Late To The Party : “The Florida Project”

This oughtta be simple enough — Sean Baker’s The Florida Project is every bit as good as you’ve heard.

Okay, that’s it, my job’s done — Happy New Year, everybody.

But wait just a second —

You wanna know why. I swear, everybody always wants to know why. And, hey, I can’t say as I blame you — movie tickets don’t come cheap these days and one is forced to choose wisely. I was sold on seeing this from the outset (even if it took me awhile to get my ass to the theater), being a huge fans of Baker’s 2015 shot-on-an-iPhone effort Tangerine, and this time around I was curious to see what he could/would do with some real actors, actual cameras, and a whopping two million dollar budget. Would he “sell out”? Or would he stay true to himself even though the ever-elusive “big time” was clearly beckoning?

The social and economic margins are still where Baker butters his bread, though, and frankly I’m not sure anyone in the movie biz does a better job of chronicling the day-to-day lives of those who exist there than he does — so even though he’s traded in Hollywood Boulevard transgender sex workers for Orlando motel dwellers, his naturalistic style, non-judgmental view, and aesthetic immediacy still serve him very well indeed. Single mother Halley (Bria Vinaite in a breakout performance) is all about the hustle : selling knock-off perfumes, scamming Disney World entry wristbands, waiting out back of the Waffle House for throwaways, anything to get through one more day. And yes, she’ll fuck for a buck too, if push comes to shove. Our auteur is still right in his element with her.

In tow for this decidedly hard-scrabble existence/subsistence is her precocious daughter, Moonee (speaking of breakout performances, Brooklynn Prince has one hell of a future ahead of her), who by all rights probably should be going to school more often, but seems to spend most of her time keeping on just this side of the juvenile authorities with her best friend, Jancey (Valeria Cotto), who crashes with her mom at the fleabag next door. The kids have fun, though, and lots of company — there’s too many of ’em, in fact, for beleaguered “super” Bobby (Willem Dafoe) to keep up with.

But how long can a set-up like this last? One of Moonee’s young friends is a little firebug. Halley still likes her booze n’ drugs. The motel’s owner isn’t to keen on permanent residents. And Bobby, well, he’s got a heart of gold, but he can’t be everywhere at once, and there’s only so much you can do to keep kids protected from leering chickenhawks, state CPS agents, and their own parents’ bad decisions. Everyone’s barely holding it all together by the skin of their teeth.

The Florida Project pulls your heart in all fucking kinds of directions. On the one hand, you know Moonee wants to stay with her mom and you want her to be happy. On the other, Halley clearly can’t keep herself above water and has no business raising a kid. On a third, taking care of that kid is basically the only thing preventing her from completely teetering over into the abyss. On a fourth, raising any child under these circumstances is clearly limiting said child’s opportunities pretty drastically.

Problem is, you’ve only got two hands. And now you know how the characters in this film all probably feel.

Really, I can’t say enough good things. Baker and his co-screenwriter, Chris Bergoch, don’t concern themselves with anything like a strict “plot” per se so much as just allowing events to unfold and follow the course that they’re gonna follow — kinda like how real life works. And “real life” is exactly what’s on display here — in point of fact, a side of it most of us (fortunately) never even have to think about too often. This flick will leave you counting your blessings, no doubt about it, and wondering about how “the other half” even manages to get by. How long they can hold out. How long until it all falls apart.

When it does, it hurts. Even if it’s ultimately for the best. And that’s no guarantee. Baker is too honest a filmmaker to give you any of those.

I pride myself on not impressing easily, and The Florida Project impressed me mightily. Maybe not as much as Tangerine, in the overall scheme of things, but it came pretty close, and is a far more accessible film for John and Jane Q. Public to wrap their heads around. Sean Baker is bringing his uniquely “no-frills” take on the lives of the marginalized right where it needs to be — into the hearts and minds of the people who would rather pretend they don’t exist. No more resting easy. Shit just got real.

 

The Last Review Of “Star Wars : The Last Jedi” You’ll Ever Need To Read

It’s always a dicey proposition when you’re reviewing a new Star Wars flick. One way or another, you almost can’t win — I recall, for instance, my lukewarm review of Star Wars : The Force Awakens being met with a comment stating, I shit you not, that “I agree with all your criticisms, but you should have given it a positive review anyway.” When I asked, naturally, why the hell my review should have been more sunny even though all my criticisms were legit, said individual responded, I assume with a straight face, something to the effect of “well, it’s more difficult to write a positive review than a negative one, so you should challenge yourself more.”

If I had any sense, I would have just walked away at that point, perhaps with a quip like “it’s only ‘more difficult’ to write a positive review of a film when said film sucks,” but instead I pressed further, insisting that it takes no more effort to write a glowing review than it does to write a pissy one, which is obviously and inarguably true, and was met with a (very) poor man’s bit of philosophy about life in general, my internet sparring partner insisting that “it’s hard work to be positive about anything, and way too easy to be negative.” Uhhhmmm — okay, if you say so.

For the record, I am not “down on” life. Hell, I wasn’t even that “down on” The Force Awakens. I just thought it was a mediocre re-tread of shit we’d seen done earlier, and better. What was painfully obvious, not just in retrospect but at the time, was that this particular commenter knew that’s all the flick amounted to, as well, but he liked it anyway, and was bent out of shape that I was both decidedly more cool on it than he was, and was able to articulate in fairly cogent terms why the overflowing love it was getting at the time really didn’t make much sense.

Well, that was two years ago, and when the hype died down, sure enough, my opinion at the time rather solidified into something like the overall consensus view. The Force Awakens hit a number of nostalgic notes, it made people feel the right way, but it certainly didn’t break any new ground, and basically amounted to a couple hours of fan service. Clearly, then, it would be left to the second chapter of the new trilogy to actually move things forward in any kind of significant way.

As early reviews for writer/director Rian Johnson’s Star Wars : The Last Jedi first trickled, then flowed, in, I was feeling reasonably good about its prospects to do just that : critics seemed to like it, while hard-core fans seemed to hate it. Pretty good sign right there that the amount of “fan-wank” in this was going to be minimal. It even seemed like Johnson was taking some risks here, and let’s face it, when you move forward, you’re going to necessarily leave plenty of overly-protective sorts behind. Maybe now that the Star Wars “greatest hits” reel was out of the way, we could get down to business.

And to an extent, Johnson does exactly that. Picking up essentially right where the last film left off, we see the so-called “Resistance, ” Oscar Isaac’s Poe Dameron in particular, scoring a pyrrhic victory against the “Empire-Lite” that is the newly-labeled “First Order,” only to find their space armada surrounded and running low on fuel while, concurrently with all this, Daisy Ridley’s Rey attempts to lure the reclusive Luke Skywalker (played by an older, but no less wooden and whiny, Mark Hamill) out of retirement to come save the galaxy from Lord Snoke (Andy Serkis, who joins Frank Oz, Lupita Nyong’o and, after a fashion, Carrie Fisher, as CGI “cast members”) and his now-apprentice — and Luke’s former trainee — Kylo Ren (Adam Driver).

Those two plotlines take up most of the flick, and certainly Rey’s eventual training (no big surprise, but she’s the titular last Jedi, not Luke) in the ways of The Force is loaded with any number of call-backs to the Luke/Yoda scenes from The Empire Strikes Back, but beyond that, yeah, the “nostalgia factor” here is kept to a welcome minimum. A third major story strand involving John Boyega’s Finn and new sidekick/potential love interest Rose (Kelly Marie Tran) attempting to locate, and then secure the services of, a supposed “master code breaker” in order to disable an Imperial — sorry, First Order — blockade is a bit hackneyed on the whole and too dependent on a series of lucky coincidences to be overly interesting, but I’m willing, probably just because it’s the holiday season, to give Johnson props for trying with that one, even if it’s one big “twist” moment amounts to audiences saying to themselves “hey, whaddya know, I never thought I’d see Benicio Del Toro in a Star Wars movie.”

Surprise casting moves seem to be a running theme of The Last Jedi in a more general sense, though, too, truth be told, and since we’re on that subject Laura Dern should get some credit for her turn as Vice Admiral Holdo, who takes over the Reb — goddammit, I’m doing it again — Resistance fleet when Fisher’s Princess/General Leia is incapacitated for a good chunk of the runtime. In fact, of all the various competing subplots, the one she features in prominently is probably the most effective, as her motives — and, by extension, those of the Resistance leadership itself — come into question, throwing some shades of grey into what’s usually a fairly black-and-white Star Wars cinematic “universe.” Things work out alright in the end, of course — they always do in these movies — but at least there’s some genuine intrigue and tension along the way.

Speaking of ends, though, that’s where most of the trouble here comes in. Johnson has, by my count, two “red herring” endings that he toys with until we get to the actual big finale, and by then you’re sort of ready for the thing to be over. The conclusion, when it arrives, is every bit as spectacular as it needs/is expected to be, but there’s definitely a sense that it’s past due. So, yeah, if you’re getting the idea that this film’s third act is more than a bit herky-jerky, you’re absolutely right.

Probably the biggest knock against The Last Jedi, though, is one that plagued The Force Awakens, as well : simply put, this First Order outfit just never seems like an “A-list” threat. Kylo Ren is an even more unstable basket case in this flick than he was last time (ditching the mask only accentuates his status as a lame bad guy), “Boy General” Hux (Domhnall Gleeson) is about as intimidating as a frat boy incensed at getting to the liquor store ten minutes after closing time and banging on the door to get in, and when Lord Snoke is finally removed from the equation, these guys are even more decisively “Bush League” than they were before. We all know the Resistance is going to win the day in the final act of this trilogy (which will no doubt be J.J. Abrams doing an updated take on Return Of The Jedi), but damn, with this Keystone Kops crew as their adversaries, the outcome is never even momentarily in doubt.

Still, for all that, The Last Jedi has more on the “plus” side side of its ledger than the “minus.” It establishes Rey as the powerful central protagonist she needs to be, it actually gives Poe Dameron plenty to do, and Finn and Rose make a good team. In short, it’s far more concerned with the characters we’re supposed to care about now rather than those we cared about a quarter-century (or more) ago — even if Hamill gets top billing in the credits.  It steps out of the long shadow cast by the franchise’s past (hell, it’s unafraid to poke fun at its own mythology, although some of the humor comes off as a little bit forced on occasion), even if it does so in a wobbly and uneven manner, and makes a statement (albeit, again, a shaky one) about where the series is in the here and now, rather than taking all of its cues from the past.

Huh. Now that I think about it, I hope my quasi-antagonist from a couple years back reads this review, since my final verdict should be right up his alley : Star Wars : The Last Jedi has a lot of problems — some of them pretty large — but you know what? I liked it anyway.