The Miracle Season: Failure to spike

The Miracle Season (2018) • View trailer 
2.5 stars. Rated PG, for no particular reason
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 4.6.18

Inspirational sports sagas tend to be bullet-proof, and even this one builds to an exhilarating climax.

Getting there, however, is another matter entirely.

Caroline "Line" Found (Danika Yarosh, No, 9) and a cluster of her teammates — from left,
Kelley Fliehler (Erin Moriarty, No. 19), Taylor (Lillian Doucet-Roche, No. 14), Brie (Tiera
Skovbye, No. 8) and Mack (Natalie Sharp) — get ready for another intense volleyball drill.

Granted, The Miracle Season is based on actual events, but that’s no excuse for director Sean McNamara — aided and abetted by scripters David Aaron Cohen and Elissa Matsuida — to lard the pathos with a trowel. So many tight-tight-tight close-ups of tears and quivering lips. The pregnant pauses, long-suffering sighs and anguished glances heavenward. Melodramatic dialogue so insufferably sugary-sweet that it’ll send insulin-dependent viewers into a diabetic coma. The swelling orchestral flourishes from Roque Baños’ histrionic score.

McNamara makes no secret of his desire to craft — whether as director, writer or producer — wholesome, family-friendly dramas; one need only read his IMDB bio. That’s well and good, but there’s a chasm of atmospheric distinction between “wholesome” and “gag-inducing sentimental slush.”

I kept waiting for some of this film’s performers to throw up their arms, burst into a heartrending Shakespearean soliloquy, and expire on camera.

It genuinely grieves me to be so mean-spirited, given McNamara’s sincere intent, and the authentic real-world tragedy-turned-triumph that inspired his film ... but that’s the problem. He tries much, much too hard; he should have had more faith in the strength of the story itself, and trusted his audience to “get it,” without jerking his puppet master strings so blatantly. And repeatedly.

The setting is Iowa City’s West High School, where newly minted seniors and longtime best buds Caroline Found (Danika Yarosh) and Kelley Fliehler (Erin Moriarty) eagerly await the start of volleyball season, revved up to repeat their previous year’s championship victory. Coach Kathy “Brez” Bresnahan (Helen Hunt), while sharing this desire, wisely cautions against cockiness and entitlement.

As a redundant voice-over narrator needlessly informs us, during a Hallmark greeting-card prologue, Caroline — everybody calls her “Line” — is one of the magical, charismatic wonders who inspires everybody to be better versions of themselves.

Captain Fantastic: A thoughtful modern parable

Captain Fantastic (2016) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated R, for profanity and occasional chaste nudity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.22.16

Cannes winners can be obtuse, maddeningly weird and deadly dull; this is, after all, the film festival that bestowed a Palme d’Or upon 2011’s execrable Tree of Life.

Ben (Viggo Mortensen, center) and four of his children — from left, Bo (George MacKay),
Rellian (Nicholas Hamilton, partly obscured), Vespyr (Annalise Basso) and Kielyr
(Samantha Isler) — gather their most recent homemade craft goods, in anticipation of
a routine visit to the nearest trading post.

On the other hand, other entries are quirky, imaginative and unexpectedly endearing, as is the case with Captain Fantastic, which took this year’s Un Certain Regard Directing Prize and was nominated for the overall Un Certain Regard Award.

Matt Ross is best known as a busy television actor with ongoing roles in eccentric shows such as American Horror Story and Silicon Valley; he occasionally moonlights as a filmmaker. His big-screen feature debut — 2012’s 28 Hotel Rooms — didn’t amount to much, but Captain Fantastic is guaranteed to change his career. Ross’ sensitively calculated script is matched by his delicate direction; he’s also blessed with an ensemble cast that rises to this quite unusual occasion.

I never cease to be amazed, having spent so much time studying our century-old film medium, by the continuing emergence of fresh stories told in captivating ways. “Captain Fantastic” is unconventional and challenging, to be sure; but it’s also poignant, shrewdly perceptive and a subtly critical statement of our times. That’s a lot of subtext for an idiosyncratic little indie, but Ross pulls it off.

Mostly because, at its core, this also is a story of the love and loyalty that bonds a family: something everybody can relate to.

Our introduction to Ben Cash (Viggo Mortensen) and his six children is unexpected, to say the least: all seven of them mud-smeared, in order to blend into forest foliage while stalking a deer. It’s a bloody rite of passage for eldest son Bo (George MacKay), who brings down the creature with a knife. Ross doesn’t shy from the gore.

Neither do any of Bo’s siblings, down to youngsters Zaja (Shree Crooks) and Nai (Charlie Shotwell), who revel equally in this feral ritual. The carcass is taken home, skinned and dressed by 15-year-old twins Vespyr and Kielyr (Annalise Basso and Samantha Isler). Everybody washes up and tackles assigned chores, later assembling for rigorous calisthenics and a grueling run through the woods.

Later, after night has fallen, they gather around a crackling fire, quietly reading weighty books on science (Jared Diamond) and philosophy (Noam Chomsky), or challenging fiction such as George Eliot’s Middlemarch. Somehow sensing when his children have had enough, Ben teases a quiet song on his guitar; Bo joins him. Twelve-year-old Rellian (Nicholas Hamilton) displays a rebellious streak by inserting an aggressive drum beat; there’s a breathless moment, as his siblings wait to see how their father will handle this intrusion, but Ben smiles and modifies his own playing to follow the beat. The others, relieved, laugh and dance as the family makes music together.

The Kings of Summer: This film rules!

The Kings of Summer (2013) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rating: R, and rather harshly, for occasional profanity and teen drinking
By Derrick Bang

This is why I love my job.

The Kings of Summer marks an impressive feature debut for director Joran Vogt-Roberts and writer Chris Galletta, the latter with nothing more to his credit than a brief 2005 stint as a production staff member for The Late Show with David Letterman. Vogt-Roberts’ résumé includes several shorts and a lot of TV series work, the latter suggesting the hilariously snarky mind set on ample display in this film.

Having more or less completed their new home away from home, our three young
renegades — from left, Joe (Nick Robinson), Patrick (Gabriel Basso) and Biaggio (Moises
Arias) — contemplate the next challenge: putting food on the table. That'll prove far
more difficult than anticipated, since they've no experience with traps, lures, bare-handed
fishing or any other woodsian skills.

Actually, calling this picture “impressive” isn’t nearly strong enough. It’s a sure-fire audience pleaser: one of those so-called “little films” — like Little Miss Sunshine or Juno — guaranteed to take off like a rocket, once word gets out. This year’s enthusiastic Sundance Festival audience certainly thought so, granting a nomination for the Grand Jury Prize (not won, alas).

As a collaborative team, Vogt-Roberts and Galletta demonstrate a striking degree of creative synch; the latter’s dialogue sounds just right coming from the naturalistic ensemble cast, granting a level of verisimilitude that makes these characters feel like the folks next door.

Allowing, that is, for a left-of-center gaggle of eccentrics commonly found in films by Wes Anderson or the Coen Brothers. But I mean that in the gentlest way: However funny the lines, however warped some of the emotional behavior by sidebar adults, this is — first and foremost — an intimate coming-of-age saga.

In the truest sense of the old cliché, we laugh with our young protagonists, not at them.

The contemporary setting is a smallish town in Northeast Ohio, the sort of all-American community that typifies such narratives. Best friends Joe (Nick Robinson) and Patrick (Gabriel Basso) are strongly bonded, in part, by their inability to cope with utterly impossible parents.

Joe’s father, Frank (Nick Offerman), hasn’t yet recovered from his wife’s untimely death, years earlier. He has become bitter, condescending and imperious: a combination that doesn’t blend well with a teenage son’s instinctive rebelliousness. Joe’s favorite method of revenge, when sufficiently annoyed, is to summon the local law — personified by the competent Capt. Davis (Mary Lynn Rajskub) and her absolutely useless rookie companion (Thomas Middleditch) — on some trumped-up accusation.

Frank responds to such hijinks the way he deals with everybody: angry sarcasm delivered by Offerman with a relentlessly straight face ... which, of course, makes every bile-fueled line that much funnier. (And they’re pretty funny to begin with.)

Joe’s older sister, Heather (Alison Brie), fled the tension-laced home awhile back, although she still visits. That speaks well of the young woman; her choice of male companions, however, does not. Colin (Eugene Cordero) is a misfit who’s as oblivious to social cues, as he is to the fact that Frank constantly winds him up.

In this case, we can hardly blame Frank; Colin’s much too easy a target. Which Heather is aware of, and Brie’s face is an amusing study in conflict: clearly annoyed by her loutish father, but equally embarrassed by her clueless boyfriend.