In America (2002, PG-13)

I rewatched this movie not long ago and was reminded of how much I love it.  It’s a really lovely drama pulling in themes of family and community, as well as tinges of magic realism, and it’s carried by a number of fine performances.  A great viewing experience every time I watch it!

The Sullivan family has just moved from Ireland to New York, taking a loft in a rundown tenement.  The whole family – father Johnny, mother Sarah, and daughters Christy and Ariel – are all still dealing in different ways with the loss of Frankie, the youngest Sullivan.  As they adjust to life in their new country, feelings of grief and guilt continue to follow them, but New York offers new additions to their family as well.  In particular, they develop a strong bond with a solitary artist living in their building, a fellow immigrant named Mateo.

The utterly-charming film, narrated by 10-year-old Christy, moves fluidly between moving family drama, light fish-out-of-water comedy, and suggestions of the supernatural rooted in childish fantasy and both Irish and West African(?) mythos (it’s never specified where Mateo is from, but Djimon Hounsou, who plays him, is from Benin.)  The story takes us through the course of the Sullivans’ lives, showing the excitement, frustration, and challenge of adjusting to life in America in small and large matters alike.  Whether they’re trying to have their first trick-or-treating experience or dealing with a family health crisis, we see how they’re a family still trying to figure out how they fit together now that they’ve lost one of their own, and even though Frankie isn’t a physical character in the movie, his presence is continually felt by the hole his death left in the lives of his parents and sisters.

I won’t claim it’s perfect – some of the plot beats are a little on-the-nose, and I can see how some might think it’s too earnest for its own good – but I love it.  All the characters are really lovable in their own damaged ways, the direction is simple but effective, and throughout, the emotion is as pure as it is strong.

And yeah, the acting game is totally on point.  Going into the film for the first time, I remember that the only actor I was familiar with was Samantha Morton (who I’d previously seen in Minority Report.)  She’s excellent as Sarah, a heartbroken woman trying to hold life together for the sake of her kids.  I love Paddy Considine’s intriguing performance as Johnny, who felt hollowed-out after Frankie’s death and now struggles to be the dad he used to.  Emma Bolger’s Ariel is adorable and winning, and her real-life sister Sarah Bolger (who later went on to play Aurora on Once Upon a Time and, more recently, Jade on Into the Badlands) does a superb job carrying the film as Christy.  Finally, there’s Djimon Hounsou, by turns understated and electric as Mateo.  Each performer is fantastic in their own right, and when they interact with one another onscreen, magic happens.

Warnings

Sexual content, swearing, drinking and drug references, brief violence, and thematic elements.

News Satire Roundup: March 26th-March 29th

Monday, March 26 – We opened on March for Our Lives – I loved the riff about how much pressure must be on King family members to have inspiring dreams, and Rick Santorum’s comment suggesting students “learn CPR” rather than ask Congress to do something about gun violence was despicable.  A Trump edition of Ain’t Nobody Got Time for That covered the ousting of Russian diplomats, John Bolton joining the administration, the transgender ban in the military (I loved the remark that trans people who’ve entered Alabama public bathrooms would make the bravest soldiers,) the omnibus bill, and Stormy Daniels.  Roy had a great field piece on a 2nd Amendment rally in Montana, featuring the stunning irony of protest organizers requesting attendees not to bring their guns to avoid “safety issues.”  Tyler Perry was the guest, discussing his empire and the importance of having a Black-owned studio.

Tuesday, March 27 – The latest in gun safety, with a Pennsylvania school equipping classrooms with buckets of rocks(?!) to use against shooters.  We got a profile on John Bolton, featuring his general warmongering, his continued support for the Iraq War, and a series of hilarious physical descriptions (my favorite being “Gepetto cosplayer.”)  I liked the piece on a staggeringly-racist Heineken ad – I appreciated Trevor’s theory that, with many people fastforwarding through ads, the only way to actually get people to see them is to incite controversy and wind up on the news.  Roy’s own ad for his new corporate service “Ask a Black” was fun, and the fake racist ads in it were appropriately horrible.  The latest Third Month Mania segment featured a guest spot from the guy from The President Show, highlighting the final Trump-BS matchups.  Guest Sean Penn discussed the book he’s written and mused on the need for the president to be impeached.

Wednesday, March 28 – After a quick blurb on Trump firing his Secretary of Veterans Affairs, Trevor moved onto a story on Sarah Huckabee Sanders and her complete dedication to whatever the Trump party-line BS is.  This piece led to a fun skit from Desi taking Huckabee Sanders’s tactics and trying to apply them to real life.  Next up was an Alabama sheriff who bought himself a beach house with money he “saved” from his prison food budget.  Michael came on to give an important lesson on the distinction between “wrong” and “illegal,” and I liked Trevor’s point about how the sheriff’s actions here color his remarks on other subjects (like suggesting opioid addicts should be imprisoned rather than treated, thus increasing his budget.)  Musicians/Grown-ish cast members Chloe x Halle were the guests, first fangirling as they shared the story of getting discovered by Beyoncé and later performing a lovely pair of songs from their album.

Thursday, March 29 – Trevor led with Kim Jong-un’s “secret” visit to China, foiled only by the use of his private train.  Good follow-up on the new Secretary of Veterans Affairs, White House doctor Ronny Jackson – I appreciated Trevor’s point that Veterans Affairs is enormous (with more employees than GM!), and simply being a doctor shouldn’t be enough to run it.  Hasan came out to discuss an English hate group’s proposed “Punish a Muslim Day.”  He covered the inscrutable points system – to be redeemed where? – and noted that condensing Islamaphobia into just one day a year could be an okay deal.  Desi and Dulcé’s final Women’s History Month piece was on Sarah Howe, a woman who was highly successful in her field.  Namely, conning people out of half a million dollars.  Desi’s performance as Howe in the “reenactment scenes” was great.  The guest, Rosie Perez, talked Rise and her experience supporting the arts in schools.

Some Thoughts on Dumbledore in Fantastic Beasts

(Dumbledore-related spoilers for The Deathly Hallows, if you don’t already know them.)

I loved the first Fantastic Beasts movie, but I’m admittedly a little apprehensive about the next installment in the new series.  The switch on Grindelwald definitely lessened my interest (I really wish we could have kept the one we had,) and I’m not a fan of the possibility of Newt and the other new characters having a decreasing presence as the plot goes on, which has been rumored – in particular, I adore Newt and want to keep him front and center.  However, I’m also all about expanding the wizarding world and seeing magic in new settings, and the casting of Jude Law as young Dumbledore seems like a neat move to me.

Then, along came David Yates.  In a recent interview, Yates said that the new film wouldn’t “explicitly” address Dumbledore’s sexuality, which presumably includes his past with Grindelwald.  In fact, Yates appeared to kind of shrug it off, saying that “all the fans are aware of” that history while suggesting this meant there was no reason to include it onscreen.  This sent the Internet into an uproar, with people understandably upset about erasure and invisible representation, and J.K. Rowling took to Twitter to suggest that people not send her abuse over something the director said; she reminded us that none of us have seen the script yet, and that there are three more movies after this one.

It’s true that we don’t yet know what’s in the movie, and it’s true that The Crimes of Grindelwald wouldn’t be the last opportunity to make an in-canon “explicit” acknowledgment that Dumbledore is gay and was once in love with Grindelwald.  However, there are a few thoughts I have on this subject.

We know that The Deathly Hallows (the book, at least) contains veiled references that Dumbledore had romantic feelings for Grindelwald in his youth, which Rowling confirmed when she announced after the book’s publication that she’d “always thought of Dumbledore as gay.”  We know that Dumbledore and Grindelwald ended up on different sides of the blood purity/magic supremacy question, and that Dumbledore eventually fought a duel with Grindelwald in which he (Dumbledore) took ownership of the Elder Wand.  Since we know the Fantastic Beasts series deals with efforts by the wizarding world to put a stop to Grindelwald, especially moving forward, and we know Law has been cast as Dumbledore, it’s reasonable to assume that Dumbledore will be involved in that plot and that we’ll likely see this duel at some point.

Given that information, here’s what I have to say.  If the circumstances were entirely the same but Grindelwald was a woman, all of the following would be true:

1. Fans wouldn’t still be debating whether Dumbledore and Grindelwald dated/Dumbledore’s feelings were unrequited/Grindelwald manipulated him/etc. because the book would have said so.
2. Rowling wouldn’t have had to tell us after the fact that Dumbledore was in love with Grindelwald because the book would have said so.
3. No interviewer would have asked Yates whether or not Dumbledore’s past feelings for Grindelwald would come up in The Crimes of Grindelwald because there would’ve been no reason to think they wouldn’t.
4. Even if someone had asked him that, Yates’s answer wouldn’t have been “all the fans are aware” that the big bad is someone Dumbledore used to be in love with and is now fighting against, so there’s no need to actually bring that up in the film, right?  At least, “not explicitly.”
5. Oh, and not a single person would be pointing out, “Well, there are still three movies after this one,” because this history would factor into all of them.

Seriously – if a witch Dumbledore once loved was evil and Dumbledore had to fight her years later, there’s no way in hell a movie would ignore that history.  To pretend otherwise, to act like this is a normal thing to do and has nothing to do with Dumbledore’s sexuality, is dismissive, cowardly, or both.  Again, I haven’t seen the film and don’t know what’s in it (if Yates’s comments are entirely off the mark here, I’ll gladly applaud the film for it,) but the remarks on the subject made by the production thus far don’t lead me to believe they get why this matters.