"The Social Dilemma"

 By Matt Duncan

Coastal View News

Hi, I’m Matt—I’m an email-aholic. I check it too much. I can’t resist. I get a little rush each time I tap “refresh”, though, I have to admit, the high isn’t what it used to be. I want to stop checking my email. There’s no real reason to. It’s not like I get a ton of urgent messages, nor is it like I’m getting tons of awesome, uplifting emails (one-quarter spam, one-quarter non-spam that I treat like spam, one-quarter annoying emails from students, one-quarter mixed bag).

 

I know I’m not alone. There are others like me—who battle the same demons I battle. For some it’s email. For others it’s Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. Whatever the digital drug is, there’s no denying it: We’re hooked.

 

And it's no accident, according the creators of "The Social Dilemma" (exclusively on Netlfix). We’re hooked because Google, Apple, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc., want us hooked, know how to hook us, and have indeed been doing everything in their considerable power to make sure that we can't put down our smart phones for very long.

 

"The Social Dilemma" is a documentary that features leading figures within the tech industry as well as influential commenters on the methods and effects of various internet platforms (especially social media). They basically say what the likes of Google, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are doing to us.

 

It ain't pretty. Let's start with the kids. They're going crazy on social media. Literally. Not only are they hooked just like the rest of us, teens' and preteens' use of social media is having horrible effects on their psyches—anxiety, depression, and body-image issues. The "Like" button is straight-up smack. Only legal.

 

Then there's the adults. Let's talk politics. Because that's what everyone likes to do on social media. The problem is that platforms like Facebook and Twitter employ advanced algorithms (good ones, too) to make sure you get exactly the information fix you want—not info that's true, or balanced, or important to hear; just the info that gives you pleasure. So Republicans are hearing what they want to hear, Democrats are hearing what they want to hear. And, of course, it’s not the same message. So we don't occupy the same information space; we are experiencing totally different worlds. Which is a recipe for awful, divisive partisanship.

 

There's more—plenty more. The tech giants are molding, bending, manipulating, contorting us to do whatever they want, which, among other things, is to keep consuming their products like frat boys guzzling cheap beer.

 

How are they doing it? Psychology and algorithms. They know how addiction works. And, given that they have access to all of our data—so much data!—they can feed that data into learning AI that then builds algorithms that predict our behavior with astonishing accuracy. They are like the mad neuroscientists in horror movies who control people’s minds, only they don’t have to bother with a neural implant. We are hypnotized.

 

Technology is not all bad, of course. As the current and former tech execs in "The Social Dilemma" point out, these platforms have also done good things—maybe even a lot of good things. But is it worth it? The overall message from "The Social Dilemma" is "regulate, regulate, regulate". The penitent millionaires interviewed in this movie seem to hope that more government control of the internet could help with the aforementioned problems.

 

But here’s another potential solution: Delete. That's what I did. Right after watching this movie, I deleted the Facebook app from my phone. There are things I like about Facebook, but, for a little while now, I've realized that checking Facebook brings me more pain than pleasure. I'm much more likely to feel anger, outrage, and jealousy than admiration, love, and joy. And, unfortunately, these bad feelings are addicting too—once I start with anger, outrage, or jealousy, it's really hard to stop. And these are not good feelings. Unlike getting high on heroin, or drunk on wine, or stoned on weed, digital addictions don't feel good. They're the ultimate downers.

 

Watching "The Social Dilemma" is kind of a downer too, I guess. Unlike our carefully culled social media feeds, this movie is not designed to make you feel pleasure. It is designed to confront you with hard truths (again, unlike those social media feeds).

 

“The Social Dilemma” is an effective movie, though not necessarily a perfect one. The guy most at the center of the movie—former Google Design Ethicist, Tristan Harris—is a bit self-righteous and preachy (I mean, for the love of Pete, he pronounces his name “Trist-on”). And there’s a pretty cheesy dramatization woven in-between all of the very informative, interesting interviews. The movie would have been better without that.

 

Still, watch it.

"The Peanut Butter Falcon"

 By Matt Duncan

Coastal View News

With most theaters still opting out of “in person” this fall, what counts as new in the movie biz is relative. Over the past months I have focused on movies that have started streaming relatively recently—that is, movies that you can watch in quarantine—as well as movies and T.V. shows that have received some recent buzz.

 

But, in the spirit of keeping it corona-fresh, here’s a new one: Recently released on airlines. I masked it up in the friendly skies this past weekend, and decided to watch a “new release”. If you’re like me, picking a movie on a plane is tough, because you’ve got a bunch of options, but without internet there’s no way to find out which ones are supposed to be good. I took a stab so you don’t have to.

 

Now showing on American Airlines: “The Peanut Butter Falcon” (those wary of flying needn’t worry—you can also stream this movie on Amazon Prime or Hulu).

 

The three main characters in this movie each have pain in their past and problems in their present. Zak’s (Zack Gottsagen) family abandoned him because he has Down’s syndrome, and, as the movie begins, he is stuck in an old folk’s home watching old wrestling videos all day because he has nowhere to go and no one to take care of him.

 

Except, perhaps, for Eleanor (Dakota Johnson). She works at the old folk’s home and keeps an eye on Zak. And she has to keep an eye on him, because Zak keeps trying to escape. Eleanor has her own tragic past, as it turns out, but now her most pressing struggle is to keep Zak safe and sound.

 

Tyler’s (Shia LaBeouf) most pressing struggle has nothing to do with Eleanor or Zak, at least not at first. He’s feuding with crabbers—that is, people who catch crabs—along the Carolina coastline. He steals their crabs, they get pissed, he complains that they stole his crabbing license, they don’t care, he damages their gear, they beat him up, and so on. Tyler’s brother used to look out for him, but now he’s dead, so Tyler is messed up and alone.

 

Then Zak mysteriously shows up on his boat. He (Zak) is wearing naught but tighty-whities. He finally escaped the retirement center and the first place he found to hide was Tyler’s boat. Tyler is on the run, so Zak is a major inconvenience. Still, even Tyler has enough of a heart to not just leave Zak to his own devices.

 

Once Tyler’s realizes that Zak is also on the run, they start to form a sort of bond. Tyler isn’t exactly all warm and fuzzy—at least not at first—but Zak starts to grow on him. They embrace their roles as outcasts.

 

Tyler is trying to get to Florida, but he agrees to first help Zak fulfill his ultimate dream: To find Salt Water Redneck (Thomas Haden Church), an old-school wrestler who once upon a time ran a wrestling school. Zak’s knowledge of this school is based entirely on an old VHS that he watched over and over in the old folks’ home. So it’s sort of a shot in the dark. But Tyler isn’t exactly in a rush. So off they go.

 

Meanwhile, Eleanor is desperate to find Zak. She wants what is best for him. However, as things play out, she is forced to reconsider what it is that’s best for Zak—and her.

 

One remarkable think about “The Peanut Butter Falcon” is that I did not hate Shia LaBeouf in it. In fact, if you really pressed me, I’d have to admit that I liked him. He does a great job playing a decent redneck with a rough exterior.

 

And then there’s Zack Gottsagen, who is amazing—if he doesn’t brighten your day, nothing will. Dakota Johnson’s performance a little less even. Still, overall this movie’s characters are clearly its heart and soul. And it has a lot of heart and soul. “The Peanut Butter Falcon” is not complex, or complicated, or heavy on plot, but it does what it does well.

 

It also deals with hard things without making the viewing experience a miserable slog. It feels light and uplifting, even when things get tense or tough. Which is a real virtue these days, at least in my book.

 

So if you’re flying out of town, or just want something to make you smile, “The Peanut Butter Falcon” is a good bet.

"Get Duked!"

 By Matt Duncan

Coastal View News

There I was, all ready to sit down with my family to watch Disney’s new live-action version of “Mulan”. We have a subscription to Disney Plus, so I thought we were good to go. Then, to my horror, I discovered that it costs an additional $30 to rent it! No way! My wife pointed out that Disney is probably losing a lot of money during the pandemic. Oh give me a break, Disney, you’ll be fine. She also pointed out that if we went to a theater, we would have paid at least $30. O.K., fine, whatever … I’m still not buying it.

 

Instead I sought out an outlet for my disgust—one that would also lighten the mood a bit. I decided on “Get Duked!”—the newly released British horror comedy. This movie is totally free on Amazon Prime (if you have a membership).

 

And I guess “Get Duked!” is kind of like “Mulan”. Both are coming-of-age tales—about becoming a capital-M Man—at least nominally. Though, instead of fighting the Huns, the main characters in “Get Duked!” fight British aristocracy. And these characters are not, hmmm, let’s say, as genteel as Mulan. They’re pretty crass. And the swordplay is much less elegant.

 

These main characters are four teenage boys. Three of them—Duncan (Lewis Gribben), Dean (Rian Gordon), and DJ Beatroot (Viraj Juneja)—are bad kids. They’re troublemakers, miscreants, delinquents, bad seeds. The fourth—Ian (Samuel Bottomley)—is a good kid, but too sheltered and childlike for his own good.

 

What brings this motley crew together is the Duke of Edinburgh Award. This is a trek across the Scottish highlands that teenage boys have been doing since bygone eras as a rite of passage. Get to the end of the trek, survive the perils of the wilderness, and you’re a Man. Or something like that.

 

At first things go exactly as you’d expect. They screw around, act like buffoons, whine and yell at each other, posture, fight, goof off, etc.

 

But then they see someone. It’s a very proper looking gentleman, adorned with fine leather boots, a handsome hunting jacket, and one of those Scottish golfing hats. The boys are bit far off, so they can’t be sure, but they think he sure looks like the Duke of Edinburgh.

 

The Duke (Eddie Izzard) also has a rifle—he’s out on a hunt. And what the boys could be forgiven for not realizing at first is that the Duke is hunting, not deer or pheasant or some other beast of the wild, but them.

 

The Duke shoots at them while taunting them with very high-society commentary about the youth and purity and aristocracy. The Duke is later joined by The Duchess (Georgie Glenn)—both wearing creepy masks and both tormenting the kids.

 

So what starts as a coming-of-age story quickly becomes a kind of strange horror movie involving aristocrats, and later anarchist farmers, pagan ritualistic symbols, and zombies.

 

The kids do their best to fend of the foes. They have some skills, but they’re not very bright. The local police seem to be onto something, but they’re even more incompetent and focused on the wrong things than the teenage boys (imagine that). So it’s sort of a race to the bottom for this skirmish between the youth, the old guard, and the hapless police.

 

“Get Duked!” is fun—amusing. The kids are sometimes annoying, but they can be boyishly charming too. And the setting—the Scottish highlands, with kids and masked-wearing nobles, with a backdrop of freestyle rap—is a unique set of flavors that adds some kick to the movie.

 

“Get Duked!” is also lazily trying to do something more—to be a kind of commentary on Brexxit and generational politics in Britain. But this layer of meaning is pretty limited. The movie itself doesn’t take it very seriously (not that it should), and I couldn’t detect anything particularly insightful there.

 

If I were more entertained by the antics of teenage boys, I suspect that I would have enjoyed this movie a lot more. But, I admit, I couldn’t really get into it. I guess you get what you pay for (or don’t pay for).

"The Fight"

By Matt Duncan

Coastal View News

Another addition to the endless annals of COVID bummers is that we’re amidst a mini cinematic Dark Ages. There’s plenty to watch, of course, and there’s still a lot of new TV coming out. But movie production is on hold, and a lot of movies that have already been made are being held up for future theatrical debuts. It’s even tough to know which movies are being released. No one is going to the theaters to see movies, so no one is seeing previews. So those of us not regularly searching for this info are basically in the dark about what is coming out and when.

 

Thus, you may have no clue what “The Fight” (which just came out on Amazon Prime) is about. Is it a “Rocky Balboa vs. Ivan Drago”-type slugfest? It is not. This movie is non-fiction. So is it a real-life boxing story, or maybe an Iraq War thriller? Nope. This movie is about lawyers. And they don’t literally fight, at least not physically. Also, it’s not a courtroom drama. Nor is it a true crime whodunit.  

 

It’s a documentary about the lawyers at the ACLU whose fight over the past four years has been to resist moves by the Trump administration that they think violate people’s rights. There have been a lot of such moves. So there’s been a lot of resisting by the ACLU. But “The Fight” is focused on four legal battles.

 

The first is over family separations at the border. Led by lawyer Lee Gelernt, the ACLU (among others) rushed to respond to the Trump administration’s policy of separating undocumented children from their parents. Mothers went months without seeing their daughters. Fathers had their sons snatched away while they were sleeping. And these events were unfolding so quickly and so widely that lawyers not only had to scramble to write their arguments, they also had to call, email, text, call, call, call almost constantly to get judges to hear emergency arguments.

 

The second legal battled chronicled in “The Fight” is over Trump’s ban on transgender individuals serving in the military. Led by Chase Strangio and Joshua Block, and inspired by the story of 11-year military service member Brock Strone whose career was threatened by Trump’s ban, the ACLU argued that Trump’s order was unlawfully discriminatory.

 

The third fight—fought by Dale Ho, among others—is over whether Trump could add a citizenship question to the census. Trump et al. basically said, “C’mon, why not? It’s a simple question. We wanna know. Why can’t we ask?” However, the Trump administration also let slip their real motive: to discourage vulnerable people from answering census questions, which would help redraw electoral maps in Republicans’ favor. According to the ACLU, there is an easier way to get citizenship data if one really wants it—from the Social Security Administration. So the ACLU argued that the Trump administration wasn’t really looking for data; it just wanted a political edge.

 

The final legal battled in this movie—headed by Brigitte Amiri—is over whether a detained immigrant has the right to an abortion. In the case in question, the young woman had been raped and wanted an abortion. But she was denied access to abortion, with the justification that she did not have the same legal rights that U.S. citizens have.

 

As with most important struggles, these ACLU battles are more guts than glory. They don’t always win. And when they do win, it’s often some kind of half-victory. And it’s not always for the reasons they thought. And it’s most often achieved only after scratching, clawing, dragging, limping, and crawling their way to the finish line.

 

Still, “The Fight” is gripping and interesting. Most of us have heard of these cases, but it’s fascinating—and sometimes surprising, galling, encouraging, or heartbreaking—to learn more about what goes into trying these cases.

 

With that said, this documentary could have stood to avoid some of the more breathless MSNBC-type commentary—not because the commentary is wrong, but because it makes these legal battles seem more partisan, and because, believe it or not—like it or not—MSNBC’s reactions to these case are not shared by everybody.

 

But while “The Fight” may overindulge in moral grandstanding here and there, and may be an exercise in preaching to the choir, it also teaches valuable lessons about how to enact change. It shows that good work, real impact, true progress is rarely glorious, hardly ever glamorous. Whether it’s legal or political or societal or economic, the front lines aren’t always rallies or T-shirts or Facebook debates with your Aunt Marge—they’re law offices buried under mountains of paper, shelters, soup kitchens, hospitals, and local communities. A good fight isn’t any less good because no one sees it, and it isn’t any less of a fight because it’s slow, incremental, deeply frustrating, and often heartbreaking.

"Uncut Gems"

By Matt Duncan
Coastal View News

Netflix just started streaming the critically-acclaimed “Uncut Gems”—way ahead of normal schedule, too. What a gift. Great news, right!?

Well, let me ask: Do you like anxiety? Not like action-thriller anxiety. More like family-shouting-at-Thanksgiving anxiety. Is that your cup of tea? Not mine. Not right now. I’m working to keep my own COVID-and-world-disaster-and-annoying-kids-stuck-at-home heart attacks at bay. I’m not eager to watch someone else’s coronary for two-plus hours.

If you, on the other hand, are more worried that your blood pressure is needlessly low, thank Netflix, because they’re now streaming your cure.

Howard Ratner (Adam Sandler) is a jewelry shop owner and a gambling addict. He sells super high end stuff, then immediately bets the profits on sports. He routinely replaces a lot of cash with a lot of debt. And upset creditors. And an estranged wife (also, a moody girlfriend). He’s kind of like King Midas in reverse, except worse—surely he’d rather have ended up with an innocuous pile of straw.

Ratner’s luck seems to turn around when a much anticipated package arrives at his shop—an extremely rare, extremely big, extremely valuable Ethiopian black opal that he ordered. It is worth a fortune—maybe as much as $1 million.

Right around the same time, Boston Celtics superstar Kevin Garnett walks into his shop. Ratner is so excited about the opal and Garnett, and Garnett and the opal, that he can’t resist bringing the precious gem out. Garnett is transfixed. He wants it!

Ratner says no—he’s planning to sell it at auction. But Garnett begs Ratner to let him at least borrow the opal for the night. He thinks the gem is lucky, and he has a big playoff game coming up. Ratner reluctantly agrees, taking Garnett’s championship ring as collateral.

Ratner then pawns the ring and bets the money on Garnett and the Celtics to have a big game. Same old same old—though this time the stakes are considerably higher (both literally and figuratively).

Luckily, Ratner wins big. Or maybe not. Does he? Well, it’s complicated. And it’s cycles of excitement, confusion, anger, despair, relief, hope, excitement, confusion … Ratner scrambles to clean up his own messes while simultaneously creating more. He’s like the little Dutch boy who put his finger in the dike, except he is the one creating the holes and it’s more holes than he has fingers and toes to plug.

Hence the anxiety.

“Uncut Gems” is exhausting. It is also well acted, written, and composed. And while you might not exactly be hungry for more stress (I wasn’t), this movie and its emotional punch are also easier to get nowadays. Anxiety is familiar. Especially if you’re vulnerable. Especially if you’ve got your own issues. And especially if you feel like you live in a system that only eggs on the worst in us all.

Ratner has issues. He’s imperfect. He’s a gambling addict, impulsive, prone to anger, unfaithful, vain, and greedy. But he also tries to make things better. He tries to fix things. Unfortunately he lives in a world—the same one we live in—that lures him into risk with the thought that things could be better only to crush him with its own unrelenting, voracious greed. Ratner is annoying, but human. And while tragedy might not feel like a very appealing genre right now, it is, at the same time, undeniably a propos.

"The Vast of Night"

By Matt Duncan
Coastal View News

The aim of this review, and the aim of that which the review is about, is escape (which feels nice right now, even if only for an evening). Escape to something a little less real. Escape to something strange, eerie, distant, yet also warm, inviting, and nostalgic.

“The Vast of Night” is a great escape. Think “The Twilight Zone”. Think “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”. Think “The War of the Worlds”. “The Vast of Night”, which was on limited release last year and is just now streaming on Amazon Prime, is a low-budget sci-fi mystery that takes place in New Mexico in the 1950s.

The movie begins with a Twilight-Zone-esque opening—“The Paradox Theatre Hour”—on a crackling old TV. Which sets the stage for a kind of retro otherworldliness—a dead serious but seriously heartwarming sense of mystery and wonder and a little fear and scandal and apprehension. Other scenes throughout the movie also appear on this crackly ‘50s TV set with poor reception, reminding us how to feel, what mood to be in, but also that this story is strange, distant, manipulated, mediated, fabricated, not totally real.

The story follows high schoolers Fay Crocker (Sierra McCormick) and Everett Sloan (Jake Horowitz). Crocker is a switchboard operator. Sloan hosts a local radio show. They, like everyone else in this movie, like to tell tales to each other—some long, some short, always speculative, and, if possible, recorded.

On the night of “the disturbance” almost the whole town is at a local basketball game. Even the game, which must have been the height of commonplace for the townsfolk, has an eerie aura to it. It plays out in this big, old hanger, the overhead lights give off an orange florescent glow, and the dust particles wafting through the air figure as a kind of ether that holds the big multi-personal hoard together like the teeming vesicles of an alien species.

On the outside, at their respective headsets, Crocker and Sloan hear some strange noise over the radio. It’s some kind of interference. At her switchboard, Crocker gets some unusual calls—maybe disturbing, maybe not. Then Sloan gets a curious call into his radio show. The caller is older, and tells of a time when he was with the U.S. military, and they brought him out into the middle of nowhere to something super secret that they weren’t allowed to say anything about. He doesn’t have all the details, though he notes that he and his fellow military-grade peons felt strange, noxious side effects from their encounter those many years ago.

Sloan’s caller is talking now, he says, first because he is old and has nothing to lose, and, second, because the sound Sloan played for him over the radio—that strange noise he and Crocker heard earlier—is exactly the sound he heard while on his mysterious mission decades ago.

All of this is eerie, alien. Yet the plot is nothing new. “There’s something in the sky” is the line. And all of the stylistic elements of this old-school sci-fi drama are utterly genre-affirming. Even the upbeat ‘50s style is unrepentantly old fashioned.

And yet “The Vast of Night” is fresh, exciting, captivating. You already know what it’s about, yet you can’t look away. The feel of this movie—with the warm colors, town-traversing tracking shots, period lingo, eerie score, and subtle distancing techniques—is so rich, atmospheric, quirky, and yet somehow also quaint and reassuring.

We’re so used to being bludgeoned with hyper realism. We’re primed to scoff at anything—sci-fi or not—that doesn’t look exactly like what we’d expect it to if it plopped down into one of our backyards right now. But what “The Vast of Night” insists, and what it reminds us was so wonderfully effective about old TV shows and movies like “The Twilight Zone” and “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”, is that not everything turns out exactly like we’d expect. Some events, whether supernatural or extraterrestrial or just unfamiliar, are, or would be, alien, confusing, weird, otherworldly, and maybe also a little bit magical.

“The Vast of Night” is a transportation device—part time machine, part alien spacecraft. And I’ll take this ride anytime.

"Onward"

By Matt Duncan
Coastal View News

“Long ago, the world was full of wonder. It was adventurous. There was magic.”

Then came light bulbs. Those were easier. So people stopped with the magic, moved to the suburbs, and switched on their TVs for wonder and adventure.

In Pixar’s “Onward”, there are still unicorns, elves, centaurs, and pixies. It’s just that they don’t act like it. They act like boring, ordinary things—like dogs and cats, who pick through the trash, or like middle-class humans with mortgages and dead-end jobs. The really out-there ones get motorcycles.

The two main characters are elves, and they’re brothers. The younger one is Ian Lightfoot (Tom Holland)—a meek, smallish teenager who has all sorts of (written-down) plans to become braver, stronger, and more assertive.

The older brother is Barley Lightfoot (Chris Pratt). He’s kinda embarrassing. He’s way into magic and board games and other Dungeons-and-Dragons-type stuff. He’s out of school and his only direction seems to be nerd-ward.

Both of these kids could use some guidance. But unfortunately they’re down one parent, because their dad got sick and died when Barley was young and their mom (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) was pregnant with Ian. So Ian never met his dad, and Barley says he only has three memories of him (though it turns out there were four—the fourth being when Barley declined to go into the hospital room to say goodbye to his wire- and tube-suffused dad).

The family has moved forward since then, but not really onward.

Then they get a jolt from the past. Ian and Barley’s dad left them a gift to be opened once they’re both sixteen. It’s a wizard’s staff—a relic of long ago, when the world was full of wonder—together with instructions on how to do a spell. If done correctly, the spell will give the boys what they sorely desire: their dad. For one day and one day only, the spell will bring their dad back to life.

This gives Ian ideas. And plans. He’s got a list. He’s going to play catch with his dad, laugh with him, tell him about his whole life, his dad is going to teach him how to drive, and they’re going to have plenty of heart-to-heart chats.

But, oh no! They botch the spell! It goes haywire halfway through and they only get the bottom half of their dad out—his legs up to his waste, clad in khakis and brown leather dad shoes. Their half-dad can walk, but he can’t see his sons—he doesn’t have eyes, after all. Nor can he hear them (no ears) or talk to them (no mouth). Ian and Barley must finish the spell to get their whole dad back. But to do so, they’ve got to find a rare Phoenix gem.

It’s a quest! Ian has the magical talent, so he wields the wizard’s staff. Barley has the knowledge—all that gamer stuff paid off—so he’s the guide. But the clock is ticking—remember, the spell only works for 24 hours. So time is running out on their magical and ever-so-desperately-longed-for reunion.

If you’re tearing up just thinking about the premise of this movie, well, yeah, that’s about right. “Onward” doesn’t quite have the magic of other Pixar greats (oh, the irony). But it’s goofy, fun, and overall a solid movie. And, oh, in the end, and at a few other points, does it pack an emotional punch.

Pixar has the market cornered on sadness. I don’t mean cheesy, bawling-for-no-good-reason sadness—Lifetime seems to have that one figured out. And I don’t mean emotionally manipulative sadness or punch you in the stomach and leave you in the gutter sadness either.

I mean beautiful sadness. Meaningful sadness. Important sadness. I mean sadness like in “Up”, when Mr. Fredrickson reads a note from his dear Ellie, who passed away too early, telling him to find a new adventure. I mean sadness like in “Inside Out”, when Riley’s terrible longing for her old home draws her into the sympathetic arms of her loving parents. I mean sadness like in “Toy Story 4”, when Woody says goodbye.

Really, it’s “Inside Out” that captures this sadness most abstractly. The various little parts of Riley’s mind—joy, sadness, anger, disgust, fear, etc.—help her cope with life. Yet it’s unclear what function sadness serves. It’s not until later in the movie, when we see how sadness breaks Riley down, makes her feel like all is not well, makes her need others, makes her seek out others, togetherness, and the loving embrace of those most dear to her, that we begin to get it. Sadness can bring joy, or it can mix in with joy to make something entirely different—not always as pleasant, to be sure, but every bit as meaningful.

“Onward” channels that sadness too. And, whether or not “Onward” is as good as the best Pixar movies (it’s not), any movie that can tap into this beautiful, important sadness, even for a few moments, has earned its keep.

"Marriage Story"

By Matt Duncan
Coastal View News

Hollywood likes making movies about it itself. About the woes of its stars. About how they’ve got all sorts of totally relatable normal-person problems. But also about how they’re transcendent—tortured, brilliant, thoughtful, flawed like the Greek gods were flawed, tragic, powerful, and, in the end, too big for this world. Hollywood likes making movies like this. And then they pat themselves on the back and give golden statues to each other for how awesome they are.

How unbearable. Or so I say.

“Marriage Story” is about the crumbling marriage of Charlie (Adam Driver) and Nicole (Scarlett Johansson). Charlie is a successful theater director in New York. Nicole is a successful actress, previously in New York, now in L.A. They once shared their dreams, aspirations, hopes, and struggles with each other. They had chemistry too. And a kid. But they’ve since drifted apart.

At first they aim for an amicable split. Neither wants to crush the other, and they agree that they should share time with their son, Henry (Azhy Robertson). They even talk about getting neighboring apartments in New York and still being friends.

I guess the turning point, though, is when Nicole retains high-powered divorce lawyer, Nora Fanshaw (Laura Dern). Nora Fanshaw doesn’t do amicable, crush-free splits. She says she does. She smiles and talks and coos and soothes like she does. But the whole point of signing up with Nora is to win. Nicole still isn’t exactly all about winning at this point. But, hey, why not?

Charlie is dumbstruck. He thought they were going to do this the easy way. He thought, no lawyers. He thought they were going to stay friends—that they’d still see each other, that he’d see even Nicole’s family from time to time, and that things would be more-or-less the same except that they could each go out and play as they wish.

Not anymore. At first, Nora seems to be playing nice, so Charlie settles on a cheaper, second-rate lawyer, Bert Spitz (Alan Alda). But once he realizes that Nora’s compassionate, totally rad, totally woke, totally reasonable demeanor is just a means to gradually obtain unconditional surrender, Charlie lawyers up for real with pit bull, Jay Marotta (Ray Liotta).

Then things get messy. And expensive. And embarrassing. Accusations fly, tall tales are told, harms are exaggerated. It’s a blood bath.

Charlie and Nicole, who were once totally amicable, start to get into the act too (they’re good at such things, after all). They start to internalize this phony anger and injustice. They stroke their egos and stoke their self-importance, buying into the idea that the other was the only thing holding them back, and is now the only thing holding them back, from … I don’t know what. Happiness? Further stardom? More money?

Charlie moans that he was a hot young director in his twenties in New York and could have had unending sexual conquests if it weren’t for Nicole. (Cry me a river.) Nicole groans that, upon further reflection, she would have liked to leave their exciting life in New York for extended jaunts in L.A. … if only Charlie would have let her. (Boo hoo.)

Sorry if I’m not sympathetic. I get that movie stars and Broadway directors are people too. And I get that they feel pain and have problems. But it’s hard (for me, at least) to get too invested in these bored rich-person problems. Like, O.K. Charlie, you could have been sleeping around. Good for you. And wow, Nicole, it must have been so tough to have only one home that 95% of the population can’t afford.

There is a fine line between self-awareness/self-realization and self-indulgence. It’s fine, even good, to reflect on one’s desires, preferences, and goals, and to try one’s best to soar to new heights. But at a certain point it’s like, O.K., shut up and get back to reality now.

There are various tender, authentic, even compelling moments in “Marriage Story”. Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson are, of course, magnetic. And the Woody-Allen-esque writing is crisp and engaging. The movie is at its best when the context kind of fades out and it seems like a normal family story—with real-life heartbreaks, challenges, and disappointments.

Which isn’t to imply that famous people can’t really be disappointed, challenged, or heart broken. It’s just that this Oscar-nominated marriage story is largely unrecognizable (and maybe should be unrecognizable) for most of us. Yes, divorce is very, very real for many, many of us. As are custody battles, court hearings, child support, and the like. But all this hand wringing over time tragically lost by golden gods of the stage and screen—give me a break.