coming of age

I’LL SEE YOU IN MY DREAMS: gentle, thoughtful and altogether fresh

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Sam Elliott and Blythe Danner in I'LL SEE YOU IN MY DREAMS
Sam Elliiott and Blythe Danner in I’LL SEE YOU IN MY DREAMS

The gentle, thoughtful and altogether fresh dramedy I’ll See You in My Dreams is centered on 72-year-old Carol (Blythe Danner), a widow of 21 years living a life of benign routine. Every day, she rises at 6 AM in her modest but nicely appointed LA house, reads by the pool, hosts her gal pals from the nearby retirement community for cards and is in bed by 11 PM to watch TV with her elderly canine companion. It’s not a bad life, but it’s an unadventuresome one.

Then some things happen that give her an opportunity to choose to take some chances. In short order, she has to put down her dog and deal with an unwelcome rodent. Her friends (Rhea Perlman, June Squibb and Mary Kay Place) suggest that she try speed dating. She opens her social life, developing a friendship with a much younger man (Martin Starr – Gilfoyle in Silicon Valley) and being courted by a dashing man of her own age (Sam Elliott).

What happens is sometimes funny, sometimes sad and always authentic. This is NOT a formulaic geezer comedy, but a story about venturing outside one’s comfort zone – with all the attendant vulnerability – to seek some life rewards.  Carol may be 72, but she is still at a place in her life where she can grow and be challenged.  I’ll See You in My Dreams proves that coming of age films are not just for the young.

I saw I’ll See You in My Dreams at the Camera Cinema Club, at which director, editor and co-writer Brett Haley was interviewed. Haley said that he and co-writer Marc Basch wanted to “avoid the obvious joke of older people doing what younger people do”. Instead, they intended to make a movie “about love, loss and that you can’t get through life unscathed – and that’s okay”. Haley and Basch certainly succeeded in creating a film about “living life without the fear of loss”.

Danner sparkles in the role (and gets to nail a karaoke rendition of Cry Me a River). Always special when playing solid-valued but rascally guys, Elliott still retains his magnetism.

We don’t often get to see realistic movies about people in their early 70s, but I’ll See You in My Dreams respects its protagonist Carol by putting her in plausible situations.  Neither farcical nor mawkish, I’ll See You in My Dreams is a surefire audience pleaser.   Now playing in New York and Los Angeles, I’ll See You in My Dreams opens this coming weekend in San Francisco and May 29 in San Jose.

Official Trailer – I’LL SEE YOU IN MY DREAMS from Bleecker Street on Vimeo.

Cinequest: EIGHTYSEVEN

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EIGHTYSEVEN
EIGHTYSEVEN

The Ecuadorian coming of age film Eightyseven traces three teenage buddies through an eventful 1987 and shows us a reunion in 2002.  Their families range from inattentive to hostile, so the guys are able to hang out at a hideaway, get up to some nocturnal hellraising and become entangled with a free-spirited girl.  And then there’s a pivotal event that changes them forever.

Eightyseven is thoughtfully written and well-crafted by promising co-writers and co-directors Daniel Andrade and Anahí Hoeneisen.  It’s a fine little film.  I saw it at Cinequest 2015.

QUEEN AND COUNTRY – a fine director reminisces

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QUEEN AND COUNTRY
QUEEN AND COUNTRY

Queen and Country is director John Boorman’s autobiographical look back at his own young manhood. In 1987, Boorman’s Hope and Glory revisited his London childhood during WW II, and now we see Boorman’s experience as a very young man drafted into the Korean War-era British army. The protagonist goes through basic training and is posted in the home nation as a military typing teacher.  Along the way, he learns what happens when 1) a petty tyrant subjects you to ridiculously stupid requirements and 2) when you become infatuated with someone crazier than you are.

Boorman (Deliverance, Excalibur, The General) is an excellent filmmaker, and Queen and Country is well-crafted.  The story isn’t compelling enough to make this a Must See, but it’s wry and warm-hearted, and moderately entertaining.

I saw Queen and Country at Cinequest 2015 at a screening with John Boorman present. Boorman was more memorable than was Queen and Country, especially when he reflected on his eccentric cult sci-fi film Zardoz: “It went from failure to classic without passing through success”.

DVD/Stream of the Week: VERY GOOD GIRLS: two girlfriends and one guy

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Dakota Fanning in VERY GOOD GIRLS
Dakota Fanning in VERY GOOD GIRLS

This week’s DVD/Stream of the Week is this year’s outstanding coming of age movie Very Good Girls.  Dakota Fanning and Elizabeth Olsen play best buds who graduate from high school and decide they need to lose their respective virginities before heading to college. Both fall for the same guy, and they’re each drawn to him and wary of him.  But what elevates this story above those with similar set-ups is that it’s not so much about girl-and-boy but about girl-and-girl and how the circumstances affect their lifelong friendship.

Although there’s potential conflict over the boy and each girl’s family goes through a crisis, Very Good Girls is completely free of emo pretension.  Genuine through and through, the story lets us relate to these girls and keep us engaged in what is happening to their bond.

Olsen is 25 and Fanning is 20, but they are entirely believable as 18-year-olds.  Fanning and Olsen are right up there with Jennifer Lawrence, Shailene Woodley and Bree Larson as our best young film actresses.  Fanning recently made an indie breakthrough in The Motel Life.  Olsen has been excellent in Martha Marcy May Marlene and even in the awful In Secret. 

The girls’ parents are played by Richard Dreyfuss and Demi Moore and Clark Gregg and Ellen Barkin.  It’s kind of a hoot to see the actresses that gave played some of the hottest scenes in 1989/1990 cinema (Ghost and Sea of Love) play the curfew-enforcing moms.  Peter Sarsgaard also shows up, at his most pervy.

Very Good Girls is the first film directed by screenwriter Naomi Foner (Oscar-nominated for Running on Empty), mother of Maggie and Jake Gyllenhaal.  Foner has a wonderful touch, and I hope we see her direct some more.

It pisses me off that, if Very Good Girls had been about high school boys getting laid, it would have gotten the theatrical release that eluded this film.  But we can make up for hat by watching it at home. Very Good Girls is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video.

We Are the Best!: friendship at the age of moroseness and exuberance

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WE ARE THE BEST!
WE ARE THE BEST!

We Are the Best! is about Swedish thirteen-year-old girls in 1986 – and the most important descriptor here is “thirteen-year-old”.  It’s perhaps the age where friendship is most important.  It’s the age when the needle flips back and forth between moroseness and exuberance.  When you feel like your peers despise you, when you’re skittish about your own body, you’re exploring feelings about the opposite gender and you are certain that your parents are the most embarrassing on the planet – you really need someone on your own team to check in with.

In We Are the Best!, we have two girls with punk hair who are NOT the popular kids in school. Trying to stake out some personal dignity, they find themselves claiming to be a punk band, despite not owning or knowing how to play any musical instruments. They reach out to the other social outcast at their school, a serious practicing Christian who plays classical guitar, and she soon sports a punk haircut, too.  Together, they test the bonds of friendship and navigate the adventures that all thirteen-year-olds encounter.  As it explores the value of teen friendship, We are the Best! is funny, poignant and charming.

DVD/Stream of the Week: The Spectacular Now

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THE SPECTACULAR NOW

Here’s number 5 on my Best Movies of 2013. The Spectacular Now is a spectacularly authentic and insightful character-driven story of teen self-discovery. It’s the best teen coming of age story since…I can’t remember.

Sutter (Miles Teller – so good in Rabbit Hole) is the high school’s gregarious party guy. Everybody loves being charmed by Sutter, but it becomes apparent that his compulsive sociability is masking some family related emotional damage. It’s also clear that he will soon face some consequences from his out-of-control and escalating drinking.

When his popular girlfriend dumps him for a guy who is less fun, but a better long-term bet, he is in the market for a rebound relationship and meets Aimee (Shailene Woodley, glammed down from the foxy brat in The Descendants). Aimee is focused, responsible, capable and smart, but has no self-esteem; she has family issues, too. Sutter becomes her first love. At first, it’s a lark for Sutter – until he assesses himself and his potential effect on her.

That’s the crux of the movie. Sutter isn’t just a shallow party guy. He’s smart – and too smart to keep from seeing where he is headed.

The Spectacular Now is directed by indie filmmaker Joe Ponsoldt (director and co-writer of Smashed), who is moving toward Hollywood’s A list. The screenplay is adapted by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber from the novel by Tim Tharp.

Smashed is a remarkably realistic depiction of alcohol abuse, and so is The Spectacular Now. Miles Teller is great in the role. And there’s a second great alcoholic performance – that of Kyle Chandler (Friday Night Lights, Argo) as Sutter’s long-estranged dad; Chandler’s turn is Oscar worthy. Woodley is just as outstanding as she was in The Descendants. The rest of the cast is uniformly excellent, especially Brie Larson and Jennifer Jason Leigh.

If you see The Spectacular Now with your teen, there will be plenty to talk about afterward – teen drinking, addiction, dating, partying, picking your friends, making choices and what a damn good movie this is.

Every teenager should see this movie, which brings me to this bit of insanity – The Spectacular Now has an R rating because teenagers are DRINKING ALCOHOL in the movie. It doesn’t matter that the movie is ABOUT teen alcoholism. It doesn’t matter that The Spectacular Now is the 2013 movie most likely to help teenagers in their real lives (by sparking discussion of the issues therein). Of course, just last year, the MPAA similarly assigned the R Rating to Bully. Just leave it to the pompous asses at the MPAA to keep those 14- to 16-year-olds out (unless they show the good taste and resourcefulness to sneak in).

I saw The Spectacular Now at the San Francisco International Film Festival in a screening with director Ponsoldt. It’s now available on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, GooglePlay and Xbox Video.

Me and You: looking for solitude, finding adventure

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ME AND YOU

In the Italian coming of age dramedy Me and You, we meet fourteen-year-old Lorenzo with his pimply face, see through mustache and bad attitude.  Lorenzo lives with his mom in a comfortable Rome apartment and yearns for some low-pressure solitude. Telling his mom that he’s off to a weeklong ski holiday with schoolmates, he instead hides out in their apartment’s basement storage unit.  He has stocked the basement with his favorite foods, it has a bathroom and he can listen to his tunes on headphones.  It’s all looking up for him until his heroin-addicted older half-sister Olivia intrudes, looking for a place to go cold turkey.

Lorenzo resents the intrusion, but Olivia threatens to tell his mom.  It turns out that the two don’t really know each other. (Lorenzo’s dad had left Olivia’s mom for his mom – and the two mothers don’t communicate.)  The siblings bicker.  As any 14-year-old would be, Lorenzo is fascinated by this young woman.  Still immature herself, she has already lived a life – and there’s much Lorenzo can learn about the adult world from Olivia.  Perhaps they can even bond for the first time as brother and sister…Lorenzo isn’t going to get his solitude, but he may get an unforgettable adventure instead.

There’s a lot of humor in Me and You, primarily stemming from the ski trip ruse and the sibling interactions.  Me and You also contains a very realistic and unvarnished depiction of detox and relapse.

This is 72-year-old Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci’s first film since The Dreamers in 2003 (my choice for the best film of that year).  Bertolucci, of course, is the writer-director of Last Tango in Paris (which I don’t think holds up well today) and The Conformist, 1900, The Last Emperor and The Sheltering Sky (which still stand up as excellent films).  With The Dreamers and Me and You, Bertolucci seems to be matching his finest work.

I saw Me and You at the San Francisco International Film Festival; it is still waiting for a US theatrical release.

DVD/Stream of the Week: Mud

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MUD

In the brilliant drama Mud, two Arkansas boys venture onto a river island and discover a man named Mud (Michael McConaughey) hiding from the authorities. Ellis (Tye Sheridan of The Tree of Life) is a hopeless romantic, consumed by an ideal view of love. His more hard-eyed buddy Neckbone (Jacob Lofland) is on the outlook for cool stuff. Both are ready for the excitement of a secret adventure.

Mud is another triumph for writer-director Jeff Nichols (Shotgun Stories, Take Shelter). The story has aspects of a boyhood adventure and of an escape thriller which hook the audience. But Mud is, at its heart, a coming of age story in which Ellis (primarily) gets a big dose of realism about love and human constancy. Neckbone doesn’t have many illusions about human nature. His parents aren’t in the picture, and he lives with his wacky uncle Galen (Michael Shannon) in a trailer. Neckbone has a knack for immediately getting to the core of situation by bargaining an errand for a pistol or asking “Didja feel her titties?”. A step down from Neckbone’s trailer lifestyle, Ellis lives on a floating shack tied to the riverbank. His parents are together, but, it seems, not for long. Somehow, Ellis believes in an ideal and forever love.

There are many relationships for Ellis to observe: his parents’ troubled journey, the sacrifices Mud makes for his lover (Reese Witherspoon), the mysterious bond between Mud and another houseboat dweller (Sam Shepherd), a rich man’s (Joe Don Baker) own obsession with his sons, his partnership with Neckbone and Ellis’ own first foray into dating. It’s all a bigger mouthful than Ellis was expecting.

The two kid actors are great. So are McConaughey, Shepherd, Witherspoon, Baker and Nichol’s favorite actor, Shannon.  Mud primarily succeeds because Nichols has created compelling characters and woven a top-rate story, both gripping and thoughtful.

Mud is one of the best movies of 2013.   Mud is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, GooglePlay, YouTube and other VOD outlets.

The Spectacular Now: every teen should see this movie (and the rest of us, too)

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THE SPECTACULAR NOW

The Spectacular Now is a spectacularly authentic and insightful character-driven story of teen self-discovery.  It’s the best teen coming of age story since…I can’t remember.

Sutter (Miles Teller – so good in Rabbit Hole) is the high school’s gregarious party guy.  Everybody loves being charmed by Sutter, but it becomes apparent that his compulsive sociability is masking some family related emotional damage.  It’s also clear that he will soon face some consequences from his out-of-control and escalating drinking.

When his popular girlfriend dumps him for a guy who is less fun, but a better long-term bet, he is in the market for a rebound relationship and meets Aimee (Shailene Woodley, glammed down from the foxy brat in The Descendants).  Aimee is focused, responsible, capable and smart, but has no self-esteem; she has family issues, too.  Sutter becomes her first love.  At first, it’s a lark for Sutter – until he assesses himself and his potential effect on her.

That’s the crux of the movie.  Sutter isn’t just a shallow party guy.  He’s smart – and too smart to keep from seeing where he is headed.

The Spectacular Now is directed by indie filmmaker Joe Ponsoldt (director and co-writer of Smashed), who is moving toward Hollywood’s A list.  The screenplay is adapted by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber from the novel by Tim Tharp.

Smashed is a remarkably realistic depiction of alcohol abuse, and so is The Spectacular Now.  Miles Teller is great in the role.  And there’s a second great alcoholic performance  – that of Kyle Chandler (Friday Night Lights, Argo) as Sutter’s long-estranged dad; Chandler’s turn is Oscar worthy.  Woodley is just as outstanding as she was in The Descendants. The rest of the cast is uniformly excellent, especially Brie Larson and Jennifer Jason Leigh.

If you see The Spectacular Now with your teen, there will be plenty to talk about afterward – teen drinking, addiction, dating, partying, picking your friends, making choices and what a damn good movie this is.

Every teenager should see this movie, which brings me to this bit of insanity – The Spectacular Now has an R rating because teenagers are DRINKING ALCOHOL in the movie.  It doesn’t matter that the movie is ABOUT teen alcoholism.  It doesn’t matter that The Spectacular Now is the 2013 movie most likely to help teenagers in their real lives (by sparking discussion of the issues therein).  Of course, just last year, the MPAA similarly assigned the R Rating to Bully.  Just leave it to the pompous asses at the MPAA to keep those 14- to 16-year-olds out (unless they show the good taste and resourcefulness to sneak in).

I saw The Spectacular Now at the San Francisco International Film Festival in a screening with director Ponsoldt.  It’s on my Best Movies of 2013 – So Far.

Mud: a big dose of realism about love

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MUD

In the brilliant drama Mud, two Arkansas boys venture onto a river island and discover a man named Mud (Michael McConaughey) hiding from the authorities.  Ellis (Tye Sheridan of The Tree of Life) is a hopeless romantic, consumed by an ideal view of love.  His more hard-eyed buddy Neckbone (Jacob Lofland) is on the outlook for cool stuff.  Both are ready for the excitement of a secret adventure.

Mud is another triumph for writer-director Jeff Nichols (Shotgun Stories, Take Shelter).  The story has aspects of a boyhood adventure and of an escape thriller which hook the audience.  But Mud is, at its heart, a coming of age story in which Ellis (primarily) gets a big dose of realism about love and human constancy.

Neckbone doesn’t have many illusions about human nature.  His parents aren’t in the picture, and he lives with his wacky uncle Galen (Michael Shannon) in a trailer.  Neckbone has a knack for immediately getting to the core of situation by bargaining an errand for a pistol or asking “Didja feel her titties?”.

A step down from Neckbone’s trailer lifestyle, Ellis lives on a floating shack tied to the riverbank.  His parents are together, but, it seems, not for long.  Somehow, Ellis believes in an ideal and forever love.  There are many relationships for Ellis to observe:  his parents’ troubled journey, the sacrifices Mud makes for his lover (Reese Witherspoon), the mysterious relationship between Mud and another houseboat dweller (Sam Shepherd), a rich man’s (Joe Don Baker) own obsession with his sons, his partnership with Neckbone and Ellis’ own first foray into dating.  It’s all a bigger mouthful than Ellis was expecting.

The two kid actors are great.  So are McConaughey, Shepherd,  Witherspoon, Baker and Nichol’s favorite actor, Shannon.  Mud primarily succeeds because Nichols has created compelling characters and woven a top-rate story, both gripping and thoughtful.  Mud is one of the best movies of 2013.