Category: Octavia Spencer

SNOWPIERCER

By Marc S. Sanders

Korean director Bong Joon-ho’s sci fi thriller Snowpiercer is a locomotive fast paced adaptation, that oddly enough is reminiscent of The Wizard Of Oz. There’s no yellow brick road however. Here, the on foot journey occurs on a massively long on going train that contains the last survivors of a frozen apocalyptic Earth.

Each car of the train separates the demographic classes of this populace. The one percenters live it up closer to the front of the train. The steerage and lower class are resorted towards the back, forced to live in filth and nourish themselves on protein bars made of vermin and waste. Chris Evans is the hero who leads the pack from the back to the front. They’ve had enough and they will not be restrained any longer. However, who and what resides up there? Let the journey into the unknown begin.

I liked Snowpiercer a lot, and mainly because the surprise of what was next kept me alert. An especially fun moment occurs when the gang comes along the car where elementary school is in session.

Characters are met along the way, including a warped performance from Tilda Swinton. She’s dressed in uniform regalia that David Bowie or Elton John might have worn to mock totalitarians. Her performance matches her wardrobe. She definitely makes her antagonist role her own with her pale complexion, short stark red buzz cut, weird dialect and large false teeth.

John Hurt is also a welcome surprise as the old wise one that is needed for these roles. He’s doing his basic John Hurt but that’s all we need.

Rounding out the cast is Octavia Spencer. She’s good too with lots of energy. A great pair up also comes from Song Kang-ho and Ko Asung as techies who can assist the band with opening doors from one car to another; allies that are encountered along the journey to see the wizard or the one in the engine car. I won’t dare spoil that surprise. The cameo was welcome in my eyes.

The journey is great.

The final moments of the film are a little short sighted though. It’s a great action set up but when everything settles down, not much is offered for a final statement on the grand outcome. I wanted more from that.

This is, however, worth checking out. Snowpiercer might consist of a ridiculous concept with all life residing on a never stopping train, but the set pieces are great fun, as are the characters.

THE SHAPE OF WATER

By Marc S. Sanders

I love fantasy and science fiction for one simple rule. A writer/director’s imagination can be limitless. Rules for a good fantasy are normally established in the exposition, and as long as those rules are not violated, a viewer will accept the narrative all the way to the end. The Shape Of Water is loyal to its set up.

Director/Co-Writer, Guillermo Del Toro continues his reputable streak of very adult (yet playful) fantasy. In 50 years, I would not be surprised if Disney/Pixar remade this film and Pan’s Labyrinth for younger PG audiences simply because the roots of the stories are so well played out.

Here is a Cold War love story between an alien and a good soul played by Sally Hawkins doing her best mute. Hawkins is bright eyed and wonderful. She’s a character that doesn’t judge and only recognizes despair for salvation. I thought she was great at conveying her performance through the limits of only facial expression, sign language, sex and self pleasure in a bathtub. Try to avoid snickers at that last description. It really is an honest, necessary reflection of a lonely innocent woman. I appreciated the writing and performance there.

Michael Shannon is back on screen playing a frightening villain…again. The reasons for his ruthless intentions were never clear to me, but either Shannon is that good an actor or he’s gotta be like this in real life. This is not a guy I’d ever want to cut in line at Starbucks, much less audit his books. He’s scary good.

Didn’t find much point to Richard Jenkins lonely neighbor except to drive a van, eat pie, be unemployed and be a token homosexual. Same with Octavia Spencer. Was she channeling a more subtle Whoopi Goldberg from Ghost? Don’t get me wrong. Jenkins and Spencer are fine actors here, and their characters are likable, but they don’t add much to the story except to be Hawkins’ sidekicks. Too much story was devoted to them though unnecessarily. Del Toro and his co-writer might have used them for too much filler.

Del Toro doesn’t stop with the new material as the two hours swim on by at a nice pace. We are treated to a wonderful Busby Berkeley song and dance moment that is just inviting to be spoofed by the Wayans or Zucker brothers, sensual nudity is there, not for perversion, but to send home the message that though this relationship is weird, it’s also the real deal. I bought it all the way through. Racism and gay prejudice are perhaps unnecessary in a film like this but there is key lime pie. Cats are consumed. Cold War espionage is on hand with Russian spies, dirty American government politics is there too, and oh yeah, there’s an amphibious alien who seems like any one of Spielberg’s extra-terrestrials we’ve seen before. Yet, I’ll take this one as well because he’s narrated into a very mature love story that is hard not to like.

As quick as the movie begins, you know how it is going to end. Again I don’t mind. Most of the execution rescues the story’s predictability.

Del Toro won Best Director and the film was awarded Best Picture at the Oscars. It’s not what I would pick, but there could be worse choices from that year’s selections.

I liked The Shape Of Water. Most of it at least.

LUCE

By Marc S. Sanders

In early 2022, the local theatre that I volunteer at, Carrollwood Players in Tampa, Florida, will be presenting Luce by playwright Julius Onah.  I’d never heard of this dramatic play before, and I learned that Onah wrote a screenplay adaptation with J.C. Lee.  Onah directed the film. 

Watching the film ahead of seeing the stage production left me quite surprised.  It was not what I expected.  Luce is a story that begins as what I anticipated would be an examination of social or racial injustice and evolves into a suspenseful thriller that questions those arguments.  There are four main characters to ponder what they stand for.  Luce (Kelvin Harrison Jr) is an adopted black boy from a war-torn country and now the star athlete and likely valedictorian of his high school.  Amy and Peter (Naomi Watts and Tim Roth) are his white well to do parents, and Mrs. Harriett Wilson (Octavia Spencer) is Luce’s African American history and government teacher with a fifteen-year tenure at the prestigious high school.  Over the course of the film, each character will be fleshed out with background and dimension.  Each character may also change his or her position on the main conflicts at hand, and each one of them will exercise an action of misgiving or betrayal.  So, in what seems like a perfect world of brilliant academics and success, who can we trust?

Harriet is introduced as “stern” and later confirmed by Luce and Peter as a “bitch,” but spoken humorously within the private confines of their car ride home from an evening speech event that Luce conducted at school.  Amy shames them for the characterization.  The men in her family are wrong to describe a hard-working woman in such a way, even if it is a little sarcasm among just themselves.  A day or so later, and Amy meets with Harriet because she’s disturbed by an essay that Luce wrote glorifying the philosophy of Frantz Fanon, who believed that elimination by violence is a sound societal solution to his country’s problems.  The assignment was to select a historical figure and write the paper from that figure’s perspective.  Following her review of the essay which left her uneasy, Harriet takes it upon herself to search Luce’s locker where she uncovers a bag of illegal fireworks.  Amy is shocked by Harriet’s actions and at first can not fathom Luce as a boy who would ever have a violent nature or want to cause harm.  Debates in the kitchen occur when she gives the run down to Peter.  Questioning confrontations with Luce and his parents occur as well.  It just doesn’t make sense.  Luce is such a model student.  He’s also a brilliant debater, and that makes it hard to get to the truth.  Is there any truth to get to at all however? Is there any justification to question him when no crime or damage has occurred and by all accounts, Luce did in fact meet the standards of the assignment?  Luce asks a good question as well. As a student, were his civil rights violated by Harriet when she took it upon herself to search his locker, under no one’s authority or approval?

All of these questions are presented early on in the film.  Afterwards, developing twists take place and the story adopts a thriller mentality to it.  Luce seems so kind and enviable.  Kelvin Harrison Jr. presents the character with a beautiful smile, who is well versed, polite and presentable.  Luce even steps in to calm down a fight among his peers.  He delivers gracious speeches.  He’s a brilliant model of the debate club and he’s a star on the track team.  He takes it upon himself to approach Harriet with a mea culpa to whatever misunderstanding may have occurred, but there’s also a disturbing subtext.  He volunteers to her that his favorite holiday is Independence Day because he appreciates its meaning when he considers the violent country he was rescued from…along with the celebratory fireworks that traditionally accompany the day.  Wilson never asked for this information, and yet Luce is telling her anyway.  Is he being sincere, or is he using this as a means to torment Harriet?

Amy becomes torn by these events.  Does she really know her son, that she eventually nurtured out of the fear of his original environment?  Does it make sense for Amy to hide the paper and fireworks that Harriet gave to her with trust that she’ll address these allegations with her son and husband?  Did Peter really want to adopt this boy, when he and his wife could have easily had a child on their own, thereby avoiding the challenges of raising a child of a different race, from a war-torn country?

As a white, middle class, Jewish American male, I don’t think I’m any wiser on the plights that people of other races have endured following my experience with Onah’s film and screenplay. I thought I might have been early on in the film, but then the film seems to divert to the wise mechanics of how any one of us can be sinister, either for our own satisfaction or to prove a point, or to protect a loved one, or to mask our own foolish blindness.  Onah deliberately leaves threads of his story ambiguous, and I appreciate that.  I always like to think and ponder a film or a play or book, with its characters, long after it’s over and Luce is a perfect opportunity. 

There are surprising moments in Luce.  Just when you think you have one of these four characters figured out, something happens that forces you to take two steps back and start over.  I’ll credit Onah’s story for that, but also the impeccable casting here.  Octavia Spencer is such a great actor.  She’s awarded a character here with much background that is challenging and lends to why the other players in the story have a right to question her actions.  Watts is given more material to play with than Roth.  Typically, I’d argue that mothers bear the weight of affection towards a child more than a father and so more opportunities present themselves here for Watts to turn Amy into an unsure, but loving mother. It’s ironic, but as I watching this film, I couldn’t help but parallel some of the themes with the play/film Doubt by John Patrick Shanley, which also ends with much uncertainty.  Amy certainly becomes more of a character plagued with internal doubt as the story progresses here.  Tim Roth is maybe given the least amount of dimension here, but he embodies the wishy-washy nature of not really knowing what’s true and what isn’t.  Roth portrays the guy like he doesn’t know whose side he’s on anymore, and he just wants to cut through the bullshit.  Harrison needs to become a more established actor in today’s mediums of streaming and cinema.  He’s brilliant at playing one face while keeping me guessing whether he’s playing another face as well.  By far, this was the most important role to cast in this film, and the production got the right guy for the part.  Side note: after watching the film it was interesting to see what his character’s name could potentially stand for.  Don’t read anything ahead of the film.  Check out the trivia notes on IMDb afterwards. 

You may expect to have a discussion on what Luce was trying to say.  I don’t think it bears overthinking from a societal perspective, really.  If Julius Onah were to hear me say this, or read this publication, he might be disappointed to know that.  Rather, I think it’s better to piece together how all of the surprises came to be.  Regardless, Luce is terrific dramatic entertainment with superb and nuanced performances, and heightened suspense from its toe the line direction and the entire cast.

ONWARD

By Marc S. Sanders

I’m thinking director Dan Scanlon could very well be the next Chris Columbus or JJ Abrams or maybe…well maybe not Spielberg. But still! His new film Onward from the genius labs of Disney/Pixar is better than I ever expected.

Think about it. The imagination of the film all goes in reverse. Magic and sorcery once ruled in a land of mythical creatures. But then the automobile was invented, along with cell phones, video games, exercise machines and every other every day to day invention known to mankind. Who needs magic anymore?

When two elf brothers, Ian and Barley, voices by Tom Holland and Chris Pratt, come upon their deceased father’s magical staff, they realize that as nerdy as he was, he was in fact a wizard. Some exposition allows them one day to revive him and spend only that particular day with him. It’s an opportunity for older brother Barley to reconnect and Ian to meet him. Something goes awry though when dad is only resurrected up to his waste, legs dressed in khakis with chino shoes and black leather belt. Hilarity and adventure ensue as they must embark on a quest to find a precious gem that will complete the resurrection before time runs out and the sun sets.

As the boys hop into Barley’s van called Guinevere. Adventure inspired of the level of The Goonies fare takes place. There are caverns with booby traps, maps and Holland and Pratt give up good vocal chemistry as they sort out their brotherly issues.

Julia Louis Dreyfus is mom and basically doing the typical Pixar mom but she has a great sidekick. Octavia Spenser as Corey the monstrous Manticore who runs a restaurant. To give side story filler, Dreyfus and Spenser are brought in to be on the trail of the boys. They have some good moments.

Onward has good, often funny and sentimental writing from Scanlon along with Keith Bunin and Jason Headley. It’s ironic actually. So many films from Harry Potter to Star Wars to Marvel focus on mysticism and magic that as movie goers we’ve become inundated with the gimmicks. Onward reminds us that ordinary dependence in a more grounded reality can actually lead to adventure too.

I liked it.