The Black Phone

The Black Phone hit me hard in my suburban parent gut. The story revolves around a serial kidnapper the kids dubbed The Grabber. In this quiet 1978 suburban town, The Grabber takes tween boys walking alone, or right off their bikes in the middle of their paper route. No one knows what happens to the boys, they just disappear, replaced with missing posters, their faces plastered all over the neighborhood. A creepy story like this is enough to scare any parent, so much so for me that I had an extensive stranger-danger talk with my older boy, complete with a few defensive maneuvers.

After establishing The Grabber, the quaint town, the harsh realities these kids face and the sister’s vague psychic abilities, Finney (Mason Thames) is taken. He comes to in a dark, barren basement, on a grungy bare mattress. There’s a barred window, a toilet, a locked door and a black phone hanging on the wall. Finney tries the phone to call for help, but it is silent. His masked captor, who visits periodically and lingers in a creepy, menacing way, tells him that the phone doesn’t work. Never has. 

But then, once Finney is alone, the phone rings. One of The Grabber’s previous victims is on the other end. They give Finney cryptic advice and share how they tried to escape. Each time the phone rings, it’s a different dead boy, in the order they were taken, trying to help Finney and trying to avenge their own death. During some calls we even see the dead boy talking to Finney, a creepy specter giving this horror movie vital visuals to its supernatural element.

As far as horror movie baddies go, Ethan Hawke’s performance as The Grabber is top notch and one of my favorite performances of his. In Finney’s kidnapping scene, his casual clumsiness disarms the boy so easily, even we’re drawn in a bit. Hawke seems perfectly at home being so casually creepy. One of my favorite moments was when Finney wakes up to find The Grabber just watching him sleep. It can be hard to create a character behind a mask without using it as a crutch, but Hawke does an amazing job working with the mask to enhance his menace. I really hope to find that creepy mask at Spirit Halloween. 

I loved The Black Phone and think it is a great new horror film. It boasts a perfect balance between horrific reality and the scary supernatural. Young Thames’s performance is believable and makes us root for him against Hawke, who gives us a creepy character we love to hate. The perspectives between Finney and his sister round out this movie and perfectly unfold this terrifying mystery until the very end. Add The Black Phone to your spooky season watch list and then never walk alone again.

“Wanna see a magic trick?”

Boyhood

There is some sort of indescribable magic about Boyhood.  In just under three hours, we watch a boy and his family grow and transform over twelve years.  Through this massive timespan, the tone, feel and heart of the film is set at a constant.  Sometimes its hard to keep the same tone for twelve days, or twelve minutes, let alone twelve years.  But when so much is changing in life, it is comforting to find something that always has its heart in the right place, and it won’t change.

As the film starts, Mason (Ellar Coltrane) is about six years old.  He is a sweet and innocent boy, never makes much trouble and lives with his mom (Patricia Arquette) and older sister, Samantha (Lorelei Linklater).  His father, (Ethan Hawke) is trying too hard to be the cool dad, but is also very authentic with his children.  We watch as Mason and his life changes through new stepfathers, new places to live, new challenges and as he faces the aches and joys of growing up.

What I find most beautiful about this film is that it says as much about living a boyhood, or being a child as it does about being a parent and witnessing a boyhood.  Like so many children, Mason and his sister seem to be little kitetails attached to their mother.  Where she goes, they must go, when she hits a bump, it reverberates back to them.  As a child, you trust your parents and assume they know where they are leading you.  But really, they are often trying to adjust and hold on while being blown off course by an unsympathetic wind.  Boyhood brings this idea to life gracefully.

Nearly anyone can identify with this film and the characters, whether you’re a parent, child or lost teen.  Masons milestones reminded me of a few of my own as a kid.  More often though, it was his troubles at home that hit the hardest. His time with an abusive stepfather is painful  and a bit frightening to watch.  Learning that his once cool father sold his old GTO to get a minivan can be devastating to a teenager.  And witnessing his first taste of romance turn to heartbreak is like a fresh heartbreak for us as well.

Boyhood is nominated for six Oscars.  Richard Linklater is nominated for best director.  Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke are nominated for supporting actress and actor for their roles as the parents, going from their early thirties to mid forties portraying all the bumps in the road between.  The film is also nominated for best original screenplay, best editing and of course, best picture.

As the film ended, it dawned on me that Boyhood is a new kind of epic.  Most films considered epic are fantasy or biblical with huge sets and a grand (often nerdy) following.   Boyhood is a humble kind of epic.  It boasts a small but committed cast who allow us to watch them grow and age on camera.  It quietly fits in all the joy and pain of adolescence within a couple short hours.  While some parts are dramatic and others a lighthearted, the film seems to be in a genre all its own, and I hope there are more like it to come.  Even if it does quietly break our hearts.

“Dad, there’s no real magic in the world, right?”

Dead Poets Society

“We are all destined to be worm food.”

I have understood all too well that we only have so much time to live, but there’s a thought that comes after that quote that makes it all better, “Not yet.”  At this glorious moment we are alive, breathing, with blood rushing through fueling our minds to endless possibilities.  Carpe diem: seize the day.  Gather ye rosebuds while ye may.  I hate to think of a wasted day, the sun setting and having nothing of interest to mark the day with.  There’s so much to see, feel, create, understand and be, I want to do a little everyday.  To share any piece of life, even these feeble words you read, make it all the more meaningful.

In director Peter Weir’s Dead Poets Society, this theme of carpe diem is all the more vibrant in an all boys prep school that looks like it was build to suck the vitality out of all who enter its stone walls.  Welton Academy operates under strictly under their four pillars: Tradition, Honor, Discipline, and Excellence.  Todd Anderson (Ethan Hawke) is a painfully shy new boy, sent to Welton by his parents to live up to his older brother’s valedictorian status.  He is assigned to room with Neil Perry (Robert Sean Leonard), an ambitious, vibrant and popular boy who’s stuck under his father’s strict thumb to one day become a doctor.  The boys and their friends become inspired by the new English teacher, Mr. Keating (Robin Williams), an alum of Welton who once ran a club called Dead Poets Society.

Keating runs a classroom that makes all the other teachers look already dead and forgotten.  He tells his students that the introduction of their textbook on poetry is “excrement” and has them tear it out.  At one point, he stands on his desk, not to feel taller, but to gain a new perspective, teaching his students to always try to see things differently.  Many of his lessons take place outdoors, a favorite of mine is where they read a line of poetry then kick a soccer ball.  It doesn’t seem enough to sit quietly and read, but to let it move you, literally.

Neil decides to resurrect the Dead Poets Society, where the boys sneak out at night to read poetry, tell ghost stories and smoke in the nearby caves.  As the boys become more inspired by Keating’s teachings on carpe diem, they become more immersed in the club and find their own ways to seize the day.  Neil decides to go against his father’s guidance and tries out for a local production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, earning the lead role.  It’s a proud moment that Keating builds Neils confidence on, but his father is ready to hand Neil some devastating consequences to snuff out his dreams of acting.

It is beautiful to see these boys discover their individual voices and know that artistic intellect carries worth.   Most of them are on a route to become lawyers, doctors and bankers.  Those are all respectable fields to be proud of, no doubt, but as Keating tells them, “Poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.”  Giving these boys the tools to give their life more meaning than plaques, diplomas and their name on a fancy office door is all the more honorable.

It’s nice to think of teenage boys still being inspired by their teachers and reading poetry.  I wished that happened more often, but I don’t honestly see a group of seventeen year old boys gathering together to read Whitman and Thoreau today.  Maybe alone somewhere, hiding the poetry like it was a Playboy.  Perhaps this is  just a shift in the times.  Today, my brother and his friends get together to worship their classic rock idols and have become damn good teen musicians.  Life’s marrow doesn’t only come from an impressive vocabulary in manicured stanzas, it’s whatever makes you feel alive.

“Carpe diem, seize the day boys, make your lives extraordinary.”