Somebody Get An Iron

Year: 2018

Director: Ava DuVernay

Cast: Storm Reid, Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon 

Run Time: 1 hour 49 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG

I, like most people who were once children, have definitely read Madeline L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time, really enjoyed it, and remember almost nothing about it. So you don't have to take my review with a grain of salt. I won't call this film a bastardization of the book. It hasn't ruined my childhood. Because, for all I know, this is the most faithful adaptation ever conceived. I literally don't remember.

I recall there being a character named Charles Wallace, and there's one of those in the movie, so it passes the test.

So, here's the plot of A Wrinkle in Time, which you probably don't remember even if you saw the movie today: young girl Meg (Storm Reid) is still wracked with grief over the disappearance of her scientist father (Chris Pine) four years ago. He disappeared right after adopting her younger brother Charles Wallace (Deric McCabe). And her mother (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) doesn't do all that much, but you can't just not mention Gugu Mbatha-Raw if she's in a movie.

Charles Wallace introduces Meg to three weird mystical women named Mrs. Whatsit (Reese Witherspoon), a scatterbrained woman who doesn't appreciate Meg's distrust and closed-off emotions, Mrs. Who (Mindy Kaling), who only speaks in literary quotes, and Mrs. Which (Oprah Winfrey), who seems to be the ringleader and is hilariously 30 feet tall for the first third of the movie. Who these women are married to, I'll never know. Anyway, they know how to bend time and space to travel thousands of light years in a split second, and in order to rescue their dad, who is being held captive by an evil force spreading darkness throughout the universe, the kids must team up with the women and their random useless neighbor Calvin (Levi Miller) to go on a cross-universe adventure.

At the very least, I'm glad this movie finally allowed Oprah to show us her true form.

A Wrinkle in Time is whimsical as f**k, and that's actually one of its rawest strengths. Director Ava DuVernay (whose previous works are well-respected but certainly in no way implied that this is the type of movie she had the capacity to make) definitely has a vision and is pursuing it full-bore. The costuming is like watching a full season of RuPaul's Drag Race condensed into 100 minutes, blasting a glitter cannon into your face every six minutes or so. There is no moderation in the design elements of Wrinkle in Time whatsoever, and between the fact that Oprah's bejeweled eyebrows change between every scene, the glorious, intricate hairpieces they slam onto Mindy Kalings scalp, and the rumpled pillowcase Reese Witherspoon seems to be dressed in, it's a sumptuous visual feast that pulses with energy.

Kids will certainly relate to this film, because that energy is exactly as empty and ephemeral as the sugar rush they'll be getting from their fistfuls of Skittles they got at the concession stand. A Wrinkle in Time jams you through its plot with a total lack of focus and broad, brittle dialogue meant to force you down the narrative track like bumpers on a bowling lane. Even though the world they inhabit is a free-flowing mass of sparkly fabrics, the characters and their arcs are stilted and strange, and the script frequently dips into being actively unbearable (the theme of the film is presented via a cootie catcher, for one thing, but this high-fantasy movie also relies on a radio news report for important exposition, which is the laziest way to do just about anything).

The plotting is equally messy, which to be fair is probably due to the highly metaphysical, internal nature of the original book, but still. The third act just turns into a video game where every rule we've seen established is instantly broken and most of the conflicts are converted into music videos for one of the many atrocious pop songs that are sticking out of the movie like razor blades in the face of a Hellraiser Cenobite.

Mindy's face when she read the script for the first time.

Luckily, the movie doesn't really rely on its script to carry things. Unluckily, it mostly just relies on kids going "whoooooooaaaaa," at a big heap of CGI nonsense flying around. For as much personality as the Misses bring to the film, the worlds they visit are too-similar, slickly designed landscapes so smooth and digital that your eye slides right off them.

The acting is fine at least. Charles Wallace is strangely wiggly in his physicality when push comes to shove, but let's not hang around insulting children. Kaling and Winfrey are absolutely satisfying, even if they don't push themselves particularly hard, and Witherspoon certainly gets across the airy inhumanity of her character, though her performance slips into manic a little too often for my liking.

Although A Wrinkle in Time is mostly forgettable, it's anything but anonymous. Whatever the movie's faults are, they are entirely its own, and to that point, if you're in the right mood some of those faults can be strengths (funnily enough, that idea is actually a major plot point). I for one was captivated by the completely strange presentation of Meg's school bully, who hangs out of her window at a 45 degree angle to spy on her at home. And the way Levi Miller exits a doorframe, milking it for every ounce of emotional weight it's worth and then some, squeezing out every last drop of screen time he can possibly glean, is a fascinating trainwreck of a scene.

All in all, I didn't hate it, but A Wrinkle in Time is a huge, flabby disappointment. That's the way these things go sometimes.

TL;DR: A Wrinkle in Time is ambitious, but entirely too messy and bland to be satisfying.
Rating: 4/10
Word Count: 987

Swimming In Miami

Year: 2016

Director: Barry Jenkins

Cast: Mahershala Ali, Ashton Sanders, Naomie Harris

Run Time: 1 hour 51 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Gay movies are tough. It’s difficult when your sexual identity is linked to a cornucopia of hot button issues, because the only wide-release gay movies that squeak by are the ones that interact directly with those issues. And you know where movies about social issues invariably end up? The whirling typhoon of overseriousness we call the Oscars. It’s a vicious cycle that has led to the most notable gay movies being the dour Philadelphia, the terrific but dour Brokeback Mountain, the ambiguously sullen Weekend, and f**king I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry.

Moonlight is a member of that massively unpleasant genre, coupled with the even more primordially depressing genre of Oscarbait Movies About Black People. So it’s a damn miracle that it ended up being watchable and, in patches, occasionally splendid.

I’ll get through an entire Oscar slate one of these years!

Moonlight is divided into three distinct parts (because you know a movie’s great if it has chapter titles), each depicting a stage in the coming-of-age of Chiron (Alex R. Hibbert as a child, Ashton Sanders as a teen, and Trevante Rhodes as an adult), a young gay man growing up in the mean streets of Miami.

To a lesser extent it is also about the people around him, at least to the degree that they influence the formation of his identity: his mother Paula (the lovely Naomie Harris, giving a performance that will inevitably be called “brave”), the drug dealer Juan (Mahershala Ali), Juan’s girlfriend Teresa (Janelle Monáe, whose transition from “R&B starlet” to “respectable actress” has been terrifyingly, imperceptibly fast), and his best friend Kevin (Jaden Pine, Jharrel Jerome, and American Horror Story: Roanoke’s André Holland).

Sidebar: Trevante Rhodes might hold the world record for Most Impossibly Buff Human Being Who Isn’t The Rock.

Moonlight is one of those movies that’s more fun to discuss than it is to sit through. As a portrait of a boy attempting to form an emotional, compassionate identity in a culture that values toughness and resilience, it’s an alternately warm and devastating character study. And probably the best thing about it is that it’s not explicitly about being gay. Although Chiron’s homosexuality informs every aspect of his stunted identity, it’s about the universal themes of love, self, and human connection. Of course, watching this all play out onscreen is about as exciting as watching an infomercial for socks.

To be fair, my brain doesn’t come equipped with the arthouse gland that allows people to sit through a long-winded parade of human misery and come out declaring it a masterpiece (I prefer short-winded parades with more stage blood). And while Moonlight is more than just misery porn, I find that it struggles to strike a balance between art and realism. 

Most of the film is straight-laced, almost documentarian drama that uses long takes and naturalistic lighting to douse the film in the gritty reality of the Miami ghetto. But it takes random leaps into bold, colorful, almost Italian arthouse cinematography that feel completely disjointed, desperately jockeying for your attention. These movements come too infrequently to be anything other than distracting, and they’re not so gorgeous that the movie couldn’t have gone on without them. Especially in the third, weakest chapter, these intrusions almost feel like the film is mocking us for actually getting into the story.

Take the film’s best scene: A moonlit seaside conversation between two boys that carries oceans of meaning beneath tentative words. It’s stripped-down perfection, using nothing but dialogue and the human face to provoke mounting erotic tension in the audience. Moonlight is at its best when it’s simple, because its delusions of aesthetic grandeur merely remind you that the visual style is mostly less than phenomenal.

Although, who could complain about this shot?

Moonlight is more like a novel than a film, packed with subtext and recurring symbolism that’s a thrill to dissect, but could just has easily have been presented as a text piece rather than a work of cinema. As a story, it’s important and heartfelt. As a film it’s nonessential.

That’s perhaps not very fair to a film that showcases well-etched characters portrayed by a bevy of talented actors and promising newcomers, but it’s so dry you could use it to cure meat. I’m in no way saying that it’s bad. Moonlight is terrific. But it’s not the type of movie I would consider taking a friend to or –Heaven forbid – owning on DVD.

TL;DR: Moonlight is a decent character study that tries way too hard to be Important.

Rating: 7/10

Word Count: 780