The Ace Black Movie Blog

Showing posts with label Lucas Hedges. Show all posts

Saturday, 13 July 2024

Movie Review: Mid90s (2018)

Genre: Coming Of Age Drama

Director: Jonah Hill

Starring: Sunny Suljic, Lucas Hedges, Katherine Waterston

Running Time: 85 minutes

Synopsis: The setting is a non-descript Los Angeles neighbourhood in the mid-1990s. 13 year-old Stevie (Sunny Suljic) lives with his abusive older brother Ian (Lucas Hedges) and their young single mother (Katherine Waterston). At the local skateboarding shop, he meets a group of older teenagers: Ray hopes to be become a pro skateboarder; his best friend Fuckshit is more interested in partying; Fourth Grade says little and is attached to his digital video camera; while Ruben is closest to Stevie's age and the first to welcome him into the group. As he spends more time with his new friends, Stevie is exposed to the joys and hazards of early adulthood.

What Works Well: Jonah Hill's directorial debut is an edgy look back at a sun-drenched and unglamorous corner of Los Angeles, where kids without a functional home create their own within the burgeoning skateboard culture. Hill draws outstanding natural performances from a young cast, led by Sunny Suljic as a young teen receiving a crash course in peer pressure, independence, acceptance, group dynamics, challenging authority, and girls. Anguish and humour mix into moments of magic as unkempt foul-mouthed street kids are transformed into genuine people worth caring for, carrying their own version of hopes and dreams.

What Does Not Work As Well: The "leave them wanting more ethos" is marginally overplayed: Stevie and his friends are hitting their stride when the credits roll.

Conclusion: Friends as alternative family.

All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.

Saturday, 18 March 2023

Movie Review: French Exit (2020)

Genre: Dramedy

Director: Azazel Jacobs

Starring: Michelle Pfeiffer, Lucas Hedges, Imogen Poots

Running Time: 110 minutes

Synopsis: Independent-minded New York socialite Frances Price (Michelle Pfeiffer) has been running out of money ever since her husband died, and is now forced to sell all her remaining belongings. Along with her grown son Malcolm (Lucas Hedges) and the family cat, Frances retreats to the Paris apartment of a friend, with Malcolm leaving behind girlfriend Susan (Imogen Poots). In Paris, an uneasy circle of thorny friends and acquaintances forms around Frances, as she grapples with the past and plots her future.

What Works Well: The wacky Frances is one-of-a-kind, entitled, unpleasant, but fascinating nonetheless. Michelle Pfeiffer shines without stretching as Frances luxuriates in a singular zone of quietly standing up to a world unappreciative of individuality. The cat's emergence as a central catalyst underlines an off-centre sensibility, director Jacobs and writer Patrick deWitt merrily introducing bizarre elements into the dreamy Parisian milieu. A psychic, a lonely expatriate, a private investigator, and the new boyfriend of the ex-girlfriend contribute to a motley crew of supporting characters.

What Does Not Work As Well: Everyone here stays close to original definitions, with hints of smug knowingness in the mostly low-key performances. The sober entwinement of supernatural elements could be off-putting in an otherwise grounded narrative.

Conclusion: When fierce self-defined autonomy is the only goal, weird is normal.

All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.

Saturday, 9 April 2022

Movie Review: Let Them All Talk (2020)

A dramedy about friendship, Let Them All Talk is a pleasantly scattered literary sailing.

Alice Hughes (Meryl Streep) is a New York-based prize-winner author. Afraid of flying but invited to receive a prestigious award in London, she decides to cross the Atlantic on the Queen Mary 2. Alice invites her nephew Tyler (Lucas Hedges) to join the trip, along with her two best friends from college days: Susan (Dianne Wiest) now advocates for prisoners' rights, while Roberta (Candice Bergen) is divorced, has a lowly retail job, and is seeking a rich husband. Alice's new agent Karen (Gemma Chan) also makes the trip, desperate to uncover information about her secretive client's latest manuscript.

During the crossing Tyler and Karen start hanging out, while decades of tension surface between Alice and Roberta, who believes she was the subject of her friend's most celebrated book. Susan tries to play peacemaker, Roberta is on the prowl for a rich man, Alice privately works on her new book, and the whole group is intrigued when they spot world-famous crime novel author Kelvin Kranz (Daniel Algrant) among the passengers.

A streamlined production directed by Steven Soderbergh and (loosely) written by Deborah Eisenberg, Let Them All Talk is an honest title. With plenty of improvisation spicing up awkward connections, this is a series of short and bright conversations between interesting characters as a luxury liner powers across the ocean. The spectacular cast is afforded almost free reign to steer scenes, and they deliver natural interactions with enough discipline to maintain coherence, landing short of profound but well above frivolous.

The number of passengers on this particular sailing is suspiciously low (the background is often empty), but the setup is an otherwise snug trip filled with the threat of revelations. Soderbergh served as his own cinematographer and editor, and keeps the scenes sharp. Conversations end without a moment of fat, building a convincing sense of eavesdropping on mid-life luggage with more to the story than these characters will ever be comfortable sharing. The budding but awkward romance between Tyler and Karen mixes well with Alice's haughtiness and layers of passive-aggressiveness harboured by Roberta, but the side-quest involving crime author Kranz is an only partially successful catalyst.

Through the simple premise the film perhaps over-reaches for some lofty themes. Alice is enamored with an obscure Welsh writer, and expresses her admiration with lyrical discourse about the ties that bind across time and generations. Her exploration of the human condition is worthwhile, but also sets her well apart and underlines the disconnect with her friends.

The final act finds bittersweet twists, as Let Them All Talk happily charts a choppy course, the untidy resolutions mimicking life's unscripted surprises.

All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.

Monday, 24 December 2018

Movie Review: Ben Is Back (2018)

A drama about a mother and her son coping with the consequences of his drug-addicted past, Ben Is Back explores the substance abuse crisis through one family's trauma.

On Christmas Eve, Ben Burns (Lucas Hedges) suddenly reappears at his family's suburban home. He is supposed to be at a drug rehabilitation centre, but claims his sponsor allowed him the visit due to the good progress he is making. Ben's mother Holly (Julia Roberts) is delighted to have her son back for the Holidays; his sister Ivy (Kathryn Newton) and stepdad Neal (Courtney B. Vance) are more circumspect.

Holly keeps close watch on Ben, insisting on a drug test, accompanying him to the mall for some last minute shopping, and tagging along to a support meeting. Although Ben appears to be genuinely trying to leave his troubled past behind, small incidents shake her trust. When the family returns home to a vandalized house and their dog missing, Ben and Holly set off into the night to try and make things right. She is exposed to her son's secret world of drug addiction, dealing, and crime.

Directed and written by Lucas' father Peter Hedges, Ben Is Back examines the damage caused by addiction from the perspective of mother and son. The intimate scope allows the seemingly insurmountable problem to be probed at a human scale, the psyche of two people serving as gateways. Within an efficient 103 minutes the film takes place over less than 24 hours around Christmas Eve, Hedges using the time of family gatherings to emphasize the season of joy's dark side.

Themes of lost trust, blind love and not giving up permeate the film. Holly and Neal allow Ben to stay for one day as long he agrees to remain under Holly's eagle-eyed supervision. Even then, a hushed conversation with a fellow-addict and the closed doors of the bathroom or the mall dressing room represent potential breaches of trust. Neither Holly nor Ben are sure they can believe anything he says, and every action and conversation is an awkward dance pregnant with the suspicions of past betrayals.

Nevertheless, Holly will not give up on her son, and she is not beyond stretching the truth and straining her own credibility to justify actions and cover tracks, even at the expense of eroding trust with Neal and Ivy. As the night goes on Holly is further exposed to all the horrors of Ben's past, and she doggedly stands by him, for better or for worse. Her lies and willingness to find excuses come from an admirable place of love, but are part of the ripple effect propagating societal damage.

Julia Roberts wears the film's heart on her sleeve, delivering a poignant performance filled to the brim with a mother's resolve. Lucas Hedges brings out the darkness behind a young man's troubled eyes, achieving the difficult feat of giving Ben humanity despite his propensity for connivance.

Intentionally uncomfortable, Ben Is Back lifts a corner of the curtain hiding the insidious epidemic eating away at the community fabric.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Monday, 12 November 2018

Movie Review: Boy Erased (2018)

A social drama, Boy Erased exposes the insidious horrors of conversion therapy hiding behind archaic religious dogma.

In the suburban American heartland, teenager Jarred Eamons (Lucas Hedges) is the son of Baptist preacher Marshall (Russell Crowe) and his wife Nancy (Nicole Kidman). Jarred is awakening to his sexuality and is no longer aroused by his long-time girlfriend Chloe (Madelyn Cline). He finally admits to his parents he is gay.

The shocked Marshall turns to church elders for advice, and with Jarred's acquiescence he is admitted to a conversion therapy centre run by Victor Sykes (Joel Edgerton). The group sessions consist of shaming, labelling family members as sinners and generating anger at parents. Jarred is unconvinced by the pressure tactics and starts resenting the sessions, while recalling his first gay sexual experiences with college student Henry (Joe Alwyn) and art aficionado Xavier (Théodore Pellerin).

Based on the true story of Garrard Conley as documented in his book, Boy Erased lifts the cover on the bogus practice of trying to "heal" homosexuals, a pseudoscience not backed by any evidence. Directed by Edgerton, the film is quietly enraging as it explores the vulnerability of teenagers not conforming to societal expectations, and unwilling to rupture bonds with parents.

Jarred's journey provides a sturdy and disquieting punch, as he makes progress towards self-empowerment and breaking away from the thick blanket of darkness imposed by misguided deception.While Sykes and his attendants may stay just on the right side of avoiding outright physical violence, the psychological trauma inflicted on the patients is disturbing in the extreme, designed to undermine self esteem, damage trust in families and surrender to controlling doctrinal fallacies.

At just five minutes under two hours the film is longer than it needs to be, and the majority of the patients going through the therapy with Jarred don't graduate past superficial introductions. But Lucas Hedges maintains a steady presence to pull the story through some of its repetitive scenes. His performance avoids theatrics and finds the fine line between curious victim and courageous protagonist.

Boy Erased is helped immeasurably by characterizing Nancy and Marshall in human terms, as parents who genuinely care but who only know what they have been programmed to know. As Jarred starts to define himself and assert his identity, he forces his family to shift, possibly pointing towards a path of optimism. Nancy will need to confront her acquiescence, and Marshall will search for the common ground between his devout religious beliefs and fatherhood. Nicole Kidman and Russell Crowe each get scenes to shine, and contribute to the film's impact.

Boy Erased is what happens when ignorance and fear provide fuel for charlatans to dispense travesties that have no place in modern society.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Sunday, 19 November 2017

Movie Review: Lady Bird (2017)

A coming-of-age drama-comedy, Lady Bird is a poignant and irresistible exploration of the awkward transformation into adulthood, with two tremendous central performances.

Sacramento, 2002. Christine McPherson (Saoirse Ronan) is in her final year of high school and struggling to define herself while navigating a tumultuous relationship with her mother Marion (Laurie Metcalf), who is perpetually stressed about money. Christine insists that she be called Lady Bird, while at her Catholic school she carries the burden of coming from a poor family and has a limited number of friends, including Julie (Beanie Feldstein).

Determined to escape from Sacramento and seek a college education at a respectable east coast university, Christine has to face the reality that money is tight, her father Larry (Tracy Letts) is unemployed, and her grades are not quite good enough. She joins the drama club and finds her first boyfriend in Danny (Lucas Hedges). She also tries to fit in with a new set of friends, including rich girl Jenna (Odeya Rush) and cool band member Kyle (Timothée Chalamet), but growing up and striking out will not come easy.

Written and directed by Greta Gerwig, Lady Bird is a tender look at the mother-daughter relationship during the clumsy final steps on the journey from girl to woman. Gerwig infuses her film with plenty of humour while holding irony firmly in check, Lady Bird avoiding smart-alecky moments and just focusing on the small tears and joys that naturally flow through family life. The film is energetically edited by Nick Houy, some scenes lasting for just a few seconds, the pace conveying the blurry commotion of life's hectic high school chapter drawing to a close.

The film contains plenty of painfully real moments that dance between the playfulness and agony of a teenager exhibiting childlike behaviour in the service of budding adulthood. Christine is embarrassed by her family, her relative poverty and her city, and is beginning to find the tools of independence to help influence major life-altering decisions. At the same time, the final stages of high school carry less fear of disciplinary consequences, and Christine and her friends let loose. Previously hidden antics bubble to the surface, none more entertaining than Christine finding her voice during an anti-abortion lecture. She also participates in a prank involving the head nun as revenge for years of institutionalized paternalism.

But when Christine engineers the disappearance of a crucial math course grading book in a too-smart attempt to get into better colleges, the math teacher calls out her honour. The flash on Christine's face, brilliantly captured by Ronan, is the responsible adult starting to push aside the unaccountable child.

Away from the high jinx, Gerwig's story is about a mother who has sacrificed everything to make her family financially viable, and along the way forgot that expressed compassion and words of encouragement are more important than a tidy bedroom. The film's sustained emotional intelligence resides in Lady Bird being aware of how much her mother loves her, despite the continuous barrage of incoming grief. Christine can sometimes handle the turmoil, but is also forced to invest plenty of time navigating around Marion's hardened emotions.

Gerwig needed two strong central performances to make the film work, and gets them from Saoirse Ronan and Laurie Metcalf. Ronan at 23 can still convincingly pull off 17, and plays Christine with the delicious slyness of a teenager beginning to believe she can outsmart the world of adults. Metcalf delivers a career defining role, conveying the harried life of a mother measuring life in dollars and cents, and yet somewhere deep in her heart still harbouring a deep if complicated love for her daughter.

Lady Bird glows with warm authenticity, the universal story of a fledgling adult seeking to fly away from a nest that will only start to look cozy from a distance.