Hillbilly Elegy

Posted on November 11, 2020 at 10:00 am

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for some violence, language throughout, and drug content
Profanity:	Constant very strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Alcohol and drug abuse, smoking
Violence/ Scariness:	Domestic violence and family dysfunction
Diversity Issues:	A theme of the movie is economic diversity
Date Released to Theaters:	November 13, 2020

“Hillbilly Elegy” had just one job: to give us a sympathetic and relatable portrait of people we might dismiss as “rednecks” and, well, hillbillies, without being superficial or condescending. It fails, with a portrait of one dysfunctional Ohio family with roots in the Kentucky hill country that never knows what story it is trying to tell. It is closer to an episode of Jerry Springer than it is to an insightful portrait of the obstacles to opportunity that prevent people, with rare exceptions like Vance, to keep from repeating the same mistakes. (For genuine and meticulously researched understanding, try White Trash by Nancy Isenberg.)

The film is based on the best-selling memoir/anthropological study by J.D. Vance. The timing contributed to its success because it was thought to explain to book-buying, educated, urban voters the perspective of those who supported the election of a failed businessman turned reality TV star in 2016, including policies that seemed to be contrary to their own interests. As we see in this movie, that is consistent with personal choices that are devastating to their own interests, and the interests of the next generations.

The movie arrives at a different time. The resentful rural voters are no longer as exotic or unknown, and they have less political power. Nevertheless, as Democratic voters are still being urged to have empathy for the other side, to the extent there is curiosity about these communities, this is not a movie that is going to provide any enlightenment. It is most telling that it spends much too much time on the blandest and least interesting of the characters, the one based on the author of the book. And so it becomes about his struggle to accept and forgive his family and their history instead of being about them, their lives, their challenges, their choices.

We go back and forth in time with Vance, from the idyllic summers with his Kentucky “hillbilly” relatives to his life with an intelligent but overwhelmed single mother (Amy Adams as Beverly), who makes one catastrophically bad choice after another, and with his tough grandmother Mamaw (Glenn Close), who left home, pregnant, at age 13 and scrabbled a life for herself and her family.

J.D. (Owen Asztalos as a young teenager) tells us the summers in Kentucky were his happiest times, but as we see him with his cousins, we may wonder why. He finds a turtle with a wounded shell and wants to heal it, while his cousins tell him to tear off the shell or throw the turtle. J.D. explains that the turtle’s ribcage is connected to the carapace, which leads them to beat him up, which leads to everyone piling on. It might be worth exploring why there is so much suspicion of knowledge and institutions, why members of this family are unable to consider that the institutions that provide opportunities for economic stability and advancement, as imperfect as they are, may be a more reliable path. That they do not think it within the range of possibilities is rooted in innumerable factors and failures well worth exploring or even portraying, but this movie never tries. All it has to say is that these people think family comes first when it comes to faking drug test results or lying to the police but not so much when it comes to providing guidance, support, consistency, or a good example.

The shifts in time are more distracting than revealing. J.D. (now played by an expressionless Gabriel Basso) is a student at Yale Law School, after serving in the Marines and attending Ohio State. He is interviewing for summer jobs at tony law firms, essential to get the money he needs to pay the tuition for his final year of school. But he feels at a disadvantage compared to his Ivy League classmates, who have social ease. He has to make an emergency call to his girlfriend (Frieda Pinto in the thankless role of beautiful, endlessly patient and understanding support system) to ask which fork to use. This is not only an unforgivable cliche; it gives us no reason to feel sympathetic. A Marine Yale Law student is more than able to look that up before a fancy dinner or just watch what the host does.

J.D. gets an emergency call. His mother is in the hospital. She overdosed. On heroin.

He drives all night to get to Ohio. And we see incidents from the past as Bev struggles with drug abuse (once asking J.D. to pee into a cup to use for her drug test, another time impulsively marrying her supervisor and moving J.D. into his house, getting fired from her nursing job for taking a patient’s medication. If we learn anything it is that having an adult who is committed to keeping a child on the straight and narrow makes a difference. But why there was only one in this child’s life, why his sister seemed to do okay without going to live with Mamaw, and why Mamaw was able to learn from mistakes is all glossed over.

Even Amy Adams and Glenn Close are unable to make this work. They yell at each other with colorful countrified expletives (Close actually has to say at one point, “Kiss my ruby red asshole!”) sounding more like the caricatures on “Mama’s Family” than human beings with vulnerabilities and intimate connections. As we see home movies of the real characters over the credits, our only conclusion is that the filmmakers spent more time getting the outside right than the inside. The members of this community deserve better from the haves in our society, but they deserve better from this movie, too.

Parents should know that this movie includes extensive family dysfunction, substance abuse, and domestic abuse as well as constant strong language. Family members and teenagers use drugs. Domestic violence includes punching, dangerous driving, negligence, and setting a husband on fire.

Family discussion: Why was J.D. able to make a different life for himself? Should he have stayed with his mother when Mamaw wanted to take him? When he left for the interview?

If you like this, try: “White Oleander” and White Trash

Arrival

Posted on November 10, 2016 at 5:26 pm

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for brief strong language
Profanity:	Brief strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Some drinking
Violence/ Scariness:	Very sad death of a child, peril
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	November 11, 2016
Date Released to DVD:	February 13, 2017
Amazon.com ASIN:	B01LTHYE0O

It’s called “Arrival.” Not “Attack” or “War of the Worlds.” In this thought-provoking, conceptually ambitious film, the creatures from another world just…arrive. At twelve points around the globe, huge, monolithic spacecraft that look like flying saucers turned sideways are suddenly just there. What do you do? How do you determine the intentions and capacities for harm from a species of creature with whom you do not have the most fundamental experiences and assumptions in common? Do they even have a language we are capable of understanding? Do they have the capacity to speak or write? Do we have the capacity to understand? Is this “ET” or “Battlefield Earth?” Or maybe that “Twilight Zone” episode where the book the aliens bring titled To Serve Man turns out to be a cookbook?

And how can we tell? This is not one of those sci-fi movies where the aliens get some TV signals and teach themselves English by watching game shows and sitcoms. So, the US military seeks out a linguist (Amy Adams as Dr. Louise Banks) because before we can decide what our response will be, we have to try to find a way to figure out how to communicate with them. “Language is the foundation of civilization,” she says to another expert being transported to the alien ship with her. “No,” he tells her. “It is science.” He is a physicist (Jeremy Renner as Dr. Ian Donnelly). If you think that both sets of skills will be necessary, that they will find a way to communicate, and find some connection with one another as well, you are right, but it will still surprise you all the way to the end.

Director Denis Villeneuve is not afraid to take on big issues and complex questions. And, as always in movies about aliens, it is more about who we are than who they are. Positioning us against creatures who are completely unknown requires us to think more deeply about our assumptions and capabilities.

Louise figures out a way to begin to communicate with the floating squid-like creatures. But is the word they are conveying “tool” or “weapon?” And will humans around the world be able to find a way to work together or will one country undermine our efforts to communicate by attacking the alien ships? We may be better at communicating with other species than our own.

The details really matter here and production designer Patrice Vermette fills the screen with thoughtful, illuminating touches from the Brancusi-like sculptural curves of the spacecraft to the calligraphy-like symbols created by the aliens. Striking images inspire awe and wonder in us as they do the characters. And the Chomsky-esque notions that language shapes our thinking even more than our thinking shapes language is conveyed in the film’s own structure as well as its dialog. Ultimately, it is a reminder of the power of communication, with movies themselves as one of humanity’s best examples.

Parents should know that this movie’s theme includes worldwide threats, with some peril, very sad illness and death of a child, divorce, and some strong language.

Family discussion: Which is the foundation of civilization, language or science? Or is it something else? What would you ask the aliens?

If you like this, try: “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and “2001: A Space Odyssey”

Trailer: Arrival with Jeremy Renner and Amy Adams

Posted on August 26, 2016 at 9:53 am

Amy Adams plays a linguist who has to find a way to communicate with alien visitors in “Arrival,” co-starring Jeremy Renner.

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice

Posted on March 23, 2016 at 11:00 am

After the refreshing superhero palate-cleanser that was “Deadpool,” it’s tough to get back into the ponderous, self-important, choir-of-angels soundtrack, too long by at least 45 minutes. Even the title is much too long. Do we really need another scene (and then ANOTHER scene) of Bruce Wayne’s parents being shot in a comic book movie? But that is not going to daunt director Zack Snyder, who lives for this sort of thing, and so here we are. The movie is literally and metaphorically murky, with muddy cinematography that turns every character’s eyes into pupil-less, drone-looking pools, except for the guys who can make theirs glow, via effects so retro they could have come from the old Flash Gordon serials. The storyline is secondary at best, just a series of setups for action sequences. It’s no secret that if you want to have a human fight Superman, you have to find some kryptonite to make him susceptible to human weapons. But then when we need him to be back to full strength, there he is. At a crucial moment, the turning point is simply ridiculous. So much of the chaos could have been circumvented if a couple of the characters ever had a conversation — or a cell phone. And everything stops when character takes the time for a detour into computer files that do nothing but set up the next movie. Isn’t that what extra scenes after the credits are for?

Batman and Superman have a lot in common — they were both orphaned as children and long before Spider-Man learned that with great power comes great responsibility, they were both living that credo, standing for, as the Superman radio and television program said, “Truth, justice, and the American way.” Indeed, they had a long comic book bromance going until the 1980’s, when they began to be at odds, focusing on what separated them. They are, after all, literally from different worlds. Brooding loner Batman/Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck) is a vastly wealthy industrialist, his only confidant the trusty butler Alfred (Jeremy Irons). Superman/Clark Kent (Henry Cavill), was sent to Earth from Krypton as a baby, then found, adopted, and raised with a lot of love and support on a bucolic farm by the Kents. When he grows up, Clark Kent works as a reporter alongside the woman he loves, Lois Lane (Amy Adams).

An alien attack on Gotham destroys Wayne Enterprises’ headquarters building in a brief action sequence more arresting and visually striking than the ones that follow. Wayne, watching Superman up in the sky and suffering devastating loss and guilt over the deaths of his employees, is not sure whose side Supe is on. After the attack, Superman is treated as a hero, but Wayne is not the only one who is suspicious and threatened by someone so powerful that no earth laws could stop him if he decided to go rogue. Later, when Lane is captured, Superman’s rescue operation ends up with many people dead and many questions unanswered.

Lex Luthor (Jesse Eisenberg, enjoying his twitches), as rich and powerful as Wayne, seems to be behind various nasty ventures, and is very, very interested in getting hold of some kryptonite, despite the objections of a Kentucky Senator (Holly Hunter). So, a lot of people here are concerned about power — how to use it, how to constrain it, how to balance it — and that would be a great issue to explore in a superhero movie in 2016, but this one is more interested in whether a rich guy with a utility belt can beat a guy with super-strength, invulnerability, laser-vision, super-speed, and the ability to fly, and then whether anyone can defeat a big monster who bursts from Kryptonian primordial ooze.

Any Batman movie has to have an elegant society party. This one is, hosted by Luthor, and a mysterious woman (Gal Gadot, by far the best part of the movie) shows up to tantalize Wayne with her beauty and steal the very data he was there to steal himself.

And any Superman movie has to have a trip to the Fortress of Solitude, so that happens, too, and all I could do was wish I was there instead of watching this film.

Parents should know that this film includes constant comic book style fantasy violence with many explosions, and massive destruction, nukes, supernatural and military weapons, scary monster, characters injured and killed, some strong language, alcohol including drinking to deal with stress, and non-explicit nudity and a sexual situation.

Family discussion: How would/should the world respond to a real-life superhero who could not be subjected to our laws? Or to a vigilante like Batman?

If you like this, try: the Tim Burton and Christopher Nolan Batman movies and the comic books

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Fantasy Series/Sequel Superhero

Big Eyes

Posted on December 24, 2014 at 5:14 pm

In Woody Allen’s 1973 film “Sleeper,” set in a decadent future, Diane Keaton plays a superficial socialite who tries to think of the highest compliment she can give to an amateurish painting. “Oh, it’s Keane! It’s pure Keane!” she exclaims. Audiences of that time would recognize that reference to Walter Keane, responsible for the wildly if inexplicably popular “big eyes” paintings of sad-looking waifs. When the concept of “kitsch” (cheap, popular, low-brow, and corny “art”) first came to the United States in the 1970’s, the Keane images were often used as an example.

Note that word “responsible.” Walter Keane (Christoph Waltz) was “responsible” for the success of the paintings but he was not responsible for producing them. It was revealed in a dramatic trial that while Walter Keane claimed credit as the sole artist behind the paintings (and prints and books), he had never put a brush to canvas. Every one of the paintings was created by the only artist in the family, his wife, Margaret (Amy Adams).

Director Tim Burton, whose film about notoriously awful movie director Ed Wood is one of his best, has created another very good film about very bad art. Like that film, “Big Eyes” is highly stylized, with heightened period detail exaggerated to reflect and comment on the art that it depicts. At one point, in some distress, Margaret pushes a shopping cart through a grocery story, seeing the big eyes in the faces of everyone she looks at.

This film also draws on the 60’s era beginning stages of the women’s movement to anchor the story. Margaret took her daughter and left her first husband at a time when most middle class women were expected to stay home and defer to their husbands. She arrived in San Francisco at the dawn of the “consciousness raising” era, at the epicenter of movements advocating more focus on individual needs and personal fulfillment. But Margaret still thought of herself as powerless in her relationship with Walter, in part because it was her nature and the way she was raised to defer and get along, partly because she was dependant on him. She married him in a hurry because her ex-husband was threatening to sue her for custody at a time when single mothers who left their husbands and had to find jobs had very few rights. “I’m a divorcee with a child,” she tells a friend. “Walter is a blessing.”

It was also partly because she loved him, at first.

Margaret was pretty good at painting the pictures, but Walter was undeniably a world-class genius at selling them. He was very good at marketing up: he sold to movie stars and appeared as a guest on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. He got a commission for a mural at the World’s Fair. And he was even better at marketing down. When he noticed that people who could not afford the paintings were taking home posters from the gallery, he realized that there was an opportunity there. “Would you rather sell one $500 painting or a million crappy reproduced posters?” Pretty soon there were Keane images for every budget, with the originals in an art gallery and the copies in stores, alongside kitchen utensils and t-shirts.

Margaret signed her work “Keane,” and Walter slipped easily into taking credit for it. He told Margaret (correctly) that no one took women artists seriously and that (also correct) that he was willing to do the kind of glad-handing and public appearances that she is not. So, she stays locked in her studio painting all the time, increasingly isolated, finally even from her own sense of who she is.

The eerie look in the big eyes of the children in the paintings begins to seem haunting. Margaret realizes that she has to leave another husband. And she has to tell the truth.

Tim Burton has a story with the grotesquerie built in, not just the outlandish images but the turbulence of the era. Waltz has the showier role and delivers as a man whose ebullience mutates into a grandiosity from which there was no return. Adams, as the woman whose passion for expression grows — finally — into the ability to speak for herself with her voice as well as her brush.

Parents should know that this film includes some disturbing themes including emotional abuse, broken marriages, fraud, some sexual references, and brief strong language.

Family Discussion: Who was responsible for the success of the big eye paintings? Why did Walter lie and why did Margaret let him?

If you like this, try: “Ed Wood” from the same director

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Based on a true story Drama