Tully: We all need this kind of care

Tully (2018) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated R, for profanity and sexual candor
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 5.4.18

Pedigree does count for something. 

It’s gratifying to recall being charmed when filmmakers previously collaborated, and to have expectations met while enjoying their next project.

Tully (Mackenzie Davis, left) watches with unconcealed warmth — and pleasure — as the
happily rested Margo (Charlize Theron) nurses her newborn daughter.

Director Jason Reitman and scripter Diablo Cody first teamed for 2007’s Juno, which was no less than a pop-culture revelation: her debut screenplay — and a well-deserved Academy Award winner — and only his second big-screen feature. Not bad, for new kids on the block.

Juno profiled an endearingly free-spirited young woman, as she contemplated how best to handle an unplanned pregnancy. In a sense, Reitman and Cody have re-visited that scenario with Tully, an often awkwardly intimate study of a middle-aged woman — already a mother of two — wondering how she’ll survive an unplanned third pregnancy.

Charlize Theron is sublime as Margo, a full-time mother already stretched to the limit while juggling the demands of a full-time job and the parenting needs of 8-year-old Sarah (the utterly adorable Lia Frankland) and 5-year-old Jonah (Asher Miles Fallica). The latter is a special-needs child prone to distressing outbursts, particularly when his routine is interrupted by something as trivial as where his mother parks while dropping them off at school.

The film opens on a tender daily routine between mother and son, as Margo gently “grooms” Jonah with a soft brush: a ritual that she believes will help calm him. Reitman and cinematographer Eric Steelberg frame this sequence with exquisite warmth and sensitivity, and — right away — we know that no matter what else, this is a woman wholly and totally devoted to her children. 

And, although stretched to the limit, she has things covered. Life works.

It’s telling that no character in this story — not Margo, nor her husband Drew (Ron Livingston), nor the increasingly harried school principal (Gameela Wright) — ever uses the terms “spectrum” or “autistic,” despite Jonah’s behavior strongly suggesting as much. We get a sense that Margo resists the label, because acknowledging as much might put Jonah’s care beyond her capabilities ... and that would be unthinkable.

Jennifer's Body: A total nottie

Jennifer's Body (2009) • View trailer for Jennifer's Body
2.5 stars (out of five). Rating: R, for violence, gore, profanity and teen sexuality
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.18.09
Buy DVD: Jennifer's Body• Buy Blu-Ray: Jennifer's Body (+ Digital Copy) [Blu-ray]

Absent the involvement of an Academy Award-winning screenwriter, Jennifer's Body would be just another easily ignored, late-summer teen fright flick dumped with the expectation of two weeks on the big screen, prior to fitful video afterlife a few months down the road.

But expectations are raised when the credits include Diablo Cody, who took a well-deserved Oscar for her original screenplay for Juno, and charmed both the industry audience and home viewers with a particularly exuberant acceptance speech. Cody's clever and whimsically snarky script for Juno demonstrated a sensitivity for teens in general, and misfit girls in particular; fans therefore were more than a little intrigued when she selected a gal-centered horror entry as her next project.

Despite having a loyal girlfriend -- even if she has gotten a bit strange lately --
Chip (Johnny Simmons) quite foolishly allows himself to be seduced by
Jennifer (Megan Fox) on the night of the high school prom. Little does he
know that this encounter is about to move up the hill, into the sort of
dilapidated, shrubbery-infested indoor swimming pool that exists only in
horror movies ... where Jennifer's appetite will prove more cannibalistic
than carnal.

Surely, we hoped, Cody could bring a fresh perspective to a genre dominated by male writers and directors far too willing to demean, debase and disembowel women.

It didn't work out that way.

To be sure, most of the on-camera victims in Jennifer's Body are guys, but they're not exactly misogynistic jerks whose fates would be greeted with vicarious delight; indeed, the one granted the most attention is just the sort of disenfranchised nice guy who would have been one of Juno's best friends. Of course, that could be the point: Cody builds this character into a well-defined individual, rather than a disposable, two-dimensional nonentity. His eventual fate hurts a bit.

The most gruesome demise, however, still is reserved for a female character, and hack director Karyn Kusama — most notorious for the sci-fi bomb Aeon Flux, with Charlize Theron — lingers on this sequence just as exploitatively as the genre usually demands.

Actually, Kusama doesn't bring much to this party. She and cinematographer M. David Mullen orchestrate only one really great shot: an eerie, late-night tableau that shows the next victim, just barely seen waaaay at the end of a deserted street, as his silhouette moves toward the house where he'll meet his eventual fate. It's a wonderfully moody image, and there ain't nothin' else like it in the rest of this humdrum and utterly predictable film.

That's the most disappointing part: Jennifer's Body is nothing fresh, and has no surprises. It's not fun in the manner of TV's Buffy, the Vampire Slayer or the more recent Being Human; it's actually rather depressing.