Luca (2021)

 Score: 3 / 5

The latest collaboration between Pixar and Disney is a mixed bag of half-baked ideas and cloying sentiment that looks great, feels sweet, and left me melancholy and generally unsatisfied. But that's not to say I didn't enjoy it while it lasted, and I'd rather watch it than most of the animated crap pumped out by other studios. It's only to say that, for a partnership that has redefined animated moviemaking for the last three decades (excepting the miserable Cars franchise), it's less than groundbreaking. In fact, it feels like an Italian fever dream after watching The Little Mermaid and Finding Nemo and eating too much pasta under a Tuscan sun.

Luca is a young sea monster, living underwater near the Italian Riviera, looking a bit like a disco merboy with his neon-green scales and bright blue head of whatever fishfolk have instead of hair. Growing bored with his days of shepherding a little school of brainless fish, he sees boats overhead and dreams of wanting to be where the people are. He's voiced by Jacob Tremblay, whose few credits of unspeakably brilliant acting (Room, Wonder) have led way to a bizarre and premature sophomore slump recently that we certainly hope he will overcome; here, he serviceably performs the title character with little to note. Of course, his parents (an unfortunately not particularly funny Maya Rudolph and Jim Gaffigan pairing) are terrified of humans, as they are well aware that the seaside villa rely on fish and fear and hate the legends of monsters in the nearby sea. A few fallen items from the surface, though -- whosits and whatsits galore! -- inspire Luca to explore farther than he ever has. He wants to, other fish might say, touch the butt.

It is, ultimately, a brief encounter with another, slightly older monster boy that brings Luca out of the sea. Alberto, voiced by a wonderful Jack Dylan Grazer (Shazam!, It and It: Chapter Two), has almost everything Luca has dreamed of. He lives an amphibian life, roaming the sea by day and sleeping in an abandoned coastal tower by night. His charisma and bravery are infectious: "Silenzio Bruno!" he says, to silence his cautious inner voice. Alberto's goal of owning a Vespa lead into multiple daydream sequences of the boys riding off into a golden sunset, flying over Florentine meadows in blissful freedom. Luca is mesmerized, and the two boys connect immediately. It helps that their transition from monster to human is involuntary. When dry, they have skin; when wet, scales return.

The actual plot begins rather late in the film, when Luca's parents, distressed by his ventures to the open air, plan to send him to live with translucent anglerfish-like Uncle Ugo (Sacha Baron Cohen being, well, weird) in the deep ocean. Panicked by the prospect, Luca and Alberto flee to Portorosso, the monster-hunting villa in what appears to be the Genoa coast. They soon meet Giulia (Emma Berman), determined to beat the town bully Ercole Visconti in a triathlon of swimming, bicycling, and eating pasta. This wild sequence is where the originality and beauty of the movie shine. Director Enrico Casarosa hits his stride in allowing the hazy Italian sun to illuminate photographic visuals of a fully realized world; the warmth and light pour out of the screen until you can smell the food and bricks and salty air. Many shots of the sea are more photorealistic than anything Pixar has ever done, and it certainly helps our understanding of why Luca has craved the freedom to travel and see this whole new world.

This sense of freedom is key in this film, a proper Bildungsroman of burgeoning desires and the deep sense of satisfaction that comes with independence and discovery. It manifests Romantically in Luca's setting, but also in its heavily weighted symbolism, particularly of the Vespa icon. More importantly, freedom is also the key to understanding all the characters of the film, from Luca and Alberto to Giulia and Ercole and even Uncle Ugo. But this freedom, the film suggests, comes with a dangerous social cost, and may entrap us behind performativity more than we were trapped in more familiar surroundings.

On this level, the heavy theming of this film seems to actively invite queer interpretation. Luca and Alberto, apart from their clearly affectionate relationship, are designed and performed as pre-pubescent, and labeling anything as explicitly sexual would be a stretch. But the youthful romance is shockingly present, and for a while I wondered how Pixar and Disney would handle the material. As we might expect, they don't, and in fact the director has publicly and aggressively denied any queer subtext and criticized people who feel moved and empowered by the narrative. The film itself, however, cannot be constrained by Casarosa's fear of queerness, and the shapeshifting boys hiding their monstrosity among the human hoi polloi is immediately relatable to any queer person. The lies they tell as they explore, the fantasies they dream up together, and the shame associated with their otherness are all here in spades; indeed, the film hinges on these elements to finally reach its narrative climax and the only character development at the very end. "Some people, they'll never accept him," Luca's grandmother says at one point. "But some will. And he seems to know how to find the good ones." I wept, honey. 

Despite a derivative and dull first act, the movie eventually hits its beautiful stride when it embraces its absurd and endearing plot among the humans. But, sweet and sentimental as its story of young friendship is, it's hard to appreciate because it does nothing fresh or interesting with it. Queer or not, two young friends who decide to part ways isn't worth yet another movie; even their identity as monsters -- unless coded as something substantial -- becomes immaterial by the conclusion. Ultimately, there isn't much wrong with the whole affair, aimed as it seems to be at younger audiences. There's just not much that's memorable, either. Casarosa would have done better to, like Luca, moved out of his safety nets and into a wider world.

The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020)

 Score: 5 / 5

"The whole world is watching!"

Aaron Sorkin's latest movie is an astounding project, on par with so many of his pieces in terms of wit, beauty, and urgency. It is also, now, very possibly my favorite of his films (closely contending with Steve Jobs) simply as a result of its massive scope and thrilling timeliness. Manifesting the best of his work, The Trial of the Chicago 7 teaches as it dramatizes, assembling an amazing cast and letting each major player have glorious moments in the spotlight, and cuts through difficult ideological and historical complexities even as it entertains. Molly's Game was a solid directorial debut, but here is Sorkin at his finest, both as writer and burgeoning director, and it deserved so much more than a Netflix premiere.

The film's prologue features stock news footage from the '60s, quickly and efficiently painting the scene: the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and King, President Johnson increasing the draft for an increasingly unpopular war in Vietnam, and the looming Democratic National Convention in Chicago to find a successor to JFK, as Johnson would not campaign again. These scenes are interspersed with the main characters of our story, eight young men leading or representing various liberal factions, as they prepare to head to the Windy City to participate in the convention. We suddenly skip to five months later, when all eight have been arrested for conspiracy to incite rioting. Which, of course, happened in August 1968.

Apart from these eight central characters, we're quickly introduced to their legal counsel, including Joseph Gordon-Levitt as lead prosecutor and Mark Rylance as attorney for seven of the eight defendants. The film, as you might have guessed, closely follows the trial and highlights the absurd length of time taken to determine justice; justice, unfortunately, is not the goal here, and it is often repeated that the publicly scrutinized trial is a political farce. Sorkin seems hell-bent to paint it in all its complex enormity but without too much razzle-dazzle we might expect from a Chicago courtroom musical. At key points, he allows flashbacks so that we can see the various outbreaks of violence that comprised the convention protests and riots; it is in these scenes that we see perhaps most clearly the urgency of Sorkin's screenplay, as the corrupt police force engages in brutal and illegal behaviors against the protestors.

Indeed, the timeliness of this film was surely why it was released when it was, on Netflix in mid-October, just as bills against protests gain support in various legislatures and the country was on the brink of its most important election in many years. The incredible Frank Langella graces the screen as the villainous judge Julius Hoffman, the kind of juicy role he always deserves and rarely gets, a Trumpian character at once terrifying and eminently watchable; he is only clearly evil in the moments when his incompetence fractures. And, given the turmoil of the DNC in 2016, our political climate is definitely ready to revisit this most infamous of debacles in popular sovereignty.

All the actors are giving masterclasses here, all the more so because they are actively supporting each other in this massive movie. Sorkin displays his incomparable ability to make even frantic, emotionally charged, intellectually intricate dialogue sound beautiful, but he also caters dialogue to the characters he's created. Even if it's at times weird that the "Yippies" (played by a delightful Jeremy Strong and Sacha Baron Cohen, who I liked for the first time in a movie) speak in such a polished manner, the actors uniformly make Sorkin's instantly recognizable style palatable and believable. Mark Rylance deserves perhaps the most credit, as he allows brief pauses each time before he speaks, allowing us to believe his lines are actually not scripted.

The beats pile up quickly, and it's hard sometimes to gauge where the facts morph into fiction. But, while he is attempting to teach us parts of history, Sorkin is more interested in the ideas and feelings involved for us in 2020. So even if he doesn't get all the facts exactly right, the sensation of the story he's telling is no less harrowing for its dramatization. More importantly, it's not really trying to teach us any clear moral lesson, a tendency Sorkin often flirts with; rather, he's showing us the dangerous theatricality in the courtroom and the internal war the U.S. government waged on its own citizens, and one key way that war was handled by some of the most outspoken, irreverent, and idealistic young people of the times. It's a story for us, for now, and in that, it is one of the best movies this year.

Sweeney Todd (2007)

Score: 2.5 / 5

I'm going to admit my bias right away: I hate this film. As a fan of the stage musical, I can't say that Tim Burton's adaptation is even representative of Sondheim and Wheeler's work. But, as I have said before -- and to avoid hypocrisy -- I hope here to objectively view the 2007 film on its own merits and not by comparing it to incomparable media (a book or stage show), and certainly not by comparing it to my expectations of what the film should be. Shall we stroll down Fleet Street together, then? Tuck in, lads.

Since the film is a musical, let's start with the adapted score. The instrumental theme thunderously succeeds, raucously inviting us into a hellish 1846 London. Other slightly tweaked moments, such as Judge Turpin's masquerade ball, sound beautiful and rich onscreen. I find unbalanced, however, the rousing orchestrations and the singers. None of the vocalists (with the exception of young Ed Sanders) are powerful singers, and their voices don't quite fit the operatic scope of the music. Rather, many of the songs are performed clipped and conversational, as if they were stylized dialogue; this would work for "The Worst Pies in London", but not necessarily for "Wait", for example.

Though the singing doesn't always match the score, it arguably does match the style. Tim Burton typically heavily relies on stylized costumes, lighting, acting, camerawork, and visual effects to achieve a specific impression for an audience, and Sweeney Todd is no exception. In fact, his devotion to thick atmosphere, dark wit, and caustic theatricality is admirable and makes this film notably compelling. I find his weighty style in this film a tad damaging, because it occasionally works against the story; he highlights spectacle, which feels redundant since the material is already so spectacular. By the end, it feels so unrealistic that I have little interest in any of the characters or their problems. A big reason for this is Burton's focus on splatter. The deaths of the characters are icky and fun but also distancing. Sometimes this works -- a combination of giggling and shrieking that comes from complementary nastiness -- but when splashed across an otherwise grim and brooding world, I have a hard time accepting any seriousness in the tale.

Pardon a little lecture: Musicals are a lot like Shakespeare. In Shakespeare's plays, there are precious few stage directions, but as scholars will tell you, almost all the dialogue implies some amount of stage direction if you know the signs. Similarly, musicals (more specifically, the music and lyric of musicals) imply a lot of stylistic and acting advice. Having seen this film, I'm not sure Tim Burton or Johnny Depp (among others, no doubt) understand how to "do" a musical, because they ignore a lot of potentially effective moments, while rendering others redundant or oxymoronic. Consider "My Friends", which feels unnecessary because the camera repeats images that mirror (literally) the lyrics, or "The Worst Pies in London", when the editor ignores potentially comedic beats on Mrs. Lovett in favor of showing Sweeney's disgust at the pies (that she's already telling us are disgusting).

A last thought on musical productions: The great paradox of musicals is that, though "realistically" we do not break out into song and dance, in the theatre we burst out into song and the audience automatically believes us. Hopefully they believe us and empathize with us by the power of the music and our vulnerability in the moment. But in this film, I often feel distanced from the characters and the material because the singing is awkward and the style overwrought. That said, "Epiphany" has a great idea in entering Sweeney's mind as he hunts his victims. And I like the visual fantasy in "By the Sea", but its contrast to the rest of the film makes the whole movie feel just that more surreal and contrived, more like an animated picture.

Moving on to the cast. Helena Bonham Carter soars as Mrs. Lovett, and her remarkable strength in humanizing a crazed character makes up for her sometimes shaky vocals. Johnny Depp is an interesting Sweeney: He's somewhat introverted, surprisingly young (I don't believe for an instant that the apparently older Pirelli worked for him as a boy), and apparently can't sing with proper technique though his tone weirdly works in context. Depp and Carter have some nice moments together, but especially shine in "Little Priest". Ed Sanders steals the show as Toby, and his beautiful, powerhouse voice amazes me. Young boys who can sing the part are rare enough (I've seen it convincingly played as an older, handicapped boy), and it seems a little odd that a child would need a "miracle elixir" to grow hair, but Sanders nails it.

Jamie Campbell Bower's vocals are nice, but I don't particularly buy that as Antony he is an experienced sailor. His facials leave a lot to be desired; for example, he can't quite decide what to do with his eyebrows at the end of "Johanna" and I laugh aloud every time (not the proper reaction, mind). Alan Rickman is a wonderful Judge Turpin, his added dialogue is very welcome, and his vocals are a fine supplement to his character work. Timothy Spall delights as Beadle Bamford, and his awkward singing style is fortunately kept to a minimum. Sacha Baron Cohen's attempts at singing are similarly kept short, and his acting is disconnected, vague, and ultimately inconsequential.

Neither Johanna nor the Beggar Woman are given enough screen time to garner our interest, and so the potential romantic and tragic elements of the story are largely discarded. Even Sweeney occasionally loses our interest: his spoken "Forget my face" and sparing of Johanna in the final scene is laughably stupid and wildly uncharacteristic. In conclusion, I find that this film limits its revenge-narrative scope to vague social commentary, stereotype-laden tropes of mental disorders, and a reinforcement of our culture's revulsion of bodily fluids. Do yourself a favor and watch the filmed national tour, with George Hearn and Angela Lansbury, or the recent concert production with Bryn Terfel and Emma Thompson.

IMDb: Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street