Alex (Claire Danes) and Greg Wheeler (Jim Parsons) try to do what’s best for their son (Leo James Davis) in A Kid Like Jake
A KID LIKE JAKE (Silas Howard, 2018)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Opens Friday, June 1
212-924-7771
www.ifccenter.com
In 2013, Daniel Pearle’s New School final thesis play, A Kid Like Jake, was staged at Lincoln Center’s small, intimate LCT3 theater. The out writer has now expanded the story into a powerful, moving film, directed by the transgender Silas Howard and starring gay actor Jim Parsons, whose company produced the movie. I only mention this because Howard, who has directed episodes of Transparent as well as the documentary More Than T, about six transgender people, explains in his director statement that “A Kid Like Jake was written and directed by queer artists, and the perspective of the film is really one that looks from a queer and compassionate perspective at the struggles of conventional parents who are raising a gender expansive child.” Those conventional parents are wonderfully played by Parsons as Greg Wheeler, a mild-mannered psychologist, and Claire Danes as Alex Wheeler, a lawyer who put her career on hold to start a family. New zoning dictates that the Park Slope couple must find a new school for their four-year-old son, Jake (Leo James Davis), and although they apply to numerous private schools, they’re afraid they can’t afford the tuition. One of Alex’s friends, teacher and consultant Judy (Octavia Spencer), thinks that they should emphasize Jake’s uniqueness and take advantage of the move toward diversity in education; Jake has a preference for princesses and wearing girls’ clothing, which the parents do not discourage. Greg and Alex have never had a problem with that before, but when Jake starts acting out and the pressure to be accepted to a private school grows, they start fighting with each other in stark, harsh ways, saying things they might never be able to take back.
Jim Parsons produced and stars in Park Slope-set A Kid Like Jake
A Kid Like Jake is a timely, intelligent look at one family’s determination to do what’s right for their child, even as it threatens to tear them apart. There were only three main characters in the stage version: Peter Grosz as Greg, Carla Gugino as Alex, and Caroline Aaron as Judy. (Michelle Beck played several minor roles.) Pearle has expanded the cast to include Ann Dowd as Catherine, Alex’s very concerned mother; Priyanka Chopra as Amal, Alex’s close friend; Amy Landecker as Sandra, one of Greg’s patients; and Davis as Jake, who is never seen in the play. It’s a crafty decision to occasionally show Jake in the film, turning the central controversy into a more tangible situation rather than becoming an issue-driven story. Pearle and Guggenheim Fellow Howard add several subplots that lend further insight to the primary dilemma. Greg is annoyed by his new office neighbor, Dr. Laurel Hendricks (Aneesh Sheth), who practices primal scream therapy; thus, disturbing loud shouting interrupt his sessions with Sandra, but Greg is tentative about confronting Dr. Hendricks. And when Greg and Alex go on a double date with Amal and the boneheaded Darren (Aasif Mandvi), general insensitivity raises its ugly head. Parents always want to believe that their child is special, deserving of only the best; A Kid Like Jake explores that innate desire and how it impacts one family continually thwarted by societal pressures, concepts of supposed normality, and their own biases. A Kid Like Jake opens at IFC on June 1, with Howard and Pearle participating in panel discussions following the 7:10 shows on June 1 and 2, joined by Parsons at the 2:40 show on June 3. Parsons, who is currently starring as Michael in the dazzling Broadway debut of The Boys in the Band, will also give an extended introduction to the 4:50 show on June 3, followed by a Q&A with Howard and Pearle.
After seeing Jeremy Frindel’s The Doctor from India, you’re going to want to know even more about its remarkable subject, Ayurvedic master Dr. Vasant Lad. And you can get that chance this weekend when the doctor, who is based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Pune, India, makes several appearances in New York City, participating in Q&As following the 6:45 shows at the Quad on June 1 and 2 and at Symphony Space on June 2 after the 4:00 Thalia Docs screening. The documentary provides an intimate, inside look at the seventy-five-year-old founder of the Ayurvedic Institute, who nearly single-handedly brought the ancient discipline to America and the rest of the world. “When I went first during 1979, no one even knows [the] word Ayurveda,” Dr. Lad says about his initial visit to the United States. “Now Ayurveda is flourishing, flowering, and it is my mission of my guru [Hammer Baba] to spread and propagate Ayurveda in the Western world.” Frindel shows the doctor — who is not licensed in America, where the medical establishment and insurance companies do not recognize Ayurveda as legitimate medical treatment — tending to patients in Pune, both at his main office during the day with students and in a clinic where people line up every night to be diagnosed for free. “The specialty of Ayurveda is the science of the pulse. Disease can be diagnosed by examining the pulse. I will look into your constitution, your prakruti, your vikruti, and let them know of any abnormalities,” he tells a patient. A kind, gentle, spiritual soul who does yoga and meditates, Dr. Lad describes Ayurveda as “the art of living in harmony with nature, in harmony with the surroundings, and that is a beautiful thing.” Frindel also speaks with Vedic scholar Dr. David Frawley, Doctor of Oriental Medicine Claudia Welch, first American Ayurvedic physician Dr. Robert Svoboda, and layman Len Blank, who sponsored Dr. Lad’s first visit to the West. “Dr. Lad is the most significant person in a sense galvanizing the movement of Ayurveda in the entire world but starting in the United States,” says Dr. Deepak Chopra, who has a fascinating connection to Dr. Lad involving the Maharaja Mahesh Yogi.
The “Academy at Metrograph” series, a yearlong residency for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences at the Lower East Side cinema house, concludes June 1 at 7:00 with Sideways, eclectic director Alexander Payne’s fourth film, following the underseen Citizen Ruth, the excellent Election, and the overrated About Schmidt. Sideways is fabulously entertaining from start to finish, a smart, inventive, very funny dark comedy about friendship and love set in California wine country. Paul Giamatti stars as Miles, a schlumpy wine connoisseur who is having trouble getting over his divorce and the failure of his massive novel to get published. His best friend, Jack (Thomas Haden Church), is getting married, so the two head off on a road trip, with Miles looking forward to sampling fine wine, and Jack anticipating sampling fine women. While Jack finds what he is looking for in Stephanie (Sandra Oh, who was married to Payne at the time), Miles seems hell-bent on not allowing himself to enjoy life, even as a beautiful woman with a deep appreciation of the grape (the excellent Virginia Madsen in what should have been a career-redefining performance) shows an interest in him. You definitely do not have to be a wine drinker to fall in love with this marvelous movie, one of the best of 2004; it was nominated for Best Director, Best Picture, Best Supporting Actress (Madsen), and Best Supporting Actor (Haden Church), and screenwriters Jim Taylor and Payne won for Best Adapted Screenplay. Taylor will be at Metrograph to talk about the movie, which will be preceded by a screening of Jeff Fowler’s 2004 Oscar-winning short, Gopher Broke, and followed by a wine tasting with vintages provided by Francis Ford Coppola Winery.
Perhaps the best part of the Quad series “Hammer’s House of Horror, Part I: The Classic Years (1956–1967)” can be found in its very name: Part I, which means there will be even more to come. The first part begins May 30, consisting of thirty-two favorites from the London-based production company, which specialized in resurrecting monsters and presenting them for the first time in color, including the Mummy. Knighted British actor Christopher Lee might be best known to the younger generations as the evil wizard Saruman in the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit films, but over the course of more than two hundred movies Lee, who passed away last June at the age of ninety-three, also portrayed Fu Manchu, Georges Seurat, Sherlock Holmes, Rasputin, Count Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster, and the Mummy. Lee is the immortal wrapped character in Terence Fisher’s 1959 Hammer favorite, The Mummy, a remake of Karl Freund’s 1932 original starring Boris Karloff. On an archaeological excavation in Egypt, John Banning (Peter Cushing), his father, Stephen Banning (Felix Aylmer), and his uncle, Joseph Whemple (Raymond Huntley), discover the vast tomb of Princess Ananka (Yvonne Furneaux). Warned by an Egyptian zealot, Mehemet Bey (George Pastell), to leave the tomb undisturbed, the older Banning instead reads from the Scroll of Life, unleashing the murderous mummy Kharis (Lee), who had dutifully protected his princess centuries before. Three years later, Bey arrives in England with Kharis, determined to have the mummy wreak vengeance on the three men who dared disrespect Princess Ananka and the god they both served, Karnak.
