Reel Thoughts: Absolute Beginners

Parents are mysterious creatures to their kids, and sometimes it takes a lifetime to figure them out. Mike Mills’ engrossing and uplifting film, Beginners, seeks to document his own experiences with his parents, in a fictionalized way. It is such a specific, personal journey, full of details that you know came straight from Mills’ life, yet Beginners feels relatable to anyone who has turned around a strained relationship with a parent or anyone who has embarked on a romantic relationship not knowing if they have what it takes to make it work. The film has whimsical elements, like the way Arthur the Jack Russell Terrier has ongoing subtitles to reveal his feelings, but overall, the film is a leisurely-paced love story paired with a late-in-life coming out tale.

Oliver, played by Ewan McGregor, is packing up his late father Hal’s (Christopher Plummer) belongings as the film begins, and in flashback, you are introduced to the man who, after being widowed at age 75, decides to come out of the closet. The film is both a tribute to a man who, being a product of the 50’s, denied his true sexual orientation his whole life, only to embrace it in the end, and an intelligent examination of the effect parents have on their children and the way they interact with others. Oliver is closed off emotionally, and doesn’t stick with relationships very long. He watched his mother Georgia (Mary Page Keller), who made Oliver her confidant and surrogate best friend, suffer from the loneliness of being in a marriage with a closeted gay man. At the same time, Hal was a distant and absentee father.

Oliver meets French actress Anna (Mélanie Laurent from Inglourious Basterds) at a costume party where she is playing mute to save her voice. Their courtship is sweet and tentative, since both come with a lot of baggage. Hal, on the other hand, embraces every aspect of gay life, trying out bars where youth rules supreme and then settling in with a great group of “Prime Timers” who host movie nights and dinners out in West Hollywood. He even gets a wild and crazy boyfriend named Andy (ER’s Goran Visnjic, in a horrible bowl cut). But Hal’s days are numbered, it turns out, and Oliver becomes much closer with his father than he ever was growing up. Mills keeps the tone even and mostly light-hearted, but the reality of losing a parent is explored in a way everyone can relate to; don’t be afraid if tears flow... it’s good for you.

Beginners has many moments of emotional truth, and the performances could not be better. Plummer is sure to be nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar, and he does a great service to a group in the gay community that tends to be ignored, namely older gay men. McGregor has a much quieter role to play, but he does it with his usual intelligence and intensity. Laurent is quirky and beautiful and Cosmo the dog makes the perfect cinematic companion for Oliver. If you can handle a summer movie that isn’t full of shape-shifting robots or Caribbean pirates, Beginners is a nice, quiet beginning to the season.

Review by Neil Cohen, resident film critic of Movie Dearest and Phoenix's Echo Magazine.

Reel Thoughts: The X Factor

The new X-Men film is first class all the way. But what did you expect? Starring James McAvoy and the sizzling Michael Fassbender, and directed by Matthew Vaughn (the man who brought us the hugely entertaining Kick-Ass), X-Men: First Class reinvigorates the series by going back to its groovy, swinging roots. Part adventure, part history lesson and all-exciting, Vaughn’s film delves movingly into what made young Holocaust survivor Erik Lehnsherr into the villainous Magneto, played by Sir Ian McKellen previously. McAvoy is a perfect, compassionate counterpoint, as the telepath who would be Patrick Stewart, a.k.a. Professor X.

The story of these friends and future enemies begins in the 40’s, when Erik reveals his mutant power over metal in an attempt to save his parents, and at the same time, young Charles Xavier finds a familiar blue shape-shifter stealing food in the kitchen of his family’s palatial Westchester mansion. Raven, a.k.a. Mystique, played by Jennifer Lawrence of Winter’s Bone fame, who cements her reputation as a strong, committed actress who is ready to assume any role that would have earlier been given to Leelee Sobieski. But if Young Magneto and Junior Professor X are friends, who is their super-villain nemesis? That would be the utterly evil Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon), a former Nazi scientist and current mutant collector. The action moves to 1962, where it turns out the Shaw is primed to bring about nuclear war via the Cuban Missile Crisis.

X-Men: First Class echoes J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek prequel in that we are introduced to many characters who will be very important in the X-Men’s future, with enough nodding cameos to tickle fans of the film series. The rest of the cast is impressive, including Nicholas Hoult (A Single Man) as Beast, January Jones as Emma Frost, and Rose Byrne and Oliver Platt as the only good guys in the US Military Complex that will eventually demonize all mutants.

The awesome sixties production design is a character unto itself, even if I doubt miniskirts were all the rage that early. X-Men: First Class truly succeeds in creating human stories amongst the action sequences. Fassbender’s quest for vengeance is a powerful plot, and the mutants’ quest to be accepted for who they are and not be hated and feared for it continues to strike a deep chord with LGBT audiences.

The best thing about X-Men: First Class is that you don’t have to have seen anything that came before to appreciate and follow the plot. In a summer that will be jam-packed with monsters, wizards and superheroes. X-Men: First Class graduates with top honors!

Review by Neil Cohen, resident film critic of Movie Dearest and Phoenix's Echo Magazine.