H Is for Happiness: D Is for delightful

H Is for Happiness (2019) • View trailer

Four stars. Not rated, and suitable for all ages

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.23.20

We all need some measure of control in our lives. Without it, that way madness lies.

 

Poor Candice Phee (Daisy Axon) has almost none. Her mother, Claire (Emma Booth), has retreated into chronic depression since the crib death of Candice’s baby sister. Her father, Jim (Richard Roxburgh), can do nothing about this; he’s also angrily estranged from his incredibly wealthy brother — known by Candice as “Rich Uncle Brian” (Joel Jackson) — believing he got screwed during a collaborative business venture.

 

Candice (Daisy Axon) enthusiastically helps new best friend Douglas (Wesley Patten)
search for the perfect tree, in which to test his dimension-hopping theories ... which
involve jumping from a high branch. (The horse just, well, appears at unexpected
moments.)

Candice and her parents eat their meals separately. Mother rarely leaves her bedroom; Father rarely stops working in his downstairs office, cut off from the world by headphones.

 

As a result, despite being not quite 13, Candice has learned to fend for herself. She’s a bright, inquisitive and — as far as her classmates are concerned — insufferably cheerful adolescent, always first to raise her hand when teacher Miss Bamford (Miriam Margolyes) poses a question.

 

Noting the rows of carefully sorted gel pens forever arranged on Candice’s desk — among her other affectations — “mean girl” Jen (Alessandra Tognini) waspishly refers to her as “Essen,” short for “SN,” as in “special needs.” Indeed, it’s easy to assume that Candice is a spectrum child, or even autistic.

 

But no: The carefully arranged gel pens, her devotion to vocabulary — she reads the dictionary — are simply her means of maintaining somesemblance of order in her life.

 

Director John Sheedy’s H Is for Happiness — available via Amazon Prime and other streaming services — is scripted by Lisa Hoppe, and adapted from Barry Jonsberg’s award-winning 2013 young adult novel, My Life As an Alphabet (a far superior title, by the way). It’s a poignant, carefully nuanced and at times droll slice of Australian whimsy. 

 

Although the emotional content is deeply felt and persuasively depicted — laughter and heartbreak existing side-by-side — Sheedy’s stylized approach owes more than a little to eclectic directors such as Wes Anderson, Baz Luhrmann and Bill Forsythe.

 

Particularly the latter: Like Forsythe, Sheedy’s tableaus frequently include random individuals doing interesting — or unusual — things in the background, or at the fringes of a random shot. Cinematographer Bonnie Elliott’s efforts are deliberately stylized, her depiction of this colorful coastal town of Albany somewhat heightened, in the manner of 2001’s Amelie.

 

A touch of magic realism also infiltrates this narrative, whether in the antics — and wisdom — of the cross-dressing costume shop proprietor (George Shevtsov); or Miss Bamford’s distractingly active lazy right eye; or in the mysterious miniature white horse that inhabits the nearby woods.

 

The woods themselves have plenty of personality; Elliott often aims her camera directly overhead, into the thick top-growth, as the trees mumble, grumble and groan in the breeze. It’s hard not to think of the Ents, in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings.

 

Parker: Solid adaptation of a literary anti-hero

Parker (2013) • View trailer
3.5 stars. Rating: R, for violence, profanity, sexual candor and nudity
By Derrick Bang

The best film Jennifer Lopez has made thus far remains 1998’s Out of Sight, director Steven Soderbergh’s slick adaptation of the Elmore Leonard novel that introduced feisty bounty hunter Karen Sisco.

Parker (Jason Statham), posing as a wealthy Texas oil tycoon, accepts Realtor Leslie
Rodgers' (Jennifer Lopez) offer to show him various properties in Palm Beach. She
thinks he's looking for a house to buy; he's actually trying to figure out where some
former associates might have gone to ground ... because he'd really like to see them.

(Sisco, obviously too cool a character to drop, resurfaced — this time played equally well by Carlo Gugino — in a woefully under-appreciated 2003 ABC television series that ran only seven episodes, out of the 10 completed, before the plug was pulled. Fans wait in vain, to this day, for DVD afterlife.)

Crime thrillers appear to be Lopez’s forté, as opposed to the limp romantic comedies into which she invariably gets cast. I say that on the basis of her similarly slick and engaging work in Parker, based on an equally gritty novel by yet another veteran American thriller writer: the recently late and much lamented Donald E. Westlake.

A bit of history: Westlake employed the pseudonym Richard Stark when writing his Parker novels, from 1962’s The Hunter through 2008’s Dirty Money. The debut novel has been brought to the big screen twice: in 1967, as Point Blank, with Lee Marvin as “Walker”; and in 1999, as Payback, with Mel Gibson as “Porter.” Other Parker novels have been adapted for stars such as Robert Duvall, Jim Brown and Peter Coyote, all of whom played the character under a different name (Westlake having insisted on that, to retain control of his creation).

Although the revenge motif employed in this new film strongly echoes The Hunter, it’s actually based on a much later novel, 2000’s Flashfire. Scripter John J. McLaughlin deserves credit for a slick, polished and deliciously snarky adaptation, while Hackford gets to resurrect thriller chops he hasn’t exercised since 1984’s Against All Odds.

Let it be said, however, that Jason Statham owns this film, as is the case with pretty much everything the rugged action star embraces. His British origins notwithstanding, he’s the ideal personification of Parker: appropriate age, ideal physical presence, proper attitude. Marvin and Gibson weren’t bad, but Statham delivers just the right blend of resourceful arrogance, foolhardy stubbornness and wounded pride.

Parker’s all about commitment: If you promise to do something, you’d damn well better do it ... or risk the consequences. He’s also a career thief and cold-hearted killer, if a situation demands it: definitely a template for later series characters such as Lawrence Block’s Keller and Lee Child’s Jack Reacher. And, like those other modern-day warriors, Parker isn’t a psychopath; he’s capable of kindness — after a fashion — and bears no ill will toward the innocent.

Statham nails that duality, as well.