Stealing home

Captain Fantastic

Crit

Often I go to a film expecting to like it but to encounter obstacles to love--plot conveniences, character slips, logical implausibilities. Once or twice in a good year I see something and am lucky enough to be able to dismiss the flaws (one child of six who has gentle doubts about his father's worldview, another who openly rebels against it, and four who would rather die than have to live in fascist, consumerist, shallow American culture? how convenient!) and fall in love.

What makes this story of practical counterculturism work? Acting, mostly: it goes without saying that Viggo Mortensen would commit fully to his role of a widowed paterfamilias who tells all the truth, slantlessly, and leads his tribe in celebrating Noam Chomsky's Birthday (giving each a lethal weapon), or that Frank Langella would bring both nastiness and sympathy to his small role as Ben's nemesis, his wealthy and conventional father-in-law.

But the kids, oh, the kids; write down these names: George MacKay, Samantha Isler, Annalise Basso, Nicholas Hamilton, Shree Crooks, and Charlie Shotwell. Oh, and Elijah Stevenson and Teddy Van Ee, seen briefly as Ben's video gamer nephews, whose parents are played by the always welcome (and rhyming!) Kathryn Hahn and Steve Zahn.

It is, in short (too late for that), an actors' film--and a film for the eyes, with sumptuous location shooting in Washington, Oregon, and New Mexico. But I seem to have buried the lead: it's a film about people with whom I side with in theory but would lampoon in life, yet the film killed the lampooning impulse and left only the love.

Trailers

• Denial--As in Holocaust, with Rachel Weisz going after her second Oscar, as historian Deborah Lipstadt, sued for libel by denier David Irving (Timothy Spall).
• Don't Think Twice--A comedy about comics, starring some of my favorites: Keegan-Michael Key, Gillian Jacobs, and Mike Birbiglia (who wrote and directed), along with one, Kate Micucci, who the trailer suggests might be one of my favorites once I've seen the film.

All the gin joints

Café Society

Crit

The heart wants, Woody has always told us, but it has been a long time since he has told us so beautifully. Way back in Annie Hall, whose themes this one plays with, in some cases more effectively--dare I say more maturely?--we had one of the greatest pair of scenes, wherein what has changed is only (!) the girl. Here we have similarly paired scenes, and again the girl has changed, but it's the same girl (Kristen Stewart, who is about ready for the Academy to start paying attention to, don't you think?). The boy (Jesse Eisenberg, ditto, don't you think?) has changed too, and so have their respective and shared worlds, but the uncoupled couple somehow hasn't.

The bittersweet of the earlier film is bitterer here, and as much as I love Annie Hall, that's not a complaint.

Trailers

• La La Land--Looks like a spiritual remake of Pennies from Heaven.
• American Pastoral--With one Philip Roth adaptation getting good reviews currently, here comes his best novel to the screen.
• Sully--Tom Hanks as another real-life heroic, death-defying captain.

Memorable

Finding Dory

Savoy 16

Thank you to my special guest blogger: Veronica Bechtel:

I think it was a very good movie. I especially liked the relationship between Dory and Destiny. Destiny is supposed to eat a fish like Dory, but instead they are "pipe pals." I don't think they could have made a cuter Dory as a little kid. Her eyes take up almost half of her face, and she is so small! The journey to Dory's parents is a real nail biter. You think everything is saved, but then something else happens, and it's a whole new story! All in all, I think you should see Finding Dory.

I agree!

Trailer

• Nine Lives--Frank Underwood as a house cat.

Field of dreams

The BFG

Crit

Note to Arsenal backers: this is not Steven Spielberg's biopic of Per Mertesacker.

I'm not sure what it is, actually. A plea for vegetarianism, even when the vegetables taste awful? A celebration of explosive flatulence? A call for multilateral military strikes against evildoers? (It's set in the era of Reagan and Yeltsin, when such a notion may have been a bit more plausible.) Rebecca Hall's least significant role ever?

I don't know, but it didn't do much for me. Mark Rylance is fine in the CGI-enhanced title role, because, after all, he's Mark Rylance, and young Sophie, as portrayed by Ruby Barnhill, is a model of cinematic-kid spunk-beats-cute, but I never felt invested in the story. Rarely has Spielberg bored me, but . . .

Wiener-Dog

Crit

I thought I was going to love this Todd Solondz omnibus film, the stories linked via the titular canine, but after the first two segments--cancer-surviving kid cursed with parents from hell, especially his mother (Julie Delpy); the return of the original Wiener Dog from Solondz's debut, Welcome to the Dollhouse, Dawn Wiener (Greta Gerwig this time) and one of her high school tormentors (Kieran Culkin)--the stories flag, so I'll have to settle for "liked a lot."

Trailers

Can I boast a moment? Forgot my notebook, so had to remember the following 6 titles with nothing but my brain. It helped that they mostly crowded the middle of the alphabet and were mostly a single short word: remembering KMMMPS took me a long way. Unfortunately, with the possible exception of the last, none of the films looks likely to be as memorable.

• Kubo and the Two Strings--Most notable for the use (or ripoff) of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps"
• Monster Trucks--See, it's a truck powered by a big friendly monster.
• Moana--Fat, tattooed Polynesian stereotype--er, demigod.
• Pete's Dragon--A dragon lives forever, you know.
• Sing--Animated animal talent show.
• Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life--I guess Veronica's a little young for the graphic-novel source.

Occupy

Free State of Jones

Crit

I edited an excellent book a while back called Why Acting Matters, and you should read it, but you could also derive the answer from this film, which traffics in no complexity, no ambiguity, no surprise, and is barely worth its 2½ hours about 10% because of its good intentions and 90% because of the inconceivable commitment of Matthew McConaughey, Gugu Mbatha-Raw (you know her from a slightly better right-thinking film, Belle), and Mahershala Ali (you know him as Remy Danton in House of Cards).

Trailers

• Bad Moms--Is it just me, or are all the jokes in the trailer (1) unfunny and (B) stolen from other Kristen Bell movies?
• Gleason--Documentary of a good dad, despite ALS.

The great Gorky

Our Kind of Traitor

Crit

Not sure what's more implausible: that MI6 would involve a callow amateur in its espionage or that the amateur would be so callow as to do the right thing simply because it's the right thing.

Still: always good to see Naomie Harris.

Trailers

• Anthropoid--It would have been a different century if people in real life had tried as often to kill Hitler as they do in the movies.
• Equity--Anna Gunn as badass banker.
• Loving--Jeff Nichols, my favorite young writer-director I'm not related to, brings the landmark Virginia miscegenation case to the screen.
• Southside with You--Barry and Michelle's first date. I wish I could report that the trailer is promising.

Thelma and Louisehad nothing on these Kiwi desperado-ers

Hunt for the Wilderpeople

Crit

Serially unwanted child (Julian Dennison), menaced by Dickensian New Zealand child welfare system, resists love of foster parents (well, love of foster mother; grudging tolerance of foster father) but ends up on the lam with Hec (Sam Neill), with whom he forges inevitable bonds.

Wait, did I mention this is one of the funniest comedies of the year? Did I mention that the sentimentality is skillfully cut by goofiness and natural beauty? And goofiness?

An absolutely irresistible film, not that I worked very hard to resist, by Taika Waititi, who gave us What We Do in the Shadows a year ago. Even more than that vampire mockumentary, this is a perfect hoot.