“Luce”

The film “Luce” highlights what a provocative tale and fine acting can do. Luce Edgars is the central mystery. He is a high school stand-out. The soon-to-be valedictorian is also cagey and at times too smart for his own good. Kelvin Harrison, Jr. is marvelous in this role. Both like Lucifer and a lucent angel.

His white , adoptive parents ( Naomi Watts and Tim Roth ) have nurtured the seven-year-old former Eritrean child soldier to succeed ~U.S. middle-class-style. He partakes in athletics, debate, and leadership positions. He is the principal’s “poster child”. When an intuitive and stern teacher, Mrs. Harriet Wilson, ( beautifully rendered by Octavia Spencer) sees an alarmingly violent tone in one of Luce’s assignments, she calls Luce’s parents, but not before she has checked his locker. Illegal fireworks are found, not an AK-47. Still the musical score heightens the tension. Mrs. Wilson has previously found weed in Luce’s friend DeShaun’s locker and he has lost his scholarship. Confrontations ensue that suck the air out of every room your mind may enter.

The history and government teacher is savvy to Luce’s mind games and subtle threats. Spencer does not over act here. She is a marvel of restraint even if her language slips in passionate caring. She tells his parents: “He can’t fuck this up. Talk to him.”

Watts and Roth are superb, too, in their back and forth dance with their son’s guilt. Did he orchestrate the vandalizing of his teacher’s home? We know he set-up his Asian girlfriend to retract her previous statements. There are numbing scenes of manipulation by Luce around shared lockers; Wilson’s mentally ill sister, Rosemary; and a bouquet of flowers. When Spencer’s Harriet poured a stiff drink, I wanted one, too. She is this film’s tragic figure~so like our times.

Naomi Watts’ Amy is perfect as the liberal parent, who wanted to use her infertility to do something praiseworthy. Tim Roth’s Peter delivers his “ missed babyhood and diapers” speech to deepen the psychological fray. Amy does all the wrong things out of fear: “ I won’t risk the trust we built”, she intones. One of the most chill-producing events was to hear how Amy could not forget the pet goldfish that Luce threw across the room like deli-meat. This mom will lie for her child, and ironically his knowing this may save him. The fireworks have been both symbolically and literally hidden!

Kelvin Harrison,Jr. is impressive as Luce. We want him to be perfect, but he isn’t. Has America put him in a box where he can’t breathe? When he says, “ I haven’t been my best self”, we cringe at his understatement. Questions like “ Do you hurt people to prove a point?” surface. In his valedictory speech, Luce tells us that he was renamed because his adoptive mother could not pronounce his African name. In America, resilience is a virtue, too. As a “ war zone pull-out”, is Luce allowed to define himself ? When Luce asks his teacher “ What if you are what I need protected from?, we understand. Is reading and championing Frantz Fanon’s violence scary from a revolutionary stand point?

When Luce tells Mrs. Wilson , “ I’m sorry if I scare you, I just hope you know me better than that”, is he taunting or conforming? Are both equally bad? It will depend on who you think Luce is. What is behind the smile? What is behind the tears? Viewers only know that Luce gets a second chance, and that Mrs. Wilson may not. A stunner of a film.

“The Shape Of Water”

Water makes room for whatever it surrounds, and Guillermo del Toro’s new film “The Shape Of Water” makes room for a lot. Not only does del Toro write and direct, but he also dubs some of his imaginative sea creature’s vocals. A fable, a fairy tale, an allegory, a 1940’s musical with 1960 Cold War spy underpinnings, no matter. It is a delight held together by an unusual romance, beautiful cinematography, and actors who seem to love their roles.

The score under Alexandre Despalt’s direction splashes our psyches with just the right tempos to keep us smiling and cowering in equal measure. Del Toro is the kind of man we all want for a friend. He applauds art, understands sex, is masterful, funny, campy, and frank. He seems as magical as the art he creates. Guillermo’s Mexican Catholic upbringing pushes toward a humanist warmth that encompasses amphibian creatures and cats.

The “Shape Of Water’ begins with water bubbles, sea grass and lab lights, and morphs into floating furniture~mid-century kitchen table and chairs to be exact. Our narrator in a crome-like voice muses: “ If I spoke about it , what would I tell you?” We are hooked.

Our setting is in a coastal city, far away. Baltimore! Our  protagonist, a princess without a voice~ a mute mop girl, Eliza. ( Sally Hawkins)  Our theme is a tale of love and loss transformed.

Eliza lives over a movie theater. She has two close friends, a gay, out-of-work artist, Giles ( Richard Jenkins) , and a loyal work friend, Zelda ( Octavia Spencer). Zelda and Eliza have a Fascist boss (Michael Shannon), who taunts a specimen with a cattle prod and  loses two “tater-tot” fingers while wrestling the scaled creature kept quartered in the lab. Doug Jones ( Jones is an Indianapolis native, who learned to swim at The Riviera Club. He is a graduate of Bishop Chatard and Ball State University. ) plays the teal-marked reptilian rumored to be a god dragged from a South American river. Eliza is empathetically drawn to him and teaches him the words “egg” and “music”. The boss wants to dissect and mimick his two systemed breathing . The Russians are  interested, too.

Eliza has found a soulmate to save. Their encounters are magical. Russian spy and lab scientist infiltrator, Bob Hostetler , aka Dimitri  ( Michael Stuhlbarg ) agrees to help Eliza. The calendar reads Oct. 10th, “Life is but the shipwreck of our plans”. Suspense and fantasy merge and pure campiness holds it all in shimmering amber light. Enjoy stabs at car ownership, Cadillacs , in particular, the art of positive thinking, and Carmen Maranda’s “chicka boom-boom” . This film has it all.

 

“Gifted”

Dueling values, familiar battles, and a seven-year-old math prodigy, who needs what all children need~ to know that they are loved~ are the spokes of this rather run-of-the-mill custody courtroom drama. Abandonment issues aside,”Gifted” deals with using another’s talent for self-aggrandizement. The acting sets this film apart. Marc Webb’s directing is laudable.

The villain grandmother (Lindsay Duncan) is a haughtily clueless intellectual. The script has made her British. Your guess may be the same as mine! Her money gives her power, and now she wants a legacy in academia that her gifted daughter kept from her.

Her grand-daughter Mary, played remarkably by McKenna Grace is the second math prodigy in this very bright, but depression ridden family. Both Mary’s mother and her grandfather have taken their own lives. Blaming the cold, intellectually ambitious matriarch is a tad too simple. Even though,I can see viewers using the “being Evelyn” every time someone acts superior by using a snarky, putdown. Evelyn’s best rhetoricals are thrown at her son:” This god-forsaken mosquito hutch was a conscious choice?”

Uncle Frank (Chris Evans) has been given sole custody of the certainly precocious and often bratty Mary. He is a drop-out philosophy professor who repairs broken boat engines like he has energized his orphaned niece. As a now laid-back Floridian, he attempts to normalize the abnormal. A pet cat named Fred, a loving neighbor and sometimes sitter, outdoorsy activities, a piano, disco all help keep Mary’s head out of the math theorems and quadratic equations. Mary knows she is different. Uncle Frank is trying to preserve her childhood while still home-schooling the young savant in Trachtenberg methodology.

School placement becomes an issue. Jenny Slate plays her classroom teacher. A romance develops with Frank. She becomes a pivotal figure when she sees a one-eyed cat poster and acts accordingly.

As Evelyn focuses on the “The Seven Great Millenium Problems In Mathematics” and salivates over the Nobel Prize, her family falls apart. Somehow it is she who has not thought things through.

My favorite scene takes place in a maternity ward. Frank knows how to teach by showing, not just telling. When Mary stops jumping up and down and asks, ” Can we stay for another?”, there is not a dry eye in the theater.

This is not a great movie, but it is a crowd pleaser. The sound track is horridly overdone, but the lessons broached are worthy of a family hug.

“Hidden Figures”

• Indianapolis native Kevin Halloran should be proud of his executive producer status for a film that will be shown for decades in every middle and high school in the country. As an alum of Holy Name Elementary, Cathedral High School and Indiana University, Halloran should be honored for his skill in seeing this film through to such grand completion. ” Inspirational” is the word that best describes these true stories of three Afro-American women who were integral to the success of the our NASA program. Why it took so long for Americans to laud Katherine Johnson, Mary Jackson, and Dorothy Vaughn is the question for the ages.