Camera: Darn near picture-perfect

Camera (2024) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Not rated, but akin to PG-13 for dramatic intensity and brief drug use

Available via: Amazon and Apple TV+

By Derrick Bang

This charming independent drama has been released without fanfare, with no publicity, and no reviews by significant print or media outlets.

 

After an initial misunderstanding, Eric (Beau Bridges, right) quickly apologizes and does
his best to make amends with the understably wary Oscar (Miguel Gabriel).

It’s clearly a labor of love by director Jay Silverman, who financed it solely via his own production company. The obviously modest budget nonetheless attracted name talent including Beau Bridges and Bruce Davison, although the film is stolen by young Miguel Gabriel; he and Bridges anchor the bittersweet and poignant script by Jamie Murphy and Joseph Gamache.

The result, a quietly compelling ode to the power of mentorship, deserves much better exposure than it’s likely to receive.

 

The setting is present-day Jasper’s Cove, a small coastal California fishing community. (The 18-day shoot actually took place in and around Morro Bay; locals will recognize famous landmarks such as Morro Rock and the Piedras Blancas Light Station.)

 

The community is struggling, due to the local waters having been overfished. Veteran fisherman such as Frank Flynn (the always engaging Davison) and Manny (Jorge-Luis Pallo) have their backs against the financial wall; the latter contemplates selling his beloved boat. Jasper’s Cove has become, as one character later puts it, “a place where fun goes to die.”

 

But 9-year-old Oscar (Gabriel) is oblivious to all this. Although a newcomer, he has quickly become a ubiquitous wanderer in town and the surrounding area, never seen without a vintage twin-lens reflex film camera slung around his neck, and hanging onto his chest. But the camera is damaged, and cannot be used.

 

Oscar is mute, due to complications from life-saving surgery when he was younger, which makes him the frequent target of a trio of contemptible adolescent bullies.

 

Oscar’s mother, Evelyn (Jessica Parker Kennedy), does her best with him; she has taught him to communicate via a series of flash cards bearing common greetings, questions and responses. He’s by no means slow; he can hear and understand perfectly, and seems intelligent for his age. But he’s also shy, self-conscious and easily frightened; he wears vulnerability like a shroud, which makes him an easy target for the aforementioned young thugs.

 

The recently widowed Evelyn has just moved them to Jasper’s Cove. She works hard, as a single parent trying to hold her little family together, and therefore can’t watch over her son as much as she’d like.

 

From Up on Poppy Hill: Young love and simpler times

From Up on Poppy Hill (2011) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rating: PG, for dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang

From its very first frame, From Up on Poppy Hill is breathtaking.

You’ll literally gasp at the hand-drawn watercolor lushness of the opening tableau, as the young heroine’s neighborhood is unveiled, her home set high on a hill that overlooks Japan’s Yokohama Port. Computer animation, for all its delights, never looks like this; one must go all the way back to the Walt Disney Studio’s early days, and Snow White or Bambi.

When Umi forgets some ingredients for the evening meal, her new friend Shun offers
to speed her down the hill, in order to reach the market as quickly as possible. The
resulting trip is exciting for its breakneck danger, and also for Umi's close proximity to
a young man she's beginning to care for quite deeply.

Or any of the recent offerings from Hayao Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli, of course, which deliver the same painstaking level of luxurious quality.

From Up on Poppy Hill — incidentally, Japan’s top-grossing 2011 film — marks the first feature collaboration between the legendary Miyazaki and his son, Gorō; Hayao wrote the screenplay with Keiko Niwa, while Gorō directed. The film is adapted from a 1980 manga series by Tetsurō Sayama (writer) and Chizuru Takahashi (artist); the story is a gentle and poignant coming-of-age saga about a teenage girl who can’t let go of a past tragedy.

Aside from the visual splendor, we’re immediately struck by the fact that this is a real-world period piece. For the most part, animated features are set in fantasy realms that involve magical creatures, talking animals or other mythological tropes. Exceptions, such as 2007’s Persepolis, tend to rely on grim political content.

But while From Up on Poppy Hill certainly has its solemn moments, they result from family secrets and unexpected revelations, rather than complex issues playing out on a broader national or global stage.

The year is 1963, a time of great excitement in Japan, as ambitious plans are made to showcase the country during the upcoming Tokyo Olympics. References to construction and renewal allude to Japan’s emergence from the still-recent horrors of World War II, but the script never calls undo attention to this sobering element.

Nor do the upcoming Olympics have any impact on Umi Matsuzaki (voiced in this American release by Sarah Bolger). The 16-year-old lives in Coquelicot Manor, a boarding house she essentially runs, while caring for her grandmother and two younger siblings, Sora (Izabelle Fuhrman) and Riku (Alex Wolff). Their mother, Ryoko, is studying abroad in the United States; their father was killed in the Korean War.

Every morning before school, Umi rises early to handle various chores and prepare an elaborate breakfast for her family and the manor’s residents. She does the same with each day’s evening meal. We immediately realize that this dutiful young woman maintains an exhausting schedule from before dawn to late at night, while diligently keeping up with her studies.

Her final ritual each morning, before walking to school, is to raise a set of signal flags on the manor flagpole that her (now deceased) grandfather built for her long ago.

The flags’ message: “I pray for safe voyages.”

The Descendants: Doing the right thing

The Descendants (2011) • View trailer for The Descendants
4.5 stars. Rating: R, for profanity and coarse sexual references
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.2.11


One of Janis Ian’s typically insightful songs, released on a 1978 album, is called “Silly Habits.” In part, it goes:

I used to say “I love you,”
But one day I forgot.
Silly habits mean a lot.

Matt (George Clooney) and his daughters — Alexandra (Shailene Woodley,
left) and Scottie (Amara Miller) — take one final, lingering look at the
unspoiled family land soon to be turned into a beach resort by the
highest bidder.

Some relationships explode in passion and fury; many simply fade away. Small, thoughtful gestures — spontaneous acts, so lovingly granted in the early days — fall victim to increasingly busy schedules or diverging interests. Impulsive cards, flowers or teddy bears. The promise to always have breakfast together. A book or new CD recently commented upon: not on a birthday or some other holiday, but just because.

We initially register these missed opportunities: pangs of guilt, mental promises to do better. Eventually, though, even the regret and intent get lost in the shuffle.

Then, one day — a day seemingly like any other — we look across the dining table and see a stranger. In that moment, the revelation strikes: True intimacy has been lost.

The Descendants opens as Matt King (George Clooney) has just such an epiphany. It’s a wake-up call; he suddenly, genuinely understands that business affairs have pulled him away from his wife and family. In his own words, he acknowledges being the “back-up parent” to their two daughters. He resolves to change course: correct the heading and do better.

He makes this promise as his wife, Elizabeth (Patricia Hastie), lies in a hospital bed, submerged within a deep coma: the result of a boating accident.

Alexander Payne’s previous film, 2004’s warm, whimsical and bittersweet Sideways, probed and dissected friendship and courting rituals with the precision with which its protagonist extolled the similar complexities of his favorite wines. Payne and co-scripter Jim Taylor shared a well-deserved Academy Award for their effort; Payne also garnered a nomination as director.

Now, seven years later — apparently not one to be hurried — Payne has returned to the director’s chair for The Descendants. He shares scripting duties this time with Nat Faxon and Jim Rash; they have adapted the 2007 book by Hawaiian-born Kaui Hart Hemmings, who based this debut novel on her earlier short story, “The Minor Wars.”

The Hawaiian setting is as much a character as the fractured King family and their friends and relatives; Payne understands this, and many scenes — particularly many brittle exchanges of dialogue — are amplified or given counterpoint by cinematographer Phedon Papamichael’s lush vistas of (mostly) unspoiled Hawaiian land.

This land actually is a significant plot point. Matt’s missionary ancestors who came to the islands were financially and culturally progressive; one even married a Hawaiian princess, making Matt a royal descendant and one of the state’s largest landowners. Indeed, stewardship of this property, along with the responsibilities of his own legal profession, bear the blame for his absentee husbanding and parenting duties.