The Best, #5-#1

I too want a dog named Tupac

 There are so many films that come out every year that it’s hard to keep up.  For someone like me, who likes all sorts of movies and would see every movie if it was possible, it can be overwhelming.  What I watch is determined by a number of factors but just keeping up with the ‘major’ releases is a full time job because those are the ones everyone expects you to see.  Is there a great French documentary screening only once in a single theatre in NW D.C. on a Wednesday afternoon you want to champion?  That’s fine, but you better have an answer for ‘is Rogue One better than the prequals?’ or no one is going to take you seriously.

Beyond the major releases, I don’t have a specific system to pick movies.  I basically go on movies I see announced in entertainment magazines and what looks interesting based on the 3 -sentence synopsis OnDemand.  This brings me to “Hunt for the Wilderpeople.” The only reason I watched this movie is the director, Taika Waititi.  He was named as the helmer of the next Thor movie and also released a movie in 2014 I though was really funny (What We Do In The Shadows).  So when I saw his name as the man behind this little New Zealand comedy I figured, why not?

I’m so glad I randomly stumbled upon this gem.  Hunt for the Wilderpeople is a very funny movie that has a tremendous amount of heart.  It’s based on a book I’ve also never heard of called “Wild Pork and Watercress” by Barry Crump and tells the story of juvenile delinquent Ricky Bicker (Julian Dennison) who, after being abandoned by this mother, is sent to live on a farm with foster parents.  Ricky Baker is a hip-hop loving chubby city boy, completely unequipped for farm living.  He’s slowly won over by his foster mother Bella, a very kind older woman who doesn’t fully understand Ricky (who dresses like Notorious B.I.G. and names the new dog he’s given Tupac, after his idol), but wants to help him feel comfortable in his new home.  She understands that as much as Ricky has been labeled a ‘bad kid,’ he’s just putting up a front to avoid getting hurt and he really is just a big kid with a big heart. 

When Bella dies, Ricky is left with his foster dad Hec (Sam Neill), a cantankerous old man who didn’t seem that thrilled with Ricky living with them in the first place.  He’s so devastated by the death of the wife he wants to send Ricky back to child services. Hec isn’t a bad guy, he’s just not equipped for children.  He’s set in his ways and doesn’t have the patience or understanding his late wife did.  He wants Ricky gone partly because he doesn’t want to deal with him, but also because he doesn’t think he can raise him.

Well, Ricky isn’t having it. He fakes his death and along with Tupac, he escapes into the woods to live as one of the “Wilderpeople.”  He pledges to get off the grid, live off the land and escape to a place no one will find him. He’s out about 10.2 seconds before he realizes he’s not equipped for anything besides finding the nearest wifi hotspot.  Hec, not having fallen for Ricky’s supposed suicide, finds him in the woods.  When Hec injures himself, they have to camp out for the night and, in a hilarious chain reaction of events, find themselves in the center of a manhunt. Child services thinks Hec abducted Ricky and the insane media-loving child welfare worker Paula (Rachel House), vows to ‘save’ Ricky.

As you might guess Ricky and Hec bond in the woods and everything turns just fine but not before the already-cartoony film turns into full on Animaniacs.  I won’t spoil what happens but it’s really funny and also unexpected.  The performances of Neil and the young Dennison are top notch.  They form an odd couple that you root for and it warms your heart when they figure out  that, despite their differences, they need each other. 

Hunt for the Wilderpeople is quirky but it’s not weird for weird’s sake.  Director Waititi has highly stylized way of shooing, reminiscent of Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead).  He also knows how to find a joke in normal human interactions and some of the best laughs come from conversations between characters. 

Sometimes it’s worth seeking a movie out that you wouldn’t normally run into OnDemand and Hunt for the Wilderpeople is certainly one of those filims.  Go ‘hunt’ for it today and be glad that you did.

Fun fact, according to the Internet, "the phrase came from the days of cattle drives in the western US, when fording a river at “high water'"

Heist films are usually fun, breezy Ocean’s Eleven –style larks where the audience cheers for the thief because of how likeable they are.  A lot of focus is put on how complex the plan is to steal whatever ridiculous thing they’re going after and how damn clever the crook is for being able to pull it off   Hell or High Water is not a heist film.  It’s a film with a heist in it (or actually several), but one that focuses on the ‘why’ instead of the ‘how.’

The ‘why’ is connected to Toby (Chris Pine) and Tanner (Ben Foster), two bank robbing Texan brothers with very different personalities.  Tanner is the typical thrill seeking redneck who loves guns and violence.  Toby is quiet, introspective and, most surprisingly, kind.  He doesn’t seem like the type of person who would be doing this and that’s the point.  He isn’t that person, but circumstances have forced him to be.

After his elderly mother can no longer afford to subsist on her government-provided Social Security, she visits the local bank she’s patronized her entire life and is swindled into taking a reverse mortgage on her property.  When she gets sick, she has to borrow even more money.  As the movie begins she’s recently passed away, leaving nothing but a soon-to-be-foreclosed estate to her sons.

Toby’s not had an easy life either and is unable to find work.   He has children to support but can’t and desperately wishes he could give them more.  He knows that when his family land is taken away, their only inheritance will disappear and a cycle of poverty will begin that will trap them forever.  When oil is discovered on the very land he will soon be evicted from, he sees a way to avoid his fate and he devices a scheme to save his family’s land, and, by extension, his family as well.

The’ why’ of the heists, therefore, is connected to a very timely subject matter: the slow death of the middle class and the uneven prosperity America has experienced in the past 50 years.  To Toby and Tanner, they never had a real shot.  They know that the American dream their mother believed in is only true for the select few for whom the game is rigged for, and a devastating lie for the majority of the county for whom the game is rigged against.  Chris Pine doesn’t have to sport a ‘Make America Great Again’ hat to recognize the parable to our real political reality.

What Toby and Tanner are doing is illegal but you root for them as they rebel against the country that let them down. You hope they triumph because you want to see the little guy win again.  The victory itself may be small and even temporary, but you know the real problem may be too big to fix. 

I hate the real 80s but love the fake 80s.

Sing Street is a story about a kid trying to impress a girl. Yup, that’s basically it and it’s its simplicity that makes the film so effective.

It’s the 80s in Dublin and 15 year old Conor’s family can no longer afford his expensive education.  In what is a nightmare for him and most teenagers, he’s moved to new school where he has to make all new friends.  But it’s hard to fit in where you’re an age when you’re not even sure who you are.   He leans on his older brother Brendan, a very opinioned music aficionado, for support and eventually adopts some of his music tastes as his own. 

When he meets a beautiful girl at school who is an aspiring model, he tries to impress her by making up the quickest lie he can think of:  he’s in a band and it just so happens that they need a model for their new music video.  She reluctantly agrees and he scrambles to create said band. 

From there there’s not much that’s surprising about Sing Street. But the performances feel so authentic, the music is so good, and the energy of the film is so infectious that I had a smile on my face the entire time.  As Conor finds his band in a group of eccentric outsiders, rebels against the authoritarian priests in his school and falls even harder for the girl, and you get caught up in John Carney’s nostalgic version of 80s Dublin and you can’t help but have a good time.  Yup, everything about Sing Street is minimalist, except the fun you’ll have watching it.

No witch or wardrobe needed here. Rimshot.

I’ve seen Lion twice and I’ve cried both times.  Both times I was surprised I cried and even more surprised that I did so for different reasons. 

The first time I saw this true story of an impoverished Indian boy separated from his family,  I expected formulaic Oscar bait.  I had seen the previews and the ads made it look like basically a “very special episode” of Slumdog Millionaire.  Despite my reservations, when I got around to actually watching it, the film grabbed me early and held on. There was more than one reason but one stood out:  I knew the story was true and I was overwhelmed by the idea that what I was watching happened, that the pain I saw on screen was experienced by someone.  By the time the end credits rolled, I was crying like a baby and quickly left the theatre in kindof-embarrassment. 

The second time I saw the movie I knew the beats and I wasn’t really expecting to get emotional. I was more curious at my girlfiend's reaction because she isn't as senstitive as me.  But I found myself swept up once more exceot this time I wasn’t lost in the ‘based on the true story-ness’ of it all.  I was lost in the film itself.

Let's start with the acting of the Indian cast: Abhishek Bharate, Priyanka Bose, and especially Sunny Pawar as the young Saroo blew me away.  Their interactions with each other as a family feel so authentic, I found myself wondering if they are actually related (they're not).   Even more amazing is that they share very few scenes together.  I didn't time it but I think they're together for only about 10 minutes in the whole movie.  To establish a firm emotional ground in such an abbreviated time is a testament to the strength of the actors.

Then there's the directing.  I don’t know what the budget for the film was but it looks magnificent.  Director Garth Evans takes an ‘every part of the buffalo’ approach, pulling the camera way back and giving you sweeping vistas of the beauty and chaos that is India.  How big the country is juxtaposes nicely with how small a boy Saroo is and it makes you sympathize with his plight all the more.

Dev Patel and Kidman anchor the last half of the movie and are excellent.  Their relationship feels as natural as the young Saroo's and his biological mother's even though they also spend very little time together on screen.  Their performances keep the film truthful, important because the events which unfold feel so unbelievable.

The first time, I feel in love with Lion as a true story but the second time, I fell in love with it as a beautiful film.

Or as it's known in South Virginia, the War of New York Aggression

I don’t like the term ‘Marvel fanboy.’  Yes, I love Marvel movies and am a fan of many of them but, ‘fanboy’ suggests that I’m automatically giving my stamp of approval to a movie simply because Ant Man may show up in it.  I’m not.  But Marvel films do have an advantage over others. Potentially. 

What Marvel has done over the past 9 years (and by Marvel I’m referring only to MCU, the Marvel Cinematic Universe) is unprecedented.  They’ve created an entire world of rich characters that premiere (usually) in standalone films then later appear in sequels where they interact with each other.  None of that would matter if the films weren’t any good, but they are.  The quality of the films has been so consistent and uniformly excellent, I hesitate even putting that out into the universe for fear of jinxing them.  Marvel’s secret sauce is that they care about the characters.  They give them compelling backstories and invest in character development, all of which help the audience understand and relate to larger-than-life people, aliens, and gods. 

Consequently, the advantage a Marvel film potentially has is that if characters whom we already know from previous movies appear, you’re already invested in them.  You don’t need a primer on Black Widow because you know who she is and what makes her tick.  You don’t need the backstory to why Tony Stark is upset about what happened in Sokovia because you saw it go down in Avengers: Age of Ultron. 

Every successive movie builds on the one before it.  That’s already powerful if the films are good but that effectiveness is multiplied exponentially if, when you bring characters together, you invest in character arcs which justify them being together.  In other words, if Hawkeye shows up just because you need someone who the audience recognizes to fight the bad guy, then that’s a waste.  But, if you give Hawkeye a motivation for being there which is consistent with what we already know about him, then you’re playing with all the toys in the sandbox in a smart way.

Captain America: Civil War is a great example of that.  It's the latest culmination in the MCU’s spectacularly successful run and it takes full advantage of everything that came before it.  It pits two of the most popular characters, Steve Rogers and Tony Stark, against each other and forces other Avengers to pick a side.  But they’re beef isn’t a squabble where the stakes are only as high as whose ego gets damaged the most.  What they clash about are very important questions:  should the welfare of many people dictate how an individual can live their life?  Should the government, for the ‘greater good’, exert control over a person no matter the effect on that person?  Does the end justify the means?

These questions are big, complicated, and crucially, they have more than one answer. 

When the governments of the world demand superheroes register themselves, Steve Rogers gets worried. He’s a WW2 era solider who has seen what happens when a large group of people starts to demonize a smaller group.  He knows that lists are the beginning of the end; that they lead to disparate treatment and that disparate treatment leads to discrimination, and possibly extermination.  So when he’s faced with putting his name on a registry of ‘enhanced/inhumans,’ he balks.  For Steve, it’s all about the means because the end isn’t worth the tradeoff of compromising what you believe.

Tony is shell-shocked from his experiences in Age of Ultron.  Yes, the Avengers saved the world but at the cost of many lives.  When the mother of young man who died in Sokovia confronts him, asking angrily through tears, ‘who’s going to avenge [my son]!?,” he breaks.  He concludes that no power should go unchecked, whether his or others.  From then on the only thing that matters is the end and the end for him is keeping as many people safe as possible.  The means are just an inconvenience and the only victim is pride.  Yes, there should be a list of all potential threats and he’ll gladly add his name to it. 

So who’s right, Tony or Steve? They both are. 

Lists which are formed to target a group of people based on a who they are whether segmented by race, religion, skin color, sexual orientation, or anything else, are evil.  They lead to those on the lists being treated as ‘the other’ and ‘the other’ is always treated less than.  Yet, there’s no denying the job of the government is to safeguard the wellbeing of the people.  It makes a certain kind of sense that we sacrifice 1 to save 9.  Public policy is based on just that; it’s not about what’s right but what’s right for the most people. 

Steve Rogers can’t stomach living in a world where he has to compromise his beliefs in order to do what’s ‘right.’  Tony Stark can’t stomach living a world where what’s ‘right’ is decided by the most powerful, no matter the effect on everyone else.  This central dispute puts the two heroes on a collision course which is exasperated by a subplot involving Tony’s long-dead parents and the identity of their true killer. 

In the end, after a fun battle royale between multiple superheroes, the two friends have it out one-on-one.  It’s an intimate bout where neither side holds back but neither side really want to win; They just want the other person to stop fighting, but neither wants to.  We as the audience understand this and respect it.  If either Tony or Steve wanted to give up they wouldn’t be the heroes we’ve come to respect, and Captain America: Civil War would not be the masterpiece that it is.