THE NUT JOB 2: NUTTY BY NATURE

Voices of:  Will Arnett     Katherine Heigl     Maya Rudolph     Jackie Chan     Bobby Canavale     Bobby Moynihan

     In this version of the Nut Job stories, the animals have found that the nut store from the first story is abandoned and filled to the brim with nuts and nut products.  They are gorging to their hearts’ content, getting lazy and spoiled, according to Andie (Heigl); she realizes that the store has a real downside, whereas her friend Surly (Arnett) discounts her concerns and fails to get her point.  She tries valiantly to get the animals to forage for nuts, work hard, and save but they’re not really interested.  Their indolence actually results in the store burning to the ground after an explosion occurred when someone who was supposed to be minding the boiler forgot about it.  But it doesn’t really matter because what neither Surly nor Andie realizes is that the corrupt mayor of Oakton City (Moynihan) has plans to destroy Liberty Park and put in a dangerous (because he doesn’t want to bother with safety issues) amusement park with rides and all the junk foods that Andie abhors—cotton candy, peanuts, ice cream, popcorn, pizza. 

      Andie plays a kind of stereotypical female role in trying to convince the male Surly to step up, get the animals to pull together, exercise their instincts, and resist the humans.  His response is the male-like war cry. “You’re going to fight the humans?” says Andie incredulously.  He does get the animals to rally around, but they will go through many struggles, even trying to move to another park in the city, in fighting the humans.  Along the way, they run into hordes of mice with a cheeky leader, Mr. Don’t-call-me-cute! Feng (Chan), which constitute an additional threat as “a weapon of mouse destruction.”

    The film has good messages for children about working hard, being responsible, cooperating with one another, doing what is right rather than what is easy, and valuing the natural world and their own instinctual nature.  The mayor and his spoiled, mean daughter are shown to be truly evil forces that must be deterred somehow.  In the end, everybody seems to have learned something, or have suffered the consequences.

     The animation and visual effects are very good, but I noticed the picture was not bright, sharp, and colorful like most of these productions are.  It could have been the projector or other equipment at fault, and the version I was shown is not in 3D, which could also account for the problem; but this was a surprise for an animation and detracted from the film’s quality.

A film with some good points, but not a great improvement over the previous Nut Job.

Grade:  C-                                    By Donna R. Copeland

THE GLASS CASTLE

Brie Larson   Woody Harrelson   Naomi Watts   Max Greenfield

     Spending two hours with a majorly dysfunctional family is a real slog.  The Glass Castle is about a family headed by a man who was abused as a child and developed views about how the world should be, imposing a chaotic lifestyle on his family in search of a dream (glass castle) that will never come to fruition.  He can be a real a-hole.  But the kicker is that the viewer is never given any evidence that anyone is standing up to this man, Rex (Harrelson), there is no “come to Jesus” moment for him, and yet we’re supposed to forgive him in the very last minutes of the film when his family has only warm memories of him.  Really??!!

     The actors are the best part of The Glass Castle.  Brie Larson and the younger actresses playing her as Jeannette (Ella Anderson, Chandler Head) all perform admirably, being entirely convincing as the “parent child” who performs her parents’ jobs, is emotionally the closest to her father, and shows disillusionment every step of the way.  Woody Harrelson playing the father Rex can as an actor be riveting as a good guy (The Messenger), a bad guy (War for the Planet of the Apes), a complex guy (TV’s “True Detective”), or a comic (Wildcats); here, he is a chain-smoking alcoholic control freak with unconventional ideas about life and a violent temper to boot.  Naomi Watts as Rose Mary, the simpering mother of the family, helps us see very well the dilemma of an abused wife of an alcoholic, always excusing, and never able to assert herself and pursue her own dreams. 

     The Glass Castle is based on the memoir of Jeannette Walls, which was on the New York Times Best Seller List and received multiple awards.  It’s a complicated story of a girl who grew up in a family in which the parents were determinably unconventional, constantly moved around the country, kept their children close, and hadn’t the foggiest notion about good parenting.  The book should be ripe for a really fine movie rendition; unfortunately, the screenplay by director Destin Daniel Cretton and Andrew Lanham does not live up to that promise.

     Although the actors perform superbly, the screenplay lets them down in plodding through most of the two hours highlighting incompetence and poor judgment.  Yes, we get that in about a half hour.  How about using the rest of the time showing more about how the two older sisters were able to move on, more about Jeannette’s relationship with her husband, and—if it really happened—events that brought Rex and Rose Mary around so that the children could (convincingly) have a rewarding Thanksgiving celebration later?

     In other words, this film should have had a better last act that showed events proceeding logically (in terms of human behavior) from eccentricity and mistreatment of children to redemption.

Unless you suspend logic and realism, and don’t mind frustration, The Glass Castle is not likely to make sense.

Grade:  D                                    By Donna R. Copeland

AN INCONVENIENT SEQUEL: TRUTH TO POWER

     It is rather dismaying to see how little people have changed since An Inconvenient Truth (2006).  Yes, Al Gore makes a big point in this sequel to express optimism (justified, I’m sure) about the future, and certainly we can be pleased with the fact that President Trump’s pulling the U.S. out of the accords in Paris this year did not have an effect on other nations; 150 countries signed the renewed agreement to reduce CO2 emissions to the 0 point by the end of the century.   Furthermore, many U.S. states and cities have made their own resolutions to do something about climate change. 

     The most impressive scenes in the documentary are to see the rushing waterfalls and rivers coming off the ice sheets.  At times, it looks like ice chunks the size of boulders are tumbling down.  Also impressive and heartbreaking are the numerous places all over the world that have experienced massive flooding and drought.  Gore presents ample evidence showing that these events occur as a result of climate change in the form of rising temperatures; e.g., much of the sun’s heat energy is absorbed by the oceans, causing them to rise, and it draws moisture out of the earth, causing droughts.  From 2006-2010, much of Syria was in a continuous drought.

     I had not heard of the relationship between global warming and an increase in tropical diseases, but apparently this happens because viruses and insects produce much faster as the temperature warms.

     Al Gore and others stepped in when India said it had to build 400 new coal plants, and they managed to convince companies and other leaders to lend India the money to forego the plants and invest in renewable energy.  This is seen as a major accomplishment, in that India is one of the larger developing countries with high needs for energy.  Another joyful sequence was to meet the Republican mayor, Dale Ross, of Georgetown, Texas, and hear how they have achieved getting 100% of their power from renewable energy sources.

     But there are still stumbling blocks in the form of huge lobbying efforts against renewable energy, like the Florida governor refusing to meet with climate change scientists, even thought Miami is the city most in danger of being submerged in flooding as the result of rising ocean levels and increasingly stronger storms.  To this date, President Trump is still expressing skepticism about climate change, and his appointee as head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt, shows just as much a lack of interest in protecting the environment.

     This documentary by Bonnie Cohen and Jon Shenk is good, for the most part, in showing the evidence and effects of climate change, and the efforts by Al Gore and his associates to convince skeptics of the reality.  They have tried to talk “truth to power”, and Gore has presented training sessions all over the world for people to teach citizens how to spread the word.  Shenk’s cinematography is especially good, but I think too much time was spent in filming meetings and rehashing old political battles.  The statistics are rather complex, and they would have been more powerful if the film had lingered a little longer on presenting them, maybe with clever graphics (so as not to risk boredom).

This is our world, and citizens are well advised to see the film or get information from elsewhere as to how to protect nature and ourselves from harm.

Grade:  C+                                    By Donna R. Copeland

THE DARK TOWER

Idris Elba     Matthew McConaughey     Abbey Lee     Tom Taylor     Dennis Haysbert

     “There are other worlds than these”, says a character in The Dark Tower, based on a series of novels by Stephen King.  Apparently, this is a sequel that picks up where the novels end.  And during the film, which starts out in Keystone Earth, we’re transported to the Mid-World, another reality altogether.  First, we meet Jake (Taylor), a rather odd child who gets into trouble so frequently he’s in psychotherapy.  The reason he seems odd is that he has such realistic dreams he begins to think there is more to it.  He draws pictures of what he sees and tries to explain to his mother, his friend, and his therapist what he is sensing, but no one understands.  His mother and his friend just walk away mystified, and his therapist relates his fantasies to the father he has lost.

     In desperation, his mother considers sending him to a “clinic” for the weekend, but Jake is convinced there is nothing wrong with him, and that he is simply trying to understand what his experience is telling him.  When he sees that he’ll be forced to go, and that the driver looks like someone characteristic of people in his dreams, he bolts.

     Jake is clever and brave, managing to elude his pursuers, and follow clues to get to the source of his dreams.  What follows after that, is his being transported (not gently) to the Middle World, where he straightaway encounters Roland The Gunslinger (Elba) of his dreams.  Interestingly, Jake has made detailed drawings of his dreams, and Roland and Walter, the Man in Black (McConaughey), are accurately depicted.  Jake recognizes Roland immediately, but Roland has no idea who Jake is, does not want to be bothered, and really wants to get back to his business of revenge against Walter.  Jake, not willing to be thrust aside, gets drawn into the struggle, and to the film’s credit, a satisfying father-son bonding develops. 

     The film could have been a touching, meaningful (and sometimes it is) journey searching for a lost father.  Unfortunately, the filmmakers make it more a glorification of guns, revenge, and even sugar(!).  (Bad joke about sugar, which kids don’t need to hear.)  Jake is tutored carefully in shooting (which is not necessarily a bad thing) with mantras like, “I don’t kill with my gun; I kill with my mind.”  “I don’t kill with my gun; I kill with my heart.”  “He who kills with his gun has forgotten the face of his father.”  But the culmination of all this is a visually spectacular orgy of vengeful gunfire and killing that seems to go on forever (to me).  All this is done in such a way it made me think it was dreamed up by the NRA for an advertisement.

   Instead of the gunfire, I wish the filmmakers had made more of the mind control techniques used by Jake and Roland, which, in the end, were much more powerful.  The film wanted us to think that it was the final gun battle that was the decisive victory, but how much more helpful it would be for young people to see how much their self-discipline and mindfulness could be potent, decisive forces in actualizing events.

     Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey elevate any film they are in, and they are certainly topnotch here.  The cinematography (Rasmus Videbaek) and visual effects make it exciting.  But the problem with this film is in adapting Stephen King’s work to a successful film.  Somewhere along the way, the thrust of his powerful fiction gets diluted.  The director, Nikolaj Arcel, has a fine record (director, A Royal Affair, writer, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo); the producers are acclaimed (e.g., Brian Grazer, Ron Howard, Stephen King), and yet it seems less than.  (Could it be that gun advocates like the NRA and sugar dispensers in soft drinks exerted an effect?  I don’t know.)

This is an intriguing story based on Stephen King’s work that misses the mark.

Grade:  D+                                    By Donna R. Copeland

DUNKIRK

Mark Rylance     Tom Hardy     Kenneth Branagh     James D’Arcy     Cillian Murphy    

Harry Styles     Fionn Whitehead     Barry Keoghan     Aneurin Barnard     Tom Glynn Carney

     Chaos reigns in the thick of battle, which Dunkirk exquisitely illustrates.  Christopher Nolan (writer/director) knew that it was critical to show the defense and evacuation in air, on the sea, and on land, and that cutting back and forth among these arenas was essential to a realistic account of the operation.  In 1940, before the U.S. entered the World War II, Germany had separated the northern Allied forces from the French forces in the south, and hoped to wipe out the Allies at Dunkirk.  In response, the Allies came up with an ambitious plan to evacuate their 330,000 troops from Dunkirk and transport them to England. 

     We are there as two young British soldiers (Whitehead, Bernard) find themselves in a throng on the beach waiting for British destroyers to pick them up.  German flyers saying, “We surround you” litter the beach, which is being periodically strafed, and when the two soldiers see a wounded man on a stretcher who needs to be carried to a waiting ship, they pick him up and run toward the ship.  There is chaos, and after much difficulty, they get him to the boat, only to have the boat bombed, and they have to figure out how to survive.  Nolan will get back to them time and again.

     Another arena is the air, where Farrier (Hardy) is an ace pilot on a Spitfire determined to shoot down every German fighter plane he sees.  And he sees and blasts many that we see go down and drown in the sea.

    The naval officers are waiting impatiently for British destroyers to show up, but they’re delayed, and other boats loaded with servicemen keep getting blown up, with the passengers who aren’t killed by the blasts jumping into the roiling sea.

     One of the more entertaining and uplifting—although also horrifying at times—segments in this film has to do with a private boat in the area requisitioned to rescue fallen troops in the sea.  The captain of this ship is Mr. Dawson (Rylance), who epitomizes the Wise One.  He rescues troops thrown into the sea, and instructs his son on board about PTSD (which had not yet been identified), boating, and simple human kindness.

     Stand-outs among the actors are Rylance as a brave and noble soul, Hardy as an ace pilot who is able to convey so much even with a mask covering his face, and Murphy as a crazed pilot rescued from atop his wrecked plane in the ocean.

     This is an extremely difficult film to watch, in that almost every scene is tension-filled with life-threatening struggles.  It’s not always clear what exactly is happening or what is being said by the characters.  The cinematography by Nolan’s favorite, Hoyle Van Hoytema, is brilliant in instilling a “You are there” experience in the viewer.  Likewise, Hans Zimmer’s score suffuses every scene with high emotional valence.

     For a fitting coda, Nolan includes excerpts of Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s actual speech following the Battle of Dunkirk, underscoring the British spirit of never giving up:  “We shall go on in the end…we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be.  We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.”

From the air, on the land, and in the sea, the battles wage on relentlessly.

Grade:  B                                    By Donna R. Copeland

A GHOST STORY

Casey Affleck     Rooney Mara

     This is truly a story about a ghost, it’s thoughts, reminiscences, and perhaps regrets.  It opens with a couple named C (Affleck) and M (Mara) saying a few words, the most meaningful of which is his saying he’s tired of talking about it, and her asking if they could discuss it tomorrow, and his response is “maybe.”  (The dialog has a Terence Malick touch to it.)  The film sets a mysterious tone right away, with noises in the night, misty smoky air (soft focus used to advantage by cinematographer Andrew Droz Palermo), and a pervasive sense of agitated discomfort—not quite unhappiness.  They are clearly getting ready to move, with boxes everywhere and she hauling things out to the trash. 

      Suddenly, he’s slumped over after a car crash, and then we see her at the morgue, and still later on her own, with C in a white sheet with big eye holes standing over her.  She seems to go through with the planned move, after which a woman with two children moves into their house, but they don’t stay long, what with dishes flying off onto the floor and shattering.  Then we see a party in progress at the same house; it’s crowded, with buzzing conversations and couples slinking off to be alone.  One man pontificates at the table through swigs of beer about life and its uncertainties and disasters.  Next, we see the house abandoned, then a wrecker demolishing it, and an office building goes up in its place. 

     There are numerous indications that the ghost does not like what’s happened, and we next see him out in the country.  A covered wagon comes up, reminding us of the doomsday prognostications of the man at the table, and we think maybe we’re going back in time, or looping around to another world, another of the man’s speculative possibilities.  In the covered wagon is a man with a family, and he is starting preparations to build a house; however, we don’t get to see it finished.

      In the final scenes of the film, we’re back at the house of C and M, and their marriage is recapitulated, giving us more information about their conflicts.  She moved a lot as a child, expressing her dislike by leaving behind little notes hidden just in case if she ever wanted to go back, there would be a little piece of her there.  Did she ever go back to the places she left notes?  No.  Yet, something within her as an adult likes to move different places from time to time; C doesn’t because history of place is important to him.  With this, it makes sense that his ghost is still in the house.  The story resolves in a way that makes all this a little more understandable, but the viewer is likely to remain in puzzlement.

      As I thought about it, it did seem that the writer/director David Lowery (Ain’t them Bodies Saints, Pete’s Dragon) is depicting the sense of loss and the searches humans go through in trying to make sense of the world and stay connected with others, particularly after a loss.  When those issues are not satisfactorily resolved and hopelessness prevails, it’s something like “the end of the world.”  Lowery’s depiction of this experience in the two ghosts (yes, there is another ghost) is graphic and profound.

     I found this an intriguing film that is almost undone by the overly long scenes, such as the opening with C and M together, the pie scene, and the pontification that can’t be easily comprehended.  The near absence of humor also makes this a slog.  Neither Affleck nor Mara—both abundantly talented actors—have enough screen time to warrant their investment in this film.

This is a ghost story without a smidgen of fear, only poetic imaginings.

Grade:  C+                                    By Donna R. Copeland

DETROIT

John Boyega     Will Poulter     Algee Smith     Jacob Latimore     John Kraskinski     Hannah Murray     Anthony Mackie

   Hardcore racism is difficult to watch, especially when the offender is weak and overcompensating for it with sadistic acting-out.  Detroit puts us in the shoes of black people who have endured hundreds of years of false accusations and persecution.  When I became so disturbed watching it in the movie and had the urge to leave, it told me this is something I need to stay for, watch, and listen. 

      Kathryn Bigelow and her trusted writer Mark Boal give an account of the 1967 race riots in Detroit from a perspective that perhaps has never been presented before.  Its value in dramatizing it is in their bringing white people in to see firsthand what black people experience every day, and hopefully to give black people the sense a) that some of us do understand, and b) they get some vindication for the stereotypes that have been foisted on them.  Stereotypes of black people are rampant in the story, and sadly are still prominent in our society fifty years later.

     The film focuses on random people getting together in the Algiers Motel on the third night of rioting.  They include a member of the aspiring vocal group, The Dramatics, and their agent, two young women from Ohio who enjoy the company of black men, their black male friend, a prankster, and a couple of his friends.  Unfortunately, the prankster has a starting pistol (for track races) that makes a pop like a real gun, which he uses to play a joke on his guests.  Then, when he looks out to see patrols on the street, he shoots it out the window, “to show them how scared we get when they’re after us.”  Little does he know that one weak officer Krauss (Poulter) will jump to conclusions, think there is an actual sniper in the motel, and proceed to locate the shooter, no matter what it takes, including planting evidence.  He has already been reprimanded by a superior for his conduct, but it doesn’t “take.”

     The film portrays the rioting and looting similar to a newsreel, (perhaps deriving from real ones) showing police and politicians taken by surprise (because they had not paid attention to the growing unrest from joblessness and promises not kept), and the National Guard is brought in.  The rioting has already been going on for two days before our hapless Algiers Motel group gets drawn in by what Krauss (Poulter) hears is a sniper.  He then proceeds to round up anyone in the motel he can find who might know something, and abuse them in an attempt to get them to identify the shooter.  (Difficult, since there was none.)

      I understand the story is based on reports of the events that occurred before the riot, as well as events leading up to it.  Boal and Bigelow elaborated on these accounts for dramatic effect, including the creation of the Krauss character, loosely based on an officer who was charged with a crime, but subsequently found not guilty by an all-white jury.  Some questions are not addressed, such as why none of the hostages mentioned that Carl’s gun was a starting pistol (no bullets) until they were in court proceedings.  Why was Krauss put back on the force after he had shot a looter in the back and killed him?  Why didn’t the hostages get the officer’s name?  Why didn’t people ask for lawyers when they were arrested?  Was the prosecution in the court trial really that bad?  These are minor points, and may be explained partly by the time; in 1967, the people held hostage may not have realized they could ask such questions.

      My skepticism has lessened after reading Mark Boal’s account in Vulture, “Why I Wrote Detroit” http://www.vulture.com/2017/07/mark-boal-on-why-he-wrote-the-movie-detroit.html.  His sources included “the historical record”, consisting of documents, police files, John Hersey’s book The Algiers Motel, and interviews of the people involved, including Cleveland Larry Reed, the Dramatics co-founder and singer who was held captive by police officers and emotionally damaged permanently as a result.  In actual fact, three black men were killed that night and nine people were kept hostage in the Algiers Motel.

     Rather than the story being character driven, Boal and Bigelow wanted to show that at times, social forces take precedence over individuals’ actions and will.  He says, “The underlying intention…was always pretty straightforward: to unpack the riot and this one incident at the Algiers from the point of view of its many participants, and thereby enable the audience to experience the events themselves.”  And in that respect, the filmmakers are entirely successful in giving viewers the sense of really being there and experiencing the horror, a horror that could conceivably be entirely true, even today.  Helplessness in an individual in such system-wide movement is aptly illustrated by the fine actor John Boyega playing a security guard who valiantly tries to intervene in the Algiers Motel, but is usually brushed aside and even falsely arrested.

The dramatization of horrific events fifty years ago that can inform us today.

Grade:  A                                    By Donna R. Copeland