Blu-ray Review: Les Parents Terribles (1948)

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AKA: The Storm Within

Just like some men steer clear of (or take advantage of) women with father issues, there's an old adage which argues that if you really want to know what a man's like, look at how he treats his mother.

Needless to say, since our parents are the people who introduce us to not only everything but love and relationships in particular, our baggage starts long before we ever have a romantic love of our own.

No stranger to mining his personal life for material in a variety of mediums from autobiographical books, poems, and plays to his expressionistic masterpieces in the canvas or celluloid frame, Jean Cocteau takes this idea and runs with it to satirical, melodramatic, and psychological extremes in the film he considers to be "cinematically speaking, [his] great success," 1948’s Les Parents Terribles.

Based upon a play which Cocteau had written ten years earlier and adapted by the filmmaker, Terribles stars the same cast who took part in a very successful Parisian revival of the work in 1946 including Cocteau favorites Jean Marais and Josette Day who played the titular roles in the director's now classic Beauty and the Beast (also made in ‘46).

With a title that seems to be a play on Cocteau's famous 1929 novel, Les Enfants Terribles, Parents has been recently restored and released to Cohen Film Collection Blu-ray to celebrate its 70th anniversary, following a short theatrical run last spring. Complete with screen tests and interviews, Cocteau enthusiasts in particular will want to track the tragic chamber piece down.

A variation of, as Richard Peña says in the Blu-ray's introduction, Jean-Paul Sartre's famous phrase that "hell is other people," shortly into Cocteau's film which is centered on twenty-twenty-year-old Michel (Marais) breaking it to his parents that he's engaged, we discover that "hell is other family members."

Smothered by his mother Yvonne (Yvonne de Bray), when Michel confesses that the reason he's been out all night is because he's fallen in love with the twenty-five-year-old Madeleine (Day) whom he met at secretarial school, Yvonne reacts like a jealous lover.

Lashing out at the son she's made the focus of her entire world, Yvonne is in for an even greater shock when she learns that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree and discovers that the woman that her husband has been secretly seeing on the side is the very same one ready to marry her son.

Caught in a love triangle multiple times over as Cocteau makes intriguing, downright Freudian implications about gaining and losing sons and daughters to love, the sudsy, psychologically driven soap opera also illustrates the way that the romantic sins and secrets of the past are bound to come back on this carousel of life.

For it seems as though Michel was raised by a love triangle as well, in the form of his Aunt Léo (Gabrielle Dorziat) who was actually engaged to Michel's father Georges (Marcel André) first before he started to have stronger feelings for her sister and married Yvonne instead.

However, after Yvonne replaced her husband with her young son in terms of complete affection, Léo – who has stepped in as a virtual housemaid and dutiful caretaker of her frail, excitable, diabetic sister – has spent years stewing in anger over what might have been.

It's at this point that Cocteau confronts the admittedly dubious setup head on. And although he waits to address us directly in a closing voice-over, we can practically hear him speaking through his characters with the witty observation, "It's unbelievable! If there weren't situations like this, there’d be no plays. We are classic characters."

Still with drama everywhere in sight and an inevitable series of confrontations ahead, Cocteau also seems to argue that, while it's easy to speculate about the lives of others, we only know what goes on in our own household... if indeed we even know that much.

Trying to highlight that subtext and the power dynamics between the characters as they jockey for position, guilt, and scheme (which makes this a superb title to play as a thematic double feature alongside the Tennessee Williams play turned 1958 film, Cat On A Hot Tin Roof in particular), Cocteau marries the mediums and techniques of stage blocking and screen framing seamlessly.

Whether holding Michel in a dominant position above Yvonne as he tells his mother about his engagement or keeping the characters in solo shots to illustrate the rift between them, Cocteau enhances the past formats Terribles has taken from written to staged – driving everything home in an emotional work that Andre Bazin dubbed "pure cinema."

And though Les Parents threatens to weigh you down with its dense emotional baggage, somehow Cocteau knows precisely how to layer and present everything with the lightest of touches that makes the film’s brisk 100 minute running time fly right by.

Of interest to psych students and a must watch for francophiles and film buffs, releasing just before the holidays, Les Parents is a terribly wonderful film that you'll want to bring home... just maybe not to mother or father. Then again, bringing the drama is precisely what Cocteau would've wanted.


Text ©2018, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title in order to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique. Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information in order to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.

Blu-ray Review: Pixar Short Films Collection, Volume 3 (2018)

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Shining a light on the audience, before every Pixar feature, the studio reaffirms their commitment to short filmmaking not only through their latest offering – which dazzles us just before the main attraction – but within the Pixar logo itself.

Evoking an image from the company's 1986 animated short Luxo Jr. with that now iconic bouncing desk lamp, more than three decades and three volumes of short films later, Disney Pixar's passion for creative storytelling remains just as strong today regardless of running time.

In fact, looking at the thirteen films included in this gorgeously transferred, recently released Blu-ray combo pack, one could go as far as to say that while Pixar's blockbuster features still thrill, it's in the studio's non-franchise shorts where they take the most risks.

While many shorts still embrace some of Pixar's favorite staples including unusual paths to romance or family-centric tales of parents learning to let go as children come-of-age, with new twists on familiar themes, these personal and often jaw-droppingly ambitious shorts introduce us to new cultures, countries, traditions, and perspectives.

Kicking things off with one of the most moving shorts I've seen in a long time, Chinese-Canadian storyboard artist Domee Shi became the first woman to helm a Pixar short with 2018’s Bao, which mixes fairy tale structure (including a dash of Pinocchio) with her own background for this bittersweet saga about an empty-nester.

A perfect companion piece to Alan Barillaro's 2016 Academy Award winner Piper, the disc’s early films – including the inventive Lou from Dave Mullins which focuses on bullying – flow nicely from one to the next as they tell a story about aging children and parents struggling to assert their independence while staying connected to home.

In the thrilling entry Sanjay's Super Team, writer-director Sanjay Patel puts a superhero spin on the Hindi gods he prayed to alongside his father as a child when he thought he'd much rather be watching cartoons.

Checking back in with some of Pixar's most iconic movies and characters, while on the whole, the standalone franchise shorts are pretty hit or miss, Riley's First Date?, Party Central, and Partysaurus Rex from Inside Out, Monsters University, and Toy Story respectively are definite highlights.

Helping to balance out the mayhem of some of the wilder shorts (even if this volume goes in this reverse chronological order), Pixar proves once again that animation can appeal to adults just as much as children with Saschka Unseld's groundbreaking 2013 short The Blue Umbrella and James Ford Murphy's lyrical Lava, which was made a year later.

From the free will and heightened realism on display in Umbrella, where a love story plays out on a dark city street as inanimate objects guide two umbrellas together to the fated romance of a lonely volcano hoping to find someone to "lava," the two works use music incredibly well, whether augmenting Unseld's dialogue-free film or literally telling Ford Murphy's story through song.

Also featuring two bonus shorts and filmmaker introductions, this stunning collection of admittedly similarly themed but mightily different shorts is filled with the heart, empathy, and magic we've come to expect from a studio that's set out to bring us closer together under the warmth of Pixar's illuminating light as it captures, interprets, and reflects the emotional journey of life.

Text ©2018, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title in order to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique. Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information in order to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.

Film Movement DVD Review: La Boyita (2009)

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AKA: The Last Summer of La Boyita

Perfectly capturing that confusing time in an adolescent girl's life when she's simultaneously holding onto the last remnants of childhood while also hurrying to grow up, Argentine actress turned writer-director Julia Solomonoff's 2009 feature La Boyita is set over the lazy days of a pivotal summer in the life of young Jorgelina (Guadalupe Alonso).

Given a crash course in puberty by her older sister Luciana (María Clara Merendino) who has been pushing her adoring younger sister away in exchange for privacy, push-up bras, and PG-13 movies with friends ever since she got her first period, Jorgelina looks for any excuse to recapture the closeness they'd shared only recently.

Hugging her sleeping sister goodbye in a hammock in a breathtaking shot that echoes the haunting innocence of Sofia Coppola's Virgin Suicides – rather than go to the beach for the summer with Luciana and her mother – Jorgelina opts to give her sister the space she craves by traveling to the Argentinean countryside with her father in the early 1980s.

With miles of land as far as the eye can see, Jorgelina begins to explore her surroundings with Mario (Nicolás Treise), a slightly older boy roughly Luciana's age who works the property alongside his father when he isn't training to make his jockey debut at an upcoming festival in the community.

Having spent time with him in the past, as she helps bring out the hard-working boy’s playful side, Jorgelina's bond with (and crush on) her summer friend awakens new feelings within our lead. And their connection only increases when Mario takes her into his confidence and she tries to sleuth out the answer to a problem that nobody – from the kids to his parents to her own brainy physician father – knows quite how to solve.

Reminiscent of To Kill a Mockingbird and The Man in the Moon with its focus on a child's loss of innocence as they come of age, Solomonoff's hauntingly tender film is not only told predominantly through the eyes of a girl who would likely have been great friends with Mockingbird's Scout Finch but also features an Atticus like figure in the form of her father.

Transporting us right from the start to a distinct time and place, in La Boyita, we can practically feel the heat of the film's translucent sunlight beating down from the celluloid and right into our scalp.

A surprisingly sensitive, still incredibly timely tale, as both a writer and director, Solomonoff uses the power of its simple and straightforward narrative to extol the importance of love and acceptance, regardless of the limitations placed on children growing up with gender roles and expectations so stiflingly defined.

Establishing and foreshadowing her theme early on through Jorgelina's observations and interactions with her sister to a conversation with her dad where he tells her that as far as Mario's family is concerned, the reason that he must do well as a jockey is "to prove he's a man," Solomonoff pushes these boundaries in this lushly photographed, unforgettable film.

Clocking in at a mere 88 minutes, the newly released title is making its North American debut both on Film Movement DVD and the studio's new superb streaming platform Film Movement Plus.

While much like Jorgelina and truth about the world around her, La Boyita might be easy to overlook at first glance, if you give Solomonoff and her young leads your time, they’ll ride away with your heart.

Text ©2018, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title in order to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique. Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information in order to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.

Film Movement Blu-ray Review: Elena Ferrante on Film - The Days of Abandonment (2005) & Troubling Love (1995)

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Read Ferrante's Novels

In anticipation of HBO's upcoming miniseries adaptation of Elena Ferrante's internationally bestselling novel, My Brilliant Friend, Film Movement has put together a lavish box set featuring vibrant transfers of the only two films ever adapted from the pseudonymous author's novels as well as a collectible thirty-two page booklet of correspondence, interview excerpts, and lush photos. Curated in reverse chronological order across the two-disc set, I traveled to Ferrante's Naples through my Blu-ray player to learn more.

The Days Of Abandonment (2005) 
AKA: I giorni dell'abbandono

From an eerie opening sequence which informs us that – especially in Roberto Faenza's film – we can't always believe what we see to an early line of dialogue where our protagonist Olga (Margherita Buy) describes the tawdry book she's translating to a friend which serves as a gender flipped foreshadowing of events to come, symbolism is everywhere in this over-the-top adaptation of Elena Ferrante's novel.

An initially intriguing spin on Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary, among other classic works centered on women whose love lives threaten to be their undoing, shortly into Days the seemingly happily married Olga finds herself in the titular hell of abandonment after her husband announces that he's unhappy and walks out on his wife and two children.

Numbed by disbelief, Olga goes through all five stages of grief before she eventually loses a grip on both reality and her sanity with the discovery that her husband Mario (Inspector Montalbano's Luca Zingaretti) didn't just have an existential crisis but a classic midlife one, trading his educated elegant wife in for an eighteen-year-old he'd already begun molding as her tutor.

As Olga's internal struggles become external, her luck goes from bad to worse. Taking on an allegorical Book of Job like quality, soon phones that connect her to the outside world break and a lizard as well as ants enter to her apartment, which causes her to go to extremes in order to protect her children. Giving in to the depression by staying inside her apartment, eventually things get so out of hand that the home she considers her sanctuary literally traps her inside.

Discarding supporting characters and ideas introduced only moments earlier in favor of increasingly outrageous sequences that must've worked better on the page, Days, which is credited to seven screenwriters on IMDb, reinforces the long-held belief that the internationally beloved, bestselling pseudonymous Italian author’s ouevre is nearly incapable of being adapted successfully.

Embracing wild moments of Magical Realism that distract from the film as a whole, as Olga's growing desperation and near psychosis after being jilted forces her to lash out at Mario and his girlfriend, Days comes across as disturbingly anti-feminist rather than humanist on the screen.

Pulling us in a myriad of directions, as noted in the thirty-two page booklet of letters and interview excerpts included in the double-disc set, out of a handful of characters to focus on, curiously the one in particular that Faenza set out to humanize from his aloof literary incarnation was Mario.

Yes, empathy is always important especially when dealing with an emotionally fraught subject in such a psychologically driven work with shades of Roman Polanski's Repulsion throughout. However, humanizing Mario more than Olga has the (hopefully) unintended side effect of pushing the characters of the husband and wife to even greater extremes by highlighting sexist stereotypes about "hysterical" women and strong men.

And rather than provide a balance between the two personalities, as she chases after her husband in a car or rips the earrings off of Mario's girlfriend in the street, Days transforms Olga into a clichéd Fatal Attraction-esque tormentor victimizing Mario as opposed to a woman sent spiraling after her cold husband ghosted her, when the truth is probably somewhere in the middle.

Disappointingly, Faenza's identification with the stabilizing male figures continues as Olga begins a tentative relationship with Damian (Goran Bregovic), the supportive musician neighbor who always fancied her but who was forced to keep his distance by an extension of Mario via his loyal dog.

And in spite of what feels like an artificially tacked-on moment of liberation where she finds a little bit of strength in herself before promptly passing out, opting to turn the neighbor into a veritable savior only augments the idea that all an Italian woman needs is a man to snap out of her depression.

Not alone in my belief, and regardless of my enjoyment of Bregovic, in one of the letters to Faenza included in the set, Ferrante urged the director to reconsider this intersection of character, theme, and plot point as well.

The type of film one can imagine would be handled quite differently if it had been written and directed by a woman, while I'm sure the filmmaker's heart was in the right place, despite some real moments of true artistry and outstanding performances within, there's little to recommend the film overall. Better left on the page, sadly had I not been watching Days for review, I would have certainly abandoned Olga as well, which cannot have been what Faenza or Ferrante had in mind.

Troubling Love (1995) 
AKA: L'amore Molesto

Chronologically the first of only two features to be made from Elena Ferrante's books ahead of the HBO miniseries adaptation of My Brilliant Friend, Troubling Love does a much better job of executing the way that women's experiences and trauma are handed down from one generation to the next.

One of the more interesting thematic threads that Roberto Faenza introduced in Days before ultimately abandoning it like his male lead Mario who hoped for something better, Troubling Love's Mario – writer-director Mario Martone – wisely turns the memories of its female characters into an overarching mystery, which begins to unspool prior to the suspicious death of our protagonist's mother.

Having received a series of odd, brief, and seemingly intimate phone calls from her mother just before her body is found in the sea, following the funeral, Anna Bonaiuto's young, reserved comic strip artist Delia leaves her home in Bologna to return to the Naples of her youth.

Flooded with memories of her parents and especially their gifts of creativity – from her father's painting and mother's work as a seamstress – which seem to have been passed down to their daughter, Delia begins to dig deeper once she reaches her hometown and enjoys a literal walk down memory lane.

Grabbing a slice to eat, Delia's Neapolitan reverie is soon interrupted by the predatory, overtly sexual behavior of men aimed her direction while she simply walks down the street (which seems even more disturbing to the eye today). Shot almost like a De Palma horror movie as Delia is followed, Martone puts us into our protagonist's shoes and we become acutely aware of the eyes of every male passerby.

Leaving us wondering if there's a link to her mother Amalia's death or if Martone is alluding to something bigger about Delia herself, both of these ideas come to fruition when our lead comes face-to-face with secrets and lies from her family's past including those she hasn't even begun to face herself.

An exploration of sex and gender roles that could inspire conversation around the globe, as fascinating as it is, Troubling is as narratively troubling as it is tonally inconsistent. And as Delia's mood shifts with each new discovery and interaction, the film strikes a much stronger chord as a psychosexual surrealist mystery a la Eyes Wide Shut than a traditional drama.

Yet whereas Kubrick’s Eyes takes place at night and deals with the unstable bond between husband and wife, save for a creepy, symbolic scene early on when a man comes for her mother's "dirty laundry," Troubling is set largely in the day and deals with the kaleidoscopic memories of guilt and betrayal between mother and daughter.

Trying to send us in another direction altogether, Martone (via Ferrante) throws two supporting male characters into the mix as potential red herrings. And although we inevitably predict the truth about what it is that Delia discovers she's really facing as soon as she steps into a revealing red dress left behind for her as a gift from her mother – the seamstress still dressing her beyond her grave – the disturbing yet fascinating path there makes for compelling viewing.

While those hoping for a conventional mystery or even a typical three act structure are sure to be disappointed (and the film should come with a trigger warning as it's sure to bring up a lot of issues), there's a lot here for viewers to unpack in what seems to be a much more faithful interpretation of Ferrante versus Faenzas's film.

Alluding to that in the extensive, lengthy letters written to Martone by Ferrante included in the set's informative booklet, despite Troubling's overall success when contrasted with Days, both works signal the struggle to successfully bring the author's books to the screen.

Proof of the uneasy disconnect between Ferrante's writing’s heavily internalized structure and the show-me medium of film, although Bonaiuto is outstanding in a difficult and evolving role, just like with Days, we still find ourselves startled by Troubling's freewheeling approach to logic, structure, and of course, gender.

A superior adaptation nonetheless, while it still hits hard today (and doubly so in the era of Me Too and Time's Up), Martone's film will inevitably play differently in its native Italy given the depiction of the tug-of-war between the sexes.

And while I can only hope that the next time someone tries to bring Ferrante'' books to life, it's a woman, in the end I would say that if you're looking for more Ferrante on Film (following My Brilliant Friend), you should pass up Days and stick with Love.

Text ©2018, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title in order to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique. Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information in order to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.

Blu-ray Review: Incredibles 2 (2018)

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Coming off the heels of a string of smash successes centered on talking toys, bugs, monsters, and fish, Pixar's sixth feature film was a radical departure for the always surprising computer animation house.

Revolving around not only human beings – who in 2004 had only ever been in the periphery of other Pixar releases up until that point – but superheroes at that, Brad Bird's The Incredibles managed the impossible task of delighting children with its fast-paced excitement as well as adults who undoubtedly appreciated the film's emphasis on family overall.

Though a focal point of other superhero fare including the Justice League, X-Men, or Avengers, which were subtextually built upon the idea of choosing your own surrogate family, Bird's Incredibles took the term "family picture" to a new literal level. And in doing so, he dared to make the ordinary extraordinary, which is the theme carried over in this 2018 sequel which picks up precisely where the previous film left off in spite of a fourteen year gap.

"Done properly, parenting is a heroic act," my favorite supporting player, technical super suit designer Edna Mode (voiced by Bird) says to a stressed-out Bob Parr aka Mr. Incredible (Craig T. Nelson) in Incredibles 2.

Not allowed to moonlight as a "Super" anymore, in the film, Bob experiences a role reversal with his wife Helen aka Elastigirl (Holly Hunter) after the superhero program is shut down because, as Rick Dicker (now voiced by Jonathan Banks) explains, "politicians don't understand people who do good simply because it's right."

Recruited by the private sector in the form of Bob Odenkirk's telecom giant Winston Deavor who, along with his sister Evelyn (Catherine Keener) is working to "make all supers legal again," with his connections, lobbyists, and by embedding super suits with tiny cameras for a PR campaign, soon Helen is employed full-time because she causes less property damage than her Incredible spouse.

Enjoying the perks of the job from a new Elasticycle to a luxurious temporary home for her loved ones since the Parrs are still in hiding since their last adventure, though initially cautious, soon the former stay-at-home Supermom falls back into the routine of her younger mohawk days, which amazingly Bird and company didn't bring to life in flashback.

And as Bob juggles solving complex math problems for son Dash, inadvertently embarrassing daughter Violet in front of her crush, and realizing Jack-Jack's alarming and quickly out of control super powers, Helen takes center stage in the lightning paced sequel’s most impressive sequence as she races to stop a runaway hovertrain.

While the action in the original feature was one of its benchmarks, following Brad Bird's work directing one of the most jaw-dropping Mission: Impossible films yet via Ghost Protocol in between the two Incredibles, Elastigirl's adrenaline pumping, highly cinematic hovertrain rescue thrills on the same level as a live action tentpole movie.

Although admittedly, one fight scene amid blinding white flashing lights later on in the film should necessitate an epilepsy warning before the film even begins – and indeed movie theaters alerted attendees during its initial run – Incredibles 2 never lets the epically executed action get in the way of its family-centric message.

Working together literally and metaphorically, as the rest of the Parrs including Samuel L. Jackson's "Uncle" Lucius aka Frozone predictably jump into the picture's ultimate showdown, the film still drives home the picture's overarching theme while reinforcing the lesson of its predecessor, namely that the family of distinct individuals are – like the rest of us – stronger when united.

Comprised of two Blu-rays, one DVD, and a code for a digital copy of the film, Disney Pixar fills the three disc set with a wide variety of bonus material such as behind-the-scenes featurettes, mini-docs exploring multiple characters and more, which has been the studio’s M.O. since the beginning.

And given that the production schedule was moved up a year after Pixar flipped the release date of Incredibles 2 with Toy Story 4, some of the disc’s extras (including ten deleted scenes) hint at storylines and ideas Bird has acknowledged he had to cut for time, which cast members are hoping might pay off in a third entry.

More about the people behind the quest than the quest itself, even though there are nods to previous genre favorites like Burton's Batman and Raimi's Spiderman 2, Incredibles 2 is a refreshing variation for those suffering from superhero overload.

Using the opportunity of a new release to showcase another stellar short film, in addition to Bao, be sure to look for the delightful Incredibles short Auntie Edna that – fitting into the overall narrative – plays like a five-minute deleted scene and gives us a chance to see Edna and Jack-Jack in action.

Amusing enough to make me think that Edna (and therefore Bird) could follow in the footsteps of Finding Nemo's Dory and have their own fabulous spin-off, even if this isn't the case, it's safe to say that with their history of Incredibly outside-the-box thinking, whatever Pixar cooks up next will be sure to blow our minds.

Text ©2018, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title in order to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique. Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information in order to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.

DVD Review: Breaking Brooklyn (2017)

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Encouraging his tap students to stay together, Miles Bryant (Louis Gossett Jr.) gives them an important lesson right off the bat in Breaking Brooklyn.

"Let’s sound like one family," he tells them, moments before he sees the face of homeless, twelve-year-old aspiring dancer, Aaron Davis (Colin Critchley) pressed up against the glass in order to better observe the class.

Intrigued by the boy's obvious passion for dance and perhaps seeing a little bit of himself in the young man – after his father is arrested and the car he lives in is towed away – the former Broadway legend takes in both Aaron and his rebellious older brother Albee (iCarly's Nathan Kress) rather than let them spend their holidays in foster care.

Discovering that Miles is on the verge of losing his own home above a beautiful old Bedford Stuy theater he purchased with his reclusive brother Greg (Vondie Curtis-Hall) who lives downstairs in a dressing room after an accident drove the two apart, Aaron decides to enter the upcoming Best of the Boroughs contest to help Miles keep a roof over their heads.

From training montages to the obligatory big show, while Breaking works in all of the main plot-points that dance picture fans (including yours truly) know by heart, Breaking Brooklyn has much more on its mind than showstopping tap.

The tale of two fractured families who attempt to form one over the course of a life-changing holiday, acclaimed choreographer Paul Becker tries to blend two distinctly different storylines together in his ambitious feature filmmaking debut, co-written with Rory Owen Delaney.

An earnest character driven work fueled by conflict, unfortunately as much as I enjoy watching newcomer Critchley dance, the film is far more fascinating when it skips past his slightly protracted storyline (that gets usurped by other things halfway through the movie) and instead focuses on the Bryant brothers.

Knowing that Brooklyn would be pretty quiet with them tiptoeing (or soft-shoeing) around one another, the pair's decades old rift is humored by their angelic voiced teenage granddaughter Faith (Madeleine Mantock), who lives with the two and routinely delivers meals down to Greg.

Nonetheless missing a far more organic plotline hiding in plain sight (which would be if Faith entered the contest rather than a kid they met days earlier), while the entire cast is excellent and it's easy to see why developing the relationship of a second pair of brothers has a nice symmetry to it, in a roughly one hundred minute movie, it just doesn't flow as naturally as it should.

Likewise, the decision to season the film with just enough grit to garner a PG-13 rating – instead of either toning it down enough to attract a much wider family audience or focusing more on the authenticity of life in the streets – calls far more attention to the inconsistencies in tone and dialogue than likely intended.

Roughly average but with real potential, it's still a sweetly entertaining film overall. And despite a rushed finale and rather sudden end to a big internal character conflict, thanks to some terrifically crowd-pleasing choreographic nods to Singin’ in the Rain in Aaron's first big solo dance in the theater, Brooklyn breaks just well enough to delight holiday film fans and musical lovers alike.

Text ©2018, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title in order to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique. Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information in order to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.

Blu-ray Review: The Spy Who Dumped Me (2018)

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For Audrey (Mila Kunis), the only thing worse than getting dumped by text message right before her thirtieth birthday – which also happens to be her one year anniversary – is only hearing from her ex-boyfriend after her best friend threatens to burn his stuff, and discovering that the one thing he seems to care the most about is his fantasy football trophy.

Of course, little does Audrey realize that the trophy isn't really the end result of her ex Drew (Justin Theroux) trading names with friends on the computer but is of actual global importance if, that is, she manages to get it to the right people in a cafe in Vienna.

Told this by Drew in the middle of a gunfight which breaks out early on in Susanna Fogel's The Spy Who Dumped Me, Kunis's stunned Audrey serves as the stand-in for the audience. Although as we watch her process what – without the backdrop of a fast-paced shootout – would otherwise have been a pretty blunt expository "info dump," we realize we might be a few steps ahead of her.

Given a cover job as a hybrid jazz and economics themed podcaster that's just boring enough that Trader Joe's cashier Audrey wouldn't have given it a second thought, the imperiled spy who dumped our straight-laced lead manages to persuade her to take the film's Hitchcockian MacGuffin trophy and run... along with her uninhibited, oversharing best friend Morgan (played by Kate McKinnon).

While obviously there's nothing quite like carnage in your own kitchen to convince you to flee, in Audrey's case, Morgan's question, "Do you want to die having never been to Europe?" serves as the ultimate selling point.

Unfortunately for Audrey and Morgan but enjoyably for us, more near-death experiences await them in Europe as Spy morphs into a much better action movie than a comedy, thanks to some inventively choreographed sequences boasting the same stunt coordinator behind Jason Bourne and Mission: Impossible in the form of Gary Powell.

Admirably keeping up with the action (at least for a little while), McKinnon tosses off the quick-witted one-liners written in Fogel and David Iserson's script as well as she improvises her own and shines alongside the affable Kunis in these moments of fast-paced situational comedy. And this is best epitomized in a scene where – following an outrageous shootout in Vienna – backseat driver Morgan asks Audrey why she's using a turn signal in the middle of a car chase since she's literally telling the people after them where they're going.

At her strongest when given clear direction and fully focused on the events at hand, while McKinnon's flighty friend provides Spy with some moments of levity throughout, far too often the gifted comedian distracts viewers rather than makes us laugh by spinning off into ridiculous tangents.

Perhaps enjoying the performance in the moment as opposed to worrying about how it would all flow together onscreen, although it's clear that Fogel has a soft spot for Morgan (as we do too because it is, after all, McKinnon), from the end of the first act, Morgan begins to get in the way of the plot.

Further straying from course, rather than serve up a cool, classy female-centric comedic spin on a globe hopping spy tale, The Spy Who Dumped Me's overreliance on unnecessary scatological humor to appeal to the lowest common denominator needlessly bogs it down from time to time.

Yet, wise enough to put the friendship of these lovely ladies first, from the bullets flying overhead to the ex-boyfriends who cross their path, Fogel doesn't let the women get sidetracked by anything for long, which includes costars Sam Heughan, Hasan Minhaj, Gillian Anderson, Jane Curtin, and Paul Reiser.

While not nearly as effective as James Mangold's woefully underrated Knight and Day with Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz or Paul Feig's sequel worthy Spy with Melissa McCarthy, it's still refreshing to see two female outsiders work together in an action movie rather than turn into rivals or be relegated to date bait.

Though eager to see the filmmaker helm more solid action movies in the future, for Spy's sake, I wish Fogel and company could've spent as much time choreographing moments of genuine, well earned laughter as they did executing the perfect stunt.

Ideal at home or as escapist airplane entertainment when you just want something mindless to watch to pass the time, while my current favorite Saturday Night Live star amuses less than she annoys, she helps buoy her costar all the same. And as such, Fogel's film offers further proof that – especially when employed as a relatable comedic foil to a wackier sidekick – Kunis is an ensemble comedy MVP who viewers will follow like a turn signal in a car chase.

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