Fistful of Films, Big Screened

Taking Stock of a Handful of Recent Movies on the Big Screen in Santa Barbara

From the “what I did on my vacation” file: along with the holidaze traditions of family hangs, food and drink overages, work avoidance and sinking into that reality escape route feeling, the goal was clear. This is time to also dive into actual movie theaters and experience the Hollywood Holiday releases in proper, big screen fashion.

Here, then, is a fistful of notes from the field.

Poor Things (Yorgos Lanthimos) link to theater

Too much is being made of Emma Stone’s unabashed sexuality — rare for an a-list Hollywood actor, not so much in European quarters — in Yorgos Lanthimos’s wild ride Poor Things. The bigger and more expansive story here, and what makes Stone’s tour de force performance the most Oscar-worthy of the year, has to do with her serial awakening to a world of wonders and horrors. In this feminist Frankenstein-ian tale, adapted from Alasdair Gray’s 1992 novel, her character Bella experiences a vast character development from infancy to full blooming intellectual prowess. I like Stone’s description of Bella in her Golden Globes award speech last week: “I see this as a romcom. Bella falls with life itself, rather than a person. She accepts the bad and the good in equal measure. All of it counts. All of it is important.”

Stone/Bella obsession aside, Poor Things is another mischievous jewel in the strange and wonderful filmography of Lanthimos, who found general public love with The Favourite, but has followed a more eccentric arthouse muse with his striking oddities The Killing of a Sacred Deer, The Lobster, and his early body-neurotic Dogtooth. Equipped with a big budget, globetrotting locations, a brilliant avant-early music score by Jerskin Fendrix and a cast also including Willem Dafoe, Lanthimos outdoes himself on Poor Things, with high, surreal style. Consider Poor Things and Barbie as this year’s stealthy, subversive, feminist masterpieces.

Ferrari (Michael Mann) link to theater

Director Michael Mann, now 80, has built a career out of creating entertaining movies that feel more important than they usually are, so it goes with Ferrari, another case of a Mann vehicle (sorry) made of slickly moving parts, polished surfaces and potentially ominous thematic rumblings under the hood. We’ve been there before in different settings, in the cop caper Heat and the suave drive-by-night number Collateral, both relying on vehicular dynamism and the post-noir mystique of Los Angeles.

This time out, he rears back to Italy in 1957 and the world of well-dressed, philandering Enzo Ferrari (Adam Driver, with a passable Italian accent). The mythic car designer is between gears, facing financial struggles and the wages of his tending and alternate family, to the chagrin of his wife (Penelope Cruz, who steals the show). Imminent peril also awaits in the fateful (and fatal) Mila Miga open road race. But we know that the fates will ultimately smile on our dashing (sorry) protagonist, partly because, well, Mann and machine rule here.

Godzilla Minus One (Takashi Yamazaki)

Upfront confession: like Martin Scorsese, this critic has little use for or patience with the superhero, supervillain, or sequel-ravenous modern movie machinery. That said, Godzilla Minus One moved me to tears. Deep into writer-director Takashi Yamazaki’s beautifully-rendered film, one of now three dozen films about the pesky destroyer of life, limb, and cities, its pursuers call it a “persistent bugger.” It’s a gross understatement and a hint that the filmmakers have a sense of humor in the line of duty.

The film, based in 1945 in post-war Japan, also possesses surprising emotional depth and elements of compassionate humanity, woven around the mandatory — and high tech — carnage-zilla. Themes of survivor’s guilt, PTSD, alternate family life, and other concepts beyond the ken of typical monster movie kitsch and thrills, touching heartstrings in spite of our guarded selves. This Godzilla wins points for its remarkable balancing act of emotionality and ungodly beastliness. Stay tuned for Godzilla 38.

The Boy and the Heron (Hayao Miyazaki) link to theater

‘The Boy and the Heron’ | Credit: Courtesy

Also from the annals of recent Japanese films whose depths and impacts may be surprising to those of us not closely tuned into specialty genres, acclaimed animator Hayao Miyazaki (who made the Oscar-winning Spirited Away) touches on many serious themes and metaphors in his elaborate and masterful The Boy and the Heron. Also based in the WWII era, the film — fastidiously hand-drawn by 60 animators — unveils an alienated boy’s journey into the underworld and mystical dimensions, with common sentiments interspersed with the fantastical scenario.

In short, the film, inspired partly by autobiographical aspects in the 83-year-old animation virtuoso’s life, ventures into realms of wild adventure and adversity, in search of coming home. Likewise, the flights of imagination — enabled by the animation medium — encircle matters of the human heart.

The Color Purple (Blitz Bazawule)

Sometimes, a movie sequel or recontextualization is a good and worthy thing, beyond marketing considerations. Alice Walkers’s powerful opus The Color Purple deserved better than Steven Spielberg’s fluffy confection of a film adaptation from 1985, and it gets some due respect with the new musical-on-screen version, directed by Blitz Bazawule and with songs by Brenda Russell and others.

It could still be said that Walkers’s tale of abusive patriarchy and lingering ghosts of slavery, unfolding over three decades in the first half of the 20^th century, has some of its grit and stinging truths about black lives soft-pedaled by a musical format. But the drama and songs are strong enough to touch deeply, especially as delivered with sad wisdom, seductive sass, and ultimate self-empowerment by a cast including Fantasia Barrino, Taraji P. Henson, and Colman Jason Domingo.

In this tune-enhanced version of black American experience, tragedy and triumph do a wary but, in the end, moving dance together. It’s a fine way to start a new year, on a cinematic/musical note.