Paradise (Diablo Cody, 2013)

I've previously been a defender of Diablo Cody's but her directorial debut is everything her detractors have accused her of being: simplistic, condescending, so caught up in her cute dialogue that character is left out in the cold. Its insultingly reductive view of religion can make even a staunch atheist blanch with embarrassment and sympathy, and any film that must rest on the shoulders of Julianne Hough is doomed from the start. A heinous picture.

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Young Adult (Jason Reitman, 2011)

Jason Reitman's and Diablo Cody's Juno showed a self-consciously "quirky" high-school girl growing up quickly to deal with an adult problem, her cloyingly quirky lingo falling by the wayside as she matured into an empathetic, responsible person. Young Adult depicts the inverse of that story, of the prom queen who never outgrew that period of her life where she was some form of royalty, her preserved physical beauty akin to Dorian Gray's aesthetic mask. Soulless and resolutely conceited, Mavis Gary (Charlize Theron) is a profoundly unlikable character, a vile creature who despises anyone kind enough to spare her pity and insists on remolding the scariness of the real world back into the teenage years she ruled. Some may blanch at Mavis' sheer mean-spiritedness and unbending attitude, but whom do we see more in real life: the Junos who can quickly adapt and mature, or the Mavises?

Theron plays Mavis as if using the part as a screen test for her upcoming turn as the evil queen in Snow White and the Hunstman. She peers at the world with narrowed, confrontational eyes, perpetually disgusted by the normalcy of adult life but unable to see that she's encased herself in amber. Living in a high-rise tower in Minneapolis, Mavis ghostwrites young adult fiction that allows her to hang onto her perversely stretched youth, and her friend drips steel-melting acid as she sarcastically reassures Mavis that she's completely moved beyond the one-horse town she talks about incessantly. That fixation on her glory days compounds when her old flame sends her a birth announcement, inexplicably prompting a decision to return to her hometown to win him back. Cody and Reitman sell it like the starting point of a romantic comedy, but as Mavis obsessively replays Teenage Fanclub's "The Concept" from a mixtape that ex- made her in high school on the way home, her drive resembles Travis Bickle heading for the pimp instead of the usual chasing a lover at the airport. Reitman even zooms into the innards of the cassette, the meticulous overview of its parts visualizing just how completely Mavis has crawled inside her teenage shell to hide from adulthood.

That gutting of traditional romantic comedy mechanics extends through the whole film, which never fails to present Mavis' dream of breaking up the happy marriage of her beloved Buddy (Patrick Wilson) as predatory, not affectionate. As a director, Reitman wisely stays out of Cody's way, but he films everything in harsh, revealing terms, casting unwelcome light on the wrinkles forming on Theron's face to the dirty trackpad of her clearly well-used Macbook. Even wretchedly obvious shots that disdainfully linger on chains like Staples and KFC work by conveying Mavis' stuck-up, hypocritical POV, the immaturity of this film school-grade "commentary" reflecting a character, not the director. Rather than throwing an arm around a lazily superior audience to coddle them, the film practically sets itself against the crowd by mocking such holier-than-thou distaste of mass culture as childish.

And if that doesn't set you on edge, Mavis takes back over after this early montage to seize control of the rest of the movie, and her actions continuously the viewer's patience with her sheer nastiness. Greeting Mavis back in Mercury is not Buddy but Matt Freehauf (Patton Oswalt), a doughy nerd who was left crippled by a homophobic beating in high school. But Matt's bitterness soon crowds out any instant sympathy, and he proves as unable to move beyond his past as Mavis. Oswalt brings some of his buried aggression from Big Fan to the part, forming Matt into a mound of impotent fury so hell-bent on feeling sorry for himself that he even hates other disabled people for stealing attention from him. Oswalt essentially plays Mavis' unheeded conscience, but Matt is so unpleasant in his own right that his warnings about leaving Buddy seem to stem more from practical worry than moral concern. The comedian gets most of the film's outright punchlines, but he delivers them with an edge; when Mavis airily explains what a zombie is, Matt snaps, "I'm a fat geek, I know what a zombie is." On paper, that joke reads as mere banter, but Oswalt reads it as if barely keeping his temper in check, anxious to keep check of that myopic grasp on pop culture that constitutes the only territory he knows and controls.

Mavis and Matt make a hell of a misanthropic double act, sniping at everyone within eyesight, including each other. Both receive so much pity from those around them that the brutal takedowns they lob between them are perhaps the first honest assessments they've ever heard of themselves. Matt, who knows he would have no shot with someone like Mavis even at his best, can taunt her for failing book series and her emotional cocoon. Mavis, so unconcerned with hurting someone's feelings, can harangue Matt for being so unapproachable because of his personality, not his disability. (And as a YA writer, she naturally uses hacky, clichéd lines that play on his crutch to do so.)

But not even these confrontations can shake something loose in either character, and Young Adult routinely sets up the usual plot points designed to offer some kind of breakthrough—a drunken kiss, the aforementioned exchange of critical evaluations, even an almost painfully sad scene of shared grief—only to collapse back into self-delusion. I winced all during a party scene near the end, waiting for the explosion that had to come, which it did, albeit in a wholly unexpected manner that managed to sidestep the easy way out but revealed a clarifying piece of information that does nothing to alter one's opinion of Mavis.

This is not easy stuff, and even those who typically have no problem with unsympathetic characters have responded viscerally to the film's unrepentant pessimism. But Cody is no mere nihilist, and Young Adult is filled with good people living contented lives. But they are not the stars, and their lives are not glorious and remarkable in the way they need to be to counteract the two principal players, who view such prosaic happiness as beneath them yet can attain nothing better. One of my notes for Young Adult said it was a better horror film than Jennifer's Body, but upon further reflection, I cannot call it such because it all feels too real and unexaggerated. Some people will never learn, so close-minded that nothing will penetrate years of self-deception and insecurity manifested as perverse haughtiness. Those who dismiss Cody as someone writing what she thinks is teen slang have already had two demonstrations of her criticism of youth and all its inexperience and arrogance. If Young Adult cannot convince them of her rejection of such self-involved attitudes, then perhaps Mavis and Matt aren't the only ones clouded by shallow prejudices.

Juno

When I first saw Juno last January, I walked out of the theater knowing I'd seen a great movie, but I couldn't quite say why. I watched it again on DVD and felt the same way, still inexplicably in love with the film. Now, after a third time, I've truly sat down and concentrated, and I've at last come up with an answer that is so absurdly simple I should probably start using safety scissors because I can't trust myself anymore: Juno, to me, is a great movie because it makes me happy, 100%, smiling into the wind, bounce-in-your-step happy. It is so thoroughly deceptive in its depth that I realize know I wanted Diablo Cody to win an Oscar for her screenplay without even understanding why she so completely deserved it.

The film of course deals with the titular Juno, a 16-year old who seems to have spent all 16 of those years fashioning herself into an independent person. To all those who dismiss the film out of hand as Cody's attempt to "sound like a real teenager:" you don't get it. Juno speaks the way she does because she wants to be individualistic; it's her own personal ironic statement to the world. Yet these speech patterns only show her immaturity, so at the start of the film her dialogue overflows with the stuff. Over the course of the film, she slowly drops her speaking styles, and it's one of the many ways Cody shows her character growing up without once calling attention to itself.

Ellen Page plays Juno about as perfectly as a person could. She manages to act far beyond her years while playing someone younger than her, an uneasy balance that could have gone awry, but doesn't. That juxtaposition makes Juno such a singular and great character; she has the intelligence of someone far older, but lacks the actual wisdom needed to put it to good use. Page has established herself as an actress to watch, but she sets the bar so high with Juno I don't know if she'll ever top it.

Also turning in his best work is Michael Cera. It's easy to dismiss Bleeker as yet another awkward little geek à la all his other roles, but just watch him in his first real scene, when Juno tells him she's pregnant. He doesn't explode like Seth Rogen's character did in Knocked Up, nor does he break down. Hell, he doesn't even demand a paternity test. He knows the baby is his, and when you look into Cera's eyes you can practically feel his stomach jump. Then he accepts the news, and whatever decision Juno makes, and in an instant you know these two are a perfect couple; Bleeker doesn't hide behind stylized speeches and quirkiness, but he's every bit as strong, yet unsure, as Juno.

Juno makes an appointment to get an abortion, but before she can enter she runs into a classmate, Su-Chin, a lone protestor who spouts off some parroted talking points before catching Juno off guard with the claim that her unborn child "has fingernails." Juno enters to face a dismissive clerk and, as she fills out the forms, she notices all the scratching and tapping the other people in the room are doing with their fingernails and has an epiphany: she can't abort the baby, but she can give it to adoption. Some may read into this as a pro-life statement, but I see it as pro-choice; after all, one of the choices is to keep the baby, and this is Juno's decision.

Page and Cera alone are enough to support the film, but Cody and Reitman found an outstanding supporting cast who all bring their own originality to the part. Now, if Juno's speech didn't turn off haters, her parents' reaction to her pregnancy sealed the deal. Mac and Bren, Juno's father and stepmom, are played by J.K. Simmons and Allison Janney, which alone makes them worth watching. But when they accept Juno's news with understandable shock, but without anger, it draws a very clear line in the sand. For me, it fits into Cody's depiction of maturity; Juno took the news with the fear befitting a child, but before the conversation evens ends they've decided to support their daughter.

The other supporting actors play as important a role as Juno's dad and stepmom. Juno searches through a local paper that has ads for couples looking to adopt, and she settles on Mark (Jason Bateman) and Vanessa (Jennifer Garner), a yuppie couple who live in a suburban condo. Mac takes Juno to meet them, and there's a not-so-subtle yet never overstated feeling of the class gap between the two pairs. Vanessa is overjoyed that she will finally be a mother and treats Juno almost like the pregnant Virgin Mary. She wants nothing more than to be a mom, but cannot conceive one of her own; she says with infinite longing that Juno's her friends say Juno's in the toughest stage of the pregnancy and Juno, still acting childish (especially now that she's "solved the problem"), casually responds with "at least you don't have to carry this thing." Jennifer Garner deserved an award just for the flash of immeasurable pain on her face when she hears the line. The agreement is signed, and everything seems to have worked out.

However, Mark gives off a vibe from the start that he's not as thrilled to be a parent as his wife. Juno takes an immediate shine to Mark because he's a commercial composer who used to play in a rock band. There's a disturbing subtext to Mark, but really Bateman plays a role not dissimilar to Bill Murray's in Rushmore: like Herman Blume, Mark seems himself in the young protagonist, and the knowledge of how he turned out leads him to an existential crisis. When Juno finally wises up to how pathetic he really is, and it inspires her own maturation.

Vanessa and Mark form counterpoints for Juno's story and give the pregnancy an endpoint, but this is ultimately a story of a little girl growing up. At the start she masks her fear and adolescence behind her speech patterns and detached demeanor, but she lets out her true emotions in one brief moment early on when she admits "I don't really know who I am." In a bitter voice-over, she mentions her mother, who moved to Arizona after the divorce and sends her daughter a cactus every Valentine's Day. There's a lot of pain masked in Juno's sarcastic remarks, and her feelings of abandonment very likely led her to keep the child, even if she's giving it up for adoption.

As Mark and Vanessa's relationship hits a strain due to Mark's fear of growing up, so too does the relationship between Juno and Bleeker. I mentioned earlier than Cera played within his typecast but offered up something more, but that was only the beginning. At one stage Juno tells Bleeker that she's missing class for an ultrasound, and Bleeker begins to ask "Can I -" and catches himself, replacing it with "Should I come?" Bleeker, though afraid, handles the situation more maturely than anyone else in the film. Later, when Juno is at her peak of self-denial, calls her on her crap and, though he never explodes and never gets mean, the effect is absolutely devastating.

I feel perhaps I'm underselling the comedy of this film in favor of the brilliant drama, but then the drama is what sets it apart. However, it is, quite often, extremely funny. When Juno and Bleeker go to science class, their lab partners are also a couple, and they're in the midst of squabbling over the immaturity of the boy, who cheated on the girl after drinking a few comically weak alcoholic beverages. This scene is funny, but it also shows just how different Bleeker and Juno are, mainly thanks to Bleeker's tenderness. But my favorite gag was the running discussion about the term "sexually active" that continues to make me laugh.

Ultimately, the film is Cody's way of telling kids that they don't know everything. Most adults are quick to point it out, but they do so in a condescending manner, and usually to end an argument before they might actually have to think. But Cody is different; she never condescends because she respects the intelligence of teenagers, and she's never cruel in her lesson. Instead, she gently shows teens that they are only just beginning to truly live, and that life can be full of surprises. Juno, Bleeker, Vanessa and Mark may go through rough times, but we learn something about ourselves and about life by the end of it, and it makes me smile the more I think about it. Haters be damned: I wish there were more films as honest and heartwarming as this.