Written for the weekly blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. It's easy to join - just pick three films that meet the week's theme, all of which are listed at the link!
Ah, Young Adult literature! Along with superheroes, the bane of the modern adult moviegoer's existence. Actually, saying that does a disservice to some very good films. I think everyone has a special spot in their heart for at least one YA novel, and when it gets turned into a movie, they get very protective of it. I know I did with one particular recent adaptation, which exceeded my expectations in all the best ways. Here is that one, along with two other very good picks for when you want to feed your inner teenager.
The Princess Diaries (Garry Marshall, 2001) I don't really understand the hatred directed towards Anne Hathaway, but I freely admit that that is because I have loved her ever since I first laid eyes on her as awkward teen/budding beauty Mia Thermopolis in Garry Marshall's great teen flick. Face it: The girl is a star, and has been ever since her first moment on screen in this, her feature film debut. But good as she as a girl thrust into the spotlight when she learns she is actually of royal blood and is called upon to rule her family's kingdom (by fairy godgrandmother Julie Andrews, because who else would it be?), I really want to acknowledge how damn good the rest of the cast is. There's Mandy Moore, relishing playing the bitchy bad-girl teen queen; Heather Matarazzo, the perfect teenage activist nerd as Mia's best friend Lily; Erik Von Detten as the perfectly sleazy blonde teen dreamboat; Robert Schwartzman, the quietly cool kid any teenage girl wants as their best friend/boyfriend; Caroline Goodall, all warmth and ease and Mia's bohemian mom; Hector Elizondo as Dame Queen Julie's long-time bodyguard/paramour, perfectly Hector Elizondo-ish; and, most gloriously, Sandra Oh as Vice Principal Gupta, stealing the whole entire movie in three short, hilarious, perfectly timed scenes of comic mastery.
The Perks of Being a Wallflower (Stephen Chbosky, 2012) This was one of my favorite books when I was growing up. I was a wallflower, ever the quiet observer, never the active social butterfly seemingly everyone else around me was in middle school and high school. So a whole lot of this book spoke to me on a gut level. I was incredibly nervous when it was announced that the author himself was directing the inevitable feature film version - he had never directed anything before (actually he had directed one feature way back in the 90s)! It smelled of over-protectiveness and over-indulgence. Plus, so much time had passed from the novel's publishing that it would probably feel extremely dated; I mean, mixtapes are central plot points. MIXTAPES. When was the last time you listened to, let alone made, one of those? Imagine my delighted surprise, then, when the film turned out to be a low-key masterpiece, with perfect casting all the way down the line and three truly incredible central performances. Ezra Miller became a star as troubled but nonetheless flamboyant gay teen Patrick. Emma Watson was PERFECTION as his sister Sam (seriously, to my complete and utter shock I can't imagine anyone else playing that part this well). And Logan Lerman. Logan Lerman, giving one of the all-time great teen performances as titular wallflower Charlie. And it turns out Chbosky is no slouch as a director either, choosing his moments for directorial flourishes very carefully for maximum impact. I'm sorry I ever doubted him. Bonus points for a perfect ending.
The Spectacular Now (James Ponsoldt, 2013) I do not understand why Perks and this lovely film received platform releases. Teenagers don't go to art house cinemas. They just DON'T. Yes, they're both much quieter than the usual teen fare (like my bonus pick), but being based of popular YA novels, they have a built-in audience. Plus, teens like to go see movies about themselves. Both of these films could have been much bigger hits than they were if they had opened wide. Not massive, world-conquering hits, but still. Anyway, the heart of The Spectacular Now is the lovely, wholly believable relationship between Miles Teller's Sutter Keely and Shailene Woodley's Aimee Finecky. You will not find a more authentic-feeling relationship in any other teen movie, YA adaptation or not. Yes, the film is maybe a bit too quiet for its own good, but it has a real empathy for its characters that is lacking in most films of this ilk. I love this scene, where perpetually buzzed bad-ish boy Sutter kisses shy good-girl Aimee (how does Woodley manage to be so movie-star beautiful but perfectly real at the same time?) for the first time. When the film was over, I just wanted to spend more time with these characters, and that's saying something. Bonus points for Kyle Chandler's perfectly calibrated cameo, and an ending that deviates from the book and actually improves on it.
BONUS PICK
The Fault In Our Stars (Josh Boone, 2014) If you don't cry at least once by the end of The Fault in Our Stars, you might not have a heart. Just saying. The story of cancer-stricken Hazel Grace Lancaster and her too-perfect-to-be-true boyfriend/cancer survivor Augustus Waters has been scientifically engineered by author John Green for maximum tear production. The screenplay was written by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber, who also wrote the superior The Spectacular Now, and it's hard not to wish it had that film's director as well, since the whole thing is far glossier than it should be. The novel makes quite a large point of railing against standard cancer-kid storylines and tropes, and while the film doesn't quite go so far as to play those tropes unironically, it largely replaces them with standard teen rom-com tropes, which the novel tends to twist a bit. Basically, this is one instance - unlike the three I picked this week - where I would happily tell anyone who hasn't seen the movie yet to read the book instead, despite Shailene Woodley's remarkable lead performance.
Written for the weekly blogathon hosted by the magnanimous Wandering Through the Shelves. Visit her blog, look at the weekly topic, and post three picks of your own!
The topic for February's "All in the Family Edition" of Thursday Movie Picks is Father & Son Relationships. Apparently, this is not something of huge interest to me, because thinking about films I've seen, I noticed a lot of Mother-Son films, a lot of Father-Daughter films, some Mother-Daughter films, but not a whole lot of Father-Son films. However, all three of my picks this week are films that I truly, madly, deeply love.
Frequency (Gregory Hoblit, 2000) I will admit that my love for this movie mostly has something to do with how unbelievably hot Dennis Quaid looks in a leather jacket (HELLO, DADDY!), but it's just a pretty great movie overall. Jim Caviezel is great too, as a policeman who is able, via a HAM radio used during an atmospheric disturbance, to communicate with his (now-dead) firefighter dad (Quaid) 30 years in the past. After giving his father a piece of information that saves his life in the burning building that was supposed to kill him, Jim learns that messing around with time like that can lead to unexpected consequences - in this case, the murder of his mother. Then father and son work together to try and stop her killer. This is one of those films, like Field of Dreams and Brian's Song before it, that will usually reduce grown men to tears, and it earns them.
Billy Elliot (Stephen Daldry, 2000) I can't imagine what it must have been like to be a family in Britain's mining areas during the Thatcher era, but Stephen Daldry's film offers a pretty good glimpse. Gary Lewis gives a great performance as Billy's Dad, slowly realizing that his kid may actually have the chance to escape his own fate and achieve greatness, even if he doesn't understand why it had to be as a bloody ballerina as opposed to a boxer. (The relationship between Billy and his Dad is almost the exact opposite of Oliver and Hal in Beginners, except no one's actually gay.) The final scene, where he finally watches Billy perform, takes my breath away each time.
BONUS PICKS
While these two films do shine a light on father-son relationships, they are really more focused on the father's relationship with the family as a whole, so I didn't feel comfortable making them my picks this week. But with this year's Oscars so fresh in my mind, so are major contributors to these two films. Plus, it's my blog, so I'll do what I want.
The Royal Tenenbaums (Wes Anderson, 2001) I'm shocked that Wes Anderson is still Oscar-less after creating some of the most aesthetically rich films and characters of the past twenty years. Of those great characters, Royal Tenenbaum stands tall. A truly awful, deeply selfish man who realizes too late in life that he won't be remembered fondly when he dies, Royal is a mess of contradictions, and Gene Hackman plays him brilliantly, and brings the best out of his screen sons, Ben Stiller and Luke Wilson. This set the template for every Wes Anderson film that's followed, and I will admit that when I first saw this in theaters, it did absolutely nothing for me. But something about it stuck with me, and revisiting it in a film studies class in college caused it to become an all-time favorite. The ensemble is brilliant, and the music, cinematography, editing, and production design all work in concert to create a clear authorial voice, which is tricky given something this tonally complex. It's bravura filmmaking at its most understated.
The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick, 2011) I get that people don't like this one. I get that Malick can get a little bit too caught up in navel-gazing, especially here. And frankly, I did check my watch a couple of times when watching this. But... goddamn is this fucker gorgeous. Emmanuel Lubezki is a fucking genius, and it was extra sweet hearing Jessica Chastain call out "Chivoooooooooo!" when she presented the Best Cinematography Oscar this past weekend, since he really should have won his first Oscar for the flat-out miraculous work he produced here. The Tree of Life also contains what is probably Brad Pitt's best-ever performance, as a strict Texan Dad. His scenes with sons Hunter McCraken and Tye Sheridan crackle with an authenticity rarely felt in his previous work, which speaks to Malick's unique process.
