Alex and Kevin's 397: Midnight Special, Star People, and Drums

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Everybody Wants Some!!: Linklater Pays Homage to his College Days

Casual sex. Drinking. Hyper-masculinity. Competition. Baseball. And of course some existential talk, it’s a Linklater film. In Richard Linklater’s newest film, Everybody Wants Some!! (yes, two exclamation points), we are put in a time machine and sent back to the era of mustaches, ass-hugging pants, muscle cars, and tape cassettes.  I’m talking about the 80s, and Linklaters attention to detail is enjoyable as well as immersive for the audience. We follow our protagonist Jake, amongst a large supporting cast, as he arrives for his freshman year of college (somewhere in Texas) upon his recruitment to the baseball team. It seems that Linklater has once again reached into his own memory bank in order to create authentic film, considering he was a baseball player in college, in Texas, in the 80s. And like most of Linklater’s work, the mundane is turned into spectacle.

There is something very compelling and charming about the characters of this film. Although as one character Finn points out that all they talk about is baseball and girls, the conversations are engrossing. This can attest to how well Linklater’s writing and directing complement each other. The mundane story arc that is truly just a flatline, matched with Linklater’s simplistic style of directing is delightful. Linklater’s style allows for the audience to feel immersed into the film, feeling like they are just another one of the guys on the team. So once the films gets to the point where they actually play baseball (a practice not even a game) it’s extremely entertaining. I felt like I could watch them play for hours because of the intimacy I felt towards the players.

It is the same type of intimacy one might feel towards the characters in Linklater’s cult classic Dazed and Confused. When watching that movie you feel as though you are hanging out with characters on screen. But I must be keen to mention that this is not in any way a ‘sequel’ to Linklater’s homage to high school that many are portraying it to be. The film stands alone and going into it thinking that you are about to watch Dazed and Confused 2 might ruin it for you. Although there is a thread that connects the two films and that is Linklater. He is a cultural anthropologist in the way he dissect time periods and institutions but is called a filmmaker because he transfers all of his research onto the big screen. He did in Dazed and Confused and he certainly did it here in Everybody Wants Some!!.

Linklater takes us to most of the frontiers of the 80’s although the film really only follows the baseball team (full of many different characters.) Our protagonist Jake finds himself on the disco dance floor, the straw covered country bar, the concrete punk mosh pit, the decorative artsy theater house, and of course the keg infused jock palace. It’s Linklater’s way of showing audiences that college is the time in your life when all frontiers are available to you, in order to figure out which one fits you best. The film is a joy to watch whether it a nostalgic piece or relevant to you now. It’s a load of fun, If you don't believe me watch this clip of Jake making friends with his new teammates through one of Linklaters favorite modes of expression, music. Enjoy!

Spotlight: Shining Light on International Scandal

        

    Tom McCarthy’s Spotlight won the little gold guy, for best picture, at the Oscars this year and the decision wasn’t to far off. The film shines a light on an international scandal that had otherwise been kept in the dark. In the film we follow the Spotlight team of the Boston Globe, a unit specialized in investigating possible scandals. The team stumble upon the sensitive issue of reported child molestations from multiple priests in the area over the past few decades. With Boston being a heavily Catholic demographic, the reports trigger a lot of controversy. The ensemble cast apart of film are a joy to watch, with each performance raising the bar a little bit higher than the last.

            Mark Ruffalo gives a performance that just can’t go unmentioned. He portrays Spotlight reporter, Mike Rezendes, and is able to capture his personality along with all the strange quirks that come with it quite impressively. You might know Ruffalo from his role as the Hulk, a member of the Avengers. His performance in Spotlight gives us hope that the blockbuster superhero phenomenon isn’t ruining the best actors of today (still waiting on a Robert Downey Jr. to leave his CGi suit). The list of good performances from hollywood's stars doesn't stop at Mark Ruffalo though, it continues on with powerful acting from Rachel McAdams, Michael Keaton, Liev Schreiber, and the list continues on.

            I must confess before I continue that I am resident of the North Shore and am a sucker for any Boston related film, ranging from Good Will Hunting to The Departed. With that being said, I have never seen a more unique portrayal of Boston. McCarthy skips past the typical aerial sequence of skyscrapers and establishing shots of notable landmarks and takes us right into the streets of Boston. He lets audience get intimate and close to the setting, bringing them closer to issue the film address. McCarthy is able to shrink the large city of Boston into a neighbor. The decision to do so takes the international issues the film confronts, right into the backyard of the audience members.

            A scene that most effectively takes this international problem underneath a microscope is at the home of Brian James’s character, Matt Carroll. He is going through old files of priests with suspected child molestation reports and discover one of the priests to live in his neighborhood. We follow James's character from inside his home with a long winding take to outside. We then continue to follow him, in the same take, through his street and around the corner to the house of this possible child molester. The shot is able to show that this issue is closer to the characters than they think. It creates a sense of urgency in the characters that transfers to the audience. A urgency concerning a problem that can no longer be ignored.  

            Spotlight might be one of the last great films about newspaper journalism to ever be made. With technology changing the way we receive information, newspapers are being swept under the welcome mat. The film is worth a watch for the homage it gives to the hardworking journalists who shined the light on an international scandal otherwise left in the dark.

The Jungle Book: Some Films are Better Left Animated

        The Jungle Book doesn’t quite deliver the magic and fun and that many might find in the 1967 version. Disney decides to take a completely new approach to the once animated children's classic and turn it into a hyper-realistic spectacle nearly 50 years later. Director, Jon Favreau, is not new to creating the spectacle with other CGI successes like the Iron Man. Favreau's work in The Jungle Book isn't the problem. The problem aligns in this concept Hollywood has grown so fond of. The concept of taking animated favorites, and through the use of CGI technology, turning them into realistic technical marvels.

And yes, it is hard to disagree that the technical marvels turn it into a spectacles that are hard not to look at. Although, no matter how realistic you can make a talking bear floating down river with a child on it’s belly, there is nothing realistic about a talking bear floating down river with a child on it’s belly. This realism appeal matched with the absurdity of the story takes away the film's entire appeal to logos. And when a film fails to hit audience members logically it becomes extremely difficult to invest into the characters on screen. Animation allows for skew in your perspective of logos. You are aware that the film will get unrealistic at times, and you open up your perspective and let the film take where it wants to go. I myself had a hard time opening up my perspective to allow this adaptation of The Jungle Book to take me to the places it tried to go.

The film follows a boy named Mowgli, played by Neel Sethi, as the only real piece of flesh and bones we get to see. The rest of the character we meet along Mowgli’s journey are CGI created animals voiced by a few of the stars of hollywood. Some of the characters we get to meet are quite fun and entertaining but at some points of the film you can distracted by a game of “what celebrity is voicing this zoo animal?” A notable good decision in casting, is Baloo the bear, voice by the always fun Bill Murray. Murray’s nonchalant and farce demeanor matches this lazy and goofy bear with precision, that guarantees for a good few laughs. The rest of the cast get the job but don’t exactly knock you off your seat.

Some will praise the visuals of this film rightfully so, some of the establishing shots of the landscapes ahead are appealing undoubtedly so. Then matched by the attention to little details like the movement of the grass or the fur on the animals the film is truly a pleasure to watch. But this doesn’t make up for the many flaws the film has in its storytelling. The film is enjoyable to watch but it stops there, whenever a character opens their mouth, most of the time you wish they didn’t. Blame doesn’t fall on the individual level but the more the institutional level. As Americans we seem to allow what we pay to go see to get more and more ridiculous. Bottom line: Some films are better left animated.