Onward

ONWARD   **1/2

Dan Scanlon

2020

IDEA:  In a fantastical world where the use of magic has fallen into abeyance, a sullen teenage elf is given an incredible gift for his birthday: a staff that has the ability to bring back his dead father for a day.

BLURB:  Onward is a heavily formula-driven movie, which is not necessarily a bad thing. In its fantasy quest narrative, the film makes clear its debts to the pop-cultural legacy of the Hero’s Journey, with particular homage paid to Spielbergian domestic/adventure drama. Family conflict and loss serve as relatable, resonant metaphors for social change, as Ian and Barley’s quest to resurrect their deceased father parallels the desire to restore magic – and its attendant “primitive” wholeness – to a world that has become fractured by modern capitalism. Scanlon and the other writers have some fun with this idea, especially in the case of the corporatized Manticore, but there’s the nagging feeling Onward doesn’t go far enough in exploring its possibilities. Instead, it prioritizes the emotional arcs of its fraternal protagonists, who, for all the charm Tom Holland and Chris Pratt imbue them with, remain largely static in their roles as fledgling hero and goading, cocky mentor, respectively. The film fills their scenes with banal platitudes about being brave and believing in yourself, which it then strangely conflates with blithely reckless, transgressive behavior (turns out, you can do a whole bunch of stupid and deadly stuff if you have magic to save you). And yet, Onward is sweet, beautifully animated, and builds to a poignant conclusion. Its imagination is spottier than it should be, but the core of fraternal love that drives it is intimately conveyed and, in some ways, magical enough. 

Jane B. par Agnès V.

JANE B. PAR AGNES V.   ***

Agnès Varda

1988

IDEA: An innovative biopic of actress and singer Jane Birkin.

BLURB:  Cinema is not only a mirror of the reality in front of a camera, but of the subjectivity of the person behind it. This notion, so central to Varda’s documentary and docu-fictional works, expands in Jane B. par Agnès V. to explicitly include multiple subjects. Here, that’s the triangulated relationship between filmmaker, camera, and filmed subject, in which all parts of the equation are equalized. Varda rejects hierarchical relations: while Birkin is the ostensible object and “muse” of this biopic, she is not positioned to be captured and controlled by the omnipotent Auteur. Instead, Varda establishes a generous, reciprocal interchange with the British-French actress and singer, in which the women are reflected in and by each other, and form a synthesis that transcends codified roles. The result is a most unusual biopic, a dual portrait of two women framed in creative chiasmus, as people who come to their identities through the art they produce. Varda’s preoccupations – time, artistic representation, class, gender, mortality – all emerge through her freewheeling, sometimes desultory-to-a-fault vignettes, but attain another dimension in how they intersect with Birkin’s slippery persona. Jane B. par Agnès V. is an embodiment of the vitality and necessity of this and other collaborations, and most affectingly, a love letter exchanged between creative confidantes.

Best of the Decade - 2010s

I know. It's April. Kind of late for a 2010s decade retrospective. Or is it? 

The truth is, even the best critic hasn't seen everything from the past ten years. It's not possible. I've done my best to catch up with notable titles I've missed in preparation for this list, which is one reason it's so tardy. But there's still much to see, and I imagine that will remain the case for a very long time. Let's appreciate such cinematic surplus, even when it can be overwhelming!

It was a great decade for film, even with the dismaying reality of a handful of IPs almost totally devouring mainstream American cinema, leaving the state of Hollywood as dismally, creatively bankrupt as it's ever been. But the independent scene thrived, national cinemas blossomed and continued to go strong around the globe, and a Korean film won Best Picture right at the end of it all. Not bad, huh?

Because ten isn't enough, I've elected to make a Top 25 (roughly ranked, outside of the top two or three - especially the top, because it is the decade's definitive work of cinema). 

The closest runners-up: Toy Story 3 (2010), Melancholia (2011), A Separation (2011), The Master (2012), Amour (2012), Lincoln (2012), Nebraska (2013), Her (2013), All is Lost (2013), Gravity (2013), National Gallery (2014), Spotlight (2015), The Lobster (2015), The Forbidden Room (2015), Jackie (2016), Toni Erdmann (2016), A Ghost Story (2017), Good Time (2017), Phantom Thread (2017), Faces Places (2017)

The list, told in images, after the jump!