Inside Out

Joy and Sadness (voiced by Amy Poehler and Phyllis Smith) in the new Pixar movie "Inside Out" 

How many ideas can the folks at Pixar have? They've given us talking toys, a lonely robot wandering through outer space, a monster corporation, a forgetful blue fish lost at sea, a Parisian rat who's also a chef, a house of floating balloons, a dysfunctional superhero family, and now "Inside Out". 11 year old Riley (voice of Kaitlyn Dias) is forced to move from Minnesota to San Francisco because of her Dad's new job. It's a major transition. She misses her old life, her friends, hockey. Her parents are distracted, and she's always been their happy girl. She hasn't experienced real life change yet. She's only 11. The story is simple. But not really. We don't see too much of Riley, instead, we spend most of our time in her brain, following the five primary emotions that make up her developing mind. They are: Joy (Amy Poehler), who has canary yellow skin and a cerulean pixie cut, Sadness (Phyllis Smith), a blue bespectacled librarian, Anger (Lewis Black), a crimson red square, Fear (Bill Hader), a purpled anxious bean sprout, and Disgust (Mindy Kaling), a kelly green sass with pursed lips and coiffed scarf. Joy is clearly at the helm of this motley crew, but the others have their moments too. Each touches memories that forever leave their stamp. Some memories (they look like glowing marbles traveling through multiple tubes) can be forgotten, falling down into a dark pit, to fade away, lost forever. Others though, the most important ones, become core memories, they shape Riley's personality. These are the five Islands of Personality: Family, Hockey, Honesty, Friends, Goofball. The big move causes Sadness to come to the forefront, every memory she touches turns a faded shade of blue, leaving Joy bewildered and confused, and the five Islands at risk of falling apart. How any of this makes sense is due almost entirely to the director, Pete Docter, and his genius collaborators at Pixar, who are working at a level of invention and imagination that is dizzyingly complex, going in a million creative directions and never losing steam. "Inside Out" is a major achievement; it speaks to children and adults equally, as most Pixar films do. A wholly original idea, in itself quite an accomplishment, it soars above and beyond its boundaries as just an animated feature by changing the way we think about our minds. Why we feel certain ways, why some memories fade, and some change. And also how you process experiences into emotions, which in turn, shape who you are as a human being. Docter, with his co-director Ronaldo del Carmen, and screenwriters, have worked through all the kinks the story could have stumbled upon. The screenplay is a miracle of organization, and it covers different aspects of the mind like train of thought, dreams and imaginary friends to comic and often very emotional results. There are many things to admire about "Inside Out". Besides the exquisite animation, eye-popping design, rainbow of colors, and a score by Michael Giacchino that bounces around as effortlessly as the character Joy, there is the story of a young girl, who miraculously is NOT a princess. She doesn't have superpowers. She's just an average girl, and that is ok. It does something else too. Something that not many children's movies even go near. It embraces sadness, allowing it to be an emotion both necessary and vital. Watching this movie, with my nephews and niece sitting close by, I couldn't help but think about how they were experiencing the story. Did they see what I saw? I can't be sure. During a particularly sad moment, my 4 year old nephew said practically out loud, "This movie is really sad." I leaned over and said, "I know, this part's almost done." But he wasn't frowning, there were no tears, and his eyes never left the screen. It's amazing what happens when you take children seriously, they'll really surprise you. They stop being children, and start being people.

Jurassic World

Chris Pratt in "Jurassic World" 

The main attraction of the new "Jurassic World" isn't a Tyrannosaurus Rex, or a raptor, or even Chris Pratt, although he tries very hard. It's a genetic hybrid, a mutation, something cooked up in a lab, the Indominus Rex. Very pale, very toothy, very aggressive. But who names a dinosaur Indominus Rex? It sounds like something from a Transformers spinoff or maybe the Abominable Snowman's distant relative. But the "Jurassic World" park needs this creature apparently. The crowds aren't satisfied with just dinosaurs anymore (if you can believe that). And just like Hollywood movies today, "Jurassic World" needs to be bigger, louder, and bloodier, in order for everyone to make more money. That's what it's all about you guys. Once again, we have a hero, Owen (Chris Pratt), with leather vest, and since its 2015, snugger pants. He knows a lot, enough to be able to wrangle and control a group of raptors, I'm guessing telepathically. Yet somehow the Operations Manager of the entire park, Claire, played by a buttoned up and bobbed Bryce Dallas Howard, doesn't appear to know much about anything, especially dinosaurs. How she got her job is never quite explained, which makes sense, she obviously doesn't deserve it. And on top of that, she's a pretty terrible Aunt to two pre-pubescent young boys, sent to the island by their parents to have fun, while they sign divorce papers. How convenient for them. The director Colin Trevorrow, and the screenwriters (credited to four individuals including Trevorrow) have somehow made a movie that not only insults women and the integrity of the original picture, but actually insults dinosaurs. How can the sight of a Brontosaurus or a Triceratops land with a thud? Barely show them, or when you do, show them dying. "Jurassic Park", when it was released 20 plus years ago, inspired a genuine awe in its audience. We came to expect no less from Steven Spielberg, its director. Technically it was revolutionary. Structurally is was tight as a drum. Remember the water glass going from still to shaking, or the scene in the kitchen? The raptor just barely peeking around the corner of the cabinets. I still have nightmares. And shockingly, the dinosaurs appeared only briefly, for approximately 14 minutes of that films 127 minute run time. And when they did, Spielberg made it count. "Jurassic World", on the other hand, inspired no such thrill, and barely any suspense. The plot is thin, the characters even more so. People die, as they should, this is a dinosaur movie after all, but the deaths happen so abruptly or in such an aggressively mean spirited way (the helicopter??), that none of the violence that should be satisfying for us as an audience had any pay off. What happened? What always happens. An ingenious idea whose story was told before, and much better, is retooled and rehashed to play for audiences today. And just because we have an actor as charismatic and swashbuckling as Chris Pratt to cheer on, and just because the CGI is so advanced nowadays that it looks more real than real life, does not mean it needs to be made again, or re-imagined or anything. None of this matters though, because it made 208 million dollars at the box office its opening weekend, more than any movie EVER. What else is there to say? Hollywood is smiling, and the audience is paying. Sadly though, I can't speak for the dinosaurs.

Spy

Melissa McCarthy has been in four starring roles since her breakout screen performance in Paul Feig's 2011 comedy "Bridesmaids". Soon after that film, in 2013, we got "Identity Thief", a shallow and not well received two-hander with Jason Bateman that relied too heavily, no pun intended, on McCarthy as a grotesque. Later that year, she redeemed herself, with Feig again as director, in "The Heat", going head to head with Sandra Bullock. It was lightning in a bottle, or so we thought. That film was an example of two game actresses having terrific on screen chemistry and wonderfully free wheeling dialogue. Both "Identity Thief" and "The Heat" were box office hits. McCarthy had an audience. Yet, only "The Heat" seemed to be interested in McCarthy as a comedienne of merit rather than a punchline. Could she sustain the momentum? Last year's "Tammy" was a success, but it didn't give McCarthy the truly funny material she got when working with Feig. In the new action comedy "Spy" though, Feig and McCarthy have reunited once more, and it may be their best partnership yet.

"Spy" is the most consistently laugh out loud movie I've seen since probably "Neighbors" and a wonderful star vehicle for Melissa McCarthy, who remarkably continues to find new ways to be funny. She can play self-deprecating, tripping over her words, batting her eyelashes, a wallflower in librarian's clothing, as well as she plays outspoken, brazenly vicious wise crackers. Her physical presence is an anomaly in mainstream Hollywood: a large and in charge woman. But through her performances she can uses her body as an asset instead of a liability. She rarely lets herself be the butt of the joke and her mouth is the true weapon. She barks out rapid fire insults as good as anyone. In "Spy", McCarthy plays Susan Cooper, a CIA analyst, who we first see guiding and talking in the ear of Agent Bradley Fine (Jude Law), through a mission in Bulgaria. We notice how much she likes him as they talk back and forth. She's crushing hard, unrequited love. Her talent also shines through though, and her need to do something more than sit in the basement of the CIA. Does the CIA even have a basement? McCarthy is so good at playing knowing and meek, she makes Law better, he becomes a charming doofus. The opening scene is a frenzy of different comic tropes, and it gives us the writer and director, Paul Feig, balancing action, banter, and sight gags like rats scurrying over computer keyboards, and a sneeze that ends in a bullet through someone's head, seamlessly. 

Melissa McCarthy in "Spy" the new comedy directed by Paul Feig

Love and Mercy

When I was young, my mom would drive my siblings and I to the beach practically everyday. It was the same stretch of road, to the same beach. The same routine all summer long and I remember it through the music. She would play Shania Twain's album, "Come on Over", a UB40 record, or a mix of the best of the Beach Boys. It was mainly the latter, it was summer, and we were going to the beach after all. Those songs, and the melodies behind them have cemented in my mind, I don't forget them. They have always and will always be around. As with the best type of art they evoke a feeling, a specific sense of time and place that somehow transcends its origin. I'm positive even people who didn't grow up near the beach amidst the surroundings that Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys sang about, continue to remember "Surfin' USA", "409", "I Get Around", and "Good Vibrations" with fondness. These songs remain eternal, yet what about the five young men behind those songs, and especially Brian Wilson, the band's leader?

The new film, "Love and Mercy", focusing on Brian Wilson, is an exceptionally sensitive portrait of an artist at two different stages of life. In the 1960's, around the time between "Surfin' Safari" and the release of the Beach Boy's masterpiece "Pet Sounds", we get Paul Dano, round faced, endlessly curious, a genius being born. And some 20 years later, after a physical and mental breakdown, and the demise of the Beach Boys, we get John Cusack, sunken eyed, pursed lipped, and in constant risk of falling apart. Shifting back and forth between these two sequences, the director Bill Pohlad, working from a script by Oren Moverman and Michael Lerner, gives us Wilson as an inspired musician and a genius work horse, who through the use of drugs like LSD and the mental abuse of two men transformed into a hollow shell of his former self. Those two central men in his life, his father Murry (Bill Camp), and eventually his personal guardian and doctor Eugene Handy (Paul Giamatti) were horrifically destructive figures. Equal parts overbearing and critical, his father is portrayed as the more subdued villain, yet probably the most damaging. Physical abuse goes a long way. We learn he was fired as the band's manager, now forever undermining and holding a grudge against the group, and mainly Brian. His abuse lays the groundwork for the abuse Brian faces from Dr. Handy after the LSD and after ballooning to 300 pounds. Giamatti does not underplay his evil and the tirades against John Cusack are out of a different film and remain some of the more uncomfortable scenes in the film. 

Paul Dano as the young Brian Wilson in "Love and Mercy" 

"Love and Mercy" does have an angelic figure in the form of Melinda Ledbetter (Elizabeth Banks), who we meet in the very first scene, selling Cadillacs. There, seated in the passenger seat of a car she hopes to sell, she listens to Brian confess that his brother died, not too long ago, his face blank. He comments that blue is a "very calming color". She listens attentively not because she knows who he is but because she senses someone who needs to be listened to. He leaves her a final, frightening note, scribbled on the back of her business card that sets the film in dramatic motion: "Lonely. Scared. Frightened." Ultimately, Melinda becomes Brian's savior, rescuing him from Dr. Handy, who not only verbally abuses Brian, but takes advantage of his bogus diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia by over drugging him and manipulating his finances. Banks, whose smile radiates kindness, gives a performance of tremendous empathy and warmth. Her presence and face tell us everything we need to know about how to respond to this particular Brian Wilson. Melinda is window that we as the audience look through to get to understand Brian. The scenes between Banks and Cusack are filmed almost entirely in close up, we listen in rapt attention when they speak back and forth. Every twitch in Cusack's mouth, and every emotion in Banks eyes are right there up close for us to see. 

One of the best parts about being a movie fan is learning more about the cultural world in which we come from. I may have endlessly listened to the Beach Boys when I was younger, their songs may have echoed in the background of the restaurant I served at, but I didn't understand their impact, and in particular the genius and ground breaking musical work of Brian Wilson. The most compelling scenes of "Love and Mercy" show the young Brian Wilson in the studio, hearing voices, doing drugs, running laps around the expert musicians that surround him. His constant need to experiment with new sound, test new methods of musical composition, and ring every last potential drop of power from those gorgeous harmonies are shown in montages that are both jumbled and have an extreme emotional clarity. It is quite amazing that the tragedy of Wilson's life as a man undone by drugs and abuse only to rise somewhat again in the future doesn't diminish the power of his legacy as an artist. In one scene we see Wilson playing "God Only Knows" to his father, in a premature version, singing purely, a pitchy falsetto, accompanying himself on the piano. The song hums true, sad. It's hard to even notice his father's disapproving scowl, the song drowns out everything else in the frame. You see the song, instead of hear it. We are left with Wilson at his most vulnerable, alone yet being watched, and he goes beyond the primal immediacy of just singing into something more spiritual, something along the lines of the sacred. Turns out you don't need LSD to know when a song is going to last, or to tell you how to feel. Only God knows that. 

Avengers: Age of Ultron

141 minutes of nonsense and not much else. The second installment of Marvel's Avengers franchise, "Avengers: Age of Ultron", has already made over $400 million domestically after only a month in theaters, and who knows how much overseas. How much money is enough money though? Super hero fatigue has evolved into an ongoing disorder in the film industry with something like 30 plus movies based on comic books coming to theaters in the next 4 years alone. That's a lot of back stories, misunderstood men with powers and the total annihilation and destruction of Planet Earth coming our way people. There's just no fighting it, this is Hollywood today.

"Avengers: Age of Ultron" reunites us with the fabulous six: Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Captain America (Chris Evans), Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), and Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) and not much has changed. Accept that the world is still under threat like it always is, and instead of a threat from outer space it's now from some country called Sokovia in Eastern Europe. Doesn't Disney have enough money to deface the name of an actual country in Eastern Europe? Of course Sokovia isn't the real issue, something called Ultron (James Spader) is, that, gasp! Iron Man helped to create. Ultron is everywhere and nowhere at once, he is all seeing, and all knowing, a God pretty much, in the form of special effects. If it wasn't for the purring voice of James Spader behind the Ultron facade, this villain, and this second part of the Avengers saga almost completely underwhelms, which really is a bummer.

Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner in "Avengers: Age of Ultron"

The first movie, "The Avengers", which was released three years ago, was an anomaly. The super hero movie to end all super hero movies. It did the unthinkable; it merged all of our favorites together. It was a funny action movie, a huge super hero film, and a band of brothers adventure all in one. There was someone for everyone. Iron Man made us laugh, Hulk made us feel, Thor made us swoon, Captain America made us patriotic, Hawkeye made us scratch our heads. And don't forget there's the token girl too, Black Widow. This time though, unfortunately, Black Widow is given a romance to distract, with Hulk no less, and damsel in distress attention that is so sad, I actually felt bad for Scarlett Johansson.

Joss Whedon, the writer and director, gives his actors wonderful dialogue that really sparks, more so than the fiery set pieces. He can make almost any character, even aliens and super heros, sound self aware and funny. These super humans become more human as a result. We like them better. The smaller moments, casual conversation, throwaway remarks, and the party scene early in this new film in particular are the best parts. They're the most fun. I'd much rather watch the Avengers being drunk at a party trying to pick up Thor's hammer, than fighting a computer in some desolate African city. It's all about the explosion, the noise, the next big sequence. Each frame of this film is filled to the brim with spectacle that I was overwhelmed, the images blurred together into one mass of movement. It was numbing, your senses are deadened. Technically, it's expert, you probably won't see more expensive effects in film this year. But in the end, the issue with "Avengers: Age of Ultron" is that I don't know why I should care about the death and destruction, what's at stake, the consequences, when the filmmakers don't seem to either. The stories and films coming out of Marvel studios are going to be with us for along while, so why complain, especially when we paid to see them in the first place, ensuring that more will come.

While I was in the relatively empty theater I kept thinking about how refreshing the first "Iron Man" was when it came out in 2008. Robert Downey Jr. brought humor and style into a genre that seemed stale, about to die. It turns out that "Iron Man" was the little seed that sprouted up, continuing to grow and grow, now a giant oak. In 2015, we are all in the midst of a giant forest of oak trees whether we like it or not. It's all the same, in every direction, and frankly, I'm lost, eager to find my way out.

Nightingale

There are many moments in the new film "Nightingale", that premiered last Friday night on HBO, where we see Peter Snowden (David Oyelowo) looking into the mirror. This mirror has three parts, sits upright, opened up, on the kitchen table in his mother's house. The parts fold into one another, showing different angles, a triptych of self reflection. Peter looks at himself in the mirror and talks, he lectures, and most menacingly, he stares. He asks questions and continues to answer them himself. We aren't sure what he sees when he's looking into them, but almost as soon as "Nightingale" begins we know we are watching someone disturbed.

Something terrible happened in that house, and we know what it is, we're watching its aftermath. Or is it just the beginning? Peter killed his mother. He snapped. There's blood smudged on his glasses, the TV is static in the background, the house emanates ruin. Johnny Mathis plays on loop in the background. No one else is around it seems and no one is coming. It's just Peter, and it's just Peter for the entire duration of this 82 minute movie.

David Oyelowo in "Nightingale" 

In "Nightingale", Peter Snowden is lonely and we quickly learn, repressed. He's confused. He eats fruity pebbles in a rainbow colored robe while lying to his sister about the whereabouts of his mother. He goes over a conversation again and again, obsessively, with various iterations before attempting to call an old friend he was in the army with. Turns out it's not just an old friend, but an unrequited love, one sided of course. He's a recluse, shutting blinds, rushing out to get the mail and scurrying back in, answering calls only to divert messages from his dead mother.

Watching a person mentally come undone with violent repercussions no less, can be an exploitive and even cheap way of exploring the anguish of a character's inner life. It's too easy to just make someone a nut job for dramatic purposes. But when you have an actor as compelling and committed as David Oyelowo, most doubt usually subsides. Oyelowo, who starred as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in "Selma" earlier this year, elevates "Nightingale" beyond it's premise and gives a performance I'm not sure the writer, Frederick Mensch, or even the director, Elliott Lester expected they could get. At once frightening, then contemplative, then manic, then charismatic, then quick witted, Snowden the character never stops changing, and Oyelowo, using his remarkable voice, is up to the scripts many shifts in tone, in point of view, in direction.

The novelty of watching a story with one character, in one location, remarkably doesn't begin to wear thin. A large part of that probably has to do with Oyelowo's performance, and the film's surprisingly brief running time. But as the story progresses, and our understanding of the character grows and shifts, the film starts to build in suspense. Even after Peter has shut the real world out, living through his own mind's delusions, trying to forget the people that make it up, it finds a way to remember him. The invisible and silent characters who existed solely on the other ends of the telephone begin to close in on Peter; neighbors and family calling too much about his mother, his old friend's wife asking too many questions. An inevitable, tragic conclusion must come to a head. But the film takes a surprising turn in its final minutes, that I'm not sure entirely worked. It becomes a lecture. This is what I know, Snowden is a killer. He is alone. He is sick. But in the end, he is also a human being.