In the movies anything is possible. Superheroes routinely save the earth, regular folks can afford to live in fancy New York apartments and infants can talk.
This weekend Alec Baldwin lends his distinctive, raspy voice to the title character of The Boss Baby. Based on a 36-page book by Marla Frazee, it’s a feature length riff on Look Who’s Talking as imagined by Family Guy’s Stewie Griffin.
“I may look like a baby but I was born all grown up,” Boss Baby boasts as he drops into the Templeton family, upsetting only child Tim’s carefree life. Wearing a suit onesie, BB carries a briefcase and speaks the language of the boardroom.
Seems he’s from a purveyor of fine babies, a company that supplies tots via a chute. Those who giggle when tickled are placed with families, those who don’t, like Boss Baby, are sentenced to a Kafka-esque, humourless life in BabyCorp management, kept infant-sized by special formula.
With lines like, “You know who else wears a diaper? Astronauts.” Boss Baby has the movies’s best lines, expertly delivered by Baldwin but he’s not the first talking baby to grace the big screen.
Leone LeDoux was an actor who, when she wasn’t voicing Minnie Mouse in cartoons of the 1930s and 1940s, made a career out of supplying baby vocals for movies. Some, like her work in the short Water Babies, involved creating childlike sounds for on screen infants while others were more involved. In The Reluctant Dragon she gives voice to child genius Baby Weems.
“You’re a quiet little fellow, aren’t you?” coos the nurse.
“Well, there really isn’t much to talk about,” replies Weems.
Other movie babies have had more to say.
Amy Heckerling came up with the idea for the Citizen Kane of talking toddler movies, Look Who’s Talking, when she and screenwriter husband Neal Israel were playing with their new baby. “My husband and I started to put words in her mouth,” she told the Los Angeles Times. “what she might be thinking based on her expressions.” The playful game blossomed into a film starring Kristie Alley, John Travolta and Bruce Willis as the voice of talking newborn Mikey. Heckerling notes that Willis frequently went off script, improvising X-rated lines that couldn’t be used in the film.
The movie gave Travolta’s career a shot in the arm—he hadn’t acted in five years—and started a talking baby trend in pop culture. The next year the sitcom Baby Talk starred the vocal stylings of Tony Danza as Baby Mickey, son of single mom Maggie.
More recently the baritone voiced E-Trade baby, frequently voiced by comedian Pete Holmes, looked to Heckerling’s movie for inspiration. From 2008 to 2014 Elayne Rapping, professor of American Studies at SUNY/Buffalo says the spokesbaby “humanized the whole business of trading. While other babies are just pictures, this one has a personality that is pure pop culture.”
Finally, back on the big screen Baby Geniuses sees Kathleen Turner and Christopher Lloyd as scientists who think that babies are born knowing the secrets of the universe. To learn those secrets they try to decode goo-goo-ga-ga baby talk. Roger Ebert put this movie on his “Most Hated” list and the Stinkers bad Movie Awards nominated Leo, Gerry and Myles Fitzgerald, the triplets who played Sly, the baby genius, as Worst Child Performer.
Can you steal someone’s life? It’s the question at the heart of “Ghost in the Shell,” in more ways than one.
Based on the Japanese manga of the same name by Masamune Shirow, it centers around a woman, played by Scarlett Johansson, rescued by scientists at AI robots manufacturer Hanka Robotics and turned into a weaponized cyber-human. “Your body was damaged,” says Dr. Ouelet (Juliette Binoche). “We couldn’t save it, only your brain survived.” Named The Major (more on that later) after her cerebral salvage she leads task force Section 9 who take down cyber terrorists and hackers by any means necessary. “We saved you,” continues Dr. Ouelet, “and now you save others.” The life the Major once knew is over but as the doctor says, “Your mind, your soul and your ghost, that’s still in there.”
On another level “The Ghost in the Shell” steals away the essence of itskmain character. The Major, or Major Motoko Kusanagi as she was referred to in the 1989 manga series and beyond, is a Japanese character in this case being played by the very western Johansson. Director Rupert Sanders dismisses the whitewashing criticism saying, “I feel that [Johansson] channelled the Major better than anyone else I could have thought of. She was my first choice and remains my first choice. She’s the best actress of my generation and her generation and the person I felt most embodied the physicality and the ability to inhabit that role.”
I think Sanders forgot to insert the word “bankable” in there somewhere.
I’m not suggesting that Johansson isn’t a talented actor or capable of pulling off believable and exciting action scenes. In movies like “Lucy” and “Captain America: Civil War” she has credibly occupied the action space, bringing both toughness and acting chops to her roles. That’s not at issue. What is at issue here is that the character is decidedly Japanese. As a human brain in an entirely synthetic body, she is far from, as Johansson claims, “identity-less.” In fact she is the very embodiment of a culture’s fascination with technology and how that technology interacts with humankind. In this case the technology actually becomes human, or perhaps it’s the other way round. Either way, the cyberpunk heroine is a key figure in Asian science fiction and the new “Ghost in the Shell” conveniently ignores that fact.
More thought has been put into creating the world The Major interacts with. A mix of the original anime, “Minority Report,” and “Robocop” with a taste of “Blade Runner” and “The Matrix” thrown in for completists, it’s a sleek near future environment, dense with activity, like in New York City and Hong Kong had a baby.
It is also a place where it’s now possible to control people by hacking directly into their minds. To combat this invasion of the mind, the Major and Co. have their sights set on Kuze (Michael Carmen Pitt), a shadowy cyber terrorist who is targeting Hanka scientists. Complicating the mission are nagging memories of The Major’s former life that manifest themselves through a glitch in her wiring. She sees strange visions, sort of sensory echoes that hint at memories just out of reach. They are the ghost in the shell. She’s sort of like a high tech Jason Bourne, deadly with little recall of the past. “Who are you?” asks a woman who may or may not be The Major’s mother. “I don’t know,” Maj says with a faraway look.
To get to the bottom of the artificial intelligence technology conspiracy that landed her with Handa Robotics, The Major goes rogue. “They created me,” she says, “but they cannot control me.”
One of the most popular Japanese animated series of all time, “Ghost in the Shell” is a beautiful looking movie, which, like its main character, is in search of its soul. Director Rupert Sanders has an extraordinary eye, whether he is visualizing the hacking of The Major’s mind, creating a nightmarish nightclub sequence or bringing surreal cityscapes complete with video statues and future world architecture to vivid life. The movie is never less that entertaining for the eye, passing the time in a wild swirl of colour and movement.
It’s a shame the story isn’t as entertaining. Filtered through a Hollywood lens, what was once a seminal work of cyber punk is reduced to a superhero origin story with action scenes aplenty. Most are beautifully staged even though the odd shot feels like out takes from an upcoming Black Widow spin off.
Johansson pulls off the cold efficiency of a machine tempered with emerging human feelings. She’s a killing machine but never more human than when she explores what it feels like to be flesh and blood, not synthetics and wires. Its territory she’s tread before, most notably and more effectively in “Under the Skin” but it’s an otherworldliness that suits the role.
Binoche as the empathetic AI specialist and mother figure is terrific and the legendary ‘Beat’ Takeshi Kitano isn’t given much to do, but does it with aplomb.
“Ghost in the Shell” is a gorgeous looking film that will engage the eye but not the brain.
Based on a 36-page book by Marla Frazee, “The Boss Baby” is a feature length riff on “Look Who’s Talking” as imagined by “Family Guy’s” Stewie.
Tim Templeton (voice of Miles Bakshi, grandson of animation hero Ralph) is an imaginative seven-year-old only child of parents Ted and Janis voiced by Jimmy Kimmel and Lisa Kudrow. “It was just the three of us,” he says. “The Templetons. Three is the perfect number. Interesting fact, did you know the triangle is the strongest shape alive?” He’s content to be the centre of attention but his carefully constructed life is turned upside down when Mom and Dad come home with his little brother (Alec Baldwin).
The baby is… different. “I may look like a baby but I was born all grown up,” he boasts. Wearing a suit onesie he carries a briefcase and speaks the language of the boardroom. “He’s like a little man!” says Mom. Seems he’s from a purveyor of fine babies, a company that supplies tots who arrive via a chute. Those who giggle when tickled are placed with families, those who don’t, like Boss Baby, are sentenced to a Kafka-esque, humourless life in BabyCorp management, kept infant-sized by special formula. “If people knew where babies really came from they’d never have one,” says Boss Baby. “Same goes for hotdogs.”
In his quest for a promotion and a corner office with his own private potty the ambitious Boss Baby lands with Tim and family. He’s placed himself with Ted and Janice to get closer to their boss, Francis E. Francis (Steve Buscemi), CEO of PuppyCorp. Francis is developing a forever puppy, a new designer models of Frankendog, each more adorable than the last. They’re so cute they threaten to soak up all the love usually reserved for babies. It’s a threat to BabyCorp’s giant-sized baby business and if Boss Baby doesn’t get to the bottom of the puppy problem his special formula will be taken away and he will turn into a regular baby. With Tim’s reluctant help he takes on PuppyCorp.
Echoes of the lamentable “Storks” and its baby making company reverberate throughout the “The Boss Baby’s” infant delivery sequence but the comparisons between the two movies ends there.
At the mushy heart of “The Boss Baby” are messages about the importance of family and unconditional love and other kid flick platitudes, but at the forefront is Boss Baby as a more devious version of Beck Bennett, “Saturday Night Live’s” CEO with the body of a baby. Baldwin brings his distinctive rasp to the character, dropping riffs from his “Glengarry Glen Ross” super-salesman character. “Put that cookie down,” he scolds. “Cookies are for closers,” and “You know who else wears a diaper? Astronauts.” With an aplomb that makes the whole silly story worth a look.
Director Tom “Madagascar” McGrath uses various kinds of animation to paint the screen with vibrant colours and images. His ninja spy sequence is striking, drawing from kung fu movies and horror movies to create the film’s most interesting few minutes. Most characters resemble Margaret Keane’s big-eyed children but McGrath finds interesting ways to jazz them up. Baby Boss’s James Brown strut up walkway to the house is more than choreography, it tells you all you need to know about the character before you even see his face. A scene with incomprehensible Elvis impersonators is hilarious and strange for adults and kids alike. In those sequences and small character moments McGrath and company shine.
Despite those character and animated flourishes “The Boss Baby” doesn’t go out of its way to truly distinguish itself. It’s a pleasant diversion for big and small but the story and its lessons feel like things we’ve seen done before and done better.
Based on the true story of Jan and Antonina Zabinski, Warsaw Zookeepers played by Johan Heldenbergh and Jessica Chastain, “The Zookeeper’s Wife” is the tale of a couple who followed their conscience, rescuing more than 300 Jews during World War II.
The action begins in 1939, months before the German invasion of Poland. The zoo is a sanctuary, run by Jan and Antonina, who treat the animals almost like family. “Good morning sweetheart,” Antonina says, greeting a tiger before giving CPR to a baby elephant later in the day. Then Nazi bombs fall, scattering the animals, effectively shutting down the zoo. When Nazi zoologist Lutz Heck (Daniel Brühl) offers to move the zoo’s surviving animals to Germany for safe-keeping and selective breeding in the hope of bringing back from extinction one of Europe’s most imposing creatures, the aurochs, the Zabinskis make a counter offer. They propose running the facility as a pig farm, using garbage from the Warsaw Ghetto as feed. Their selling point? It will provide food for German soldiers. Their motive? To create a secret safe haven for Warsaw Ghetto Jews, a “human zoo,” as Antonina wistfully calls it.
“The Zookeeper’s Wife” is a simply but effectively told hero’s journey. To her credit director Niki “Whale Rider” Caro has made a handsome movie about a harrowing time. It looks and feels like a big budget period piece, befitting the gravity of the story, but despite some memorable scenes the film feels like it left much of the drama unplumbed. It’s an important story but we don’t spend enough time with the rescued people to truly get a sense of their lives and the movie feels incomplete without as a result.
Chastain holds the centre of the story, providing a steely, compelling—although distractingly accented—character. She shines in her scenes opposite Brühl, a series of cat-and-mouse meetings where she feigns friendship, bonding over a shared love of animals, with the Nazi to keep her hidden dependants safe.
Despite narrative flaws “The Zookeeper’s Wife” contains unforgettable images. The shots of children being comforted by their teacher as they are loaded onto Nazi trains are as memorable as they are heart wrenching. It also contains many instances of animal cruelty. I’m sure no animals were actually harmed during the making of this movie but it doesn’t make the killing of the zoo animals any easier to watch.
What will people remember about you after you’re gone? Friends and family will have personal memories of course, but for many people the last legacy comes in the form of an obituary. “Obit,” a new documentary goes deep into how newspaper epitaphs are written at The New York Times.
Deadly boring? Not by a long shot. It’s a fascinating and funny look at obituarists and the work they do. We’re introduced to the department’s editor, William McDonald, writers Margalit Fox, William Grimes, Paul Vitello, Paul Weber and the inadvertent star of the show, the wryly-hilarious morgue archivist Jeff Roth.
We watch as they decide on who will be included in the exclusive NYT obit page, how much space the dearly departed get—some legacies are whittled down to 600 words, others splayed out across multiple pages—and how they garner information. It’s an old fashioned process; phone calls are made to relatives, handwritten notes are taken. Sometimes mistakes are made, but just as often, as one of the writers notes, “I tend to fall in love with the people I write about.” Most importantly we learn the obits are meant to honour lives lived, not dwell on death.
There isn’t much in the way of narrative—this is more of a slice of life doc—but it does celebrate those no longer with us as much as it does the journalists who write the stories. Take for instance the case of John Fairfax. His claim to fame—he was the first person to cross do a solo crossing of the Atlantic in a rowboat—was just the beginning of his unbelievable life. We’re told he settled a dispute with a pistol at age nine, travelled the Amazon jungle as a teen and once apprenticed to be a pirate.
That’s a hell of a story and “Obit” tells it well, offering a lively look at the men and women who handcraft tales for people whose voices have been silenced.
Ghostbusting is supposed to make you feel good. If that’s true, why does Personal Shopper’s Maureen (played by Kristen Stewart) appear so miserable all the time? Perhaps it’s because the spirit she is trying to bust is that of her brother Lewis, a twin who died of a heart attack in a rambling, old Paris house.
In her second film with French director Olivier Assayas, the Twilight star gives a career topping performance, brittle yet calm in the face of mounting terror. There is a detached feel to the performance that recalls the remove Hitchcock’s leading ladies often projected as she navigates through personal tragedy and supernatural mystery.
“Kristen is the great actress of her generation,” says Assayas. “I feel very privileged to have this connection with her. It is miraculous to work with a young actress who realizes there is no end to what she can do. You tell her, ‘You can fly,’ and she doesn’t believe it and then she does it.
“I have always loved to work with young actors and actresses. You catch them at a moment when they are transforming and opening up. I think it is always interesting to work with actors when you can give them something. When you work with great actors who have done it all, it is very difficult because you give them something that they have already done better in another movie ten years before. “
Their previous collaboration, Clouds of Sils Maria, earned Stewart a rare honour. She was the first American actress to be nominated for and win a best supporting actress César award, the French equivalent of an Oscar.
“She is obsessed with breaking anything that could feel like routine,” he says. “She gives herself this rule of not doing what she would instinctively do. When you do a scene there is an obvious starting place. She never takes it. That’s what I love. As a writer I don’t want to see what I imagined, I want to see an actor who takes it, who appropriates it and does something else with it. That’s when it becomes real and human.”
“Usually I work with actors once, twice and after a while I realize we’ve gone all the way. With Kristen I think I could go on and on.”
Personal Shopper is a ghost story, so things take a strange turn when Maureen’s phone lights up with mysterious texts while she’s on a quick Chunnel trip to London. “R U real? R U alive or dead?” she writes, replying to the Unknown texter. “Tell me something you find unsettling,” comes the response, opening the door for Maureen to begin exploring her fears, phobias, digging deeper than she ever has.
“I don’t believe in the supernatural but I believe there is more to life than the material world. Science kind of proves it. There is so much going on that we can’t see because it is too small or too big or whatever. We have our own relationship with some invisible world. Each of us has his own version of it. You end up living with the departed. Each of us has an inner world which is much more complex than the material world. It’s much more fascinating in terms of cinema. I don’t think it is bizarre to try and connect with that.”
Judy Greer wrote a charming, self-depreciating book called I Don’t Know What You Know Me From: Confessions of a Co-Star that chronicles her busy career as the second lead in dozens of movies and television shows like Jurassic World, Ant-Man, Arrested Development and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
She is, as her twitter bio reads, “that girl from that movie/tv show,” a familiar face on screens big and small. If you can’t place the face, perhaps you’ll recognize the voice. One of her longest running roles has her voicing the clingy and emotionally fragile Cheryl Tunt on the wildly popular adult animated spy sitcom Archer. For Greer herself the show has provided a career highpoint.
“I got to sign someone’s boobs at Comic-Con last year,” she says. “I think you’ve really made it if you have your own action figure and people want you to sign their boobs.”
There are other perks as well.
“I went to a dinner party recently, now I’m about to name drop, and Jon Hamm was there. He played a role on Archer but we don’t record together so I never get to meet anyone who does it. When I saw him he said, ‘God, I love your work on Archer and I love Archer so much I just wanted to be in it.’ That was so cool. That was a highlight. Jon Hamm and the boob signing. They work well in tandem. Maybe I’ll sign Jon Hamm’s boobs sometime!”
Her latest film, Wilson, gave her the chance to meet another of her favourite actors.
“I’m looking to work with people who inspire me. I’m pretty happy with the roles I‘m getting and I just want to work with more of my idols. I definitely checked that box with Woody [Harrelson].”
In the film Greer plays Shelly, a dog sitter who is one of the only people who finds the offbeat title character charming.
“There are a handful of actors who couldn’t play this role because you would hate them all the way through to the end. Woody himself is so lovely and wonderful that in the beginning when Wilson is kind of terrible Woody makes you root for him.
“After I saw the movie I found myself wanting to spend more time talking to people who irritate me,” she says. “Maybe that person is a Wilson and Wilson is great. I would want to hear Wilson’s opinion about things. Maybe I’m shutting people down too quickly. Maybe I need to give people who have strong opinions a little bit more of a minute in my life. Maybe there is something to be learned from them.”
The effervescent forty-one-year-old, who will next be seen in War for the Planet of the Apes, laughs when she says, “I felt strongly that [director] Craig [Johnson] would be making a huge mistake by not casting me.”
“Sometimes when I read something I fall in love with the character I’m going to play and sometimes I fall in love with the movie itself. In this case I fell in love with the whole movie, the script itself. I had to see this movie pop up for years to come and be so proud that I had a small piece of it. I wanted to do what I could to help Wilson and his story.”
What do Point Break, Independence Day and Beauty and the Beast have in common? All are movies released in the 1990s and all have been remade, re-imagined or rebooted in recent years.
Brand happy Hollywood is in overdrive repurposing Saturday morning superhero cartoons, big screen hits and other touchstones of 90s pop culture and audiences have mostly lapped up the nostalgia from the Clinton years. Independence Day: Resurgence and Point Break tanked but Beauty and the Beast, to use a 90s term, was all that and a bag of chips box office wise.
Soon we’ll see a live action Lion King, a new Jumanji and even more Bad Boys. This weekend it’s morphin time once again as the Power Rangers are resurrected for the big screen.
Featuring familiar characters but an all new cast, Power Rangers sees the helmeted heroes rescue the world from a powerful witch, an army of stone golems called Putties and Goldar, a giant golden monster born on Titan, one of Saturn’s moons.
It’s a blast from the past designed to draw in new fans while appealing to grown ups who came of age in the 1990s but is it possible to feel nostalgia for four actors in plastic helmets?
The dictionary tells us nostalgia is “a sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations.”
Science tells us more.
As a recent study showed when we get bad news or are feeling down nostalgic, misty memories of a simpler time almost automatically kick in. Call it protection. Call it wistfulness. Call it whatever you like; Hollywood calls it money and exploits it ruthlessly because movies are a natural nostalgic go to. It’s their very essence, that dreamlike quality that takes root in our subconscious, swirling around our brains to create happy memories. They are the stuff from which dreams are woven and the feelings associated with them can give us comfort when the going gets rough.
We now live in unsettled times so perhaps the neo Power Rangers will bring back recollections of carefree Saturday mornings spent watching the TV show. Or mom and dad buying candy at a Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie matinee in 1995. Or a long ago Halloween costume inspired by Amy Jo Johnson (the popular Pink Ranger) but at the rate Hollywood is recycling ideas we’ll soon run out of things to get nostalgic about. Can you be nostalgic for nostalgia? We’ll find out in the years to come when another generation gets sentimental about the remake of the reboot of Power Rangers.
As I see it nostalgia is bad for the movies. It encourages lazy re-treads and reimaginings, not innovation and originality. If we demand new films to make memories with, to fall in love with, then Hollywood’s raiding of pop culture brands must stop. Romanian-American poet and novelist Andrei Codrescu says that in the grand collage that is art the “past and future are equally usable.” I’m just wishing Hollywood would look to the future more often.
To a degree all art is a combination of everything that came before, but interesting, original films like Moonlight, Manchester by the Sea and Get Out give me hope that some filmmakers have their eyes facing forward and aren’t simply wallowing in nostalgia.
Best selling romance writer Jude Deveraux declares that there are no new stories, just interesting, inventive ways of taking the journey with characters. “In romances,” she says, “the characters are going to fall in love with each other; you know that when you see the syrupy cover. It’s how they get there that’s the fun.”
The new monster-in-space flick “Life” would seem to prove this theory. It hits theatres on a mighty gust of déjà vu courtesy of “Alien” and “Gravity,” two movies that share its DNA and several plot points.
Headliners Jake Gyllenhaal, Rebecca Ferguson and Ryan Reynolds are David Jordan, Miranda North and Roy Adams, three of six astronauts (alongside Olga Dihovichnaya and Hiroyuki Sanada) aboard an International Space Station. Their mission involves intercepting a shuttle containing a space specimen from Mars. In the beginning the microscopic alien, nicknamed Calvin, is benign, an inert collection of cells.
“We’re looking at the first proof of life on Mars,” says head honcho scientist Hugh Derry (Arlyon Bakare).
What could have been one of the greatest scientific discoveries of all time, however, changes when Derry feeds Calvin a glucose meal. The snack changes the organism from extraterrestrial to extra-terrible as it grows into some kind of jelloy-gremlin-Martian-hellbeast, gains intelligence and goes on a homicidal rampage. The astronauts says things like, “We can’t let that thing in here!” and “You don’t know what it can do!” as they fight, not only for their own safety but also the survival of Earth. “If it is between letting it here,” says Miranda, “or letting it down there, we let it in here!”
If the story sounds familiar it’s because it is, but is Ms. Deveraux right? Is the journey enough to keep the audience interested? For most of the running time the answer is yes.
Director Daniel Espinosa keeps things wound tight as he ramps up the danger and the stakes for the characters. Unlike most space operas, “Life” is an ensemble without a clear hero. The small cast are all equally important, and all equally expendable which adds an air of unpredictability that ratchets up the tension. As Calvin’s powers increase the movie’s powers decrease slightly, changing from finely tuned thriller to space caper.
Near the end, with just minutes to spare, characters (I will not tell you who, no spoilers here) have an extended moment of solace. A time of reflection and for a discussion about procedure and from that point on it’s a by-the-book Got-To-Kill-The-Space-Monster flick.
By the time the end credits roll, however, “Life” will have subverted your expectations enough to earn it an “all systems go.”
