Movies Daily by Zach Cannon

This weekend I saw three flicks. Two of them, The Visitor and Son of Rambow, are small indie films, and the third is the big-budget DreamWorks Animation tent pole Kung Fu Panda. The Visitor and Son of Rambow have been out for a little while, and usually I wouldn’t bother to review a movie that’s not brand new unless it’s about to come out on DVD, but I imagine many people are going to discover these movies the same way I did.

The Visitor has been bouncing around theaters in Miami the last few weeks. A couple days ago at work, I overheard a woman recommending it to a friend after she had seen it in the north side of the county. This weekend, I checked the listings and it was only available in Coconut Grove, in the southern side of town. Simply put, The Visitor is a quiet, word-of-mouth character piece that’ll affect you at a deep level and remind you, even amongst the super hero spectacle summer movies, that movies can be powerful and artful stories as much as they are entertainment. In The Visitor, the lonely Walter Vale (the phenomenal Richard Jenkins) returns to the New York City apartment he owns, which he hasn’t been to in years, and finds a couple, Tarek (Haaz Sleiman), and Zainab (Danai Jekesai Gurira),living there. An unseen Ivan rented them the apartment knowing Walter hasn’t been around. Rather than turning them out on the streets, Walter lets them stay in his apartment until they can find a new place to live. In the time, Tarek a Syrian drum player, and Walter strike up a friendship. Tarek teaches Walter to play the African drum and he begins to bloom and come back to life. This would have been your cliché flick about an older white man finding new life if it had stopped there, but it didn’t. The film becomes a larger tale about the human spirit in a multicultural, but paranoid world. Revealing much more of the plot would be spoiling much of the pleasure of the terrific, bookish narrative, so just take my word for it: The Visitor is a must see. Grade: A
A footnote: don’t mistake it for The Strangers. You will surely be shocked if you go into that expected a heartwarming story about a drum player.

I discovered Son of Rambow was playing in Miami when I was looking up show times for The Visitor. I heard about the film sometime last year after it debuted at the Sundance Film Festival. I remember mixed reviews coming out of there, but a movie about two British kids who try to direct their own sequel to First Blood in the ’80s sounded fun and intriguing to me. And, ultimately, the movie is fun, but the whole isn’t greater than the sum of it’s parts. The two boys who attempt to make the unofficial sequel (their goal is to win a 17-and-under BBC film competition) are unlikely friends. Lee, a film nut, is the youngest son of absent parents who, despite his tough guy exterior, longs to have a true family. Will, on the other hand, lives with his mother, sister and grandmother in a pious community that outlaws TV and movies. His imagination locked up, Will doodles all day and when he watches First Blood one afternoon, he dreams up a story in which Rambo is imprisoned and, as Rambo’s son, he must rescue the Vietnam hero. Will and Lee team up to make their movie, but eventually find themselves split by Will’s religion, Lee’s insecurities, and a French exchange student’s Hollywood-esque meddling. Writer/director Garth Jennings, who, along with producer Nick Goldsmith, makes up the music video team Hammer & Tongs, has created a movie about imagination and the importance of individuality. He achieves the light, whimsical feel he’s looking for, but parts of Son of Rambow are uneven and keep it from being as charming as it could be. Grade: B

When I read yesterday that Kung Fu Panda had conquered the box office, I lamented to myself, because no one was really around to listen, how sad it is that traditional, 2-D cartoons aren’t made anymore. Back in my youth (all fifteen years ago), Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid and The Lion King were the pinnacle of the medium and, at the same time, Toy Story was released and pretty much marked the beginning of the end. Now that John Lasseter is at Disney, he apparently wants to relaunch the hand-drawn studio, but, for the most part, it’s all digital, all the time. But that’s all right when something like Kung Fu Panda gets made. The 3-D whirling action and jiggling fat only compliment the wonderful story of Po the panda, the unlikely hero chosen to protect Valley of Peace when the evil Tai Lung threatens to destroy it. And it’s not just the story that makes Kung Fu Panda worth watching, but the life that Dustin Hoffman, Ian McShane and Jack Black as the titular bear bring to their characters. In this animated entry, it’s not just 3-D; it’s well-rounded. Grade: B+

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