Private Life (2018)

Tamara Jenkins's Private Life is a touching, funny movie that is all too rare. It's about a middle-aged couple (a writer and a theater director) living in the Village desperately trying to have a child, by any means possible. Not only is the writing excellent and realistic, but the acting from Paul Giamatti and Kathryn Hahn have never been better.

The Little Prince (Le Petit Prince) (2015)

This is a gorgeous little movie that mixes traditional computer animation with creative stop motion animation. The animation is brilliant. That is by far the best part. I admit I didn't read The Little Prince. So I don't have the same connection to this story that other people have. But it is a touching story with an uplifting moral. There is this strange balance between English and French in this movie. The dialogue is in English but the text is in French. The production is French, but was supposed to be accessible to a wider audience. And yet it has had a difficult time breaking into the American market. I had to see it on an international flight. But I would highly recommend it to all kids.

Love & Mercy (2015)

Paul Giamatti is so creepy as the hack of a doctor Landy. He just does evil so well. Coincidentally, this is the second evil music producer he has played this year after Straight Outta Compton. The music is very different. It is less about lyrical genius and more about musical genius. Brian Wilson created complex layers of instrumentation. Paul Dano brilliantly and effectively plays a young Wilson who is just beginning to hear voices in his head. The studio scenes are incredible. They are shot on Super 16 handheld cameras documentary style. These are candid, intimate shots in the studio zooming in and out of Wilson instructing the musicians on the exact sounds he is trying to produce. He experiments with literal pet sounds, puts hairpins in the piano, and keeps his voice in the track. He has complete control over the studio, making sure that he achieves perfection. There is a shot of Wilson working with the cellist and the camera rotates to film the rest of the studio while the action takes place off camera. You hear it but you don't see it. This recurs in the film. The music naturally has a lot of sound mixing, and the sounds tell the story as much as the pictures do--such is the power of music.

The texture given to the young Wilson scenes contrast John Cusack's scenes of an older Wilson. The story jumps back and forth in an innovative approach to the biopic. And I like that different actors were cast to play the same man, like in the Bob Dylan biopic I'm Not There (also written by Oren Moverman). We primarily see the man under the care of Dr. Landry who has been suffering from his mental illness for many years. And in between there are glimpses of the younger Wilson, to remind the viewer of the genius that is being hidden by his illness. But here is the nuance, the illness inspires Wilson to write some of his most revolutionary and iconic music. The title Love & Mercy is a fitting one that is also one of his songs, without giving away too much. And the original song "One Kind of Love" written by Wilson for the film is very good. It was inexplicably left off the list of Oscar-eligible songs this year, though it might win the Golden Globe.

Straight Outta Compton (2015)

Straight Outta Compton is a perfect example of a primary source on our present society. Sure, you can view it as a secondary source on the 80s and 90s West Coast hip hop scene. But the movie itself is a product of our time. The influence of our society is overtly present throughout, giving this movie more importance than at first glance. Any African American could tell you that police brutality has been an ongoing problem in their communities for decades. But for many who live in Ta-Nehisi Coates's suburban dream, the recent incidents of police brutality caught on video have been a startling wake up call. This is the reality that minorities live in this country. What has changed is the quick access to video.  Rodney King's brutal beating was caught on tape, otherwise we may never have heard his story. Camera phones can capture video in an instant and the video can go viral on the Internet the next day.

NWA tried to convey their struggles through music (simple exercising their first amendment rights that even the FBI tried to curb) to the suburban teens who knew of no such struggle but listened to gangsta rap. This movie puts visuals to their visceral rhymes. From the outset, F. Gary Gray captures the raw toughness of the streets of Compton.  It looks like a war zone, complete with a tank-like battering ram. The threat of gangs is real and close to home.

Considering the original members of NWA served as executive producers, the film is surprisingly candid. The group is not uniformly portrayed in a positive light. It is a brutally honest movie. I loved the casting of O'Shea Jackson Jr as his father. In fact, the whole cast made a very convincing ensemble. Including Paul Giamatti who is seemingly typecast as the evil music manager; it is just something about his look and his mannerisms that make him a fitting choice.

Finally, the film does a good job at portraying the immense influence of the revolutionary group NWA. Their seminal album Straight Outta Compton changed hip hop music. What I didn't know before was just how brilliant Dr. Dre is as a businessman. He first found success as a founding member of NWA. Then he left that for Death Row Records where he found more success before throwing that money away to found Aftermath Records, which still operates today. That is not even to mention the massive moneymaker Beats. It's astounding that someone with such business savvy let himself be cheated out of money early on in his career. It was Ice Cube that saw through the mirage and so he took his lyrics genius solo. And individually these giants of rap each shaped the music industry in their own ways.

The Congress (2013)

Ari Folman's follow-up to his acclaimed animated documentary once again delves into the world of animation, this time using animation as a plot device.  The latter half of the film is animated in a style that is notably different from the cut-out comic book animation style of Waltz with Bashir.  It starts out sort of psychedelic in a Yellow Submarine-esque feel, preparing the audience for a funky ride through cuckoo town.  This is a seriously wacky movie.  Folman animates recognizable figures in pop culture and art--the animated scenes genuinely look like something straight from Cartoon Network.

The premise of the movie is very interesting, but there is simply too much going on.  The first premise of the film is Robin Wright playing a version of herself, an aging actress who is getting less work, and resorts to selling her image.  Her likeness is captured by computers and the computers make movies starring their manipulation of Robin Wright.  In exchange she promises to quit acting, so the computerized version of her can be used in movies.  The movie is a critique of Hollywood and the studio system.  Folman clearly supports actors and their art, which cannot be replaced by computers.  But this is not just mere theory--recently the Hunger Games director decided to not use a computerized Philip Seymour Hoffman in the final film, opting to simply remove him from their unfinished scenes.  Marlon Brando attempted to preserve his head and emotions digitally for use in performance in the future, as detailed in the documentary Listen to Me Marlon.

But this storyline, which could stand alone to make a formidable movie, is seemingly abandoned in the second half of the movie.  The plot gets more convoluted and the movie moves on to explore other issues about denying reality and living in a fantasy of one's own kooky creation.  There's just so much going on, that it is easy to get confused.  But the movie is very interesting and its a pleasure to watch the animations.  Robin Wright is excellent acting live and voice-acting.  She reveals her mastery of her emotions in the scene in which the computer is capturing her range of facial expressions.  This movie is less personal and less powerful than Waltz with Bashir, but it is a brave foray into narrative film.