Morris from America

SCREENED AT THE 2016 CHICAGO CRITICS FILM FESTIVAL: Back in May, when I heard the plot of the opening night film of the 2016 Chicago Critics Film Festival, I had an immediate flashback to the summer of 2012, when I was chosen as one of four Chicago teenagers to represent the United States at the Giffoni Film Festival in Italy, the largest children's film festival in the world (around 3300 teenagers from 54 countries and 79 Italian towns come to it every year). Besides the fact that I had to stay with an Italian host family for a entire week (and nobody in the family spoke English), the most exciting and unusual part of this film festival was that they would only show movies during the day and then, in the afternoon and into the evening, it would just turn into a gigantic party with all these teenagers from all over the world picnicking and hanging out and dancing to (mostly American) pop music.

However, due to my shyness and antisocialness at the time, I would mostly sit on a pair of swings in a nearby park and occasionally interact with pretty Italian girls if they seemed interested in interacting with me. Anyway, my point is, I thought a lot about my own experience as a young American boy in Europe when watching Morris from America, and while I only stayed in Italy for a week and a half, there were still a lot of things that rang true.

Here's the set-up: Morris, a 13-year-old African-American boy, is living in Heidelberg, Germany, with his dad who's a soccer coach. Since Morris' mother died a long time ago and he's beginning to become more and more distant from his father, most of the time Morris just sits in his room listening to rap music and surfing the Internet. It isn't until Morris' German tutor, Inka, makes him sign up for a program at the local youth center that he actually begins to interact with other human beings his age. Unfortunately, though, most of these German youths taunt him for his weight and his skin color, and as a result, he retreats further into depression and loneliness until an attractive young lady named Katrin takes him under her wing and develops a friendship with him.

What follows is a light, sweet, and sometimes heartbreakingly honest coming-of-age story that hit me on a lot of very personal levels. First of all, I just want to point out one scene that pretty much sums up my entire experience in Italy four years ago: when Morris and Katrin first have an actual conversation (after he's been admiring her from afar for a while), the first thing that Katrin does if offer Morris a cigarette. Considering that this is exactly what happened at least three times during interactions with pretty teenage girls in Italy, I immediately knew that writer/director Chad Hartigan knew a lot about what he was writing.

And this continued throughout the entire film. Not one thing here felt dishonest. The German teenage characters never felt like caricatures. The situations were all believable. And, most of all, the beautifully understated performance from Markees Christmas adds a lot of depth to what Hartigan already had written on paper, adding certain awkward beats and body language to moments that ultimately do a lot to capture the alienation and loneliness that he feels and that I felt during my week-and-a-half in Europe. And Craig Robinson does remarkable work as Morris' father, having just right amount of humor and pathos to be a fun character while also grounding the film, particularly in one great scene late in the film when he's driving Morris back from someone's house in Frankfurt and he tells the story of how him and Morris' mother met. I'd like to think if this film had come out later in the year, Robinson could have had a shot a Best Supporting Actor nomination. I know that won't happen, but he does deserve it.

Although I will admit to being kind of a sucker for coming-of-age films (three of my favorite films from the past several years are The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Boyhood, and Brooklyn), I still think that Morris from America is a solid entry into the genre with great performances and a beautifully honest story. And while I didn't have the urge to engage in repeat viewings like I did those other films, I would nevertheless recommend this without reservations since this isn't the kind of film that will get much of a push from its studio but it's one that deserves to be seen. Oh, and you will immediately want to visit Europe afterward.

Tallulah

I'm not sure how I feel about this whole "Netflix Revolution" that's been happening over the past few years. On one hand, I like how it's been able to expose my friends to some older films and indie films that they likely would have never seen otherwise, and in terms of TV I like being able to watch quality television like Breaking Bad and House of Cards in the way that one would read a book. On the other hand, I think that Netflix going into new film distribution is really troubling and disheartening. Yes, there are certain films that would be better seen on your 32-inch television or laptop. And yes, going to the movies is expensive and it's easier to just sit on your couch and watch Netflix. However, seeing a movie in a theatre, on a big screen in a dark room with a crowd of strangers, is something that's incredibly special and dear to me. The movie theatre has been my home-away-from-home since elementary school. It forces you to unplug from the world for a couple hours and embrace yourself in a story. It's the most beautiful communal art form that brings people together in a way that most art forms don't anymore.

I thought a lot about this while watching Tallulah, a Netflix pick-up from this year's Sundance Film Festival. It's a powerful film, and I think an important film, but throughout it's running time I kept thinking of how much more I might have enjoyed it if given the opportunity to experience in a dark theatre with a crowd of people.

Here's the basic set-up: Our main character, a homeless twentysomething drifter named Tallulah (or "Lu" for short), is living out of the back of her van while traveling across the country stealing credit cards and eating out of dumpsters with her boyfriend Nico. One day, however, Nico decides he's had enough of this life and takes off in the middle of the night, leaving Lu alone in a train station parking lot with no money. In response, she takes off to New York City, where she finds herself stealing room service leftovers (mainly food to tide herself over) from outside hotel rooms while trying to track down Nico's mother who lives in NYC.

While doing this at a high-end hotel, she is mistaken for housekeeping by a hotel guest named Carolyn, who is staying in a room with her one-year-old daughter, Maddy. While going on a drunk, profanity-laced, and incoherant rant to Lu about how she's going out tonight to impress a man since her husband is away in Cancun, Carolyn asks Lu to babysit Maddy, and Lu agrees once she sees how much money Carolyn is going to pay her (and also once she sees what a horrible, neglectant mother Carolyn is). Once Carolyn comes back from her affair even more drunk and passes out on her bed, Lu, having formed a connection with Maddy while her mother was away, quickly packs Maddy's things and takes her from the room. Once she finds Nico's mother, Margo, who lives in her ex-husband's 5th Avenue apartment while separated from him, Lu tells her that she is the biological mother of this baby and she needs a place to stay for the night. Margo obliges Lu, and gives her and Maddy the guest bedroom. 

That's about as far as I want to go into the plot, because what the film really becomes about is not only the beauty of motherhood, but also parental and societal responsibility for children. While the plot may have the makings of a Lifetime movie, writer/director Sian Heder is able to transcend the tropes by providing the audience with two fully developed and three-dimensional human beings as main characters. Ellen Page and Allison Janney (reunited from Juno, a similarly life-affirming film) show much more complete chemistry here than they did in that film, mainly because they just have a lot more time to spend together. Tammy Blanchard does a similiarly sublime job as Carolyn, even if I didn't quite buy her transformation by the film's end.

Overall, I believe Heder has crafted an insightful, absorbing film with her debut, painting characters with many shades of gray and giving a beautiful message that life is precious and worth living even if things don't go as planned. This would actually make a great double feature with Ellen Page's other 2016 indie film Into the Forest (which I reviewed a few weeks ago) as both are unequivocally feminist films that also honor the beauty and value of all human life. While I still believe some of the film's most intense scenes would be best viewed in a theatre, I also think this could be great Netflix viewing on a rainy day. However you decide to see it, this is one absolutely recommend. 

Sausage Party

Since this isn't going to be a very long review I'll just cut right to the chase: I was really looking forward to this film. This might sound weird coming from someone whose favorite films of each year tend to be along the lines of Boyhood and Brooklyn, but I've actually liked quite a few of the comedies produced by Seth Rogen and Even Goldberg (This is the End and The Interview being two of my favorite comedies of the last five years) and I had heard really good early buzz coming out of its work-in-progress screening at the South by Southwest Film Festival as well as other advance screenings. And plus, I just thought the central premise was really fun and original for an animated film: What if our food had feelings? What if the food that sits in supermarkets around the world could talk and walk around and throw wild parties in the store after-hours? There's a lot of potential in that premise, and I really thought Rogen and Goldberg and their crew could do something creative with it, given their track record and their love of double entendres, while paying homage to the likes of Toy Story and A Bug's Life and Finding Nemo.

So, here's what they do with the premise: it's Fourth of July weekend at a Whole Foods-like supermarket called Shopwells. Our main character, a sausage named Frank who's packaged with others of his kind for Fourth of July sales next to neighboring buns, is enthusiastic about the possibility of being chosen by the "gods" (supermarket customers) to enter the "Great Beyond" (the customers' homes). Once Frank and his other sausages are chosen with a package of hot dog buns (which includes Brenda, a bun that Frank is infatuated with), it seems like everything's going to go great...until a jar of Honey Mustard in the cart (who we learned earlier was mistakenly purchased by one of the "gods" and is much less than enthused about his experience in the "Great Beyond") tells everyone in the cart that the Great Beyond is "bulls***" and kills himself by jumping from the cart and smashing on the floor. Frank, haunted by seeing this and being of the inquisitive type, is determined to go on an adventure to see whether there's any sort of truth behind Honey Mustard's statements on the "Great Beyond".

What follows is, to put it bluntly, an anti-religious parable disguised as an animated sex comedy. Yes, essentially the argument that Rogen and Goldberg metaphorically make in this film is that the whole concept of Heaven (or, in the film, the "Great Beyond") is a lie invented by humans to make themselves feel better about death. And while I am a practicing Christian, I have no problem with tackling religion from an angle I don’t personally agree with as long as they handle said subject with thoughtfulness and intelligence. But what this film essentially does is pound its atheistic message down the audience's throats so forcefully that the impact of much of the film's raunchy humor and double entendres (the kind that I loved in This is the End and The Interview) is blunted and didn't really register with me. 

And on top of this, I also found it to be kind of lazy that literally all of the food talks in exactly the same profane way, so no one really sounds unique. Thankfully the voice cast does a good job at helping to differentiate the characters so they don't sound completely interchangeable, but I still just kept thinking, "Not ALL of these characters have to talk like this! Do they all have to drop f-bombs at every other word?!"

Now that's not to say there wasn't any hint of cleverness in this screenplay. I liked the relationship between the Israeli bagel and the Palestinian pita/flatbread, and how they only hate each other because their respective people hate each other. There's also a piece of chewed-up gum that has metamorphisized to resemble Stephen Hawking that shows up and allowed me to have a good laugh. And the final 10 minutes of the film is about as offensive and shocking as you can expect from Rogen and Goldberg and did a lot to pay off the preceding 80 minutes. But, overall, I just found myself really underwhelmed by Rogan and Goldberg's squandering of the film's great premise. One of the most disappointing films I've seen so far this year.

Into the Forest

SCREENED AT THE 2016 CHICAGO CRITICS FILM FESTIVAL: I feel as though there's been a lot of talk recently about the role that technology and the media is playing in what some people are considering to be "the downfall of our society." People say that our world is becoming one similar to Mike Judge's 2006 satire Idiocracy with the rise and success of Donald Trump's presidential campaign, which was successful primarily to the ridiculous amount of free media he received during primary season. Even people my age are saying that younger kids don't have imaginations anymore due to the easy access to smartphones and iPads. As an eternal optimist, I want to believe that our best years as a society are ahead of us, that my children will be able to have a similar childhood to the one that I had. I'm not a fan of tech-based fear-mongering, especially from people close to my age, but I do think there's a certain truth somewhere in it.

In Into the Forest, writer/director Patricia Rozema poses the question, "What if, all of a sudden, our access to this technology and media was suddenly lost? How would we be able to survive?" In the not-too-distant future, two young women named Nell and Eva, who happen to be sisters despite the fact that they treat one another like strangers, are living at their father's secluded cabin in Northern California when, all of a sudden, the power goes out. Like many annoying power outages, they just assumed it will be fixed in a matter of time; however, not only does it never get fixed, but soon word spreads that the entire country is in the dark. But thankfully for these two girls, their father is about as resourceful as they come, and it seems as though they're going to be fine...until he kills himself in a horrific chainsaw accident and they're both left to fend for themselves, and they're hardly as resourceful as their father (Nell is a bookworm and straight-A student while Eva is an extremely competitive ballet dancer).

Watching these two very different people who really only share gender and DNA in common have to work together just to survive in this cruel, brutal environment is relentlessly compelling to watch, especially given the fact that these two people are played by Ellen Page and Evan Rachel Wood, who bring so much humanity and emotion to these roles that at some point you don't even realize that (a) they don't look like sisters and (b) they're both in their late twenties, and these characters are clearly supposed to be much younger. Their chemistry is excellent, and their performances do a lot to suggest long-standing family ties and ratchet tension even in scenes that might seem uneventful on paper.

But throughout the inevitable hardship and suffering that these two young women face while trying to survive, there is always a slight glimmer of hope that permeates through every scene. (SPOILER): At one point during the film, Eva is raped by a local stranger who walks onto the property and gets her alone while Nell is out collecting water. Eva ends up getting pregnant from this rape and is determined to have the baby, despite Nell's pleas for her to have an abortion. This was a brilliant, beautiful storytelling decision on Rozema's part, as the scene where Eva gives birth to the baby amidst the dark woods and falling-apart house is an incredibly life-affirming moment that very much gives the film a "circle-of-life" theme, and reminds the viewer of the preciousness and beauty of Eva's child despite him being conceived in the most hateful of situations.

If I have one complaint about the film, it's that it's ending is a little too simplistic and vague for my liking. I understood the symbolism behind it, but what exactly happened felt a little out-of-character in terms of what these two women had been doing up until that point. But that quibble aside, this is one of the best (and definitely most thought-provoking) post-apocalypic dramas I've seen in the past few years that manages to have feminist and pro-life messages simultaneously, both of which I wholeheartedly approve of. This is available on most VOD platforms right now (I don't think it's in any Chicago-area theatres but I'm not 100% sure) and I absolutely recommend seeking it out.