Life of Chuck (c) NEON
Film: Life of Chuck
In Cinemas
Horror film director Mike Flanagan has directed movie adaptations of Stephen King novels before (Doctor Sleep, Gerald’s Game), and considering Flanagan’s pedigree (Ouija: Origin of Evil, Oculus) and King’s reputation, actual horror is surprisingly kept to a minimum in both. Now, despite the apocalypse and deathly premonitions woven into the plot, Life of Chuck, based on a Stephen King novella, has both men dealing with a more philosophical approach to death. And while a lot of it feels like new-age hooey, the film mostly gives us an interesting thesis to make the experience quite emotional. In a quiet town, English high school teacher Marty (Chiwetel Ejiofor) notices new billboards that thank a guy named Chuck for his 39 years of service. At the same time, the world seems to be at its endgame with news of California falling into the ocean after a devastating earthquake, as well as other catastrophes hitting around the world. All this makes Marty want to reunite with his ex-wife, Felicia (Karen Gillan), a nurse, and try to make sense of what’s happening, and how Chuck is a part of all this. The film then goes back nine years to focus on the aforementioned Chuck (Tom Hiddleston), who we hear from an omnipresent narrator is soon to find out some devastating new. But on this day, he seems depressed until he runs into a street busker (Taylor Gordon) on the drums, which gets him dancing solo then with stranger (and equally sad) Janice (Annalise Basso) as they find joy in life again. The movie’s last time shift is back to when Chuck (Benjamin Pajak) was a young kid, who after the death of his parents, moves in with his grandparents (Mia Sara and Mark Hamill). Chuck realizes that life is going to be a series of heartbreak and tragedy, but as he learns in English class reading Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself, both Chuck and life contain multitudes.
Life of Chuck (c) NEON
Movies that take on big issues and even the cosmos (Carl Sagan is a major reference) fall into two camps: sentimental but effective (Field of Dreams, Forrest Gump) or hopelessly sappy (Collateral Beauty, Life Itself). I would say that Chuck mostly falls into the former, and that’s because the backwards narrative gives the film a sense of mystery, a sort of escape room for the audience to try to unlock. Once it is unlocked (mostly from visual clues, one that is so fleeting that Flanagan repeats it twice to help us along), how effective the film is depends on your tolerance for big life messages. Chiwetel Ejiofor makes the most out of his character, although, his section of the movie turns out to be the least consequential. Much has been made of Tom Hiddleston’s 10-minute dance sequence, and it is charming and impressive, but his Chuck is still an enigma, only unlocked by the young Benjamin Pajak, who’s also charming, and relatable enough, especially when the cosmic puzzle pieces finally start connecting. Flanagan and King try to give the film some horror elements, including a locked room in the grandparent’s house that must never be opened, a scar on Chuck’s hand as well as a very portentous heart monitor sound that appears throughout. I bought into it all, and it doesn’t surprise me that Life of Chuck won the People’s Choice Award for Best Feature at last year’s Toronto Film Festival. Leave your cynicism at the door.
How to Train Your Dragon (c) Universal Pictures
Film: How to Train Your Dragon
In Cinemas
I’m not sure Cressida Cowell, the writer of How to Train Your Dragon, the book that spawned a billion-dollar movie franchise, would agree, but I believe her story is very similar to Romeo and Juliet. An ancient grudge between humans and dragons is at the center of this latest live action remake of the 2010 animated original: essentially a bromance between the teen human Hiccup (Mason Thames), who never hiccups, and the Night Fury dragon Toothless, who does in fact have teeth. Their unlikely friendship is frowned upon by both camps (at least I assume the dragons feel that way as they don’t talk), until the two friends must get everyone to work together to fight a bigger bad. This is the first Dreamworks Animation film to be remade into live action, something that Disney has been doing with their animated films for decades. And it is a valiant effort, although its mostly shot-for-shot retelling of its animated counterpart makes one wonder why it was needed at all. It’s almost as if Universal, which owns Dreamworks, wants to keep the franchise front and center in the mind of consumers who might want to go to its newest theme park in Orlando, where Berk is one of its Epic Universes. Just a thought.
How to Train Your Dragon (c) Universal Pictures
With Chris Sanders, Dean DeBlois not only co-directed the 2010 original Dragon film, but the two also directed the 2002 animated film Lilo & Stitch, both live-action versions opening within a month of each other. DeBlois is sole director of this current How to Train Your Dragon, and while the original is superior in every way, there is enough action, stunning visual effects and heartfelt moments here to make it an easy watch. The biggest asset to the film is young Mason Thames as Hiccup, who somehow makes the animated character’s unruly bangs work in real life. He has an easygoing charm of a young John Krasinski, and his interactions with Toothless (which I assume was played on set by a man in a black unitard covered in dots or a baseball on a stick) are palpable. Gerald Butler returns as Hiccup’s disapproving father (he voiced the role in the original) and is it backhanded to say his character is only a little more believable in human form? Like the 2010 film, it’s never explained why the kids all speak in American English while most everyone else speaks with a Scottish brogue. But DeBlois retains the element that made the first film soar, and that’s John Powell’s majestic score, although adding lyrics to it for this film’s end credits seems unnecessary. Like Lilo & Stitch, Dragon feels destined to be a big hit this summer, because kids who grew up in the 2010s probably need a bit of nostalgia right about now.
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