Boy Erased

Throughout childhood I was a member of a Free Will Baptist church deep in the mountains of central West Virginia. The congregation was small and the dogma fundamental. Church membership was made up mostly of family members and close friends. It was rare that folks outside that small circle of people attended.

During my teen years a young, married couple -- who were not family -- started to attend on a regular basis. They were interesting, and seemed pretty hip to most of us kids. Soon, they began taking an active role in the church, and were especially eager to work with the youth. There was one problem: this congregation frowned upon women wearing pants in the church. 

And the young lady wore pants for every service.

After several months of waiting for her to catch on and conform, church leaders finally decided to talk to her about wearing a dress. The outcome? The couple never came back.

I couldn't help but think of this experience as I watched Boy Erased, which is based on the real-life experience of Garrard Conley. Conley is the Christian everyone thinks a Christian should be -- thoughtful, genuine, interested, curious, dedicated to God and to his faith -- and he's a true believer. His pastor father is proud of him, and his preacher's wife-mother thinks he hangs the moon.

Until the whole gay thing becomes public.

Even in the midst of distress and chaos, Jarrod (Gerrard's character in the flick) wants to do what he and his family think is the right thing -- learn to be straight. God can't love people who are living in sin, his father says, and people attracted to the same sex are living in sin.

So dutifully and with genuine intentions, Jarrod tries to change himself.

Instead, he discovers himself.  And in that process he recognizes the legalistic dogma so obvious and pronounced in many churches is, simply, made and maintained by people. We humans put our spin on The Word of God and fit it to how we see the world. The result is often a very narrow lifestyle of distrust and disharmony.

At one point in the movie Jarrod's father says that all of the answers to life can be found in the Christian Bible. That's true, of course, if we already know what we hope to find when we crack open the book to find it.

Mid90s

One of the benefits of living a mile up a West Virginia holler in 1978 is that I had a mile of road -- which was paved, most of the time -- to skateboard on without any real traffic. Hell, there was so little traffic at times on that road that I could set up a slalom course, complete with small, orange cones, around which I could maneuver.

And by "maneuver" I mean "falling on my ass over and over again until I was bloody and bruised."

I didn't take to being a skateboarder, really. For lots of reasons.

First, I had a crappy skateboard. It looked a lot like the one in this photograph, although I suspect the one in the picture was of better quality. If the board I rode hit a small pebble I was thrown to the ground.

And there were lots of pebbles on the road that went up my holler.


Second --and perhaps most important -- skateboarding seems to me the sorta activity you gotta do with other people. It's a social sport, one where you watch others and try to emulate or outdo them.

You skate a little, sit and talk, skate some more, sit and laugh, skate some more. Repeat.

The social aspect of skating -- being a part of a skating community, and forming an identify around that -- is at the heart of Jonah Hill's Mid90s. The film stars several professionals who are almost as good at acting as they are skateboarding. A small band of  kids dreaming of making it big on the pro circuit, looking out for each other while all the while busting balls.

Stevie, played with remarkable authenticity by Sunny Suljic, is drawn to the group at a time in his life when he's trying to find his identify. He learns to smoke and drink and curse and skate. But more than that, he learns to be a part of something bigger than himself.

It's not always a pretty something. But it's something that fills a void.

Mid90s is a terrific film, a near-home run for first time director Hill. And, I think, it's a flick that will make Suljic a star.

The Favourite

Costumes and accents

Illness and preservation

Lifetime in despair 

Ben Is Back

Peter Hedges' Ben Is Back could easily have been set in my home state of West Virginia. The opioid crisis that holds a vice-grip on the USA -- every 25 minutes a baby suffering from opioid withdrawal is born in the US -- is particularly bad in the Mountain State.

In 2016, WV experienced the nation's highest rate of death by opioid overdose: more than 43 deaths per 100,000 people.

The opioid epidemic in WV results from a perfect storm of causes that includes a challenging economy, geographic isolation, an under-developed infrastructure, insufficient health and wellness resources, etc. Perhaps the biggest influence, however, is greed. You want an example? In a 10 month span, a major drug company shipped over 3,000,000 prescription opioids to a single pharmacy located in the small town of Kermit, WV.

Kermit, WV has a population of just about 400 people.

Ben is Back tells the story of a young man on a brief holiday leave from an in-house drug recovery program. The movie has a strong ensemble, with Luke Hedges and Julia Roberts doing some of their best work in the most subtle of ways. Both are desperate and hopeful at the same time. The real question for both is, which emotion will win out?

The flick touches on some of the more obvious problems in the opioid epidemic. Big Pharma's hypocrisy is exposed when we see a pharmacist selling an addict a syringe, but refusing to sell Narcan to the addict's mother who wants to have it on hand in the event her child overdoses. We see the devastating effects of addiction on the mental health of those most deeply involved in the world of addiction. And throughout the film we see how cautious optimism can cause overwhelming emotional damage to the family structure.

The first half of Ben is Back is strong, with top-shelf performances by Hedges and Roberts. Courtney B. Vance and Katheryn Newton are terrific in supporting roles: each exemplifies in different ways the conflict of family members who want to believe -- but are afraid to believe -- in the recovery of an addict.

The second half of Ben is Back is less compelling. A McGuffin designed around a stolen pet is used to get Roberts and Hedges into a complicated plotline involving drug dealers. It's designed to show the audience the day-to-day lifestyle of a drug addict and the peripheral damage that lifestyle has on others. But, it feels convoluted as it morphs into something akin to Ben is Back meets A Christmas Carol.

The ghosts of addicts past and future take a little shine off an otherwise compelling film. 

Vice

While watching Adam Mckay's Vice, I recalled these two quotes:

                 "I do not fear the Dark Side as you do. I have brought peace, freedom, justice, 

                   and security to my new empire."

                 
                "Give yourself to the Dark Side. It's the only way you can save your friends."

No, Vice President Dick Cheney did not make those comments, at least as far as I know. The quotes are by Darth Vader, the fictional villain of Star Wars flicks.

Personally, I see a lotta similarities between the two.  

I'm more Star Trek than Star Wars. Still, I know debate exists within the Rebel Legion as to whether Vader was evil or simply a misunderstood anti-hero who did what he had to do. Likewise, Vice asks the audience: Was Dick Cheney lured to the dark side of The Force in order to realize his desire for power, or were his actions  genuine efforts to protect US citizens from terror?

McCay's Cheney is more Darth Vader than Anakin Skywalker. He seizes every opportunity to grab and wield power. And in true conspiracy-fueled story-telling, Vice depicts the VPOTUS as complicit in decades of social engineering that produced a more pro-business, climate-ruining, civil-rights-eradicating American society.

Is he a true believer? Is he grabbing power? It's impossible to say for sure. What the film makes obvious, though, is that Cheney and his wife Lynne are ruthless. They'll stop at nothing -- including hurting those they love most -- to achieve their goals.

Vice tells the Cheney story in a unique visual manner. It doesn't always work; some techniques are inspired, others seem too gimmicky. The strength of Vice rests squarely in the performances: Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Steve Carell, and Sam Rockwell are brilliant as Dick and Lynne Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, and George W. Bush. 

Each is able to humanize their characters at various stages of the film. These aren't stereotypes: they are people, with real-life strengths, foibles, and failings. 

Vice likely won't bank much box office, as it's seen as a partisan attack on political conservatives. Red Staters gonna hate. That's too bad, really. The movie should be seen simply for the top-shelf performances. 

They're that good.

Green Book

Mrs. Film Geek and I were eager to see Green Book, as we're always on the look for flicks that dramatize complicated relationships. We bought our popcorn and sat down expecting a film that touched lightly on racism and more deeply on personal connection -- and in large part that's what we encountered.

But, what we received mostly was (yet another) lesson in white privilege.

Neither MFG nor I had reference for the real-life publication The Negro Travelers' Green Book: The Guide For Travel And Vacations. For more than 30 years the Green Book was published in the USA because, as the publisher wrote on the 1956 edition, "The white traveler has had no difficulty in getting accommodations, but with the Negro, it has been different. He, before the advent of the Negro travel guide, had to depend on word of mouth, and many times accommodations were not available." (See article here.)

Never in my half-century of living have I had to seek advice on where to have lunch, get gas, or lodge overnight while traveling. I've never been forced to plan my routes according to where I might feel safest. Not a single time have I feared being turned away from conducting business because of the color of my skin.

The Green Book ceased publication in 1966, soon after the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It became unnecessary because, legally, white privilege can't exist in 'Merica.

Tradition, human nature, and psychology suggest otherwise.

Aquaman

If you -- like me -- started reading comics in the early 1970s, you're most likely familiar with this version of Aquaman.

Back then, Arthur Curry dressed in orange and sea-green. He couldn't be out of water for more than an hour or he'd die. His blonde hair was short, and he traveled below the ocean depths on the backs of aquatic animals.

You know: porpoises, dolphins, super-huge seahorses and the like.

Even though he carried his own comic book title, this version of the King of Atlantis was at best a secondary character in the DC Universe. He talked with fish and made a pretty good member of the Justice League -- especially when there was a water-based threat.

But readers didn't really take him for a serious hero.

DC retconned Curry in the 1990s to more closely fit the anti-hero trend happening at the time. This Aquaman was angrier, more impulsive, and willing to cross ethical lines his 1970s version would never consider crossing. Writers even severed his hand and fit him with a prosthetic to make the character edgier. 

Meh.


In recent years, DC Comics has focused efforts to morph the literary Curry into a character that more closely resembles the matinee idol being developed for movies. Comic-book Aquaman's hair was darkened, He became more playful, a little more care-free than was his previous incarnations. He lost the throne and embarked upon a swim-about, where he tried to find himself again. The modern comic book stories make it clear: Aqaman's identify is being transformed.

Whether it is a good transformation or not remains to be seen.

Aquaman (2018) gives us pretty good insight into who the comic-book hero will eventually become. The character from the flick is arrogant, impulsive, stubborn, and slightly immature. He's a hard-drinking do-gooder with the soul of a pirate. He lives and loves hard.

The film version of Arthur Curry is -- like the movie itself-- melodramatic. The movie exaggerates even the most obvious banalities common to super-hero-movies. Aquaman is shown in a cliched "super-hero pose" at least three times, and King Orm's "Call me Ocean Master" moment made me laugh so hard I nearly did a spit-take. This despite the fact the moment was supposed to be dramatic.

Aquaman can't seem to find a good balance between humor and drama. It's inconsistent (why can some Atlanteans breath on land while others cannot?), cheesy, and contrived.

The movie will make tons of cash at the box office. But I doubt the flick moved DC any closer to Marvel in its ability to get its universe right on-screen.