Quick takes on 5 films

I’m cheating on the first “film,” because it’s not a film at all. Followers of my blog may think all I do is watch movies, but I also read a lot of books (a couple a month, anyway) and watch a lot of tv series (no, I don’t know where I find all the time). But it’s hard to do a “quick take” on a 13 or 26 episode season. However, The Queen’s Gambit is just a 7 episode limited series. It stars Anya Taylor-Joy (of Split and The Witch fame) as a chess prodigy named Beth Harmon. An orphan in the 1950’s, she is raised in a religious orphanage when she is exposed to the game of chess by the custodian. She takes to it immediately, and is beating the local boys’ high school team (and its coach) very soon thereafter. The rest of the series shows her grow up into a young woman and one of the best players in the world; however, she cannot seem to beat Borgov, the world champion out of the USSR. Besides the Russians, she has to fight her internal demons, struggling against drugs and alcohol. Beth is a complicated person and it isn’t always easy to root for her. She’s arrogant and condescending, and it takes awhile before she “grows up” and starts treating others with respect. There’s some good acting and quite a few recognizable faces from tv and film, as is typical of Netflix dramas. Among the seven episodes, there are great moments, slow moments, but overall it is a decent enough coming-of-age story featuring a strong (and strong willed) female lead. Maybe not as envelope-pushing as it could have been, and it does get predictable a little too often, but it is entertaining. Taylor-Joy’s performance is fantastic, and she shows the real making of a star. ★★★½

I always skip movies like Happiest Season, i.e., sappy Christmas movies that come out every year that take a well-known cast and mash them together to make some money. I took a flier on this one because it substitutes a man with a woman and gives us a gay couple, and one of them is Kristen Stewart, who I love. Should have gone with my gut. From the first 10 minutes, the viewer gets plenty of the cheese you can expect. The twist in the story is that, when they go to visit one of their parents, they don’t know their daughter is gay, so they have to pretend to be straight until the right moment comes to out herself. The whole “taking my partner to my parents, who don’t know I’m in a relationship” is about the oldest retread of a holiday movie as they come, and the gay twist only slightly changes it. All the old plot elements are here: old flames that the parents love, unearthed secrets that threaten the relationship, etc. ★

Betany Bledsoe, or Beth as she prefers to be called, is growing up in a tiny town in South Carolina, emphasis on the South. In 1969, she’s a freshman in high school and her family revolves around the larger-than-life grandfather patriarch, “Daddy Mac.” However, Beth’s favorite family member is Uncle Frank, who tells her that she doesn’t need to get married out of high school and start having kids to be a successful woman, no matter what her family and friends tell her. 4 years later, she gets accepted to NYU, where Frank teaches, and begins school there. Very soon, when hanging out with Frank at a party at his house, she finds out that he is gay, a closely guarded, hidden family secret, that even Frank’s brother Mike (Beth’s father) doesn’t know. When Frank’s and Mike’s father Daddy Mac dies, Frank and Beth make the car trip from New York, with Frank’s longtime partner Wally in tow for support. Along the way, and once they arrive to the funeral, we learn about Frank’s growing up, and the rift between him and his father, who’s word in the family was law. For a gay young man in the south in the 1940’s, it was more than just about anyone could bear, and it hadn’t gotten much better by 1973. It’s a beautiful film about growing up with heartbreak, but ultimately acceptance, especially of yourself, and Paul Bettany’s standout performance is about as good as you will find on television. He’s had some tremendous performances in his career, maybe this is the one that will finally get him some long-deserved recognition. ★★★★

Words on Bathroom Walls stars Charlie Plummer as 18-year-old Adam, who starts seeing visions and hearing voices. He keeps them to himself until he has a psychotic episode at high school, which gets him kicked out of school and a diagnosis of schizophrenia. His single mother and her boyfriend enroll him at a private school to help him finish his degree, so that he can meet his goal of going to culinary school for college. His new school is contingent on keeping his grades up, which is impossible with all the voices in his head. Despite reservations over longterm health effects, Adam starts on a new trial medication, and his parents get him a tutor, the brightest girl in school, Maya (Taylor Russell). The new drug works to a degree; the not-real people Adam sees disappear, but there are side effects, including tremors in his hands and legs and loss of taste, which obviously affects his cooking. Adam learns a big secret of Maya’s and the two grow closer, but he still cannot confide his past to her, and with the side effects of the drugs getting worse, he stops taking his medicine. The hallucinations return, and so does a sinister voice Adam has been able to ignore up to this point in his life. It all sets up to an explosive ending, as Adam’s paranoia ramps up, and his illness takes control of his life. The conclusion is just a little too perfect, as mental illness very rarely lets things be so tidy, but what a fantastic picture. It presents a very frank, honest portrayal of something with an illness which is still, to this day, very misunderstood by the general public. I first saw Plummer a few years ago in King Jack, and that is a dude with a future. ★★★★½

After a couple serious films, it was time for some brevity. After decades off, Bill and Ted are back in Face the Music. I don’t know what I hoping for, it was just as goofy and silly as you’d expect. 30 years after their first adventure, Bill and Ted still haven’t written the song that was supposed to have united humanity. After a one-hit-wonder, their musical career has tanked. In the future, the entire space and time reality is starting to collapse, and time is running out for the Wyld Stallyns to perform their world (and reality) saving tune. In proper sequel fashion, there’s a boatload of stuff going on simultaneously: Bill and Ted have their trusty time-jumping phone booth, and keep jumping ahead to future versions of themselves to learn the song to save everything, while their wives (in true Hollywood stereotypes, have been replaced with new actresses 15 years younger than the originals) are being led by their future selves to see how big of disappointments Bill and Ted have become, and also their kids are jumping to the past to make up a band of history’s all-star musicians. And don’t forget the robot from the future trying to kill Bill and Ted. Just a completely dumb movie. I liked the original, but I was also 9 or 10 at the time. Maybe my 9 year-old-self can time jump to 2020 and try to enjoy this stupid movie. ½