Quick takes on 5 films

I never watched Dora the Explorer, never had any kids into the show, but Dora and the Lost City of Gold looked cute, so I thought I’d give it a chance. The movie starts out with the little 6-year-old Dora of the TV show, being raised in the jungle by her parents, but quickly jumps ahead 10 years to a teenage Dora getting ready to move to the city for the first time in her life. Dora is completely unprepared for the city, and the city is unprepared for her. Her one-time sidekick, cousin Diego, has lived in the city all these years and is initially embarrassed by Dora’s naivety and complete lack of social skills. When Dora and some classmates are kidnapped to a South American jungle by treasure hunters, after the fabled Incan City of Gold which Dora’s parents have been hunting for years, their adventure really starts. Isabela Moner is cute as a button and portrays Dora with infectious good cheer, and her exuberance permeates through the tv, but I wasn’t buying it all. This is a family film that is definitely geared towards the youngsters, and has a few too many cliches for the older crowd to enjoy. ★★

Luce is a good kid, a senior in high school, on track towards a seemingly bright and successful future. Adopted as a child from war-torn Eritrea, he was raised well and never has given any reason for anyone to doubt him. Yet he is surrounded by circumstantial evidence that he has a darker side. A class assignment has him write an essay from the point of view of an historical figure, and his pick is a revolutionary who called for violence to end colonialism. He does the paper so well that it negatively grabs his teacher’s attention. Luce was in the vicinity when a classmate was sexually assaulted. He had illegal fireworks in his lockers, but claims they were someone else’s, as he and his friends all share lockers. The only person that doubts Luce is that teacher, but whether she’s right, or she has a vendetta against him, isn’t apparent to the viewer. This is one of those “thrillers” where all the suspense is created by the unknown. There is an obvious racial angle, with Luce being black and raised in a white household in an upper-middle class neighborhood, but it is so much more too. Luce is smart, smart enough to realize he is hampered by both expectations to succeed by some, and by others, expectations to fail. Tremendous, multi-layered film with a fantastic ensemble cast. ★★★★

Official Secrets reminded me of another recent historical film, The Report. Like that picture, this one focuses heavy on the facts of a moment that many people may not be terribly aware, and frankly by itself, though important, may not be all that riveting as viewing material, but which features strong actors to try make it work. The Report succeeded for the most part, Official Secrets does not. This one follows a woman in the intelligence community in the UK, Katharine Gun (Keira Knightley), who leaks a memo to the press that the USA has been gathering intel on UN diplomats, in a bid to perhaps blackmail them into voting to legitimize an invasion of Iraq, despite intel that Saddam Hussein in fact has no WMD’s. The second half of the film, where she is busted and brought to trial for being a whistleblower, is boring as hell. I almost made it to the end of the movie, but finally gave up. There’s some good, recognizable actors in this one, but the script is as dry as a desert. ★½

The Farewell is just one of those quiet, beautiful movies that make you feel good. Awkwafina, who burst onto the scene the last couple years in comedic roles in Oceans 8 and Crazy Rich Asians, takes on a more serious part as Billi. Raised in the USA since the age of 6, she returns with her parents to their native China, ostensibly for the wedding of Billi’s cousin, but really to visit her Nai Nai (grandmother), who has terminal lung cancer. In Chinese tradition, none of the family is giving Nai Nai the news of her impending death, forecasted just months away, and she thinks she is just fighting a bad cold. Raised “in the west,” Billi doesn’t understand this tradition and thinks Nai Nai should know the severity of her condition, but she is cowed by all the rest of her family, including her parents. As the wedding approaches, Billi has to come to terms with the differences in cultures from which she was born versus where she was raised. Despite sounding very somber (and it is at times), the film has moments of levity that prevent it from becoming a dirge, such as the time when the family has to rush to the hospital to intercept Nai Nai’s recent test results before she can read it herself. It’s a lovely film and a fantastic role for Awkwafina, nabbing her a Golden Globe. ★★★★

Followed up a film predominately in Chinese with one completely in it, but Long Day’s Journey Into Night is much less linear. Our main character is a man in search of a lost love, and the film starts with a trip through his memories. There’s no clear path through them either. He remembers his girl, his deceased father and surviving mother, and his friend who had been murdered. The memories are disjointed, out of order, and like our own memories, probably not exactly accurate. In fact the same actors play a couple different characters, intentionally I think, to mimic the infallibility of human memory. The director (Gan Bi) uses running water to great effect to signify the flowing of time; water drips everywhere in these memories, from faucets, from rivers, from the sky. The second half of the film is what everyone brings up when they talk about this movie. There is a single, hour-long cut in real time (and shown in 3D no less) following our main character through a dream of his. He’s fallen asleep in a movie theater, and the hour is one long continuous shot of his journey through his dream. And he’s not just sitting in a room. The camera follows him as he walks through a mine, then a nearly abandoned town. There are some truly astounding sequences, including when he takes flight over the town. How the camera pulled all this off is astonishing. It reminded me of other famous long shots where a lot was going on, like the hallway fight scene in Oldboy, the street-side pan of Godard’s Weekend, and the battle at the hospital in Children of Men. Those were all amazing, but this one will amaze you. (And it’s a good, thought-provoking movie too.) ★★★★