Landscape with Invisible Hand

Posted on August 17, 2023 at 11:30 am

B +

Lowest Recommended Age:	High School
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for language and brief violent content
Profanity:	Strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Alcohol
Violence/ Scariness:	Suicide by gun
Diversity Issues:	A theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters:	August 18, 2023

Wherever you think this is going, I can guarantee you will be surprised. Based on the book by National Book Award winner M.T. Anderson, “Landscape with Invisible Hand” is a story about the aftermath of an alien invasion of Earth, but not like one we’ve seen before. This is not about evil invaders like “War of the Worlds,” “The Tomorrow War,” “Independence Day,” or benign, wise aliens like “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” and “E.T.” These aliens, called vuvv, do not look like giant insects, robots, or humans. They look like a cross between a big slab of pink tofu and a rectangular sofa cushion, with two big front teeth. One character calls them “squishy coffee tables.” They communicate by scraping their flippers together and the rasping sounds are translated by little bluetooth speaker-like boxes.

The movie takes place a few years after they have colonized the Earth and siphoned off its wealth and resources. We are brought up to date over the opening credits, with a theramin-influenced score that is a throwback to 50’s sci-fi. We see a series of drawings, labeled as though they are in a museum, with titles, dates, and identification of media. The first is a very young child’s portrait of his family, and then we see his skill grow over the years. There is a drawing of a family Christmas. There is a drawing of a bustling market. And then there is a drawing of the market after the arrival of the aliens. It is empty of food and customers.

The artist is Adam Campbell (Asante Blackk), a high school student who lives with his mother, Beth (Tiffany Haddish) and sister Natalie (Brooklynn MacKinzie). Like most adults who have not sold out to the vuvv, Beth is unemployed, but they still have their home, which makes them much better off than most people. Adam impulsively offers their basement to Chloe Marsh (Kylie Rogers of “Yellowstone”), a new classmate who has been living in the family car with her anxious father (Josh Hamilton) and surly brother Hunter (Michael Gandolfini). Chloe and Adam like each other, and that creates an opportunity.

The vuvv are curious about human culture, especially romance. They pay to watch it. So Chloe and Adam attach sensors to their foreheads and start racking up views and money. That does not go well, And then things really take a turn.

That turn is strange and it gets stranger, in smart and interesting and thought-provoking ways I will not spoil. It is refreshing especially in what is usually the slowest time of year for movies to see one that is willing to challenge the audience. That applies to the small details, from the design of the vcvvs and their settings to the mixture of humiliation and resentment in the male Marshes, the way some humans adjust their appearances to more closely resemble the vuvv, the difference between two characters, each seen only in a single brief scene calibrate their priorities about their interactions with the aliens. And its message about art and its significance to those who create it and those who observe it, comes through with great clarity.

Parents should know that this film includes some strong language and a suicide by gun. It is offscreen but we see the blood splatter. There are some sexual references and brief underage drinking.

Family discussion: What parallels are there between the vuvv and historical colonizers? What does this movie say about the importance of art?

If you like this, try: The book by M.T. Anderson and the film “Upside Down”

When You Finish Saving the World

Posted on January 19, 2023 at 6:00 pm

B +

Lowest Recommended Age:	High School
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for language
Profanity:	Strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Wine, teenage drug use
Violence/ Scariness:	References to domestic abuse
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	January 20, 2023

Jesse Eisenberg’s first feature film as writer and director is reminiscent of his breakthrough performance in Noah Baumbach’s “The Squid and the Whale.” They are both stories of teenagers beginning to understand themselves and their parents a little better through some of the inevitable painful discoveries of adolescence.

“Stranger Things'” Finn Wolfhard plays Ziggy, a high school student who is very proud of the 20 thousand fans worldwide who tune in to hear his weekly live streaming performances. He sings original songs he describes as “folk rock with alternative influences” and thanks them for their comments and tips in their native languages.

Ziggy lives with his parents, the reserved, bookish Roger (Jay O. Sanders) and the slightly formal and sardonic Grace (Julianne Moore), director of a shelter for women and children who are survivors of domestic abuse.

Both Ziggy and Grace make efforts to connect to new people. Abused wife Angie (Eleonore Hendricks, creating a character of great specificity and depth in her brief scenes) and her teenage son Kyle (Billy Bryk) arrive at the shelter after police intervention, and Grace is touched by Kyle’s empathy and support for his mother. She becomes over-involved in trying to help him, perhaps displacing her feelings out of frustration with Ziggy. When she brings him on errands and sees him warmly speaking Spanish with one of the shelter’s former residents, she abruptly insists on leaving. She encourages Kyle to apply to college, which makes Angie feel threatened.

And Ziggy is drawn to a girl at school. Her name is Lila (a wonderfully charismatic Alisha Boe). He awkwardly tries to impress her with his live streaming success, but sees that what she cares about is activism on behalf of social justice and the environment. He has no idea how to approach her, and his awkward attempts will be painfully familiar to anyone who has survived adolescence.

There are three kind of music in the film, perhaps three and a half. The first is the light, electronic tune played for us in the audience to establish the tone. The rest are diegetic, the music played and listened to by the characters. Grace favors classical music which she plays in the car. She listens to Bizet’s “Carmen” when she drives Ziggy to school, refusing when he asks her to play anything else. Ziggy plays his original songs on an acoustic guitar, at first about his feelings but then, as he using Lila’s poem about colonialism and exploitation of the Marshall Islands for lyrics.

Eisenberg’s screenplay, based on his Audible book, is thoughtful with an actor’s sensitivity to tone and character, with impeccable casting choices. He knows that he can tell us as much by having Ziggy and Kyle pass each other at school or by the Ziggy he walks down the same sidewalk at different times in the story as he does with Ziggy’s painfully awkward attempts to tell Lila how “lit” and “terra” she is. Moore, as Grace finally watching Ziggy’s songs on YouTube, gives another of her gorgeous performances, with so much going on underneath Grace’s air of righteousness, a sense of loss of the closeness she had to Ziggy as a child, exhaustion over the overwhelming difficulties of the people at the shelter. Some parts of the story do not quite work, but the details are thoroughly imagined and the performances are thoughtful and involving.

Parents should know that this film includes very strong language, wine, and teen drug use, with references to domestic abuse.

Family discussion: Why didn’t Grace want to listen to Ziggy’s music and what changed her mind? Why didn’t Grace tell the truth about helping Kyle? Why did Ziggy go to the shelter? What should he have said to Lila?

If you like this, try: “The Squid and the Whale” and “The Edge of Seventeen”

Missing

Posted on January 19, 2023 at 4:31 pm

B +

Lowest Recommended Age:	High School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for teen drinking, some strong violence, language, and thematic material
Profanity:	Strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Teen drinking and drug use
Violence/ Scariness:	Intense peril and violence, domestic abuse, characters injured and killed
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	January 20, 2023

I promise, the only spoiler in this review is an answer to the question: Was the very clever 2018 missing girl mystery “Searching,” almost entirely told on the computer screen of a father trying to find his teenage daughter, just a stunt, or does it open up a new kind of storytelling? We’re told that “Missing” is from the “minds behind ‘Searching,'” meaning that Aneesh Chaganty, who directed the original and co-wrote the screenplay with Sev Ohanian, provided the story for this one, and they share producer Timur Bekmambetov (“Night Watch”). “Missing” co-directors and screenwriter Nicholas D. Johnson and Will Merrick edited “Searching,” and the new film feels very much part of the same world but refreshingly up-to-date. It builds lightly on the original but is very much its own treat of a twisty thriller. If any part of it is less choice, it is the generic title itself, without the original’s double meaning linking the mystery in real life to the way we get information online.

Once again, a frantic family member is searching for someone who has gone out of contact, and the contrast between the omnipresent information available online and the unsolvable absence is immediately absorbing. And as in the first one, we are dealing with a single parent and a child who is still mourning the one who has died. June (an excellent Storm Reid) is 18, and perhaps a bit too eager to get her mother, Grace (Mia Long) out of town, though she is not a fan of Kevin (Ken Leung), the man who is taking Grace on a vacation trip to Colombia.

As she is getting ready to leave, we see Grace on FaceTime, trying to give her daughter some vital information — who will be checking in on her, where the emergency money is, when to pick them up on their return. We can see that June is feeling smothered via the avatar she has for her mother’s profile and via the nonsense, with a few OMGs, she types after Grace tells her to take notes.

And then, amusingly, we see June getting that emergency money and doing searches for things like cheap ways to get drunk, to put on a party for her friends. It is such a success that she almost misses that pick-up at the airport. But Grace and Kevin are not there. And June has to figure out how to search for her mother 3500 miles away.

As promised, I am not going to spoil the deliciously surprising twists and turns of the storyline. I’ll just say that they are very clever, and the filmmakers made the most of the technology’s ability to show us what June is thinking as she starts to type something and then backtracks and changes her mind, whether it is finding a Taskrabbit who fits her budget (a terrific Joaquim de Almeida), filling out a State Department missing person report, or hacking someone’s accounts. This film proves that the screen-told story is not just a gimmick but an intiguing new tool that opens up many new opportunities for imaginative story-telling.

Parents should know that this movie includes criminal activity, peril and violence with characters injured and killed, drug use, strong language, and teen drinking.

Family discussion: What clues did you pick up from June’s screen before she did? Who did you suspect? Will this movie make you think about online access differently?

If you like this, try: “Searching” and “Modern Family’s” “Connection Lost” episode, also all on computer screens.

Catherine Called Birdy

Posted on September 22, 2022 at 5:27 pm

B +

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
Profanity:	Some strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking and drunkenness
Violence/ Scariness:	Some violence, discussions of forced marriage, references to battles, stillbirth, offscreen death
Diversity Issues:	A theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters:	September 30, 2022

Lena Dunham is a remarkably talented writer and director and this loving, joyous adaptation of YA favorite novel Catherine Called Birdy is a passion project for her, as we can seen from her affectionate portrayal of a rebellious girl in the Middle Ages. Before I get to the details of the story, I want to take a moment to note Dunham’s exceptional talent in casting. One of the palpable pleasures of this film worth noting is the superb selection of performers. Even the smallest role is cast with care and beautifully performed. High marks to Dunham and to her casting directors Catriona Dickie and Nina Gold.

“Games of Thrones” actress Bella Ramsey is ideal as the title character, the 14-year-old daughter of a feckless nobleman (Andrew. Scott as Lord Rollo) and his kind-hearted wife (Billie Piper as Lady Aislinn). We are introduced to the family and household with brief written descriptions, video game style. They include Birdy’s nurse and confidant, Morwenna (Lesley Sharp), her brothers, one a monk she likes and one living in the castle with her she mostly ignores. Her friends are Perkin (Michael Woolfitt), who cares for the pigs, and another noble teenager, the beautiful Alis (Isis Hainsworth), who comes to visit once a month with her parents. She also adores her Uncle George (Joe Alwyn), who comes for a visit after fighting in the Crusades.

Birdy (nickname from the pigeons she keeps) is a fierce, independent young woman who describes her “lady lessons” as my two least favorite words in one terrible phrase.” She feels unfairly constricted by the norms of her time, and has a long lost of activities unfairly forbidden to women. She is mostly ignored by her father, until he is informed that (1) he is in need of money and (2) the primary asset he can use to get money is his marriageable daughter. In the calculations of the time. a young woman who carries a title is equivalent to a wealthy man without one. As soon as her father finds out that she has begun to menstruate and is therefore ready to bear children, he sends out word that she is ready to be sold into matrimony. She has a series of amusing encounters as she scares off would-be suitors. Finally, though, after Alis is “married” to a nine-year-old, Birdy is promised to the worst of them all.

Dunham gives us a Middle Ages compound that is suitably grimy, with evocative production design by Kave Quinn and costumes from Julian Day and a score from Carter Burwell. But the modern sensibility is evident through contemporary songs on the soundtrack and Birdy’s commentary. She may be ignorant about some of the basic facts of life, but the more interesting knowledge she gains over the course of the film concerns her increased understanding of people and their motivations.

Dunham, like the book’s author Karen Cushman, effectively uses the Middle Ages setting to raise not just contemporary but eternal issues of conflicts between independence and connections of our friends and family, between challenging traditions and allowing them to provide continuity. The humor and pop songs keep the more dire aspects of the story from distracting us when what she wants us to see is Birdy’s resilience and open-heartedness.

Parents should know that this film is frank about puberty and has sexual references and childbirth scenes, including a sad stillbirth. There is off-screen violence, with references to the Crusades and the death of a child, and a sword fight with one participant wounded.

Family discussion: Why did Birdy and Alis have different ideas about how to behave? Why didn’t she agree to go with Ethelfritha? The screenwriter changed the ending from the book. Which ending do you prefer?

If you like this, try: the book and the book series by Tamora Pierce

13 the Musical

Posted on August 12, 2022 at 12:01 am

B +

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG for some thematic elements and rude humor
Profanity:	Some schoolyard language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	None
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	August 12, 2022

There’s lyric in a song in the lively and tuneful “13 the Musical” that the main character and his mother sing together that pretty much sums up the most stressful parts of life. And there’s nothing more stressful in life than middle school. The mother and son sing ruefully, “It would be funny if it didn’t suck.”

Evan Goldman (a terrific Eli Golden) is studying for his upcoming bar mitzvah, or, as he says, “the Super Bowl of Judaism.” Like many b’nai mitzvot, he is more focused on the party than the significance of being called to read from the Torah and being recognized as an adult. He believes the party will establish his status, either cool or not.

Evan’s parents have just split up, and he and his mother (Debra Messing) are leaving New York to move in with his grandmother (Rhea Perlman) in a very small town in Indiana. There is no synagogue; his New York rabbi (a warm, wise, and witty Josh Peck) will fly in to conduct the service in a church. Evan faces all the pressure of starting a new school in 8th grade multiplied by the pressure of figuring out who the cool kids are and how to make sure they come to his party. This leads him to make a lot of mistakes, hurting the feelings of the not-cool but loyal friends he abandons for the popular crowd, and then digging himself in deeper when he betrays the new friends, too.

In other words, it’s middle school. Actually, it’s middle school with terrific musical numbers. The 2012 Broadway show was entirely performed by kids, even the musicians. Ariana Grande was in the cast. This version smooths out some of the storyline, making it more family-friendly and a bit sweeter. Messing and Perlman are welcome additions, but the focus is still very much on the 8th graders and their efforts to begin to navigate relationships, friend and romantic. Given the heightened emotion of that age, this film is reassuringly low stakes. A couple wants to have a first kiss. A jealous third party wants to make sure it does not happen. Evan is in the middle because either way he will not be able to have the party he wants. Kids make some poor choices but they learn to do better, starting with an apology.

A lot of the film is the energetic, witty musical numbers from writer/composer Jason Robert Brown (“The Last Five Years”), energetically choreographed by Jamal Sims. Every one of the young performers is a triple threat, acting, singing, and dancing, with songs set at cheerleader practice and on the football field bleachers. The storyline lightly but sincerely and authentically addresses the real issues of adolescence but it is seeing real-life kids singing and dancing with such jubilant energy and showing the skill and hard work they have devoted to the performance that are the greatest reassurance that adolescence can be survived and triumphed over.

Parents should know that this movie includes a painful divorce and parent-child estrangement and discussion of kissing.

Family discussion: How does Evan help his friends solve their problems? Why was it hard for Brett to tell Lucy he did not like the way she was treating him? Why did Archie go along with Evan’s plan?

If you like this, try: “Hey, Hey, It’s Esther Blueburger,” “You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah,” and “Better Nate Than Ever”