As I watched “Isle of Dogs” (2018), I was reminded how much I used to enjoy “Samurai Jack.” There’s a zen-like inner calmness at the center of these two pieces of Japanese-flavored animation that I savored. This film is loaded with metaphors for all kinds of stuff I didn’t have time to try to discern (it’s a dark story about the potential for a doggie holocaust, and there’s heavy – perhaps too heavy – political symbolism). I was too busy either trying to make out the tiny writing on my normal-human-sized television or I was simply enjoying the calm, deliberate, confident storytelling.
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Two thirds of the way through “Collateral Beauty” (2016) I was starting to wear down. The story, about a man (not) coping with his daughter’s death, was work. But I hung in there. This deep dive of a film let me up enough to see the surface, even if I couldn’t take a breath just yet. I thought I had the plot twist figured out. I was (almost) right. I didn’t go away happy, but at least I wasn’t sad. This kind of film is OK, once in a while. The cinematic world can’t be all superheroes and fart jokes.
At the beginning of “The Score” (2001), Robert De Niro cracks a safe. Then we see an artsy, through-the-windshield shot of him driving, rain droplets and wiper blades and all. Then we hear one of those jazz trumpets with the toilet plunger thingy stuck in the hole. So we know it’s going to be one of those kinds of movies. A formula caper flick with a noir edge. The execution is very average. De Niro, Angela Bassett, Edward Norton and Marlon Brando seem to be going through the motions. The jazz trumpet with the toilet plunger thingy sounds good, though.
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