What a quadruple feature: Anvil! The Story of Anvil, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Where the Wild Things Are, and Goodbye Solo. I was so moved that I decided to jot down some notes on them…

I expected Anvil! The Story of Anvil to be entertaining, but I didn’t expect it to be quite so affecting.  This documentary about  Canadian-heavy-metal-lifers-who-should-have-been-rock-stars could have easily been the next American Movie (read: wretchedly exploitative) were it not for the deeply affectionate desire on the part of the filmmakers to see Anvil as more than the real life Spinal Tap.  In fact, Anvil! is almost painful to watch precisely because we want these rockers to succeed: the thought they might not ever achieve their dreams is nearly unbearable.  But what really interests me about Anvil! is that the heart of the documentary is really about the relationship between founders Steve “Lips” Kudlow and Robb Reiner – as well as their relationships with their families and friends.  In that way, Anvil! is very similar to Some Kind of Monster (2004), the documentary about Metallica that approaches something like a heavy metal group therapy session.  It occurs to me, then, that both of these documentaries are really about a peculiar kind of rock ‘n roll brotherhood – and that metal, in particular, is kind of a fantasy warrior brotherhood.  I would love to see this idea of masculinity, brotherhood and ‘making the band’ explored more.  In the meantime, I’m just relieved that Anvil finally got to live the dream and open for AC/DC this past summer.

Fantastic Mr. Fox – what a joy!  I’m not sure there’s much I can say about this film that hasn’t already been said: it’s super clever, delightfully animated and very funny.  I say, with some amount of snark, that it’s a relief to see Wes Anderson (as well as his co-writer Noah Baumbach) freed from the pretense of having to make films about real human characters, to see him being able to indulge his love  for bringing to life strange little dioramas without having to drag us through snoozy, half-completed real-people storylines.  And, in the end, Fantastic Mr. Fox delivers on a more emotionally compelling level than his last several films.  It’s wonderful!  And it’s even wonderful as a comic story about a man struggling with his wild animal instincts and his domestic responsibilities, as a story about fathers and sons, and as a story about living with your regrets (Meryl Street’s Mrs. Fox has a scene in which she confronts Mr. Fox that’s a real stunner).  Predictably enough, the film reinscribes  the natural world as an inherently gendered place (guess who’s sneaking out to hunt chickens and who’s at home cooking them?) but it’s done with a hefty serving of tongue-in-cheek good grace that tends to offset all the ’stand by your Mr. Fox’ action that takes place.  Also, I have to admit, I’m powerless in the face of an animated fox in underpants.  It may have impaired my critical judgment.

Critical judgment is not impaired by the technical accomplishment of Where the Wild Things Are, however.  Compared to the magical energy of Fantastic Mr. Fox, Where The Wild Things Are comes off as a fairly dull but Very Important Statement About the Wonder of Childhood.  (It’s actually not fair at all to make such a comparison, but I can’t help it after seeing the films on consecutive nights.)  My friend Dan has written just about the most eloquent review I’ve seen of this film in which he does a great job of exploring its merits – as difficult as they are – and it reminds me that the film is goodish.  But it’s not great.  The scenes with the wild things are overburdened with meaning, the framing narrative gets short shrift, the soundtrack is called upon too often to tell us how we should feel, and the ending is so subtle as to feel meaningless.  There’s some potent stuff eluded to here about the relationships between mothers and sons (or sons and their absent fathers) but not much at all gets explored.  (One of my friends feels that the film is about why you should never get too close to anyone, while another thinks the film is pretty much asserting that mothers should always unconditionally love their children no matter what, ever.) I left the theater scratching my head. What about this boy Max, in the end?  What do we know of him and how he has changed after his time with the wild things?  I guess we sorta know that something has happened, but what?  As a contemplation of childhood, the film is interesting and successful; as a film about a boy, it doesn’t quite perform.  That puts it somewhere in the goodish category, I guess?

No doubts here, though.  The crown jewel of all the films I saw this past weekend is Goodbye Solo.  Wow.  It’s amazing.  A sincere, beautifully directed, dual character study of a Senegalese cabbie and the old man who hires him as a driver, Goodbye Solo quietly explores how each of these men contend with their relationships, their roles, and their responsibilities.  And it manages to be both contemplative and lively, while completely avoiding all the indie film cliches to which it easily could have fallen victim.  Stop whatever you’re doing and put Goodbye Solo in your Netflix queue.  It’s easily one of the best films I’ve seen all year.

Warning: Minor spoilers ahead.

I am always frustrated that science belongs firmly to men and boys in mainstream film, especially kids’ movies. And I have to say that I was pessimistic about Cloudy precisely because of this reason: the main character in the film is Flint Lockwood, a misfit inventor/scientist and a young man struggling to create some sort of relationship with this father. This is pretty conventional territory for animated films, and I was prepared to see some funny, but ultimately pretty standard supporting girls stuff from the film’s main female character, Sam Sparks (voiced by Ana Faris). I was pleasantly surprised, then, when Sparks turns out to be not an aspiring, silly weathergirl, but instead a genius, nerdy young woman who has squelched her passion for weather science after a childhood of being teased and taunted. There’s a genuinely moving and funny scene in the film in which Sam talks about her young life as a glasses-and-ponytail wearing nerd who turned her back on the science of meteorology, took off her glasses (which she still actually needs in order to see), styled her hair, and started acting more acceptably girlie by pretending to know nothing about science – all of which resulted in her ability to pass as a vapid, pretty and popular aspiring weathergirl. In response to this revelation, Flint places Sam’s glasses on her face, puts her hair into a ponytail with a Jell-O scrunchy (taken from the Jell-O castle he created for her) and tells her how beautiful she is. It’s a really nice overturning of the conventional ugly duckling transformation scene so prevalent in films with young girls. You know the one I’m talking about, where the nerdy girl takes off her glasses, lets down her hair, and suddenly becomes pretty? In Cloudy, Sam damns the pressure of the weather network, puts on her glasses, pulls back her hair, and uses her vast knowledge of meteorology to help save the day. It’s both immensely satisfying and inspiring.

Of course, Cloudy is not entirely awesome. Sam sports a boy’s name and the sharp line that gets drawn between girls and science seems to end up reaffirming that only exceptional, ‘boyish’ or ungirlie girls will ever like it or be good at it. Even as the film critiques conventional notions of beauty, it ends up reaffirming them: Sam is firmly established as a beautiful and attractive young woman well before she puts her glasses back on. And, finally, the boy who ends up winning her heart is the one who defines Sam’s standard of beauty (and makes her his prize). This is still a boy fantasy, after all.

But it’s quite an improvement, at the least. Cloudy, along with Monsters Vs. Aliens, portrays a female character who would rather be a misfit or a freak if it means that she can be who she really wants to be. Considering that so many animated films are about misfit boys trying to find their ways in the world, it’s satisfying and powerful to see girls getting the same treatment. Between Cloudy, Monsters Vs. Aliens, and Coraline, I’d say that this is just about the best year yet for girls in animation.

So……. what’s the deal, Pixar?