DOCTOR SLEEP (US - 2019) Written and directed by Mike Flanagan. Cast: Ewan McGregor, Rebecca Ferguson, Kyliegh Curran, Cliff Curtis, Carl Lumbly, Bruce Greenwood, Zahn McClarnon, Emily Alyn Lind, Robert Longstreet, Carel Struycken, Jocelin Donahue, Zackary Momoh, Alex Essoe, Henry Thomas, Jacob Tremblay, Nicholas Pryor, Selena Anduze, Catherine Parker, Roger Dale Floyd, Dakota Hickman, Violet McGraw, Michael Monks, Hugh Maguire, Sadie Heim, KK Heim, Danny Lloyd. (R, 152 mins) There are no shortage of reasons to be apprehensive about a sequel to Stanley Kubrick's 1980 classic THE SHINING. It's been almost 40 years since it opened to middling reviews and disappointing box office (and got Razzie nominations for Kubrick and co-star Shelley Duvall) only to become one of the most iconic masterpieces of cinema and a ubiquitous pop culture touchstone, even though Stephen King, the author of the 1977 source novel, still hates it. The sequel is based on King's own 2013 follow-up Doctor Sleep, and isn't considered one of his better books. Mike Flanagan, who did as good as job as he could turning King's almost unfilmable GERALD'S GAME into a Netflix film a couple of years ago, opted to fashion the movie version of DOCTOR SLEEP as both a King adaptation and a direct sequel to Kubrick's film. Flanagan (OCULUS, HUSH, Netflix's THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE) is one of the top contemporary horror genre craftsmen, but to say DOCTOR SLEEP is a daunting task is an understatement. He seems to realize the gravity of this endeavor and the time and thought he put into his screenplay and his choices as a director are ample proof that the need to do right by both King and Kubrick was a responsibility that he absolutely did not take lightly.
To put this on a more personal level, THE SHINING is my all-time favorite film. I first saw it at the drive-in with my parents in 1980 when I was seven years old. Maybe they couldn't find a sitter, maybe they assumed I'd go to sleep, but all I know is, once the plot kicked into gear, I started paying attention and I was riveted from the backseat of the car. Partially because it was obvious that I shouldn't be watching it ("Close your eyes!" my mom said as the woman in room 237 got out of the tub; I didn't), and partially from the story, which I probably didn't fully get, but also from the look of it. My dad started taking me to movies a couple of years earlier, around the time I was five, and I remember seeing JAWS, JAWS 2, SUPERMAN, and ROCKY II on the big screen and I remember watching the good parts of THE GODFATHER SAGA (the re-edited network TV version of the first two GODFATHER films) with him, but they didn't look like THE SHINING. I didn't realize it at the time, but Stanley Kubrick would be the first instance where I was actively aware of who the director was and that it was a person of importance. I've seen THE SHINING countless times since. I stopped keeping track at 100 and that was probably 20 years ago. I've been obsessed with it since the summer of 1980. It was one of the defining moments of my life. The dialogue is committed to memory. I could recite the whole thing for you. My point is, for someone whose love of THE SHINING is somewhere in the vicinity of the maniacal, it would be a small victory if DOCTOR SLEEP simply managed to not be terrible, and even that's only because Flanagan's involvement meant approaching it with cautious optimism instead of immediate dismissal.
Running an epic 152 minutes (eight minutes longer than THE SHINING), DOCTOR SLEEP occasionally feels like it should be an HBO or Netflix limited series, but works just fine as a feature film. Flanagan paces it like an engrossing novel, cutting back and forth between three different narratives that eventually intersect. That's following an opening prologue set in 1980, just after young Danny Torrance (Roger Dale Floyd) and his mom Wendy (Alex Essoe, doing a spot-on Shelley Duvall) have relocated to Florida following their horrific winter at the Overlook Hotel. Danny still "shines" and is still haunted by the ghosts of the hotel, particularly the rotting woman in the bathtub in room 237, and is frequently counseled by the spirit of Overlook chef and fellow shiner Dick Hallorann (Carl Lumbly in place of the late, great Scatman Crothers), who was killed in Kubrick's film but survived in King's novel, and whose presence is a perfect example of creative ways Flanagan does his best to stay true to both Kubrick and King.
Cut to 2011, and adult Dan (Ewan McGregor) hasn't dealt with the trauma of his childhood and is now an alcoholic drifter some years after his mother has passed on. At the same time, a nomadic cult known as "True Knot," led by Rose the Hat (Rebecca Ferguson), moves around the country seeking recruits as well as victims, psychically-gifted children that they kill to absorb their life force--"steaming," as they ingest the steam that exits their mouths as they die, thus healing wounds and holding off the aging process, enabling them to live hundreds of years and adapt to a changing society. Dan ends up in a small town where he befriends Billy (Cliff Curtis), a recovering alcoholic who knows one when he sees one. He sponsors Dan in AA and helps him achieve sobriety and get a job as an orderly at a local hospice, where he earns the nickname "Doctor Sleep" for his ability to sense, via his psychic abilities, when a resident is about to die. At this same time, Dan starts getting vague "shining" messages from a young girl named Abra, who then goes silent for seven years. Cut to 2018, Dan is still sober and still working at the hospice. True Knot is still on a quiet rampage undetected, though their latest victim is a child (Jacob Tremblay) who shines to a now-13-year-old Abra (Kyliegh Curran), who then tries to alert Dan. She even tracks him down, and while he offers sympathy and describes his experiences with The Shining, he advises her to keep her head down and ignore it. But as Abra continues to psychically connect in a dangerous game with Rose the Hat and her minions, the stakes increase and Dan has no choice but to help her, especially when Rose realizes Abra's abilities far exceed her own.
After the 15 minute opening sequence taking place in 1980, DOCTOR SLEEP settles into its own groove and the overt SHINING references are dialed down, at least in terms of the developing plot (check out the visual shout-out to the Overlook manager Stuart Ullman's office when Dan meets with the head of the AA group, played by Bruce Greenwood in a rare sympathetic role). This gives Flanagan enough opportunities to make the film his own, and during this majority of its duration, it sticks generally close to King's book (the "True Knot" cult is very reminiscent of the RV-travelling vampire clan in NEAR DARK). One of King's major gripes about Kubrick's film is that he felt it lost the humanity and the central themes of alcoholism, violence, and the traumatic effects of abuse on a family in exchange for the "coldness" that typified Kubrick's work. Flanagan keeps those ideas intrinsic to the heart of DOCTOR SLEEP, with McGregor very believable as a man still haunted by ghosts both literal and figurative, whether it's the woman from room 237 or the psychological specter of an abusive father who tried to kill him and his mother, eventually using alcohol and self-destruction as the quickest coping mechanism. DOCTOR SLEEP resonates on a more emotional level than THE SHINING ever could, especially in the few scenes where the spirit of Hallorann appears (it should be mentioned that Lumbly is just terrific here). A SHINING fan might actually get a little choked up when Hallorann tears Danny a new one over his reluctance to help Abra, telling him "You was just a kid when you wandered into my kitchen all those years ago and here I am, still on the hook." As good as those dramatic elements are, it's Ferguson who creates the most indelible character with Rose the Hat, who's quirky and terrifying at the same time ("Well, hi there!").
It's not until about the two-hour mark that Flanagan has a Kubrickgasm and takes a deep dive into full-on SHINING worship. Some may feel it's an awkward shift in style and tone, but I found the transition to be handled in an effective way that, in lesser hands, would've seemed like a tacked-on compromise akin to the out-of-nowhere, studio-mandated exorcism finale in THE EXORCIST III. On the run with Abra, Dan decides to lure Rose the Hat to the long-shuttered, boarded-up, moldy-walled ruins of the Overlook, where he's been mentally locking away the spirits that have haunted him all these years. It's giddily, dizzyingly surreal to see McGregor's Dan wandering through almost perfect recreations of those legendary sets at England's Elstree Studios (except for one thing--there were steps going into the Torrance apartment). Everything is as it was left in 1980, looking like a combination of a crime scene and a SHINING museum (plus there's that droning, rhythmic beat, a crescendoing "Dies Irae," and a little "Midnight, the Stars and You"). The attention to detail is actually breathtaking at times (even after Steven Spielberg's tribute in READY PLAYER ONE), and it results in what should be one of the most crowd-pleasing comeuppances in recent memory once Rose the Hat shows up for the big showdown in the Colorado Lounge.
But something unexpected has happened: DOCTOR SLEEP flopped its opening weekend. Nobody cares. There's a million ways this could've shit the bed, and almost any other filmmaker would've been content to play it safe and rely on easy SHINING fan fiction. Flanagan doesn't cave to the lowest common denominator, and maybe that's why it's not playing well or bringing in the crowds despite acclaim from critics and hardcore SHINING fans. IT kickstarted a King renaissance a couple of years ago, but are we already suffering from fatigue and burnout? The inferior IT: CHAPTER TWO made a lot of money a couple of months ago but it definitely didn't have the fan adoration or the lasting impact of its predecessor (and does anyone remember we had a new PET SEMATARY earlier this year?). Or do the kids just not know THE SHINING like Warner Bros. assumed? I saw the 4K restoration of THE SHINING theatrically in September and there were a lot of younger people in attendance, and "Here's Johnny!" didn't even register with them. They don't know who Johnny Carson is. Has it been too long between films to attract anyone but the most devout--and likely middle-aged and older--superfans? A similar fate befell the 35-years-later sequel BLADE RUNNER 2049, which opened big with devotees of the 1982 Ridley Scott classic but dropped nearly 66% in its second weekend after everyone who wanted to see it saw it immediately. DOCTOR SLEEP is an entirely different beast than THE SHINING, but speaking as someone who regards the Kubrick film as sacrosanct, it surpasses all expectations and is the most worthwhile sequel that a Shining and SHINING fan could hope to get, and maybe the best big-screen Stephen King adaptation since 1994's THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION. Like THE SHINING, DOCTOR SLEEP will stand the test of time and hopefully find an audience on streaming and cable. In the meantime, I just don't know what the hell moviegoers want anymore.
THE MEG (US/China - 2018) Directed by Jon Turtletaub. Written by Dean Georgaris, Jon Hoeber and Erich Hoeber. Cast: Jason Statham, Li Bingbing, Cliff Curtis, Rainn Wilson, Ruby Rose, Winston Chao, Robert Taylor, Page Kennedy, Jessica McNamee, Sophia Cai, Olafur Darri Olafsson, Masi Oka, Vathaya Pansringarm. (PG-13, 113 mins) Based on Steve Alten's 1997 novel Meg and in development hell since about that time, THE MEG is enjoyably stupid summer junk food that may as well be titled DEEP BLUE SEA: JURASSIC SHARK. A $140 million US/China co-production, THE MEG offers a nice working vacation in New Zealand for its international cast, brought on board mainly to play paper-thin characters but really serving as chum for a giant CGI shark. The film opens with deep sea rescue hotshot Jonas Taylor (Jason Statham) losing three members of his team in a split-second decision that meant losing three or losing everyone. He swears the vessel was attacked by a giant shark but no one sees it and he's written off as a coward who cracked under pressure. Cut to five years later, and the billion dollar underwater research facility Mana One, located 200 miles off the coast of China and run by Dr. Zhang (Winston Chao), has a small submersible disabled after breaking through the frozen thermocline and finding a second level of the ocean beyond the Mariana Trench, never before explored by man. Zhang and crew member Mac (Cliff Curtis) know there's only one man in the world capable of saving them: The Transporter. Er, I mean, Jonas, now a hopeless drunk idling his days away, living in a shithole apartment above a bar in Thailand, presumably next door to John Rambo.
Jonas agrees to help, especially since one of the stranded personnel is his ex-wife Lori (Jessica McNamee), and after a rescue that involves researcher Toshi (Masi Oka) sacrificing himself to save the others, they have visual proof of what Jonas saw five years earlier: the Megalodon, a giant, 70 ft. long shark thought to have gone extinct in prehistoric times. Trapped for centuries under the frozen thermocline breached by Zhang's research submersible, "The Meg" breaks free and begins attacking the research facility, also staffed by Zhang's daughter and colleague Suyin (Li Bingbing); her precocious, 8-year-old moppet daughter Meiying (Sophia Cai); engineer and computer hacker Jaxx (Ruby Rose as Pauley Perrette from NCIS); sneering Dr. Heller (Robert Taylor), with whom Jonas has some bad blood after Heller dismissed his claims about a giant shark years earlier; burly ox with a heart of gold "The Wall" (Olafur Darri Olafsson); comic relief black guy DJ (Page Kennedy), on hand to frequently yell "Aw, hell no!" and "This is not in my job description!"; and Morris (Rainn Wilson), the money behind Mana One, and an obnoxious billionaire man-child for whom the world is a playground.
Clearly, there are few surprises to be had in THE MEG, unless you consider the title creature's ability to somehow sneak up on people, lure them into traps, or the way people continue to venture out in vessels that can easily be devoured whole (also, the inevitable "It's right under us!" moment). It's nice to see the always-engaging Statham headlining his own action movie again after a series of middling underperformers threatened to relegate him to VOD until his addition to the FAST AND FURIOUS franchise gave his career a much-needed boost. He has a nice chemistry with both Li (though maybe not to the degree of John Barrowman and Jenny McShane in 2002's SHARK ATTACK 3: MEGALODON) and Cai and gets to work a good slow burn with his reactions to both Wilson's Morris and Taylor's Heller. As far as CGI sharks go, "The Meg" isn't bad until you start to see too much of it, though both Statham and director Jon Turtletaub (WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING, NATIONAL TREASURE) expressed dissatisfaction with the studio's decision to cut down the gore to secure a PG-13. While an unrated Blu-ray is inevitable, THE MEG as it stands is reasonably entertaining, never boring and often amusing brain-dead summer multiplex fare, and it even throws in a yapping dog named "Pippin" as a shout-out to the doomed black lab Pippet from the shark movie that will never be surpassed.
The final work of Russian auteur Aleksey German (credited here as Alexey Jurievich German), HARD TO BE A GOD was also the maverick filmmaker's career-long obsession. German first conceived the notion of adapting the 1964 sci-fi novel by Arkady and Boris Strugatski shortly after its publication. While other projects came and went, German remained determined to bring Hard to Be a God to the screen, even after a somewhat commercial Germany/USSR co-production directed by Peter Fleischmann and featuring Werner Herzog in a supporting role was released in 1989. He was known for his infamously meticulous nature, drawing obvious comparisons to Stanley Kubrick but probably more akin to Orson Welles with his doggedly stubborn nature and refusal to compromise. German, who only directed six films over his 45-year career, began shooting HARD TO BE A GOD in 2000 and didn't wrap until 2006. He then spent an additional seven years on post-production, endlessly tinkering with the editing and the sound mix until his death from heart failure in February 2013 at the age of 74, leaving his wife and son to finally complete the film. While it's tragic that German didn't live long enough to see his life's work through to its ultimate completion, one can't help but wonder how much longer it would've taken the film to be finished had he lived. Shot in black & white and running three hours, HARD TO BE A GOD is a cinematic endurance test to end all cinematic endurance tests, existing purely on its own terms and made for no one other than Aleksey German.
It opens in mid-story, with a team of scientists having spent an undisclosed amount of time (probably several years) on Arkanar, an Earth-like planet that's about 800 years behind in terms of thought and technological advancement, and still in what's tantamount to the medieval Dark Ages. Don Rumata (Leonid Yarmolnik) is one of several Earth scientists who have infiltrated the Arkanar society and are aghast at what they see, but are expressly forbidden from taking a proactive role in it, lest they influence the course of its future. They're strictly there as observers but smart enough to be considered gods by the unwashed, brutish masses. That's a summary of the Strugatski novel and indicative of things only vaguely hinted at in the finished film. German's HARD TO BE A GOD is adamantly against any kind of narrative drive or momentum whatsoever. The director's primary focus is capturing the medieval look and feel of Arkanar on sets constructed in the Czech Republic, and on that level, the film is an achievement both monumental and monotonous. HARD TO BE A GOD is one of the grossest films ever made, loaded with filthy, slobbering Dark Agers with endlessly streaming snot, shooting boogers out of their nose, vomiting, defecating, and pissing, rolling around in bodily waste, smearing feces everywhere, always looking like they're breaking the fourth wall as they look into German's handheld camera. There's a lot of nonsensical, stream of consciousness babbling by the denizens of Arkanar, almost like German is offering us what might happen if Terrence Malick lost his mind and directed a long-lost Chaucer adaptation written by Pasolini. Drenched in rain, fog, and mud, HARD TO BE A GOD looks like no other film ever made, and to that end, as well as German's endless devotion to the project, it's something that can't be easily dismissed. When someone puts that much into a project, are the accolades for the content of the work or for the obsession that drove it? There's a fine line between genius and insanity and though it may come off as cold, no one wants to say that perhaps German wasted the last 13 years of his life. It's a Stalinist allegory that took so long to complete from German's first inclinations of interest in 1964 to his death in 2013 that it inadvertently became a Putin critique, which may say something along the lines of "meet the new boss, same as the old boss," but it's lost here. There's incredible ambition in the end result, with fleeting moments that recall the likes of Herzog, Andrei Tarkovsky, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Bela Tarr and Terry Gilliam (Rumata even compares himself to Baron Munchausen on one occasion), but what's here is far beyond the bounds of reasonable self-indulgence. The bodily waste never stops flowing and, like the endlessly hanging gobs of snot, HARD TO BE GOD just goes on and on and on, which is part of German's master plan. He set out to make something as anti-entertaining as possible. While going against convention is admirable, you'll just feel numb around the 90-minute point, especially when you realize you're only halfway through this thing. HARD TO BE A GOD took 13 years to complete, and that's about how long it feels watching it. (Unrated, 177 mins, also streaming on Netflix Instant)
LAST KNIGHTS (US/South Korea/Japan - 2015)
With the financial backing of three countries and carrying 37 credited producers, it's clear that a lot of money went into the medieval adventure saga LAST KNIGHTS, but that still didn't keep it from spending three years on the shelf before getting an unceremonious VOD release. While the film is formulaic and a little too reliant on cliches, it's nevertheless surprisingly solid, grand in its presentation, and would've looked terrific on a big screen. There's a couple of instances where the CGI scenery gets a little dodgy, but for the most part, it's blended seamlessly and with care and precision, which is more than you can say for most mega-budget movies that get 3000 screen releases. Directed by Kaz I. Kiriya (2004's compromised but visually stunning CASSHERN), LAST KNIGHTS is set in a feudal society in medieval times, with the revered Lord Bartok (Morgan Freeman) outraged by a tax increase imposed on him by Geza Mott (HEADHUNTERS' Aksel Hennie), the sniveling minister to the Emperor (A SEPARATION's Payman Maadi), with the ulterior motive being to take over the Bartok lands for himself. Knowing a shakedown when he sees one, Bartok and his chief army commander Raiden (Clive Owen) venture to Geza Mott's palace for a meeting, where Bartok intentionally insults the greedy minister with a cheap gift in a wooden box ("You can keep the box, too," he snarks). Geza Mott later provokes Bartok into a physical confrontation, and when Bartok draws his sword in self-defense, he's nevertheless ordered by the Emperor to pay for his offense against Geza Mott with his life, and also cruelly orders Raiden to be his executioner. The Bartok lands are claimed by Geza Mott, who casts out Bartok's widow (Shohreh Aghdashloo) and forces his daughter (Si-Yeon Park) into prostitution. The paranoid minister lives in constant fear of Raiden's vengeance, unaware that Raiden has become a hopeless drunkard who sold his cherished sword and is so overcome by grief and guilt over killing his beloved master that he has little will to live. Unknown to Geza Mott, the rest of Raiden's army, led by Cortez (Cliff Curtis) has a spy inside their former stronghold and a plan for revenge is on, eventually joined and taken over by Raiden when he finally rises out of his sulking stupor and decides to take back the Bartok lands and restore his master's good name.
Loosely inspired by the legend of the 47 Ronin, and much better than the recent botched Hollywood take on the subject, LAST KNIGHTS could easily be written off as a GAME OF THRONES knockoff, but it's miles ahead of a lot of recent films of this type (HAMMER OF THE GODS, OUTCAST, SWORD OF VENGEANCE, and the terrible IRONCLAD sequel). though with its rousing battle scenes and committed performances, it's more akin to the original IRONCLAD and like that film, should have a long life on Netflix streaming and cable. There's one great shot of a guy getting his head sliced off and taking several more steps before stumbling into a pool, and one very well-choreographed, OLDBOY-inspired scene where Raiden works his way down a hallway, slicing and dicing about 20 of Geza Mott's soldiers without Kiriya employing a single cut. No, LAST KNIGHTS doesn't break any new ground (it opens with--spoiler alert--narration by Freeman), its momentum depends on the villains stupidly underestimating Raiden, and you just know that the most eager and ambitious young soldier in Raiden's army will be the first one to die ("Did I do well?" he gasps in his dying breath, tears welling up in the eyes of the weathered, seen-it-all dogs of war comforting him in his final moments), but it's an almost defiantly old-fashioned adventure nicely blended with the violent and downbeat nature of a GAME OF THRONES or a VIKINGS. Freeman, sporting some interesting facial hair, exits about 30 minutes in but does what he's required to do (basically, be Morgan Freeman). While Owen stars in the acclaimed period drama THE KNICK, Cinemax's "We're not just Skinemax, so put the Kleenex away, fellas!" bid at respectability, Hollywood has seemingly lost all faith in his ability to open a movie. Owen glowers and grimaces and is excellent as the battle-hardened, heartbroken Raiden, exhibiting the kind of dour, steel-edged gravitas that will come in handy in about eight years or so when his career gets a second wind after it inevitably enters its "Liam Neeson Geriatric Asskicker" phase. Very well-made and epic in scope, with every dollar up on the screen, LAST KNIGHTS was abandoned by its distributors--when's the last time you saw a Clive Owen movie in a theater?--and reviled by the few critics who saw it. It's not to be mistaken for a great movie, but it's a fine adventure and didn't deserve the shitty reception it got. (R, 115 mins)
WHILE WE'RE YOUNG (US - 2015)
Ben Stiller has always seemed like he was born ready for midlife crisis roles and now that he's nearly 50, he's got a prime one in WHILE WE'RE YOUNG, which reunites him with his GREENBERG writer/director Noah Baumbach. Baumbach, an occasional Wes Anderson collaborator (he co-wrote THE LIFE AQUATIC WITH STEVE ZISSOU and FANTASTIC MR. FOX), a voice of Gen-X malaise with his 1995 debut KICKING AND SCREAMING, and a master of cinematic discomfort with THE SQUID AND THE WHALE (2005) and the brilliant and underrated MARGOT AT THE WEDDING (2007), seems to be mellowing with age. WHILE WE'RE YOUNG isn't as caustic as some of his mid '00s work, and gives Stiller a chance to basically use his "Ben Stiller" persona as Josh, a 44-year-old documentary filmmaker who's gone full Aleksey German and has been working on the same project for nearly a decade, a coma-inducing series of interviews with left-wing theorist Ira Mandelstram (Peter Yarrow) that comprise so many hours that he's actually lost track of what the film is even about (when asked, he's quick to desperately blurt "It's about America, really"). His wife Cornelia (Naomi Watts), a producer for her legendary documentary filmmaker father (Charles Grodin), is constantly being hounded by her friends about why she and Josh are still childless. They seem happy and content with their careers and each other, but something's missing. That void is temporarily filled by Jamie (Adam Driver--and can someone explain the whole "Adam Driver is hot" thing to me?) and Darby (Amanda Seyfried), a pair of mid-20s, newlywed bohemian hipsters who make their own furniture, churn their own ice cream, watch old movies on VHS, and embrace CITIZEN KANE and Survivor's "Eye of the Tiger" with equal passion. Soon, Cornelia is joining Darby for hip-hop dance classes, Josh is wearing a porkpie hat, and they're drifting away from friends their own age. Tensions rise when Josh and Jamie collaborate on a documentary about a high-school classmate of Jamie's (Brady Corbet), which leads to a Jamie side project that starts getting him everything evading Josh: money from investors, critical acclaim, and the approval of his father-in-law.
Many pointed out that WHILE WE'RE YOUNG seems like an art-house version of the Seth Rogen/Zac Efron comedy NEIGHBORS. It's very low-key and never really cuts loose, instead focusing on character, where a more mainstream film would have Josh embarrassing himself beyond going out in a public in a porkpie hat. The film's one attempt at overt slapstick is also its weakest sequence--a tedious and overlong visit to a drug-tripping ayahuasca ceremony where everyone vomits into a bucket. As the film goes on and Jamie's and Darby's intentions and true nature come into question, Baumbach never paints them as villains and still treats everyone with sympathy, whether it's Josh and Cornelia trying to find themselves at a crossroads in their life together, and forgiving Jamie and Darby's trespasses because of their youth and inexperience at life. "They're not evil," Josh realizes. "They're just young." (R, 97 mins)
