BOY ERASED

Lucas Hedges     Nicole Kidman     Russell Crowe     Joel Edgerton

     Joel Edgerton is someone in the film world to pay attention to.  The Australian is well known to Americans for his acting in Loving, The Great Gatsby, and Black Mass, and as well for his writing/directing/producing talent in The Gift.  Now, he comes out with an award-worthy production informing us about conversion therapy, based on a memoir by Garrard Conley about his real-life experience.  Edgerton impresses us with his talent for telling a story with elements of experience and perspective from multiple points of view.  By the end of this movie, we have a real sense of the individual, family, religious community, and programmatic aims and aspirations of the participants.

     Lucas Hedges as Jared Eamons lives up to his promise as an actor who can play complex characters with subtlety and poignancy.  Here, he is a budding college student who is curious about the world, is compassionate and sincere, loves his parents, and wants to please them.  You see him naively trying to follow the script written for him in love, marriage, and career, primarily by his father, a pastor, and secondarily by his mother who goes along with her husband most of the time.  The beauty of the film is in its focus on Jared’s discoveries and transitions he must make on his own journey.  

     Boy Erased does just as well in depicting what a program in conversion therapy involves, which, to me, is essentially a brainwashing process.  Participants are coerced into revealing their innermost secrets and actions, which are labeled as sins, and then they are shamed and manipulated to behave in ways their “trainers” envision is “right.”  

     Nicole Kidman and Russell Crowe as Jared’s parents exquisitely capture the essence of shock and anguish so many sincere, loving families undergo when they’re not prepared for the news and have been taught that homosexuality is vile and a sin.  These parents, like so many others, are not prepared for the paradox they must face: the child they know and love does not sync with their fundamental beliefs of what is good and honorable.

     Of course, Edgerton nails Victor Sykes, the head of the conversion program—part suave salesman, part corporate chief, and part pseudo-therapist—primarily interested in his investment.  He gives out clues about himself that are born out over time, another example of Edgerton’s skill.

     Music by the team Danny Bansi and Saunder Jurriaans plays a significant role in enhancing the dramatic ups and downs of this important film that is difficult to watch at times.  But sticking with it pays off.

A look at conversion therapy and a family’s experience of it.

Grade:  A                                              By Donna R. Copeland

THE MUMMY

Tom Cruise   Russell Crowe   Annabelle Wallis   Sofia Boutella   Jake Johnson   Courtney B. Vance

     The Mummy is another showcase for Tom Cruise to dominate the action by performing impossible feats, bare his physique, and rescue a beautiful woman, usually blonde.  Here, the story in the beginning casts him as Nick Morton, a soldier supposedly on a reconnaissance mission getting distracted from his duties in the interest of stealing antiquities and selling them on the black market.  Far from being an admirable fellow, he is a thief, having stolen, in addition to artifacts, an archeological map to reach a Mesopotamian (now Iraqi) site that holds antiquities he can sell.  When he ends up having to be rescued by his commanding officer, Col. Greenway (Vance), he lies without blinking an eye. 

     Accompanying Greenway is archeologist Jenny Halsey (Wallis), who is keenly interested in the site (guess where Nick got the map), and insists on exploring it after a bomb made a huge pit exposing valuable artifacts from Egypt (most unusual) in a tomb far from Egypt’s borders.  Greenway sends Nick and his sidekick Vail (Johnson) down into the pit with her—presumably for protection—and gives them only a limited amount of time.  Nick and Chris are like two boys in a candy story trying to nick (pun intended) every bauble they can grab.  Appropriately, Jenny scolds them, but a far more threatening force has been unleashed by the violation of the tomb.  They have unearthed (thanks to Nick’s careless use of his gun) a sculpture of a god that was not meant to be disturbed.

     As background, we are told about an ancient Egyptian ruler named Ahmanet, who made a deal with the god of death, Set, when her father bore a son who would eventually usurp Ahmanet’s reign.  She is punished and mummified for killing her father and his son, but by disturbing the site in the way he did, Nick is now cursed.  The mummy of Ahmanet has risen and has decided that he is her “chosen one”, Set, so she tries to persuade him to join her in death to be a god.  He is not very tempted, but she is able to “get into his head” in a way that propels him to go in directions he does not intend.  It is only through sheer will that he is able to thwart her.

     It turns out that Jenny the archeologist works with a Dr. Jekyll (Crowe) in London, who has grandiose plans of his own.  Nick ends up there when Jenny realizes that he has been cursed, and she wants him to see a doctor.  Here, Nick learns that Dr. Jekyll has actually captured Ahmanet as part of his plan and she is in chains.

     Interspersed in all this are mummies turning into zombies, endless struggles by Nick and Jenny to break free (he’s now become, magically, a more honorable figure) of the curse, with Ahmanet pursuing them relentlessly, seeming to have superhuman powers.  The film ends with a clear-cut set-up for sequels.

     The best part of this film is watching Ahmanet, who is fascinating to look at, eerie and forceful in her actions, and relishing her evilness.  She is abhorrent and beautiful in a surrealistic way, and about the only creative force in the film.  Cruise plays his usual role; Annabelle Wallis is competent in rendering what she is given by the script, and Jake Johnson plays as well as he can his completely irritating character Vail, who is transformed into a zombie.  Russell Crowe can certainly play conniving baddies, but the script he is given here makes his character neither convincing nor understandable because his “plan” is not well articulated. 

     Although there was a low-key applause at the screening I attended, it is doubtful this film will catch the fire that the studio and filmmakers hope for.  It’s no longer interesting to see unending fights, despite the hope for CG effects to elevate them. 

This is an uninspired attempt to revive The Mummy franchise.

Grade:  D+                                    By Donna R. Copeland

THE NICE GUYS

Russell Crowe     Ryan Gosling     Matt Bomer     Kim Basinger     Angourie Rice

          Holland March (Gosling) and Jackson Healy (Crowe) are like Abbott and Costello private detectives.  They argue, fight, and bumble their way through the plot of trying to locate a missing woman.  They’re often puzzled about what is transpiring, yet manage to get through all the scrapes.  Their characters are interesting, and Gosling shows more comedic chops and timing here than in his previous comedies.  March seems hopelessly incompetent and clumsy with a weakness for alcohol, yet has a brain and is well read enough that his vocabulary often stumps his competitor/fellow principal investigator Healy.  He also has a kind heart (placing a pillow under an unconscious foe), and is devoted to his daughter Holly (Rice) as best as he knows how.

           Healy, on the other hand, is very serious, doesn’t drink (much) on the job, and serves as the brawn to March’s brain.  He has a conscience and a kind heart too—at least for children—and is not quite as ready to stiff his clients as March is.  Crowe is perfect in portraying a street-smart brute who can lure his prey by distraction then deliver crushing blows.

          Neither March nor Healy is a very responsible adult for children, but quick-witted Holly inserts herself into their jobs and turns out to be a valuable, though unacknowledged, aide.  She lends her own wry, astute comedic observations of the adults and manages to be at the right place at the right time, uncovering important clues, and coming up with ploys or a gun that she knows how to use.  Although it is disconcerting to see, that along with the good values she has absorbed from her father, she has also learned techniques of sociopathic exploitation.

      This is a mess of a movie in some ways, with tons of violence and over-the-top ridiculous plot twists.  My impression is that this could have been a sensationally funny, dramatic hit with a message if the writer/director Shane Black and his co-writer Anthony Bagarozzi had chosen subtlety over unrestrained stunts and violence simply for effect.  For instance, it’s hilarious when one flirtatious character swims after mermaids and does a back flip over a wall to impress a woman, but ends up tumbling down a hill.  But this is not Shakespeare’s Midsummer’s Night Dream, a farce with multiple plot lines ultimately making a statement about the mysteries of love.

       If The Nice Guys has an underlying point, it may come at the end when the two protagonists are cynically reflecting on the corruption of justice and the manifold points of view that can come to bear on real situations.  It’s too bad the filmmakers did not elaborate more on this, Healy’s wrestling with his conscience (especially when it is pricked by Holly) and March’s coming to terms with his guilt about his wife’s death, which would have made the story more substantive and meaningful.

The Nice Guys is a farce with unrealized potential.

Grade:  B+                        By Donna R. Copeland