Category: Reviews

“Five Feet Apart” is a story of medically-crossed lovers. Like star-crossed lovers, they meet and fall in love, but something keeps them apart. In this movie, that something is cystic fibrosis, a degenerative lung condition that causes a person to slowly drown in their own excess fluids. It is not a laughing matter. Yet, there is enough hope in the young teenage girl and the slightly older teenage guy to think that this relationship might last. Because they both suffer from CF, those chances are not that good. They need to keep separated by at least six feet at all times. Or maybe five feet apart will do…

Stella Grant (Haley Lu Richardson) is a girl with CF who spends her days in the hospital. She is driven and focused, and her OCD issues keep her life in meticulous order. She must stay in the pediatric ward, even though she is nearly 18 years old. She has a loving mother and father, but illness puts a terrible strain on them. She had a loving older sister, who has passed away about a year ago. Stella makes it a point to visit the neo-natal unit often, because the premature babies give her hope and strength to keep on going. She has a friend in the ward named Poe (Moises Arias) who also has CF. He is just slightly younger than Stella, and they spend a lot time together, always at a safe distance apart.

.

One day a new CF patient comes in, and he is in a new drug trial case study. Will Newman (Cole Sprouse) has a severe case of CF, with a bacteria strain that is very hard to manage. He is there to test out a new drug, and to become a hot new thing in Stella’s life. Of course, she is ordered and measured – and he is older and more of a rebel. Whatever the doctors want from him, he is in no mood to comply. But he is smitten with Stella, and he has a desire to draw her. He sketches and does charcoal drawings and wants to draw the beauty of Stella. Stella, of course, will have none of that. Not unless Will changes and starts to fully get into his medical testing regimen.

Stella and Will can have no physical contact, yet the both of them have fallen deeply in love with the other.  They do things with Poe, and always at a safe distance. The head nurse in the ward, named Barb (Kimberly Hebert Gregory) loves these kids – but she must be strict. She remembers other cases where CF patients found love in the hospital corridors, but then they took it too far. The other CF kids caught that bad bug from the other and both died. Barb states that it will not happen again “Not on my watch”. That is why Poe and Will and Stella still try to have fun without getting caught. Stella picks up a pool cue from the pool table. She decides that for her and Will – it is a good comprise. They will keep the distance of the cue stick – five feet apart.

But these are young adults with major medical issues. Sometimes, people die. There is sometimes hope for a lung transplant. But most times that will never come. Will’s disease is so bad that it is not even an option. So, they can live, and they can love, but they do not dare to touch or hug or kiss. It is a very difficult relationship at best. Will is about to turn eighteen, and when that happens – he can no longer be in the pediatric ward area. There are big changes in the air, and not all of them will make it. They will feel a great loss and want to ditch everything behind and try new paths. But that might not be the best way to go, when there is a potential for new lungs around the corner.

“Five Feet Apart” is a movie respectful of the pain and suffering of cystic fibrosis patients. It shows all the various difficulties that they endure, because of a bad gene that make their own body a slow death trap. The idea behind a hospital or sick bed romance is fine, but it is not new. See “The Fault in Our Stars” or “The Space Between Us” or “The Big Sick”, among others. The story and writing in this movie is fine, but tapers off a lot right at the ending. There are just too many things that happen that are against the character of Stella that we have seen so far. There is a sudden death, and midnight stroll and some close encounters with a frozen pond. It seems to throw out most everything that has guided Stella’s motives up to this point.

That being said, Haley Lu Richardson does a very splendid job in the role as Stella. She is weary from all her CF trials and tribulations, but she is not down hearted. She is still a positive and forward-looking girl. Cole Sprouse is also good. His role as Will gives him free range to pout and sneer a lot more. His character is much more fatalistic than Stella. He wants to think something good will come from it all, but he is not that hopeful. Moises Arias is very funny as Poe, who can turn being the ‘third wheel’ into a best adventure of a lifetime. He is great for that role and he makes for a great mutual friend for both Stella and Will..

The movie “Five Feet Apart” just might have a better tag line: “Better stay ‘Five Feet Apart’ if you don’t want to end up ‘Six Feet Under’…“

“Gloria Bell” is a mulligan do-over from Sebastián Lelio, who had written and directed this story already as “Gloria” (2013). Lelio has taken a very mundane story of a woman (you can guess the name) who is middle-aged, divorced and has some indifferent kids and a supportive ex-husband. Gloria has some unusual life experiences with her love life. She has a very positive outlook on life, which makes her a good friend. But as a girlfriend, she expects to have a steady relationship. When it turns out that the relationship that she gets is very shaky instead, she has a few choice words.

Gloria (Julianne Moore) spends most of her day working, but when she has free time in the evening – she loves to dance at a club. She has very large glasses and she will occasionally smoke. She likes to sing along with songs on the radio. She has an apartment with a very loud upstairs neighbor and a silly little cat that always winds up in her room. The cat is not hers, and she throws it out every day, just to see that same cat the next day. Her son (Michael Cera) and daughter (Caren Pistorius) do not have a whole lot of time for Gloria. That is why she goes to the club at night.

She meets Arnold (John Turturro) one night and the hit it off. They start to see each other more and more. Arnold runs a place that does a lot of outdoor fun stuff; trampolines and paint ball guns and the like. He even lets Gloria borrow one of the paint ball guns. She invites Arnold to a party with her family. Her son and daughter are there, along with her ex-husband (Brad Garrett) and his current wife. Arnold feels more and more out-of-place, as the conversations are about the family history. He gets a phone call, and then leaves without saying anything. After a while they notice Arnold is gone, and they don’t know if there has been something that happened.

Gloria is especially upset that he left without an explanation about where he was headed or where he went. He explains that he has two daughters, and they are very ‘fragile’ (as he puts it). He is a helicopter dad hovering over his kid’s lives and watching everything that they do. At the least provocation, he will split from the scene and go be with his kids. Mind you, these are grown young women, but they are so incapable of dealing with life that they must call Daddy for everything. Gloria is furious that he dumped her at her own party without an explanation. Arnold begs and begs and begs and begs for a chance to come back into Gloria’s life. But she always tells him no.

Until she tells him yes. He arranges for a private weekend for just the two of them in Las Vegas. It works out wonderfully. Until Arnold gets a phone call. There is an emergency with his daughter. He refuses to leave and go to help them. Until he does leave. And Gloria is alone once more, left in the lurch. Nothing to do now but dance and drink the night away. Which is all well and good, until she wakes up after being passed out on a pool lounge chair… Arnold asks for forgiveness (again). What will Gloria do? Can she afford to be burned again by a man who to more dedicated to his immature kids than to her? Can she ever find a use for those extra paint ball guns that Arnold had loaned to her?

“Gloria Bell” is very thin mast used to haul up the main sail of Julianne Moore’s performance. She kills it (as typical for her) in this role, even when there is not much meat on the character bone. She is great and does a very believable job. John Turturro is also up to the high bar of acting that he is known for, but his character is not very deep. There is an attempt to give a slow narrative structure to this move. But more often it falls apart into tissue-like segments that feel disconnected. The original movie (“Gloria” 2013) was in Spanish. So maybe something was lost in the translation.

If you are or are not curious about what happens to us after we die, what happens to the shell we are currently housed, you will enjoy this film. Whether you are or are not religious, you won’t be able to hold back the laughs. Whether you are or are not a big fan of Matthew Broderick, you will be after watching how he manipulates the written word here to have you laughing at practically everything he says, even when he’s literally describing a rotting corpse! ‘To Dust’ is hysterical. Broderick is hysterical. See this wonderful dark comedy which for some reason is listed as a drama. At times it does seem heavy. Regardless, you’re anything but brought to tears in this yarn, unless it’s because of Broderick’s dry humor. It’s so dry that if the temperature goes up one degree more, the room may catch fire. Broderick’s not only skilled in the comedy division but he’s also charming as his character Albert takes the time to help Geza Rohrig’s (Son of Saul) character Schmuel, a pained Orthodox Jew who just lost his wife to cancer.

Though Schmuel has two young sons, he can’t move on. Not even for them. He’s tormented and needs to be assured of something before he’ll ever be able to embrace life, even his beliefs, again. At the beginning of the film, we see his wife’s body being prepared for burial. It’s washed, wrapped in cloth and put in a simple pine box. Thirty days after, he still can’t get over her passing. He’s assaulted with dark visions of his wife lingering on this earth, unable to be free. There’s a prologue when the film starts that explains to the audience a strong belief that he holds dear. This is, ‘Then the dust will return to the earth as it was and the spirit will return unto God who gave it.’ Now that she’s in the ground, as haunted with these terrible images as he is, he must know if his wife is becoming dust, has become dust already or if she ever will.

Not receiving help from his own community, he goes to the nearby community college and seeks advice from their science professor, Albert. Albert isn’t interested at first but feels strangely compelled to comfort Schmuel after Schmuel tells him that he’s sinning by even seeking his guidance. He wouldn’t be there but he fears for his wife’s soul. Albert helps with the best tool he can think of… a science book. Broderick gives a unique and humorous reading from the textbook that explains what the body goes through after death, along with the approximate time frame. As if we were all in school again, director Shawn Snyder’s has an ingenious idea to use a pig and time-lapse photography to show us the rotting flesh the science professor describes. Albert’s play-by-play is so subtle and flippant in tone that even though the dialogue is a man taking another man through the journey of a dead, decaying body, you can’t help but find it amusing. Now that’s art!

What happens next is hard to imagine. One person willing to help another in the way Albert becomes willing to help Schmuel is unbelievable but crafted comedically as to not be purely ridiculous, thus making the film even that more pleasing to watch. The stage for Schmuel’s growth is set. Soon everyone can go back to life as normal. Unable to easily appease the most curious man on the planet, Albert attempts to alleviate his concern by helping Schmuel with an experiment. Schmuel can no longer accept what’s in a textbook and must see for himself what happens to a body. Literally, SEE for himself. To the forest, they go. Months after they bury a stolen pig, the pair check in on the progress of the flesh of the pig as it turns to ash. He’s distraught to see that it’s discolored and swollen but there’s no trace of ash. Albert continues to humor him and listens to him, offers some scientific theory, while at the same time trying desperately to end their connection. But then he finds something in Knoxville, TN that they may have to explore. Something that may finally move this along. A corpse farm! Now it’s a road trip movie!

This film is indescribably psychotic and demented yet in an incredibly unique and fun way. It’s bananas and irresistibly entertaining. It’s impossible not to connect to one, if not both, of these characters. ‘To Dust’ is one to see.

Social Media:

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/ToDustMovie/

Twitter https://twitter.com/todustmovie

Instagram https://www.instagram.com/todustmovie

*Playing at Phoenix Harkins Shea