Wednesday, October 13, 2021

Movie Reviews: Street Gang (Sesame Street documentary), Toy Story 4, The Truth, The Vast of Night

Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street - This fantastic documentary outshines the mediocre documentaries I have watched lately. Children Television Workshop's Sesame Street, incorporating Jim Henson's muppets, was a game-changer for television and a global phenomenon, and this film makes you feel it. I learned a lot about the people and history of Sesame Street that I did not know, such as the groundbreaking use of research and educator input used to create an educational program, together with comedians and puppet makers to make it appealing to both children and adults. The nostalgia I got while watching it made me sing along with some of the songs that I had not heard since my childhood.

I guess if you never saw SS you won't get this nostalgia. The film could have presented some of the data that lets us know that the children that they targeted actually had better school performance as a result. Aside from this one missing element, this was a treat and worth watching.

Toy Story 4 - Featuring a who's who of celebrity voices, this fourth installment in the Toy Story series is only slightly lesser quality than the first three, which were all great. Still enjoyable, still funny, still fun, and still full of heart, only the story is a little more scattered.

Woody and co are now Bonny's toys. Woody sneaks along with Bonny on her first day of school to check up on her and helps her create Forky, a stick figure made from crappy plastic. Forky thinks of himself as garbage and that he should be thrown away, but Woody tries to keep him around for Bonnie's sake. Meanwhile, they travel to an RV park, where Woody meets Bo, Gabby Gabby, Duke Caboom, and other toys who have various plans to become owned by children or to reunite children with their toys, all the while trying to not get separated from Bonny.

There are messages about the nature of reality, what it means to belong or to be useful, what is worth sacrificing, and where our higher purposes lie, all in the form of kinetic action, comedy, and pathos. If you watched the first three, of course you will watch this one. If you have not, it might be slightly confusing to follow, so watch, at least, Toy Story 3, first. Hard to believe they have been doing this for 25 years, and that they haven't messed it up, yet.

The Truth - A French drama starring Catherine Deneuve, Juliette Binoche, Ethan Hawke, and Ludivine Sagnier. Fabienne is a famous but aging actress writing a book. Lumir is her screenwriter daughter, who, with her husband Hank and daughter Charlotte, is visiting her mother in France. Fabienne lies to Lumir, Lumir lies to Fabienne, and this continues for the whole movie. Fabienne did, and does, many insulting things to everyone around her, oblivious to their pain. Fabienne's excuse is that she is a liar and a pathetic wife and mother because she gave it all to her art of acting. Meanwhile, Charlotte may learn something - maybe the wrong thing? - from them both.

This is a dialog heavy open-ended drama where you quickly realize that you are never going to find out what the actual truth is, because everything you know comes from the mouths of the actors, and they are thoroughly unreliable. That is both tantalizing and infuriating. It is a movie about acting and aging, and about what you get from your mother vs what you need from her. It is similar in feel and plot to the very good Clouds of Sils Maria  that I saw a few years ago. That was better, but this is also good; how could it not be, considering the talented cast? Worth watching on a small screen. Mostly in subtitles.

The Vast of Night - This is a strange but wonderful film for film-buffs only. Rather than watch this for the plot - some kind of lights have been seen in the sky above a small New Mexico town in the 1950s, and some high schoolers who work with radios try to discover what is happening ... that's it - you watch it for the acting, suspense, and cinematography. It stars Sierra McCormick and Jake Horowitz as the high schoolers Fay and Everett.

The film has some fantastic shots. The opening is a series of walk and talks with the main characters at long shots, off screen, or behind things, giving us a sense of something off-kilter. There are several more long shots of Sierra or Jake fielding phone calls from bewildered townfolk, or talking over the events while rummaging through old recordings. One impressive and fascinating long take swoops from Fay at one end of town, traveling for a mile at ground level, over fences, and through the high school basketball game to Everett at the other end of town.

What does it all mean? Who knows? The acting, sets, sound, and camerawork are phenomenal. The dialog is mysterious and captivating, even though very little actually happens. But the same is true for all suspense movies, where things may be happening but it's hard to know what. After a lot of dialog, it ends with a run through a field when the mysterious lights come into sight. This whole movie would have been the opening 3 minutes of an X Files episode. If you want standard, passive entertainment, you should probably pass, but it is sure fun to watch if you love to watch something really good and really different.

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