MOVIES: Pixar's first foray into TV, a gorgeous film from Italy and more

You may not have noticed this momentous bit of movie news this week. The Chinese film Ne Zha 2 is now the biggest box office hit ever in animated films. It's based on old legends and made most of its money in China, a good bit of it during the lunar New Year holiday. It bumped Pixar's Inside Out 2 out of the top spot, which it had reached less than a year ago. I didn't have access to a preview but it is now playing in Canada and I'll have to catch it. And as a consolation to Pixar, I start today with one of theirs. 

Win or Lose:  4 stars
Parthenope: 4
Morningside: 3 ½
The Monkey: 2 ½
Anacoreta: 3
Eat the Night: 3 

WIN OR LOSE: Toy Story, Inside Out, so many others and now Pixar had produced its first for television. (Well, Disney+ which is almost the same.) It’s an eight-part series that brings along all the studio’s celebrated attributes: lively stories, family and kid friendly themes, respect for children’s emotions and anxieties, all delivered in sharp animation. And one important added element: differing reactions from different people to what’s going on. The message is to accept that there can be various viewpoints. The series doesn’t push that but it’s there by implication and it’s a good idea to promote these days. It comes out in kids’ baseball.

A team of middle schoolers strives to get to a championship game and we see the same events through the perception of players, their coach, the umpire and parents. Episode one (I’ve seen four of the eight) focuses on Rochelle, the coach’s daughter facing the terror of that ball she’s supposed to hit and her father’s pressure and sometimes consolation (“You’ll get one next time”). She imagines a big blob that weighs her down.

We also get the view of a stressed-out mom and a lonely umpire. He’s attracted to a cute teacher in the school where’s he’s a janitor and moaning about his broken life. There’s even an incident there about exam cheating. The coach, voiced by Will Forte, gets the final episode and that should be interesting. Meanwhile, there’s humor, human drama and a whole background filled in showing that there’s more than baseball on everybody’s mind. A couple of Pixar veterans, Carrie Hobson and Michael Yates, created the series. (Two episodes are now up at Disney+; two more debut on coming Wednesdays)      4 out of 5  

  
PARTHENOPE: Sumptuous is a great word for this Italian film. It follows exquisitely-dressed people into ornate buildings, a cathedral and historic neighborhoods in a captivating story about a woman’s progress in life. She, played by a beautiful newcomer, Celeste Della Porta, was given the name of the siren of Greek myth and lives up to it. She studies anthropology at university, impresses her professor  and is advised to write a thesis on the miraculous. Others tell her that her sensuous beauty will get her everything she needs. “You can have it all without even asking” and “Beauty is like a war. It opens doors,” she’s told.

A billionaire hovers in his helicopter and invites her to his villa. A talent scout says she should get into movie acting and sends her to the top acting coach for lessons. She’s malleable. “I don’t know anything but I like everything,” she says. She reads John Cheever and then meets him (played by Gary Oldman). He says “I don’t want to steal one minute of your youth.” 
And so goes her life journey that also gets her to a “scoundrel” of a priest. He’s bombastic and proclaims that God didn’t finish the job: he perfected childhood and then got too tired to deal with older ages. That resonates with Pathenope. Her brother’s suicide haunts her and she rejects young love as useless. There’s a rich melancholy in this film written and directed by Paolo Sorrentino, who won an Academy Award for The Great Beauty (2013). A previous film celebrated his hometown of Naples, but a character here slams it as a city of “whiney and cowardly” lowlifes. Just one of a number of surprises in this winning film. (Theaters in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver, so far) 4 out of 5  

MORNINGSIDE: I used to live in the Toronto suburb of Scarborough many years ago. I even went to West Hill Collegiate, which is on Morningside Drive. So I had a special interest in seeing what this film shows about the place now. The population back then was mostly white; today it’s largely black. It has a reputation for crime and gangs, which director and co-writer Ron Dias wanted to counter. He made this film as a love letter to the place. As he put it to a Toronto blogger: "Everyone thinks Scarborough is such a dark, disturbing, violent place. It's not, and I want to showcase people's life experiences living there."

We meet several locals in and around a community center. A security guard (Alex Mallari Jr) stalled in his attempt to become a cop. A young woman (Fefe Dobson) with a wonderful singing voice but also stage fright. A woman (Joanne Jansen) fired from her job for repeatedly arriving late. She throws out her boyfriend who she catches cheating. The biggest worry in the film is gentrification. Condos are going up and forcing people to move or as a woman on the subway puts it’ “they’re pulling the rug out from under us.”
But as much as Dias wants to keep crime out of the story but he can’t.

Gang members are around (Lovell Adams-Gray and Orville Cummings play two of them). One young woman gets involved with one and when he goes on a tirade insisting he must get his “burner” back, tragedy follows. A guy is shot, the car taking him to a hospital is stopped by a cop who finds him already dead. Ultimately, it’s an abrasive portrait of the community (and probably accurate) but also an appreciation of the resilience of its people. A strong scene at the end affirms that. The film is well acted by the cast, most of whom are black. (In many theaters across the country, including two (naturally) in Scarborough) 3 ½ out of 5

THE MONKEY: Oz Perkins takes a sharp turn from last year’s creepy Longlegs to this not-at-all subtle horror comedy. There’s some musing in it about how to handle grief and the effect of absent fathers but you have to look to find them among the many deaths. They come fast, are often gory and aren’t particularly meaningful. They’re jokes; people laugh. Too serious a subject for that, I’d say, but it seems there’ll be a big audience for it. 
It’s from a short story by Stephen King, the latest of many adaptations of his work, and not a match for the good ones, like The Shining and Stand by Me. It plays like some cheaper horror films as the deaths keep coming after two brothers discover a toy their father left behind.  

It’s a monkey with a malicious grin and the ability to play a drum and throw weapons. Dad tried to pawn it once (pity the broker). Bill and Hal find it and get rid of it after the unexplained deaths start. (Mom, played by Tatiana Maslany, gets a gruesome one).  But years later, grown up and apart, both now played by Theo James, they notice the deaths have started up again.  
Hal now has a son and, like his own father, is remote from him. Not much time for deeper themes though, except this: one brother has become obsessed with death and the other with life, basically protecting his son by staying remote, if that makes any sense. The brothers come together to try and eliminate the monkey forever. The film is short, visually sharp and well-directed, by Perkins in Vancouver, where I think he now lives. Elijah Wood has a small role because he happened to be in town at the time of filming. (In theaters) 2 ½ out of 5  

ANACORETA:  Young filmmakers traipse off into the sticks to make a horror movie. There’s been a trio of films with that plot recently and this has a vibe similar to a long-ago classic, The Blair Witch Project. I won’t compare because I was annoyed, not entertained, by that film. This one gives us what seems like an authentic view of how low-budget filmmaking works. There’s a director pushing his vision, willing co-horts and friends in the cast and a small crew to catch the action. The fact that it’s a horror film is pretty usual, that it’s meant to be experimental is a bit of a novelty and can lead to misunderstandings and even acrimony. All that plays out here.

Jeremy Schuetze plays the director, and in low-budget commonality is also the actual director and co-writer. The group heads to his late-grandfather’s house near Squamish, north of Vancouver where he tries to create the right mood. His first move is to put a dead black cat in the freezer. His colleagues Antonia (Antonia Thomas), Matt (Matt Visser) and Jess (Jess Stanley) are more angry than horrified. Later one starts sleep walking, one has a seizure, a mysterious truck is seen. More mood setting-by the director? Suspicions swell. 
The grandfather, a novelist, left a manuscript that tells of a nearby site called Afterglow, from where nobody can return. Should they find it? Also ghosts are known to appear at dinnertime and drag people down to hell. It’s like telling stories around a campfire. Eerie to hear, wisely staying away from anything gross but with walks in the dark woods chilling at times. Safely. (Vailable VOD and digitally) 3 out of 5 

EAT THE NIGHT: On-line gaming is not a waste of time. It’s a way be part of a community. A number of films recently have said that and this one, from France, repeats it. A sister and brother duo, Appoline (or Apo) and Pablo, play the game Darknoon with its immersive world and vistas. She is particularly engrossed and calls it “my favorite place in the world.”

Her avatar in the game has big breasts and spikes; Pablo’s carries a sabre. It’s an escape from their real life. They’re living alone, no parents; she’s a schoolgirl; he rides a motorcycle and sells drugs. The game feeds their fantasies about who they are. Then an on-screen alert appears. The game will be shut down in about a month, on winter solstice. She’s horrified. He’s got even bigger worries. A big drug dealer is after him for encroaching on his territory. Thugs beat him up and when he gets a bodyguard more thugs set out to kill him. The bodyguard was a stranger who helped clean him up after a beating. He moves in; the two have sex and wait for the attackers. It gets violent and becomes a fine thriller with two environments—on line and real life—co-existing and supporting in each other. The actors are new to me, Lila Gueneau as Apo, Théo Cholbi as Pablo and Erwan Kepoa Falé as the defender. The film, though, is cool. (Toronto only, so far) 3 out of 5