TOY STORY 4

Directing: B+
Acting: B+
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B+
Editing: A-
Animation: A

My love of the Toy Story franchise cannot be overstated, especially since Toy Story 3 became not only my favorite in the series, but my favorite movie of 2010. When the first Toy Story was released in 1995, it established Pixar Animation Studios as the industry standard for CG animated features, for visual impressiveness and storytelling power in equal measure; with Toy Story 2 in 1999, Pixar’s first-ever sequel proved that they were capable of sequels equal to their predecessor. But, a second sequel, eleven years after the last installment? Which was more emotionally affecting even than the previous to put together? The achievements of Toy Story 3 astonish me to this day.

So, I had mixed expectations for Toy Story 4 — and, in the end, somewhat mixed feelings about it after the fact. Could the lightning in a bottle they managed with a third film in a series, which still woks perfectly as the final installment of a trilogy, be repeated with a fourth installment? In short: no. But, it’s more complicated than that. Toy Story 4 feels like a revisit to a world we all love, and it is undeniably fun and emotionally affecting in its own right. But it also doesn’t not particularly innovate the story in any way, doesn’t move these characters’ universe any further forward than they had gone the last time around.

With eleven years between 2 and 3, and nine years between 3 and 4, there has been an average of ten years between the release of every Toy Story sequel. Entirely new generations of kids exist with the release of each new installment. It seems kind of fitting that much of this new one takes place inside an antique store. Granted, these toy characters have been talking about their conditions as antiques since the second film, but 4 contains a fully contained environment housing relics collecting dust. It feels like a vague allusion to this franchise itself, were they to continue making them.

Sadly, the truth is, of all four of these movies, Toy Story 4 is the least vital. Unlike the first three movies, this one doesn’t even have Andy as part of the narrative thread that connects them all — only the memory of him, which Woody (voiced, as everyone should know by now, by Tom Hanks) can’t learn to let go of. And strangely, even though Toy Story 3 aged its characters close to the amount of time passed between the Toy Story 2 and 3, Toy Story 4 starts with a flashback to “nine years ago” that would actually place it closer to the time of Toy Story 2. In the narrative of 4, Bonnie, the little girl Andy gifted all his toys to at the end of 3 as he headed off to college, is still the same little girl. It has a slightly discombobulating effect, a decade between movie releases but time passing that much in the story with one but not at all with the next.

But. But, but, but! I freely admit I am being nitpicky here. I can nitpick even more: if Bo Peep has been living such a wild outdoor life all this time at a carniva (Annie Potts, who voices the character, did not appear in Toy Story 3), how the hell does her porcelain face and clothes remain so clean and spotless? Pixar is usually better at attention to detail than this. But I’m digressing again! Because: seriously, so what? Toy Story 4 not being the truly great movie I wanted it to be certainly doesn’t change the quality entertainment it offers in its own right and on its own terms.

The new toy characters alone make this movie worth seeing. “Forky” (Tony Hale), a spork with googly eyes made by little Bonnie at kindergarten orientation, is a delightfully weird addition to the gang. Keanu Reeves voices Duke Caboom, a Canadian toy daredevil motorcycle rider with a hilarious amount of pride in himself. Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele show up as the voices of insanely cute and also unruly plush carnival prizes, a bird and a bunny, with overactive imaginations. An antique doll with a pull string but a malfunctioning motor that makes her borderline villainous in her desire for the working motor in Woody’s back, is voiced by Christian Hendricks.

And yes, of course, Tim Allen also returns as Buzz Lightyear, with an amusing running joke about considering his button-press recorded sayings his “inner voice.” Pretty much all the rest of the regular toys return as well, particularly Bo Peep, here basically getting a co-lead part in the story.

Thus, as you might imagine, a whole lot is going on in this movie. It’s an hour and forty minutes long, and it zips along so quickly it feels much shorter than that. And, I must also admit, the more I think about it after the fact, the greater my appreciation for it becomes. That doesn’t make it any more vital as an addition to the series, but it does illustrate that not a single moment of time is wasted watching it either. As with its predecessors, I will no doubt by happy to go see it again.

As always, I must mention the animation. It is as impressive as ever, and here easily the most impressive part of the film — pretty on-brand for Pixar. Because Bonnie’s family has chosen to take a road trip in the interim between kindergarten orientation and the official start of the school year, the majority of the story takes place first on the road, and then at the aforementioned carnival — only a fraction of it takes place in Bonnie’s bedroom. And this carnival allows for some spectacular visual backdrops, the lights, the colors, the spinning rides, the occasional fireworks. This could easily have been a sensory overload, but the animators here present it with a unique beauty, often as deliberately blurred background for the action of the story. It’s animation that looks remarkably like a location shoot.

I suppose these flourishes are increasingly necessary, lest the repetition of the conceit, that toys get misplaced and must find their way back to their kids, get stale. It’s true that these stories are really just variations on the same basic concepts — but then, aren’t all stories? The joy is in the details, and this is a film with plenty such joy to offer.

A return to something we did not need but are sure glad to have.

Overall: B+

LATE NIGHT

Directing: B+
Acting: B+
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B
Editing: B+

Late Night starts off a little pat and corny, as it rushes a bit through the introduction of its characters, late night talk show host Katherine Newbury delivering a monologue on her show to an audience laughing plenty, even though the monologue jokes aren’t actually all that funny. Within about five minutes, however, we find Katherine in her writers’ room exclusively full of white guys who treats with either dismissiveness or contempt, and then things get genuinely funny, and remain fairly consistently so through the rest of the movie.

The jokes in Late Night are always best when part of the banter between the show staff, the actual writing they do that we see Katherine perform never quite as good. Thankfully this movie takes place mostly behind the scenes, in a fantasy world where Katherine Newbury is a female contemporary to late night talk show titans like Jay Leno or David Letterman — neither of whom are ever named; we just know that Katherine has been doing the show since 1991, and has won a ton of Emmys for it.

One neat trick, among many, of Mindy Kaling’s script is that it presents a world in which a woman star talk show host is believable, even though no such thing has ever actually happened. If it did, though, it’s easy to see it looking like this, with a white English woman filling the role as a casually cruel perfectionist who doesn’t even realize how little she herself cares for other women.

Emma Thompson is perfectly cast in this role, giving it unique nuance that makes it difficult to imagine anyone else doing it. Pairing her with Kaling, who also stars, doesn’t seem like the most intuitive choice at first, but they have real chemistry together. Of course it doesn’t hurt that Kaling herself has charisma to spare.

Her script, though, is what truly drives Late Night’s undeniably winning sensibility, because Kaling’s Molly Patel so clearly loves television, and that is a clear extension of Kaling herself. Late Night somehow manages to be the least offensive movie to anyone while also acheiving everything it aspires to, which is simply to be a light, entertaining story that touches on industry issues — lack of diversity, sexism — without ever coming even close to being judgmental of the people working in it. In this universe, anyone benefiting from systemic problems is doing so unwittingly.

It’s a smart move from the standpoint of a light comedy, as it acknowledges industry (and cultural) challenges without ever getting mired in it. There’s a certain unbridled joy to Mindy Kaling in particular, which she infuses into all her work. They way she writes her characters — and the way Nisha Ganatra directs the actors playing them — you can’t help but find ways to root for them all, privileged background or not.

There are moments where the amount of detail thrown into the story does feel a little overdone, and certain moments are almost distracting in their oversimplifications. There is no real romantic element to this story, although it gits hinted at in a way that feels it would be better either fleshed out more or done away with altogether. The overall charm of the story, and especially the performances of Kaling and Thompson (who has never been better), more than make up for it.

I wish more could have been done with John Lithgow as Katherine’s ailing but supportive husband, and even Amy Ryan as the network president planning to cancel the show, both of whom do great with what little they’re given. You can’t have everything. The ensemble supporting cast is large enough just with the guys in the writers’ room, which includes Denis O’Hare, Hugh Dancy, Reid Scott, and John Early, not to mention Ike Barinholtz as the boorish comedian presented as Katherine’s potential replacement. There’s some irony to a movie so much about female voices rounding out its cast with so many white men, but even more satisfaction to the two leads being women who get a combined majority of the lines and screen time.

Far more importantly, and as always with comedies, this movie made me laugh — and if a movie is being sold as a comedy, that’s what it should do. Mindy Kaling has a unique comic sensibility, and Emma Thompson a unique comic voice. Late Night didn’t just make me chuckle consistently, as is far more common with most “comedies.” It genuinely made me laugh at a pretty consistent clip, with clever and sophisticated humor that could easily fall flat in lesser hands. It’s just plain a lot of fun, with a large cast of characters who are all enjoyable to be around. I genuinely can’t imagine anyone not enjoying this movie.

To borrow a line, this movie is “a splash of color on the gray canvass” that is all comedy currently in cinema.

Overall: B+

GODZILLA: KING OF THE MONSTERS

Directing: C-
Acting: C+
Writing: D+
Cinematography: C-
Editing: C
Special Effects: C

When I saw Godzilla back in 2014, I had high hopes for director Gareth Edwards, who had in 2010 made a name for himself with the indie alien mystery Monsters. That film revealed a director with real potential, which made Godzilla all the more disappointing. That movie spent its first half being static and lifeless before turning into an even worse disaster movie than 2012.

Godzilla: King of the Monsters, now, overcompensates for that previous lifelessness by jumping right into the action — although I use “action” loosely here, as it would be more accurate to call this film a “mess of chaos.”

Why did I even bother seeing this movie, you might wonder? I’m wondering the same thing. I literally went to it thinking to myself, These movies are never very good, I don’t know why I keep coming back. My only defense is that I held on to the idea that I knew full well it would be dumb, but the spectacle might me fun on its own terms. Some blockbuster special effects extravaganzas do work that way.

Well, not this one. This movie has not one redeeming quality. The closest it gets is that some parts of it are merely average — the acting, for instance — rather than terrible.

Otherwise, I hardly know where to begin. I found myself thinking, Why the hell would that happen? so many times, I can’t think of any specific examples. Maybe when Godzilla bites off one of the heads of the three-headed rival “alpha predator” that was reawakened in Antarctica, then that head literally grows right back in a matter of seconds, and this is explained away by somehow figuring out that it’s the one monster that is an alien, whereas all the others are actually native to Earth? That ridiculousness is just the tip of the iceberg here.

If I were Kyle Chandler, Vera Farmiga, Ken Watanabe, Ziyi Zhang, Bradley Whitford, Charles Dance, Bradley Whitford, Thomas Middleditch, Sally Hawkins, Aisha Hinds, O’Shea Jackson Jr., or David Strathairn, I would be embarrassed to be in this movie, but apparently none of them are. I guess they’re all happy to act proud of this mess since they got a nice paycheck? Presumably they got paid up front: King of the Monsters made half in its opening weekend what the previous Godzilla did. And trust me, no word of mouth is going to save this one: you might think that earning $80 million so far is nothing to shake a stick at, except it cost $170 million to make!

What a colossal waste of money. The special effects are subpar, the lighting is almost always too dark to get a visual handle on what the hell is going on, the editing makes it impossible to get any real sense of continuity, and this is in action set piece after action set piece that make up about 80% of the movie. Director and co-writer Michael Dougherty (Krampus) never takes things down a notch long enough to allow any time for the story to breathe. On the few occasions things do slow down, it’s apparently just to insult our intelligence.

At the beginning of our “story,” such as it is, it’s been five years ago since “the attacks” on San Francisco, and for reasons no one can explain, Godzilla has been in hiding all this time. We find Kyle Chandler’s Mark Russell off somewhere studying wolves — which evidently involves taking pictures of a pack feeding on a carcass, using a long lens from behind a nearby log otherwise exposed in a massive field. This is the “foundation” for which we learn about “apex predator” behaviors later applied to Godzilla, and the three-headed monster, and how all the other long-dormant monsters frozen in time suddenly wake up and answer their calls in one way or another.

Vera Formiga’s Dr. Emma Russell has devised an audio contraption that apes these so-called apex predator commands and somehow can render them docile — if used correctly and in the right hands. All sorts of wrong hands come into play, the one exception being Mark and Emma’s daughter Madison (Millie Bobby Brown), who of course has more brains and logic than any of the adults around her, which in this movie isn’t saying much.

We do get brief shots of other “massive unidentified terrestrial organisms” (MUTOs, they actually call them that), by the way, with three or four very quick shots and/or references to “Kong.” This is a transparent attempt at laying the foundation for the next film in this “cinematic universe,” Godzilla vs. Kong, also co-written by Dougherty and already in post-production. I’m exhausted already. At this rate, no one is going to care what Kong or Godzilla are doing by next year. I already don’t.

I’d be tempted to say that at least this time around you get to see Boston get destroyed, but . . . honestly, it hardly matters. You can barely see the city at any given time. And it’s just the same shit in a different movie, with no characters you feel any need to get emotionally invested in. This movie is supposed to be a thrill ride but I lost my patience with it within fifteen minutes and soon after became so numb to the onslaught of nonsensical carnage that it literally made me drowsy. Maybe that’s this movie’s best defense: Godzilla: King of the Monsters works if you have insomnia!

Hey, let’s have a sleepver! And watch this movie to go to sleep!

Overall: C-

ROCKETMAN

Directing: B+
Acting: B
Writing: B
Cinematography: B
Editing: B+
Music: B+

The comparisons are inevitable, so I’ll start with the obvious question: is Rocketman a better movie than Bohemian Rhapsody? And, objectively speaking, Rocketman is the superior film, from pretty much every aspect and angle — except, perhaps, for the featured music itself.

But is Rocketman as enjoyable to watch as Bohemian Rhapsody was? That’s a very different question, and it really depends on where your previously existing loyalties and tastes lie. For instance, I was pretty fundamentally disappointed in Bohemian Rhapsody, but still found the music irresistible, because I have long connected to the music of Queen. By contrast, as much as I have long been a massive fan of many classic rock bands and artists from the seventies, I was only introduced to the likes of Fleetwood Mac, Heart, Supertramp, The Moody Blues, even Queen by my parents, none of whom had any Elton John Records.

So, for me personally, this is the thing with Rocketman: I never got any introduction to his back catalogue in my youth, and so I have no more than a cursory familiarity with Elton John’s music. This has an effect on how much I can enjoy the film, and I am confident that any bona fide fan of Elton John will absolutely love it.

The thing is, if a movie about Queen and Freddie Mercury had been made as well as this movie about Elton John, then Bohemian Rhapsody would have been the best of both worlds. As it happened, audiences loved Bohemian Rhapsody way more than I did, launching it to massive global success the likes of which Rocketman could never hope for, thanks to the far more enduring nostalgia for their music and for a transformative performance by the star.

I would be hard pressed to call Taron Egerton’s performance as Elton John “transformative.” He doesn’t even look that much like the guy, honestly. As opposed to Rami Malik looking incredibly like Freddie Mercury but failing to get very deep into his character, however, what Egerton manages is to get into the spirit of Elton John as a character, which is frankly the makings of a film with far more successful execution.

And then there is another truly key difference: in Bohemian Rhapsody, the singing of the character Freddie Mercury had the voices of Rami Malek and Canadian singer Marc Martel seamlessly blended with that of real-life Freddie Mercury. In Rocketman, which is a true musical somewhat in the spirit of Across the Universe (except in that movie the story is entirely fictional and in this one it’s based on real life), Taron does all of his own singing — and he’s really good. Some say he’s better than Elton John himself.

The comparisons with and connections to Bohemian Rhapsody don’t end there, given that Rocketman’s director, Dexter Fletcher, is the one who, uncredited, was brought in to finish up Bohemian Rhapsody after Bryan Singer was fired due to “erratic behavior.” It could be argued that what is good about Bohemian Rhapsody can be credited to Fletcher, and here he’s officially given credit for the entire film.

Him and, perhaps, editor Chris Dickens. Biopics are notoriously difficult to feel like they sufficiently tell a story in the space of just a couple of hours, but the largely stylized nature of Rocketman, combined with it being a musical, makes it feel a lot more natural to present the life of a character in a series of vignettes, which cover many years of a person’s life.

And with Richard Madden as Elton’s sometime lover and manager; Bryce Dallas Howard as Elton’s mother; and particularly Jamie Bell as Bernie Taupin, Elton’s longtime lyricist, the supporting cast is well rounded with competent players. All of them do a bit of their own singing, always to songs from the Elton John back catalogue, and some transitions from dialogue to singing are smoother than others. There are sporadic moments when the narrative of Rocketman sags a little. But, they are always followed by yet another fabulous sequence that easily wins you over.

The story is told in flashback style, with Elton in full “Elton regalia” attending a twelve-step program meeting, telling his story. I often thought about how Elton was dominating the meeting discussion to tell a story that was being turned into this movie, but I guess that’s just my OCD talking. Let someone else talk, man! But, this movie isn’t any of their stories. And over the course of the film, Elton systematically sheds the plumage of his costume, until we are finally seeing the essence of him as just a deeply flawed person with addiction issues. There is a moment where he literally hugs his inner child, and that’s a little corny, but we can live with it.

Rocketman does do a nice job of representing Elton John’s gayness — a pretty sharp contrast to a major sticking point with critics of Bohemian Rhapsody. Rocketman is quite frank about Elton’s sexuality without ever getting especially explicit, proving that you don’t have to whitewash over key elements of a person’s identity in order to make them relatable to mass audiences.

All that said, there is still a slight hollowness to Rocketman, a feeling that, in spite of the movie’s overall finesse, we still don’t get very deeply into who Elton John really was and is. There is plenty of spectacle here, and it is eminently entertaining. On the other hand, it could be argued this is just the nature of biopic films — if you want to get further into the weeds of a person’s psyche, two hours just isn’t enough time — read his autobiography (there’s one coming in October 2019).

What I liked most about Rocketman was that, although it’s an “authorized” biopic, it seems clear Elton John is interested in owning his mistakes. This is a man with addiction issues that nearly did him in, and the movie makes that very clear. And that’s also what makes it unusually uplifting for such stories: it didn’t do him in — he survived, and he still lives: this actually has a happy ending, a superstar self-actualized after a satisfying redemption arc. It’s the kind of story made for Hollywood, only this time it’s a fantastical reflection of real life.

Partners in rhyme, Jamie Bell and Taron Egerton as Bernie Taupin and Elton John.

Overall: B+

SIFF Advance: THE LONG HAUL: THE STORY OF THE BUCKAROOS

Directing: B+
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B+

I guess I need to stop approaching local productions with low expectations by default. That’s the ignorant thinking of an old fool, who doesn’t see how the world has changed.

Now, to be both fair and realistic, one thing that really hasn’t necessarily changed is that one does not expect great cinematography from a documentary. This is a genre that usually features static shots of talking subjects intercut with some kind of archival footage that is often amateur by definition — not the stuff of high production values. A true exception to this general rule comes in the form of The Long Haul: The Story of the Buckaroos, which focuses on, of all things, a group of male strippers of diverse body types doing performative cowboy masculinity at Seattle’s own Can Can.

Director Amy Enser began filming in 2014, and offers a portrait of what was, then at least, the five core guys performing in the show, how they got to be involved, how it changed their lives, how the show itself evolved. As I write this, I find myself wondering if the show even exists anymore: the Buckaroos website appears to be out of date; no live dates any more recent than 2016 can be found anywhere; their social media links feature no posts any more recent than 2016 either. Maybe I should have stayed for the entire Q&A after the SIFF world premiere screening of this film after all.

Well, whatever, the film tells a compelling, often delightful, certainly colorful, and by turns sexy and funny story about these guys who play a fictional group of long haul truck drivers. Or cowboys. Construction workers. You get the idea. You’d think the movie would generate interest in their live shows, assuming those shows still existed. Maybe the hunky red head who was the driving force behind the show’s creative decisions, who retired from the show after ten years of performing in it during filming, was a harbinger of its end?

The film itself offers no insight as to the fate of the show itself, but rather stands as a unique, refreshing take on performative sexuality, as seen through the gaze of a female director. This is markedly different from how any movie about female strippers by a male director could ever even hope to be. It certainly has a more egalitarian vibe to it. Any many of the group’s dance numbers are featured, impressively shot with swooping camera movements and vivid lighting.

It’s not super surprising that the group of men in this show is not super diverse in terms of ethnicity — all but the one black man are white — but, there is something to the diverse array of body types on display: some guys more conventionally attractive than others; one a bit skinny; one who weighs 280 pounds, who gets some of the greatest cheers from the crowd. None of them is especially chiseled. Most of them are straight, but with an unusual comfort engaging with naked male sexuality. What Amy Enser’s direction shows is how these guys prove that anyone can be sexy if they just know how to own it. Different performers are seen talking about how working in the show helped them overcome shyness or body image issues. These are not things you see men talking about a lot.

So The Long Haul turns out to have a lot more depth to it than you might expect from a movie about, to greatly oversimplify it, a bunch of male strippers. I went into this expecting something fun, but a lot more breezy and superficial. I left it impressed by some actual substance. This isn’t just some time filler. I would actually recommend watching it, however you might find it in the hopefully near future. I had a great time with it and am confident you will too.

Can you feel the heat?

Overall: B+

SIFF Advance: TROOP ZERO

Directing: B-
Acting: B-
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B

There’s a pretty strong, old-school “independent movie” vibe to Troop Zero, a light and breezy tale of a young girl in rural late-seventies Georgia getting together a ragtag group of local girls (and one effeminate boy) to form a “Birdie Scouts” troop with the intent of winning a jamboree prize of getting her voice recorded on a record set to be sent to space. The script is both unique and strong, as written by Lucy Alibar (Beasts of the Southern Wild), but the direction, by a female duo called “Bert & Bertie” (which makes me think of avian muppets), much of the time has the feeling of unfinished business. It’s as though there perhaps wasn’t enough time or budget (or both) for a proper amount of rehearsal or number of takes.

To be fair, filming with children is tricky, and Troop Zero features a lot of them, pretty much all of them with the vibe of real kids rather than professional actors. And how easy is it to find that sweet spot between kids who feel genuine onscreen and kids who come across as creepily precocious? Given a choice between the two, I’d take the former; at the very least, there’s nothing odd or unsettling about any of these kids.

Still, I found myself thinking as I watched this movie, what kind of theatrical release this might get. There are far more polished films than this one which these days are better marketed as releases straight to streaming platforms, which seems like perhaps the most appropriate avenue for Troop Zero . Who knows how big an audience it would get there, compared to in movie theatres?

That said, Troop Zero has more than its fair share of genuine charms, not least of which are its opening and closing sequences, with special effects impressively rendered for what was clearly a small budget. The opening credits follow a meteor hurtling towards the Earth, until we zoom in on little Christmas Flint (Mckenna Grace), sitting in a chair under the stars, watching a meteor shower, reminiscing about how her late mother encouraged her interest in making contact with alien life. Christmas is immediately established as a girl with an exceeding interest in science, and what’s not to love about that?

The adult actors rounding out the supporting cast include some pretty big names, not least of which is Viola Davis (who gets top billing, actually) as Rayleen, who works as secretary to Christmas’s downtrodden defense laywer dad (Jim Gaffigan, sporting a truly horrible blond wig). Aside from the many local school bullies, Christmas’s pseudo-nemesis turns out to be Principal Massey, played by Allison Janney.

“Troop Zero” is the number given to the Birdie Scout troop formed by Christmas, because all the other numbers are taken — an attempt at a slight joke at the expense of the misfit kids, I suppose, although it makes little logical sense: apparently the numbers can only go up to thirty? Rayleen gets roped into being their “Troop Mother,” and by extension a much needed mother figure to Christmas.

It feels a little like the more famous actors involved are present as a means of lending attention this movie might not otherwise get. And in more experienced directorial hands, the final product might have been delivered with a bit more finesse. Still, I have to admit that by the end of this movie, it had completely won me over, and I was even misty-eyed by its delightful climax at the jamboree talent show. The story strands all get tied together with a neat bow with a nice emotional payoff, and with a movie like this, you can’t ask for much more than that.

A bit of star power is lent to the proceedings.

Overall: B

BOOKSMART

Directing: B+
Acting: B+
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B+
Editing: A-

God damn it, people! You need to go see Booksmart! It’s no surprise that this Memorial Day Weekend box office was dominated by Aladdin, which also opened this weekend; the same goes for the top four being rounded out by smash hits John Wick Chapter 3: Parabellum (in its second weekend), Avengers: Endgame (still on track to be the biggest box office success in history — in unadjusted dollars), and Pokémon Detective Pikachu (the first-ever live-action movie based on the most profitable franchise ever). Still, Detective Pikachu is in its third week, and honestly, Booksmart deserves to be at least competitive as a top-3 placeholder.

Ten years ago, it very well might have been. Now, it barely squeaks into sixth place, taking in a paltry $8.7 million. Less than a million tickets have been sold to see this movie, and it’s getting lamented in headlines as being crushed by the competition. And why? Because we live in a world now where going out to the movie theatre is reserved, by most, for spectacle. Aladdin is all spectacle. So are those other movies mentioned. Booksmart, by contrast, is about laughs, and fun, and character, and heart. Just without special effects. Who wants that!

Well, I do. And you should too! Scrolling through Twitter, excuses can be found regarding how going to the movies is just too expensive anymore. You know what? Barely more than twenty bucks for an AMC monthly subscription that allows for seeing up to three movies a week is not that expensive. Okay, yeah, a movie outing for a family of four gets pricey. This is an R rated comedy that is not intended for those audiences.

But, the argument goes, the audience this movie does have is far more prone to watch this movie later on a streaming service, at a fraction of the cost, in the comfort of their own home. It’s entirely possible I’m just being a grouchy old geezer about this. I love the movie-going experience. Even if I don’t know anyone else in the theatre, I love the communal aspect of it, getting a sense of how much everyone else is enjoying it compared to me. And I can tell you this much: Booksmart gets a lot of laughs.

It’s never cheap laughs, either, never low-hanging fruit. This is smart comedy, from a uniquely joyous script that offers a truly diverse array of characters who are to a person well-rounded, a rare case of a movie about teenagers that highlights the best of them as they exist in 2019, rather than the worst of them. These are kids who can make a mess of things — sure, they make mistakes. But in this movie, their peers are generally kind, and quick to forgive, or at least move on and offer second chances.

Now, to be fair, the gags and punchlines aren’t completely consistent in how well they land. I kind of wanted the sequence in which Molly (Beanie Feldstein) and Amy (Kaitlin Dever) get high and hallucinate themselves as Barbie dolls to be funnier than it really was. But, two key things make up for such semi-lulls in the narrative. Firstly, the laughs otherwise come far more steadily than they do in 90% of the other comedies that get released in theatres. This is a comedy that will make you laugh out loud. Second, Molly and Amy are supremely endearing as these over-achieving super dorks, who suddenly realize the night before graduation that they wasted time focusing only on school work and never having any real fun.

And so, Booksmart is the story of their pursuit of such fun, spending about half the movie in search of one particular kid’s party, and making pit stops at two other poor excuses for parties along the way. Once they get to the destination party, it becomes about how they figure out how to have a good time there. Unlike in other movies, where the antagonists would be other kids who are bullies, the conflict in the end becomes how they antagonize each other — and, of course (spoiler alert!), reconcile.

This movie has a lot in common with last year’s 🐓 Blockers, the key difference being that this one relies less on gross-out humor, and also somehow that one made $20 million its opening weekend. So, it’s not like anyone can blame this one’s underperformance on the fact that it’s got female leads. Also, in semi-contrast to 🐓 Blockers’s lesbian supporting character, in this movie one of the two leads is gay, and that fact is completely incidental — her pursuit of a love (or lust) interest played no differently than it would be if this were about two guy high school seniors who were best friends. I would argue that Booksmart handles these themes even better.

There is just so much I like about this movie, not least of which is that the story is about friendship, between one girl who is straight and one who is gay, and there is no sexual tension between them; their relationship is entirely platonic. I can’t think of any other movie I’ve seen, at least not in recent years, that was about such a relationship. Instead of playing up any other kind of “other-ness,” director Olivia Wilde plays up their lovable dorkiness. I even hesitate to say “quirkiness.” Amy and Molly are dorks.

And the supporting cast is wonderful too, from the spacey girl (played by Billie Lourd) whose running gag is that she keeps popping up inexplicably every place Amy and Molly find themselves; to the melodramatic gay guys (Austin Crute and Noah Galvin, both of them crushing it) whose party is all drama performance; to the eccentric but lovable rich kid (Santa Clarita Diet’s Skyler Gisondo), among plenty of others. There are even some comfortably familiar faces among the adults in the cast, including Lisa Kudrow and a nearly unrecognizable Will Forte as Amy’s parents; and Jason Sudeikis as Principal Brown.

In any case, the journey of Booksmart is very much its own thing, very much of its time, and it’s mostly a blast, as well as occasionally touching. It’s a journey worth taking, and not enough people are hopping on its train. Maybe it’s a victim of its release date, who knows? Sometimes a smaller movie just gets eaten alive by too much razzle-dazzle in its competition. My hope is that this movie proves resilient, and finds its way to wider audiences one way or another. It’s just as worthy as pretty much anything playing out there right now.

We’re going to have a good time if it takes us all night! Or at least 102 minutes.

Overall: B+

SIFF Advane: ENORMOUS: THE GORGE STORY

Directing: B
Writing: B
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B+

This would have been more accurately called “The Gorge Amphitheatre Story,” as it focuses almost exclusively on the history and cultural impact of the famed music venue, which is situated with a memorably stunning view of the Columbia River Gorge. Director Nic Davis does include a minute or two at both the beginning and end of the film with a geologist from Central Washington University, who shares a few geological details about the Gorge that are, frankly, far more interesting than what singers or band played the Gorge at which times between 1988 and now.

For instance, he notes that in contrast to the Grand Canyon, which took millions of years to form as it was carved out by the Colorado River, the Columbia River Gorge was formed mostly by cataclysmic floods occurring at the end of the last ice age, between 15,000 and 13,000 years ago. What! That’s an infinitesimally smaller window of time, and cataclysms are fun! Tell me more!

Alas, Enormous: The Gorge Story tells virtually no more about the formation of the Gorge itself, and is instead the story of the amphitheater built there by a young couple also operating a winery in the area, at the time with a capacity of 3,000. It has been enlarged and improved over time, now has at least two side stages and hosts many music festivals year round, has a currently capacity of 27,500, and is managed by Live Nation.

Nic Davis interviews several people with either notable or unique histories with the venue: a longtime event photographer; a woman who spent twenty years as a regular there with her sister who passed away; a few musicians of varying levels of fame, including a guitarist from Pearl Jam and the guru (or godfather? whatever) of Northwest music festivals, Dave Matthews himself. This guy has been headlining a full weekend of music every Memorial Day Weekend for many years now.

All of this is interesting enough, to be fair. And the musicians all uniformly appreciate the incredibly scenic nature of the venue, now widely considered to be one of the most beautiful in the country. That said, considering the eclectic number of festivals directly connected to the venue that do get mentioned — Sasquatch, Paradiso, Watershed — a curious number of them do not.

I have my own personal, unique history with this venue myself, just as presumably many Washingtonians and Northwesterners do. The first concert I ever attended was The Cranberries in 1996, at The Gorge. The second one I ever attended was one year later, at Lileth Fair. Granted, Lileth Fair is not directly associated with The Gorge generally speaking, but that 1997 concert there was the first stop of the first tour that festival ever did.

Perhaps there were some rights clearance issues. There’s a hint that may be the case in a shot of a newspaper article, with much of the text blurred — including the name Tracy Chapman, beneath a photo of her not blurred. And she was one of the acts at that 1997 Lileth Fair concert. Then there are Lollapalooza, Ozzfest, countless Phish concerts, and more — again, not directly associated with the venue, but worth mentioning as having been hosted by it several times. None of these things are mentioned at all, which gives Enormous a bit of a feeling as though certain details are curiously omitted. The run time of this film is all of 64 minutes, so it’s not like they were pressed for time.

Before seeing this, I imagined Enormous: The Gorge Story might be one of the few documentaries I would say are worth going out of your way to see in a theatre, what with the grand vistas being so much the point. Shots of the Columbia River itself, and the Columbia River Gorge, are both used sparingly and often repeated. You’ll get just as much out of this movie watching it on your TV at home. Being such a very local production and with such a short run time, I’ll b surprised if this gets any kind of general release in theatres anyway.

To be clear, however, what does get included is still compelling. In terms of what narrative this film has, nothing included feels wasted, and it’s over too quickly for you to get bored. It will certainly appeal to fans who love to see concerts at this venue, of which there are a great many. If you have no more than a cursory interest in the Gorge Amphitheater, though, you won’t have cause for any more than a cursory interest in this movie.

The show is spectacular no matter where you look. Well, if you’re actually there, anyway.

Overall: B

SIFF Advance: TRIXIE MATTEL: MOVING PARTS

Directing: B+
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B+

I seem to have a thing for seeing movies with a connection to a world I’m not a part of. Ironically, maybe, the world of fandom to which I belong is that of film itself, which becomes my one portal into other interests I have little to no time for. As in, I have literally seen exactly one episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race. It was at a viewing party in a gay bar in New Orleans during the week of Mardi Gras in 2014. The show was five years old at the time, and as many years have passed since then.

I have since gained only a cursory knowledge of who Trixie Mattel even is, let alone Brian Firkus, who created the Trixie persona. That cursory knowledge comes pretty much exclusively from gifs and clips shared by queer people I follow on Twitter. This documentary, though, Trixie Mattel: Moving Parts, has certainly piqued my interest. I might even buy her two folk albums, Two Bids and One Stone, many songs from which we see performed in the film.

The many existent fans of Trixie will already have knowledge of what is presented in the film, most notably her friendship, professional partnership, estrangement and ultimate reconciliation with fellow drag queen Katya Zamolodchikova. This is a very compelling part of Trixie’s story, and the reconciliation element could have used a little more fanfare in the film’s narrative. As presented here, it’s somewhat disappointingly anticlimactic, as though Katya being back in Trixie’s life is just an afterthought in the sequence of vignettes representing the past couple of years in Trixie’s life.

Aside from the Katya stuff, though, Trixie is perfectly compelling in her own right — Brian Firkus every bit as much so. In a noteworthy scene, Brian, not in drag, ponders the impact Trixie has had on her fans, many of whom tell her they relate to her as people who have battled depression. Brian notes that he jokes about being sad, but he’s neither depressed nor a sad person, per se. That, I could relate to. It made Brian very endearing to me.

There’s also something refreshingly average about Brian, when he’s out of drag. He’s far from ugly, but arguably just as far from the chiseled muscle boys gay culture fetishizes. It underscores the skill and talent that goes into the extraordinary transformation into Trixie Mattel, every single thing about her elevated and exaggerated.

I did find myself thinking about what might ultimately set Trixie Mattel apart from any other perfectly good drag queen. Surely, a documentary every bit as compelling could have been made about, say, any other contestant from RuPaul’s Drag Race. Details could be singled out about their backgrounds just as moving, or heartbreaking, as Trixie’s. For example, when Brian is doing a radio interview by phone, and confirms that the name “Trixie” comes from the malicious nickname given to Brian as a child by an abusive stepfather.

There is one pretty key thing, it turns out. Trixie Mattel isn’t just a personification of Dolly Parton on acid. She’s a bona fide, accomplished musician — something rare among drag queens, who traditionally lip sync to other people’s prerecorded music. Brian Firkus is actually a songwriter, and a pretty good one. He’s not half bad as a singer, either.

Trixie Mattel: Moving Parts tracks Trixie’s rise to midlevel fame, both as a losing contestant and then a winning contestant on RuPaul’s Drag Race, and then as a touring comedian-musician performing in venues all over the country. I found both Trixie and Brian so endearing, essentially being introduced to both through this film, that I might actually buy a ticket if Trixie ever comes back to Seattle.

The self-proclaimed “best folk singing drag queen” . . . is not wrong.

Overall: B+

SIFF Advance: BANANA SPLIT

Directing: B
Acting: B
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B
Editing: B+

Here’s a fresh take: a recent high school graduate breaks up with her boyfriend, and when she meets his new girlfriend, instead of becoming rivals, they become friends. Banana Split, in fact, is in its own way a love story — a platonic one, about a budding friendship between two girls under unique circumstances.

Director Benjamin Kasulke, former cinematographer for local Seattle productions (Safety Not Guaranteed, Your Brother’s Sister), here works with a script co-written by Hannah Marks, who also plays April, one of the young women. Marks is 26 years old, and shows clear promise, even though the opening sequence in Banana Split, detailing the rise and fall of April’s romance with Nick (Dylan Sprouse), is a little bit clunky. It lacks a natural narrative flow, and I found myself worrying that this might be one of those movies with a nice concept but a bit lacking in execution.

But, then the title card comes up (in a lovely neon design of an actual banana split), and then the story settles in. We get to see April in a more straightforward way, not just in an introductory relationship montage, and see her interacting with her loving, single mom (Jessica Hecht) and her sassy 13-year-old sister (Addison Riecke, who is delightful). April is depressed, in a pretty typical 18-year-old girl way, and soon enough she’s running into Clara (Liana Liberato), Nick’s new squeeze, at a house party.

Why isn’t Nick at this party? Clara is asked this very question but her answer is not very memorable. In order to launch this plot, I guess. Clara and April have a few awkward exchanges, and then they hit it off, and before long they’re doing shots. These soon-to-be college kids drink a lot, as such kids are wont to do.

As their friendship develops, both Clara and April keep it from Nick, who is very much a secondary character in this story. Even though he is the guy between them, this story is never about him, which is really what elevates it. It’s always about Clara and April, a shining beacon of female friendship that has very little in the way of melodrama, bucking stereotypes at every turn.

It certainly helps that Hannah Marks and Liana Liberato have a natural chemistry together. Neither of them particularly do with Dylan Sprouse as Nick, or even with Nick’s best friend played by Luke Spencer Roberts, who also happens to be childhood friends with Clara, and develops his own connection with April, and thus gets somehow stuck between every other relationship around him. Roberts does have a quirky charm about him, though, and is fun to watch.

I found myself thinking about the “Bechdel test,” the flawed but useful idea that at least two women be in a work of fiction, and they talk to each other about something other than a man. Banana Split passes this test with flying colors, as Clara and April talk to each other about all manner of things — even though the thing hanging unsaid between them is a young man.

Nick is just what brings them together, though. And of course they make a mess of their lives in myriad definitively useful ways over the course of the summer, as the specter looms of colleges pulling them away from each other, to all corners of the country. Even with the angst, though, I quite liked how honest Clara and April are with each other, if not with, you know, Nick.

It’s also nice that really no character in this story is a horrible person. They’re all just regular kids who make mistakes and learn how to dig themselves out from misunderstandings that breed resentments. It’s a reflection of real life, just with a lighter touch. It’s nice to see a so-called “teen movie” come along that is both this relatable and just a bit of fun. Banana Split isn’t out to be profound, but if you look closely you might find some profundity in the details.

Unlikely friendships can be the most fun.

Overall: B+