Queen & Slim

In the soon to be iconic photograph from Melina Matsoukas's distressing Queen & Slim, stars Daniel Kaluuya and Jodie Turner-Smith posed on the hood of one of several getaway cars they drive while fleeing the shooting of a Cleveland police office on the night of their first date. That sequence is anguishing, and sets the bar high for the rest of the film. If only the disciplined intensity was sustained. Matsoukas and screenwriter Lena Waithe serve up quite a melange during the fugitive couple's trek toward Miami and a plane to take them to Cuba. Some episodes are comic, some romantic, some philosophical, some political but the inconsistency does not enhance the story; it left me puzzled. The tonal variety feels like a mix-tape, which is probably not coincidental as Matsoukas is a veteran music video director; this is her first feature film, and it has a phenomenal soundtrack. The film's premise feels undermined by a surfacy narrative that can not withstand close scrutiny; leaps of logic and geographic dislocation detract. These would not be matters of concern if the film was being offered as a parable, the characters more totems than real people trapped in an unbelievably untenable situation, but that doesn't seem to be what's going on here. Communities are shown embracing and protecting the fugitives but for reasons that don't rise above vengeance and bloodlust. At this moment in history -- with tensions between black communities and law enforcement raw -- audiences, particularly audiences of color, need rational stories that explore all aspects of human loss -- not just BLM agitprop.

The Laundromat

Steven Soderbergh's unique brand of political subversion doesn't always deliver the audiences but his films certainly are entertaining. His latest, The Laundromat (Netflix), weaves together a handful of ironic tales of people crushed by a predatory cartel of gouging, phantom underwriters. Meryl Streep heads a cast of characters caught in Gary Oldman and Antonio Bandera's web of fraud and unaccountability that spans the globe.(Yes, ripped from the headlines.) Streep's Ellen Martin is left a widow after a touring river boat capsizes near Trenton, Michigan. When she discovers the tour company's insurer can't pay she investigates and finds nothing but false leads and dead ends. Her story intersects with several others, each taking the level of corruption deeper. Although Soderbergh and writer Scott Z. Burns sermonize during the last five minutes of the film, it's a welcome and timely message about the threat greed and deception pose for democracy.

Knives Out

Rian Johnson's deviously comedic, big house murder mystery, Knives Out, is artfully composed -- from the script to the art direction to the cinematography -- but not at all precious. The A-list cast for this story about the death of the wealthy patriarch (Christopher Plummer) of a ridiculously pampered family (see poster) are generous with their gifts in Johnson's rich story space; no scenery chewing here. The movie's surprises are abundant, many howlingly funny sequences. Daniel Craig's gentleman sleuth, Benoit Blanc, is a marvelous (awards-worthy) creation, erudite and cagey. The lovely Ana de Armas is the dead patriarch's young Latina nurse at the center of what appears to have been her employer's suicide ... but was it? This film is not what I expected.

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

Marielle Heller's engrossing Can You Ever Forgive Me? from last year depicted the descent of a blocked and frustrated writer into a morass of self-destruction through fraud. Heller's latest, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, charts a different though still riveting course as it recounts the beginning of the friendship between a magazine writer (Matthew Rhys) and Fred Rogers (Tom Hanks with his usual uncanny brilliance). Cynics will no doubt chuckle at Rogers' unrelenting cheesiness but will quickly be entranced by his steadiness and abiding decency. It's those qualities that the wounded and bitter Lloyd Vogel doesn't trust, and tries to reveal as Rogers' attempt to mask his own demons. A new father who has resisted the role, Lloyd is estranged from his own father (a wonderful Chris Cooper) who is trying to reconnect after years of absence. Heller has crafted a visually arresting and narratively complex story that brings together fine actors for exchanges that resound with truth and healing. At one point toward the end of the film, Rogers and Lloyd are sitting over lunch and Rogers asks for a minute of silence to call to mind all of the people who made their lives possible. For that entire minute, not a sound, not a breath was heard in the theater during the screening I attended. What a touching sequence!

Doctor Sleep

Mike Flanagan's Oculus (2014) was an ably crafted entry in the new horror genre of spirits who kill for no reason, just because they can. In Flanagan's latest film, Doctor Sleep, the demons certainly seem to have purpose but it's tough to care if all we're given is "evil has always been." Working from Stephen King's sequel to The Shining, Flanagan expands on the original's world of clairvoyants, angry haints and mad men with axes for an intermittently entertaining update on mind-reader Danny Torrance, who as a boy escaped the haunted Overlook hotel with his mom, leaving his possessed father to freeze to death, lost in a hedge maze. Thirty plus years later and Torrance (Ewan McGregor) is walking roadkill, who stays drunk to keep his demons at bay. His "shine" is awakened by a young girl Abra [as in Cadabra] (Kyliegh Curran), who "sees" the kidnapping and murder of a boy by a witchy mystic (Rebecca Ferguson) and a tribe of fairly redundant hench-people who feast on the souls of shining folk. Yes, the premise lacks the subtle creep of King's best work; it's loopy, ham-fisted and bombastic.The last reel showdown takes place in the abandoned Overlook hotel where the ghosts from the previous picture make a not-unexpected curtain call. It's all a bit annoying and silly. Stanley Kubrick's film broke new cinematic ground and Jack Nicholson powered through his role as the unlucky Jack Torrance, and delivered moviedom's most memorable Kubrick stare. Flanagan and crews' energetic effort does not rise to the level of artistry of the original (and, frankly, the story never actually gels) but it probably fits nicely in the new world of meaningless menace.

Motherless Brooklyn

Writer / Director / Star Edward Norton's hommage to Hollywood gumshoe features, Motherless Brooklyn, has so many stellar elements to it -- the cast, the period detail, the story, the music -- that I wish it were a better movie. Norton's heart is in the right place in putting this tale of big city corruption and racism in the New York boroughs based on the novel by Jonathan Lethem on the screen in Trump's America. I just didn't enjoy it as much as I wanted to. Maybe the narrative reminded me too much of Chinatown (1974). Maybe Norton's character's Tourette tick didn't seem to add as much to the character or the story as his obsessive compulsiveness. Maybe it was the draggy pacing and some seemingly interminable passages that a more seasoned director would have sensed were extraneous and repetitive. Maybe it was the unevenness in dialogue that seemed to borrow both from gangland flicks of the Cagney era and the streetwise banter of a more recent age, with some pretty jarring moments of "they wouldn't have said that in 1950s New York." The picture still entertains; it's just not the keeper I really hoped it would be.

Jojo Rabbit

The most pressing question about Taika Waitit's Nazi satire Jojo Rabbit is not IF it works (it does), but HOW. Waititi carries much of the film's outrageousness himself as a spectral Adolph Hitler, the ghostly best friend to the film's lead, 10-year-old Jojo (a fine Roman Griffin Davis), a softhearted member of the Hitler Youth, who doesn't understand war, hatred or prejudice but is willing to fake it until he makes it. Jojo's loving mother (Scarlett Johansson) is a member of the resistance and is hiding a Jewish girl (Thomasin McKenzie) in crawl spaces. Jojo, on the mend from a youth camp grenade accident, discovers Elsa while recuperating at home and begins the real journey into manhood. Waititi has a keen eye and ear and masterful way with childlike enchantment and heartache. The picture, bold and bracingly funny with its anachronistic soundtrack, is loaded with small moments of emotional eloquence.

My Nephew Emmett

Kevin Wilson Jr.’s short film My Nephew Emmett (2017) is as devastating as the movie’s premise would suggest. It is Aug. 28, 1955, and 14-year-old Emmett Till is taken in the middle of the night from his uncle’s home in Money, Mississippi, by the husband of a white woman Till reportedly whistled at earlier that day. L.B. Williams plays Till’s Uncle Mose Wright, who was unable to protect his nephew from the hate white folks were steeped in. The moment when he begs the raging husband (Ethan Leaverton) to take him and not the boy evokes disdain and pity, which are key to appreciating this film. One must understand how powerlessness works and see how anguishing it is.

The King

David Michôd directs Timothée Chalamet, Joel Edgerton and Sean Harris in The King, a literate and intriguing staging of the early days of the reign of England's Henry V. With a script by Michôd and Edgerton, the film depicts the young king's determination and uncertainty. He's determined not to be like his despised father (Ben Mendelsohn) but uncertain how to be his own man because, to date, he's done little but carouse. As played by Chalamet, who has established himself as an actor of uncanny emotional depth, Hal, as he's known, is a pensive commander. Uneasy lies the head ....His scenes with both Edgerton as his confidante, the former knight and wastrel Sir John Falstaff and Harris as senior counsel William Chief Justice are smart exchanges that merge period drama elegance with contemporary bombast. That's not to say the exchanges are always transparent. Hal questions the motives and loyalties of the nobles and courtiers who surround him and so his movements are a negotiation between forthrightness and wariness. The movie builds to the famous Battle of Agincourt, where Henry led England in defeating the French, led by the ridiculous dauphin (Robert Pattinson). The sequence does not feature Shakespeare's famous St. Crispin's Day speech but Hal's address does not lack in dramatic heft. The battle itself is fairly bloodless, more a rugby scrum in chain mail than medieval slaughter but it is still pretty stirring. A fine, entertaining picture.

The King

 

David Michôd directs Timothée Chalamet, Joel Edgerton and Sean Harris in The King, a literate and intriguing staging of the early days of the reign of England's Henry V. With a script by Michôd and Edgerton, the film depicts the young king's determination and uncertainty. He's determined not to be like his despised father (Ben Mendelsohn) but uncertain how to be his own man because, to date, he's done little but carouse. As played by Chalamet, who has established himself as an actor of uncanny emotional depth, Hal, as he's known, is a pensive commander. Uneasy lies the head ....His scenes with both Edgerton as his confidante, the former knight and wastrel Sir John Falstaff and Harris as senior counsel William Chief Justice are smart exchanges that merge period drama elegance with contemporary bombast. That's not to say the exchanges are always transparent. Hal questions the motives and loyalties of the nobles and courtiers who surround him and so his movements are a negotiation between forthrightness and wariness. The movie builds to the famous Battle of Agincourt, where Henry led England in defeating the French, led by the ridiculous dauphin (Robert Pattinson). The sequence does not feature Shakespeare's famous St. Crispin's Day speech but Hal's address does not lack in dramatic heft. The battle itself is fairly bloodless, more a rugby scrum in chain mail than medieval slaughter but it is still pretty stirring. A fine, entertaining picture.

Harriet

Kasi Lemmons' Harriet is a star vehicle for Tony winner Cynthia Erivo (The Color Purple) that strikes familiar chords in its depiction of slaver tyranny along with a few fresh notes in its treatment of the dynamic between its black character. London-born Erivo is Minty (later Harriet) whose fiery temperament has made her a liability to her resentful young master Gideon (Britisher Joe Alwyn). When bills advertising her sale are posted about, she leaves her husband (Zackary Momoh), a free black man with whom she cannot live, and escapes the Maryland plantation that has been her home. She heads for Philadelphia with the help of a local preacher (Vondie Curtis-Hall), and there she meets a free black abolitionist (Leslie Odom Jr.) who helps her find lodging and work and unwittingly stokes a fire for her to return south to lead her family to freedom. And thus she begins her journey to becoming a conductor for the Underground Railroad. The film's treatment of the many dimensions of blacks' relationship to enslavement is its most interesting aspect and I wish there was more of it rather than the long sequences of Harriet running from pursuers, which, of course, is the core of her story but is certainly not all of it. Scenes between Harriet and her husband, her parents, and the free blacks of Philadelphia are all exceptionally well done and insightful. The interactions with slavers, menacing but trite. Also, the spiritual aura in which the Harriet is cast will undoubtedly resonate with some audience but it does not enhance her persona. Rather, it seems to diminish her bravery and brilliance.