Movie Review: "Ricki And The Flash"

"Ricki And The Flash": B+.  I have always felt that movies about sports and movies about musicians generally suffer from similar flaws.  Sports movies tend to have weak on-the-field action shots.  An example is Hoosiers from 1986, a highly acclaimed film in almost all respects save for the fact that the basketball scenes are ridiculously fake.  The players look more like they're going through a choreography than actually playing hoops.  The football action in 1993's Rudy appears more like an intra-mural powder puff scrum.  Likewise, music films need good soundtracks, but the weaker stories are those where you might hear the same song repeatedly, or sub-minute snippets of a few other songs purportedly played by the actors.  I suspect reconciling the payment of expensive royalties with the movie's budget has a lot to do with it. Eddie And The Cruisers from 1983 is a film which received lukewarm reviews.  The story is about a band but, ironically, the music is a weakness in most critics' views.

Happily, Ricki And The Flash does not suffer that defect, and it's one of the reasons I enjoyed it so much.  One could easily make the argument that the music is the best part of the film.  I found myself foot-tapping throughout.  Meryl Streep is the title character, the leader of, and only woman in, a five person band, the Flash.  They're the house band at a blue collar bar in Tarzana, California, playing old school rock covers.  The role of lead guitarist Greg is rendered nicely by Rick Springfield who, in real life, is a rocker who has enjoyed a long career as a performer.  Ricki is dirt poor, living in a one star motel but fulfilling her dream of being a "rock star," at least in her eyes.  She is not delusional, but she enjoys what she's doing and that's all that counts.  She's living the life she has always wanted to live.

That enjoyment is disrupted when she receives a phone call from her ex-husband, Pete (smooth Kevin Kline), the father of her three adult children who all live in Indianapolis.  Their daughter Julie (Mamie Gummer, Streep's real life daughter) is distraught and depressed because her husband is leaving her for another woman.  At the behest of Pete, Ricki uses her entire meager savings for plane fare to Indy.  Upon Ricki's arrival at Pete's house, Julie storms down the stairs to the kitchen and greets her mother with this question: "Do you always dress like a hooker from Night Court?" Yes, the middle aged Ricki's appearance does resemble that of a poor man's Joan Jett.

At this point we get filled in on Ricki's history.  It is she who walked out on her family when her kids were in grade school, so that she could pursue rock stardom in LA.  Her real name is Linda.  She's making so little money at her music gigs that she desperately needs her day job as a cashier at Whole Foods, where her twenty-something male boss is dissatisfied with her conversations with the patrons who come through her line.  "You need to enhance your customer's experience."

Meanwhile, Pete has done extremely well for himself and lives in a sprawling house in an upper-crust neighborhood.  After Ricki walked out on Pete and the kids twenty years ago, he soon remarried.  His second wife, Maureen (Audra McDonald), is everything Ricki is not: classy, dignified, refined, elegant and educated.  And unlike Ricki, she is a cook extraordinaire.  It is Maureen who has raised the kids, while Ricki found little time from two thousand miles away to stay even tangentially involved in her kids' lives.

On the second night of Ricki's return, Pete unwisely decides to host a family dinner at a white tablecloth restaurant.  The mercurial Julie will be there, along with her gay brother and her engaged brother and his fiancé.  As they are seated in the center of the elegant room, you know this is a bad idea, and things will not go well.  It is fun to watch the uneasiness at the table, which only gets worse when the engaged brother and his fiancé make attempts to rationalize Riki's omission from the invited wedding guests list.

The movie was written by Diablo Cody, who has won an Academy Award, Best Original Screenplay for 2007's Juno.  The Ricki script has two particularly well-written dialogue scenes.  The first is a reserved showdown between Maureen, who has just returned from Seattle to tend to her ailing father, and Ricki, who the day before convinced Julie to skip her much-needed therapy session so the two could hang out at the salon.  It is noteworthy and laudable for McDonald that the viewer can't tell which of the two actresses on the screen is appearing in her first major motion picture and which is a veteran actress who has been nominated for nineteen (!) Oscars, more than any actor or actress in film history.

The second scene with especially good dialogue is a short one between Ricki and her lead guitarist, Greg.  He is attempting to convince Ricki to eat some humble pie and accept a last-minute invitation to her son's wedding, even though she feels unloved by her family.  "Your kids' job is not to love you.  But it is your job to love them."  Springfield may be a rocker, but he's a convincing actor too.

From the opening barroom song, Tom Petty's American Girl, to the last scene, Ricki And The Flash provides what I'm most interested in when I plop down in my theater chair, viz., entertainment.  Kudos to the actors for playing their own instruments on ten songs, and doing their own vocals. 

Easy Ev

Three months after graduating from college in 1969, I was teaching the twenty-seven member sixth grade class at Most Holy Trinity School.  I was still twenty-one years old, and my students were, for the most part, eleven.  That group has always held a special place in my heart because they were my first class.  I recently found out the sad news that one of "my kids," Evan Bower, died unexpectedly at age 57 on July 31.  Evan lived most of his adult life in Colorado with his wife and son.  He worked as a trouble shooter for a computer company, which sent him on projects all over the country.  To my knowledge, Evan is the only student from that cherished class to have passed away.

A celebration of Evan's life was held two weekends ago at the Gearty-Delmore funeral chapel.  The "ceremony" was hosted by Evan's twin, Kevin, who was also in that sixth grade class.  Most of Evan's five siblings spoke, recalling incidents especially from their young lives growing up together on France Avenue in St. Louis Park.  The stories were lighthearted and heartfelt, and laughter filled the small room several times.  Many of the siblings affectionately referred to their departed brother as "Easy Ev," a fitting nickname given his laid back personality.  After the brothers and sisters spoke, Kevin invited any of those present to share a story or a memory about Evan.  One person, who I believe was their neighbor, spoke briefly and haltingly.  Afterwards, notwithstanding Kevin's repeated invitation, it did not appear that anyone else was going to step forward.

I did not go to the service intending to speak, but I did have a story in mind which I thought folks might enjoy hearing.  After waiting for what seemed like thirty or forty seconds, I put up my paw, Kevin smiled and told me I had the floor.  This is the little story I told.

***

I was Evan and Kevin's sixth grade teacher during the 1969-70 school year.  Having just finished college, I was only ten years older than my students and this was my first class.  The principal who hired me, Sister Ruth, thought a first year teacher like me could use some advice, so she offered these two recommendations before the first day of school.  First, establish your rules from Day One, and be strict in enforcing them.  Then, as the school year goes by, if your good judgment tells you that you can relax the rules a little, go ahead and do so incrementally.  But starting out leniently, thinking you can get tougher if need be, is not a good strategy.

Her second pearl of wisdom was this: Don't play favorites.  It is a long school year and you will have twenty-seven students.  On most days during the course of the year there will be something that either happens or doesn't happen which, due to human nature, will make you want to treat certain students either more favorably or less favorably than most of their classmates.  That is a bad policy, and don't think the kids won't notice.  You must deal with all of your students even-handedly, regardless of their academic achievement, behavior, attitude, or what-have-you.

Sister Ruth's advice -- warnings might be a better word -- made perfect sense to me, and I did my best to adhere to them.  My job was to get these kids ready for junior high.  I knew a rookie teacher would not have all the answers, so I welcomed this guidance from my veteran principal.

It was common in those days for a lot of the kids to hang around after school and have, more or less, a bull session right there in the classroom.  One of the hot topics that fall and winter was the phenomenal season the Minnesota Vikings were having.  The Vikes ended the regular season with a record of 12-2, and their first playoff game was scheduled to be played in old Metropolitan Stadium, with a seating capacity of only 47,900.  It would be the first time in their young history they'd ever hosted a playoff game.  The opponent would be the Los Angeles Rams, and many fans were eager to see how those softies from tropical southern California would fare in the brutal cold of Minnesota.  The home games were not televised locally due to the seventy-five mile radius blackout rule imposed by the NFL.  The demand for tickets was so high that the team could easily have sold out a stadium nearly twice the size of The Met.

On the second-to-last school day before Christmas vacation, and a few days before that playoff game, Evan and Kevin were in a large group congregated around my desk after school, and the discussion turned to Christmas presents.  The kids were telling me what they bought for their family members, and what they hoped to receive.  The twins told me that their father worked for Triple A, and if I wanted anything from there they could get it for me as a present.  I figured they were talking about something like a state highway map, a key chain, or perhaps a window decal.  I jokingly replied, "Okay, how 'bout two tickets on the fifty for the Rams game?"  Everyone laughed and the gabfest continued.

The next morning I arrived in my classroom about fifteen minutes before the bell.  Eight or nine students, including the Bower boys, were already there.  On top of my desk was a business envelope with the Triple A logo in the corner.  In the middle of the envelope the following was handwritten: "Mister P, 2 on the 50."  It wasn't until I opened the envelope and found two fifty yard line seats to the big game that I realized the writing on the envelope was not a hoax.  There they were, two playoff tickets that thousands of die hard Vikings fans would have given anything to possess.  I was astonished and flabbergasted.  Evan and Kevin had smiles from ear to ear, as did I.

Class resumed two weeks later.  During that respite I thought about those two guiding principles Sister Ruth had given me.  I concluded that it was going to be pretty tough for me to comply with her second warning for the remainder of the school year.      

Movie Review: "Mad Max: Fury Road"

Second verse, 
Same as the first

-  I'm Henry The VIII, I Am
   Herman's Hermits (1965)

"Mad Max: Fury Road": B.  Mad Max: Fury Road is the fourth film in the Mad Max series, the franchise which boosted Mel Gibson to international star status.  This time, thanks to more than a decade of production postponements,  Mel has given way to Tom Hardy to play the title character, Max Rockatansky.  Getting at least equal time on the screen is Charlize Theron, who takes on the role of Imperator Furiosa.  Furiosa is a kick-butt warrior who more than holds her own against all comers.  When she dukes it out with a male foe, her ability to send him flying with a right uppercut comes as no surprise.

If you were to place plot, acting, cinematography and stunts in order of their importance as attributes of this film, those four categories would be listed exactly inversely.  The plot, such as it is (or isn't), makes little difference.  This is a film where we tip our collective hat in awe of the action sequences, which occur virtually nonstop for two hours against the backdrop of a magnificent, strangely beautiful post-apocalyptic desert.  At times it was hard to decipher whether the movie was shot in color or black and white.  The desert contains sparse vegetation, the sky is almost never blue, and the expansive sands melt into the horizon with a grayish hue.  The film was shot mostly in the southwestern African nation of Namibia.

When the story opens, Max is being held prisoner by a madman, Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne), who is a tyrant showing little mercy over his water-deprived subjects.  He teases them by releasing a few gallons of water from the mountain storage tanks, then is amused at how they nearly stampede over one another in a vain attempt to fill their buckets before he shuts down the taps.  Meanwhile, he has sent Furiosa on a trip over the desert to retrieve more water and gas from Gas City.  Unbeknownst to Joe, Furiosa has granted refuge to Joe's five "wives," one of whom is preggers.  They are hidden in Furiosa's battle wagon, and naturally, all five are baberahams, as is Furiosa in an athletic/masculine sort of way.  Before she gets half way to Gas City, Furiosa steers her vehicle hard left off course.   Destination: The Green Place, the homeland of the six women.  As soon as Joe gets wind of what's happening, i.e., desertion by Furiosa and her perceived kidnapping of the concubines, the chase is on.  Max, who is fully chained and fitted with an iron face mask, is brought along against his will by Joe as a human blood supply.  Too bad for Max that he's a universal donor!

As one of the initial battles rages, Max escapes and reluctantly joins forces with Furiosa as they continue down Fury Road in the battle wagon, heading for The Green Place.  A little later, one of Joe's soldiers, Nux (Nicholas Hoult), ends up in Furiosa's wagon as well.  Nux is something of a village idiot, not sure whose side he's on.  He is comforted and consoled by the red haired wife, Capable, played by Riley Keough who in real life is the eldest grandchild of Elvis and Priscilla Presley.  Their pairing is the only relationship remotely approaching a love connection

The evil pursuers catch up to Furiosa's battle wagon from time to time, but are never quite able to conquer her or her comrades.  The staging of the close range combat is amazing.  It's all done while traveling at very high speed across the sands.  Some characters seem to have nine lives, as combatants I thought sustained a fatal blow reappear in the next sequence.  Enemies are able to balance with ease standing atop a careening battle wagon.  Some are dozens of feet above the ground in what appear to be super flexible pole vault apparatus attached to high speed war machines.  Different people in Furiosa's group get behind the wheel of the wagon, but they don't stay long in the driver's seat.  While the vehicle is in motion they step out on a running board or the hood just as calmly as if they were getting off a bus,and someone else takes over the driving duties.  My favorite touch in all this is the soldier, hitched to the rear of one of Joe's trucks, who is playing a double-neck electric guitar belting out a metal tune, somewhat analogous to a bugler exhorting the cavalry.

What is shown doesn't always make sense.  For example, in one scene a rock formation resembling Utah's famous arches is blown up to prevent Joe's army from catching up.  But several scenes later, we see the same passageway through the mountains, and the formation is still intact.  Maybe director George Miller just wants to see if we're paying attention.

A recent article in Rolling Stone Magazine tabbed Fury Road as the best movie to be released so far in 2015.  If post-apocalypse action flicks is your bag, you just might agree.  Incidentally, I can't tip you off on the connection between the lyric from the Herman's Hermits song I chose to introduce this post and the story itself, as to do so would constitute a spoiler.  But, you'll understand the appropriateness of the choice near the beginning of the movie's final act.  

Suburban Exploring

In recent weeks there have been a number of local stories about people getting seriously injured, or even killed, inside abandoned mills, silos, grain elevators and deserted buildings.  These places are not in the boondocks; they are within the city limits of Minneapolis.  One University of Minnesota sophomore, twenty year old Emily Roland, was killed on June 6 when she fell thirty feet inside the Bunge grain elevator, a boarded up facility which has stood abandoned near campus since 2003.  She was with two other friends late at night when tragedy struck.  That was not their first such excursion, some of which were posted on Instagram accounts.  Six days ago, the city of Minneapolis decided to demolish the Fruen Mill near Theodore Wirth Park as a safety precaution, because the uninhabited structure was attracting not just vagrants and hobos, but curiosity seekers too.

Other sites frequented by these adventurers include underground tunnels, sewer systems, culverts and industrial complexes.  The name attached to the practice of rooting around in these structures is "urban exploring."  Prior to the past twelve month period, I had never heard that term.  It seems akin to box car jumping.  There is a combination of at least two things in play here, the rush of trespassing and a sense of taking the path less traveled.  What is more exciting, being among a bunch of tourists taking an elevator to the observation deck of a downtown skyscraper, or breaking into a dark spooky warehouse in the middle of the night?  Reading these sad stories brought back some memories.

In my youth I was an urban explorer, or more accurately, a suburban explorer.  I was introduced to this craziness by a classmate of mine, Charles Poorhus.  We were both seventh graders at St. Joe's in Libertyville, a town of 6,600 thirty-five miles north of Chicago (hence, the "suburban" modifier).  I was not really a friend of Chuck, although after being under the thumb of the Sisters Of Mercy ever since first grade, I secretly admired some of the "bad boys" like him in my class.  If compliance with the good sisters' rules was too inconvenient for them, they simply blew them off with total disregard.  Somehow those guys managed to avoid expulsion and got to live mischievously for another day.  Of course, unlike me they probably did not have parents whose code of conduct for their children mirrored that of the nuns.

My family lived on Cook Avenue, four blocks west of the main drag, Milwaukee Avenue.  The Pook did her grocery shopping at Jewel, also on Cook but a block east of Milwaukee.  One day while I was assisting my mother at Jewel, I ran into Chuck.  I was surprised to see him in there.  He seemed more like a dumpster diver than a patron of a civilized supermarket.  He had that Dead End Kids aura about him. Chuck pointed across the street over to Coy Lumber and asked me if I'd ever been over there.  Up until that point, I may not have even realized there was, in fact, a lumber yard across from Jewel.  The Marquis, from whom I inherited my complete absence of handyman talent, would have had no reason ever to set foot on Coy's property, and therefore neither had I.  (My dad did, however, make a trip or two to Schanck's Hardware Store each year!)  After replying "no" to Chuck, he did an impressive sales job on me, telling me Coy's was the best kept secret in Libertyville, with mysterious treasures yet to be discovered and wondrous spectacles to behold.  Trap doors, hidden rooms, fake walls, concealed tunnels.  It sounded too good to be true, but my curiosity was piqued to the point where I needed to find out what I'd been missing.  There was also a factor of getting to behave in a manner much more daring than I would ever have been willing to try in a school or household setting.  We agreed to meet the next evening after dinner so he could show me around.

 

I must admit that, from the perspective of this twelve year old, the results came pretty close to, though short of, matching Chuck's hype.

 

I didn't dream of requesting permission from my folks to go exploring the lumber yard.  There's no question what their answer would have been.  I never even told them when I'd play flashlight tag or hide-and-go-seek at Lakeside Cemetery, a mere quarter mile from our house.  In retrospect, partaking in such frivolity on burial grounds was in poor taste on my part.  But at least the cemetery was public property, while Coy's was not.

 

The main building on the lumber yard was like something out of a Stephen King novel.  A shadowy, creeky and rickety old wooden structure, it seemed out of place in a pleasant burg like Libertyville.  The eerily quiet premises was the antithesis of bustling Milwaukee Avenue, only a block away with cars and pedestrians making their way through Libertyville's classic downtown.  Coy's was not abandoned, but apparently business was not brisk enough to run more than one shift.  By 5:00 p.m. there was nobody left on site, not even a watchman.  Other than a yellow light above the main entryway, the ominous place was dark inside and out. Gaining access through a rear garage door was a piece of cake.

 

Twilight came fast, and we had one flashlight between the two of us.  Our mission was, quite simply, to see what we could see.  I had just finished reading The Tower Treasure, the first in the famous Hardy Boys mystery series.  In contrast to those sleuths, Chuck and I had no crime to investigate -- in fact, we were the ones breaking the law by trespassing -- but my imagination got carried away thinking he and I were Frank and Joe Hardy!

 

We did not discover anything out of the ordinary.  No secret passageways, ghosts or skeletons.  There were stacks of wood everywhere, sharp dangerous tools and equipment in every corner, and piles of unswept sawdust.  We could hear invisible four legged critters scampering behind the boxes and barrels.  The place was giving me the creeps within minutes of our arrival.  When we climbed two sets of stairs to the loft I was afraid the wooden slats would give way.  Adding to my anxiety was my distrust of Chuck.  Why hadn't I thought of that earlier?  I figured if trouble arose, either by injury or upon being found out, he would bail on the theory of "every man for himself."  Thankfully my theory never got tested.

 

The lumber yard also included several out buildings which, ironically, were locked.  It struck me as weird that they would padlock sheds and yet not secure the main building.  Additionally there were a number of what I'd call three-sided huts, cheaply built relatively tall rectangular structures which, although covered by a roof, were missing a fourth exterior wall.  My guess was that the company used those huts to store large pieces which would not fit in the main building.  We checked out all of them.  Most fascinating to me was the Milwaukee Road rail spur, terminating right in the middle of the yard, on which a half dozen flat bed cars and box cars were parked.  I had always wanted to see the inside of a boxcar; this was my chance.  Most of them were empty, but it was cool nonetheless.

 

After an hour we mutually determined that the outing was a rousing success.  We had not been arrested, nor had we tripped any alarms or accidentally amputated any limbs.  We made a pact not to tell anybody about our escapade.  I kept my end of that bargain, but as I wrote above, my faith in Chuck was shaky, so I could not be sure whether he would blab.  But as I considered what we'd done, the following thought occurred to me:  What good is having a unique and exhilarating experience like that if you have to keep it to yourself?  Good thing I have this blog.  The truth now comes out after hibernating for fifty-five years.

 

A month or two after our memorable night, Chuck approached me to suggest another visit to Coy's.  He had been back there in the interim, and once again made it sound like our next visit to the forbidden sanctuary would be more fun than a day trip to Chicago's Riverview Amusement Park.  I politely turned him down.  I figured we'd gotten away with one caper but did not want to press my luck. He was left to explore Shangri La on his own.

Movie Review: "About Elly"

"About Elly": A-.  When choosing whether to fork over the price of admission, most American movie goers are much more likely to pay greater attention to the stars of a given film than the film's director.  Only a handful of directors (e.g., Steven Spielberg, Woody Allen, Quentin Tarantino, the Coen brothers) have a devoted following large enough to make a box office difference on their names alone.  Add Asghar Farhadi, the esteemed Iranian director of About Elly, to that list.  When I learned that Farhadi's latest US release was playing in Uptown, I put it on my short must-see list.  This decision was based mostly on my thorough enjoyment of his last film to play a long run in Minnesota, A Separation (reviewed here February 25, 2012; A-).

Farhadi is brilliant at taking common everyday situations and turning them into suspenseful dramatic tales.  In A Separation, things go awry when a woman who's been hired to look after an elderly homebound man momentarily leaves her post.  In About Elly, a similar lapse of duty, this one involving children playing in or near the ocean, creates chaos.  The ensuing reaction of the film's characters, individually and collectively, is very real.  One can imagine himself saying the same things, asking the same questions and going through the same emotions as the people in the film.  There is nothing fabricated or dishonest about the script, and the actors are astonishingly convincing.  Panic, fabrications, scheming, white lies, moral questions, potentially misplaced honor; they all come into play as the plot thickens.  So do red herrings; what's up with the coughing women?

The setup for the tale is a weekend outing by a group of eight adults who have a connection to a law school in Iran's capital, Tehran.  Two of the couples are parents, and have brought along their three children.  When they arrive at their destination after a long drive from the city, they are advised that the villa they'd reserved is not available because its owner has unexpectedly returned and is using the place himself.  They are offered what is described as a less-desirable accommodation on the beach of the Caspian Sea.  Although this alternative building has not been cleaned and has no cell phone or internet connection, the group decides that staying there is preferable to canceling their plans altogether.  But as the manager leaves she cautions them, "Be sure to lock the door at night."

We quickly find out that three of the couples, including Sepideh (Golshifteh Farahani) and her husband, are married.  The fourth male, Ahmad (Shahab Hosseini), is a newly divorced friend who is visiting from Germany.  The fourth female, Elly (Taraneh Alidoosti), is the single kindergarten teacher of one of the kids and has been invited by Sepideh.  As the adults are cleaning up the place, there is a lot of playful banter, especially among the males who are prompting Ahmad to hit on Elly.  Elly is friendly, but on the bashful side.  She seems alone in her thoughts and sometimes strays from the group, heading into the kitchen or out on the front porch.  Whether she is receptive to the idea of hooking up with Ahmad is hard to gauge.

One of the many interesting aspects about this story is that the muslim religion influences the action.  The women are, for the most part, respected by the men, yet the difference in power between husbands and wives within the respective families is clear.  Also, when the group first arrives at the rental establishment, Sepideh tells the manager that Ahmad and Elly are newlyweds.  This lie is necessary because religion and culture would not tolerate two unmarried people of the opposite sex sharing living quarters.

The poster advertising this film is noteworthy for two reasons.  First, as a public service announcement, I will advise you that the character whose picture dominates the poster is not Elly; it is Sepideh.  I point this out because initially I had a hard time distinguishing between those two characters, and the fact that the poster featured a female other than the title character contributed to my confusion.  Eventually I identified them by the solid colors of their omnipresent scarves -- Elly reddish brown, Sepideh green.  That worked until the next day when those two women wore different color scarves.  I should have known, especially being married to Momma Cuan, that a woman would travel with more than one scarf!

Second, and more importantly, one of the two review quotes appearing on the poster reads, "The less you know in advance, the better."  I am going to heed that advice by film critic David Bordwell, and therefore it's up to you to check out how the story unfolds.  I highly recommend doing so.

As she was sucking down a delicious Insight Saison de Blanc at Libertine following the movie, Momma Cuan made a valid point which bears repeating.  She opined that when you watch a movie with talented but unfamiliar foreign actors, it is easier to forget that they are, in fact acting.  The only familiarity we have with them is that they are one with their corresponding characters.  As we like to say on ND Nation, "Agreeance."  The acting in About Elly is nothing less than phenomenal. 

Movie Review: "Me And Earl And The Dying Girl"

"Me And Earl And The Dying Girl": B.  I had no intention of seeing Me And Earl And The Dying Girl until I received an e-mail from my pen pal, Colin Covert, praising the film as "a wonderful movie just crammed with talent and creative energy."  Covert is the film critic for the Star Tribune, so yes, I am name-dropping a little bit here.  I refer to him as "my pen pal" because he is one of the few Strib journalists who is kind enough to respond to my e-mails.  In fact, he always responds.  I had written to him asking if he'd seen Testament Of Youth (reviewed here June 30, 2015; B), for which the Strib had used a review by New York Times critic Stephen Holden.  It turns out Covert had not seen that picture, and in closing steered me to Me And Earl.

The story is about three high school friends, Greg (Thomas Mann), Earl (Ronald Cyler II) and Rachel (Olivia Cooke), classmates at a Pittsburgh high school.  The two guys are best buds who share movie-making as a hobby.  The titles of their short, low budget films are take-offs on familiar sayings, slogans and movie titles such as My Dinner With Andre The Giant, Senior Citizen Kane and Anatomy Of A Burger.  Greg and Rachel have known each other since grade school, but have traveled in different circles within their high school as they grew older.  It isn't until Greg's mother (Connie Britton of TV's Friday Night Lights fame) informs him of Rachel's cancer condition that he and Rachel reconnect, albeit mutually reluctantly.  He is brutally honest when, without prompting, he reveals to Rachel that his mother is the one who suggested he pay her a home visit.  Rachel does not take offense, instead appreciating such candor. She is bemused by his simple charm.  More visits ensue.  Many of the movie's scenes occur in her spacious bedroom, where she has a collection of offbeat pillows and, of all things, scissors.

Greg's initial plan for surviving senior year was to be cordial to each of the wide varieties of cliques and other social groups, while simultaneously avoiding membership.  His approach is to be an acquaintance to all but not close friends with any, except for Earl.  But the more he talks with Rachel, the harder it is to stay aloof.  Little by little he puts his friendship with her on higher priority levels, even to the point of starting on a movie project with Earl which is tailor made for Rachel.  Her disease is no longer the impetus for his frequent visits.

Greg was never a stellar student, settling for average grades.  Now that he's a senior his mother insists he's got to get serious about college plans.  She has him carting around an eight hundred page college guide, and even suggests Princeton as a school to which he should apply.  Clearly she is clueless, but at least he has in his life a history teacher, Mr. McCarthy (Jon Bernthal), who can relate to kids and offer sage advice from time to time.  Greg and Earl make themselves at home in McCarthy's office, even when the teacher is elsewhere.  Unfortunately, the more time Greg devotes to Rachel, the less he focuses on his already precarious schoolwork. 

 

Me And Earl, told in a first person narrative from Greg's perspective, is a coming-of-age story.  Even though the time span is a single school year, it reminds me a lot of 2009's 500 Days Of Summer, to which I gave a pre-blog rating of B+ and is likewise told from the male's perspective.  Coincidentally, both movies use the device of compartmentalizing sections of the story with on-screen chapter titles. 

 

Me And Earl is a true-to-life portrayal of what it's like to be a high schooler who is so normal as to be almost hidden in plain sight; not a jock, a climber, a party animal, a scholar, a stoner or a trouble maker.  Just an average joe with a couple of close friends who, despite his plans for an uneventful senior year, instead experiences one which will stay with him a long time.    

Driving Miss Linda

Last Friday the news of Egyptian actor Omar Sharif's death in Cairo saddened movie buffs around the world.  Sharif was an international star whose film career extended almost right up to his passing from a heart attack at age eighty-three.  His most famous role was that of the title character in the 1965 epic of the Russian Revolution, Doctor Zhivago (scanned April 1, 2012; B+), for which he won a Golden Globe Award.  But the movie I personally associate more with Sharif is 1962's Lawrence Of Arabia, for which he also won a Golden Globe and a nomination for an Academy Award.  I remember it well because is was the destination for my first real date.

In the winter of 1962-63 I was a fifteen year old sophomore at Assumption High in Davenport, Iowa.  Although I had been the so-called "boyfriend" of several girls in grade school and the first year and a half at Assumption --  mostly girls I barely knew, artificial connections manufactured by female classmates with too much time on their hands -- I had never really gone on a date.  By "date" I mean picking a girl up, taking her somewhere (not just hanging out), and then bringing her back to her house.  Once I became fifteen, I thought it was about time, maybe even long overdue.  The two biggest obstacles to executing my plan were building the courage to ask someone out, and dealing with the fact that I was under sixteen and therefore without a driver's license.  Since I figured there was a better-than-even chance I might not ever build up the courage to overcome the first obstacle until I was, say, seventeen, I decided not to worry about the car issue.  By the time I'd be seventeen, I'd have my own wheels!

 

Surprisingly, the first hurdle was overcome with relative ease.  As I've written before (in my August 25, 2012 post), Assumption was not co-ed, so the only high school girls I knew very well were my former classmates from Our Lady Of Lourdes Grade School in Bettendorf, Iowa.  I chose Linda Roemer as the "target" because she met my three criteria: pretty (call me "shallow" if you must), talkative (to complement my reticence) and a Lourdes alum.  In a weak moment, she said yes.  It's a good thing she said yes because my universe of potential candidates was countable on one hand, and I may not have ever continued the quest beyond a rejection from Linda.

 

Now it was time for figuring out transportation.  I did not know any Assumption upperclassmen (read: drivers) well enough to propose a double date, so I had to ask the one person I knew would oblige: The Marquis.

 

As I correctly predicted, Pook had way more questions about my upcoming date than did The Marquis.  How do you know Linda?  What is she like?  How did you go about asking her?  Where does she live?  What are you going to do?  Do you know her parents?  Etc.  The Marquis, on the other hand, had only one very practical question.  Do you want to sit in the back seat with Linda, or would you prefer that you both sit in the front with me?  Better to figure this out now instead of experiencing an awkward hesitation later.

 

I only remember my dad owning one kind of car, a station wagon for hauling National cash registers.  Nothing impresses a girl more than pulling up in a big ol' station wagon with a couple of clunky registers in the far back.  In any event, it was my feeling that it would seem more like a date if Linda and I sat in the back (i.e., between the front seat and the registers) than crammed in the front with the old man.

 

Time for an aside:  The Marquis gave me some advice which I deemed to be good and therefore attempted to follow.  He said, if you want to ask a girl out, do so several days, maybe even a week, before the planned outing.  If you wait until the last minute, you give the impression that she was not the first girl you had in mind for that evening, not to mention that the longer you wait the greater the chance that she will have made other plans.  The main downside for me was that, for the entire week leading up to the big Saturday night with Linda, it was hard for me to concentrate on anything else, like classes and studying.  The Nerves Meter was in the red zone throughout.

 

The Roemers lived in Bettendorf, as did my family.  My dad pulled in their driveway, and I went to the door to get Linda and to meet her parents for the first time.  I stepped into the living room and, although both of her folks were friendly, they were sizing me up with a list of questions that would have made Pook's list look like an abridged Readers' Digest version.  (In case you are wondering, no, they did not ask me to present a personal financial statement!)  At some point during the multi-minute inquisition, Linda sneaked out and went to the station wagon.  If you are guessing that she sat in the front seat with The Marquis, you would be correct.  So much for that part of my plans!

 

The seating arrangement actually turned out to be fine because my dad, with his Irish wit, could keep just about any conversation rolling.  We needed it to keep rolling because we were headed for Illinois.  "Why Illinois?" you might ask.  Well because the movie I chose for the date was the one everybody was buzzing about, Lawrence Of Arabia, and the only Quad Cities venue where that film was playing was the Rocket Theater in Rock Island, Illinois.  For those of you who are not Geography Bee participants, the Quad Cities are comprised of Davenport and Bettendorf, separated from Moline, Illinois and Rock Island by the Mississippi River.

 

Most guys, when they are selecting an activity for their first date with a girl, will choose something which will enable them to get to know each other better.  For example, going bowling, to a sporting event or out to dinner would afford opportunities for talking and asking each other questions.  Most would avoid movies altogether, because they obviously do not lend themselves to chit chat.  Not me.  Instead of doing the smart thing, I chose not only to go to a movie, but to go to one with a running time exceeding three and a half hours!  Other than a mumble here and there, Linda and I sat in silence for over three and a half hours (two hundred twenty-seven minutes, to be exact).  Well, at least it lessens the prospects of saying something stupid!

 

When the closing credits were rolling, I asked Linda, "Do you think this is a double feature?"  I had been working on that joke for the past two hundred twenty-seven minutes.

 

I'm not sure if she thought that was funny, because her reply was, "His eyes were so blue!"  She was referring not to Sharif, who had a supporting role, but to lead actor Peter O'Toole, whose eyes were, indeed, a deep, almost mesmerizing blue.

 

We had roughly twenty minutes until The Marquis was scheduled to chauffeur us back home to Iowa, so we ducked into a diner next to the Rocket for ice cream.  This was, after all, the early sixties, and finishing up a date with ice cream, just like you would a meal, was in fashion.  It was the best part of our date, the only time we had to talk alone.  Throughout the brief treat, Linda must have commented on O'Toole's blue eyes three or four more times.  She was in love, but not with me.  When The Marquis showed up he asked us, "How did you two like the movie?"

 

I preempted Linda by immediately replying, "It was a little too long, but you wouldn't believe Peter O'Toole's blue eyes!"