Review: The Diary of a Teenage Girl

Image courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.

There have been enough films about young men's coming of age - and sexuality - to constitute an entire genre, but similarly themed films about young women are far more scarce - that is, unless you turn to the French, such as Catherine Breillat's unforgettable "Fat Girl" (as well as several other of that filmmaker's provocative titles).

But Marielle Heller's "The Diary of a Teenage Girl" is an unabashedly frank picture about a young girl coming of age in 1976 San Francisco and her raging hormones. The movie should be more disturbing than it is, considering that Minnie (Bel Powley), a comic book obsessed artist who becomes sexually involved with her mother's boyfriend (Alexander Skarsgard), who is - how shall we put it - very age inappropriate. Minnie's mother (Kristen Wiig, handling a dramatic role like a pro) is, naturally, unaware of the burgeoning relationship as she is more often than not with booze in hand or cocaine in nose.

And, possibly, the reason why the film isn't as disturbing as you might think is because Skarsgard's Monroe, while very obviously completely in the wrong, isn't the aggressor. This isn't a film about a youth corrupted at the hands of an adult that should know better. Minnie is the one who pursues the relationship, mostly because she receives little attention from boys her own age and is afraid that Monroe could be her only chance for sex. It sounds a little creepier on paper, but "Diary" is a film about female empowerment, not victimization.

Powley is very good in a role that takes a fair amount of guts and the supporting cast - Skarsgard, Wiig and Christopher Meloni as Pascal, Minnie's sarcastic father - is very good. If "Diary" has any fault, it's that while the fact that a film about a young woman's sexual coming of age is a rare thing, Heller's movie often relies on some of the same storytelling tropes you'd find in a male-centric counterpart. There's also a series of scenes toward the film's end involving Minnie becoming involved with another young woman that feel a little undercooked.

Still, the film is funny, refreshingly vulgar (in that, while it doesn't go out of its way to offend, it also doesn't tip toe around its occasionally raunchy material) and well performed. The movie is set in the 1970s, but it's not beholden to emphasizing the setting, other than some obvious choices in dress and decor and some well-picked soundtrack choices.

Both Heller and Powley are talents to watch and "Diary" is further evidence that there's a need for more women filmmakers looking to tell female-centric stories.  "Diary" picture is a solid and unique entry into the coming of age canon.

Review: Ricki and the Flash

Image courtesy of Sony Pictures.

If "Ricki and the Flash" has an air of familiarity, it's probably because it was directed by Jonathan Demme, who made the wonderful "Rachel Getting Married," a film that also centered around a wedding, a dysfunctional family member and music. "Ricki" is not nearly as good as "Rachel," but it's a mostly entertaining film all the same, primarily due to that force known as Meryl Streep.

In the film, Streep plays Linda (but takes the stage name Ricki), a woman who gave up her family years before to pursue a career as a rock 'n roll star, although as we find her in the present, she is merely the vocalist of the in-house band at a dive bar and a cashier at Whole Foods. Her on-again, off-again romance with her guitarist (Rick Springfield, suddenly ubiquitous) is the only thing she has going in the way of relationships.

Ricki gets a call from her estranged husband Pete (Kevin Kline, doing a solid job of playing a Mr. Milquetoast), who tells her that their daughter, Julie (Mamie Gummer, Streep's own daughter), has been ditched by her lout of a husband, who has taken up with a younger woman. This, of course, is all in the service of a family reunion story that allows the wayward member to reconnect.

The film is not without its troubles. It's a little unclear why Ricki has turned out the way she has and whether she ever had much to show for in the way of a career. The tense conversation she has with Pete's new wife (Audra McDonald) feels a little forced and the picture's finale, which involves Streep playing at one of her son's weddings, feels a little too neatly wrapped up. And that performance is followed by a series of stares from wedding guests that is a little over-the-top.

Aside from these issues, "Ricki" is a pretty fun movie, mostly due to our being given ample time to watch Streep try her hand at classic rock staples - everything from Bruce Springsteen to Dobie Gray. As always, Streep delivers, which goes a long way to patching up some of the film's script problems. She always brings the A game. The supporting players are solid as well, including Kline, Gummer, McDonald and Springsteen.

Demme is a filmmaker with a diverse resume that includes great character dramas ("Melvin and Howard"), stunning thrillers ("The Silence of the Lambs"), social importance dramas ("Philadelphia"), kooky comedies ("Something Wild") and, of course, "Rachel Getting Married," which perfected the dysfunctional family gathering formula to a science. "Ricki" is not as good as that latter film - not nearly, in fact - but it's an enjoyable experience that enables us to watch very talented people let loose.

Occasionally, Streep's performances overshadow the films in which she stars - for example, her portrayal of Margaret Thatcher was significantly better than the sum total of "The Iron Lady." And her latest is such a case. Even when the film falters a bit, Streep is the driving force that keeps us on board.

Review: The End of the Tour

Image courtesy of A24.

James Ponsoldt's "The End of the Tour" is a fascinating picture, not only due to its intimate story that keeps company with two writers, one of whom was hailed among the best of his generation, on a road trip, but also due to some of the controversy surrounding the film.

I typically - in fact, virtually never - take he-said-she-said arguments into account when reviewing a film. For example, I could care less whether Martin Luther King Jr. and Lyndon B. Johnson actually had the conversations portrayed in "Selma" as those scenes were used to further the story and they were not egregious.

So, I take into account that - in the case of "The End of the Tour" - I'm watching a movie about actual people with some possibly fictional sequences. I have no problem with that, although those who have been against the film from the beginning might have a reasonable bone to pick with the film's depiction of David Foster Wallace (Jason Segel, who is quite good here).

It's been noted that an aura of gloom, depression and suicide is hinted at throughout the film as Wallace opens up to Rolling Stone reporter David Lipsky (a very good Jesse Eisenberg). The book tour during which Lipsky follows Wallace was in 1996, while the author's suicide didn't happen until 2008. So, the complaints that Wallace coming off as a depressive and possibly suicidal person more than a decade before he actually died is a valid complaint. Perhaps, Ponsoldt and company did not intend to foreshadow Wallace's eventual suicide, but the film often drops hints that could be interpreted as such.

Getting that out of the way, "The End of the Tour" is still a good movie with two strong performances at its center. Eisenberg plays Lipsky as a pushy reporter who wants to get the best story out of his time spent with Wallace, whom he obviously respects, but also a guy attempting to do the right thing. As Wallace, Segel displays dramatic talents before unseen, portraying Wallace as a man who wants to be seen as ordinary - he lives in a modest home in Illinois and worries constantly that people will think more highly of him than he believes himself to deserve - but is clearly someone of great talent.

Although the film is not confined to one room - Lipsky follows Wallace during a promotional tour for "Infinite Jest," his most acclaimed work - it reminded me slightly of Louis Malle's wonderful "My Dinner with Andre," in that both films are centered completely around conversation and any sort of character development must be gleaned from the characters' words.

At one point late in the film, Lipsky reads to a crowd about his experience shadowing Wallace during the book tour and calls their tete a tetes "the best conversation [he'd] ever had." And that is what ultimately makes "The End of the Tour" work. It's a film centered around conversation between two people who are interesting to hear. I can take into account the critiques of the film based on Wallace's portrayal, but I still think the film works and is a great showcase for two very good performances.

Review: Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation

Image courtesy of Paramount Pictures.

I often bemoan the concept that you should just turn off your brain to enjoy summer movies as it is typically an excuse for people to defend films that are lacking, most often in intelligence, creativity or reason for being. In the case of "Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation," I relent - here is a film that is virtually nonstop action, but one in which the stunts and set pieces are so impressive that I couldn't help but enjoy myself.

So, yes, "Rogue Nation" is a fun movie and, I might add, one of the better entries in the "Mission Impossible" franchise as well as one of this year's better summer movies, although not as good as George Miller's visually stunning "Mad Max: Fury Road" or Pixar's very substantive "Inside Out." But that's apples and oranges. This latest sequel in the action-espionage series is fast paced without being brainless and that's a good - and rare - thing.

In this film, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) discovers that an anti-IMF agency known as The Syndicate exists and that its shadowy leader (played creepily by Sean Harris) is recruiting ex-agents to form a, ahem, rogue nation that will carry out nefarious acts of terrorism as a means to... Do you really need to know why? Probably not.

This is a case of a film with a plot existing solely to enable Cruise to take part in some impressive stunts - hanging on to the outside of a plane, swimming in a pressurized tank, etc. - and bring back together the gang from the previous pictures - Ving Rhames, Jeremy Renner and Simon Pegg. Alec Baldwin joins the cast as the CIA's director, while Rebecca Ferguson is a spy playing both sides of the fence.

While, on the one hand, the "Mission Impossible" movies are not very diverse in terms of plot - typically, Cruise and company have to stop some mad man from obtaining a bomb or dangerous intel - on the other, they take a well-worn formula and do it well. In the case of "Rogue Nation," there's no reinvention of the wheel, but said wheel is constantly in motion and it gets the necessary results.

Although I wish Cruise would occasionally take on the type of more challenging roles that made him so interesting to watch in the 1980s and 1990s (everything from "Born on the Fourth of July" to "Magnolia"), I can at least appreciate that he's making big budget action movies with care. There's obviously a fair amount of energy and expertise at work in the "Mission Impossible" films and this latest entry is no exception.

Review: Southpaw

Image courtesy of The Weinstein Company.

Sports dramas - especially boxing pictures - come equipped with their own set of cliches and Antoine Fuqua's "Southpaw" is certainly a slave to those well-tread cliches. The film follows the fall and resurrection of a troubled boxer who came from the street, only to return to it and then attempt to rise to glory once more. But Jake Gylenhaal (as said boxer) and Forest Whitaker (as his trainer) are so good in the picture that the film's cliched storyline is mostly forgiven.

As the movie opens, Gylenhaal's Billy Hope (how about that name?) is the lightweight champion of the world and has a wife (Rachel McAdams) and young daughter, Leila (Oona Laurence), who adore him. His wife attempts to convince him to drop out of the sport or at least slow down after a fight he wins leaves him bruised and battered.

But during a speaking engagement, he is taunted by an up and coming Colombian boxer named Magic Escobar (Miguel Gomez), who insults his wife, leading to a scuffle during which a member of Escobar's entourage accidentally shoots and kills Hope's wife. The fact that no arrests are made at the scene is only one of the sequences that stretch credibility here.

The death of Maureen (McAdams) causes Billy to go on a downward spiral that leads to his home being repossessed and his daughter taken away by child services. So, in the tradition of many boxing films before this one, "Southpaw" follows Billy's humbling, which includes his taking a janitorial position at a gym, where Tick Wills (Whitaker) trains young men to keep them off the street.

As a means to get custody of his daughter, Hope decides to clean himself up and fight again, but this time with the help of Tick. Meanwhile, his previous manager (Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson) has - of course, since this is a movie - taken to managing Escobar, who continues to taunt Hope, seemingly only to provide the film with a villain and give Billy the incentive to win the fight at the film's end.

Gylenhaal gives a fully committed performance in the picture that is both physically and emotionally impressive. Following in the lead of Matthew McConaughey, Gylenhaal has undertaken his own renaissance that began two years ago with the terrific and underrated "Prisoners" and has since included the creepy thriller "Enemy" and, now, "Southpaw." Even if his latest picture doesn't measure up to the two Denis Villeneuve films in which he starred, his performance sure does. And Whitaker delivers some of his finest work in years as Tick, a man who has his own set of woes.

So, while "Southpaw" shows us nothing new, its performances elevate it slightly within its genre. And the fight sequences are well choreographed, gripping and bloody, especially the final bout between Hope and Escobar. Even though we're never actually surprised in which direction "Southpaw" goes, it entertains all the same.

Review: Paper Towns

Image courtesy of 20th Century Fox.

"Paper Towns" is the type of the film that stumbles during its first half, but manages to recover during its second. There has been a glut of well-made movies about youths during the past few years that includes a few great ones - including "Adventureland," "The Perks of Being a Wallflower" and "The Spectacular Now" - and a handful of good ones - for example, the decent "The Fault in Our Stars" and "Me and Earl and the Dying Girl."

The thing that especially worked about those aforementioned titles is that they are films about teens that can also be appreciated by adults. During its first half, I was under the impression that "Paper Towns" was the type of film made solely for teens. On the one hand, it manages to capture the awkward behavior and speech that marks adolescence and, on the other hand, the film does so in a manner that comes off as slightly... awkward.

The picture follows one of those stories about a somewhat dorky, but likable, young man who realizes his best self thanks to the pretty - but quirky, mind you - girl who sees something in him that others do not. I know, this is a tired premise that recently failed to engage in Cameron Crowe's "Aloha."

In this case, the girl is Margo (model Cara Delevingne) and the awkward young man is Quentin (Nat Wolff), two teens who live in Orlando, which is portrayed here as mostly posh neighborhoods and towering buildings. As the film opens, Quentin tells us via voice over that he and Margo were childhood pals, but that she became a popular girl (but with mystique!) when they reached high school.

Now, as their senior year begins to wind down, Quentin is paid a surprise late night visit by Margo, who wants him to join her on a nine-step revenge plot that goes down in the course of a night. During their adventure, she gets back at a cheating boyfriend and a few friends who do not pass muster. Then, suddenly, Margo has disappeared - as in, run off.

Quentin enlists help from his band buddies, Ben (Austin Abrams) and Radar (Justice Smith), as well as a popular girl, Lacey (Halston Sage) who is friends with Margo, and Radar's girlfriend, Angela (Jaz Sinclair), and they hit the road, traveling to upstate New York in Quentin's van to find Margo, whom Quentin believes has left him clues to track her down. As is always the case in such movies, the story does not pay much mind to the parents, especially during the slightly unbelievable road trip.

And yet, "Paper Towns" finally finds its rhythm about halfway through as the quintet takes its journey. While the culmination of the journey reveals truths that are not so profound, the camaraderie among the cast members works and a finale set at a prom (where else?) brings nice closure to the story.

The film is based on the novel by "Faults in Our Stars" author John Green and both this film and the adaptation of that other novel capture the teenage experience fairly well, even though both rely heavily on cliches (road trips, a cancer-based melodrama, the mysterious girl next door, etc.). So, while "Paper Towns" isn't on the level of some of the other youth films as of late, it's not half bad.

Review: Phoenix

Image courtesy of Sundance Selects.

Christian Petzold's "Phoenix" is an engrossing post-World War II drama with a noirish story and an ending that feels like a gut punch. The picture is a revenge thriller, of sorts, and Nina Hoss is the femme fatale, but the plan she enacts to get back at the person who betrayed her is the stuff of subtle drama, rather than the plot to drive an exploitation movie.

Hoss plays Nelly Lenz, a Jewish woman who has managed to survive the concentration camps, despite the rest of her family having been killed by the Nazis. Her appearance has been badly damaged and a friend, Lene (Nina Kunzendorf), has helped Nelly to secure an operation that will restructure her face. One of my few quibbles with the picture is Lene's mysterious presence. We're never quite sure what role she plays in the story and, much later, she takes a drastic action that only makes her character more opaque.

Nelly hears from Lene that her husband, Johnny (Ronald Zehrfeld), has survived and is working at a local bar. In their previous lives, both Nelly and her husband had been musicians. But Lene warns her friend that Johnny sold her out to the Nazis in order to survive and is now attempting to get ahold of the money left to her by her deceased family.

At first, Nelly appears skeptical that her husband would have done such a horrific deed against her and, due to her changed appearance, when she finally meets him he doesn't recognize her. However, he believes that she could pass as his wife and attempts to convince her to get involved in a plot to get his "deceased" wife's inheritance by passing Nelly (who is now living with a new identity) off as, well, Nelly.

Still convinced that her husband would not have sold her out, Nelly goes along with the ploy because it gives her an opportunity to be close to her husband, despite his not recognizing her, and due to the fact that he is the only person left alive that she loves. She holds out hope that he might still love her - even though he does not know who she actually is.

"Phoenix" has a plot that borders on noir melodrama, but what makes it work so well is the rich atmosphere that Petzold, whose previous film was the powerful "Barbara," creates, especially during the sequences in which Nelly haunts the bar - which is bathed in a red glow - where Johnny works. It also helps that the cast is terrific, Hoss especially. It's a tricky role - playing a woman who is pretending to be another, but all the while wishing to actually be the person she once was - and Hoss nails all the various beats of the role.

The picture leads up to a powerful climax that some reviewers have mislabeled as a "twist." It's not so much that as it is a stunning reveal - in other words, a twist for one of the characters, rather than the audience. "Phoenix" is a good movie with a great ending and another solid collaboration between its star (who played the lead in "Barbara") and director. And it's the type of thriller that makes an impact not due to the mechanics of plot, but through the characters and the excellent actors who inhabit them.