La La Land (5/5 Stars)

Watching “La La Land,” one wonders why there aren’t more movies like it. After all, it is a lot of fun. The movie starts in a typical traffic jam on a Los Angeles overpass. That is until one person starts singing a cute upbeat tune entitled “It’s Just Another Day of Sun.” She is joined one by one by her fellow commuters and then all at once by every other person stuck on the overpass. They are of all creeds and colors and are lightly dressed and brightly colored. They start dancing, doing tricks with bikes and skateboards, and at one point the back of a van opens to reveal a band already playing this upbeat song. Suddenly the song ends, everyone gets back into their cars, and the traffic jam continues. The camera pans up to show the Los Angeles skyline and the movie’s best joke appears as a title. Simply, it states, “Winter.”

“La La Land” is written and directed by a young man named Damien Chazelle. He’s made three movies so far. His first “Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench,” was notable in how it contained distinct musical numbers, set pieces almost never seen in a no-budget movie (almost never because Damien Chazelle did it). “Whiplash,” Chazelle’s first brush with a budget (albeit still a very small one), was a virtuoso in editing which spoke volumes about the director’s preternatural talent and industry for displaying rhythm on the screen. “La La Land” is the full flourishing of Chazelle’s power. He reunites with Justin Hurwitz, the musical director of his previous features, and has created the best movie musical since 2002’s “Chicago.”

Unbound by a restrictive budget and reveling in the presence of movie stars like main leads Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone, “La La Land” is a brilliantly romantic and exceptionally kinetic movie musical. The music riffs several themes over and over in various ways and they are good enough that the repetition is welcome. The cinematography wastes no frame in its attempt to make the movie wall to wall artistry. Cinema lovers who have watched Gene Kelly’s “Singin’ in the Rain” and “An American in Paris” will notice where the movie gets its inspiration. Gosling and Stone are not exceptional dancers (though they do a flawless Viennese Waltz at one point) but they don’t really need to be for you to have fun alongside them.

The movie might just win Best Picture and the reason it is the front-runner is also the only minor quip I have with it. The story, like previous Oscar winners like “The Artist,” “Argo,” and “Birdman,” is about people in the movie business. Emma Stone plays a wannabe actress striking out at various auditions and Ryan Gosling is a struggling jazz pianist. As someone who watches lots of movies, I believe I have seen enough movies about these particular types of people. “La La Land” is an exceptional movie musical, I just wish there were exceptional movie musicals that weren’t about people convinced the epitome of life is becoming famous.

Having said that, you may notice that these two characters aren’t necessarily equal in these cliche ambitions. Gosling is already good enough to get a good job in this movie, he just doesn’t want to settle for a regular gig. His ultimate goal is to open a jazz club where patrons can receive a very specific experience he feels is valuable. Whereas Emma Stone would be happy with any type of work and her ultimate goal is apparently to be recognized while buying coffee and insisting to pay for it when the manager tries to give it to her for free. One goal is actually worth having and this may reflect Chazelle’s far greater interest and experience in jazz than in whatever vague abstraction of success the Emma Stone character is going after.  

Manchester by the Sea (3/5 Stars)

Lee Chandler (played by Casey Affleck) works as a janitor in a housing project in Boston. He fixes stuff and doesn’t take shit from the tenants. His boss excoriates him for not taking shit from the tenants. Lee Chandler points out that he’s cheap, he does good work, and he knows about a bunch of illegal stuff the boss does on the side. “So do what you have to do,” he says. Lee doesn’t care if he gets fired. He goes to a local bar at night. Women try to hit on him but he doesn’t respond. He starts a fight later on that night. Lee doesn’t really have a problem with the other guy. He wants to get punched in the face.

There is tragedy in Lee’s past. As the particular nature of it is only revealed half-way through the movie, it is technically a spoiler. But given that it seems to be the premise of Lee’s character and various flashbacks point to a wife and three children that are no longer there, you can take a guess at what happened. My guess was that Lee got drunk and while driving everyone home from a party somewhere he got them all killed in a car crash. I wasn’t too far off.

“Manchester by the Sea,” is the name of the town where this tragedy took place and where the people from his past still live (or are buried). Lee doesn’t visit. And when he does its because something bad has happened, specifically his brother, Joe Chandler (played by Kyle Chandler) is in the hospital. Joe has congenital heart disease and every once in awhile collapses and is taken to the hospital. In the opening scenes of this movie, Joe collapses and dies. Lee goes to Manchester by the Sea where he sees Joe’s friends at the hospital and picks up Joe’s teenage son, Patrick (played by Lucas Hedges) from hockey practice.

At the will reading, his brother throws him a curve ball. The will says Lee Chandler will be Patrick’s guardian. This is something Joe although he knew he would die soon, did not inform Lee of because as Lee puts it, “he knows I would have never agreed to it. Being guardian to Patrick necessarily entails Lee moving back to Manchester by the Sea and trying to live with the tragedy. The story is well written and directed by Kenneth Lonergan who treats his subject with patience, care, and good humor. Casey Affleck’s performance is perfect and a scene he shares with his ex-wife, Randi, played by Michelle Williams, is one of the saddest scenes in movies. (Michelle Williams, it is fair to say, is underused in the movie but when she is on screen, she captivates).

As a slice of life or character study, “Manchester by the Sea” is as good as it gets. But its tragic centerpiece calls for something more than a glimpse into the lives of these people. Kenneth Lonergan owes us some theory on what it all means or what the next correct step is in Lee’s life. This the movie does not provide. The tragedy occurred for no particular reason and Lee’s life has no particular lesson to teach us. It’s okay for comedy to be pointless, but tragedy needs something more. Lonergan made me cry a little, he owes me that.  

 Perhaps a good idea would have been to tell two parallel stories. One for Lee and the other for Randi. After all, Randi got remarried and had another kid. How she accomplished that in the wake of the tragedy while Lee couldn’t would be interesting and instructive to see.

Arrival (4/5 Stars)

The screenplay for Arrival was written by Eric Heisserer adapted from the book “Story of Your Life” by Ted Chiang. Arrival is one of those movies where you get on IMDB and look up the name of the writer. Eric Heisserer past resume would not make him a likely suspect for “Arrival” one of the most intelligent movies in theaters today. He is a horror remake/sequel movie writer. His credits include “The Thing” (2011), “Final Destination 5” (2011), and “A Nightmare on Elm Street” (2010). I guess he had to do what he had to do to get his foot in the door.

“Arrival” is several leagues away from these previous movies. The basic premise, an alien visitation (or is it an invasion?) has been done a thousand times but “Arrival” is something entirely different. It isn’t about humans battling angry alien instincts. At its core, “Arrival” is a movie about linguistics. It mainly concerns a linguist named Louise Banks (played by Amy Adams) and her efforts to communicate with the aliens (referred to as heptapods, and two specifically called “Abbot & Costello”). If there is a movie that “Arrival” is like, I suggest it would be Christopher Nolan’s “Interstellar,” another smart movie that went out of its way to demonstrate scientific principles to the audience. To watch “Arrival” is to learn something about how your brain processes language. At the same time, there is much humor and a good deal of suspense. “Arrival” is one of the best written movies of the year.

What “Arrival” isn’t is a particularly good looking film. This is more noticeable than usual because Director Denis Villeneuve’s last two films (Prisoners and Sicario) were very beautiful movies. It just so happens that the cinematographer, the great Roger Deakins, worked on the last two but not on “Arrival.” So if you want a good idea of the value a great cinematographer brings to the screen, compare and contrast these movies. Looking at IMDB I am very glad to discover these two will be working together again for the new Blade Runner movie. That movie should be incredible, at least to look at.

The aliens land in strange ships on thirteen (give or take) parts of the globe. A major concern of the movie is the various ways that different countries respond to the aliens. (Get it, the lack of unified culture and language plays out importantly in this way too.) Because it is vogue in this particular decade (as opposed to say the Japanese in the 1980s), the Chinese have a big role in the unfolding of the plot. On the American side, the military led by Colonel Weber (Forest Whitaker) and Agent Halpern (Michael Stuhlberg) seek out two experts, one a mathematician named Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner) and the linguist Louise Banks (again Amy Adams). It is unmistakable that Louise Banks being the only woman in a sea of military men in this movie is not mutually exclusive to her being also the main advocate for a peaceful response. Storywise it also helps for exposition purposes because she continually has to persuade all the dudes to give her more time to figure out the Alien language so she can figure out why the Aliens came. By doing so, she explains her procedure to us, and it is enlightening and entertaining. The mathematician is generally supportive. The military men are generally not supportive but, of course, they have a Columbus and the Native Americans situation on their minds.

The story of the aliens is interspersed with a subplot about the life and death of Amy Adams’ daughter. Why and how it is being shown in the movie is one of the more interesting devices the movie uses to explain how language affects the mind. I’m not about to give it away too much except to level a general appreciation of the song used: “The Swimmer” by Max Richter (This is the same violin Martin Scorsese used in that sad and gorgeous scene in “Shutter Island”) and again to note that like “Interstellar” the movie uses Time to provide a very optimistic dues ex machina.

p.s. The Sanskrit word for "War" and its translation is 'gavisti' and it means either 'a disagreement' or 'a desire for more cows.'

Loving (5/5 Stars)

Jeff Nichols wrote and directed “Loving” a movie about the couple behind the 1968 United States Supreme Court case “Loving v. Virginia” that declared unconstitutional bans on interracial marriage. Joel Edgerton plays Richard Loving and Ruth Negga plays Mildred Loving.

“Loving” is a perfect movie about a couple of very boring people. The fact that they are boring, that Richard Loving fixes cars and lays brick and that Mildred raises her children and wants to live a simple life close to her family home seems to be best reason the American Civil Liberties Union took on their case pro bono and took it all the way to the Supreme Court. You could not come up with another less threatening pair of persons and the fact that the government is spending time and energy trying separate them is the greatest evidence of the absurdity of the government’s position.

The story goes that Richard loved Mildred and felt that the right thing to do would be to marry her. The State of Virginia believed that Richard Loving officially marrying Mildred Loving, a colored woman, was a threat to society. It would be noted that Richard and Mildred simply living together would not have provoked the arrest. Richard and Mildred Loving are arrested because they took a day trip to Washington D.C. and got a marriage certificate. Sometime after, the local police burst through their bedroom door in the middle of the night and put them both to jail. Mildred happens to be pregnant at the time. They are dragged in front of a judge that lectures them on who they should sleep with in their own bedroom in their own home. (I must admit a certain disgust, particularly as a lawyer, when I saw the Virginia courtroom scenes in this movie.)

And yet, the director, Jeff Nichols, does the story a great service by not over dramatizing the interactions between the law and the couple in such a way that makes them unbelievable for their time and place. Normal people generally act like the characters in this story act. You don’t talk back to cops and judges and here Richard and Mildred Loving are nothing but consistently polite. It only makes them that much more validated in their continual decision to challenge the law. “Loving” is a particularly engaging and effective movie not only in its argument for civil rights but simply (and probably because) as a fully developed character portrait. Surely you can watch this movie and go, “I know this person. I know that person. The government really should them alone.”

I especially liked the scenes where Mildred and Richard talk to their lawyer, here played by the comedian Nick Kroll, an inspired choice for a Jewish ACLU lawyer. All the enthusiasm for the case is on Nick Kroll’s side. Richard looks nothing but uncomfortable and wary the entire time. His decision to be in the room seems to be based entirely on his loving deference to his wife’s wishes to be there. After all, Richard doesn’t particular care about making history. All he wants to do is lay brick, work on cars, and take care of his family. These two things aren’t necessarily the same thing, and the latter is way more important to him.

Richard and Mildred Loving don’t even bother to show up to the Supreme Court to listen to the arguments. Nick Kroll asks Richard if he wants to say anything to the Judges. Richard says that Kroll should tell judges that he loves his wife. To him, that is all that matters. Nobody is hurting anybody and this whole thing is a stupid absurdity that he doesn’t feel like he should waste anymore time on. This movie goes a long way in presenting that argument in the most forceful way imaginable. “Loving” is one of the best movies of the year.