The Other Two Movies

Abominable – The night after I went to see Ad Astra, I went back to the cinema for this DreamWorks animated feature. By the end, I felt that I had corrected my error of the night before. It's a warm-hearted, visually beautiful, funny and magical movie about a teenage girl from an unnamed Chinese city (we only know that it's not Beijing) who discovers a yeti living on the roof of her apartment building. Armed with her dead father's violin, a heartful of steely determination and some postcards of places her dad would have taken her if he had lived, she travels thousands of miles to restore the creature, whom she calls Everest, to his home environment, also called Everest. Accompanying her are two cousins from the next floor down – a social media addict whose attractiveness to girls, not to mention his college plans, threaten to tear their friendship apart, and a plump little kid who aspires to basketball stardom.

Chasing them, meanwhile, are an obsessed rare animal collector and his henchpeople, who surprisingly turn out to be more villainous than the at first unpleasant old man. The pursuit leads up rivers, over mountains, across grassy plains and deserts, and finally into the high snows. But the magic of music – especially hummed by a yeti – provides faster modes of movement that keep them just ahead of the bad guys until a climactic standoff on a Himalayan bridge.

The scenery in this movie is awesome. The music, mainly showcasing the solo violin and/or basso profundo humming, is frequently moving and sometimes elicits beautiful displays of visual magic. The characters work out an entertaining interplay between them, of which the unexpected plays an important part. The voice cast is pretty effective, including a kid whose grandfather (ironically?) was the first man to summit Mount Everest, Chloe Bennet of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., British comic Eddie Izzard, and a certain Sarah Paulson who will soon be seen in a TV miniseries playing Nurse Ratched.

Three Scenes That Made It For Me: (1) I like the moment when Jin, the older boy, realizes that the tame white rat previously depicted as a female scientist's pet would actually be better off perched on the shoulder of the character who, up to that point, seemed to be the boss villain. The move, and the boy's line (something like "I think you're better off with him"), helps the viewer through one of those moments where everything seen up to that point changes meaning. (2) The scene in which Everest tries to pass as a yak. (3) When Yi, the hero girl, realizes that their journey has taken them to all the places in her dad's postcards.

The Peanut Butter Falcon – This off-road road trip movie stars the unspellable Shia LaBeouf (I looked it up) as a screw-up on the run from some hard guys he screwed over in the outer banks of the Carolinas. He inadvertently picks up a Down syndrome person, played by a certain Zack Gottsagen, who is running away from a nursing home and dreams of being a professional wrestler. Later joined by a kind nurse from the facility played by Dakota Johnson, they make their way to the last known address of Zak's idol, the Salt Water Redneck, played by Thomas Haden Church. But as the trio grows together as a found family, the bad guys find them, too, threatening the sweet future that seems just tantalizingly possible for the three of them.

Also appearing are Bruce Dern (last seen in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood) as Zak's nursing home roommate, LaBeouf's Fury co-star Jon Bernthal as the memory of Tyler's dead brother (an actor who makes a vivid impression in a handful of brief appearances in which his voice is never heard), and former real-life pro wrestler Jake "The Snake" Roberts as the former pro wrestler who gets in the ring with Zak at the climax of the movie. The climax hits, swift and hard, and the movie resolves for good or ill in very short order, and with almost no dialogue from there to the end. But it's a powerful moment, and you only realize how invested you are in these flawed characters when you experience the emotions at the end of the film.

Three Scenes That Made It For Me: (1) That time the shrimp boat almost runs Zak over while Tyler (LaBeouf) tries to tow him across a channel. (2) The scene in which Tyler and Eleanor (Johnson) make Zak dunk his head underwater so they can talk about him without being heard – which culminates in Zak catching a fish with his bare hands. The audience I saw it with roared with appreciation. (3) How Zak's bout with "The Snake" winds up.