He was studying physics. She was studying Spanish poetry. He was an atheist. She was a churchgoer and believer. He was disorganized, not socially adept or at least not interested in fitting in. She was a natural rule-follower and very comfortable in social situations. There was never anything conventional about their encounters or conversations.
And yet, they felt the kind of pull that is better described by poetry than physics, the kind that seems to mean that only the similarities matter. She smiles, “I like to time travel. Like you.”
And then Hawking is given the devastating diagnosis of motor neuron disease (ALS), with a life expectancy of perhaps two years of calamitous decline of all muscles. “Your thoughts won’t change,” he is told, “but eventually no one will know what they are.”
Hawking’s father warns Jane away. “This will not be a fight. This will be a heavy defeat for all of us.” But Jane is resolute. She is determined that they will get married and they will fight. They get married, with him leaning heavily on a cane. They have two children. And he loses muscular control, more every day. Each downward ratchet is wrenching, but ultimately he has to give up walking and move to a wheelchair as eventually he will have to give up speech and learn to operate a computer with one muscle in his cheek to have it speak for him. Adding insult to injury, it will be with an American accent.
In the meantime, he is transforming our understanding of the universe and our place in it, and then turning those theories upside down and starting over as he attempts to synthesize the two areas of physics into one simple, elegant, beautiful formula that will explain how it all fits together.
Screenwriter Anthony McCarten and director James Marsh (“Project Nim”) show deep understanding and extraordinary sensitivity in conveying with small, intimate details what is going on in this marriage. Hands reach casually across a dinner table while two of the people at the table watch, just a slight tightening of the muscles around the eyes or mouth revealing what it is like to see it be so easy for other people. They can love each other despite his awful knowledge of being a burden while resenting the healthy. And despite her equally awful knowledge of his humiliation in being a burden. We see the combined beauty and soul-destroying relentlessness of being a caretaker.
They try to keep relating to each other as a couple, not as patient and nurse. They have another baby. That is joyous but it is more work and more of a reminder of how little he can do as a parent. He is in many respects more dependent than the children. And Jane is exhausted.
Jane’s mother (Emily Watson) has some advice. She tells Jane to sing in the church choir. “That is the most English thing anyone has ever said,” Jane replies, but she goes, and as soon as we see the handsome young choir leader, just widowed, (Charlie Cox of “Stardust” as Jonathan), we know there is going to be trouble. Jonathan, at a loss in his grief, offers to be of help to the family. He is kind and understanding but he is also healthy and in a beautifully poignant scene at the beach, he runs with the children while Hawking’s wheelchair sinks into the wet sand.
Jonathan and Jane develop feelings for each other. Hawking and his new nurse Elaine (Maxine Peake) develop feelings for each other. Perhaps it is because she never sees him as less than a version of himself that is long gone. Perhaps it is just that he wants Jane to have a chance to be with a healthy man. Perhaps he knows that there is some parallel universe where they are living happily ever after. I’d like to think so.
Parents should know that this is a sad movie about a family dealing with a very serious disease. There are some sexual references.
Family discussion: Why did Stephen chose that moment to talk about God to Jane? Why was it important to her?
Olive Kitteridge, Elizabeth Stout’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about a difficult woman experiencing and creating difficulties, is now a two-part miniseries on HBO, premiering tomorrow night, with Oscar-winner Frances McDormand in the title role.
Rated R for language, some sexual material and teen partying
Profanity:
Strong and crude language
Alcohol/ Drugs:
Adult and teen drinking and drunkenness, drunk driving
Violence/ Scariness:
Car crash, tense emotional confrontations
Diversity Issues:
None
Date Released to Theaters:
October 31, 2014
Amazon.com ASIN:
B00OUNNWPS
Lynn Shelton is known for writing and directing small, intimate, independent films with a lot of improvised dialogue (“Humpday,””My Sister’s Sister,” “Touchy Feely”), often using the same small group of actors. With “Laggies,” she moves seamlessly to working with a more conventional screenplay, written by someone else (novelist Andrea Seigel), and with a higher-profile Hollywood cast, but the film maintains a nice indie sensibility that lets the characters speak for themselves. For example, the only time the word “laggie” is used, it is not directed at any of the main characters and it is never explained, but we get the point. The laggie is Megan (Keira Knightley), who has lagged behind her close-knit group of friends from high school. Ten years later, all of them are established in careers and relationships. You can tell they all have mortgages and 401(k)s. But Megan, who has an MA in counseling, is currently working as a “sign girl” for her accountant father (Jeff Garlin), standing on the sidewalk twirling an arrow sign advertising his firm. She is living with Anthony (Mark Webber), the boyfriend she has been with since sophomore year of high school.
At a bridal shower for her friend Allison (Ellie Kemper), her friends find her joking immature and she finds them stuffy. And at Allison’s wedding (with a hilariously pretentious First Dance), two developments shake Megan badly. Anthony proposes. And Megan sees her father kissing (and more) Allison’s mother. Megan leaves the wedding and meets four teenagers hanging out in front of a convenience store. They ask her to buy some booze for them and she reasons that since someone did it for her, she should do it for them. “It’s a rite of passage,” she reassures herself.
With no interest in returning to her messy life, she spends some time with the kids. They think she is cool, and she likes being thought of that way. Annika (Chloë Grace Moretz) gives her a phone and asks her to stay in touch. When Megan gets back to her apartment, she accepts Anthony’s proposal and agrees to elope with him in a week. Before they go, she tells him, she wants to attend the week-long personal development seminar that made such a difference to him (he learned that his spirit animal was a shark and that made him realize he had to start making decisions in his life because if a shark doesn’t move, it dies).
She has no intention of attending the seminar. She just needs time to think. And then Annika calls and asks her to pretend to be her mother for a parent conference at school. Megan puts up her hair and fakes her way through. And then she asks Annika if she can stay at her house for a week without her father finding out. One of the many nice touches in this movie is that of course he finds out immediately. This is not a sitcom. The set-up may be artificial, but the characters have real-life reactions.
Annika’s father is Craig (Sam Rockwell), a divorce lawyer and single dad. Annika’s mother left them years ago and he spends his days working with unhappy, angry couples. Annika thought she could hide Megan because Sam was supposed to be at a mixer, but he comes home early. I loved the detail that his name tag was on his arm and his conversation with Megan about how women at mixers like that tap him on the arm to show that they are listening. There are lies, and excruciating confessions, and lessons learned, but the progress is organic as everyone from the school counselor who thinks Megan is Annika’s mother to the real mother (the always-excellent Gretchen Moll) to Megan’s old friends from high school and even Craig seem to be carrying a message about growing up even though you don’t have it all figured out. Shelton has enough confidence in the story, the characters, and her outstanding performers to avoid the easy exaggerations of the genre and show us real people who are essentially decent struggling to find the courage to move forward, even when they don’t know where that will take them.
Parents should know that this film includes strong language, drinking by adults and teenagers, drunk driving, car crash, sexual references, some crude, and non-explicit situations, and infidelity.
Family discussion: What animal would you pick to represent your spirit? How can you tell when you’ve outgrown your friends?
If you like this, try: “Girl Most Likely” and Sam Rockwell films like “Galaxy Quest” and “The Way Way Back”
Filmed as though it was almost entirely one long, stunning, audacious, breathless and breathtaking shot, “Birdman” (subtitled “The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance”) explodes with ideas and visions, adopting the language of dreams to explore and upend the very idea of storytelling.
Michael Keaton plays a character in superficial ways like Keaton himself. He is Riggan, an actor who has undertaken at least three impossible tasks at once. He has adapted the acclaimed but notoriously difficult and difficult to adapt Raymond Carver collection of short stories, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, into a Broadway play. The translation of stories whose art is in the spareness and lyricism of the prose into a theatrical production is at best ambitious, at worst impossible. But Riggan is not just the writer. He is also the director and star. He has put his last dime into the show. If it fails, he loses everything. And there is more. His estranged and angry daughter Sam (Emma Stone), just out of rehab, is working as his assistant so he can keep an eye on her and perhaps repair their relationship. One of the actresses (Andrea Riseborough), may be pregnant with his child. And a piece of equipment has just fallen on the head of one of the actors. They are about to go into previews and he cannot perform.
Riggan and Jake, his best friend/lawyer/producer (a slimmed down and pitch-perfect Zach Galifianakis), throw out (real-life) names of possible actor replacements. The best of their generation: Michael Fassbender, Jeremy Renner, Robert Downey, Jr — but they are all in Hollywood playing superheroes. Riggan knows something about that. He played a superhero called Birdman in a series of wildly popular films. He had money, fame, success, and the kind of power all of that brings. But now he has an ex-wife (Amy Ryan), an angry daughter, a possible new child on the way, and he is risking his future on the longest of longshots, a serious play in the high-pressure world of Broadway theater, between the vicious barbs of dyspeptic, despotic critics and audiences who would rather be at the latest musical based on a movie.
Riggan and Jake argue about what to do next. The understudy? No! “It’s not like the perfect actor is just going to knock on the door!” Cue knock on the door. It is Lesley, the non-possibly pregnant actress in the show (Naomi Watts), volunteering her boyfriend, Michael (Edward Norton), who is available (he just got fired or quit or both) and wants to do it. He is a Broadway darling, a Serious Actor with a lot of fans. Jake is ecstatic. This will sell a lot of tickets.
Michael shows up with the script already memorized and able to give a dazzling performance that pushes Riggan to do his best. But Michael is also narcissistic and arrogant. His relationship with Lesley is deteriorating and he is hitting on Sam. Worse, he is sending her mixed signals, making her feel even more insecure and putting her recovery at risk. Riggan is under even more pressure externally and internally as a voice — his Birdman persona? His younger self? His future self? — is urging him, taunting him, distracting him.
It is a high wire act, the endless, dreamlike take festooned with farce-style slamming doors, fantasy interludes with monsters and explosions, sharp satire, poignant drama, and across the board performances of superb precision. As sheer, no-net, bravura filmmaking it is pure wonder, and if it raises more questions than it answers, at least they are the big questions of meaning, identity, work, love, art, and, of course, superheroes.
Parents should know that this film includes very strong and crude language, explicit sexual references and situation, gun violence, drinking, smoking, and drug use.
Family discussion: How much of what we see in this film is “real” and how can you tell? What do you think is happening in the final scene?
If you like this, try: “All That Jazz” and Woody Allen’s “Stardust Memories”
. (The book’s purported status as the most-bought but least-read best-seller has inspired the “
, Elizabeth Stout’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about a difficult woman experiencing and creating difficulties, is now a two-part miniseries on HBO, premiering tomorrow night, with Oscar-winner Frances McDormand in the title role.
, into a Broadway play. The translation of stories whose art is in the spareness and lyricism of the prose into a theatrical production is at best ambitious, at worst impossible. But Riggan is not just the writer. He is also the director and star. He has put his last dime into the show. If it fails, he loses everything. And there is more. His estranged and angry daughter Sam (Emma Stone), just out of rehab, is working as his assistant so he can keep an eye on her and perhaps repair their relationship. One of the actresses (Andrea Riseborough), may be pregnant with his child. And a piece of equipment has just fallen on the head of one of the actors. They are about to go into previews and he cannot perform.