Hair Slicked Back, Wayfarers On

The summer theme continues as I somehow avoided the worst of the rainfall and took in a Monday matinee of 2013 Sundance entry The Kings of Summer, the feature film debut of director Jordan Vogt-Roberts. Fifteen year old best buds Joe and Patrick (Nick Robinson and Gabriel Basso) decide to ditch their annoying parents for the summer and go Thoreau, running away to build a secluded ramshackle cabin in a clearing in the woods with their tagalong weirdo pal Biaggio (Moises Arias).

Ostensibly a run-of-the-mill coming-of-age flick, it manages to tickle all the right parts of my funny bone with the supporting cast, notably familiar faces Nick Offerman, Megan Mullally, Mary Lynn Rajskub, and Alison Brie. Through debut writer Chris Galletta and (I'm guessing) a fair amount of improv, the straight-faced non-sequiturs fly fast and furious, led by the scene-stealing Arias (of "Hannah Montana" fame), whose character manages to channel a mini-Galifianakis, out-of-left-field vibe that keeps things light even when the proceedings get pointy and grim.

Cinematographer Ross Riege squeezes the most out of the the gorgeousness of the settings, guiding the action through vibrant sunny fields, glistening riverbanks, and lush forests with the eye of a true outdoorsman. When combined with the overabundance of here-and-gone montage sequences of the boys' adventures, however, I get the feeling that the time spent pitching style could have been better spent in developing the characters and the substance of the story, which is rather flimsy and haphazard at times, and frankly a little misogynistic. The Kings of Summer is a boy-centric, Lord of the Flies-lite with a snarky heart, but a smart, lovely little summer flick, nonetheless.
79/100



Tuesday, I felt like this pretty much all day:

Hey, even during the Summer of Jim, some days are just gonna eat you alive

Once I shook off the shark, the newest Noah Baumbach entry awaited me on Wednesday. Frances Ha, co-written by and starring Greta Gerwig, is another witty navel-gazer from the director of Kicking and Screaming and The Squid and the Whale. Frances is a wandering soul, a dancer in NYC who can't quite manage to lock down her dream job or affordable living arrangements. She is awkward, impulsive, outspoken and prone to over-drink. Her friends winkingly refer to her as "un-datable," despite her Ingrid Bergman-esqe beauty.

As a portrait of a rootless twenty-something with grand ambition but still seeking direction, Frances Ha straddles the line between her dreams and reality in a way that is both cautionary and celebratory. Her evasions and delusions can be sad and dangerous, but sometimes they are absolutely necessary, forces that can either throw her into blind adventures or enable her to swallow her pride to step back and make hard choices. She looks around and realizes that she and her friends are maturing into "grown ups" at different rates -- if at all -- and whether it is healthy to push back against this maturation process to hold onto a nostalgia of youthful idealism is a powerfully resonant theme.

Shot in (sometimes too-dark) black and white and off-the-cuff in the streets and parks of New York, it immediately recalls the visual sensibility of the French New Wave, early Jim Jarmusch, and especially Woody Allen's Manhattan. With the focus on the trials of a liberated NY chick, comparisons to Lena Dunham's series "Girls" are also inevitable (they even share a lead actor). Here, sometimes the characters go too far off on the quirky/hipstery tangents, but they are rounded out with heart and humor and are pretty likable, and the cringe-worthiness is kept pretty minimal.

While it has a loose, ephemeral feel to it, Frances Ha was meticulously scripted and directed, and Gerwig's lead turn is nothing short of phenomenal. During one close-up monologue, she travels through what seems like a hundred different subtle quirks and facial expressions within the space of about a minute, a mastery of character detail and delivery.

Oh hey, and there's always room for a little Bowie.

83/100

Midnight in Paris & A Few Thoughts on Oscar Noms

Midnight in Paris --87/100--

While watching Woody Allen’s films usually gives me at least a little pleasure, in recent years his annual submissions have, with a couple of notable exceptions, been mostly lackluster. In 2011 he’s finally made slogging through the struggles well worth it, turning out his most magical and memorable piece in ages.

Midnight in Paris plays out like Field of Dreams for the erudite crowd, placing struggling writer Gil - a wide-eyed Owen Wilson - smack dab in the City of Lights with his fiancé Inez (Rachel McAdams). Allen once again employs a dab of fantastic whimsy that charmed audiences in Play it Again, Sam and especially The Purple Rose of Cairo, and through a mystical twist Gil ends up partying his Parisian nights away with a who’s who of 1920’s cultural icons. It starts with Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald and Cole Porter and quickly snowballs from there; half the fun of the film is guessing what legend is waiting around the next corner and how he or she will be portrayed. Some of the names dropped by Allen may send some scrambling to wikipedia for the reference, but that’s not uncommon for any of his films. There are some great turns by some familiar faces, just keep your eyes peeled.

As in many of his films, Allen gives the surroundings an important role; in fact Paris is the most important character in the film, as it certainly has a life of its own and a million stories to tell. Evocative of his famous montage “Rhapsody in Blue” montage in Manhattan, and in what felt like a bit of homage to cityscapes of early cinema (notably Berlin, Symphony of a Big City), the volley of luscious street scenes that opens Midnight in Paris even has its own miniature story arc as the day progresses from a bright beautiful morning into rainy afternoon, through a calming dusk and then exploding into a lustrous evening. The entire film exudes the richness of the city’s offerings and serves as the type of carefully composed travelogue that makes one mentally plot out a dream vacation - or, in my case, consider a new career as a location scout.

Nostalgia has been a big theme at the cinema this year, as evidenced by some of the fellow Oscar nominees for Best Picture. While the current economic recession might play a role in that, I think it probably has more to do with these filmmakers finding ways to comment and come to terms with the digital era and a constant stream of technological advancement producing a contemporary film audience that mostly buys spectacle over substance. But while The Artist and Hugo recall a simpler time when the language of the art form was literally still being developed, Midnight in Paris balances that romanticism with a more levelheaded view, rejecting the idea that there was ever a single “Golden Age” of especial ingenuity in favor of a more universal celebration of all forms of human expression, past and present.

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Oscar noms were announced yesterday, and I’ve already seen 7 of the 9 Best Picture nominees, so I already have a pretty good grasp on my feelings toward this particular set of films.

A couple of random initial thoughts simply on the nominations themselves:

-- I was kinda thinking they might throw a Best Pic bone to the Harry Potter finale as a nod to the high level of quality for the entire series. Not that I was expecting a Return of the King sweep by any means, but found it especially odd since they only decided to nominate 9 after upping the ante to 10 last year.

-- Based on reviews and other nominations I suspect there are about 5 or 6 others that could have filled that 10th spot. Of the stuff I’ve seen so far, I might have rooted for a dark horse like Warrior, but if it were my choice I would have picked Beginners. I liked it better than The Descendants, personally. Reviews for both forthcoming.

-- Not a real standout crowd in the Best Animated Film category, with none of them pulling a Best Pic nominee. Won’t be as easy to call as last year when Up was the obvious animated fave.

-- The Original Song category is down to only two nominees. Yikes. I can think of about 15 reasons they should probably just ditch this category altogether, but the memory of “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp” winning gold makes me hope it comes back strong next year.

Still have a bunch of other stuff to catch and I’ll really get down to business over the next few weeks. Won’t/can’t say much more right now as I’m headed out the door to see Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.