Numerous Personalities, All Begging to Get Out

James McAvoy in "Split"
Photo Credit: Imdb.com

M. Night Shyamalan has had an interesting career as a director, to say the least.  He rose to fame in the late summer of 1999 with his supernatural drama, “The Sixth Sense,” and then followed up the next year with his superhero thriller, “Unbreakable.”  Shyamalan’s next movie arrived with his sci-fi drama, “Signs,” which was terrifically spine-tingling, despite some questionable aspects with the overall story.  

However, his filmmaking abilities started to show a bit of doubtfulness with “The Village,” which had quite a bit going for it, until the rather silly double-twist ending.  The decline in quality became steeper with his next four movies: the woefully misguided fairy-tale thriller, “Lady in the Water”; the unintentionally hilarious “The Happening”; the unfaithful adaptation of “The Last Airbender”; and the eyebrow-raising, Will Smith-Jaden Smith vehicle, “After Earth.”  It wasn’t until the fall of 2015 where Shyamalan made a small step towards his return to form with his quietly creepy found-footage film, “The Visit.”

Now, with his psychological-horror thriller, “Split,” he shows that he’s on the path back to the greatness for which audiences once knew him and delivers his best movie in years.

One afternoon, on their way home from a party, high-school students Casey (Anya Taylor-Joy), Claire (Haley Lu Richardson), and Marcia (Jessica Sula), are kidnapped by Kevin (James McAvoy), a man with dissociative identity disorder, who locks away the girls in his home.  When they learn of his condition, they attempt to use his personalities against him to try to escape.  Little do they know, he has a total of 23 personalities, and a 24th, known as “The Beast,” is on the verge of being unleashed.

James McAvoy offers a brilliant, unsettling, and unpredictable performance, which is also one of his finest to date.  He has a handle on all of the personalities he presents, smoothly transitioning from one to the other.  While doing so, he’s able to keep the behavioral characteristics, physical movements, and speech for each disposition very distinct, always remaining perfectly in tune with whichever side of his character the story needs him to display and maintaining the consistency of the traits of each personality.  You can tell McAvoy spent a considerable amount of time on crafting these personas in order to make them as believable as possible, and it’s every bit as fun to watch him perform as it is chilling.  Although we’re only in January, McAvoy’s work in this film could turn out to be one of the most memorable performances of the year.

Anya Taylor-Joy provides an empowering performance as someone who must use her survival skills to escape this horrific scenario.  While being a closed-off individual as first, it’s liberating to see Taylor-Joy’s character come into her own and work to outsmart her captor.  What makes Taylor-Joy’s performance so effective is that she doesn’t show many traces of her character being scared, but instead stays rather calm, processes the situation, and tries to figure out how to break free.  With all of this, Taylor-Joy exhibits the strength and collected mind of a horror heroine for whom we can cheer.  

Although the screenplay by Shyamalan mainly has the story take place in Kevin’s home, one of the best aspects about the story is how it provides scenes of Kevin at a few therapy sessions, which offer an in-depth analysis of Kevin’s psyche, allowing us to understand his character, learn how his personalities control him, and decipher the possible cause behind his mental illness, and all of this gives us Shyamalan’s most psychological film to date.  We get these scenes occasionally throughout the film, and they are some of the most fascinating to watch as we see how McAvoy’s character reacts to the sessions.

Although the film is a little slow in the beginning, it nevertheless keeps you in its vice for its duration.  And, believe me, you’ll want to see this movie has soon as you can to avoid spoilers because Shyamalan offers an ending on par with “The Sixth Sense” and “Unbreakable,” and he leaves us with a lot to discuss after the film’s conclusion.

In terms of directing, Shyamalan has improved on adding a bit of humor to the creepiness.  While that blend didn’t work at all for “The Happening” and not quite as well for “The Visit,” he knows how to use occasional comic relief in this film when it works for Kevin’s “Hedwig” personality.  Although it seems like dissociative identity disorder has been a plot point for several films, “Split” takes this concept in a direction that’s both interesting and layered, with the help of McAvoy’s performance, Shyamalan’s narrative, and the resurgence of the latter’s directorial talents.

The new year has brought us definitive proof that Shyamalan is on the road to a comeback, and if he continues to remain as close to the quality of his earlier films as he does with “Split,” I can’t wait to see what he surprises us with next.

Final Grade: A-   

In Hollywood, No Dream is Too Big for an Aspiring Actress and a Musician

Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone in "La La Land"
Photo Credit: Imdb.com 

The movie musical is one of the most classic of film genres.  There’s something enchanting about seeing actors and actresses sing and dance on screen in the middle of majestic set pieces as the music unfolds.  With films like “Singin’ in the Rain,” “West Side Story,” “My Fair Lady,” and countless others, audiences were swept away in the emotion and energy of these stories.

We may not get many of these old-school types of musicals these days, but we have been given an opportunity to go back to the glory of those movies with director Damien Chazelle’s “La La Land,” a vibrant and lush film about following your dreams and handling the sacrifices that come with doing so.  In a film with two great lead performances, a heartfelt story, gorgeous camerawork, and soaring songs, this is one of the best films of 2016, a movie that must be seen in a theater.

Mia Dolan (Emma Stone) is an aspiring actress working to get noticed in Hollywood, while Sebastian Wilder (Ryan Gosling) is a struggling jazz pianist who dreams of opening his own club.  After their paths intersect and they begin a relationship, Mia and Sebastian will help and encourage each other to make their dreams into a reality.

Emma Stone, in her most luminous role to date, effortlessly displays the determination and frustration of someone’s who’s trying to find success in entertainment.  It’s an emotional performance that draws you in with its heartbreak and hopefulness, and you are instantly hooked when you begin to see her character’s journey to make it on the big screen.  Aside from Stone’s superb portrayal of a true, hardworking dreamer, the film also gives her the opportunity to show off her wonderful singing voice, especially in her character’s passionate audition scene near the film’s end.  With work in this movie, Stone should consider doing another musical here and there.

In regard to Ryan Gosling, what can be said about his performance that hasn’t already been said about Stone’s?  We’ve never seen him in a musical before, and seeing his suave, smooth-talking, and talented pianist, he shows the wide-eyed optimism and resilience of someone who has the deepest appreciation for jazz and desire to preserve the spirit of that music form.  Similar to Stone, he also proves to have quite a good singing voice.  All of this makes his performance fit in seamlessly with this love-letter to the musicals of the mid-20th century.

The screenplay by Chazelle does well in showing what the process is like to audition and strive to achieve your dreams in Hollywood.  It shows the ache of rejection, yet the possibility of finding success, providing the audience with a sincere look at the difficulties one might face when trying to get noticed in the entertainment business.  But in between the hardships that the characters face, Chazelle places many beautiful and lighthearted moments, such as the film’s opening scene (more on that later), Mia and Sebastian’s dance amongst the stars in a planetarium, a dusk-lit walk shared by the two, and Mia’s audition near the film’s end.  All of these scenes immerse us in the experience of being in Hollywood and the magic that happens there.

When it comes to the film’s songs, which were composed by Justin Hurwitz, I urge you not to listen to them until you see the movie, as that will make the experience that much more special as you hear the numbers from the first time.  I’m sure you’ve heard snippets of them in the trailers, but do what you can to avoid listening to them in their entirety before seeing the movie.  All of the songs, such as “Another Day of Sun,” “Someone in the Crowd,” and “Audition (The Fools Who Dream),” are treats for the ears that help make this film one of the most euphoric moviegoing experiences of 2016.

Chazelle is a filmmaker who sheds a lot of focus on music in his movies, having written and directed “Whiplash” and “Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench,” the latter of which was his directorial debut, and writing the thriller, “Grand Piano.”  With “La La Land,” he takes a confident, big-scale leap that pays off, showing that he has an intense love for blending the art forms of music and filmmaking.

This is only Chazelle’s third film as a director, but it’s remarkable to see to how much of a handle he has on the musical numbers, especially in the song-and-dance sequence in the opening scene.  With the talent of many performers and Linus Sandgren’s cinematography, Chazelle is able to film this scene all in a six-minute take.  In doing so, he makes the sequence much more exciting and gives us the feeling of watching the continuous motion of a Broadway musical, and the use of long takes is something we see in many of the song-and-dance sequences.

“La La Land” is an affectionate tribute to the old-school musicals that used to be gifted to movie screens, making this film a cinematic dream come true.

Final grade: A  

In Hard Times, a Boy is Given the Healing Power of Storytelling

Conor O'Malley (Lewis MacDougall) and the Monster (voiced
by Liam Neeson) in "A Monster Calls"
Photo Credit: RottenTomatoes.com

Stories, in general, have the ability to help us understand the world and the experiences we go through.  They teach us timeless lessons and provide us with the opportunity to see ourselves in the characters and feel a connection to them that assists us in coming to terms with our own lives.

This is something that’s explored in director J.A. Bayona’s fantasy-drama, “A Monster Calls,” which is based on the novel by Patrick Ness and inspired by an original idea from the late writer Siobhan Dowd.  With emotional performances and a screenplay and direction that capture the beauty and heartbreak of the source material, Bayona delivers a near seamless transition of the story from page to screen.

Conor O’Malley (Lewis MacDougall) is a young boy living in England who’s trying to cope with his mother’s (Felicity Jones) terminal illness.  One night, an ancient being in the form of a yew tree (voiced by Liam Neeson) visits Conor to tell him three stories that he hopes will teach him how to deal with the misfortunate that has befallen him and face his greatest fear.

MacDougall’s performance is one that perfectly embodies the main character of Ness’ creation from the novel.  In a film that’s a deeply emotional meditation on letting go of someone you love, MacDougall brings this role to realization as someone who must face the possibility of a painful loss.  What makes MacDougall’s character so sympathetic is the degree of truth there is to his performance in how someone would approach this situation, such as when Conor holds onto hope for his mother and has moments of needing to relieve his anger.  There isn’t anything overdramatic about his sadness, but is instead a perfect representation of what it means to be a child in such an unfortunate scenario.

Similar to Neeson’s work in voicing Aslan the lion for the “Chronicles of Narnia” films, he roars with the voice of an ancient entity that has boundless wisdom of the world.  Because of Neeson’s voice echoing regality with every word, it’s hard to imagine any other actor in the role of the Monster.  He’s a character who commands respect as a teller of tales, and you can’t help but give yourself over to Neeson’s vocals as the Monster uses his thought-provoking narratives to help Conor understand what he’s going through.  It’s a majestic voice performance that’s fitting for a character who’s probably as old as the art of storytelling itself, and Neeson is perfect in the role.

The screenplay by Ness remains faithful to the novel in the way he presents the process of grief and the experience of losing someone who’s close to you, and he brings that notion to the page and screen in the most remarkable and poignant of details, all of which makes this a book-to-film adaptation that works.  When it comes down to it, I can't think of anyone other than Ness being able to transmit the language of his novel to his screenplay, given how emotionally rich his writing is. 

While the film is faithful to the book, one of the only big changes the screenplay makes is adding an epilogue that follows the original ending of the novel.  Although this epilogue adds an interesting layer to the story and makes it a little more optimistic, it doesn’t necessarily fit with the darker tone of what came before and feels somewhat tacked on.

Just as the novel is realistic in its depiction of grief and is never over-sentimentalized, Bayona delivers that to the film.  With the heartfelt mother-child bond that MacDougall and Jones exhibit throughout the movie, Bayona is able to explore the unbreakability of a mother-child relationship, as he did in his horror film “The Orphanage” and his disaster-drama “The Impossible.”  Just like in those movies, Bayona explores the strong bonds between parents and children, yet avoids many of the cliches along the way.  Through the different genres of these three films, Bayona is able to find new ways to examine those connections between the characters in each movie.  

This is a loving adaptation from Bayona, and he infuses it with visuals as gorgeous as Jim Kay’s black-and-white illustrations that appeared in Ness’ novel, while also capturing the look of the Monster that Ness envisioned on the page.  When it comes to the sequences of the three tales, Bayona uses a stunning mix of 3D animation and watercolors, transporting us to the events of the stories and immersing us in their complex views of their characters’ actions and how they relate to Conor’s situation.

The melancholy subject matter of the film may make it difficult for some to watch, but it’s a cathartic experience that offers something for both adults and older children and is a movie you’ll be thankful to have seen.  This film shows that when we face certain things in the world that are difficult to comprehend, we have storytelling to help us find some clarity, and in the case of “A Monster Calls,” this is a story told beautifully.

Final Grade: A-