The Half of It

Netflix teen-drama which has its merits.  Directed by Alice Wu, making her first film in 13 years, this is a semi-autobiographical high school coming of age drama in a small town called Squahamish in Washington State. The plot owes a lot to Cyrano de Bergerac and other stories in which Ellie Chu, local nerd and brainbox agrees to write some love letters from the school jock Paul Munsky to the object of his desire.  

This person is Aster, daughter of the local preacher and another smart girl who is basically too smart for the town.  The letters lead to coaching as Ellie guides Paul in date etiquette – the blind leading the blind because Ellie herself doesn’t date.  And it leads to Paul and Ellie becoming unlikely friends and Ellie falling in love with Aster and discovering that she is gay. Lesbian and Chinese in smalltown USA is a tough card and reflects Wu’s beginnings in life.

The plus points in this film are: decent acting, a good script and a natural ending.  Daniel Diemer handles the role of goofy Paul well,

Leah Lewis is completely credible as Ellie and Alexxis Lemire has a future star presence as the graceful Aster.  Collin Chou is effective as Ellie’s grieving father.

On the minus side, the film is a bit slow paced and could do with some serious editing in the middle.  I also felt that the literary highbrow art references shared between the girls was a bit much even if they displayed how much they needed to get out of the place. Good photography from Greta Zozula.  

Better than many of its genre but somewhat low-key and not quite as funny as it pretends to be.

3 stars

Supercell

A throwback to the era of disaster movies in many ways, this is a film about storm chasers in Texas and neighbouring states trying to get as close as possible to the centre of supercells, thunderstorms which have rotating wind uplifts and can produce tornadoes.  This 2022 film is made on a cheaper scale than the old blockbusters like Twister or the tsunami films but even with the CGI it is quite exciting in the four parts of the movie where the protagonists get stuck in the middle of the supercell.  

Quite why you would pay to go a tour to get close to one I can’t understand but there you are.  Canadian Herbert James Winterstern in his first full-length feature gives us the story of William Brody (Daniel Diemer), a teenager whose father Bill was killed ten years before by such a storm.  

William is secretly fascinated by the storms too despite mother Quinn’s abandonment of the practice after her husband’s death.  Roy (Skeet Ulrich) Bill’s partner at the time sends William a copybook used by Bill and this motivates the boy into leaving his Florida home and heading to Texas to hunt Roy down and join in the fun.  

Besides which, he has some sort of tracking machine to test out that his parents had been working on before Bill died.  Roy now runs tours for Zane, but using the Brody name.  

Zane, played with delicious cynicism and smarm by Alec Baldwin rips both his employees and tourists off but William manages to get in on a tour and experiences the worst a storm can bring.

Meanwhile jittery Quinn (Anne Heche) sets off in pursuit of her son in the company of William’s possible girlfriend (Jordan Kristine Seamon). 

Most of the dialogue parts are either a) follow your dream talks. b) don’t do anything stupid talks or c) technical explanations regarding Supercells.

Neither the screenplay nor the acting is up to much.  Diemer has presence but is no great actor, Ulrich and Heche are adequate and Seamon has little to do with pretty dire lines.  

Baldwin hits the right notes as a meany with the actor clearly seeing the funny side.

Decidedly it is the storm, the action and photography by Andrew Jeric and Corey Wallace that rule the day in a modest but watchable movie.

2 stars