January 13-19 Recap

Films

Europa Report
Director: Sebastian Cordero
Genre: Sci-fi
Source: USA (2013)
Rating: PG-13
Location/Format: Netflix Instant Watch
Grade: B

A solid pseudo-documentary about an international mission to Europa, one of Jupiter's moons, Europa Report really surprised me. I tried to watch the film once a couple of months ago and must have been distracted, because this time through I couldn't tear myself away. The documentary hook works well (especially as you start to realize who's not being interviewed) and the nonlinear narrative works well in building suspension and emotional weight. 

Mostly I loved that the film seemed to be a bit of a love letter to sci-fi films. I caught pointed references to both Alien and 2001: A Space Odyssy, and I'm sure a second viewing would reveal even more homages. I've never heard of writer Philip Gelatt before, but the deftness with which he handles the pacing (and particularly the climax) of the film makes me want to seek out more of his work. This was a pleasant surprise. I'm glad I gave it another shot. 

Nebraska
Director: Alexander Payne
Genre: Drama/ Comedy
Source: USA (2013)
Rating: R
Location/Format: Georgia Theater Company
Grade: A

Do you have to be from the Midwest to really appreciate Nebraska? I'm not sure. Maybe there's a plainness, a sadness, to small towns and working class people everywhere that crosses geographical boundaries. I've heard Payne be accused of not having much sympathy for his characters before, but that's not at all what I saw in this film. I saw an honesty and an optimism that, while perhaps at times misguided (like Woody's belief that he has won a million dollars) also has a kernel of heart and sweetness to it that gets at something genuinely human. It may be sad, but there's also heart and sweetness, if you can get past the rough surface. Just like Bruce Dern's Woody Grant.

There's a lot to like here. The acting really is fantastic. Payne doesn't seem to be afraid of pauses, or of letting his actor's speak in awkward cadences, much like real life. I didn't love June Squibb (nominated for Best Supporting Actress), but I was blown away by Dern (nominated for Best Actor), Will Forte, Bob Odenkirk, and several of the minor characters. Angela McEwan's Peg Nagy (who runs the local newspaper), for example, seems to be genuine, a woman who has seen a lot and done a little and is thoroughly pleased with her life. She's got a grandmotherly sweetness to her that reminds me of my own grandmother. Scenes of awkward gatherings, where there's really not much to say to family you rarely see, so you find something else to do to distract yourself (like watch a football game, which decreases the opportunities for awkward small talk) remind me of times visiting my family or going to friend's houses.

The film is funny as well. Cousins Bart and Cole--and their determination to talk to Forte's David about what kind of car he drives, despite his utter lack of interest in the discussion--reminds me of so many conversations I've had since moving to the South. Payne finds comedy in age and even in dementia that manages to recognize the humor while refraining from being too cruel. 

And it's really beautiful. I don't know the last time (if ever) I saw a black and white movie on the big screen, but there's something beautiful about it, a reminder of just how many shades of grey there are in the world. The cinematography fits the bleak Midwest winter landscape, but it also finds beauty in a sunrise, or in a cold breath, or in a truck driving down an empty road. I'm not afraid of black and white film the way I was as a kid, but I hadn't expected to see it move me so much when projected on a big screen.

This is one of those movies I can see a lot of people enjoying but being ultimately apathetic about (despite the Oscar nods), but I really found it an honest and heartfelt film. Really great.

Books

Jim Henson: The Biography (by Brian Jay Jones)
Who doesn't love the Muppets? I know I do, and clearly author Brian Jay Jones does as well. While I was interested enough in Henson's life, ups, and downs to keep reading, however, I wish Jones had as much creativity in writing about Henson as Henson had in writing about, say, coffee advertisements. It's not that this was a bad book. It was just much flatter than I expected it to be. 

Granted, I'm much more of a fiction than a biography kind of guy, so perhaps I just came at the story of Henson's life and work from the wrong angle, but I got bored much more often than I expected to. Jones writes about every detail of Henson's life with little regard for what details are interesting and what are somewhat bland. He waxes philosophical on Jim's rather generic childhood for nearly a hundred pages and spends nearly as much time writing about how who he hires to decorate his house as he does about much more interesting elements such as Henson's disagreements with Roald Dahl. I think the problem is he likes Jim and the Henson family (both literal and professional) so much that he's not really as interested in exploring Jim's complexities and contradictions as he is praising and celebrating him. Which is fine, it's just that it gets a little dull.The book becomes a chronicle rather than a story, and the peaks and valleys that should be there eventually all get evened out and flattened.

Which is not to say there's not great stuff here. Jones clearly drives home several aspects of the "What made Henson tick" question: his love of creativity, his desire for positivity, the pleasure he took in work. All of those elements are explored--and explored well--at several points throughout the book. And though the book could and should have had more pictures (Jim was, after all, a visual storyteller), reading the biography was still fun in that it drove me to the Internet repeatedly to look up film clips (like Henson's short film "Time Piece" on YouTube) or to find scenes with individual Muppets. And it also made me wish I had some Muppet movies/tv episodes in my own collection!

In the end, the book isn't bad, it's just not as dynamic or compelling as it should have been, given the creative genius at its heart.

Grade: C+

Eleanor & Park (by Rainbow Rowell)
I devoured this book like Saturday morning breakfast cereal.

Rainbow Rowell captures about as perfectly as I could hope that feeling of teenage love--the consuming, overwhelming, enveloping feeling of wanting and needing and feeling hungry to consume another person that anyone who had a relationship that mattered to them in high school is sure to recognize. 

And in Eleanor and Park, she creates the kind of misfits that so many teenagers can identify with. Not so much the idealized wunderkind who other YA writers celebrate, but the mostly average kid who is passionate about a few things and lost about a lot of things and feels broken much of the time and doesn't know she (or he) needs someone who helps her (or him) feel found. Kids who love music and comic books and are smart, but they're not savants, and they're not about to change the world or save the world, because they're just trying to survive. Because sometimes high school can be the loneliest place on the planet.

And then someone says something like, "You can be Han Solo. And I'll be Boba Fett. I'll cross the sky for you." And if your little heart doesn't melt a little at that, then you're not the kind of person I probably have much in common with, because damn, that's fantastic. And that's just the tip of the iceberg for Rowell's millions of metaphors about trying to capture that feeling of love. 

There is drama here. One of the two lives in a hellacious and abusive home. Teenage cruelty, and parents who don't understand, and figuring out how to get time alone. All that drama is here, and more. 

But at heart, it's about being an outsider, and finding someone who makes you feel like you're a part of the only inside circle that matters. 

I loved it.


(PS: On Spotify Rowell has listed a killer soundtrack to the novel. A mixtape from Rowell to us--a kind of "Best Of" of Park's mixes for Eleanor. It's fantastic.)

Grade: A