The Kid Detective: A complicated case

The Kid Detective (2020) • View trailer

3.5 stars. Rated R, for profanity, drug use, sexual candor, fleeting nudity and violence

By Derrick Bang

This Canadian import is a droll, slightly tart slice of PI whimsy.

 

That’s actually too superficial a description of writer/director Evan Morgan’s engaging feature film debut. At times, The Kid Detective seems to be taking place in a slightly existential universe not quite our own, where characters drop mordant one-liners without cracking a smile.

 

When Abe (Adam Brody) and Caroline (Sophie Nélisse) realize they're being followed
by a dark sedan, they waver between two equally uncomfortable choices:
attempt to flee ... or confront.

At other times, matters unexpectedly turn real-world serious, and emotions are real-world familiar.

 

It’s an intriguing balancing act, which — for the most part — Morgan skillfully navigates. He’s helped considerably by star Adam Brody’s morose, vulnerable and yet unexpectedly engaging performance as the rather unusual title character.

 

As an adolescent, Abe Applebaum (Jesse Noah Gruman) became a local celebrity in the cheerful little town of Willowbrook, Ontario, thanks to his facility for solving minor mysteries and wacky crimes. His successes resulted mostly from perception and an acute sense of psychology: the way people think and therefore act.

 

Partly out of respect — and likely also out of amusement — the townsfolk even set him up in a downtown office, where good friend Gracie Gulliver (Kaitlyn Chalmers-Rizzato) worked as receptionist. But then she disappeared one day. Despite Abe’s best efforts, and that of the local police, neither she — nor her body — ever was found.

 

This failure leaves Abe traumatized.

 

Now 32 (and played by Brody), Abe works out of the same office, stubbornly solving the same trivial cases — finding lost cats, and so forth — in between hangovers and raging attacks of self-pity. He has become the town joke, barely making ends meet; his frustrated parents (Wendy Crewson and Jonathan Whittaker) clearly have spent years trying to prod him into responsible adulthood.

 

Even Abe’s Goth receptionist (Sarah Sutherland, hilariously condescending) treats him with contempt.

 

Enter Caroline (Sophie Nélisse), a 16-year-old orphan who brings a real case, by asking his help in solving the brutal murder of her boyfriend, Patrick. Although initially wondering if she’s putting him on — we see the wary uncertainty in Brody’s gaze — Caroline is absolutely serious, her wide, guileless eyes radiating sincerity. And, indeed, Patrick was stabbed 17 times (!).

 

To say the subsequent investigation proceeds in fits and starts would be an understatement. Although his intuition remains sound, Abe’s sloppy appearance and occasionally reckless behavior hinder more than help. None of this shakes Caroline’s faith; indeed, she even drives him from one lead to the next — Abe doesn’t have a car — and becomes a de facto partner.

 

Tigertail: The sad price of detachment

Tigertail (2020) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG, no particular reason
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 4.15.20

Reprimands intended to be helpful, but delivered with too much irritation, can have devastating consequences.

Try as she might, Angela (Christine Ko) can't begin to connect with herfather, Pin-Jui
(Tzi Ma), who has spent decades burying his emotions so far, that they may be irretrievable.

Writer/director Alan Yang’s Tigertail — a Netflix original — is a quietly heartbreaking depiction of how emotional isolation can be transmitted from parent to child, to the ongoing detriment of both. Tang’s approach is methodical and unhurried; even at an economical 91 minutes, his film can feel slow (particularly during the initial half hour).

But the payoff is worth the investment; the final few minutes are surprisingly powerful. There may not be a dry eye in the house.

Yang’s script traces key events in the life of his protagonist, Pin-Jui, during three time streams: young childhood, early adulthood and post-retirement. The latter phase is played by the magnificent Tzi Ma, whose finely shaded portrayal of withdrawn stoicism is conveyed mostly through sad eyes and a slumped frame (even, seemingly, when he stands erect). They depict silent resignation; this is a man who has completely abandoned any effort to find joy in life.

Given that he seems to have built a comfortably middle-class life, how could this possibly be? What could have happened?

We initially meet Pin-Jui as a little boy in Taiwan (played by Zhi-Hao Yang) — at the time, still under Chinese communist rule — living with his grandparents and helping work their vast rice fields. His father is dead; his mother is elsewhere in a nearby city, struggling to find work, in order to reunite with her only child. The boy misses her, and occasionally hallucinates seeing his parents in the distance, working the same rice field.

Harsh reality brings tears to his eyes, which his grandmother (Li Li Pang) curtly dismisses:

“Crying never solves anything. Be strong. Never let anyone see you cry.”

And there it is: the seed from which bitter fruit will spring, decades later.

But not immediately. The middle time stream finds Pin-Jui (now played by Hong-Chi Lee) toiling alongside his mother, Minghua (Yang Kuei-mei), in a sugar factory. The work is hard — and dangerous — but they lead an acceptable, if meager existence. And Pin-Jui has been lucky enough to re-connect with childhood friend Yuan (Yo-Hsing Fang); the two are deeply in love.

The Farewell: An unsatisfying send-off

The Farewell (2019) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rated PG, for no particular reason
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.26.19

Is there such a thing as a “good” lie?

Or are they merely lies of convenience?

Billi (Awkwafina, center right), burdened by a secret she cannot reveal, has no appetite
for the lavish meal prepared by her beloved grandmother (Shuzhen Zhao, center left)
and great-aunt (Hong Lu, far left).

Bear in mind, as well, that the answer depends on cultural origins and expectations.

Indie writer/director Lulu Wang addresses such complexities in her second feature film, The Farewell, which she cheekily admits — up front — is “based on an actual lie.” Her story’s core relationship is the strong bond between Chinese-born, U.S.-raised Billi (Awkwafina) and her grandmother, Nai-Nai (Shuzhen Zhao), who has spent her entire life in Changchun.

The introverted Billi, an aspiring New York writer, struggles to make ends meet; to her vexation, she still relies on her parents — Haiyan (Tzi Ma) and Jian (Diana Lin), who live nearby — for occasional meals, their washing machine, and similar small favors. Despite recalling little of China, there’s a suggestion that Billi feels displaced: a soul perhaps not fully at ease with either half of her identity.

She enjoys frequent phone chats with Nai-Nai, which is how the film opens: on a typical call punctuated by Billi’s curiosity over the background sounds supplementing her grandmother’s voice. It’s nothing, Nai-Nai insists, when in fact she sits amid the hustle, bustle and background PA announcements of a busy hospital, where she has gone for some tests. A lingering cold and cough.

The test results are shared not with Nai-Nai, but with her doting younger sister, Little Nai-Nai (Hong Lu). The news is grim: terminal cancer, with death likely imminent.

Little Nai-Nai — with full support from the rest of the family — chooses not to share this information with her sibling. Better, everybody feels, to let Nai-Nai enjoy her final days in blissful ignorance.

(Also — and here’s our first brush with the cultural element — because the Chinese believe that the mere word “cancer” causes one so afflicted to give up and die.)

Well, not quite everybody; Billi, after extracting the truth from her parents, is appalled.

Arrival: They're here!

Arrival (2016) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity and brief profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 11.11.16

Michael Crichton’a The Andromeda Strain pretty much invented the modern sci-fi techno thriller, and it was made into a crackling 1971 thriller by director Robert Wise.

After confronting the alien spacecraft that has terrified the entire United States, linguist
Louise Banks (Amy Adams) and physicist Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner) are garbed in
protective haz-mat suits, prior to their first meeting with the ship's inhabitants.

The tone was pure procedural, with a gaggle of scientists researching and conferencing in labs, to determine why a highly lethal microorganism killed everybody in a small Arizona town, except for a geriatric Sterno addict and a relentlessly cranky baby.

Few films since then have successfully duplicated that formula, because it’s a difficult tightrope walk: too many talking heads, and the result is boring; too much contrivance and coincidence, and audiences roll their eyes in contemptuous disbelief.

Director Denis Villeneuve gets the balance just right with Arrival, easily one of the most intelligent “first contact” movies Hollywood ever has delivered. Scripter Eric Heisserer embraced the challenging assignment of adapting sci-fi author Ted Chiang’s  2000 Nebula Award-winning novella, and the result is impressively faithful: fascinating, clever and suspenseful, with an out-there finale certain to fuel debates as impassioned as those that greeted the conclusion of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

The story also boasts one of the most truly unusual alien cultures ever conceived, the depiction of which is likely to forever change most viewers’ perception and understanding of language.

Finally, the film is an uncomfortably timely reminder of the dangerous levels of nationalism and xenophobia currently running amok throughout this country and the globe, and the consequences of failing to recognize that — at the end of the day — we’re a single species sharing this planet, and that it behooves us to behave accordingly.

To cases, then:

Northeastern university professor Louise Banks (Amy Adams), an internationally respected linguist, is surprised one day to discover that her huge, entry-level language class is almost empty. The reason becomes clear as breaking news reports interrupt all radio and television broadcasts: A disturbingly large something has landed in a deserted Montana meadow.

Actually, “landed” is the wrong word; the semi-cylindrical object hovers about 20 feet off the ground.