"Inside"

 By Matt Duncan

Coastal View News

Lately I’ve found myself wondering what it will be like to do things that I haven’t done—and couldn’t do—since the pandemic began. What will it be like to sit inside a restaurant? Eat in someone else’s house? Go to the movies? I wondered: Will it be awkward? Will I feel anxious? Or will I snap back to normal, business as usual?

 

Last week I went to the movie theater for the first time in over a year. It was not what I expected, though I don’t think COVID-19 can be blamed. My mom and I took my kids—ages eight, five, and three—to see “Space Jam 2” (their choice). After we endured about 30 minutes of its frantic plot and Lebron James’ stiff, phony acting, and once the movie started getting a bit intense for my five-year-old, he announced, “I don’t like this movie.” Seeing as we had the same verdict (though for different reasons), I shuffled him over to the only other kid-friendly movie on offer: “Boss Baby: The Family Business.”

 

I then proceeded to zone out for the next hour and a half as talking babies smashed, hit, chased, screamed, and shot at each other. I tuned in for the touching ending, but the rest is mostly a blur.

 

So after a year of cinematic quarantine, my first trip to the theater yielded no review-generating material.

 

I did, however, then see another movie—a movie kind of about the pandemic, about being stuck inside, which, ironically, hit the theaters for a short run in late July after being on Netflix since May: Bo Burnham’s “Inside.”

 

Burnham started his comedy career at 16 as a Youtube sensation. His trademark is to mix music into his comedy—he writes and performs witty songs on the piano about everything from race to love to gender to social media to mental health.

 

“Inside” takes place inside. During the pandemic. In a single room. Burnham, like everyone else, is stuck inside, and this is his outlet. The movie features lighthearted songs like “FaceTime with My Mom (Tonight)” and “White Woman’s Instagram,” but also darker pieces about depression, politics, and economics.

 

In between, Burnham offers scattered commentary about life in quarantine—about how much it sucks, how frustrating the world is, how annoying people are, and again how much quarantine sucks.

 

Some of the songs in “Inside” are pretty funny. There’s “Bezos I” in which Burnham sarcastically cheers Amazon owner Jeff Bezos to (among other things) the suck the blood of Zuckerberg, Gates, and Buffett. Then there’s “Problematic” in which he (very) self-consciously confesses to all of the (by today’s standards) “problematic” things he’s done in the past. And then there are plenty of other fun songs like “Welcome to the Internet,” “Unpaid Intern,” and “How the World Works.”

 

While the songs of “Inside” are worth the watch, I was less fond of the content in between. O.K., so a rich 30-year-old with no kids to wrangle and no “essential” work to stress over, moans and groans about life in the pandemic. Spare me. Burnham acts as if he bears the weight of the world on his shoulders. Except he doesn’t. At all.

 

Burnham is very self-aware of these dynamics. He constantly brings up his privilege, lack of special insight, and even hypocrisy in ways that on the face of it are self-undermining but are clearly aimed at defusing the criticism, as if noting one’s privilege or hypocrisy makes it vanish, or makes it O.K.

 

I don’t mean to minimize the stress and anxiety that anyone felt during the pandemic—including those who are closer to Burnham’s position. It’s just that, having spent the last year and a half going through it myself, I have limited appetite for listening to someone else whine about it. I suppose some people—maybe even a lot of people—feel that Burnham is giving voice to their own feelings, and they find that cathartic, enjoyable, or something else positive. Fair enough. But there’s a fine line between giving voice to misery and wallowing in it, and I found Burnham’s moping around excessive and annoying.

 

Still, some of the songs are pretty funny. So maybe it’s worth it. Everyone else (especially the critics) seems to think so.

"Luca"

 By Matt Duncan

Coastal View News

Turns out sea monsters are afraid of humans. Fair enough. Humans don’t have a great track record. Especially with things they don’t understand. Or that they’re afraid of. I’d be afraid of them too, if I were a sea monster.

Anyway, rational or not, that’s the psychology of the sea monsters in Pixar’s new movie, “Luca.” So the rules of their underwater domain say stay in the underwater domain. Don’t go up. Don’t show yourself. Hide. Conceal your identity.

Luca (Jacob Tremblay) isn’t listening though. He’s not a bad little sea monster. He’s just curious. He lives off the coast of a quaint little Italian village, and, while he is a bit shy and timid, he can’t help but sneak a peek of the wonders above.

And he’s not alone. One day when he’s close enough to the surface to make his parents cringe, he meets fellow sea monster, Alberto (Jack Dylan Grazer). Alberto doesn’t have much family to keep him in check—he just says his dad isn’t around much—and he’s every bit as curious, and three times as bold, as Luca.

 

Also, Alberto knows a secret: If sea monsters go onto dry land, they don’t just flop around like fish out of water, gasping for oxygen through their gills; rather, they turn into humans—breathing, walking, talking humans.

 

At first when Alberto shares this secret with Luca, Luca is characteristically timid and reluctant. But he’s also curious. And he’s drawn to Alberto like a magnet. So Alberto offers a solution. He calls Luca’s inner scaredy-cat “Bruno,” and teaches Luca the mantra “Silenzio Bruno.”

 

And thus Bruno is silenced. Luca and Alberto’s relationship is strengthened every day as they explore the terrestrial world. Luca’s parents are a bit of a complication. So the pair formulate a plan to run off together on a Vespa.

 

But they need a Vespa. Which isn’t cheap.

 

Yet, ah ha, they catch wind of the Portorosso Cup Race—a triathlon of swimming, biking, and pasta-eating—that has a cash prize. As they inquire further, they’re quickly introduced to the local scene. There’s Ercole Visconti (Saverio Raimondo), an arrogant, good-for-nothing jerk who, yeah, fine, always wins the race.

 

Then there’s Giulia Marcovaldo (Emma Berman), a young girl, who always loses the race but is nice in her own way and befriends Luca and Alberto. After some negotiation, she agrees to add Luca and Alberto to her triathlon team.

 

So they have a team! With two sea monsters on a competition that involves swimming, you’d think things would be looking up. But, remember, when Luca and Alberto go into the water, they turn back into sea monsters, and they can’t let that cat out of the bag. So they have to figure out some other arrangement to beat Ercole. And everyone else. Without letting on that they’re monsters. Or being found by their parents. Silenzio Bruno, Silenzio Bruno …

 

“Luca” is sweet. Nothing groundbreaking. It’s just sweet. The relationship between Luca and Alberto is nice, it’s good, it’s warm. It’s complicated by the plot they weave themselves into, but, in other ways, it’s simple, pure.

 

Add that to a beautiful composed film, set in a beautiful location, and we’re off to the races.

 

This is not a very ambitious film. The themes of identity, shame, and self-confidence are immediately evident and never strained too hard with divisive political overtures. Some may balk at that, wishing for more. But I say it’s for the best.

 

“Luca” is simple. It won’t knock your socks off. But after a year-plus of drama, it feels kind of nice to just chill by the beach with a friend.

"Oxygen"

 By Matt Duncan

Coastal View News

In the 11^th century, Islamic philosopher Ibn Sina—more commonly known in the West as “Avicenna”—introduced a thought experiment. He asked us to imagine that someone—you, let’s say—was created an instant ago in a blank void. You have no memories, beliefs, thoughts, nor can you see, hear, smell, taste, or feel anything. You’re just floating in the void. Imagine what that would be like. What it be like anything at all? Or would it just be lights out, no one’s home?

 

Now consider a different, more modern version of the thought experiment. Imagine that you woke up an instant ago strapped into a futuristic pod. You don’t know where you are, and you can’t remember how you got there. Nor can you remember much of anything else. You can see things—such as the contours of the pod with its futuristic screens and displays, buttons and mechanisms. You can hear things—most notably MILO, the pod’s AI “assistant”. And you certainly can feel things—like the straps restricting your movement and a tightly bound wrap enclosing most of your body, as well as the racing of your heart, the burning of your lungs, and the confusion, anxiety, and sheer terror evoked by your situation.

 

So, unlike Avicenna’s “Flying Man” thought experiment, you have all sorts of sensory experiences. But you don’t know what to make of them. In that way, you’re a blank page, starting from scratch. What do you?

 

This is “Oxygen”—a new Netflix Original sci-fi thriller. Elizabeth Hansen (Melanie Laurent), who at first only knows of herself by the computer code name assigned to her, wakes up blank-page-like into a pod. She has flashes of memory. But she doesn’t know much about who she is, where she is, or how she got there.

 

What she does know is that something is wrong with the pod. MILO (Mathieu Amalric) tells her that there’s been a malfunction, an error. That, no doubt, is why she’s awake.

 

O.K, so now she wants out. But she can’t get out. She doesn’t have the required admin password.

 

Another thing Hansen learns pretty quickly—because MILO keeps telling her—is that her oxygen is running low. She only has so much time to figure things out. And, of course, the more she panics the harder she breathes, and the harder she breathes the quicker the oxygen runs out.

 

So Hansen has to get it together and solve her problem quickly. MILO helps some—he’ll answer any question he’s programmed to answer. But he’s only programmed to answer, or do, so much. He’s a smart AI, but it’s not like he knows, or gets, what Hansen is thinking, feeling, and wanting such that he can just cut to the chase and devise a strategy for her escape.

 

That’s up to Hansen. She’s got to figure it out. Eventually she finds a way to call the police. They seem willing to help. But they need more info about Hansen’s situation. Which she of course doesn’t have. She is able to give them the manufacturer and serial number of the pod, but the police can’t locate it. They need more info.

 

As Hansen thinks, thinks, thinks, memories start to come back in little bits. With the help of MILO, she’s able to piece together that she’s a well-known scientist who works on cryogenics, and she has a husband who appears to be sick. But things end up being more complicated—and surprising—than anyone in that state could imagine.

 

Still, she’s only got so long to figure it out. Oxygen at 23 percent. 14 percent. Eight percent. Three percent …

 

“Oxygen” is captivating. It is beautifully simple. The entirety of it takes place in an area not much larger than a casket. Yet it explores vast themes about the far reaches of technology, the nature of personal identity, and the future of humankind. As the information trickles in, there’s more to think about, more to ponder.

 

The puzzle itself is a futuristic Sherlock Holmes story. Hansen has to piece it together, we have to piece it together. And the tension feels real. Not only do we have to think it through, we know we’re on the clock—stuck in a tiny space with naught but our wits and dwindling air to breathe.

 

Stuck in a tiny space with naught but our wits and dwindling air—I suppose that’s how a lot of us have felt over the past year (the creators of “Oxygen” know this, of course, along with other relevant details about how things are going for us humans). Which makes the film all the more effective, more relatable, more real.

 

People differ in their reactions to Avicenna’s “Flying Man”—some agree that they’d still be self-aware in such a scenario, other say it’d just be nothingness. But it’s all too easy to know what it’d be like in the “Oxygen” scenario. And it’s breathtaking.

"Please Stand By"

 By Matt Duncan

Coastal View News

We’re almost there—we’re almost back to the movies. After more than a year of binge watching movies and TV and sports and Youtube and anything else we could stream from home, the time is almost here when we can bask in the warm glow of those neon lights, pay way too much for way too much popcorn, and get reacquainted with that bigger, louder, more intense cinematic experience. I can’t wait.

 

But we’re not quite there yet, at least not most of us. So we might as well plop back down on the couch and harken back to some pre-pandemic cinema for good feels.

 

Enter “Please Stand By” (now streaming on Hulu). This movie is apt, because it is about tough times and, more importantly, about getting past them, overcoming them, learning from them.

 

It is about Wendy (Dakota Fanning), a young autistic woman living in a group home. She’s looked after by Scottie (Toni Collette).

 

Scottie cares a ton about Wendy and just wants the best for her. Still, Wendy doesn’t want to live there. She wants to live with her sister, Audrey (Alice Eve). Audrey also cares about Wendy, but, ugh, you know how it is, it’s tough looking after someone with a disability. Audrey feels guilty about it (hats off to her). But of course that’s not enough to spring Wendy from her institutional cage.

 

So, whatever, Wendy’ll do it herself. She hatches a plan to escape.

 

It’s a pretty nerdy plan. You see, Wendy isn’t always happy or comfortable, but one thing she does love, and makes her feel totally at home, is Star Trek. She’s a Treky. She especially likes the cool, emotionless, logical Spock. And there’s a contest. Paramount Pictures is running a writing contest. $100,000 goes to the fan who writes the best script for an episode of Star Trek.

 

This is perfect for Wendy. She understands Star Trek—like, she really gets it. And she can write. And, hey, with $100k, she can leave the group home. Originally Wendy planned to just mail her script in, but when that doesn’t work out, she decides to ditch the fight and go for the flight.

 

Wendy plans to break out of her group home in Oakland, somehow get to Paramount Pictures in Los Angeles, submit her manuscript, win the prize money, and then live long and prosper.

 

This may be a good idea in theory (well, kinda). But Wendy hits snags almost immediately. First, the group home’s little dog convinces Wendy to take it with her. So now she has a dog. Then Wendy realizes that traveling places isn’t easy when you’ve never traveled places before. She needs money and tickets and etiquette and food and the kindness of strangers.

 

Unfortunately, as we all know, strangers are not always kind. Especially to someone like Wendy, who struggles to make eye contact, who acts in a way that others perceive as rude or offensive, and who, as a result, gets frustrated.

 

It’s pretty clear that Wendy has a disability. So one option for strangers, you’d think, would be compassion. But, no, not for someone like Wendy. See, Wendy is difficult. She’s harsh. She’s sometimes annoying. She’s not like a cute kid with cancer or a decorated vet in a wheelchair—now those things elicit compassion.

 

It’s not her fault, sure, but as we saw with her sister, if it’s too frustrating, better to just sweep it under the rug. Out of sight out of mind.

 

Most of the strangers that Wendy encounters are either dismissive of her in this way, or they take advantage of her. A few don’t. So a key question, which of course generalizes beyond Wendy, is: Is that enough?

 

Wendy has one, relatively simple goal: Deliver her manuscript. She shouldn’t have to go it alone. But she mostly does. She can’t go it completely alone—no one can. So, again, how much help is enough?

 

“Please Stand By” is a touching portrayal of a kind of life led by many but truly seen by few. Dakota Fanning brings to life the misunderstanding, alienation, and deep frustration of being autistic in a non-(or anti-?)autistic world.

 

And yet the movie maintains a relatively upbeat tone. It doesn’t feel like devastating expose. It gently tugs rather than yanks on your heartstrings.

 

“Please Stand By” is a simple, even somewhat predictable movie. It does not try to do too much. Yet it also raises important questions about autism, how our society treats those who are “not normal”, what it means to help someone, and what success looks like for Wendy, or for anyone.

 

It’s a prime time to think about overcoming adversity. We’ve all had a fair share of it over the past year. Part of the overcoming is learning. And, as Wendy’s story illustrates, we’ve all got a lot to learn.

"Mank"

 By Matt Duncan

Coastal View News

“Mank” received the most Oscar nominations of any movie this year, proving once again that Hollywood likes itself.

 

This movie is about movies—and movie makers. “Mank” refers to Herman Mankiewicz (Gary Oldman), writer of “Citizen Kane”.

 

Herman is your typical Hollywood tragic hero. That is to say, he’s a hot mess. He’s an alcoholic, a grump, and a tyrant. He also just broke his leg in a car accident. So he’s stuck in bed.

 

That’s where this movie picks up—Herman in bed with nothing to do but rant, rave, and crave booze.

 

Then none other than Orson Welles gives him something to do. He wants Herman to write a movie for him. So, with nothing better to do, Herman gets on it, dictating the script to his secretary, Rita Alexander (Lily Collins).

 

Rita notices that the main character in Herman’s story is an awful lot like media magnate William Randolph Hearst. Then come the flashbacks—from when Herman knew Hearst. The rest of “Mank” oscillates between 1940—when Herman is working on “Citizen Kane”—and the 1930s, when Herman was just getting started.

 

1930 is when Herman was first introduced to Hearst (Charles Dance) by actress Marion Davies (Amanda Seyfried). Herman and Hearst hit it off, and, as a result, a lot of the 1930s for Herman seems to be spent getting boozy at his buddy’s castle.

 

But there is a more serious side to their upper-crust social life: politics. They like to sit around talking about the Nazis, socialism, and the California governor’s race. A lot of them want hotshot socialist Upton Sinclair to be governor, but Hearst doesn’t. Hearst funds a smear campaign against Sinclair and, in the process, unhappily implicates the others who are forced by their Hearst-funded employers at MGM to produce the smear films.

 

Back in 1940 Herman’s work on “Citizen Kane” is up and down. Standard stuff: Producers worry that Herman isn’t making enough progress. Others worry about the content, or the style, or the politics, or whatever. Eventually, he finishes it. Some like it (a lot), some don’t (a lot).

 

Then more squabbling occurs over whether to go ahead and make the film (no spoiler needed there), whether to credit Herman as a writer, and so on.

 

Yes, Hollywood likes itself. And it likes to revel. It likes to tell its golden tales of yore as though they’re modern Iliads—and as though everyone, Hollywood-insider or not, would and should give a care.

 

No doubt some will give a care, if for no other reason than that this insider-baseball story is told with such style. Gary Oldman is mesmerizing. Director David Fincher (who is using his late father Jack’s screenplay) knows how to make a movie. The black-and-white cinematography is at times warmly nostalgic and at other times eerie and unsettling.

 

I like movies plenty (obviously). But, if you couldn’t already tell, I found myself not caring all that much about this story. I’m a curious enough guy, and I like little historical vignettes of all sorts, so I’m not totally sure why I wanted so badly to yawn at my TV, to really let it know that I’m over it, I don’t care.

 

Maybe it’s to offset Hollywood’s out-of-whack interest in itself. Herman Mankiewicz, Orson Welles, Marion Davies, William Randolph Hearst, “Citizen Kane”! These are interesting things! But, I don’t know, maybe they’re not that interesting—not portrayed like this, not as a saga of the SoCal pantheon. At any rate, it is a bit gross to witness the self-referential self-love ooze from the screen (and splatter all over the Oscar envelopes).

 

“Mank” drums up some complexity by showing the role Hollywood played in pre-WWII politics. Perhaps this provides some nice allegories and lessons about the relationship between the set and the statehouse. Or perhaps, again, Hollywood has an outsized sense of its importance: thinking of itself as some vital source of change despite being impotent to do anything but make movies about its impotence—its heroic, tragic, well-meaning impotence.

 

Now, the money in Hollywood—whether it’s from Hearst, Welles, Oprah, or whoever it is that funded “Mank”—maybe that makes a big behind-the-scenes difference. Maybe that’ll get you House seats, statehouses, and Oscar nods. But two things about money in politics: First: No duh! And, second: Yuck.

 

Enjoy it if you can.

"Nomadland"

 By Matt Duncan

Coastal View News

How much do you need? A house? Running water and a toilet? A stable job? Health insurance? Restaurants, bars, friends, families, TV, and other entertainment? Most of us enjoy most of these things, but how much of it do we really need?

 

Nomads say: Not much. These nomads, which really do exist, roam the U.S. in their Ford- and Chevy-made ships of the desert. They eat what they can, work when they can, and sleep where they can—mostly in their vans.

 

Fern (Frances McDormand) is a nomad. She wasn’t always. She used to work with her husband in a U.S. Gypsum plan in Empire, Nevada. Then her husband died and the plant shut down (the whole town did, in fact). Everything crumbled. So, at the start of “Nomadland” (which just won Best Motion Picture at the Golden Globes and is streaming on Hulu), there is nothing tethering Fern to anything.

 

So she lets it all go. She sells a lot of her stuff, puts the rest in storage, buys a van, and heads out. She picks up temporary jobs here and there and radically simplifies her life.

 

Fern is quiet and reserved. She doesn’t exactly look happy—and you can tell her mind is elsewhere—but she insists she’s fine. She’s getting by. She’s making it. This isn’t the life she set out for herself, and boy does she sure miss her husband, but life on the road is now her life—the life she chose.

 

A bunch of others chose it too. A small army of nomads (several of whom are real-life nomads) come up around Fern, becoming her support, her community. The nomads are tough, but kind. They readily help each other out and revel in each other’s company, though they always end up saying goodbye.

 

The nomads have a different way of looking at things. Instead of asking how much we need, nomads—or anyone, really—might more helpfully ask how much we really want. A lot of people want as much as they can get, or more. But nomads embrace a different way of life. The austerity—or, rather, simplicity—of their lives does not always, or perhaps even usually, spring from a failure to acquire more and more stuff; it often springs from their belief that acquiring more and more stuff isn’t good—it isn’t healthy, it isn’t desirable, it’s not worth wanting. Stuff weighs you down. So does the owning of it.

 

Still, it’s not always easy to square the appeal of this message with the evident fact that, in many ways, nomads really do have it hard. Even aside from the strain of living off of odd jobs, eating out of a camper, and pooping in a bucket, life on the road takes its toll in many other ways. There may be something liberating about going where you want when you want, but it also looks to be pretty lonely and isolating.

 

Which is all to say that it’s complex. As is “Nomadland.” This movie consistently holds together contrasting moods—both positive and negative affect—in such organic, authentic, simple ways. It makes you feel bad for nomads, while also, in other ways, making you jealous of their courage and independence. The nomads are close to each other, despite constantly parting ways; their bond is, by its nature, evanescent—bound up in saying, “See you down the road.”

 

“Nomadland” is sad, but also beautiful. You see it on Fern’s face. There’s no hiding the hurt, the pain, the sorrow. Unlike the rest stops and short-term work, there’s no moving on from what she lost. It’s etched into the lines on her face. It’s a tired sadness—a weariness.

 

Yet there are also clear skies and sunsets, the open road and kinship. One way of looking at the nomads is as running away from something. Some are. But maybe for some it’s more like: keep moving, stay alive, one foot in front of the other.

 

That feeling is worth sitting with. Not trying to change it, or fix it, or move on—as if that were possible—but just recognizing the feeling. A lot of people feel it—the sadness mixed in with little glimmers of … what is it? Hope? Beauty? O.K.-ness? Whatever it is, “Nomadland” offers a meaningful glimpse. It’s not cheery. But it is good.

"The Little Things"

 By Matt Duncan

Coastal View News

I’m ready for the good old days. The nowadays are tough. And even the glimmers of hope—vaccines, new leadership, an improving economy—just make me all the more ready to turn the page and get back to the way things were. I’ve started to listen to NPR again (I couldn’t stomach the news for the last while). And my wife and I are re-watching/re-devouring the fancifully optimistic “The West Wing”.

We are also part of a 90s movie night series with some friends (though it’s on hiatus right now). The 90s—those were the days for some fun movies. Twisty plots, soaring musical scores, ridiculous action sequences, and bad guys that everyone could get pissed at.

“The Little Things” (now streaming on HBO Max) bills itself as a throwback to those movies. Here are some of its familiar tropes: Joe “Deke” Deacon (Denzel Washington) is an old detective with a haunted past. Once upon a time he was a brilliant investigator—best close rate in the area—but now (in the 1990s) he’s rusting away as a deputy Sherriff in Kern County, California. 

Jim Baxter (Rami Malek) is a young, idealistic, hotshot detective in the Los Angeles Sherriff’s Department. He has a bleeding heart for victims, and can’t rest—won’t rest—until justice is served. There’s a serial killer afoot in L.A.—really brutal stuff—so Baxter is on high alert.

Meanwhile Deacon starts to nose around the area, too, thinking that the recent murders look a lot like some scenes from his still-murky-but-obviously-painful past.

Both Baxter and Deacon dig for a little while—sometimes in sync, sometimes at odds with each other. When they finally get together to chat about it, Baxter—bless his soul—confesses his unrelenting addiction to crime-avenging. Deacon warns him, “There are no angels.”

Eventually the pair meet another trope: A creepy auto mechanic—Albert Sparma (Jared Leto)—who is ham-handedly setting off all the murderer alarm bells. Still, Sparma is pretty smart—more like conniving—so he can’t be pinned down. Even for us, the audience, it’s not perfectly clear whether he’s The Guy or just a super sketchy crime buff.

At this point, anyone who has watched a fair share of 90s movies—especially in the action/thriller genre—will no doubt be shrouded in a feeling of familiarity. Whether it feels more like a warm blanket of nostalgia or a suffocating sheath of unoriginality may vary. But it’s there.

For me, the feel of the movie was pretty appealing. Sinister, but not soul-crushing. Realistic enough, but nothing deeply stressing. Complicated but not confusing. Idealistic but not preachy (well, most of the time … some of Malek’s lines are a bit much).

I also enjoyed the acting (I mean, with those three leads, how could I not?) and parts of the bendy plot. For I’d say about 90 minutes of the two-hour movie I felt transported to the good-old days of 90s cinema.

But the rest of it was sort of botched—a cheap knock-off of the thrills and chills of movies like “Seven” or “Silence of the Lambs”. The ending, in particular, betrayed the movie. It was cheesy and not half as clever as it took itself to be.

Come to think of it, a lot of 90s movies also failed in exactly these ways. So I guess, in the end, it’s not a 90s movie that I really long for. It’s a good movie. Just as I’d settle for some good 2021 days—they don’t have to be old—so too I’d go for a movie with good atmosphere, both realism and idealism, good acting, and a fun, well executed plot.

Alas, “The Little Things” isn’t quite there.

"Soul"

 By Matt Duncan

Coastal View News

There’s a saying that those who can’t do, teach. Joe (Jaime Foxx)—the main character in Pixar’s latest animated feature, “Soul”—hopes he’s the exception.

 

Joe is a middle-school band teacher. So, yes, he teaches. But he sure can do it too—that is, he sure can play the piano. And his dream is to make it big in the New York City jazz scene.

 

But things haven’t exactly taken off for Joe. He’s a middle aged guy with a pot belly, out-of-style clothes, and a dad mustache. His students love him, sure. But, as Joe’s mom likes to remind him, his musical career is a pipe dream.

 

Until, that is, one of Joe’s former students—whom Joe inspired to be a professional musician—asks him to drop by his band’s practice session to see if he can fill in at piano.

 

Joe is way nervous, but he nails the audition. The famous leader of the band, Dorothea (Angela Bassett), is impressed, and that is all it takes. Joe is in! So, naturally, Joe is on cloud nine.

 

Then he isn’t. Instead, he is on a more literal cloud heading to the great beyond. For Joe died. (Or something like that. Maybe he’s not quite dead? Just about to die? The metaphysics are a little unclear.) In his distracted, post-tryout euphoria, Joe fell into a manhole and his little, phosphorescent blue soul wakes up in a different place.

 

Joe resists. He’s not ready to die. Not only does he really, really want to play with Dorothea’s band, he has this idea that, if he doesn’t, his life will have been pointless, meaningless.

 

So Joe exploits a glitch in the heavenly machinery to move from the “Great Beyond” to the “Great Before”—the place where unborn souls are readied for life on Earth. Joe gets roped into being a “soul counselor” for unborn souls in need of guidance.

 

Unfortunately he gets assigned 22 (Tina Fey). 22 is pretty much a hopeless case. Everyone from Gandhi to Abraham Lincoln to Mother Teresa has tried to mentor 22, but to no avail. 22 is stubborn—she doesn’t want to be born.

 

But Joe is desperate to get back to Earth, and he figures he can hitch a ride with 22 if he gets her born. So he tries. The main ingredient missing for 22 is her lack of a “spark”. Joe tries to help her find it—in music, art, science, food, sports, and whatever. Nothing works.

 

So Joe tries a different tack—he gets hooked up with some hippie mystics who help lost souls, and they agree to help him get back to Earth.

 

And he succeeds! The problem is, he accidentally brings 22 along too. The even bigger problem is, 22 is in Joe’s body and Joe is in the body of a therapy cat.

 

Joe frantically searches for more hippie magic while simultaneously trying to preserve the career opportunities he had worked so hard for.

 

Meanwhile, 22 is gobsmacked by life (again, in Joe’s body), and Joe is learning to experience the world from a different perspective (again, in a cat’s body). 22 eats pizza, inspects interesting flora and fauna, feels, hears, touches, and smells. She’s no longer thinking about purposes and sparks and the like. At the same time, Joe is trying so hard to get his old life back, but he begins to wonder about what he, or anybody, should, in the end, at the core, strive for. Fame? Success? Accomplishments? Or something else?

 

“Soul” is pretty abstract. With all the talk of souls, purpose, and sparks, it definitely runs the risk of going over younger kids’ heads. It also runs the risk of feeling less approachable, warm, and (dare I say it) soulful than more concrete, Earthly stories.

 

For comparison, Pixar’s “Inside Out”—about tiny little mental states—also ran this risk. But “Inside Out” totally nailed it because there was enough concrete scaffolding in the background, the characters were really amusing, and the abstract bits tied in really nicely with the real-life bits and provided some really powerful insights.

 

“Soul” has some, but not all, of that. The otherworldly scenes are a bit dry, long, and (again, dare I say it) lifeless. And the connection between the two realms felt more made up and less real—versus the mental realm in “Inside Out” which, in essence, felt pretty true to life. Also, the very end of “Soul” is regrettably cheesy.

 

Nonetheless, “Soul” has some very high points too. What Joe and 22 realize about what a “spark” is (hint: it ain’t just an interest in music, science, or sports) is nothing short of profound. And how this might reshape their—and our—conception of what makes a life worth living is thought-provoking and, I think, compelling.

 

So, just as Joe might in the end recommend to us that we live for the here and now, rather than something dreamier or loftier, in a similar way, I recommend that you watch “Soul”, not for the comparatively banal stuff set in the clouds, but for the concrete, true-to-life, moving, powerful, very well done scenes and insights from Joe’s life.

"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.

"A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood"

By Matt Duncan
Coastal View News

Right at the beginning of “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood”, we get a reminder of how dorky, hokey, cheesy and incredibly slow Mr. Rogers (played by Tom Hanks in this movie) was. Yes, yes, he was also tender, kind, and totally wonderful (more on that below). But, man, was he slow.

And not at all fancy. The show was half Mr. Rogers putting on/taking off clothes while singing some not-totally-appealing song, half him playing with ratty old puppets. No effects, no gimmicks, no production value.

So then why was everyone drawn to him? Why did kids tune in to his show so religiously for so long (895 episodes!)?

That’s what investigative reporter Lloyd Vogel (Matthew Rhys) of Esquire Magazine wants to know in this movie, which is based on a true story. Vogel is not sure he buys Rogers’ whole absurdly wholesome, outrageously good persona. Unlike Rogers, Vogel isn’t a warm and fuzzy type. Or, as another character put it, Vogel is not exactly a “lover of humanity”.

And Vogel has other issues. He is angry at his dad, Jerry (Chris Cooper), for abandoning their family while his mom was on her death bed. He is worried that he is going to be a bad father too. And the only thing he seems to know how to do is work, work, work. He doesn’t like this about himself. He doesn’t want it. But he can’t help it. He calls himself “broken.”

So maybe Vogel is an unusual choice to do a piece about the beloved, kindhearted Mr. Rogers.

But Mr. Rogers doesn’t see it that way. Rogers wants to talk to Vogel. He is enthusiastic about it. The first time he talks to Vogel on the phone, Rogers asks, in his characteristically slow, calm, sweet tone of voice, “Do you know what is the most important thing to me in the whole world right now?” He answers, “To be talking with Lloyd Vogel on the phone.”

Over the course of several meetings, Vogel tries to ask probing, difficult questions. But, more often than not, it is Rogers who ends up digging deeply into Vogel. Rogers wants to know about Vogel’s family, his background, what he likes, what’s bothering him. As a result, Vogel can’t get very far with his intended exposé.

Still, he tries. Vogel asks Rogers if it is a burden to always be dealing with other people’s problems. He asks whether Rogers’ children have found it difficult. He tries to tease apart Mr. Rogers, the character, from Fred Rogers, the person. Mr. Rogers doesn’t understand. He just wants to know about Vogel’s childhood stuffed rabbit.

Why? Why does he want to know about that? Why does he care?

Well, that’s just it—that’s the answer: He cares. He cares about Vogel. He cares about the kids that he meets and that tune into his show. He cares about them desperately.

But why? Why does he care about them? How could he care about them—people who, like Vogel, are cold, mean or even “broken”?

Again, Mr. Rogers sees it differently. In a 2002 commencement address at Dartmouth, Rogers says, “It’s not the honors and the prizes and the fancy outsides of life which ultimately nourished our souls. It’s the knowing that … the bedrock of our lives from which we make our choices is very good stuff.”

He then adds that what this means is that, “You don’t ever have to do anything sensational for people to love you.”

Why does Rogers listen? What does he want to know about Vogel’s childhood stuffed animal, as well as his family, he past, his pains, his heartache? Because he cares about Vogel. Why does he care? Because, according to Mr. Rogers, Vogel is valuable. Just the way he is. That’s it. Not because he’s a good writer. Not because he works at Esquire. Not because he has something interesting or important or sensational to do or say. For Mr. Rogers, it’s way simpler than that. It’s because Vogel is exactly who is his, and that’s valuable.

“A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” is, like Mr. Rogers’ show, cinematically unremarkable. There’s nothing fancy about it. Yes, Tom Hanks and Matthew Rhys do a fine job. And, sure, the movie is well composed in some other ways. But it is not sensational because of its plot, effects, lighting, score, etc.

What makes this movie sensational is Mr. Rogers himself and what he was able to bring to people’s lives aside from all the dorky outfits, worn out puppets, and cheesy jingles. Day-in, day-out, for over 30 years, he asked, “Won’t you be my neighbor?” And he really meant it. What could be more sensational than that?