Joe

By Ian Brockway

 

Get ready to tighten your belts and squint your eyes. We haven't seen the last of Southern Gothic and more of those stiff legged, lumbering men who are brash and big with hearts of gold. We get it all again here (as in Mud) and in David Gordon Green's adaptation of  Larry Brown's "Joe", this makes a good and gritty holiday in a hollow once more.

 

We have Joe (played with some rehabilitative gusto by Nicolas Cage) an over the hill, overwrought labor foreman hired to clear huge trees with sweat and poison. Joe isn't a bad guy but he has a problem with stopping his rages. He's been in trouble with cops and he's stuck in neutral. He doesn't go out. He smokes and has a gray cough.

 

One day, a curious and energetic boy named Gary (Tye Sheridan of Mud fame, somewhat predictably) comes to see Joe about a job. He reluctantly takes Gary on, sensing the kid needs a break.

 

During a half boring and half tense time with his alcoholic and violent father (Gary Poulter) the boy unwittingly confronts Joe's near Satanic nemesis Willie (Ronnie Gene Blevins). After a very cathartic scene where Gary stands up for himself, the boy gets more and more interested in the Man Alone Joe, as well as wanting protection from his increasingly scary, albeit wizened father.

 

Tye Sheridan and Nicolas Cage have a terrific chemistry and although Sheridan plays his teen role with much of the same stock that he gave in "Mud, the harmony the two share is hard to resist.

 

"Joe" has wonderful touches of detail. This is an anemic Mississippi, with pale and rusty washboards for windows and doors while the dogs are even paler and blood is cheaper than food. The rooms are brown with sepia heat and the people within stumble with drugs, sleep and apathy, all equally toxic.

 

Nicolas Cage is nimbly authentic on his own. Filmgoers and critics alike can take heart that Cage is here in full force, playing a genuinely believable character of substance rather than an action-jittering cartoon. Let us hope than this is a renaissance for the veteran actor and not a fluke.

 

As good as Nicolas Cage is, he is nearly outshined by a brutally venomous and an also helplessly and creepily maudlin Gary Poulter, who is all the more frightening for his stooping physique. This is Poulter's first and last film as he sadly died from drowning after production.

 

Last but not least, there is the roguish and supernaturally sour Willie, the monster-man who just won't go away (played as Gothic as-all-get-out by Blevins)

 

Even with all the usual crepuscular critters cooking a grim roux from "Winter's Bone" and "Mud", the two main characters, Joe and Gary have plunged into a boggy morality tale full of friendship and frenzy.

 

"Joe" has as much heart and warmth within in it as it does some sad horror, and it will definitely curl your beard and put stubble on your chest, regardless of gender.

 

Bears

Disneynature's "Bears" is another satisfying virtual safari by the directing team of Alastair Fothergill and Keith Scholey of "African Cats" fame.

 

This adventure places us deep in the coastal ranges of Alaska in Winter. Like Lilliputian explorers, we are imbedded with a family of three brown bears. With the first intense shot, it is unclear whether these are bears or hirsute extraterrestrials from another star. Fur, marbled eyes of brown and pink snouts dominate the screen. But yes, these are three bears in the mode of a quasi fairy tale but very well done.

 

Sky, the mother, is a single parent. She alone must provide for her two cubs: Scout, a male and Amber, a female. Existentially, alone and together, the three face incredible obstacles to survive a first year. The cinematography is breathtaking rivaling any epic film of the past and present. The mountain peaks alone are as sensational and towering as anything depicted in this past year's hit "Gravity".

 

 Mary Shelley, Byron and even Captain America himself would turn purple with envy.

 

Despite the live action, the film progresses in the manner of an animated feature. Both Scout and Amber are photographed with cuddly lenses as if to have darting and roundish eyes. At one point Scout dances in an almost human fashion.

 

When the wolf appears, he is slope nosed, and slouch-footed. One can almost hear as if by telepathy, the voice of Jeremy Irons.

 

Despite such anthropomorphism and a folksy armchair narration by actor John C. Reilly, the action doesn't coddle its audience. But given its lack of savage pathos, that its predecessors "Chimpanzee" and "African Cats" contained, this bestial outing is clearly for kids. The only spilled blood is from some sacrificial salmon.

 

The most remarkable scenes are when Sky and her cubs are left in the wide expanses of white snow where they do resemble an actual human family, perhaps on vacation, or better yet and more realistically on a camping trip, determined to find the way home.

 


 


In this case, our single parent family is trying their best to reach a pool, brimming with quivering fish.

 

No matter what your maturation stage is, the appeal of "Bears" is delightfully universal, with or without a booster seat.

Write Ian at [email protected]

 

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