SCRAPPER: a funny film about loss, connection and second chances

Photo caption: Harris Dickinson and Lola Campbell in Charlotte Regan’s SCRAPPER. Courtesy of Kino Lorber.

In the delightful coming of age dramedy Scrapper, Georgie, a precocious 12-year-old girl, thinks that she is independently living her best life, until the unexpected appearance of the dad she hasn’t known.

In her first feature, British writer-director Charlotte Regan has created a deliciously charming character, played to roguish perfection by Lola Campbell. Streetwise and mischievous, Georgie is able to outsmart the adults who might be expected to be providing more effective oversight.

Regan gradually reveals why Georgie is living alone, and the back story of her family. The screenplay, about loss, connection and second chances, is brimming with humanity.

Harris Dickinson (Triangle of Sadness) is very good as the dad.

Scrapper won the Grand Jury Prize for World Cinema/Dramatic at Sundance. I screened Scrapper for the SLO Film Fest, where it was my favorite film. Scrapper is playing Cinequest tonight, and opening in theaters this weekend.

AFTERSUN: who’s coming of age here?

Photo Caption: Frankie Corio and Paul Mescal in AFTERSUN. Courtesy of A24.

The authentic, thought-provoking and entirely fresh Aftersun follows a British dad and daughter on their weeklong holiday at a budget seaside resort in Turkey in 1999.

She is 11, and he is 30. Although he’s always been in her life, he’s not the custodial parent, and perhaps never has been. (If you do the math, he was only 19 when he impregnated her mom.) Dad and daughter are playful ,affectionate and entirely comfortable with each other – and they are both eager for her Week With Dad.

The daughter, Sophie (Frankie Coro), is bright, bouncy and engaged with the present. She’s curious about the dad whom she doesn’t live with and about the older teens at the resort.

The dad, Calum (Paul Mescal of Normal People and The Lost Daughter) is charming and decent. He wants Sophie to enjoy a carefree, fun week, and maybe learn a few things about the culture of the country they are visiting.

But when Calum is not engaged with his daughter, he is moody and tired. There are hints of bad choices in his personal history – his very limited financial means, his not remembering the origin of physical injuries, his buying something that he can’t afford, and a probably unintended early parenthood. He’s experiencing melancholy at where he is and is not as he approaches 31. Calum is too young for a mid-life crisis, but there it is.

Sophie and Calum’s holiday week is a pleasant enough slow burn – playing at the pool and the beach, arcade games, umbrella mocktails, an outing to ancient mud baths and low-grade and corny dinner entertainment at the resort. The week starts very playfully and becomes more tense and forced as Calum’s dissatisfaction with himself begins to leak out.

We glimpse the adult Sophie (Celia Rowson-Hall), now her dad’s age back then, reflecting on her dad in strobe-lit dreams and when awakened in the middle of the night by her own kid. Now with adult life experience, she’s trying to figure out her dad.

The young Sophie is ever watchful. She doesn’t miss much, and we observe her observations. She’s getting a rare full dose of Calum, all from her 11-year-old perceptive. As Sherri Linden writes in The Hollywood Reporter: “ Charlotte Wells’ sharp and tender Aftersun is the rare father-and-child drama that leaves you wondering who the dad will grow up to be. ”

[MILD SPOILER: This is not a child in peril movie, When Calum makes choices that will cause more vigilant parents in the audience to gasp, Sophie can still rely on her uncommon good sense and some good luck to stay safe. ]

This is the first feature for writer-director Charlotte Wells, and it’s a remarkable and promising debut. Wells tells an intimate dad-daughter while refusing to deploy any cliches. She elicited superb performances from her cast, one of whom is11-years-old in her very first movie. And credit Well’s originality for the very idea of a coming of age movie for the adult in a child’s life.

Aftersun is also the acting debut for Frankie Corio, a major discovery. She’s so charismatic that we can’t keep from watching her, and she has an uncommon gift of letting us in on her thoughtfulness.

Paul Mescal is also excellent as Calum. I always respect performances when the role is mostly passive, and the actor has to portray an individual’s inner life without getting to do anything flamboyant.

I’ll be adding Aftersun to my Best Movies of 2022. It’s currently rolling out in a few theaters.

ARMAGEDDON TIME: coming of age – right into a moral choice

Photo caption: Banks Repeta and Anthony Hopkins in ARMAGEDDON TIME. Courtesy of Focus Features.

The thought-provoking Armageddon Time, centers on Paul (Banks Repeta), a 6th grade boy in 1980, who, besides grappling with all the regular coming of age issues, must face issues of conscience. Paul and his new school friend, Johnny (Jaylin Webb), have their interests, but the adults at school miss the opportunity to harness the boys’ passions, instead trying to force square pegs into round holes; of course, these smart and spirited lads act out and get into trouble. That’s less of a problem for Paul, who has been sheltered by his affluent family, but Johnny is African-American and poor and already has a more clear-eyed view of the world.

On a day-to day basis, Paul is raised by his tightly wound mom (Anne Hathaway), but she defers to the family’s men when something really big must be confronted. Paul’s male role models are his venerable grandfather (Anthony Hopkins) and his grouchy, stressed-out dad (Jeremy Strong). The grandfather’s point of view has been shaped by his own mother’s having escaped a Ukrainian pogrom and having experienced anti-Semitic college quotas himself. He has survived to build a family and business success.

The grandfather is the anchor of the family, and his moral stance is absolute – a person must act with justice and decency in every situation, no mater how difficult. The dad, who views life as a continuous struggle to keep one’s head above water, is more pragmatic – one must do what is necessary to get along. The grandfather despises privilege; the dad wants to leverage any privilege that might fall his way.

The kid actors, Banks Repeta and Jaylin Webb, are excellent. (For some reason, Repeta’s facial features kept reminding me of Molly Parker).

Anthony Hopkins is a treasure, and we should appreciate every performance he continues to bring us, even an unchallenging one like this.

Jeremy Strong is such a strong actor, and he’s such a chameleon that I never seem to recognize him until the closing credits, as he shows up as Jerry Rubin, Lee Harvey Oswald, Abraham Lincoln’s secretary John Nicolay and the like. Here, he seems like a one-dimensional brute for most of this film, until the story reveals his fears and hopes.

Reportedly, writer-director James Gray, who just re-invented the adventure epic with The Lost City of Z, peppered this story with his own childhood experiences. Maybe that’s why Fred Trump and Maryanne Trump appear as characters. Maryanne Trump (Donald’s much more sympathetic sister) shows up in a Jessica Chastain cameo, and lays out the narrative that the privileged are actually meritorious.

I wasn’t wowed upon leaving the theater, but, the more I noodle about this film, the more I admire it.

SUPERCOOL: a teen comedy familiar, until it isn’t

A scene from Teppo Airaksinen’s film SUPERCOOL, which played at SFFILM. Photo courtesy of SFFILM.

Supercool has the familiar arc of a teen comedy – until it doesn’t. We get the high school cafeteria lunch period, the adolescent social awkwardness, the bullies and the parents-away teen house party. And then there are some unexpected sparkles.

Our protagonists, Neil (Jake Short) and Gilbert (Miles J. Harvey) have a commonplace obsession for teen boys: they aspire to get SOME sexual experience with another person. And Neil worships a girl whom he is afraid to even talk to,

There’s a funny scene (glimpsed in the trailer below) where the guys fantasize a situation where girls would be attracted to them, unaware that Neil’s parents are hearing every word.

The guys also have two misadventures that put them in hilariously uncomfortable sexual situations.

Neil has a helluva imagination and creates graphic novels that picture how he hopes to eventually woo his beloved. Fortunately, he is sweet on a girl who turns out to have an awesome sense of humor.

I must note that Supercool does contain the best-ever movie use of the (only?) Haddaway song What Is Love.

I screened Supercool for its world premiere at SFFILM in April 2021. Supercool can now be streamed from Amazon, Vudu, YouTube and redbox.

BESTIES: confidence rocked

Photo caption: Lina Al Arabi and Esther Esther Bernet-Rollande in BESTIES. Courtesy of Frameline.

The absorbing coming of age drama Besties is set among Algerian teen girls in a hardscrabble immigrant urban French neighborhood. They’re growing up on the streets with minimal supervision by their hard-working single moms, and even their modest aspiration of a day trip to the beach seems beyond their grasp.

Yet, despite her downtrodden circumstances, the spirited Nedjima (Lina Al Arabi) is especially comfortable in her own skin. Supremely confident, she leads her girl squad, athletically matches up with the boys, and can talk trash like an NBA player.

Lina Al Arabi in BESTIES. Courtesy of Frameline.

Nedjima is fascinated by Zina (Esther Bernet-Rollande), a new girl in the hood, with relatives in a rival crew. Although Nedjima and Zina are on different sides (as in Sharks/Jets, Montagues/Capulets), there are attracted to each other and begin a secret romance.

Suddenly, Nedjima’s own identity is rocked – she never imagined that she could be a lesbian. This may be France, but even the kids in this insular immigrant community are homophobic. Suddenly she’s lost her community status and her support group. She reveals to Zina what teens often feel and never say, “I’m afraid of everything.” How is Nedjima going to recover her own agency and navigate being lesbian in her family and neighborhood?

Esther Bernet-Rollande (center) in BESTIES. Courtesy of Frameline.

Besties’ two leads, Al Arabi and Bernet-Rollande are very charismatic. Al Arabi’s performance could be star-making. Her Nedjima registers strength and vulnerability, wilfulness and confusion, and the audience is on her side all the way.

Besties is the first feature for writer-director Marion Desseigne-Ravel, and it’s an impressive debut. The milieu seems absolutely authentic. Besties is briskly paced, and Desseigne-Ravel tells her story economically and powerfully, without a single false moment. The final shot captures the briefest of glances, the perfect culmination of Nedjima’s story.

Besties is a showcase for Al Arabi’s magnetism and Desseigne-Ravel’s storytelling. Besties screens at Frameline on June 19.

COMPARTMENT NO. 6: a surprising journey to connection

Photo caption: Seidi Haarla and Yuri Borisov in COMPARTMENT No. 6. Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.

In Compartment No. 6, an odd couple must share the same claustrophobic compartment in a dreadful train ride to Murmansk. She aims to see ancient petroglyphs, and he is heading to a job in a massive mining operation, but they’re really on a journey to human connection.

Compartment No. 6 won the Grand Prix, essentially the second place award, at Cannes; (in 2022, as in recent years, the Grand Prix winner is a much better movie than the winner of the more prestigious Palm d’Or).

Laura (Seidi Haarla) is a mousy Finnish college student in Russia, studying Russian language or archaeology – it’s not exactly clear. She is having a fling with a 40ish Russian professor, and Laura is more deeply invested in the relationship than is her new girlfriend. Laura is out of her depth with the girlfriend’s academic friends. The girlfriend cancels their planned trip at the last moment, and Laura, disappointed, still heads off to Murmansk on her own.

Given the discomfort of Russian train travel, this multi day trip is not for the faint-hearted anyway, but Laura is alarmed to find herself sharing a second-class compartment with a nightmare of a roommate. Ljoha (Yuri Borisov) is an obnoxious drunk, a slob leaving a trail of cigarette ashes and partially eaten sausage. This is a guy devoid of intellectual curiosity, who has never had an original thought. What he possesses in mass quantities is macho boorishness – his icebreaker is “are you traveling alone to sell your cunt?”

More restrained when he is sober, Ljoha is socially inept. As emotionally vulnerable as is Laura, so is Ljoha – he’s just trying very hard to hide it with bravado.

What is important to Laura – and to Ljoha? Fundamentally, each needs to find human connection. Compartment No. 6 takes us on their unpredictable journey. This is not a conventional hate-each-other-and-then-fall-for-each-other movie romance.

Compartment No. 6 is hardly an advert for Russian passenger trains. The train attendant is surly and officious, the running water doesn’t work, and the dining car menu is ever diminishing. The passengers are constantly smoking, and they have no ability to wash themselves. As the trains winds northward, you can’t help but imagine the rancid odors.

Compartment No. 6 is the second feature for Finnish director and co-writer Juro Kuosmanen. Boy, I liked this movie.

LICORICE PIZZA: when nine years is a big age difference

Photo caption: Cooper Hoffman and Alana Haim in LICORICE PIZZA. Courtesy of MGM.

The entertaining coming of age story Licorice Pizza has a lot going for it – the originality of an age mismatch, two fresh and interesting lead actors and a 1973 time capsule of the San Fernando Valley. A little too much length and an odd segment with Bradley Cooper as Jon Peters keep this from being among the best films of the year.

Gary (Cooper Hoffman) is a successful child actor who, at fifteen, is aging out of his marketability; nevertheless, he has stashed his earnings and can’t pass up the chance to build a business mini-empire, whether in waterbeds or pinball machines. Gary is a bundle of showbiz charm and ambition, and he is always “on”.

Gary’s ambition contrasts with the 24-year-old Alana (Alana Haim), who is drifting through deadend jobs. Amused, and then intrigued, by Gary’s chutzpah, she starts driving him around (he’s too young for a driver’s license) and becomes entangled in his schemes, intermittently questioning why “I’m hanging out with Gary and his 15-year-old friends“.

Alana is open to experiences, and flirts with a more age-appropriate actor pal of Gary’s, enjoys meeting much older celebrity in a Ventura Blvd showbiz bar, and moons after a young politician. Still there’s Gary – will he become her friend – or her soulmate?

Licorice Pizza is the creation of accomplished writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson (Hard Eight, Boogie Nights, Magnolia, Punch-Drunk Love, There Will Be Blood, The Master, Inherent Vice). The vibe of Licorice Pizza is so specific to the period and place that I was surprised to learn that Anderson, who did grow up in the San Fernando Valley, was only three years old in 1973.

Alana Haim and Cooper Hoffman in LICORICE PIZZA. Courtesy of MGM.

Licorice Pizza is entirely a character-driven story and its most successful moments rest on the performances of newcomers Haim and Hoffman. Haim excels at portraying Alana’s moxie. Gary is a force of nature, and Hoffman captures his knack for ever acting as the adult hustler, except when his teenage emotional immaturity peeks out.

Cooper Hoffman is the son of Anderson’s frequent collaborator Philip Seymour Hoffman. Philip Seymour Hoffman had an early-career minor part in Hard Eight, broke through with his supporting performance in Boogie Nights, and starred or co-starred in Magnolia, Punch-Drunk Love and The Master.

Alana Haim is a musician in the sister band Haim. Here’s the pretty cool, 3:57 one-shot video of their pop hit Want You Back and a live festival cover of the Peter Green Fleetwood Mac’s Oh Well. Paul Thomas Anderson has directed nine of Haim’s videos (but not that Want You Back video that I just linked). Haim’s real life parents and sisters play her family in Licorice Pizza.

Sean Penn, showing a sense of humor for the first time since Fast Times at Ridgemont High, is very good as a veteran Hollywood celebrity, as is Tom Waits as his drinking buddy.

Indie filmmaker Benny Safdie is excellent as the non-fictional elected official Joel Wachs. (I essentially grew up in campaign offices like the ones perfectly re-created in Licorice Pizza (and the one in Taxi Driver where Cybill Shepherd volunteered).

In one disjointed segment, an over-the-top Bradley Cooper sends up the by-all-counts-scumbag Jon Peters, who washes over Gary and Alana with a tsunami of self-absorbed outrageousness. The tone of the Jon Peters scenes just doesn’t mesh with the rest of the movie and only serves to jar the audience out of the story.

I was expecting Licorice Pizza to be among the very best films of the year, so I was a little disappointed. I still enjoyed it overall, but it failed to engage The Wife, who thought that the oft-repeated motif of characters running didn’t work.

Gary would be 63 today, and Alana 72. I’m pretty sure that they’re not together as a couple, but that they have lived very interesting lives.

THE HAND OF GOD: coming of age, shaped by events

Photo caption: Toni Servillo, Teresa Saponangelo and Filippo Scotti) in THE HAND OF GOD. Courtesy of Netflix.

The Hand of God is filmmaker Paolo Sorrentino’s own coming of age story – and a time capsule of 1986 Naples. The kinda-fictional stand-in for Sorrentino is the directionless 16-year-old Fabietto (Filippo Scotti), who enjoys family life with his boisterous, ever-joking parents (Toni Servillo and Teresa Saponangelo). Events occur, one profoundly tragic, which pivot Fabietto into a future career in cinema.

The young Fabietto is very passive, a bobber floating on the surface of his tumultuous family and his rowdy hometown. Besides being rocked by the tragedy, he is deluged by the energy of a sexy, funny and mentally ill aunt, a formidable dowager baroness, a crazily impulsive smuggler and a bombastically narcissistic film director. He is a sensitive kid, one who is triggered into a panic attack when his mother, usually his rock, has her own meltdown.

The title of movie, as even casual sports fans may recognize, is a reference to soccer star Diego Maradona, whom the Naples soccer club broke the bank to acquire for seven seasons. As the film opens, Fabietto, with the rest of Naples, is transfixed by the possibility, then just a rumor, of getting Maradona. When Maradona leads Napoli to a league championship, Fabietto has been numbed by grief and is juxtaposed against the rest of his city in ecstatic celebration.

Luisa Ranieri in THE HAND OF GOD. Courtesy of Netflix.

The cast is very effective, but the standouts portray the key female parts – Fabietto’s mom (Teresa Saponangelo), his aunt Patrizia (Luisa Ranieri), and the Baroness (Betty Pedrazzi).

Nothing is more personal than one’s own coming of age, and Sorrentino, describing The Hand of God, says, “Almost everything is true”.

I think that, of all current filmmakers, Sorrentino (Il Divo, The Great Beauty, Youth) makes the most visually and striking beautiful movies. The Great Beauty won the Best Foreign Language Oscar. In that film, Sorrentino follows his protagonist (played by Servillo) through a series of strikingly beautiful Roman settings (including lots of gorgeously still Roman dawns.) If you’ve been to Rome, you know that it is a generally chaotic city with unexpected islands of solitude. Here in The Hand of God, Sorrentino gives this treatment to his own hometown, the grittier and more humble Naples.

The Hand of God opens with a remarkable 2 1/2-minute drone/helicopter shot that takes us from the ocean to Naples and back to the ocean; as the camera nears the city, the soundtrack gradually picks up the sounds of urban bustle.

In one very brief but inspired scene, Sorrentino shows us the casting call for extras in a Fellini film. (You can only imagine.)

How audience-friendly is The Hand of God? In real life, which this film seeks to reflect, events happen randomly. In contrast, a narrative screenplay would ideally organize the plot artificially in a way to make the story compelling. So, some viewers may find The Hand of God too disjointed to be satisfying. For sure, it’s not as good a film as The Great Beauty or Youth.

The Hand of God is now streaming on Netflix. I also recommend the 6-minute Netflix featurette with director Sorrentino discussing the film.

BELFAST: a child’s point of view is universal

Photo caption: Jude Hill in BELFAST. Courtesy of Focus Features.

In Belfast, Kenneth Branagh’s superb coming of age story, we see Northern Ireland’s Troubles through the eyes of eight-year-old Buddy (Jude Hill). His dad (Jamie Dornan) works for two weeks at a time in Britain, so his mom (Caitriona Balfe) is raising Buddy and his older brother by herself most of the time. The family is under severe financial pressure. They are a nominally Protestant family living in a working class Belfast neighborhood, integrated with Catholics.

The movie’s opening is set on August 15, 1969, the day the Troubles intrude on Buddy’s neighborhood. Branagh perfectly captures the moment – the very second – that external events upend Buddy’s life. Overnight, his block has barbed wire at one end and a barricade at the other. Catholics are pressured to move out in a measure of ethnic cleansing.

Things get real, and the dad has the chance to move the family to Britain. There are factors that make uprooting the family a complicated decision. The audience is thinking, get the HELL out of THERE. After all, the family doesn’t know what we know – that the Troubles will persist for 29 more years.

This is autobiographical, the story of Kenneth Branagh’s own family. They escaped the Troubles by moving to from Belfast to Britain in 1970 when Branagh was Buddy’s age.

Although this story is about a specific child, telling it from the child’s point of view makes it universal. Children need security, but adult grievances, however valid, are prioritized over the security of children. The sectarians may think that they are targeting Catholics or Protestants, but the impact of their violence is to destroy safety, civility and predictability for all.

Judi Dench, Jude Hill and Ciarán Hinds in BELFAST. Courtesy of Focus Features.

The performances are impeccable, especially those by Judi Dench and Ciarán Hinds as Buddy’s grandparents. (The grandfather has the best line in the film.)

And where did Branagh find this kid actor Jude Hill? He is completely believable in every scene – and he might just be the most adorable child on the planet.

Belfast is a family drama, but the family is Irish, so there’s plenty of humor.

Branagh has shot Belfast in a glorious black-and-white which amplifies both the historical period and the grittiness of the setting. The use of Belfast’s own Van Morrison on the soundtrack is perfect.

Belfast is justifiably one of the Oscar favorites. If you have heartstrings, they are gonna get pulled.

DRUNK BUS: escaping the rut

Photo caption: Charlie Tahan and Pineapple Tangaroa in DRUNK BUS. Photo courtesy of Filmrise.

In the light and appealing coming of age comedy Drunk Bus, a young slacker (Charlie Tahan) is paralyzed by the disappointment of a breakup. He’s stuck driving the shuttle between a college town’s bars and the dorms (the “Drunk Bus”). One running gag is that he is fixated upon an ex girlfriend that every other man in America would find insufferably frustrating.

He needs someone to shake him up, which is what he gets in the form of a 300-pound Samoan security guy with facial tattoos (Pineapple Tangaroa). It’s all sweet and predictable.

This is the first feature for co-directors John Carlucci and Brandon LaGanke.

I screened Drunk Bus, which had played at the 2020 SXSW, in March at the 2021 Cinequest. It’s now available to stream from Laemmle.