THE LAST BLACK MAN IN SAN FRANCISCO

Directing: A-
Acting: B+
Writing: A-
Cinematography: A
Editing: A

The Last Man In San Francisco is about so many things, I hardly know where to begin — except, perhaps, the subtext that pervades every part of it, which is the gentrification of San Francisco, particularly to its exclusion of low-income, nonwhite people.

It’s a bit of a cliche now to call the city where a film is set “is also a character,” but San Francisco definitely qualifies here. It’s a somewhat curious experience to see this movie while still in the middle of the current season of Tales of the City on Netflix, which very much tries to do the same thing with San Francisco — only in the series’ case, it’s through a queer lens. In this movie’s case, it’s through a black lens.

There is a scene in the first episode of the current Tales of the City in which a cab driver is keeping his pet turtle in the passenger seat. I found myself feeling very skeptical about it: could San Francisco, with all its homogenized gentrification, really still be that commonly weird? Well, there’s a scene in The Last Man in San Francisco where the protagonist, Jimmie Fails (played by . . . Jimmie Fails), is sitting in a bus stop. This older white man, stark naked, meanders into frame, sets down a tissue on the bench, and sits on the other side of the bus shelter, apparently also just waiting for the bus. A cable car full of frat bro partiers pulls up next to them for a minute, and once it pulls away again, the naked man says, “This city, man!” Totally unfazed by the white guy’s nakedness, Jimmie just replies, with a wistful look in his eyes, “Tell me about it, bro!”

In both of these examples, the sentiment is basically the same: “This city, man!” — people exasperated by the changes wrought upon the city they love. There is some irony, too, in the sentiment being expressed by the very people who are clearly keeping the city plenty weird.

The Last Black Man in San Francisco is directed, incidentally, by Joe Talbot — a white man, offering his feature directorial debut. Still, its direction is unusually confident and assured for a debut. Also, he and Jimmie Fails grew up together in San Francisco, and receive co-credit for writing the story. Fails plays a fairly aimless as well as obsessive young man who stays in the house of his best friend, Montgomery (Jonathan Majors), and Montgomery’s blind father (Danny Glover). Montgomery is an accessory to Jimmi’s truly eccentric crimes, all of which are tired to his obsession with the Victorian house he lived in for a time as a child. The house’s current occupants, an upper-middle-aged white couple, are bemused by Jimmie’s insistence on coming by when they’re not around to do upkeep on the house, such as gardening or painting the trim.

This truly gorgeous house is as much a character in its own right as San Francisco is. A huge portion of the story takes place inside or around it, as when the house is unexpectedly vacated, Jimmie and Montgomery move all of Jimmie’s belongings in, and basically become squatters.

The lore behind this house is a big part of the story, with Jimmie often repeating that it was actually built by his grandfather in the forties, having been regarded by locals at the time as “The first black man in San Francisco.” Jimmie’s family is complicated, and I do wish more details about them were revealed. His father sells knockoff DVDs. His mother, seen only once when Jimmy happens to run into her on a city bus, seems relatively affluent in her own right, but there is the sense she hasn’t even seen him since well before he became an adult. Why? We never find out. His aunt (Tichina Arnold, really maximizing what few scenes she’s in), lives outside of town now, in a place she can afford.

There is much more at play going on, and every part of The Last Man of San Francisco, gorgeously shot by Adam Newport-Berra in a way that makes the film more art than drama, is dense with layers of meaning. It is both totally absorbing, and feels like something that could be studied in college film courses. It contains multitudes of fascinating narrative choices, not least of which is the heavy focus on the intimate friendship between Jimmie and Montgomery, to the exclusion of any apparent romance in either of their lives. The closest we get to romance, in fact, is a couple of slightly comic looks of lust on Auntie Wanda’s face as she watches her husband skateboarding in the street.

This is a film that pulls off the trick of universal themes via ultra-specific viewpoints. The gentrification subtext is a familiar one to me; I feel like a lot of the people I know could make a similar movie called The Last Gay Man in Seattle. Except the dispersal of queer people from Seattle is nowhere near as dire as people like to characterize it, and I could not trust anyone I know to make a film of this quality. The Last Black Man in San Francisco is a less hardened, much more wistful and contemplative companion piece to last year’s excellent Blindspotting, its own subtext largely being the gentrification of the city across the Bay, Oakland. Those two movies would perhaps make a great double feature.

In any case, The Last Man in San Francisco is a unique experience, even as it is a treatise on a lot of well-trod cultural conversations. It’s not to be missed.

An American Dream unravels.

Overall: B+

TOY STORY 4

Directing: B+
Acting: B+
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B+
Editing: A-
Animation: A

My love of the Toy Story franchise cannot be overstated, especially since Toy Story 3 became not only my favorite in the series, but my favorite movie of 2010. When the first Toy Story was released in 1995, it established Pixar Animation Studios as the industry standard for CG animated features, for visual impressiveness and storytelling power in equal measure; with Toy Story 2 in 1999, Pixar’s first-ever sequel proved that they were capable of sequels equal to their predecessor. But, a second sequel, eleven years after the last installment? Which was more emotionally affecting even than the previous to put together? The achievements of Toy Story 3 astonish me to this day.

So, I had mixed expectations for Toy Story 4 — and, in the end, somewhat mixed feelings about it after the fact. Could the lightning in a bottle they managed with a third film in a series, which still woks perfectly as the final installment of a trilogy, be repeated with a fourth installment? In short: no. But, it’s more complicated than that. Toy Story 4 feels like a revisit to a world we all love, and it is undeniably fun and emotionally affecting in its own right. But it also doesn’t not particularly innovate the story in any way, doesn’t move these characters’ universe any further forward than they had gone the last time around.

With eleven years between 2 and 3, and nine years between 3 and 4, there has been an average of ten years between the release of every Toy Story sequel. Entirely new generations of kids exist with the release of each new installment. It seems kind of fitting that much of this new one takes place inside an antique store. Granted, these toy characters have been talking about their conditions as antiques since the second film, but 4 contains a fully contained environment housing relics collecting dust. It feels like a vague allusion to this franchise itself, were they to continue making them.

Sadly, the truth is, of all four of these movies, Toy Story 4 is the least vital. Unlike the first three movies, this one doesn’t even have Andy as part of the narrative thread that connects them all — only the memory of him, which Woody (voiced, as everyone should know by now, by Tom Hanks) can’t learn to let go of. And strangely, even though Toy Story 3 aged its characters close to the amount of time passed between the Toy Story 2 and 3, Toy Story 4 starts with a flashback to “nine years ago” that would actually place it closer to the time of Toy Story 2. In the narrative of 4, Bonnie, the little girl Andy gifted all his toys to at the end of 3 as he headed off to college, is still the same little girl. It has a slightly discombobulating effect, a decade between movie releases but time passing that much in the story with one but not at all with the next.

But. But, but, but! I freely admit I am being nitpicky here. I can nitpick even more: if Bo Peep has been living such a wild outdoor life all this time at a carniva (Annie Potts, who voices the character, did not appear in Toy Story 3), how the hell does her porcelain face and clothes remain so clean and spotless? Pixar is usually better at attention to detail than this. But I’m digressing again! Because: seriously, so what? Toy Story 4 not being the truly great movie I wanted it to be certainly doesn’t change the quality entertainment it offers in its own right and on its own terms.

The new toy characters alone make this movie worth seeing. “Forky” (Tony Hale), a spork with googly eyes made by little Bonnie at kindergarten orientation, is a delightfully weird addition to the gang. Keanu Reeves voices Duke Caboom, a Canadian toy daredevil motorcycle rider with a hilarious amount of pride in himself. Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele show up as the voices of insanely cute and also unruly plush carnival prizes, a bird and a bunny, with overactive imaginations. An antique doll with a pull string but a malfunctioning motor that makes her borderline villainous in her desire for the working motor in Woody’s back, is voiced by Christian Hendricks.

And yes, of course, Tim Allen also returns as Buzz Lightyear, with an amusing running joke about considering his button-press recorded sayings his “inner voice.” Pretty much all the rest of the regular toys return as well, particularly Bo Peep, here basically getting a co-lead part in the story.

Thus, as you might imagine, a whole lot is going on in this movie. It’s an hour and forty minutes long, and it zips along so quickly it feels much shorter than that. And, I must also admit, the more I think about it after the fact, the greater my appreciation for it becomes. That doesn’t make it any more vital as an addition to the series, but it does illustrate that not a single moment of time is wasted watching it either. As with its predecessors, I will no doubt by happy to go see it again.

As always, I must mention the animation. It is as impressive as ever, and here easily the most impressive part of the film — pretty on-brand for Pixar. Because Bonnie’s family has chosen to take a road trip in the interim between kindergarten orientation and the official start of the school year, the majority of the story takes place first on the road, and then at the aforementioned carnival — only a fraction of it takes place in Bonnie’s bedroom. And this carnival allows for some spectacular visual backdrops, the lights, the colors, the spinning rides, the occasional fireworks. This could easily have been a sensory overload, but the animators here present it with a unique beauty, often as deliberately blurred background for the action of the story. It’s animation that looks remarkably like a location shoot.

I suppose these flourishes are increasingly necessary, lest the repetition of the conceit, that toys get misplaced and must find their way back to their kids, get stale. It’s true that these stories are really just variations on the same basic concepts — but then, aren’t all stories? The joy is in the details, and this is a film with plenty such joy to offer.

A return to something we did not need but are sure glad to have.

Overall: B+

LATE NIGHT

Directing: B+
Acting: B+
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B
Editing: B+

Late Night starts off a little pat and corny, as it rushes a bit through the introduction of its characters, late night talk show host Katherine Newbury delivering a monologue on her show to an audience laughing plenty, even though the monologue jokes aren’t actually all that funny. Within about five minutes, however, we find Katherine in her writers’ room exclusively full of white guys who treats with either dismissiveness or contempt, and then things get genuinely funny, and remain fairly consistently so through the rest of the movie.

The jokes in Late Night are always best when part of the banter between the show staff, the actual writing they do that we see Katherine perform never quite as good. Thankfully this movie takes place mostly behind the scenes, in a fantasy world where Katherine Newbury is a female contemporary to late night talk show titans like Jay Leno or David Letterman — neither of whom are ever named; we just know that Katherine has been doing the show since 1991, and has won a ton of Emmys for it.

One neat trick, among many, of Mindy Kaling’s script is that it presents a world in which a woman star talk show host is believable, even though no such thing has ever actually happened. If it did, though, it’s easy to see it looking like this, with a white English woman filling the role as a casually cruel perfectionist who doesn’t even realize how little she herself cares for other women.

Emma Thompson is perfectly cast in this role, giving it unique nuance that makes it difficult to imagine anyone else doing it. Pairing her with Kaling, who also stars, doesn’t seem like the most intuitive choice at first, but they have real chemistry together. Of course it doesn’t hurt that Kaling herself has charisma to spare.

Her script, though, is what truly drives Late Night’s undeniably winning sensibility, because Kaling’s Molly Patel so clearly loves television, and that is a clear extension of Kaling herself. Late Night somehow manages to be the least offensive movie to anyone while also acheiving everything it aspires to, which is simply to be a light, entertaining story that touches on industry issues — lack of diversity, sexism — without ever coming even close to being judgmental of the people working in it. In this universe, anyone benefiting from systemic problems is doing so unwittingly.

It’s a smart move from the standpoint of a light comedy, as it acknowledges industry (and cultural) challenges without ever getting mired in it. There’s a certain unbridled joy to Mindy Kaling in particular, which she infuses into all her work. They way she writes her characters — and the way Nisha Ganatra directs the actors playing them — you can’t help but find ways to root for them all, privileged background or not.

There are moments where the amount of detail thrown into the story does feel a little overdone, and certain moments are almost distracting in their oversimplifications. There is no real romantic element to this story, although it gits hinted at in a way that feels it would be better either fleshed out more or done away with altogether. The overall charm of the story, and especially the performances of Kaling and Thompson (who has never been better), more than make up for it.

I wish more could have been done with John Lithgow as Katherine’s ailing but supportive husband, and even Amy Ryan as the network president planning to cancel the show, both of whom do great with what little they’re given. You can’t have everything. The ensemble supporting cast is large enough just with the guys in the writers’ room, which includes Denis O’Hare, Hugh Dancy, Reid Scott, and John Early, not to mention Ike Barinholtz as the boorish comedian presented as Katherine’s potential replacement. There’s some irony to a movie so much about female voices rounding out its cast with so many white men, but even more satisfaction to the two leads being women who get a combined majority of the lines and screen time.

Far more importantly, and as always with comedies, this movie made me laugh — and if a movie is being sold as a comedy, that’s what it should do. Mindy Kaling has a unique comic sensibility, and Emma Thompson a unique comic voice. Late Night didn’t just make me chuckle consistently, as is far more common with most “comedies.” It genuinely made me laugh at a pretty consistent clip, with clever and sophisticated humor that could easily fall flat in lesser hands. It’s just plain a lot of fun, with a large cast of characters who are all enjoyable to be around. I genuinely can’t imagine anyone not enjoying this movie.

To borrow a line, this movie is “a splash of color on the gray canvass” that is all comedy currently in cinema.

Overall: B+

GODZILLA: KING OF THE MONSTERS

Directing: C-
Acting: C+
Writing: D+
Cinematography: C-
Editing: C
Special Effects: C

When I saw Godzilla back in 2014, I had high hopes for director Gareth Edwards, who had in 2010 made a name for himself with the indie alien mystery Monsters. That film revealed a director with real potential, which made Godzilla all the more disappointing. That movie spent its first half being static and lifeless before turning into an even worse disaster movie than 2012.

Godzilla: King of the Monsters, now, overcompensates for that previous lifelessness by jumping right into the action — although I use “action” loosely here, as it would be more accurate to call this film a “mess of chaos.”

Why did I even bother seeing this movie, you might wonder? I’m wondering the same thing. I literally went to it thinking to myself, These movies are never very good, I don’t know why I keep coming back. My only defense is that I held on to the idea that I knew full well it would be dumb, but the spectacle might me fun on its own terms. Some blockbuster special effects extravaganzas do work that way.

Well, not this one. This movie has not one redeeming quality. The closest it gets is that some parts of it are merely average — the acting, for instance — rather than terrible.

Otherwise, I hardly know where to begin. I found myself thinking, Why the hell would that happen? so many times, I can’t think of any specific examples. Maybe when Godzilla bites off one of the heads of the three-headed rival “alpha predator” that was reawakened in Antarctica, then that head literally grows right back in a matter of seconds, and this is explained away by somehow figuring out that it’s the one monster that is an alien, whereas all the others are actually native to Earth? That ridiculousness is just the tip of the iceberg here.

If I were Kyle Chandler, Vera Farmiga, Ken Watanabe, Ziyi Zhang, Bradley Whitford, Charles Dance, Bradley Whitford, Thomas Middleditch, Sally Hawkins, Aisha Hinds, O’Shea Jackson Jr., or David Strathairn, I would be embarrassed to be in this movie, but apparently none of them are. I guess they’re all happy to act proud of this mess since they got a nice paycheck? Presumably they got paid up front: King of the Monsters made half in its opening weekend what the previous Godzilla did. And trust me, no word of mouth is going to save this one: you might think that earning $80 million so far is nothing to shake a stick at, except it cost $170 million to make!

What a colossal waste of money. The special effects are subpar, the lighting is almost always too dark to get a visual handle on what the hell is going on, the editing makes it impossible to get any real sense of continuity, and this is in action set piece after action set piece that make up about 80% of the movie. Director and co-writer Michael Dougherty (Krampus) never takes things down a notch long enough to allow any time for the story to breathe. On the few occasions things do slow down, it’s apparently just to insult our intelligence.

At the beginning of our “story,” such as it is, it’s been five years ago since “the attacks” on San Francisco, and for reasons no one can explain, Godzilla has been in hiding all this time. We find Kyle Chandler’s Mark Russell off somewhere studying wolves — which evidently involves taking pictures of a pack feeding on a carcass, using a long lens from behind a nearby log otherwise exposed in a massive field. This is the “foundation” for which we learn about “apex predator” behaviors later applied to Godzilla, and the three-headed monster, and how all the other long-dormant monsters frozen in time suddenly wake up and answer their calls in one way or another.

Vera Formiga’s Dr. Emma Russell has devised an audio contraption that apes these so-called apex predator commands and somehow can render them docile — if used correctly and in the right hands. All sorts of wrong hands come into play, the one exception being Mark and Emma’s daughter Madison (Millie Bobby Brown), who of course has more brains and logic than any of the adults around her, which in this movie isn’t saying much.

We do get brief shots of other “massive unidentified terrestrial organisms” (MUTOs, they actually call them that), by the way, with three or four very quick shots and/or references to “Kong.” This is a transparent attempt at laying the foundation for the next film in this “cinematic universe,” Godzilla vs. Kong, also co-written by Dougherty and already in post-production. I’m exhausted already. At this rate, no one is going to care what Kong or Godzilla are doing by next year. I already don’t.

I’d be tempted to say that at least this time around you get to see Boston get destroyed, but . . . honestly, it hardly matters. You can barely see the city at any given time. And it’s just the same shit in a different movie, with no characters you feel any need to get emotionally invested in. This movie is supposed to be a thrill ride but I lost my patience with it within fifteen minutes and soon after became so numb to the onslaught of nonsensical carnage that it literally made me drowsy. Maybe that’s this movie’s best defense: Godzilla: King of the Monsters works if you have insomnia!

Hey, let’s have a sleepver! And watch this movie to go to sleep!

Overall: C-

ROCKETMAN

Directing: B+
Acting: B
Writing: B
Cinematography: B
Editing: B+
Music: B+

The comparisons are inevitable, so I’ll start with the obvious question: is Rocketman a better movie than Bohemian Rhapsody? And, objectively speaking, Rocketman is the superior film, from pretty much every aspect and angle — except, perhaps, for the featured music itself.

But is Rocketman as enjoyable to watch as Bohemian Rhapsody was? That’s a very different question, and it really depends on where your previously existing loyalties and tastes lie. For instance, I was pretty fundamentally disappointed in Bohemian Rhapsody, but still found the music irresistible, because I have long connected to the music of Queen. By contrast, as much as I have long been a massive fan of many classic rock bands and artists from the seventies, I was only introduced to the likes of Fleetwood Mac, Heart, Supertramp, The Moody Blues, even Queen by my parents, none of whom had any Elton John Records.

So, for me personally, this is the thing with Rocketman: I never got any introduction to his back catalogue in my youth, and so I have no more than a cursory familiarity with Elton John’s music. This has an effect on how much I can enjoy the film, and I am confident that any bona fide fan of Elton John will absolutely love it.

The thing is, if a movie about Queen and Freddie Mercury had been made as well as this movie about Elton John, then Bohemian Rhapsody would have been the best of both worlds. As it happened, audiences loved Bohemian Rhapsody way more than I did, launching it to massive global success the likes of which Rocketman could never hope for, thanks to the far more enduring nostalgia for their music and for a transformative performance by the star.

I would be hard pressed to call Taron Egerton’s performance as Elton John “transformative.” He doesn’t even look that much like the guy, honestly. As opposed to Rami Malik looking incredibly like Freddie Mercury but failing to get very deep into his character, however, what Egerton manages is to get into the spirit of Elton John as a character, which is frankly the makings of a film with far more successful execution.

And then there is another truly key difference: in Bohemian Rhapsody, the singing of the character Freddie Mercury had the voices of Rami Malek and Canadian singer Marc Martel seamlessly blended with that of real-life Freddie Mercury. In Rocketman, which is a true musical somewhat in the spirit of Across the Universe (except in that movie the story is entirely fictional and in this one it’s based on real life), Taron does all of his own singing — and he’s really good. Some say he’s better than Elton John himself.

The comparisons with and connections to Bohemian Rhapsody don’t end there, given that Rocketman’s director, Dexter Fletcher, is the one who, uncredited, was brought in to finish up Bohemian Rhapsody after Bryan Singer was fired due to “erratic behavior.” It could be argued that what is good about Bohemian Rhapsody can be credited to Fletcher, and here he’s officially given credit for the entire film.

Him and, perhaps, editor Chris Dickens. Biopics are notoriously difficult to feel like they sufficiently tell a story in the space of just a couple of hours, but the largely stylized nature of Rocketman, combined with it being a musical, makes it feel a lot more natural to present the life of a character in a series of vignettes, which cover many years of a person’s life.

And with Richard Madden as Elton’s sometime lover and manager; Bryce Dallas Howard as Elton’s mother; and particularly Jamie Bell as Bernie Taupin, Elton’s longtime lyricist, the supporting cast is well rounded with competent players. All of them do a bit of their own singing, always to songs from the Elton John back catalogue, and some transitions from dialogue to singing are smoother than others. There are sporadic moments when the narrative of Rocketman sags a little. But, they are always followed by yet another fabulous sequence that easily wins you over.

The story is told in flashback style, with Elton in full “Elton regalia” attending a twelve-step program meeting, telling his story. I often thought about how Elton was dominating the meeting discussion to tell a story that was being turned into this movie, but I guess that’s just my OCD talking. Let someone else talk, man! But, this movie isn’t any of their stories. And over the course of the film, Elton systematically sheds the plumage of his costume, until we are finally seeing the essence of him as just a deeply flawed person with addiction issues. There is a moment where he literally hugs his inner child, and that’s a little corny, but we can live with it.

Rocketman does do a nice job of representing Elton John’s gayness — a pretty sharp contrast to a major sticking point with critics of Bohemian Rhapsody. Rocketman is quite frank about Elton’s sexuality without ever getting especially explicit, proving that you don’t have to whitewash over key elements of a person’s identity in order to make them relatable to mass audiences.

All that said, there is still a slight hollowness to Rocketman, a feeling that, in spite of the movie’s overall finesse, we still don’t get very deeply into who Elton John really was and is. There is plenty of spectacle here, and it is eminently entertaining. On the other hand, it could be argued this is just the nature of biopic films — if you want to get further into the weeds of a person’s psyche, two hours just isn’t enough time — read his autobiography (there’s one coming in October 2019).

What I liked most about Rocketman was that, although it’s an “authorized” biopic, it seems clear Elton John is interested in owning his mistakes. This is a man with addiction issues that nearly did him in, and the movie makes that very clear. And that’s also what makes it unusually uplifting for such stories: it didn’t do him in — he survived, and he still lives: this actually has a happy ending, a superstar self-actualized after a satisfying redemption arc. It’s the kind of story made for Hollywood, only this time it’s a fantastical reflection of real life.

Partners in rhyme, Jamie Bell and Taron Egerton as Bernie Taupin and Elton John.

Overall: B+

SIFF Advance: THE LONG HAUL: THE STORY OF THE BUCKAROOS

Directing: B+
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B+

I guess I need to stop approaching local productions with low expectations by default. That’s the ignorant thinking of an old fool, who doesn’t see how the world has changed.

Now, to be both fair and realistic, one thing that really hasn’t necessarily changed is that one does not expect great cinematography from a documentary. This is a genre that usually features static shots of talking subjects intercut with some kind of archival footage that is often amateur by definition — not the stuff of high production values. A true exception to this general rule comes in the form of The Long Haul: The Story of the Buckaroos, which focuses on, of all things, a group of male strippers of diverse body types doing performative cowboy masculinity at Seattle’s own Can Can.

Director Amy Enser began filming in 2014, and offers a portrait of what was, then at least, the five core guys performing in the show, how they got to be involved, how it changed their lives, how the show itself evolved. As I write this, I find myself wondering if the show even exists anymore: the Buckaroos website appears to be out of date; no live dates any more recent than 2016 can be found anywhere; their social media links feature no posts any more recent than 2016 either. Maybe I should have stayed for the entire Q&A after the SIFF world premiere screening of this film after all.

Well, whatever, the film tells a compelling, often delightful, certainly colorful, and by turns sexy and funny story about these guys who play a fictional group of long haul truck drivers. Or cowboys. Construction workers. You get the idea. You’d think the movie would generate interest in their live shows, assuming those shows still existed. Maybe the hunky red head who was the driving force behind the show’s creative decisions, who retired from the show after ten years of performing in it during filming, was a harbinger of its end?

The film itself offers no insight as to the fate of the show itself, but rather stands as a unique, refreshing take on performative sexuality, as seen through the gaze of a female director. This is markedly different from how any movie about female strippers by a male director could ever even hope to be. It certainly has a more egalitarian vibe to it. Any many of the group’s dance numbers are featured, impressively shot with swooping camera movements and vivid lighting.

It’s not super surprising that the group of men in this show is not super diverse in terms of ethnicity — all but the one black man are white — but, there is something to the diverse array of body types on display: some guys more conventionally attractive than others; one a bit skinny; one who weighs 280 pounds, who gets some of the greatest cheers from the crowd. None of them is especially chiseled. Most of them are straight, but with an unusual comfort engaging with naked male sexuality. What Amy Enser’s direction shows is how these guys prove that anyone can be sexy if they just know how to own it. Different performers are seen talking about how working in the show helped them overcome shyness or body image issues. These are not things you see men talking about a lot.

So The Long Haul turns out to have a lot more depth to it than you might expect from a movie about, to greatly oversimplify it, a bunch of male strippers. I went into this expecting something fun, but a lot more breezy and superficial. I left it impressed by some actual substance. This isn’t just some time filler. I would actually recommend watching it, however you might find it in the hopefully near future. I had a great time with it and am confident you will too.

Can you feel the heat?

Overall: B+

SIFF Advance: TROOP ZERO

Directing: B-
Acting: B-
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B

There’s a pretty strong, old-school “independent movie” vibe to Troop Zero, a light and breezy tale of a young girl in rural late-seventies Georgia getting together a ragtag group of local girls (and one effeminate boy) to form a “Birdie Scouts” troop with the intent of winning a jamboree prize of getting her voice recorded on a record set to be sent to space. The script is both unique and strong, as written by Lucy Alibar (Beasts of the Southern Wild), but the direction, by a female duo called “Bert & Bertie” (which makes me think of avian muppets), much of the time has the feeling of unfinished business. It’s as though there perhaps wasn’t enough time or budget (or both) for a proper amount of rehearsal or number of takes.

To be fair, filming with children is tricky, and Troop Zero features a lot of them, pretty much all of them with the vibe of real kids rather than professional actors. And how easy is it to find that sweet spot between kids who feel genuine onscreen and kids who come across as creepily precocious? Given a choice between the two, I’d take the former; at the very least, there’s nothing odd or unsettling about any of these kids.

Still, I found myself thinking as I watched this movie, what kind of theatrical release this might get. There are far more polished films than this one which these days are better marketed as releases straight to streaming platforms, which seems like perhaps the most appropriate avenue for Troop Zero . Who knows how big an audience it would get there, compared to in movie theatres?

That said, Troop Zero has more than its fair share of genuine charms, not least of which are its opening and closing sequences, with special effects impressively rendered for what was clearly a small budget. The opening credits follow a meteor hurtling towards the Earth, until we zoom in on little Christmas Flint (Mckenna Grace), sitting in a chair under the stars, watching a meteor shower, reminiscing about how her late mother encouraged her interest in making contact with alien life. Christmas is immediately established as a girl with an exceeding interest in science, and what’s not to love about that?

The adult actors rounding out the supporting cast include some pretty big names, not least of which is Viola Davis (who gets top billing, actually) as Rayleen, who works as secretary to Christmas’s downtrodden defense laywer dad (Jim Gaffigan, sporting a truly horrible blond wig). Aside from the many local school bullies, Christmas’s pseudo-nemesis turns out to be Principal Massey, played by Allison Janney.

“Troop Zero” is the number given to the Birdie Scout troop formed by Christmas, because all the other numbers are taken — an attempt at a slight joke at the expense of the misfit kids, I suppose, although it makes little logical sense: apparently the numbers can only go up to thirty? Rayleen gets roped into being their “Troop Mother,” and by extension a much needed mother figure to Christmas.

It feels a little like the more famous actors involved are present as a means of lending attention this movie might not otherwise get. And in more experienced directorial hands, the final product might have been delivered with a bit more finesse. Still, I have to admit that by the end of this movie, it had completely won me over, and I was even misty-eyed by its delightful climax at the jamboree talent show. The story strands all get tied together with a neat bow with a nice emotional payoff, and with a movie like this, you can’t ask for much more than that.

A bit of star power is lent to the proceedings.

Overall: B