Movie Review: The Public (2018)

Now Available

As the third floor librarian of the Cincinnati Public Library working in the Social Sciences Department, the fields of psychology, sociology, political science, history, economic, public health, and more are Stuart Goodson's domain.

However, as we see shortly into The Public from writer-director-producer Emilio Estevez (who also plays Goodson), the librarian's experience with these subjects goes far beyond the printed page as everyday his workplace transforms into a veritable homeless shelter, which gives citizens freezing on the streets of Cincinnati a warm place to go for the day.

Bringing awareness to an epidemic that plays out in public libraries across the country, the film, which was inspired by an article that Salt Lake City Public Library Deputy Director Chip Ward wrote for "The Los Angeles Times" in 2007, became a twelve years in the making indie passion project for Estevez.

Without the support of the local government, which instead turns a blind eye to the crisis, Goodson spends his shifts playing the role of friend, social worker, referee, and first-responder to a group of homeless patrons he knows almost as well as the books on the library's shelves, letting instinct and kindness be his guide.

But when a deadly cold front hits Cincinnati and fills every shelter in the area, Goodson finds himself caught in the middle of a righteous act of civil disobedience as a group of roughly one hundred men refuses to leave the warmth of the library at the end of the day.

Taking a few moments to weigh the pros and cons of the action, which arrives in the middle of a frivolous lawsuit against the Cincinnati Public Library, Goodson decides to risk everything and join the men's cause in the hopes that the mayor will sanction the library an emergency shelter for the night.

Having proclaimed that books saved his life, even though he understands they're facing an uphill legal battle, Estevez's aptly named Stuart Goodson knows that as a good son adhering to the rights of the nation's founding fathers in his role as a librarian, sometimes you have to stop stewing in the arts and stand up for what's right.

Filled with symbolism, speechifying, and signposting, The Public wears its heart in each one of cinematographer Just Miguel Azpiroz's frames. And while Estevez raises a number of valid and urgent points from start to finish, I couldn't help but wish that the film would have woven its main thesis into a much more organic narrative tapestry than it ultimately does.

Rather than draw us into The Public with character-driven storytelling, we're repeatedly told how to feel as (even with the best of intentions) Estevez introduces and then abandons important subtopics from the opioid crisis to media manipulation throughout the film's roughly two hour running time.

A work with a lot on its mind and all of it worthy of deeper discussion, the decision to turn Ward's article into a fictional feature is ambitious indeed since — as someone not only passionate about libraries but who also grew up in and around them — I believe there's enough here to warrant an HBO documentary miniseries.

Buoyed by a terrific turn by Estevez (in his strongest role in years), the film boasts a who's who cast of terrific and largely criminally underutilized character actors including Jena Malone, Jeffrey Wright, Christian Slater, Michael Kenneth Williams, Taylor Schilling, Gabrielle Union, and Alec Baldwin that's sure to delight fans.

Though continuing Estevez's great tradition of making socially conscious features like The War at Home and complex Altmanesque ensemble pictures like the masterful Bobby, The Public falls short of those films by too often spelling out key plot points and character reveals as if holding up a sign at a protest rally.

But thanks to Estevez's wise decision to add levity and laughter to the issue to try to appeal to a wider audience, it's one cause we'd be proud to stand up for along with Goodson and The Public since in the end, humanism should be in all of our domains.

Text ©2019, 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.

New on DVD for the Week of 10/19

Video Pick of the Week: Rain Shadow

The Go-Getter

Gunnin' for that #1 Spot

The Incredible Hulk

Kiss of the Spider Woman

Rain Shadow: Series 1

Sweeney Todd (Arriving on Blu-ray)

New Releases via Amazon

The Go-Getter

View the Trailer & Photo Gallery

It’s become nearly common sense to say that anything you see in the movies you shouldn’t try at home but when it comes to writer/director Martin Hynes’ critically acclaimed Sundance Film Festival indie hit, The Go-Getter, it’d probably be best to extend that warning to your local car wash and parking lots.

Running out of ways for would-be lovers to meet, in a wonderfully inventive alternative to having the two lock eyes and become drawn together with near magnetic force (that’s called lust, my friends) or literally bumping into one another (which looks incredibly painful), Hynes comes up with a Kerouac and Huck Finn inspired humdinger with a felony thrown in for good measure. Why not steal her car?

Of course, this isn’t truly what makes Mercer run in the opening of Hynes’ film—having read Huck Finn and discovering that more than anything else it made him realize just how “stuck” he felt, he crafts plans for a premeditated vehicular heist. Namely-- borrow a friend’s t-shirt to get into the local car-wash without causing speculation, hop into the closest ride that doesn’t look like it’d fall apart, and pick up one’s belongings later on the side of the road.

Mercer (wonderfully played by the subtle and emotive Lou Taylor Pucci) gets away with it too until a cell phone rings and after a mini freak-out, he decides he’ll answer it, since by then he has nothing to lose. Instead of it being the local fuzz, he finds himself talking with the beguiling automobile owner, voiced by independent film’s coolest young actress, Zooey Deschanel. Oddly, yet believably (possibly because she’s voiced by Deschanel who can do anything from fake romantic chemistry with Will Ferrell in Elf or make you laugh and nearly cry all in the same scene in Mumford), she decides she won’t press charges. Eager to make it up to her, Mercer rattles off a laundry list of ideas from helping out with yard work or chores but the forgiving Deschanel says that she’ll let him use her wheels on his trip as long as he calls her regularly to fill him in on what’s happening.

Although it initially felt as though the idea to “go west, young man,” was spontaneous, soon we realize—and it is an indie (read: grab your tissues) after all – that Mercer is a nineteen-year-old kid on a mission. Having lost his mother to slow, excruciating cancer eight months earlier, he decides to track down his estranged brother Arlen (Jsu Garcia) who is eighteen years his senior and whom he’d last seen at the age of five and inform him about what has happened. And along the path to Arlen, he begins realizing that he may not really know his brother as well as he thinks when he receives everything from a punch to a threat as he tries retracing the man’s steps.

Larceny, it seems runs in the family but Arlen’s crimes have been far more severe, ruining relationships and causing heartache wherever he’s set foot as Mercer meets a pot-smoking hippie played by Judy Greer, a former jailbird played by Maura Tierney and many others riding all the way from Oregon through Nevada, California, and ultimately ending up in Ensenada, Mexico.

Mercer takes advantage of the gift of close proximity when chasing the rumor that Arlen has wound up in Reno to look up an old middle-school classmate and crush named Joley, played by Jena Malone. Getting sidetracked by the flirtatious, sexually confident, and manipulative Joley who teases him into submission with ecstasy and her feminine wiles before endangering Mercer when she invites other men along, Mercer soon comes to realize that the girl he’s pining for isn’t the one for whom he’d carried a torch all those years ago but the one taking his calls back in Oregon.

When she shows up later on and is identified as a slightly older local girl he barely knew named Kate, Deschanel and Pucci elevate a film that had begun spiraling out of control with one odd adventure after the next (including meeting a creepy would-be adult filmmaker who exploits teenagers and one too many warnings about Arlen) into something genuinely touching and emotionally rich.

Additionally it offers a great contemporary soundtrack as well as music by M. Ward who has joined forces with Deschanel off camera to form the band She & Him. Including some impressive craftsmanship including an overwhelming homage to the French New Wave (especially evidenced in a scene taken right out of Godard’s Band of Outsiders), it’s the type of film sure to gain instant fans in those who latched onto Braff’s Garden State, provided they seek it out when it hits DVD shelves on 10/21.

Featuring filmmaker commentary, exclusive interviews, and other behind the scenes bonus footage, the film’s DVD release from Peace Arch Entertainment taps right into its target demographic by including not just a Digital Copy of the film for your PC, Mac, iPod, iPhone, or other portable device but also access to an exclusive free download of a musical track by Ward and Deschanel’s band She & Him.

Beautifully shot completely in sequence as a “creative decision” so that all would need to “go on the trip”—the film wears its high style and artistry proudly from its USC-educated and George Lucas in Love award-nominated helmer Hynes in some of the earliest scenes as Mercer imagines what the girl on the other end of the phone looks like and then pictures her riding along in the backseat.

Despite his admission that he isn’t religious and “given the fairly raw language and sexuality,” Hynes doesn’t quite get why it’s being labeled as such but noted that Christian seminary students who attended “one of the Sundance screenings… were intrigued by the threads of [what they assumed were] spiritual confusion that run through [the] road trip.”

Likewise I agreed with Hynes, feeling that-- no matter how outrageous and highly unbelievable the situations were throughout the film from asking us to buy into its laid-back negotiation to car theft early on-- it’s a relatable, nonreligious road movie that taps right into its 18- to 24-year-old target demographic of trying to discover just who they are, what’s important, and whom they’d like to invite with them along the way. Although, speaking as someone whose car has been broken into before, I can’t stress enough the importance of leaving thievery in the movies where it belongs as that’s not the world’s best conversation starter when you meet someone new in the real world.

Into the Wild

Director:
Sean Penn

It almost seems like it’s a prerequisite for becoming an adult but most people I’ve talked with have had a similar feeling of restlessness following graduation when, after years of raising one’s hand and waiting for a hall pass to leave the room, there’s the unmistakable urge to break free, to wander, to explore, to see beauty in nature, and to stop worrying about the clock on the wall. For me it followed high school when my friend Shelley introduced me to Jack Kerouac and Bob Dylan and I felt a sense of wonder I hadn’t encountered since I’d first read Steinbeck and Fitzgerald—a hopeful sense of idealism, an unquestioning love for the idea of the American dream, and an overwhelming sense of wanting to get out and see the gorgeous landscapes and talk to people just as people and not as clips on the news categorized into whatever stereotype the network has decided to spin that day.

While my destination of Arizona ended up becoming my new home after a traditional visit, I admit that, as bizarre and illogical as it is, there is something undeniably intoxicating about the journey that Christopher McCandless took following his graduation from Emory University in 1990. Even though, those familiar with the resulting novel by Jon Krakauer or from the media coverage, knew that his story ended tragically inside that Magic Bus in the Alaskan wilderness, there’s a haunting indescribable joy mixed with dread and sadness that comes from watching his tale realized on the big screen by a compassionate filmmaker in actor turned writer/director Sean Penn.

Penn, who’d wanted to make the film for more than ten years and originally had envisioned Leonardo DiCaprio in the role, waited for official permission and approval from the McCandless family according to IMDb and I think that the film benefits not only from the space in time from the day that Christopher fled Atlanta in his Datsun but also from Penn’s maturity and growth as an artist in his own right as I recall the multitude of characters, performances, directorial efforts and choices he’s made over the last ten years as well.

After only a few moments of watching actor Emile Hirsch disappear into the role of Christopher in a career making effort, it seems to be an absolute crime that he was denied a Best Actor nomination from the 2007 Oscar season. A gifted student with the promise of an even brighter future at Harvard Law School, Christopher makes a choice that seems to shock everyone but his loving sister Carine (Jena Malone) when he donates his professional school fund of $24,000 to Oxfam, uses a scissors to cut up his credit cards and identification and burns his social security card in an act of defiance before taking to the road. Inspired by his beloved books by Thoreau and London, Chris heads west until his car fails him in the unforgiving Arizona desert and begins to "hoof it," now as what hippies would later dub him in his role as a “leather-tramp.” Fitting to his newly dubbed name of Alexander Supertramp, the film, divided into chapters that illustrate his new life from birth, to adolescence, manhood etc. follows Chris/Alex as he meets some people who would become like a second family to him on the road including a terrific Catherine Keener and Brian Dierker as hippies Jan and Rainey, a memorable Vince Vaughn as his farming boss in South Dakota whom he writes postcards to regularly throughout the film and countless others while his sister and parents (William Hurt and Marcia Gay Harden) must contend with his absence without any explanation, save for the flashbacks showing a rather tumultuous upbringing with some abuse, rage and lies. In a truly heartbreaking and Oscar nominated role, Hal Holbrook plays a retired military veteran with a tragic past who grandfatherly looks after Chris before he ultimately heads north for his true destination of Alaska.

Soon the film, which has intercut his past travels for two years before making it to the bus which would be his final destination, meets up in the same timeline and it careens towards its chilling and desperate finale—yet there’s a beauty and a quiet to these moments that recall the wonder and innocent joy of the earlier work that keeps things bearable, despite viewers' underlying sense of dread.

Gorgeously photographed on the exact locations from the life of Chris McCandless with an unrecognizable Hirsch who, in his brave role lost not only forty pounds but also used no doubles or stuntmen in even the most dangerous of situations, it’s Penn’s greatest directorial achievement so far and manages to hook us completely after its stylistically uneven start with too many scrawled journal entries and notes moving across the canvas of the frame. With an undeniable nod to the road pictures of the 60’s and 70’s such as Easy Rider and Bound for Glory, Penn’s film is admirable and unique in the sense of it seeming like an actual document of a life and one that, unlike some of the more polished works of 2007, will not become dated with each passing year, kind of like the life of McCandless that will no doubt continue to fascinate and inspire for decades to come.

Four Last Songs

Director: Francesca Joseph

Filmed entirely on the Spanish Mallorca Balearic Island and co-produced by the BBC, this Midsummer’s Night’s Dream tinged tale stars Stanely Tucci as a lackluster piano bar performer who dreams of staging a grand celebratory concert to honor the world-famous deceased composer who had made the same island his home. At the start of the film, as he tries to put his plans in motion, he realizes that he must gain the trust and commitment of both the composer’s widow Veronica (Marisa Paredes) as well as the man’s muse and mistress, Helena who claims she has never-before-heard sheet music that she’s willing to let Larry use for its world debut. Feeling neglected and jealous, Larry’s singer girlfriend Miranda (Jessica Stevenson) is even more threatened by Larry’s busy schedule with the unexpected arrival of Frankie (Jenna Malone), a young woman claiming to be the man’s daughter and the result of one single weekend fling in America nearly twenty years earlier. In addition to the ladies, he finds a rival in Sebastian (Hugh Bonneville), an ambitious entrepreneur aching to take over the event when his free-spirited brother Dickie (Notting Hill's scene stealing Rhys Ifans) arrives under the guise of repairing a family heirloom clock but with other news that will shake the residents. While the overpopulated story does make the film a bit uneven at times, it’s a charming film that always feels a bit like a fairy tale and should remind viewers of Lasse Hallstrom’s Chocolat in its inviting spirit, warmth of the community and gorgeous locale.