SIFF Advance: THEATER CAMP

Directing: B+
Acting: B+
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B
Editing: B+

Theater Camp seems to pick up where Christopher Guest left off—and, I mean, where he left off with his last great movie, A Mighty Wind, in 2003. His 2006 film For Your Consideration aside, Guest hasn’t been in top form in a solid twenty years. In that wake, countless imitators have come and gone.

Somewhat astonishingly, first-time feature co-directors Molly Gordon and Nick Lieberman have come along with a film worthy of the comparison. It also fantastically updates the charming but flawed precepts of the film Camp, which was also released in 2003, was also about a theater camp, and incidentally costarred a then-18-year-old Anna Kendrick.

Who knows which of the many, incredibly talented children in Theater Camp will similarly become stars in the near future? The cast this time is rightfully much more diverse, right down to the straight theater kid who has two dads. And the characters this time are not saddled with a plot about backstabbing competitiveness. The central conflict here has very little to do with interpersonal conflict, as the characters—teachers and kids alike—exist in a sort of utopia of sorts, one by all accounts very similar to those remembered by drama kids today. Instead, Theater Camp is much more about finding success through making the best of very limited resources.

The more I think about this movie, the more fond of it I become. There’s something about the storytelling, that is sweet without being sticky, heartwarming without being overly sentimental. It’s not just that these varyingly eccentric kids exist in a world that allows them to be their whole, authentic selves. It’s that, in the world of this movie, there isn’t even any particular novelty in that. It’s just what these kids—and their teachers—know.

And none of this is to say that Theater Camp doesn’t lean into the humor of “theater types.” It very much does so, but it’s always with a loving humor, a clear fondness for its subjects. One of my favorite things is how this extends to the camp founder’s grown son, Troy (Jimmy Tatro, who could easily pass for Ike Barinholtz’s younger brother), one of two key straight male characters. When his mother, Joan (Amy Sedaris, criminally underused) falls into a coma, Troy must step in and take on her duties. Even with Troy characterized as a “bro” type vlogger who comes in largely clueless, he is never characterized as the enemy—which, honestly, is refreshing. Instead, he’s merely a fish out of water, trying to find his bearings, stumbling on his way toward attempts to keep the camp afloat. He is met with some resistance, but in a way that makes us feel for him.

And that is perhaps the most delightful part of Theater Camp: it has a huge, ensemble cast of characters who are wildly different from each other, the one key thing they have in common being a love of theater. And every single one of them is likable—even, somehow, the director of the neighboring camp who is keen on taking over theirs.

The cast also prominently features Ben Platt, and co-director Molly Gordon, as teachers at the camp who play a gay man and his straight-woman best friend who attended this same camp as kids, and now compose an original play every year. This year their play is about the life of the play’s founder, which cleverly winds up touching Troy in subtly inventive ways.

Through this play-within-a-movie, we get a film that itself is technically not a musical, and yet we are treated to plenty of incredibly catchy, original musical numbers. If musicals aren’t your thing, then Theater Camp won’t be or you. But if you have any kind of appreciation for theater at all, and particularly the lovably odd personalities that inhabit that world, then you will be utterly charmed by this film.

You’ll be delighted by everyone in this movie. End of discussion!

Overall: B+

SIFF Advance: BEING MARY TYLER MOORE

Directing: B
Writing: B
Cinematography: B
Editing: B

I should have done more research on Being Mary Tyler Moore beforehand. This is premiering on HBO a week from today. Why bother wasting a SIFF ticket on it?

I was hardly the only person to do so. I saw this at the Uptown Theater and, of the four SIFF films I have seen thus far, this had by far the largest crowd—more people in this audience than at even any regular-release film I’ve seen since probably last summer. This is a testament to the enduring legacy of Mary Tyler Moore, I suppose.

The woman was an icon, no doubt about it—and in a way that transcended the gross overuse of that word. The irony is that Mary Tyler Moore’s characters, particularly Laura Petrie and Mary Richards, were more interesting than she was. It may be fair to say that the documentary Being Mary Tyler Moore is the definitive record of Moore’s entire life, but far more is to be gained by watching The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961-1966) or The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970-1977), both of which hold up shockingly well. The latter remains more forward thinking than about three quarters of any network series on today.

It would seem that Mary Tyler Moore, more than anything, was simply a vessel for a persona. This film suggests the real her is a lot closer to Beth Jarrett, the cold, grieving mother in Ordinary People (1980) for which Moore was nominated for an Academy Award. And Moore did endure far more than her fair share of tragedy, with a sister who died at age 21 from an overdose; a son who died at age 24 from a gun accident (amazingly, only a month after the release of Ordinary People), and a brother who died of kidney cancer at age 47.

On the upside, her third marriage was apparently the charm, with a man 18 years younger than her and who stayed with her 34 years, until her own death at the age of 80 in 2017.

That was six years ago. Why we’re getting this documentary now, as opposed to five years ago, is unclear. Except: this woman’s career and legacy remains as relevant as it ever was. Even all the way back during the Dick Van Dyke Show, Moore ironically played a housewife while pushing boundaries for American women: she was the first woman to wear pants on television, and was herself a working wife and mother offscreen. Nothing, of course, could possibly match the legacy of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, which depicted a single woman, totally fulfilled by her personal and professional life, content to find and land a man if she can but comfortable with the outcome if doesn’t. This show aired in the era of Roe v. Wade, a bittersweet memory now if there ever was one.

And I certainly don’t mean to suggest that Mary Tyler Moore herself is uninteresting. She led a life worth examining. It’s just that she herself can never stack up to the characters she played, which is what causes an unfortunately muted effect to this film about her. Of course she was much more than Laura Petrie or Mary Richards: she had ups and downs on both Broadway and in film. She was later diagnosed with diabetes. But are any of these things as interesting as the enduringly groundbreaking TV shows she was an integral part of?

Being Mary Tyler Moore is a pretty standard documentary, about a deeply talented but slightly indecipherable woman, who played a couple of characters who will be (and already have been) remembered for generations. If you’re just a casual fan, then you could take or leave this film. If you really love her, you’ll like the movie. It might be of more interest to know, however, that The Dick Van Dyke Show is now streaming on Peacock and The Mary Tyler Moore Show is streaming on Prime Video.

She was just a bit more than what you saw onscreen.

Overall: B

SIFF Advance: HIDDEN MASTER: THE LEGACY OF GEORGE PLATT LYNES

Directing: A-
Writing: A-
Cinematography: B+
Editing: A-

Who the hell is George Platt Lynes? I had no idea, myself, until seeing this documentary film about him listed in this year’s Seattle International Film Festival schedule. It turns out, he was an artist of photography, in his prime in the 1920s and 1930s, who was by all intents and purposes openly gay. More to the point, he was incredibly talented, his work was infused with male sexuality, and that combination is likely the biggest reason his vast and stunning body of work has gone unnoticed for decades.

Anyone who knows anything about the cross section of art history and gay history has heard of Robert Mapplethorpe—who was clearly influenced by George Platt Lynes. Lynes pre-dates even Mapplethorpe by a good five decades.

After seeing Hidden Master, I am dying to see a major exhibition of Lynes’s work. But, as director and co-writer Sam Shahid tells us, no American museum will touch this body of work. Several art historians and curators are interviewed for this film, and Shahid briefly includes some commentary on the “double standard” of art exhibition that plasters the naked female form all over the place, even when sexually evocative—sometimes even provocative—and yet won’t do the same for the naked male form, which by contrast threatens people. There appears to have been multiple books published about him and his work, however, and I just placed a hold on the single one of them apparently carried by the Seattle Public Library.

That book was published in 1994 and evidently focuses on the body of work Lynes left to the Kinsey Institute—one of many fascinating things about George being that he both became good friends with famed sexologist Alfred Kinsey, and was an active participant in his research. Hidden Master, the movie, is a far more contemporary look at Lynes’s life and work, having been finished nearly three decades later.

What’s more, this film, ten years in the making, features interviews with multiple people who knew Lynes personally. In all but one case, the interview subjects passed away shortly after the interview, giving the film a bit of an “under the wire” quality. We’re talking about a photographer who was himself a stunningly beautiful young man a full century ago, after all. Even the interview subjects who knew him would have had to have been young even compared to Lynes when they knew each other—in the forties, or perhaps the early fifties. George Platt Lynes dyed of lung cancer in 1955, at the fairly young age of 47.

The crucial element of Hidden Master, though, is the countless examples of his work featured: a seemingly endless slide show of gorgeously rendered, black and white photos of male nudes, no less beautiful for how unsubtle they often are. The lighting of his subjects is incredible, and the themes of sexual desire are stunning, particularly for the time—people don’t know today how early on there was precedent for art like this, and that’s what makes this film so crucial. I could not stop thinking, as I saw example after example of Lynes’s photography, that I could have easily believed this work had been done today. God knows I never would have assumed these photos were taken between the twenties and the forties, without them being contextualized for me.

A fair bit is made of Lynes’s “physical snobbery,” in that he never chose average looking people as his subjects. His nudes were nearly all young men, and without exception the men were beautiful. Lynes also worked as a fashion photographer, his female subjects also exclusively beautiful. In apparently one exclusive case, he even had a sexual relationship with one of his women subjects. There are nude photos of her as well.

It should be noted, not all of his photos were sexual, although he seemed to have an appreciation for the naked human form whether it was sexualized or not. He even took nude photos of his brother, who was straight, and helped find more models culled from his college friends.

Which is to say, in just about every way you can imagine, George Platt Lynes was so far ahead of his time it’s mind boggling. This was a man fully self-possessed, comfortable in his own skin, casually defiant in his sexuality—all a full hundred years ago. He was himself so beautiful he fit right in with his subjects. He pushed boundaries in more ways than with his sexuality, also sensual, nude photos of Black and White men together. From today’s vantage point, there is an element of privilege there that both cannot be denied and which was about a century away from being even a hint of a part of anyone’s vocabulary. It’s even acknowledged in this film that the racial provocativeness has an element of exploitation to it.

Although not a lot of time is spent on it, there is some acknowledgement in Hidden Master that Lynes was an imperfect man, sometimes a little manipulative, particularly in sexual situations. To me, these details are classic elements of people whose beauty allows to get away with what others can’t. Somewhat on the flip side of this, Lynes was also the third partner in what we now would call a polyamorous relationship, and which itself lasted decades. Even by mainstream queer standards this is incredibly forward-thinking. There is no indication Lynes thought in these terms at all, however. He was only ever just completely and utterly himself.

I do appreciate the sexual frankness of Hidden Master, clearly a positive byproduct of having a queer story told by queer people. Given the nature of virtually all of Lynes’s male nudes, it would make no sense to shy away from it. It turns out Lynes did also take a few sexually explicit photos, just a couple of which do we see, during a brief discussion of the fine line between “art” and pornography, and how it gets applied differently between men and women. In any case, I could not find any indication that Hidden Master has received an MPA rating at all, but this film is definitely not for children.

I feel a deep, abiding appreciation for this film—not just its construction, but its very existence. It’s full of people who lament the lack of Lynes’s presence in any serious look at art history, and the film makes a very strong case for this man to get the kind of appreciation he has long been denied. His personal life at his particular time in history is deeply fascinating in its own right, but nothing comes even close to the vitality of the photography work itself. Whether or not you see this movie, do yourself a favor and just look him up. I am eager to learn more just because of this film.

Both erotically charged and a multi-level challenge to the viewer: George Platt Lynes is worth your time.

Overall: A-

BLACKBERRY

Directing: A
Acting: A-
Writing: A
Cinematography: B
Editing: A

It’s not the story, it’s how it’s told. It’s good to remember that if you hear that there is a movie about the rise and fall of the first mass-market mobile device, the BlackBerry. Because this film, directed, co-written and co-starring Matt Johnson, is stunningly propulsive, edge-of-your-seat stuff. And it’s about a bunch of tech nerds who made it big, then came crashing down. Well, except the ones who got out at the company’s peak, such as Doug Fregin—who Johnson plays—who we are informed during end title cards is currently “secretly one of the richest people in the world.” Secretly? What does that mean? How do we know?

Whatever, it’s easy to trust that it’s true, considering he left BlackBerry in 2007. As depicted in BlackBerry the movie, the move was in response to longtime friend and Waterloo, Ontario-based Research In Motion cofounder Mike Lazaridis, and his single-minded drive to succeed at the expense of their friendship. Presumably the dynamics of their relationship are oversimplified, but as depicted here, it’s almost stunning what great drama it makes. That is, along with everything else we see onscreen.

It’s tempting to put BlackBerry in the same league with the revered 2010 David Fincher film The Social Network. Only time will tell if BlackBerry enjoys the same kind of enduring appreciation, and given the drastically different pop culture landscape today, I fear that it won’t. This movie may be doomed to be criminally under-seen forever. It opened last weekend at #14 at the box office. That was only on 449 screens, though, so where does it rank by per-screen averages? #14. Crap!

I assure you, this film deserves your eyeballs. Nearly everything about its construction is inspired, including the casting—particularly Jay Baruchel as Lazaridis, the severely introverted genius who designed the devices. This guy previously known from The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (2010) now has a peculiar cut of solid gray hair that makes him virtually unrecognizable. Nearly everyone in this film is unrecognizable, though, which also works very much in its favor. The most famous face here is that of Carey Elwes, in the surprisingly small part of former Palm Inc. CEO Carl Yankowski, intent on a hostile takeover of BlackBerry.

The ease with which the actors disappear into their parts, though, allows the movie itself to shine as an amazingly well-constructed whole. It is nearly impossible to tell a story that spans so many years—in this case, about fifteen—with such precision. Glenn Howerton plays “co-CEO” of BlackBerry Jim Balsillie as a tightly wound prick, but an incredibly effective one. His sharklike business instincts combined with Lazaridis’s deceptively quiet genius turn out to be quite the effective combination.

BlackBerry is adapted from a book, by Jacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff, itself reportedly an exhilarating read. Even without having read the book, I can tell you this is an exceptional adaptation, because it’s a legitimately exhilarating watch. It likely helps that McNish co-wrote the script, along with Matt Johnson and Matthew Miller. The Social Network may have been a skewering of the zeitgeist, particularly at the beginning of the last decade, but BlackBerry examines both the quick rise of the mobile device that preceded the iPhone, and the mistakes made in attempting to compete with it. In this case, it’s a product that quickly dominated the market (“the crackberry”) and then suffered an even quicker fall.

Matt Johnson and his co-writers pack plenty more into this tightly polished story, which clocks in at an impressively solid two hours—arguably more than anything else, this film deserves an Academy Award nomination for Curt Lobb’s editing. There’s not a single wasted or dull moment in this movie. I left the theater fired up to tell others to see it, which is a rare thing indeed.

The higher they fly, the harder they fall . . . especially when they aren’t paying attention,

Overall: A-

SIFF Advance: AND THE KING SAID, WHAT A FANTASTIC MACHINE

Directing: B
Writing: B-
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B+

And the King Said, What a Fantastic Machine is ostensibly a critical, yet beautiful, look at the history of the camera: from still photographs to moving pictures, from an hours-long process to capture one image to a world rife with photographic immersion. We’re meant to learn, I suppose, how the camera over time has influenced and distorted how we see what is in front of our very eyes.

And is is undeniably, deeply fascinating, especially for a film without any overt narrative beyond the very passage of time, from the first-ever photograph, taken in France in 1826, to the mass-media digital world we live in today. I just wish this film had a little more in the way of insight.

And the King Said is of a certain type of documentary film, assembled as a collage meant to convey the “big picture”—no pun intended—on a particular concept, without intercutting to talking heads, or anyone attempting to contextualize for us. This films jumps far back and forth through time, taking select images, or clips from YouTube or TikTok, and then jumping back to certain breakthroughs like the series of photographs proving horses have moments of all four hooves above the ground when they run, or the famous film of a train that was the first motion picture shown to large audiences.

If there’s any problem with And the King Said, it’s that it attempts to convey far too much in far too little time—all of 88 minutes, to be exact, to cover nearly two hundred years of history. And although the instinct on the part of co-directors Axel Danielson and Maximilien Van Aertryck to tilt heavily toward coverage of the explosion of digital photography in the 21st century makes sense, the resulting effect is a series of random images that hardly feels like any random deep dive into Flickr or YouTube or Instagram. The film notes how many millions of photos are published every minute, which only makes one wonder how they chose all the images they include in this particular edit. There’s a million other edits that could have had exactly the same effect, and if you think too much about that, it dilutes whatever meaning this film is supposed to have.

I would have liked to see more time spent on watershed moments in the advancement of photography before the 21st century, and how those jumps in technological evolution insidiously infected the public consciousness. The paradigm-shifting advancement of television, for example, gets all but a few minutes of time, even though had a movie of exactly this sort been made in, say, 1995, it likely would have spent most of its time on that.

To be fair, And the King Said has some pretty sobering moments. There’s the award-winning photograph of a dead little girl in the wake of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, juxtaposed with a photo of the line of photojournalists all squatting to take her picture. (It could be argued it’s the latter shot that really deserves an award.) There’s the clip of a chimpanzee scrolling through Instagram exactly the same way any of us do, which, for me at least, caused some real cognitive dissonance.

And I have to admit, this film had me thinking about whether I should improve my life by deleting all of my social media. The science used in these apps’ algorithms dates back further than you think, when research was done decades ago to find out what interested people most, and content producers bought the data. Of course, I am far too addicted to TikTok or even online streaming platforms like HBO Max to have any hope of escaping their clutches. And the King Said, What a Fantastic Machine offers a window into how we got here, where a company like Netflix can use simple computing to know our interests better than we know them ourselves.

That said, if that is the point of And the King Said, maybe the filmmakers should have been more explicit about that. I went in expecting a history of the camera and its effects on society—and there is some of that; one fascinating sequence shows people’s brains being broken by a demonstration of how cameras work, which is the exact same way our eyesight works, and is both incredibly simple and something I am unable to explain.

I guess you could call this film more of a meditation. If it had a mantra, though, it would be connected far more to very recent years, when we get viral videos of a woman doing sexy poses with a plush hamburger, or a group of amateur idiots get death-defying shots of a young woman being hung over the side of a skyscraper. Don’t even get me started on the guy who is driven crazy by viewers of his constant livestream who are going out of their way to cause chaos in his life, but for some reason he continues to livestream, including a stream of his rant against his viewers. You do have other options, sir.

But, maybe that’s the point: it’s easy to say there are options, and quite another to choose any of the other options, in a world optimized for engagement. It would be easy to get into a bit of an existential funk after watching this movie. Personally, I prefer to complain about its lack of narrative focus.

Apparently all photography roads led to this.

Overall: B

SIFF Advance: THE MATTACHINE FAMILY

Directing: B+
Acting: B+
Writing: A-
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B+

Prominently featured in The Mattachine Family, as a narrative symbol, are the Mattachine Steps in the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles, dedicated in 2012 to the Mattachine Society in memory of Harry Hay, who cofounded the gay rights group that preceded the Stonewall Riots by 19 years. In the film, we see a couple of shots of the sign posted by the staircase, both of them too quick to retain its text fully: The Mattachine Steps - Harry Hay founded the Mattachine Society on this hillside on November 11, 1950. Hay died in 2002 at the age of 90; 2012 would have marked his 100th birthday.

As our protagonist, Thomas (Nico Tortorella) and his lesbian best friend (Schitt’s Creek’s Emily Hampshire) are hiking up a hill to these steps, it is pointedly noted that the Mattachine Society advocated for White queer people. At another moment, though, Thomas’s voiceover narration ponders the chosen family of his husband, Oscar (Juan Pablo Di Pace), and their close friends, and how seventy years ago, they would have called themselves a “society.”

Hene the title The Mattachine Family, which is to be taken both figuratively and literally: the plot focuses on Thomas and Oscar’s evolving notions of actually raising a child. They’ve spent a year fostering a child to whom they have become very attached, and now are grieving the loss after the child has been reunited with his mother—pointedly, a mother who is doing well and clearly the right place for the child. The question, then, is whether to move forward with similar efforts that might result in a repeat of the same kinds of heartbreak.

The Mattachine Family is clearly a deeply personal film, largely autobiographical as told by director Andy Vallentine, who co-wrote the script with real-life partner Danny Vallentine. The two are also parents, and all of this makes me a little self-conscious about picking at the film’s contrivances. Such things are arguably part of the point, though: what movie made in Hollywood—independent or otherwise—doesn’t have its contrivances? This one just happens to have not just an organically diverse cast, but actually tells a story heretofore not depicted onscreen. This film may not be a grand masterpiece, but how notable it is still can’t quite be overstated, especially as it breezily normalizes the very kind of family many across the country are now actively working to criminalize.

Fundamentally, The Mattachine Family is about a long-term, committed couple grappling with diverging convictions about whether raising a child is the right decision for them. Instead of the more typical love story about whether two people are right for each other, this one is about how ideas of family planning test the very strength of a long-established relationship.

Watching this film, I was struck by its relative wholesomeness that exists concurrent with frank depictions of gay sexuality. It’s not lost on me that the so-called “frankness” would not necessarily register the same way if this were about a straight couple thinking about adopting a child. The key here is in how the film stands apart, just by virtue of it being a same-sex couple. Mind you, Thomas and Oscar are a long-term, monogamous couple. They’re even married.

There are some, and I don’t necessarily agree with them, who might argue that they represent the heteronormativity of “acceptable” ideas of same-sex relationships. They do have a more, let’s say, “free spirited” close friend (Jake Choi), who cheerfully talks about hopes for a threesome with his date. And it’s not like there is any moral obligation to make Thomas and Oscar more promiscuous just to remove them from notions of heteronormativity—especially if their marriage reflects the same truth of the film’s storytellers.

It’s sort of odd when a film that’s plotted in a fairly formulaic way still feels definitively like progress. The one genuine surprise was the gay father Thomas meets (Hacks’s Carl Clemons-Hopkins), who I really thought was being telegraphed as a potential source of infidelity—and then the story goes in another direction. Side note: that character’s lesbian coparent is played by none other than Heather Matarazzo, of Welcome to the Dollhouse fame, and she’s delightful as a “mommy influencer.”

Which is to say, The Mattachine Family isn’t all heavy moral dilemmas and drama. It has plenty of humor, giving it an overall very welcoming vibe. From start to finish, it invites you in, to feel what its characters are going through, to empathize with and to root for them, and the Valentines’ writing and direction make it easy to do so.

One man’s society is another man’s family.

Overall: B+

JOYLAND

Directing: A-
Acting: A-
Writing: A-
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B+

Joyland is an ironic title, I guess. There’s not much the way of joy in this movie. There are flashes of it, for sure, but always in the face of pressure to suppress it. Maybe director and co-writer Saim Sadiq went in a different direction with the title because Melancholia was taken. Joyland is a very, very different movie, but nevertheless it maintains an almost dreamlike, melancholy tone from start to finish.

Joyland is a notable film for a multitude of reasons, not least of which is its co-lead, Alina Khan, the first transgender actor to be cast in a lead role in a Pakistani film. In certain ways, it takes Pakistan’s evolution to warp speed in comparison to American cinema: this is also a trans character, actually played by a trans actor. They’re doing representation properly right out of the gate.

That’s not to say all the depictions in this film are comfortable. There’s a moment when another character says of Biba—without judgment, mind you—“She’s not a real woman.” But this is the thing: of course she’s a real woman, but these characters don’t have the sophistication of knowledge to understand that. I immediately thought about the need to meet people where they are, when trying to invite them to some greater understanding.

Joyland may just do that, for at least some viewers. It’s an extraordinary achievement in Pakistani cinema, creating a nuanced portrait of family, gender, sexuality, and how all of these things intersect. The central character, Haider (Ali Junejo), is an incredibly meek young man, seemingly satisfied with his domestic duties as his wife Mumtaz (Rasti Farooq) is the breadwinner in their relationship, happily working a job at a salon. Haider and Mumtaz live with Haider’s older brother and his wife; their four daughters; and Haider and his brother’s elderly father—none of whom are especially proud when Haider lands a job at an “erotic dance theater.” He’s actually a completely inexperienced backup dancer, but he lies and says he’s the theater manager. It’s at this theater that he meets Biba, and quickly becomes infatuated with her.

One of the more fascinating things about Joyland is how it doesn’t define Haider’s sexuality in particular, basically depicting a kind of fluidity not often seen even in Western cinema. This is in spite of his offensive misreading and misunderstanding of Biba’s circumstances, not understanding her desire to save up for surgery (“I like you the way you are”), and awkwardly attempting a sexual position Biba has no interest in. With such avenues being explored, one can’t help but wonder how well Joyland played in its home country. The saddest thing, maybe, is that it being a mixed bag is kind of a sign of progress.

Joyland examines more than just Haider’s relationship with Biba. His relationship with his father is predictably fraught, as is that with his brother. Most significantly, his landing of a job results in his wife, Mumtaz, getting pressured to quit her job. She is forced to pick up domestic duties; she eventually gets pregnant; she is quickly miserable. Even as Joyland itself pushes boundaries, it reflects the kinds of enforced gender roles that are impossible to escape without drastic, sometimes fatal action.

Haider and Mumtaz’s relationship is fascinating because, through all of this, it stays surprisingly honest and healthy. That’s not to say that Haider can be open about his captivation by Bibi—but, given the nature of their relationship, in a different culture, they might very well have been able to be.

The characters in Joyland are exquisitely drawn, multidimensional and flawed personalities. Their motivations are often at odds, but easily empathized with. In a way, it’s about all of them accepting their fates. Some of them just take unconventional roads to get there. The fateful ending is ambiguous in its meaning, a sort of somber release. This film’s very existence, by extension, ironically offers a kind of hope its characters cannot find.

An example of Joyland’s indelible imagery.

Overall: A-

BEAU IS AFRAID

Directing: B-
Acting: B+
Writing: C
Cinematography: B+
Editing: C+

I suppose, given enough time. every great director disappoints us eventually. Does Ari Aster getting there with unusual swiftness—on his third feature film, only five years after his first—pull him back out of that designation? I would say no; at least not until we see what he brings us next. Hopefully with a shorter runtime than fully three hours. And less wild self-indulgence.

I’m coming on strong right out of the gate here, and I don’t want to mislead: the biggest thing that makes Beau is Afraid a disappointment is in comparison to Aster’s previous, far superior works, Hereditary (2018) and MidSommar (2019). I didn’t hate Beau Is Afraid, although I cannot think of one person I would recommend it to.

Which is to say, I didn’t love it either. I’d say it’s a mixed bag, except that’s not even the experience of it in the moment. One thing Ari Aster remains consistent with is maintaining a particular tone, and for lack of a better phrase, this film’s tone can best be described as “panic attack.” For three hours, I feel compelled to remind you.

Beau is Afraid is constructed entirely from the title character’s perspective, as played by Joaquin Phoenix (as a pretty dumpy looking, middle-aged man), all of it as though we exist inside his perpetual state of panic. There is no detour into naturalism or realism here; it’s all pretty surreal—from the very start, which must be the first birthing sequence I have ever seen filmed from the perspective of the baby, what he sees, inside the womb and then out. From then on, every single sequence—ultimately going on a journey from surprising place to surprising place, in the broad form of The Odyssey—is a depiction of what Beau fears is going to happen.

Eventually we get clues into where these fears come from, with a few detours into flashback from his childhood, usually in one of multiple states of unconsciousness between locations. Memory is definitively unreliable, which Beau Is Afraid never explicitly states but seems to know, and god knows any vision borne of fear has no root in reality. And this is all we ever see. With that in mind, it should be noted that Beau’s wildly guilt-tripping mother (Patti LuPone) may be less a classic cinema cliché than a simple exaggeration of Beau’s own mind—as is, presumably, absolutely every single thing we see onscreen. But to what degree are audiences considering this?

I kept waiting for a hard cut to reality that never came. Unless: maybe the first scene with Beau at his therapist’s office is the only thing that actually happens? Aster pointedly cuts to the therapist (Stephen McKinley Henderson) picking up his notebook and writing the word guilty. Everything we see after that is a panicked manifestation of that, from the chaotic dangers of city streets outside his derelict apartment building, to the couple (Nathan Lane and Amy Ryan) who hit him with their car and then nurse him back to health in the bedroom of their resentful teenage daughter (Kylie Rogers), to the truly wild turn after the long-delayed consummation of a relationship with a childhood quasi-sweetheart (Parker Posey). These are just a few quick examples; I could go on.

The only real tonal shift that occurs is at the performance of an outdoor play in the forest, where Beau suddenly sees himself on the set, and it turns into a surreal animation sequence, featuring voiceover narration as we see him go on a truncated version of basically this same odyssey, to the point where we watch him grow old. This sequence gets into things like the question of how he could wind up in a tearful reunion with three now-grown sons if he was a virgin . . . and this was where Beau Is Afraid really lost me. And, then: the only hard-cut back to where the sequence began: we’re back with Beau in the audience of the play, standing up, bewildered. Much like I was.

Beau Is Afraid is clearly ripe for analysis, and I suspect I would gain deeper and deeper appreciation for it with multiple viewings. But who the hell wants to do that? This is three straight hours of chaos, fear and stress. And it’s admittedly very well executed, particularly the cinematography (Pawel Pogorzelski, who also shot Aster’s two previous feature films) and the acting. Aster is an auteur who quickly made a name for himself, and the famous faces in smaller parts in this film are clear indicators of how many actors want to work with him: others include Richard Kind and Bill Hader. The only thing that makes rational sense to me is that all these actors read the script and then said, “I can’t make heads or tails of this. But whatever, it’s Ari Aster!”

I must admit, there are many moments in Beau Is Afraid that will stick with me for a while. That’s kind of his thing. On the upside, in contrast to his other films which were more clearly within the horror genre, this one has nothing gruesome in it. Although it does eventually feature a giant monster penis.

Once it finally sunk in that the narrative would never revert to any other separate “reality,” I began to wonder if we were meant to believe everything we saw onscreen was actually happening. That may have been by design. But, then there would be characters supposed to have been dispatched one moment, suddenly appearing again the next. We are clearly never meant to trust the narrative in Beau Is Afraid, which is an expression of one man’s waking nightmare, taking all the twists and turns that happen in the mind of anyone who is just perpetually terrified.

For all I know, Beau Is Afraid will resonate more with people who are clinically diagnosed with anxiety, of various types. Does that mean they would like it? That, I imagine, is an entirely different question.

Everything is as bad as you think or so you think

Overall: B-

ARE YOU THERE, GOD? IT'S ME, MARGARET.

Directing: A-
Acting: A-
Writing: A-
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B+

It’s a bit ironic that Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret is the most “godly” film I have truly enjoyed since I actually considered myself religious, over two and a half decades ago—and yet, it’s also quite pointedly neutral on religion. The trailers before the film advertised so many “inspirational” films about the power of faith, I almost began to get worried. Thankfully, I already knew how critically acclaimed this movie is. Frankly, without knowing that, I’d never have had any interest.

I suppose I might have, had I ever read the widely and long beloved “middle-grade novel” by Judy Blume. But, unlike the vast majority of the people reviewing this movie and comparing it favorably to the source material, I have not. I did not even realize, until seeing this film, how much of a massive pop culture blind spot it really was for me. When the eleven-year-old girls started chanting, “We must! We must! We must increase our bust!”, it brought back memories of my mother playing around, and reciting the same chant when I was a teenager. I never had any idea that it was a reference to a pop culture touchstone originally published in 1970 (when my mother was 18, incidentally).

Which is to say, I can only judge this film on its own merits—the only way any film should be judged, even if it’s been adapted from a beloved novel. I really couldn’t tell you how great an “adaptation” it is. I can only tell you that it stands firmly on its own, that this would be an objectively wonderful film even if it were released exactly as is without the novel ever having been published. The only disappointing thing about it is how it was never made earlier.

It could be argued that nothing is more important in film than tone—not just establishing tone, but nailing it, and maintaining it. This has to be the greatest compliment that can be given to Kelly Fremon Craig (The Edge of Seventeen), the 42-year-old director who also co-wrote the script with the now-85-year-old Judy Blume. The tone here is so singular, in fact, that I struggle with the words to define it. Dramedy with a touch of sweetness, I suppose?

Movies like this typically have an uncomfortable sort of earnestness, or are too treacly. Neither is the case here. It’s not even especially nostalgic in tone, even though it’s clearly pleasing many audiences who are nostalgic about the novel. Its tone is fairly matter-of-fact and straightforward, which effectively makes it feel like how good it really is sneaks up on you.

The decision to set the film in the year in which the book was published (1970) was both crucial and correct. Eleven-year-old Margaret spends so much time speaking directly to God, much of it praying for relatably trivial things like a successful party or for her breasts to finally grow in, her innocence just wouldn’t play as well in the present-day, with kids wildly worldly, informed, sophisticated and even cynical by comparison. Yes, even at age eleven. Margaret’s rites of passage may be universal, but they get greater purity in the telling without the distractions of modern trappings.

Margaret is played by Abby Ryder Fortson, who is 15 now but was 13 during production, playing 11. I want to single her out as a phenomenal youmg performer, but I was particularly stuck by the performances of all the kids in this movie. They’re all so good, it’s a bit stunning. There once was a time when child actors were so reliably stilted on film, it was easy to assume getting great, nuanced acting out of children was impossible. I don’t know what changed, casting tactics or directing styles or what, but those days are clearly over. Bad child acting is actually the exception these days, and Are You There, God? is like the poster film for the new era.

But I haven’t even gotten to what is my favorite thing about this movie, and that is the specificity of a young girl “becoming a woman”—without trauma. Margaret is neither ignorant about nor afraid of getting her period; on the contrary, she’s eager and excited about it. She and her friends chat openly about it. She has a perfectly healthy relationship with her mother (a well-cast Rachel McAdams) with whom she can talk about it all openly: her desire to get a bra, the inevitable moment when her period comes. I can’t speak to the common experiences of women and girls with these things in reality, obviously, but I certainly know how these things are typically depicted onscreen. This film stands apart.

And sure, there’s drama here, but none of it is tied directly to a young girl’s body changing in ways that are predictable yet feel unpredictable. Instead, the drama is about the lessons learned in kindness and friendship—particularly between girls—and, somewhat pointedly, the tensions between different religions.

The religious aspect fascinates me, and I had to look up the plot of the book to see if it was as significant there (it was). Margaret prays frequently to a god she doesn’t know how to categorize—which, clearly, is an intentional theme—because her parents have deliberately chosen not to raise her with any faith. Her parents, her mother having been raised by conservative Christian parents and her father (Benny Safdie) have been raised by Jewish ones, are both so disillusioned with their religion that they think the’ve done Margaret a favor, but it leaves Margaret feeling somewhat aimless.

With the exception of hardline extremists from either side, these explorations of religion make Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret. a movie with unusually broad appeal, particularly in an era with increasingly niche tastes. This is a movie that can easily entertain the pious and the atheist alike. It might work only slightly better than either on the agnostic. There’s a sequence in which Margaret’s estranged grandparents make a surprise visit, and her paternal grandmother (Kathy Bates, an always welcome presence) also shows up, the resulting tension erupting into an argument that is the most contrived moment in the film, a little too neatly resolved.

Not that it has to be anything different, given that this film’s real target audience would be kids around Margaret’s age, or maybe just a tad older, with some experiences behind them to make Margaret more relatable. That is clearly the power of this story, though, and the beauty of stories about adolescents that work this well: it doesn’t matter how old you are, if you can remember being that age, it really hits home.

Spoiler alert! They aren’t just reading it for the articles!

Overall: A-

POLITE SOCIETY

Directing: B
Acting: B+
Writing: B-
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B+

If you’re looking for an uber-specific niche interest in your moviegoing entertainment, look no further than Polite Society, which fuses Bollywood with martial arts as performed by Brits of South Asian descent. It’s west-meets-east-meets-further-east-meets-west again.

And I had a great time. I suppose I should also be clear: this movie is cheesy as hell, to a degree that I made a conscious decision to look past. Sometimes, it’s downright cartoonish.

This is clearly intentional on the part of writer-director Nida Manzoor, in a feature film debut she isn’t taking any more seriously than she wants us to. Don’t get me wrong—she also plainly wanted to do a good job. But, the job she had at hand was farcical, and for the most part it succeeds on that front. The performances are winning; the action and choreography are delightful. I just would have liked the plotting to be a bit more clever.

At least there is believable love and affection between sisters Ria (Priya Kansara) and Lena (Ritu Arya), who both not only have unusually creative dreams for themselves, but they also have parents who indulge them far more than any of their parents’ peers do their own children. Ria is the youngest, still in high school, making YouTube videos of the moves she learns in martial arts class as she dreams of becoming a stuntwoman. Lena, the eldest, has dropped out of high school because she’s convinced herself she isn’t talented enough.

With Lena’s life adrift and without direction, she gets easily lured into a quasi-arranged marriage with handsome Salim (Akshay Khanna), who has an uncomfortably intimate relationship with his cartoonishly villainous mother, Raheela (Nimra Bucha). Much of Polite Society is spent with Ria plotting to break up this engagement between Salim and her sister, in increasingly ridiculous ways—including a sequence in which not only Ria, but one of her two schoolmates infiltrates Salim’s gym dressed as a man. (In one memorable shot, we see a bunch of naked butts in a locker room.)

This is real “Looney Tunes” stuff, which is where Polite Society slightly stumbles, as it relies on cheesy physical gags as opposed to wit. What makes it worth giving into the utter silliness, however, is when Nida Manzoor kicks it up a notch with at least one choreographed wedding dance lip syncing to a Bollywood song (where Ria found the time to rehearse with several backup dancers is unclear), and multiple sequences with martial arts choreography usually reserved for straight up action movies, but here featuring women in beautifully colorful saris. Seeing all these martial arts moves combined with flowing scarves and swirling dresses is a memorably charming touch.

Ria’s consistent practice in her martial arts class provides a plausible explanation for her skill—as well as her struggles, particularly with a spin kick—or, more accurately, “Chekov’s spin kick,” which we see her fail at several times early on. Lena proves to be equally competent at fighting, though, and we see less of anything to explain that. And of course, through most of the film, Ria is outmatched by Raheela, but Raheela is such a cartoon villain that having her be great at everything—until she ultimately gets bested—is practically mandatory.

I guess you could say: I wanted to feel the vibe with Polite Society more than I really did, at least on average. There’s some potential there that doesn’t quite get met. I’m always down with silliness, but I like it better when married with cleverness, which this film has a bit of, but it skirts the line between cleverness and cheesy tropes a bit too much of the time.

It wouldn’t be nearly as good as it still manages to be without the actors, though. It’s fun to watch Nimra Bucha chew up the scenery, and Priya Kansara and Ritu Arya have great chemistry as sisters. Best of all—and this remains an important point, something that makes Polite Society stand out in the best way—this is a movie about women, about sisterhood, directed, written, and shot by women. There are also men in key crew roles (most notably editor Robbie Morrison), but many of the key roles behind the scenes are filled by women, and nearly all the roles onscreen are women. The only real exceptions are Ria’s father, who is only in a few scenes; and Salim, who is given far less depth as a character than any of the many women surrounding him.

Which is to say, there’s a lot to delight in what Polite Society has to offer. It’s also largely mindless, yet well executed fun. Which people of all genders have the right to do! Not everything has to be a masterpiece; in fact, most things don’t. And this one is certainly unique, which is the greatest thing it has going for it.

Sisters are kicking it for themselves.

Overall: B