San Diego Reader December 15, 2016 59
71 San Diego Reader December 18, 2014
expressionistically lit studio backlots successful, and the ending decidedly downbeat. And there’s this five-and-a- half-minute long take that starts in search of a parked car and ends with a slow and deliberate pan over to the Hollywood Hills at twilight time that found me struggling to pick my jaw up from off the floor. Ditto a lovely romantic walking tour of the Warner Bros. lot. But, and it’s a big but, any number of the movie musicals that director Damien Chazelle references (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, The Band Wagon, It’s Always Fair Weather, etc.) have more depth of characterization than either Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone’s comparative stick figures are assigned. But enough grouching. This is one crowd-pleaser worth getting behind. 2016 — S.M.★★★ (IN WIDE RELEASE)
Loving — This week’s dollop of Oscar- bait is a well intentioned account of the marriage and subsequent incarceration of an interracial couple in 1958 that led to the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn state laws prohibiting mixed marriage. With the fact-based outcome predetermined, it’s up to the storyteller to make the journey through the details as narratively compelling as possible. Directors make movies, not issues, and while Jeff Nichols (Take Shelter, Mud) has a proven track record of summoning southern atmospherics, when it was over, my watch said two hours and my butt screamed Gone With the Wind. A pair of solemn, unostentatious performances by Ruth Negga and Joel Edgerton help to raise the bar just slightly higher than the one set by a benignly routine Lifetime movie. And in case you don’t know how to react, there’s an overbearing score by David Wingo to telegraph every smile and tear. With Nick Kroll and Will Dalton 2016. — S.M.★ (LA PALOMA; AMC LA JOLLA; LANDMARK HILLCREST; REGAL SAN MARCOS)
Manchester by the Sea — Some films you watch to escape from the frequently painful and/or difficult reality of life. Pacific Rim, perhaps. Some films you watch to impose a satisfactory narrative onto the seemingly random chaos of life. Casablanca, maybe. And some films you watch to enter more deeply into life — the difficulty, the chaos, all of it. Writer- director Kenneth Lonergan’s masterful Manchester by the Sea, which tells the story of a penitent exile who is asked to give up both his penance and his exile, falls into the third category. And it does so without a hint of bravado or flourish, except perhaps for a single devastating
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scene between the exile (Casey Affleck) and his ex-wife (Michelle Williams). But even there, everything is earned and nothing is wasted in service to anything beyond the characters themselves. Williams’ is only one of the outstanding performances surrounding Affleck; Lucas Hedges also merits mention for his portrayal of a teenager who remains recognizably human — and what’s more, recognizably himself — in the midst of adolescent grief. But it’s Affleck’s movie to quietly own as layer upon layer of Irish impassivity is stripped away from his visage until the unspeakable can be spoken. (It’s tempting to add, “Until the marble angel standing atop a tombstone is once more a man,” but that’s precisely the
sort of high-flown hooey that Lonergan avoids.) 2016. — M.L.★★★★ (IN WIDE RELEASE)
A Man Called Ove — What is a cynic other than a failed romantic? Director Hannes Holm adapts Fredrik Backman’s popular German novel about a know-it-all curmudgeon (Rolf Lassgård) who, after being let go from 43 years on the job, turns his attention to the project of making the lives of his fellow condo association members into a living hell. Flashbacks — Ove is played by two different actors in the early stages of his life — show us how the jagoff earned his stripes. It starts well, but the deadpan humor quickly runs out of gas.
What would have worked in a 20-minute short is stretched thin by a running gag involving several comedically botched suicide attempts (Ove returns the frayed rope to the store he purchased it from), a syrupy romance with his ill-fated wife (Ida Engvoll), and a resolution that takes a lethal turn for the sentimental. All this makes it difficult to muster much enthusiasm. 2015. — S.M.★★ (LA PALOMA)
Moonlight — Best suited for those who found brilliance in Beasts of the Southern Wild, here comes a hackneyed tale of a young black man’s passage from childhood to maturity in a tough Miami neighborhood. Bullying, poverty, closeted
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sexuality, drug abuse, and racial strife combine to form an overworked agenda of cultural woes that’s more concerned with rubber-stamping issues than telling an original story. Suffocating close-ups, rocking-chair camerawork, and a few unnecessary 360-degree pans lifted from the Christopher Nolan playbook do little to elevate the visual storytelling, while the script — based on the life of playwright Tarell McCraney — is content to churn out one cliché after another. The three actors who share the lead are all first-rate, while Mahershala Ali actually manages to breathe new life into the character of a good-natured drug dealer. That’s more than can be said of Naomie Harris’s standard- issue hysterical crack mom. Here’s just what liberal-minded, visually challenged Academy voters need to make up for last year’s lily-white ceremony. I predict Oscars all around. Written and directed by Barry Jenkins. 2016. — S.M.★ (ARCLIGHT LA JOLLA; LANDMARK HILLCREST; LA PALOMA)
Office Christmas Party — It’s awards season, and the duo responsible for Blades of Glory and The Switch, virtuoso hacks Josh Gordon and Will Speck, earn a nomination for one the year’s gloomiest comedies. Box office anathema Jennifer Aniston stars as a CEO threatening to shutter her sybaritic little brother’s (T.J. Miller) failing branch office. By way of retaliation, he decides to reward his employees with a depraved holiday blowout. If imitation is indeed the sincerest form of failure, then the unintoxicating dope jokes, eeny-meeny- miney-moe framework, and de rigueur closeup cameo by Harry P. Ness may lead one to believe that Judd Apatow might very well be a genius. Olivia Munn photographs well, Kate McKinnon puts an uptight Republican spin on her Hillary Clinton impersonation, and Jason Bateman’s mugging quickly fades into the background. Even a third act demolition derby tribute to The Blues Brothers can’t revitalize this stiff. As childish and unimaginative as its oversimplified title, were there still video stores, the DVD would no doubt be shelved in the generics aisle. 2016. — S.M. ● (IN WIDE RELEASE)
Star Wars: Rogue One — Gareth Edwards directs Felicity Jones in the story of just exactly how the rebellion got ahold of those Death Star plans. Review forthcoming at
sandiegoreader.com. 2016 (IN WIDE RELEASE)
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