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The trials of youth, up there on the screen
Youngsters dominate this week’s new movie releases, including Graduation and The Circle
The Circle: Not even Tom Hanks can sport a beard and still be a movie good guy. Only Thor, kids. Only Thor.
Uh-oh. You’ve got America’s Most Beloved Actor (TM) Tom Hanks plus Emma Watson, the star of 2017’s biggest hit (Beauty and the Beast), in a techno-thriller designed to push everyone’s buttons about the companies whose bread and butter is our personal data, and you don’t screen it for critics? That’s more ominous than a notification from Facebook about its exciting new ways to improve the way you live online.
Movie
Circle
The trailer for <em>The Circle</em> jerked audiences in the direction of a paranoid thriller of universal proportion, but all director James Ponsoldt (<em>Smashed, The Spectacular Now</em>) could make good on was a wormhole of narcissism down which he could make his latest film spiral. Mae (Emma Watson) won the lottery the day she landed a job at a Google-<em>ish</em> tech giant cloaked in secrecy and headed up by Eamon Bailey (Tom Hanks). And in no time, she attracts worldwide attention by agreeing to wear a camera 24/7. It’s rare when Hanks tanks; scenes of his charismatic CEO riding herd over weekly staff meetings pack all the intimate spontaneity generally associated with an Herbalife seminar. Is he hosting a reality series or heading up the most powerful corporation on the planet? If we’re supposed to assume they’re one and the same, Ponsoldt and co-screenwriter John Boyega do a lousy job of connecting the dots. With: Patton Oswalt, trying for Don Rickles in <em>Casino</em>.
The early critical response seems to indicate that the studio was right in thinking it had a stinker on its hands. But Scott Marks isn’t one to take an aggregator’s word for things. He’s taking in The Circle even as I write this and will render judgment ASAP.
Movie
Graduation (Bacalaureat) **
Writer-director Cristian Mungiu continues his expert evisceration of his native Romania, and by extension, this whole rotten world and the people who make it that way, even as they convince themselves otherwise. Here, the remarkably sympathetic villain is a father (Adrian Titieni) who just wants a better life for his beloved daughter — and as he sees it, “better” means “somewhere besides Romania.” Somewhere more civilized, where merit is more important than connections, where people can afford the luxury of moral absolutes, and where the doomed struggle to change society at large doesn’t wind up destroying society at home. Somewhere like Cambridge, where she can go if she manages to ace her exams — or even if she just appears to ace her exams. Mungiu’s surgical precision is on full display in his exploration of the back-scratcher’s pathology and its attendant complications, and he’s an old hand at establishing a dread-heavy mood. But the brute force of 2012’s masterful Beyond the Hills is here moderated by the discovery of vital forces amid the morbidity, moments hinting at hope and healing. A measure of justice amid the casual corruption, a moment of humility amid the self-satisfaction. It’s a thrilling development, sadly muted by a story made up mostly of static conversations — in police stations, in hospitals, in offices, in kitchens, in bedrooms, in cars, et cetera.
Still, even if she’s working for a company whose secret slogan is probably Be More Evil, at least young Emma has made it out of high school and into the professional world. The poor slobs of My Entire High School Sinking into the Sea can’t say as much, what with their high school sinking into the sea and all. And neither can the Bright Young Thing at the heart of Graduation — though that situation is a good deal more complicated, nuanced, and heartbreaking. What else could you expect from Cristian Mungiu? (I’ll tell you what I thought I could expect: a little less static conversation. At least his Beyond the Hills had a botched exorcism. But it’s still a masterpiece of thought and mood.)
(The privileged poppet of How to Be a Latin Lover, meanwhile, will never have to worry about such things. So he’s free to discover the special sadness that attends such people. Not sure we’ll get around to reviewing that one, alas.)
Speaking of Bright Young Things, Scott circled around and took a gander at Gifted, a movie about a dad trying to provide the virtues of an ordinary life for his extraordinary daughter. Go Dad! Love beats genius every time in the pursuit of happiness.
And speaking of special sadness, the documentary Finding Oscar tells the story of a boy who survives the massacre of his village. Some young-people problems are blunter and bloodier than others.
Here's something you might be interested in.
The trials of youth, up there on the screen
Youngsters dominate this week’s new movie releases, including Graduation and The Circle
The trials of youth, up there on the screen
Youngsters dominate this week’s new movie releases, including Graduation and The Circle
The Circle: Not even Tom Hanks can sport a beard and still be a movie good guy. Only Thor, kids. Only Thor.
Uh-oh. You’ve got America’s Most Beloved Actor (TM) Tom Hanks plus Emma Watson, the star of 2017’s biggest hit (Beauty and the Beast), in a techno-thriller designed to push everyone’s buttons about the companies whose bread and butter is our personal data, and you don’t screen it for critics? That’s more ominous than a notification from Facebook about its exciting new ways to improve the way you live online.
Movie
Circle
The trailer for <em>The Circle</em> jerked audiences in the direction of a paranoid thriller of universal proportion, but all director James Ponsoldt (<em>Smashed, The Spectacular Now</em>) could make good on was a wormhole of narcissism down which he could make his latest film spiral. Mae (Emma Watson) won the lottery the day she landed a job at a Google-<em>ish</em> tech giant cloaked in secrecy and headed up by Eamon Bailey (Tom Hanks). And in no time, she attracts worldwide attention by agreeing to wear a camera 24/7. It’s rare when Hanks tanks; scenes of his charismatic CEO riding herd over weekly staff meetings pack all the intimate spontaneity generally associated with an Herbalife seminar. Is he hosting a reality series or heading up the most powerful corporation on the planet? If we’re supposed to assume they’re one and the same, Ponsoldt and co-screenwriter John Boyega do a lousy job of connecting the dots. With: Patton Oswalt, trying for Don Rickles in <em>Casino</em>.
The early critical response seems to indicate that the studio was right in thinking it had a stinker on its hands. But Scott Marks isn’t one to take an aggregator’s word for things. He’s taking in The Circle even as I write this and will render judgment ASAP.
Movie
Graduation (Bacalaureat) **
Writer-director Cristian Mungiu continues his expert evisceration of his native Romania, and by extension, this whole rotten world and the people who make it that way, even as they convince themselves otherwise. Here, the remarkably sympathetic villain is a father (Adrian Titieni) who just wants a better life for his beloved daughter — and as he sees it, “better” means “somewhere besides Romania.” Somewhere more civilized, where merit is more important than connections, where people can afford the luxury of moral absolutes, and where the doomed struggle to change society at large doesn’t wind up destroying society at home. Somewhere like Cambridge, where she can go if she manages to ace her exams — or even if she just appears to ace her exams. Mungiu’s surgical precision is on full display in his exploration of the back-scratcher’s pathology and its attendant complications, and he’s an old hand at establishing a dread-heavy mood. But the brute force of 2012’s masterful Beyond the Hills is here moderated by the discovery of vital forces amid the morbidity, moments hinting at hope and healing. A measure of justice amid the casual corruption, a moment of humility amid the self-satisfaction. It’s a thrilling development, sadly muted by a story made up mostly of static conversations — in police stations, in hospitals, in offices, in kitchens, in bedrooms, in cars, et cetera.
Still, even if she’s working for a company whose secret slogan is probably Be More Evil, at least young Emma has made it out of high school and into the professional world. The poor slobs of My Entire High School Sinking into the Sea can’t say as much, what with their high school sinking into the sea and all. And neither can the Bright Young Thing at the heart of Graduation — though that situation is a good deal more complicated, nuanced, and heartbreaking. What else could you expect from Cristian Mungiu? (I’ll tell you what I thought I could expect: a little less static conversation. At least his Beyond the Hills had a botched exorcism. But it’s still a masterpiece of thought and mood.)
(The privileged poppet of How to Be a Latin Lover, meanwhile, will never have to worry about such things. So he’s free to discover the special sadness that attends such people. Not sure we’ll get around to reviewing that one, alas.)
Speaking of Bright Young Things, Scott circled around and took a gander at Gifted, a movie about a dad trying to provide the virtues of an ordinary life for his extraordinary daughter. Go Dad! Love beats genius every time in the pursuit of happiness.
And speaking of special sadness, the documentary Finding Oscar tells the story of a boy who survives the massacre of his village. Some young-people problems are blunter and bloodier than others.
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