LOGLINE: “Inside Out 2,” a new animated movie from Pixar now playing in theatres, returns to the inner workings of the mind of Riley. Emotions like Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear and Disgust have helped Riley get through life successfully to the age of thirteen. “Thirteen years of hard work wrapped up in what some might call our masterpiece,” says Joy. Now a teenager, however, Riley’s emotions have been taken over by Anxiety, Envy, Ennui and Embarrassment, leaving Joy and Co on the outside.
CAST: Amy Poehler, Phyllis Smith, Lewis Black, Diane Lane, and Kyle MacLachlan, Tony Hale, Liza Lapira, Maya Hawke, Ayo Edebiri, Adèle Exarchopoulos, Paul Walter Hauser. Directed by Kelsey Mann
REVIEW: After a few films that didn’t live up to the gold standard established by movies like “Up” and “Toy Story,” “Inside Out 2” is a return to form for Pixar. It may not have the emotional originality of the first film, but it does deliver a touching coming-of-age story by way of an adventure through the evolving personality of a thirteen-year-old.
Inventive and vivid animation bring to life the processing plant where Riley’s emotions originate. Part high tech work station, part ephemeral mindscape, it’s a cool, and eye-catching, backdrop to the story.
As for the story, it’s a typical tale of growing up, the complexity of navigating emotions with relationships and family life, but it is reshaped by a healthy dose of imagination. Director Kelsey Mann toggles between Riley’s inner and outer life, deftly displaying the multiplicity of emotions that makes her human. It’s a romp, but it’s also a lesson in life and the things that give Riley a sense of self.
Added to the returning voice cast—Poehler, Smith, Black, Lane, and MacLachlan—are standouts Adèle Exarchopoulos as Ennui—“It’s what you would call ‘the boredom.’”—Envy as voiced by “The Bear’s” Ayo Edebiri and Maya Hawke as Anxiety.
As portrayed in the film, Anxiety is a juxtaposition of good and bad as Riley learns to harness the tension that accompanies the emotion for her own good. It’s an interesting take, and Hawke brings the character to life with a spirited performance. “Don’t worry Riley,” she says, “you’re in good hands. Now let’s change everything about you.”
Like the best of Pixar, “Inside Out 2” is doubled edged. It’s an adventure story for kids, but one that transcends the form with abstract, adult thoughts on the things that make us, us.
Depending on what generation you belong to, Leonard Bernstein is either a name from the distant past, a prodigiously talented musician who wrote the music for “West Side Story,” or the subject of a well-loved name drop in the 1987 R.E.M. song “It’s The End of The World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine).” “Maestro,” a new film written, directed, produced and starring Bradley Cooper, aims to remind audiences of the complicated man who said, “music, it keeps me glued to life.”
The story of gender roles and genius begins in 1943 with Bernstein’s (Cooper) career making debut as a conductor at Carnegie Hall, filling in for an ailing colleague with only an hour’s notice and no rehearsal. The day before he was a talented but struggling musician, living in a cramped apartment with boyfriend David Oppenheim (Matt Bomer). The next day a star is born. He is the toast of New York, lauded on the front page of the New York Times.
At a party he meets Felicia Montealegre (Carey Mulligan), a Chilean actress with dreams of starring on Broadway. It’s love at first sight and Cooper stages their first night together as a romantic fantasy, a ballet in a theatre that is both beautiful and surreal as it morphs from stage bound to involving Lenny and Felicia.
The couple marry, and have three children, Jamie (Maya Hawke), Alexander (Sam Nivola) and Nina (Alexa Swinton), as Felicia turns a blind eye to her husband’s extramarital relationships with men. “One can be as free as one likes without guilt or confession,” she says to him. “Please, I know exactly who you are.”
She is his muse, a catalyst for his best work, who pushes him to perform with passion but his lack of discretion eventually takes its toll. The couple split, but when she is diagnosed with cancer, he returns to care for her in her final days.
“Maestro” is a tenderhearted tragedy, a movie about a complicated marriage and the push and pull between Leonard Bernstein public and private lives. It is not a cradle to grave portrait of the title character. Instead, it’s an ambitious film that disregards most of the usual biopic conventions to delve into Bernstein’s sexuality, creative genius and his marriage to Felicia, brilliantly played by Mulligan.
Bernstein may be the focus, but the contradictions of his life are best viewed through the lens of his relationship with his wife. With a sexual appetite that rivalled his passion for music, Bernstein is a compelling character, and wonderfully played in a career best performance by Cooper.
Any trace of his “Hangover” persona disappears behind an inch of make-up but this isn’t a performance made from cosmetic prosthetics. Cooper digs deep to get into the nooks and crannies of Bernstein’s life, from his playfulness—“I’ve slept with both your parents,” he jokes when he bumps into Oppenheim, wife and baby in Central Park—to his musical passions, to his warmth and self-absorption.
The performance’s pinnacle comes with a vigorous recreation of Bernstein conducting Mahler’s Second Symphony in London at the Ely Cathedral in 1976. The nearly six-minute sequence is a powerhouse of performance—Cooper reportedly spent six years learning Bernstein’s moves and conducts a live orchestra on screen—that captures the passion that fuels the character. It is the kind of work that wins awards.
As dynamic as Cooper is, it is Mulligan’s delicate work as Felicia that steals the show. She is a pillar of resilience and gracefulness, as composed as Bernstein is mercurial. Her final moments in the film (NO SPOILERS HERE) are quiet and reserved but devastating. It’s a radiant performance in an already impressive body of work.
When Cooper and Mulligan share the screen their effortless chemistry and the way they look at one another tells us as much about their lives and how they moved through the world as the script. Their dynamics and wonderful performances are invigorating in their portrayal of a creative life, marred and fuelled in equal measure by self-destructive behaviour and fervidness.
“Maestro” avoids most, but not all, of the usual biopic cliches.
It occasionally goes too heavy on expository dialogue to move the story along, is linear in its construction and a scene in which Felicia plunges into a pool, sitting on the bottom to escape trouble at home, is a film staple, but Mulligan, to her credit, makes it work. And while the film doesn’t shy away from Bernstein’s same sex liaisons, it is fairly chaste in the depiction of that aspect of his life.
Still, this is a stylish, passionate movie with just enough depth to both warm and break the heart.
For better and for worse, there is nothing quite like a Wes Anderson film. The director’s unique production design is all over his new sci fi comedy “Asteroid City,” but with this film it is clear that whimsy has finally replaced storytelling on his to do list.
This is a twisty-turny one. Like a set of nesting dolls, it’s a film, within a play, within a show hosted by a Rod Sterling-esque talking head (Bryan Cranston), within a teleplay written by playwright Conrad Earp (Edward Norton).
The bulk of the “action” takes place in Asteroid City, a remote New Mexico desert town—population 87—where Steve Carell’s motel manager hosts a Junior Stargazer convention. Gifted kids and their parents from all over the state convene to showcase their incredible, and often outlandish, inventions.
It’s an interesting group that includes recently widowed war photographer Augie Steenbeck (Jason Schwartzman), father to “brainiac” Woodrow (Jake Ryan) and son-in-law to Stanley (Tom Hanks), movie star Midge Campbell (Scarlett Johansson) and the rough-n-tumble J.J. Kellogg (Liev Schreiber). Along for the ride are singing cowboy Montana (Rupert Friend), teacher June (Maya Hawke), Dr. Hickenlooper (Tilda Swinton) a scientist from the local observatory and the fast-talking Junior Stargazer awards judge, General Grif Gibson (Jeffrey Wright).
When the convention is interrupted by a visiting alien, the whole thing is locked down for a mandatory government quarantine.
Despite the quirky tone and Anderson’s trademarked stylistic choices, “Asteroid City” is a serious film, albeit one laced with a healthy dose of absurdism. A study in how people deal with grief, and the true nature of love, Anderson’s characters experience existential dilemmas, angst born of loss and dissatisfaction. Threats are posed by nuclear bombs and life from other planets unexpectedly dropping by to say hello and children wonder aloud what happens when we die. A shroud of melancholic anxiety hangs over the film, like a shroud, but Anderson’s staging of the film, the meta story within a story structure, obscures the movie’s deeper meanings under layers of style.
The cast, particularly Johansson and Hanks, bring focus to Anderson’s unfocussed story, and Carell, Cranston and briefly Goldblum are having fun, but it sometimes feels the surfeit of characters are there more to decorate the screen than to forward the story.
“Asteroid City” may delight long-time fans, but casual moviegoers or newcomers to the director’s oeuvre may find the film’s mannered obtuseness off kilter and off putting.
