Reviews Archives - Page 12 of 59

Midnight Special

Michael Shannon stars in this mysterious and surprising sci-fi of fathers and sons.

With “Midnight Special,” Jeff Nichols’s fourth film (“Mud, “Take Shelter”), Nichols remains the best emerging American director today, capable of infusing any genre with earthy, Americana trappings and unpacking the intimate character drama within. “Midnight Special” channels sci-fi, noir and family melodrama in unpredictable, startling ways and resembles a modern day stab at the personal conflict of “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” or the spirituality of “Contact.”

Except the story of “Midnight Special” defies easy classification and blends genres with thrilling results. At its very core a chase film, “Midnight Special” begins with Roy (Michael Shannon) on the run for having abducted a young boy named Alton Meyer (Jaeden Lieberher). He and a former cop named Lucas (Joel Edgerton) are trying to get Alton to an undisclosed location while evading a religious cult who sees Alton as their savior and the FBI who believes Alton knows confidential government information. Roy however is really Alton’s birth father, separated from him by the cult leader Calvin Meyer (Sam Shepard).

Above the sci-fi tension and conspiracy theories, the father-son dynamic between Alton and Roy truly drives “Midnight Special.” Alton possesses untold powers that change and grow more intense and severe the more they remain unchecked, from being able to unconsciously tap into radio frequencies to locking eyes with powerful blue tractor beams of light. Roy can’t fully comprehend all that’s happening to Alton, covering his eyes with blue swim goggles and transporting him only at night, but he displays a need to protect him above any greater cause the boy might represent to the cult or to the government.

As a result, Shannon proves a touching father figure. His eyes and body language are more muted and less intense than in many of his other fiery roles, but he’s gruff and a man of few words in a way that will be familiar to many fathers and sons. “I like worrying about you. I’ll always worry about you Alton. That’s the deal,” he says. All this family drama weaves wonderfully within “Midnight Special’s” denser scientific jargon and spiritual underpinnings. The ambiguous nature of Alton’s abilities and ties to another world all serve the film’s mystery and suspense.

And “Midnight Special” is highly entertaining and beguiling. Nichols seeps the film in darkness and other-worldly lens flares. The quiet, procedural and noir-like filmmaking make Alton’s skills all the more startling when the fireworks begin. “Midnight Special” even has a sense of humor. Adam Driver (“Girls,” “The Force Awakens”) as the NSA analyst tracking Alton is out of place in the best way possible. He has an awkward, nerdy charm that’s practically foreign to the more rural sensibilities of the rest of the cast.

With “Midnight Special” Nichols has proven that he can take a larger budget and still deliver the intimate character drama of an indie. As a director and screenwriter, Nichols has as much untapped potential as Alton.

4 stars

Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice

Zack Snyder’s follow-up to “Man of Steel” pits Superman and Batman against each other.

Have blockbusters really come to this? We’ve grown so desperate to make superheroes dark, gritty and realistic that we’ve fallen to sticking Superman, in full spandex, in front of Congress? “Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice” has it all: senatorial hearings, editorial newsroom meetings, CNN, Charlie Rose? It’s the spectacle of the new millennium!

Director Zack Snyder has officially made superhero movies no fun. Whereas Snyder’s “Man of Steel” was depressing, overly tragic and evoked disturbing 9/11 mayhem for action, “Dawn of Justice” is messy, overstuffed, boring, and still manages to double down on “Man of Steel’s” doom and gloom.

“Dawn of Justice” opens with a revisit of Bruce Wayne’s tortured childhood, when his parents were killed in a mugging. Anyone even remotely familiar with Batman will know this story, so Snyder’s just making exploitative melodrama. The super slow motion gun chamber blasts and falling pearls from Martha Wayne’s shattered necklace are laying it on a bit thick, no? Snyder then takes us back to the titanic battle at the end of “Man of Steel,” with Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck) horrified at the havoc Superman can wreak. Bruce swears to find a way to beat Superman, while Clark Kent (Henry Cavill) believes Batman to be the dangerous criminal and vigilante.

18 months later, Superman is the figure of heated political controversy. Has Superman been sent by God, is he human, or is he God himself? And if he has the power to bring about our destruction, can he be trusted and held accountable? Except Snyder doesn’t actually explore or consider any of these themes through drama and storytelling. We have to endure an endless torrent of TV talking heads spouting claptrap analysis on cable news, or Superman being called before Congress in an oversight committee held by Senator Finch (Holly Hunter). Snyder even dragged Neil DeGrasse Tyson into this mess.

When it’s not Anderson Cooper debating the moral dilemma behind Superman, it’s Lex Luthor (Jesse Eisenberg), the head of a massive, nebulous company called Lexcorp. What movie exactly does Jesse Eisenberg think he’s in? Dressed in a baby blue suit and white sneakers with a wild mane of dirty brown hair, Eisenberg delivers a fast-talking, wide-eyed performance as less an ironic, tongue-in-cheek, super villain and more an eccentric mental patient. Luthor has for some reason declared his own war on Superman, and by extension a vengeance against God, utilizing his infinite resources to gain access to Superman’s only weakness, the mineral Kryptonite, and devise experiments on the body of the defeated General Zod.

Snyder goes all over the place in this story (written by “Argo’s” Chris Terrio and “Man of Steel’s” David S. Goyer). There’s an apocalypse dream sequence complete with a desert wasteland and unexplained mutant hornets policing the planet. There’s the sexy Diana Prince (Gal Gadot) needlessly inserting herself into Bruce Wayne’s business. And there are more than a few diversions to introduce the other members of the upcoming Justice League movie.

At no point however does Snyder tease out a strong main tension for the movie, a reason to care for the outcome of a fight between Superman and Batman or even urging us to root for a particular side. If it’s the fate of the world at stake, “Dawn of Justice” needs to do a better job than superficially profound lines about morality. “The world has been so caught up with what he can do that no one has asked what he should do,” or, “Devils don’t come from hell beneath us. They come from the sky.”

Snyder has also lost all his credibility as a visual stylist. While not as washed of color as “Man of Steel,” “Dawn of Justice’s” ending epic battle is a dizzying CGI laser-light show, in which Superman and another unstoppable behemoth wail on one another without consequence. And while some critics took Christopher Nolan to task for some sloppy editing and continuity within “The Dark Knight,” the car chase here is simply incomprehensible.

Affleck is a fine Batman, but his version of conflicted and tortured means being slow and lumbering. Cavill doesn’t fare much better as a perfectly bland Clark Kent. Eisenberg simply feels out of place. And poor Amy Adams. She’s taking Lois Lane far too seriously than this movie requires.

Every origin story has been told, every universe explored, every franchise booted and rebooted, and now as superhero movies have dominated popular culture, filmmakers have taken it upon themselves to fit their comic book idols into the real world. “Dawn of Justice” poses questions of governmental oversight that no one cared to ask, and in the process, the genre itself has ceased to be fun. Perhaps in the sequel, Superman can take out a mortgage and settle down into a nuclear family.

1 ½ stars

The Hunting Ground

“The Hunting Ground,” Kirby Dick’s documentary about sexual assault on college campuses across America, recognizes there is a major, widespread problem in this country when it comes to rape. Dick makes an effort to serve all those survivors affected. No instance of rape is too small.

But his target becomes far too wide and the movie’s subject too broad in scope. Universities, athletic programs, fraternities and college culture in general are all brought under fire. What exactly are Dick and his researchers attacking, other than to say that The Hunting Ground is everywhere? Dick has a powerful cause but not a clear villain or actionable agenda, and on a dramatic level it lacks the compelling figureheads or even the relatable protagonists to make us feel this problem most deeply.

The number of sheer numbers in this film is staggering and overwhelming. Less than 8 percent of men commit 90 percent of sexual assaults. Only 2 to 8 percent of all reported rape cases are actually false. Less than 4 percent of all college students are athletes, and yet 19 percent of athletes supposedly commit rape.

You could make a movie about any one of those statistics right there. “The Hunting Ground” makes a disturbing diversion to see how fraternities play into rape culture, with dozens of girls reciting the slogan about frat SAE, “Sexual Assault Expected,” before cutting to a video in which pledges chant in front of a sorority house, “No means Yes, Yes means Anal.” The Greek system is so weirdly institutionalized in a way that demands a deeper look, but Dick is on a crusade to tell every woman’s story.

Compare this to Dick’s last film, “The Invisible War.” Even though it was released just a few years ago, that movie didn’t come out in the same climate for talking about rape that we have today. And yet that film made waves because it made the US Military into a shocking source of institutional corruption harboring rape. In Kori Cioca, Dick found a strong-willed survivor with a pressing need for support that tied her sexual abuse case to the broader healthcare problems currently faced by veterans. “The Hunting Ground” only knows assault and arguably has far too many young women telling the same story.

“The Hunting Ground” is at its best when it’s a portrait of a victim and the psychology behind their post-traumatic stress. Two women profiled in the film lead a national support group and have faced Twitter death and rape threats as a result. In one scene, a young woman goes on an online message board from another country only to use Google Translate and learn that the poster thinks she needs to die.

“Whatever it takes, it has to be done. This is leadership.” “The Hunting Ground” aims to put names and faces on all the survivors (they don’t want to be called victims) that rape has affected. Through some stirring testimonial, jarringly cinematic pomp and circumstance and even a little help in the form of a Lady Gaga anthem, “The Hunting Ground” couldn’t have been released in a time and culture more willing to listen and help no matter what. But Dick’s goal is monumental and well above the means of what one movie alone can hope to accomplish.

3 stars

What Happened, Miss Simone?

The opening moments of the Oscar nominated Netflix documentary “What Happened, Miss Simone?” are so volatile and unpredictable in a way that captured Nina Simone’s musical essence, and it’s a shame director Liz Garbus can’t harness that lightning in a bottle throughout the rest of her film. It becomes a far more conventional musical biography told in relative chronological order, but is still entertaining and revealing about this influential musician’s life.

Simone saunters on stage at a concert in Switzerland. We’ll learn later in the film that this was her first show after a long hiatus, when she feared that few would still know her name. She does a big, long bow, sits at the piano and looks far off into the distance of the crowd. Her facial features are worn, very black, with big teeth and not the most flattering of looks later in her age, but she has a natural quality and magnetic allure.

This one performance interlude opening the film shows everything about how Simone battled issues of her appearance, of her skin color, and of her identity on stage throughout her entire career. In it she announces that she would play no more jazz festivals, and there’s a sense for why Simone, who passed away in 2003, had vanished from the cultural sphere and is now re-emerging. Her music can reach a new generation of listeners with its racially and politically charged lyrics (boycotted by some in the ‘60s and ‘70s) and sound tied directly to her time and upbringing.

Garbus’s film takes us through the beginning of Simone’s life, born Eunice Waymon, up through some of her final performances. When her daughter appears on camera in present day and gives her talking head interview after such an arresting open, it’s almost immediately something of a let down. But she says, “She was Nina Simone 24/7, and that was the start of the problem.”

Garbus finds some choice clips of Simone performing alongside Hugh Hefner on “Playboy’s Penthouse” and of how she came to record the vital and controversial song “Mississippi Goddamn.” These clips allow those interviewed to argue that the reason Simone doesn’t fall into the revered company of Aretha Franklin and Gladys Knight today was specifically because of her politics and how she was literally and figuratively blacker than the rest.

But “What Happened, Miss Simone?” goes beyond that easy assessment of fame, examining how she then became stifled in her identity once off stage. Her daughter describes her as monstrous, taunting and violent in middle age. “I think I would’ve been happier as the first black classical pianist. I am not very happy now,” Simone says bluntly. These are gripping stories of personal demons that, like this year’s “Amy,” do more than just celebrate the artist at hand.

Garbus however perhaps gets inside Simone’s music with more success compared to “Amy.” “Mississippi Goddamn,” the film points out, is such a bouncy song, an angry screed against her home state with a pop, jazzy sensibility. That song gets countered with the bone chilling “Strange Fruit,” such a strong example of how Simone’s music “exposed the sickness” of the American South in the ‘60s.

“What Happened, Miss Simone?” however begs for the visual creativity of 2015’s “Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck” or the attention to detail in the archival editing room of “Amy.” The film can’t help but feel weighed down slightly by its own storytelling convention. Only in the film’s opening moments when Simone is mysterious and odd on stage can we feel her vitality.

3 stars

Results

Andrew Bujalski’s latest mumblecore film plays off romantic comedy tropes.

I don’t mean to diminish the “mumblecore” movement of films – although I suspect if you dislike the lot of them outright you won’t find much to sway you in “Results” – but while Andrew Bujalski’s latest has been described by critics as a move toward a more traditional rom-com, it’s a perfect example of how mumblecore can drag down a perfectly acceptable genre film.

Mumblecore trades in realism, with characters meandering through life and the films themselves dealing primarily in casual, improvised dialogue and low production values. But just because your movie has realism doesn’t mean it needs to be “realistic.” Bujalski, one of the founders of the movement, proved with his last film “Computer Chess” that you could have a low budget but still be surreal and creative with genre expectations.

“Results” has the same level of “realism” but has a plot that echoes old fashioned screwball comedies. Danny, Trevor and Kat (Kevin Corrigan, Guy Pearce, Cobie Smulders) are caught in a love triangle under increasingly convoluted circumstances, but as would be expected of a mumblecore comedy, the madcap humor that would typically arise from such a genre is flat and muted, if not altogether absent. Even as these characters continue to get deep into sex, drama and emotion, it’s amazing how frustratingly little actually seems to happen in “Results.”

Danny is a recently divorced, out of work and out of shape dude who has fallen into obscene wealth and doesn’t have a clue what to do with his money. He wanders into Trevor’s health club Power 4 Life and explains his goal is to be able to take a punch and not be immediately brought down. Trevor puts Kat on the job, who’s testy with her clients and with Trevor, who she previously had an affair with. Danny gets a crush on Kat as soon as she does her first squat, and after a few sessions they make out. By the next meeting he’s gone too far with an elegant dinner, and Kat disappears from both Danny and Trevor’s life.

Part of the problem with “Results” has to do with this flimsy love triangle. “Results” has no clear perspective or main protagonist. Kat initially looks like the character capable of the most growth and in need of love, but she vanishes from the movie midway through to allow for an extended training montage of Trevor and Danny becoming friends. Danny too becomes conspicuously absent later on, with a romance emerging between Kat and Trevor a little more unexpectedly.

As for Trevor, he spouts health clichés about living inside your perfect body and attaining goals physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. All three have goals and aspirations but a lack of a clearly defined vision of what that future looks like or motivation on how to get there. Trevor would make for a good target for humor, particularly gym or fitness culture, but Bujalski doesn’t really care to go there.

I wish he would though. “Results” simply isn’t that funny. It’s certainly not jokey, nor does it make cynical, ironic fun of the gym-rat personality or their philosophies. Mumblecore films are made to be formless and bucking of narrative convention, but at least they have some excitement. The Duplass Brother films are all sharply written and comedic, even broad in their humor. Joe Swanberg’s movies have a strong sense of place and community in his home of Chicago. And Greta Gerwig, Anna Kendrick and Lena Dunham have charm and generational appeal.

Bujalski’s film just doesn’t get the same results.

2 stars

Knight of Cups

“Knight of Cups” stars Christian Bale in a spiritual journey through LA and follow-up to “The Tree of Life.”

In ways that are both enlightening and maddening, Terrence Malick continues to demonstrate in his latest film “Knight of Cups” a remarkable eye for visuals and creative ways of playing with depth. Since “The Tree of Life,” Malick’s polarizing masterpiece, critics have divided on whether Malick’s movies have grown tired, in that they’re beautiful and breathtaking, but too much like all his others.“Knight of Cups” follows in “Tree of Life’s” tradition as a dreamy, formless, spiritual, often indulgent film of a man drifting through life as hushed voiceovers adorn the images. But in small ways, Malick shows he’s still experimenting and innovating within his style, employing the now three-time Oscar winner Emmanuel Lubezki to engineer turbulent, liberated and delirious fish-eye shots using GoPro cameras. At times the film arguably looks more like Jean-Luc Godard’s “Goodbye to Language 3D” than it does “The Tree of Life,” and you wonder what brilliant and creative things Malick might do in 3D or another new format. And lord knows that with Lubezki he has the means.

Yes, “Knight of Cups” is still very “Malick-esque,” but for all its excesses, “Knight of Cups” still feels beguiling as a thoughtful, artistic look at existentialism, at examining what it means to be alive, even amid so much excitement, sex, opulence and hedonism.

“You think that when you reach a certain age things will start to make sense. That’s damnation. They never come together. Just splashed out there.” Malick explores this thesis throughout “Knight of Cups” both thematically and formally. Watching it is like witnessing a flashback of a life as an otherworldly spirit. The film’s weightless camera wanders around to observe moments and emotions rather than a concrete story. Everything’s “just splashed out there,” disconnected in ways that can be as frustrating as they are invigorating.

Our vessel is the wealthy Hollywood playboy and screenwriter Rick (Christian Bale). He revisits the relationships in his life, from fast friends, past lovers, bosses, brothers and fathers, and in each encounter he drifts without much feeling or words to articulate his mood. One of his girlfriends, the punk, free spirit Della (Imogen Poots), challenges his depression with the question, “Am I bringing you back to life?” With his reckless brother Barry (Wes Bentley), he can communicate entirely through posturing and body language. His ex-wife Nancy (Cate Blanchett) still loves and hates Rick passionately, but likely knows more about him than he ever will.

The title “Knight of Cups” refers to a tarot card and fairy tale of a man who can’t remember he’s the king’s son after drinking from a special cup. Each of Malick’s vignettes, as broken up through chapters, shows a man trying to remember who he is and who he was. Other films have shown men disillusioned with their life of wealth, women and splendor. But in “Knight of Cups,” even during a massive, celebrity-cameo filled party sequence at a glorious palatial estate, the film’s graceful editing, score and cinematography suggest something beyond just Rick’s glittering anguish.

Even a trip to Las Vegas finds a new mystique through Malick’s eye. It’s lush and beautiful rather than loud, sensational and trashy. He’s separated the confetti-filled, neon colored raves from their typical emotions and associated them instead with something gorgeous and ethereal. In Malick’s Vegas, there are as many peaceful, Zen moments as when he takes Rick inside a tranquil Buddhist monastery.

At a certain point however, the film’s weightless quality itself does grow aimless, even anemic. If “Knight of Cups” observes a life in progress from afar, then sure enough it will be filled with highs, lows and even boredom. How many impeccable shots of beautiful women frolicking barefoot on the beach can you honestly have?

There’s no doubt that Malick’s latest has some indulgence and seriously inscrutable moments. It falls short of “The Tree of Life’s” masterful reverie but surpasses the drearier slog of his last film, the equally formless “To the Wonder.” But “Knight of Cups” is its own film, and rather than turning in on his own bad habits, Malick is just beginning to find new meaning in the world.

3 ½ stars

Heart of a Dog

Musician and artist Laurie Anderson composes an experimental video essay to her dog Lolabelle.

It’s been argued that the most experimental films are often the most realistic. In Laurie Anderson’s touching, lovely, thoughtful and spiritual visual essay “Heart of a Dog,” she approximates the inner workings of the mind through her language, animation and sound. Between delightfully twee anecdotes and more melancholy meditations on life, Anderson grapples with the notions of death and loss and goes deeper into these subjects than most traditionally fictional stories.

At a brief 75 minutes, the only real narrative Anderson has belongs to her late dog, Lolabelle, a terrier that eventually went blind. She blends the line of documentary and fantasy with stories that ascribe thoughts and emotions to her dog. In one early anecdote she and her dog are on a hike when vultures swoop down and try to grab Lolabelle. Suddenly the dog has become aware of threats from the sky when previously all she knew were the ants on the ground. In one of “Heart of a Dog’s” more strained analogies, Anderson likens this realization to her own thoughts following 9/11. But many more of her stories have fun giving Lolabelle anthropomorphic qualities, going as far as to have a dog POV camera on the New York streets or Lolabelle pounding on a synthesizer to create her “Christmas Album.”

Anderson’s husband Lou Reed died while making the film, and while he appears only briefly, that feeling of loss lingers throughout “Heart of a Dog.” Her images and her animations are delicate scrawls and wisps, gracefully patched together in a way that echo the colors we see when we close our eyes. Anderson says in the film these are “phosphenes,” the “eternal avant-garde movies and screensavers” we have in our minds. And this tone she strikes allows her to reach a feeling of grief without being cloying.

Anderson too has a soothing, comical and endlessly curious fascination to her voice as she narrates the images. “The limits of my language are the limits of our words,” she says, dancing around stray thoughts about Japanese dogs wearing clogs to making some more vaguely political insinuations.

At no point though do you have to share Anderson’s spirituality or politics in order to appreciate her reverie. “Heart of a Dog” is more of a guided meditation in film, a phrase that sounds a lot more inviting than an experimental visual essay.

3 ½ stars

10 Cloverfield Lane

“10 Cloverfield Lane” is a chamber horror drama that bares ties to “Cloverfield” in name only.

J.J. Abrams projects tend to be more interesting as viral marketing campaigns than as actual films. Not so with “10 Cloverfield Lane,” a tightly-wound chamber drama and horror thriller that bares ties to the 2007 surprise blockbuster “Cloverfield” in name only.

In a jarring and harried opening, Michelle (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) is on the run, not from an impending natural disaster, but from a relationship. She drives to the middle of nowhere to escape her problems and gets run off the road in a violent collision. The disorienting, turbulent moment, with a jolting cut away in image and sound to reveal the title credits, speaks to the film’s style. First time director Dan Trachtenberg plays on what we think we know throughout “10 Cloverfield Lane.”

When Michelle wakes, she’s cuffed to a pipe in a small bunker. An IV is attached to her arm and she has a large, locking brace on her knee. In a panic, she manages to reach across her room to her cellphone, only to find she has no service underground. Her captor is Howard (John Goodman), who tells her, “I’m going to keep you alive.”

The line has multiple connotations. Howard found Michelle crashed on the side of the road and brought her in, but he has to keep her prisoner and orders her to behave. He explains that outside the walls of his bunker, an “attack” has taken place rendering the air contaminated and uninhabitable. Michelle is skeptical. She sees two mutilated pigs outside a window but also a blood stain and dent on the side of Howard’s truck that suggests he abducted her and lied to keep her locked up.

Then there’s Emmet (John Gallagher Jr.), a dopey, good-ol country boy with a broken arm. Did Howard break it? He’s not a captive, but doesn’t seem to be on Howard’s good side. Could they be in cahoots, or can he be trusted? He claims he saw the attack, something he’s never seen before, but only believes the air is poisonous because Howard said so.

“How do you know that,” Michelle prods. Time and again Trachtenberg pushes the question and makes Michelle a prisoner of circumstance, torn between the danger both inside the bunker and out. Howard could be sincere or devious, sane or delusional, or maybe a bit of all four. Goodman speaks calmly, but firmly with a lightly scolding, parental tone that complicates the dynamic between Howard, Michelle and Emmet. He talks fondly of his dead daughter and shows Michelle similar affection.

Trachtenberg’s visual tone has him playing on the contrast between claustrophobic close-up shots and emptier wide shots. There’s little concrete sense of time, and even the bunker’s confines run hot and cold. One scene is an intimate conversation between Michelle and Emmet between two walls, his backdrop a frigid blue and hers a warmer pink. There’s no certainty as to what they’re really thinking about the other.

While the question of what lies outside the bunker provides constant suspense and curiosity, the ultimate reveal almost can’t help but be a letdown. The conflict between Howard and Emmet doesn’t feel as well developed as could be, Howard becomes more of a traditional monster down the line, and the breathtaking ending feels like an out-of-left field twist that overwhelms the film’s small scale beginning. And if “Cloverfield” got anything right, it’s that the protagonists at its center were not heroes. Michelle has a weirdly innate talent for shimmying through air vents, crafting hazmat suits from household items and performing acrobatics to evade her captor.

A recent article in Vulture suggested that “10 Cloverfield Lane” could change the way Hollywood approaches movie franchises. The original story by Josh Campbell, Matthew Stuecken and with help from Damien Chazelle (“Whiplash”) was written without “Cloverfield” in mind but contains some of that film’s DNA. If bending the parameters of a small story can lead to more compelling, original ideas such as this getting to the screen, that’s a good tradeoff.

3 ½ stars

Only Yesterday

From Studio Ghibli, Isao Takahata’s 1991 film “Only Yesterday” finally gets an American release.

Out in the Japanese countryside, budding yellow flowers dot the fields, trees line the horizon and a stream cuts through the valley. From the top of a hill, you learn that over hundreds of years, everything you can see has been man-made. In “Only Yesterday,” Isao Takahata’s Studio Ghibli animated film from 1991, the farmer Toshio (Toshiro Yanagiba) explains to the visiting Taeko (Miki Amai) that on this farm, “Every bit has its history.” Each moment of Takahata’s film shows that a person’s experiences shape their life and identity. There’s history and beauty in even the most mundane and ordinary moments of life.

For her vacation from work in the city, 27-year-old Taeko decides to visit her family in the countryside to work on their farm. As she travels, she reflects back on her life as a child. The 10-year-old Taeko (Youko Honna) is spunky, sunny and just a little bashful and spoiled. She’s a typical little girl, so overwhelmed with joy as she visits a bath house that she faints, mystified by how to cut open a pineapple, and so smitten and petrified in her crush on the cute, 5^th Grade pitcher of the baseball team.

“Only Yesterday” shares the look of all Studio Ghibli animated films, with soft pastel colors and rich, painterly, hand drawn detail within every frame. But unlike the fantastical tropes of Hayao Miyazaki’s many films within the studio, Takahata grounds “Only Yesterday” in reality. The film’s modest scale only make the many slices of life more beautiful.

Takahata made the film back in 1991 (since then he’s been nominated for an Oscar with “The Tale of the Princess Kaguya” in 2013), but Disney originally blocked its American release due to a scene in which the naïve kids start piecing together what it means to have a period. Sure enough, “Only Yesterday” approaches many mature, adult themes through young eyes. Similarly, Takahata’s masterpiece “Grave of the Fireflies,” his previous film in 1988, deals with war, violence and death in a way that perhaps a child can understand.

“Only Yesterday” however finds tragedy in smaller moments. In one scene, Taeko gets a single line in a play, and though she’s discouraged from improvising new lines, she makes the most of it in her performance and gets offered a part in a college production. Her fantasy about fame blooms to life in preciously hilarious pinks, yellows and greens around her. It’s adorable, and it’s so intimate that it hurts all the more when her father quietly puts his foot down and dashes her dreams. In another, Taeko gets a D on a math test because she doesn’t understand dividing fractions. She draws a picture of an apple and cuts it into pieces, so she’s clearly practical, but her older sister thinks there must be something wrong with her, and it’s devastating to see Taeko within earshot of her sister’s ridiculing.

Of course the spirit of any Studio Ghibli movie lies in its animation. Every film that has ever come from this studio has a meticulous, loving care in each still frame. Takahata literally blurs the frame itself to give “Only Yesterday” a hint of magic. After a baseball game, Taeko quickly runs home to avoid the boy she has a crush on. Though he’s just as bashful, the boy chases after her, and there he is, standing in the distance, a small figure at the end of an alley. The bright orange sunset is just behind him, and everything else in the frame is white and washed of its color, with the edges of the foreground specifically erased to create a sense of depth within the 2D, animated frame. He mumbles out a question: “Do you like sunny, rainy, or cloudy days?” She stutters out her answer, “c-c-cloudy,” they both smile, and he runs off. Taeko then turns down the block and starts to seemingly climb up the frame and fly away. You’ll melt watching it.

“Only Yesterday” drips with warm, fuzzy sensations of nostalgia. The childhood story and characters are whimsical and light-hearted but are concerned with intimate, personal truths about life in a way that would be meaningful at any age.

4 stars

Embrace of the Serpent

Colombian filmmaker Ciro Guerra documents the Amazon during the rubber boom of the 1900s.

“Embrace of the Serpent” mysteriously and surreally takes us on a journey through nature and history to examine the value of preserving culture in the face of radical, profound change. Told in two time periods surrounding the Amazonian shaman Karamakate’s encounters both as a young and old man with visiting white men, Ciro Guerra’s Oscar nominated foreign language film finds unexplored twists in the culture clash narrative and delivers an entrancing look at the jungle through a native’s eye.

“How could I forget the gifts that God has given us? What have I become?” Karamakate speaks these words in fear of becoming a “chullachaqui,” or as the film defines it, an empty ghost and shell of one’s past self. He sees a photo of himself for the first time and comes to understand it not as himself but a memory of a past moment. In that moment lays the lost legacy of his people.

“Embrace of the Serpent” is loosely based on two diaries documenting the events of the rubber boom in Colombia, during which time an estimated 90 percent of the native population was wiped out by wealthy, white rubber barons (think Herzog’s “Fitzcarraldo”). The first by Theodor Koch-Grunberg, a German ethnologist, serves as the basis for Theo (Jan Bijovet), a white scientist at the turn of the century slowly dying and in need of a sacred and medicinal flower called yakruna (also fictional). Several decades later, Evan (Brionne Davis) is an American botanist (this part based on biologist Richard Evans Schultes) who reads Theo’s account and wants to see if yakruna really exists. In each alternating story, Karamakate (Nilbio Torres as a young man, Antonio Bolivar as an old man) finds himself at odds with his companions, mistrusting of their intentions but reluctantly willing to lead them through the forest to find the sacred plant.

Yet Guerra challenges some of the typical assumptions of the invading white man learning to discover nature, and he avoids the insanity tales that have been a trope of the Amazon movie since “Aguirre, Wrath of God.” Karamakate initially seems right to be wary of Theo, warning him that the only way to survive the jungle is to respect it and follow the rules of the wildlife that lives there. But his hatred may be unfounded when we see how Theo has earned the trust of his travel companion Manduca (Yauenku Migue) as well as another tribe. This dynamic complicates the culture clash narrative that all native cultures are pure and innocent. In one scene, Theo shares stories and sings and dances for a tribe’s amusement, and they repay him by stealing his compass. Theo argues that with technology, they’ll lose their built-up knowledge of navigating by the stars, to which Karamakate replies, “You can’t forbid them to learn, but you can’t know that because you’re white.” Guerra’s story has layers and is hardly so black and white.

“Embrace of the Serpent” however is a spiritual story above a cultural one, and the many and frequent metaphors, symbolism and surreal diversions (including one yakruna-fused head trip that seems to channel “2001: A Space Odyssey”) range from devastating to enlightening to strained. One run-in with a deluded, cannibalistic Messiah figure is wholly shocking but feels separated from their more tangible journey. When “Embrace of the Serpent” reveals the plight and suffering as a result of the rubber boom, it’s more effective than when reaching for religious themes. One encounter with a muddy, disfigured native who grovels for his life after Karamakate ruins the man’s rubber harvest particularly resonates, far more so than vague symbolism of jaguars, serpents and meteors.

But Guerra’s film mystifies and enchants with a liberated camera and stark black and white cinematography that give an entirely magical look at nature. The camera has a habit of stalking through the forest, swiveling around trees and gliding over the river. It’s the Amazon in the way a native might see it, and as Karamakate wished, it serves as a reminder of the gifts God has given us.

3 ½ stars

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