There is unexpected depth in RENTAL FAMILY, a comedy/drama starring Brendan Fraser as an American actor living in Tokyo who takes a job with an agency that supplies actors to play a part in people’s lives. There are sweet moments but nothing saccharine in this a film that thoughtfully explores issues about identity, role-playing and self-deceit as well as human connections.
Odd as it seems, such rental agencies really do exist in Japan. Brendan Fraser gives a touching performance in RENTAL FAMILY, which is partly in English and partly Japanese with subtitles, as an American actor who has been living in Tokyo for seven years but still feels like an outsider. With work becoming sparse, the out-of-work American actor takes a one-time job with a company that provides its customers with people to play roles in their lives, such as a mourner at a funeral, or even impersonate someone in their lives. The company asks him to stay one but the actor is hesitant at first. He is persuaded to take the job when the business owner points out it is still acting, like improv, and that the service is helping people.
That is not always true, as the American finds out. Some of the assignments are short-term, but others are longer. In one such case, a single mother hires the actor to impersonate the American father her young daughter never met, in order to help her gifted daughter get into an exclusive school. In another, the daughter of an older Japanese movie star, who hires the American to play a journalist who has come to interview the once-famous, aged actor, who fears he has been forgotten. The one rule in the work is not to get too involved, which Fraser’s big-hearted character struggles with that at times. This charming, beautifully-shot drama, partly in English and partly in Japanese with subtitles, is mostly sweet, warm and sometimes even comic, but it also has some surprising, and even unsettling, food-for-thought moments, as well as offering reflections on identity, human connections and role-playing in our own lives.
While there is plenty of humor, there is also a poignancy to RENTAL FAMILY, as it explores issues around role-playing in our lives and human connections, There is a sweetness to but it is naver cloying or false in tone, and always grounded in real human connections.
RENTAL FAMILY, partly in English and partly Japanese with English subtitles, opens in theaters on Friday, Nov. 21, 2025.
Here’s a terrific showbiz documentary that’s been sent to streaming just months after another superb one, MY MOM JAYNE (which is still on HBO Max, if it’s still called that). Aside from both this doc’s subjects also being a big part of 20th century pop culture, they also both deal with siblings (both are directors of their docs), who are stars in their own right, discovering their parent(s) through boxes and cases of old recordings, press clippings, and notebooks. Sure, some of the legacy of Jayne Mansfield is fairly funny (such tacky fashions), this new film really explores humor, because it’s about a comedy team. That phrase usually conjures up Laurel & Hardy, the Stooges, those Marx Brothers, but this is one of the rare male/female teamings. While their early 60s contemporaries Nichols & May never settled down, this duo, like Burns & Allen decades before, married and started a family. Here’s the story of how their son Ben discovered that, with STILLER & MEARA: NOTHING IS LOST. Really, it’s all there…
The son, of course, is actor/director/writer/producer Ben Stiller. His father Jerry passed away in 2020, five years after his mom, Anne Meara. Since the world was in lockdown due to the pandemic, Ben decided to prepare their longtime Riverside apartment in NYC for an eventual sale (and take one last spin around with his camera). Before the place could be “staged” for presentation to buyers, Ben, and sister Amy, dove into the cases and cartons of material their folks had accumulated over nearly 70 years. Jerry and Anne married in 1953, and as they took on acting gigs in early TV and the theater, they decided to go out as a comedy team. And they were successful, first in nightclubs, and then becoming a favorite of Ed Sullivan (he booked them on his show 36 times). Ben and Amy relive those old days as they pour over correspondence (seeing their love letters), listening to countless audio cassettes, and watching grainy 8mm home movies. . Somehow, their folks almost return to vivid life, guiding Ben through a very difficult time (his recent separation from wife Christine Taylor). Along this nostalgic journey, Ben interviews his own family, along with dear friends of his parents, including actor Christopher Walken and playwright John Guare. In putting together this loving cinematic tribute, Ben realizes how similar his own life, personal and professional, to his recently departed mom and pop, Could this be sage parent advice and consul from the “Great Beyond”?
Talk about your “labor of love”! What a splendid, interesting and entertaining film which should help dispel that old notion that “documentaries are homework”. Certainly, Ben does make use of the doc trope of “talking heads” (mainly with his aunt), but he’s found a way to juggle and intercut the archival photos and footage in a fresh, compelling way. The segments from the Sullivan show are crisp, looking as though they aired new last Sunday night, while we also get the grainy VHS (or maybe half inch) video dupes of the duo co-hosting “The Mike Douglas Show” and bringing in little Benji and Amy for a sweet, though “ear-testing” violin duet. The notebook scribblings and the murky (sounds like a basement) audio of Anne and Jerry working out a routine for a TV appearance, gives us a rare peek at the creative process. We hear that Anne was relaxed and confident performing while Jerry was a perfection who fretted and “over-rehearsed”, which Ben recognizes in his own work discipline (yup, a chip off the “old man’s” block). There’s a big contrast in the duo’s early years. Jerry wasn’t encouraged by his folks, while Anne was the adored “princess”, perhaps because hers was a single parent household due to a horrific suicide. It’s also fascinating that when the team split, the marriage got a bit stronger since Anne could,at last, pursue dramatic roles and Jerry could finally be the solo comic he dreamed of (his lauded work on the TV sitcoms “Seinfeld” and “King of Queens” in his 70s is one heck of a rousing career third act). Plus the film does shine a light on Ben’s rise with his own 8mm films and videos (starring Jerry), while he also “takes the heat” during the one-on-one-interviews with his spouse and two kids (daughter Ella is still ticked that he cut her out of one of his features). Pressure and guilt (being away too long) are shared by both generations in the “biz”. This is a “pull-no-punches” journey, though with a touch of sweet nostalgia, that is a must for comedy fans (the “collection” is now part of the Museum of Comedy in New York state) of the current media icon and the team that spawned him. Hopefully they’ll be “rediscovered” and found via STILLER & MEARA: NOTHING IS LOST.
3.5 out of 4
STILLER & MEARA : NOTHING IS LOST is now streaming exclusively on Apple TV+ and is playing in select theaters
Fernanda Torres as Eunice Paiva in the Brazilian historical drama I’M STILL HERE. Photo by Adrian Teijido. Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.
The Oscar-nominated, true story-based I’M STILL HERE opens with an idyllic family scene, as mom swims in the ocean, her children play volleyball on the beach. She looks up as a dark helicopter flies overhead, briefly puzzled, before turning her attention back to the water, the beach and her family. Her youngest, a boy, has found a puppy and crosses the street from the beach to their comfortable home. The helicopter is forgotten. But this is Brazil in 1971 and a military dictatorship is in charge of the country, and the military helicopter foreshadows what is to come.
I’M STILL HERE stars Brazilian great Fernanda Torres as Eunice Paiva, mother of five and wife of Rubens Paiva (Selton Mello), a former congressman turned architect, in an adaptation of Marcelo Rubens Paiva’s biographical book about his family’s experience in under the brutal dictatorship. The film shows the transition from quiet ordinary life to a time of government violence and terror, from the view of one family, during the time when countless people were “disappeared” by the dictatorship.
Fernanda Torres gives a riveting performance as Eunice Paiva, as she is transformed by events when the family is suddenly upended after becoming a government target, a role taking the character from her forties, to her sixties, to late in her life in her 80s.
It is easy to see parallels with our present in the way normal life is slowly transformed under authoritarian government. I’M STILL HERE is one of two Oscar-nominated international films about families under violent authoritarian rule, the other being SEED OF THE SACRED FIG. I’M STILL HERE is set in the past, about one specific family in Brazil under a infamous dictatorship from which it eventually emerged, while SEED OF THE SACRED FIG is a contemporary story of an Iranian family who is a composite inspired by recent events about a family of a government official under extreme internal and external pressures. Both films are excellent dramatic films but audiences might see more parallels with the present here in the historical I’M STILL HERE, and also feel a sense of closure and reassurance in that the country emerged from that period, while things are less hopeful in Iran, which is little changed after the brief uprising against restrictions on women depicted in that film. A drama in which a country ultimately recovers from dictatorship is more reassuring to watch.
I’M STILL HERE is beautifully-crafted by director Walter Salles, takes us into the warmth and fun of this large, lively family. Four girls and a boy, the youngest, keep both parents on their toes but the family is both close and fun. With the help of their live-in cook and maid, mom Eunice keeps everything running smoothly at home while big personality, fun Rubens earns the money and plays around with the kids. The couple entertain frequently in their home, have a big circle of friends and generally life is good in Rio. At the same time, they are aware of the realities of living under a dictatorship, and are careful to keep a low profile. Rubens was once a Congressman but that is in the past, and he stays out of politics now. Still, they are a politically-savvy couple, and it is a wake-up call when their oldest daughter is caught up in a military roadblock, as the authorities search for suspected terrorists and is quickly released only after the military police recognize her boyfriend’s diplomatic connections. When an ambassador disappears, they decide to send their oldest daughter, who will go to college next year and tends already to be outspoken, to London, along with friends who are relocating their family to Britain to escape Brazil’s government.
Eunice and Rubens think they are on top of things, until government official show up to take Rubens downtown for routine questioning. While he drives away, escorted by the officials, a handful of other government officials come into the house to hold the family there until her returns. Some of them are armed. Eunice is a gracious hostess to her uninvited guests, offering food and making them comfortable. Then new officials show up, to take in Eunice and her next oldest daughter in to ask a few questions.
The small steps by which things evolve from normal to not are part of the chilling tension in this well-crafted drama by director Walter Salles. The pacing, choice of shots and mis-en-scene are perfect as this film goes slowly, step-by-step, from it’s portrait of noisy familial happiness to tension and terror. When Rubens is taken away, it leaves Eunice to make decisions she is unaccustomed to making, on top of her worries.
By the time Eunice arrives at the facility where she will be questioned, she knows she is outside any thing normal. Still, she fiercely demands to see her husband or to at least know if he is there.
Fernanda Torres is virtually a national treasure for Brazil, a remarkable gifted actor who can pull off the challenges of this role and play a character convincingly through 40 years. Various actors play the kids as they grow but careful casting makes that seem seamless.
All the cast give excellent performances but Fernanda Torres is the one who shines brightest. Torres is outstanding as Eunice, depicting her going from her wife and mother role to stepping in to take charge. Early on, she is warm, appealing and smart as wife and mother but fierce as the wife defending her husband and children. Eunice is defiant and confident as she demands to see her husband, but she is disconcerted when her interrogator shrugs off her demands. On Torres’ expressive face, we see the slow dawning realization that she has no power after all, and fleeting shadows of fear pass over her face as well.
Torres is the center of most scenes and her powerful, nuanced portrayal of Eunice is key in the film’s
emotional impact, and a lynch pin in the narrative as well. The appeal of this close family is also key as we watch their world transformed.
The majority of the film focuses on the terrifying events the family endures, but then the film leaps forward in time more that twenty years to show them as survivors, adding both a note of hope and a sense of closure, as we see them changed but still standing. And Eunice is still here, as the title says. A further leap forward in time, to Eunice’s old age, gives almost a sense of triumph, despite the losses and what was endured. It is an unexpected way to end this kind of story but director Salles makes it something powerful by focusing on Fernanda Torres’ face again.
I’M STILL HERE is an inspiring true tale of a family that survives, enduring losses and battered but still standing, due to the strength of one woman. It is a film even the subtitle-adverse should see for its depiction of the slow advance of authoritarian power as it chips away at the normal, and for its redemptive ending.
I’M STILL HERE, in Portuguese with English subtitles, opens in theaters on Friday, Feb. 7.
Jason Schwartzman as Ben and Carol Kane as Carla, in Nathan Silver’s dark humor yet sweet Jewish comedy BETWEEN THE TEMPLES. Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics
Jason Schwartzman plays a cantor who has lost his singing voice, his wife and maybe even hope, whose life is changed when his grade-school music teacher, played by Carol Kane, becomes his adult bat mitzvah student, in Nathan Silver’s offbeat, darkly funny but sweet Jewish comedy BETWEEN THE TEMPLES.
After the sudden death of his wife, Ben Gottlieb (Jason Schwartzman) has lost his singing voice, his enjoyment of life, and even, maybe, his faith. Unable to bear living in the house he shared with his late wife Ruth, Ben now lives with his doting artist mother Meira (Caroline Aaron) and his overeager, real estate agent stepmother Judith (Dolly de Leon) in the basement of their big home. Rabbi Bruce (Robert Smigel), still keeps Ben’s position as the cantor at his family’s Reform Jewish synagogue, Temple Sinai, open for him, and is encouraging.
But after a year of mourning, his rabbi, his mother and his stepmother are all ready for Ben to move on with his life, and rejoin community life. Hoping to help, Rabbi Bruce pushes Ben to resume his singing as cantor at the next Shabbat service. Meanwhile, his stepmother Judith encourages Ben to begin dating – with some dates already waiting just out of sight as soon as he concedes it might be a good idea.
But the cantor isn’t ready, and can’t handle either. Despondent after the disastrous performance at the synagogue, Ben even lays down in the middle of a road, in front of an oncoming 18-wheeler. When the truck driver sees him and brakes, Ben urges him to “keep going,” to run over him anyway. Instead the driver gives the cantor a ride to a bar, when Ben takes refuge and quickly picks a fight with someone who looks his way, and gets punched. A quirky older woman comes to his rescue, helping up from the floor, a woman the cantor soon recognizes as his grade school vocal teacher Mrs. O’Connor (Carol Kane), the person who inspired him to have a career in music and become a cantor. The two seem to connect immediately, offering the first ray of light in Ben’s dark world in a long time.
But when the retired music teacher turns up the next day at Ben’s temple things take a strange turn. She arrives as Ben is teaching the bar/bat mitzvah class, the only thing Ben has managed to continue doing for the synagogue. Mrs. O’Connor announces that despite her Irish married name, she’s Jewish and her maiden name was Carla Kessler. Now a widow, Carla Kessler has gone back to her Jewish maiden name, and she wants to have the bat mitzvah she never had as a girl. She never had one, she explains, because her parents were communists, making her a “red diaper baby.” Growing up in a Jewish neighborhood, she was surrounded at 13 by other children having bar and bat mitzvahs but she knew neither her parents nor the temple would even let her have one. Now the retired teacher wanted to do just that.
Although Ben was pleased to reconnect with his childhood music teacher, Ben doesn’t want to take her on as a bat mitzvah student, and tells her it is “too late” for her. Angered at being told she’s too old, she persists, chasing and hounding Ben, and when Rabbi Bruce intervenes and Ben gives in.
Rather than have Carla join his class of young students, Ben starts coaching Carla for her bat mitzvah one-on-one in his office. The process is supposed to take a year, during which she learns Hebrew and memorizes a Torah portion that corresponds to her birthday month. The two begin to share memories of her music classes way back when. Eventually the lessons move to her nearby home, and Carla also starts to coach Ben in breathing exercises to recover his singing voice. They trade off the role of teacher, and each gives the other support neither gets elsewhere. Ben teaches Carla, encouraging her Hebrew pronunciation, and Carla becomes his encouraging teacher again, as well as a kind of mother figure and a best friend who truly gets him.
BETWEEN THE TEMPLES debuted at Sundance to strong reviews. Director/co-writer Nathan Silver’s films are known for their sharp, witty humor but also for their emotion and heart. That humor is present here in abundance but the film also has a strange sweetness too in the scenes between Jason Schwartzman and Carol Kane. Those scenes are the real moments of magic, with a charm and appealing quirk reminiscent of “Harold and Maude.” The film also has good doses of screwball comedy, particularly in the scenes with family, as well as some serious things to say, behind it all. Things may look conventional on the surface but little is underneath.
While Ben and Carla are teaching and learning from each other, stepmother Judith continues arranging dates for Ben with “nice Jewish girls,” sometimes without telling Ben or even checking much on the girls. Meanwhile, Rabbi Bruce wants to introduce Ben to his daughter Gabby, who has recently gone through a broken engagement and will be back in town soon.
There is an undercurrent of poking fun at expectations. Ben keeps kosher and his faith means a lot to him, so his rabbi and stepmother would like to fix him up with a nice Jewish girl – a traditional match. But plenty is not traditional in his life, like his two mothers. His childhood music teacher, Mrs. O’Connor, turns out to be Jewish, and Carla Kessler becomes his adult bat mitzvah student, but she doesn’t even know what’s kosher. At one point, Ben even wanders into a Christian church, and engages in an offbeat, dryly funny chat with the priest, even asking if he, Ben, started believing in heaven, would his late wife join him there. “You might check with the Mormons for that,” the priest replies. It’s clever but respectful.
Jewish mothers play a big role in the film and how it came about. Carol Kane has said in interviews that she partly based her character on her mother, a vocal music teacher who re-invented her life after being widowed in mid-life. Director Nathan Silver has said he was inspired to make the movie after his mother Cindy Silver enrolled in classes for her adult bat mitzvah, something she never had as a “red diaper baby” like Carla.
Carol Kane and Jason Schwartzman have wonderful chemistry together. There is sweetness that is hard to describe and equally hard to resist, as they form an island of simplicity in the churning sea of complexity from both their families. Carol Kane is a delight in this role, giving a winning performance. Jason Schwartzman plays against his usual handsome leading man type in Wes Anderson films, by playing a slubby fellow, a bit gone to seed, with little purpose in life. It is the kind of role we are more likely to expect from Steve Carell but Schwartzman pulls it off very well. All the supporting players are wonderful as well, particularly Robert Smigel as Rabbi Bruce, delivering lines with deadpan humor.
BETWEEN THE TEMPLES is an offbeat comedy about Jewish identity that takes some odd turns but offers a surprising sweetness in the scenes between the two main characters, along with a strange yet somehow satisfying ending.
BETWEEN THE TEMPLES opens Friday, Aug. 23, at Landmark’s Plaza Frontenac Cinema and nationwide, and on Friday, Aug. 30, at the Hi-Pointe Theater.
(L-R) Yotam (Ofri Biterman), Iris (Oshrat Ingedashet) and Eli (Michael Moshonov) in AMERICA. Photo credit: Beta Cinema. Courtesy of Menemsha Films
AMERICA, despite the title, is not set in the U.S. nor is it about America, Instead, it is a deeply human, moving, emotionally complex, intelligent Israeli drama an Israeli man who has lived in America for decades but returns after the death of his long-estranged father, to deal with the estate, and reconnects with some people from his past. Human relationships, and a different take on a love triangle, as the center of the fine drama/romance AMERICA, from the director of the international hit THE CAKEMAKER. Israeli writer/director Ofir Raul Graizer helmed both that excellent German drama and this new this Hebrew-language drama/romance, which feels like a kind of sequel in its similar emotional, poignant style.
AMERICA centers on an Israeli-born man, Eli (Michael Moshonov), who has lived in Chicago for ten years, since leaving Israel as a teenager. A one-time swimming champion, Eli now has made a life for himself in America as a swimming instructor, with no intention to even return to Israel, even changing his name to leave his past behind, But Eli is reluctantly compelled to return to Israel, in order to sort out the estate of his late father, from whom he was long estranged. The swimmer only intends to stay long enough to sell his father’s house in Tel Aviv and therefore settle the estate.
At his old house, Eli runs into an old neighbor by chance, Moti (Moni Moshonov), who is very glad to see him. The swimming instruction is pleased as well to see Moti, who was kind and even a kind of father-figure to Eli as a boy after his mother died and the boy struggled in his difficult relationship with his police chief father. The chance meeting leads Eli to reconnect with Moti’s son Yotam (Ofri Biterman), a childhood friend who shared his love of swimming, and to meet his friend’s fiancee, Iris (Oshrat Ingedashet), who has a flower shop in Jaffa which she runs with Yotam. Yotam no longer swims but helps Iris run her flower shop. Iris is estranged from her strict Moroccan family, much like Eli is estranged from his.
We catch a frisson of attraction between Eli and Iris but of course neither acts on it because of Yotam. A tragic accident changes everybody’s plans, creating a complicated situation for everyone.
Director Graizer uses beautiful, evocative locations and settings to deepen scenes and add to character. The flower shop that Iris runs is crowded with colorful blooms and green foliage, offering a lush, even sensual, setting around which much of the drama unfolds. It seems to symbolize life, and the setting particularly wrapping Iris in beauty and vibrant life. In one scene, the old friends drive out to remote location, a favorite swimming hole of their youth, and take a long trek through difficult, dry terrain to arrive at a beautiful waterfall and idyllic pool of water beneath it.
Like THE CAKEMAKER, the story is layered with details that gives it the feel of reality, and the people in it are complex in the way real people are. That depth of detail and layered character makes the film intriguing as well as unpredictable. We can guess some things that happen but we never know when some new twist, some surprise – good or bad – is lurking around the next corner. The sense of reality unfolding gives the film a kind of tension but also makes the characters wholly believable. We can’t resist being drawn into the lives of these interesting people.
The fine script is further boosted by an excellent cast, who create people we like, even if we don’t understand everything about them. As the story unfolds, dilemmas arise and complex ethical choices face them. The characters are forced to make choices, where the right path isn’t always clear.
This excellent drama is a follow-up, in a way, to the director’s previous one, THE CAKE MAKER, a hit film that also had complicated people in complicated situations with a romantic theme, but people we pull for. The script in both these films is superb, as is the work of the cast. This is the kind of intelligent, human storytelling fans of serious drama long for, yet AMERICA, like its predecessor, also delivers as an entertaining film.
AMERICA opened Friday, July 4, in select theaters and expands to additional cities on Friday, August 2.
(L-R) Stephen Fry, Lena Dunham, and Stefan Zbigniew Zamachowski in TREASURE. Photo Credit: Bleecker Street and FilmNation
Lena Dunham and Stephen Fry play a daughter and her Holocaust-survivor father, on a trip to his native Poland in the 1990s, in the dramedy TREASURE. The trip is the daughter’s idea, and her plan is to learn about her family history, something her father and late mother always refused to talk about. Angry and frustrated at her parents’ refusal to share anything about their past, she plans to visit sites related to dad’s family and life to learn about the family she knows nothing about. Her father has steadfastly refused to talk about it, and with the death of her mother, she figured going to their home country of Poland was the only way. Unsurprisingly, revisiting Poland is not something dad wanted to do but he goes along, pretty much uninvited, to “protect her,” as he puts it. What he is protecting her from is a little unclear.
This pair couldn’t be more different in temperament, and have a prickly relationship. The daughter, Ruth (Lena Dunham), is grim, humorless, and no-nonsense, a New York-based music journalist, a vegan with rigid habits, who doesn’t seem to enjoy travel and worries about her tight budget. Dad Edek (Stephen Fry) is a joyful, outgoing fellow, who stops to flirt with most women he meets along the way and tells everyone they meet that his daughter is rich and famous, although she is neither. He refuses to be serious, at least on the surface, and Dad does his best to distract his daughter, to delay things, waste time, and send her on the wrong track, even trick her, to keep her from her mission. He is sometimes helped by a local taxi driver (Stefan Zbigniew Zamachowski) that the pair have picked up at the airport and turned into a kind of tour guide, after dad refuses to board the train his daughter had booked for the trip.
Julia von Heinz wrote and directs this dramedy about family, memory and Poland in WWII and in post-communist 1990s. The story is emotional, and often funny. At first, the situation seems a bit forced, contrived and awkward, but as the story unfolds, the film improves and becomes more believable. Fry and Dunham soften and deepen their characters, and both father and daughter work through some issues. Zamachowski as the driver provides a mediator between battling father and daughter, and adds his own comedy touches or serves as a comic foil, while supplying information about the post-communist Poland as they travel.
Ruth is there to investigate her family’s history, not to have fun, so she goes about his trip like a woman on a mission, or working an assignment. But her trip does include some educational tours, mostly because she has so few clues from her parents, both to learn about Poland and the Holocaust. The film does note how odd it is to have such tours of sites like Auschwitz. As admirable as it is to educate people, with the aim of “never again,” it is still seems strange and unsettling to have them as tourist sites. However, Ruth is mostly there to learn about her family. She has done some research and also visits places like a family cemetery and a one-time family home. But the closer she gets to the family sites, the more smiling, fast-talking dad seems desperate to derail her search.
Both Dunham and Fry are good, with Fry especially charming and funny. Early one, some odd-couple humor feels forced, but as things go along, the film improves as Fry’s and Dunham’s characters become more relaxed. Fry’s Edek is quite a plotter but slowly becomes less a hindrance, even revealing why he has been so secretive all these years. The film touches on true-history subjects, such as giving insight on how neighbors turned on their Jewish friends and neighbors, exploiting the Nazi occupation for their own advantage. Eventually the meaning of the title is revealed, in a twist that brings father and daughter together at last.
TREASURE debuts streaming on demand on Tuesday, July 30.
Blake Cameron James as Malik and Gian Knight Ramirez as Eric, in WE GROWN NOW. Courtesy of Participant. Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.
In a touching portrait of childhood friendship, the child-focused WE GROWN NOW captures the magic and innocence of childhood, even one where the two inseparable friends, elementary-school age boys, are growing up in poverty in a housing project that later became infamous for violence and a symbol of urban decay, Chicago’s Cabrini-Green. But in the early 1990s, when this story is set, all that is still in the future although very much on the horizon. Like FLORIDA PROJECT, the story is told from a child point-of-view, as the boys play and explore their world with all the joy and curiosity of childhood.
The real appeal of this moving drama is in performances of the two young actors playing these friends, performances filled with believability and an inescapable appeal and charm. The story is largely told through their eyes, with childhood’s limited view of the world. Their housing complex is falling into physical decay yet the playground is still joyous and filled with children, and the boys are embraced by their loving, stable families, albeit financially-struggling ones.
Malik (Blake Cameron James) and Eric (Gian Knight Ramirez) are inseparable life-long friends, who are next-door neighbors in the Cabrini-Green housing project. The housing complex is filled with families, and many of the parents, like Malik’s mother Dolores (Jurnee Smollett) have grown up there, raised by her mother Anita (S. Epatha Merkerson) who moved to the then-new housing with her husband and daughter, fleeing the Jim Crow South with the Great Migration.
Although the buildings are falling into disrepair, with trash in hallways, a leaking faucet in their apartment that has gone un-repaired despite months of calls to maintenance, and empty apartments, there is family history there.
In an opening scene, the boys take an abandoned mattress from one such apartment, not to sleep on, but to use on the playground to practice their jumping. Another pair of abandoned mattresses in an empty apartment becomes a place for the boys to dream about the world, talk about the future, and imagine a starry sky overhead.
In fact, the boys’ apartments are neat, clean and well-kept homes. Both boys are being raised by single parents who work hard at low-paid jobs. Eric is being raised by his widower father along with his older sister while is being raised by his mother and grandmother. The stable, loving families, and the boys’ parents view of the housing complex as safe and familiar, allows the boys the freedom to play and roam with other children carefree. They attend the local school with other neighborhood children, another orderly, safe place, where they study and share.
Scenes in the playground, surrounded by children jumping rope and engaged in games, and classroom scenes, provide the setting for the boys’ conversations, which are remarkable in their naturalness and childhood charm. There are adventures too, one when they skip school to ride the train into the city and spend the day to the Art Institute and exploring other Chicago sites. Their carefree comfort with exploring their world echoes universal childhood impulses.
Director Minhal Baig grew up in Chicago although in a more prosperous neighborhood area than that of Cabrini-Green but she researched Cabrini Green and its history, and also interviewed people who lived there to build a more human, fuller picture of living there. Baig recalled her childhood view of her city being limited to the parts of it she experienced, from her neighborhood to downtown, and that same sense of childhood’s limited view suffuses WE GROWN NOW, which also reflects how young children like these two boys are largely at the mercy of the decisions of adults in their lives. This story is set at a time of change for Cabrini Green, as it falls into disrepair and the neighborhood around it becomes more dangerous and violent. WE GROWN NOW uses the parents’ personal stories to recap the history of the place, a housing project originally built for war veterans but which by the early 1990s was falling into disrepair, and eventually became a watch-word for urban decay by the time the last buildings were brought down in about 2011. The boys’ story is set at a time when as the neighborhood is changing, as the boys themselves are growing and changing, although they actually are far from grown by the film’s ends, just at a transition point that will impact their lives.
Director Baig incorporates a real event in 1992 in the Cabrini-Green neighborhood into this story, the death of a boy accidentally killed by a stray bullet while walking down the street. The event plays a role as a pivotal point in the film, with the boys attending the child’s funeral and then discussing life, death and wondering if there is an afterlife. Meanwhile, the sudden random act of violence jolts their parents, changing the adults’ view of a neighborhood they had thought of as safe, in which their children could be free to roam.
The sudden violence is combined with other changes that further alarm their parents. The housing complex becomes the focus of police, in the grip of the War On Drugs, who rouse all residents at 2am for complex-wide warrant-less searches for drugs, leaving apartments in disarray. There are new rules, along with new mandatory ID for residents, even small children, and intrusive security restrictions. The changing environment, and opportunity for a promotion, prompts hard decisions that threaten to separate the inseparable boys.
The focus on the two young friends, and their child-view world, makes this drama both magical and heartbreaking, as the world shifts around them. The young actors are so good in this film, and their believable bond so strong and so moving, that it gives the story about a specific place and time both a timelessness and universality, and a powerful emotional pull. As the film notes at its end, a place is really made of its people, and our memories of them.
Full confession: I love Bob Marley, so a biographical drama about the reggae icon is pure catnip for me. BOB MARLEY: ONE LOVE, a charming, personal look at the music giant, is produced by his son, musician Ziggy Marley. Ziggy Marley influenced the casting of Kingsley Ben-Adir, who is excellent as Bob Marley. The drama covers his life, music and beliefs, religious and political, with a special focus on his relationship with his wife Rita, played by the also excellent Lashana Lynch.
The film opens at a pivotal moment for Marley, as he is preparing for a concert in Jamaica that he hopes will soothe heated political tempers in the run-up to an election. The opposite happens, with an assassination attempt on the singer. Moving back and forth in time, the film goes on to follow Bob Marley’s path to international stardom as he brought his reggae-infused music to the world and the world’s attention to Jamaican music.
BOB MARLEY: ONE LOVE is not a documentary nor is it the definitive biography. But it is a fine reminder of the man’s integrity and values, and the enduring gift of music he gave to the world.
Kingsley Ben-Adir does a marvelous job portraying Bob Marley, and looks strikingly like him, capturing his movements, performance style and dazzling smile, despite being nearly 6-foot-2-inches tall while the real Bob Marley was just under 5-foot-7-inches tall, although a giant of music.
Shot on location in Jamaican, we get some lovely glimpses of the island’s natural beauty and also views of the hardscrabble, dusty streets where Marley grew up. The film not only covers Bob Marley at this career height, but portrays moments from his earlier life, with two young actors who portray the musician as a small child and as a teen.
Marley’s teen years are when he met his future wife, launched his career, and discovered Rastafarianism, all touched on in these flashback sequences. The early childhood scenes have the symbolic feel of memories and touch on his feelings about his white British father in some visually striking scenes. The flashback sequences give us insight on the man’s formative experiences and a bit on the development of his music.
While this biopic is thoroughly enjoyable, two things would have made it even better: more of Bob Marley’s music and clearer dialog. The concert sequences are among the film’s most enjoyable moments and Kingsley Ben-Adir’s captures Marley’s energetic stage performances wonderfully. The characters speak with Jamaican accents, which adds to the authenticity of this Jamaican-shot drama but there are moments, sometimes long ones, where the dialog is largely undecipherable by non-Jamaican audiences. Subtitles would help, but having the actors slow down a bit and speak a bit more clearly would have been enough to avoid the distraction of subtitles. It is something that comes and goes, and most the dialog is clear enough but still, it is frequent enough that when a clueless British record producer, played by Michael Gandolfini blurts out a “What?” after Ben-Adir’s Marley says something, it gets a big, unintended laugh from the audience struggling with some of the same problem.
This are little things (well, maybe not the wish for more Bob Marley music) and do not significantly detract from enjoyment of the film. BOB MARLEY: ONE LOVE is a delightful revisiting of the life and music of the beloved music icon Bob Marley, with a striking performance by lead Kingsley Ben-Adir.
BOB MARLEY: ONE LOVE opens Wednesday, Feb. 14, in theaters.
Everyone wants to feel seen as who they are, not who others think they should be. In the smart, hilarious comedy/drama AMERICAN FICTION, college professor/author Thelonious Ellison (Jeffrey Wright), called “Monk” by family and friends, is frustrated when a publisher turns down his latest novel for not being a “Black novel.” “I’m Black, and I wrote it, it’s a Black novel,” the author complains to his agent Arthur (John Ortiz). “Your books are good,” the agent tells him, “they’re just not popular.” It seems his books just don’t fit audiences’ preconceived notions of what a Black novel should be – gritty, urban, struggling, violent perhaps. At a literary conference, Ellison hears author Sintara Golden (Issa Rae), a Black academic like himself, read from her own latest hit novel, a novel that fits those expectations. The frustrated Ellison decides, sarcastically, to write a novel that hits all those expected stereotypic beats – as a joke. Except the joke finds a publisher.
Smart, clever AMERICAN FICTION is simply laugh-out-loud funny, perhaps the year’s funniest film, and also has an unpredictable story that you never know where it will go next. Director/writer Cord Jefferson based his excellent film on Percival Everett’s novel “Erasure,” but much of the success of the film goes to the film’s cast, which also includes Sterling K Brown, Tracee Ellis Ross, John Ortiz and Leslie Uggams, and to Jefferson’s script. Besides being a biting, clever satire – of publishing, of the reading public, of contemporary American culture overall, and the meaning of “authentic” – that builds to breathlessly funny absurdity as this joke spins out of control, the film is also an insightful, even warm family drama, as the lead character, no flawless hero himself, is forced to deal with his not-too-functional family and his own shortcomings.
A curmudgeonly grumbler, Monk has been, informally, put on leave for the semester from his teaching job, for offending the sensibilities of a student. His dean suggests that he go to the literary conference he has planned to attend (where he hears that other author), and then stay on to visit with his Massachusetts-based family to “relax.” “You think spending time with my family is relaxing?” Monk snorts. Turns out, college professor/author Monk is a bit of a “black sheep” in his affluent Black family, where both his sister Lisa (Tracee Ellis Ross) and brother Clifford (Sterling K. Brown) are doctors, and his widowed mother Agnes (a wonderful Leslie Uggams) is vaguely disappointed in her youngest child.
Monk’s sister Lisa (a wonderful Tracee Ellis Ross) teases her sourpuss brother Monk relentlessly but there is an affection between them underneath it. Since Monk lives on the other side of the country, he has not seen the decline in their mother that Lisa is dealing with. She tells Monk that things are not going well with their mother, who seems to be in the early stages of dementia, and asks her brother for help getting her into assisted living.
It is a topic nearly all families deal with at some point as parents age, and having one sibling avoiding the topic while another is shouldering the larger burden is a familiar theme too. Early cognitive decline means his mother’s filter is sometimes off, and Leslie Uggams’ Agnes Ellison veers between fondly fussing over her younger son, and painful criticism and even some embarrassing non-PC remarks, in a fine performance.
Monk gets along much better with his sister than his brother Cliff, and Sterling K Brown gives a striking performance as Cliff, an out-spoken cosmetic surgeon, recently out of the closet and going through a messy divorce. There are verbal sparks between the brothers and personalities clash big time.
AMERICAN FICTION unfurls along two narrative tracks in brilliant parallel, one a farcical path about what happens with that “joke” novel and the other a sharp family comedy/drama. The very talented Jeffrey Wright giving a outstanding performance that is by turns bitingly funny and the other touchingly human, creating a character with real depth. The other narrative track has humor too but also a dash of realism, as Monk grapples with his family issues and his own flaws.
The bulk of the laugh-out-loud humor comes from the thread about the “joke” novel. At the literary conference, Issa Rae hits the right notes as the scholarly, erudite academic Sintara Golden, who jars us when she reads in street slang from her inner-city set novel, and then is praised for the novel’s “authenticity,” despite the mismatch between who she is and the characters in the novel (a subject that comes up in a later scene between the two writers). Irritated by the response to her novel, Monk writes his sarcastic “joke” book, a memoir titled “My Pafology” under a pseudonym that should have been a tip-off: Stagg R. Leigh. Shocked when a publisher expresses interest, Monk tries to wave it off but his agent presses him to go ahead and sell it – because he needs the money. That requires that the buttoned-down Monk pose as fugitive ex-con author Stagg R. Leigh in dealing with the publishers, who are far too thrilled to be dealing with the “dangerous” but cool Stagg R. Leigh, in some hilarious scenes.
Monk finds himself living two lives, and trying to keep them separate, a situation rich in humor potential that both Cord Jefferson and Jeffrey Wright use hilariously. The film also has a love interest, with a neighbor, Coraline (Erika Alexander), at the family’s beach house, which adds another layer of complexity to Monk’s already complicated life.
Few movies are as smart and funny as AMERICAN FICTION, and few actors who could carry the lead role in it as perfectly as Jeffrey Wright. This is a must-see film, and a film on my and many critics’ Top Ten lists for 2023’s best films, and it is a sure thing to continue to garner nominations and win awards as the movie awards season makes its way to the Oscars.
AMERICAN FICTION opens Friday, Jan. 5, in theaters.
CANDY CANE LANE is a light, pleasant little holiday treat, much like the candy its name suggests. The family comedy takes place on one of those streets nearly every town has, the one where neighbors out-do each other with the decorations, competing for the neighborhood honor of being named the annual winner. This story centers on one of those suburban families, headed by dad Chris Carver (Eddie Murphy). Chris Carver does indeed carve, in this case, handmade holiday decorations, which are overlooked for the prize every year. He is married to Carol (Tracee Ellis Ross), and they have three kids, Nicholas (Thaddeus J. Mixson), Joy (Genneya Walton), and Holly (Madison Thomas). Seeing a pattern here?
In case you missed, the film thoughtfully points that Christmas naming theme out for you in one scene.
For CANDY CANE LANE, director Reginald Hudlin pretty much throws in anything that would fit for a Christmas movie, and then goes for some other genres too, like family comedy and even horror. Hudlin’s “everything and the kitchen sink” approach doesn’t really add to “more is better” but there is some fun in this very busy film. And the director also adds subversive little tidbits too, turning holiday movie stereotyping on its head – like making the Black suburban family the film’s main characters instead of supporting ones.
Eddie Murphy’s Chris Carver really wants to win the neighborhood Christmas decorating contest, in part because he just lost his job and the contest has a cash prize this year. Looking for a way to up his decorating game, he stumbles across a holiday shop he never saw before, run by an impish woman named Pepper (Jillian Bell), who has a whiff of something scary about her. She sells Chris an impressively large yard-decor Christmas tree, festooned with the characters from the song “12 Days of Christmas,” and requires him to sign a receipt that as a lot of fine-print. “Just standard,” she says, hurrying him along. Pressed for time, Chris does sign without reading it. You know that can’t be good.
Some very crazy things start happening once Eddie Murphy’s Chris gets the huge decoration home, and there is more magical stuff involving those little Christmas village models, with Nick Offerman as one of the figurines. David Alan Grier shows up later too – as Santa.
Eddie Murphy plays his role straight and leaves the comedy heavy-lifting mostly to Jillian Bell, who chews up some scenery in a most entertaining way. While Murphy plays it straight, Jillian Bell gets the comedy spotlight, as a mischievous elf you don’t want on your shelf. (See, this stuff it contagious.) Still, its fun to see Eddie Murphy on screen again, playing a dad determined to give his kids the best Christmas ever – no matter what gets in his way.
The comedy has a bit of fun with breaking some Christmas movie rules too. For one, this suburban “candy cane lane” is in Southern California, so there is no chance of snow. When Santa rolls his sleigh down the lane, one of the homes is decked out for Hanukkah. As Santa passes, he points at houses to signal the homeowners to switch on the lights – or in case, inflate the army of inflatable figures clogging the yard. And there is a running joke about the clueless neighbors who serve box wine – in wine-growing California, gasp!
If you absolutely love Christmas movies, you should put this on your holiday list. If you are cooler to the genre, know that this isn’t the worst holiday movie – plenty ahead of it there – but it isn’t a must-see holiday future-classic either. Just a bunch of familiar holiday and family film tropes along with a few more surprising ones – a 12 Days of Christmas display come to life – but ideas well within the lane (ahem) of holiday fun.
Every character gets their moment, and the humor is broad and over-the-top. Nothing subtle here. But if Christmas excess is your holiday treat, CANDY CANE LANE might be the stocking-stuffer for you.
CANDY CANE LANE debuts streaming Friday, Dec. 1, on Amazon Prime.
