Swan Song (2021)

 

Mahershala Ali plays opposite himself in Swan Song, a tender, ruminative study of identity and loss whose strength rests in Ali's Cameron, a terminally ill man wrestling with an imponderable -- sending a healthy clone to live out the rest of his days with Cam's unwitting family.

Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold

 

Joan Didion's death on Thursday prompted me to move up in my Netflix watchlist the 2017 doc, The Center Will Not Hold. It's not just a splendid personal statement, directed by her nephew actor Griffin Dunne, but a celebration of Didion's unique expressiveness, written and spoken.

Don't Look Up

 

In The Big Short and Vice, Adam McKay spiced up history with his trenchant humor but he's not constrained by anything in lampooning governmental fecklessness, social fragmentation and mass media froth in Don't Look Up's tale of a planet-killing comet drawing a bead on the Earth.

The Matrix Resurrections

Where 1999's The Matrix was an energizing optical convulsion of tech mumbo-jumbo and New Age mysticism, Lana Wachowski's Matrix Resurrections, like its central characters (Reeves and Moss), feels a little stiff, overwhelmed and a bit slower. It's nostalgic and unintentially sad.

The King's Man

 

Matthew Vaughn's The King's Man is epic and globetrotting but has a distressing mix of tones, and a sudden but narratively propulsive death that enrages, not just because it was unexpected but because the film sacrificed its most interesting character for the sake of legend.

Spider-Man: No Way Home

 

Spider-Man: No Way Home pumps up the wattage of the comic-cinema franchise's winning formula by multiplying the number of universes and villains and villainous catastrophes and Spider-Men answering the calls. Tom Holland, arguably the most affable of the three motion picture depictions of the character, is joined by Tobey MaGuire and Andrew Garfield (the other two) in this the third of Jon Watts' Spidey productions.

The picture is as smart and nimble as any in the Watts trilogy, mixing magic and mechanics and ample amounts of humor -- much of it purely for the delight of knowing fans. The story's lessons are familiar and painful: unintended consequences are always a threat and loss and sacrifice are parts of a life well-lived.

CODA

 

The title of Sian Heder's Golden Globe-nominated feature is CODA. It is the acronym for Child of Deaf Adults but it is also the term used to refer to the final passage of a musical composition, which often strays away from the original theme. Both meanings apply to Heder's sweetly touching film about a young woman named Ruby (a terrific Emilia Jones) growing up in Gloucester, the only hearing member of her family (all played by deaf actors), who has come to rely on her as a translator and buffer with the hearing world.

Ruby has a powerful singing voice, developed by crooning along to the music on her family's fishing boat, which she works along with her father (Troy Kotsur) and brother (Daniel Durant) before school. She hides her talent or interests from her isolating mother (a radiant Marlee Matlin) to avoid criticism. When she follows a handsome boy (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo) into signing up for choir class, the course of Ruby's life takes a sharp turn as she is encouraged by her music teacher (Eugenio Derbez) to apply for admission to Berklee School of Music in Boston. This leads to clashes with her fearful parents and her resentful brother and with her own self-doubts.

Heder's story shares some elements with other films that depict young people tugging at the strong gravitational pull of family ties that are made even tighter because of eternal pressures (Running on Empty, Billy Elliott, among them). But it's the story's treatment of the CODA's unique challenges that gives this film special resonance. Though it has some small narrative holes, the picture has tremendous heart and will likely not leave a dry eye in the house as viewers hear and see Joni Mitchell's "Both Sides Now" performed by Jones. A beautiful, expressive rendition.

Nightmare Alley (2021)

Visionary filmmaker Guillermo del Toro's Nightmare Alley smolders with performances from its prinicpal players -- Bradley Cooper, Rooney Mara and Cate Blanchett -- that will likely remind movie geeks of the noir classics of the '40s. (In fact, an earlier version of this story was produced in 1947, starring Tyrone Power and Joan Blondell.) Matched with Del Toro's exquisite eye for period detail and atmosphere, the film is as captivating as the con artists at its center. Cooper plays a drifter turned carnival roustie turned "mentalist" who takes the act he's mastered from Zeena and the Professor (Toni Collette and David Strathairn) on the road with the help of Molly (Rooney Mara), the girl who conducts electricity. The two eventually team up with an unsavory but immaculately scultured psychologist (Blanchett channelling Bacall) who helps Cooper's Carlisle find well-heeled marks to scam. As suggested by its title, Nightmare Alley is dark and foreboding, a Del Toro trademark, and its characters are pitiful when they're not depicable. But it's beautfiully constructed -- Blanchett's scarlet lips are a work of art -- and speaks to human ferality, its power to elude and seduce.

Being the Ricardos

 

Aaron Sorkin's Being the Ricardos is set during a week of taping an episode of the second season of the phenomenally popular TV sitcom I Love Lucy, starring Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. Ball, played to near perfection by Nicole Kidman, is depicted as a remarkably savvy and self-possesed former movie contract player turned TV megastar who when the action begins has recently testified before the House Committee on Un-American Activities and been cleared but is called a Communist, albeit obliquely, by a popular radio opinionist. In '50s America (and maybe even today), the red stain could end a career.

Sorkin applies his knowledge of U.S. history and his classically brisk wit to retell how Ball and Arnaz (a solid Javier Bardem) and their production team, including CBS network executives and program sponsor Philip-Morris, respond while preparing that week's show. It wouldn't be a Sorkin production if the narrative did not include emotional and relational complications -- Lucy and Desi's early courtship, infighting between writers and suspicions between the show's stars (there's a reason Lucy is looking at the camera in the movie's poster). These subplots track along with the main storyline, and, in masterly fashion, enhance its themes.

Those looking for a wall-to-wall comedy might be a bit disappointed because Sorkin -- as smart a screenwriter as any -- always has more on his mind than laughs, which are abundant here. He also explores issues of autocracy, intrusive politics and female empowerment -- setting one foot in the past and the other in the present.

West Side Story (2021)

 

Those who loved West Side Story 1961 will certainly love 2021 -- and for many of the same reasons. New fans might be won by the splendid music -- of course -- but also by director Steven Spielberg's expansion of the production's color palette (both in casting and costuming) and screenwriter Tony Kushner's recrafting of New York's white/brown conflict to reflect both familiar immigration battles and the existential threats of urban development for all but the wealthiest city dwellers.

The leads for this production, Ansel Elgort and newcomer Rachel Zegler, are natural charmers, who deliver what I consider to be the show's more beautiful melodies (Maria; Tonight; One Hand, One Heart) with exuberance, warmth and grace. But the show's power center, as was true for the '61 version, is the three featured seconds -- Ariana Debose as Anita, David Alvarez as Bernardo and Mike Faist as Riff. All are brilliant, especially Debose, a true mesmerizing beauty.

The dancing has been re-choreographed by Justin Peck to emphasize, to great effect, more balletic movement and de-emphasize the acrobatic from the earlier film (courtesy of gymnast Russ Tamblyn who played Riff in '61). His re-imagining of Cool as a pas de deux for Elgort and Faist is particularly impressive.

Some songs have been moved around and reassigned. Rita Moreno, Anita in '61, returns to WSS as a new character and is assigned the aching Somewhere, sung by Maria and Tony in the original. It's a touching homage by and for the Oscar-winner that might strike some longtime fans as more of a gimmick than a natural narrative correction or substitution.

In the end, WSS '21 is a Spielberg production -- immaculate and stunning and sure to make billions.

The Power of the Dog

The title of Jane Campion's latest film -- The Power of the Dog -- is taken from Psalm 22, Verse 20 -- "Deliver my soul from the sword; my darling from the power of the dog." This is not revealed until the final minutes of this methodical and riveting story of repression and cruelty in the Montana wilderness of the 1920s. The principal characters are a widow, Rose, (Kirsten Dunst) and her bookish teenage son, Pete, (Kodi Smit-McPhee) who join the household of a wealthy rancher named George (Jesse Plemmons) and his toxic, cowpuncher brother Phil (Benedict Cumberbatch), who seems at first to be incapable of civil exchange and kind regard. It is Phil's brutishness that sets in motion this deceptively understated psychodrama, based on the novel by Thomas Savage. The four players are altered by their proximity to one another, some more drastically than others, and Campion, who directs feature films infrequently, conceals motive, relying on inference and nuance to separate the "darlings" from the "dogs."

Annette

Annette didn't perplex like Carax's disjointed Holy Motors because it has a sung-through narrative from the Sparks Brothers about Adam Driver's unfunny comic, Marion Cotillard's moribund soprano and their magical musical baby, but that doesn't make it a more successful picture.

Brian Wilson: Long Promised Road

 

Brent Wilson's tender treatment of Brian Wilson in this film doesn't vary much in tone, pairing requisite file footage with passages when the camera is trained on Wilson's inscrutable face while he's on a tour of Los Angeles with his friend journalist Jason Fine. Sadly wistful.

Encanto

 

Disney Animation Studio's ravishing Encanto gives the incomparable Lin-Manuel Miranda another opportunity to address the Latinx gaps in American popular culture by penning the songs for a warmly affirming tale of Brown Girl Magic that comes in the form of determination and grit.

House of Gucci

Ridley Scott offers a whirling, often witty account of the events leading up to the disco-era hired killing of Maurizio Gucci (Adam Driver) by his estranged wife (Lady Gaga) when the fashion giant was rocking with debt and scandal. The cast is well-dressed, if not well-behaved.

King Richard

 

Reinaldo Marcus Green's King Richard works because Venus and Serena's full-bodied father Richard Williams is played by the full-bodied Will Smith, who gives his all, which is substantial, to selling this winning but rocky tale of resolute determination and Black Dad Magic.

tick...tick...BOOM!

 

Much to love in Lin-Manuel Miranda's adaptation of Jonathan Larson's semi-autobiographical musical tick, tick ... BOOM!, mostly Andrew Garfield's performance as the pre-Rent Larson, caught between creativity and stagnation. The Sunday diner tribute is a Broadway baby's delight.

Belfast

 

For a film suffused with pain and trouble, Kenneth Branagh's loving tribute to his hometown -- Belfast, Northern Ireland -- brims with joy -- most of it reflected in and seen through the eyes of young Jude Hill, who plays Branagh's boyhood alter ego, Buddy, a child completely invested in life, in his family, the village that is raising him and a flaxen haired classmate for whom he endures the torture of maths. It's a beautifully constructed and emotionally impactful picture.

Spencer

 

Kristen Stewart's arresting performance as Princess Diana in Spencer is riveting though the actress rarely speaks above a strangled whisper; Jonny Greenwood's raw, angular soundtrack underscores the schism being played out by the two parties -- rule-bound royals and the rebel.

Uncorked

 

Prentice Penny's Uncorked, which stars Mamoudou Athie and Courtney B. Vance, gets so many things right that one can forgive some predictability in the story. The characters in this tale of a young man hoping to become a master sommelier feel real; the dialogue lean and authentic.

The Harder They Fall

 

The vibrantly assured The Harder They Fall begs the question about the finesse Black British directors like Jeymes Samuel bring to bear on their film projects that many Black American directors seem to lack, even with material rooted in U.S. history. The film is a stylized treat.

The French Dispatch

 

Perhaps "serious" film performers love working with Wes Anderson because the exacting auteur makes movies, like The French Dispatch, that assemble dozens of A-listers for elaborate, painterly tableaux in serpentine stories that movie inexorably but not always predictably forward.

Last Night in Soho

 

I believe Edgar Wright (The Sparks Brothers, Baby Driver) is a music lover, as evidenced by how he so thoroughly integrates music, often of another era, into his pictures. I also believe Wright is fascinated by artifice, constructed personas and discovery. Shaun (of the Dead) discovered his inner zombie-killer and Sergeant Angel (Hot Fuzz) discovered his inner bad ass and the evil that lurks in picturesque small towns. Wright also loves puns.

Wright's subject matter in Last Night in Soho (the double meaning is clearly intentional) is darker than most of his previous films but familiar thematic elements are present. Ellie, a young and ambitious English country girl (Thomasin McKenzie) is accepted into a London fashion school in the Soho district, where she hopes to fulfill both her dream and that of her mother, who died by suicide in London when Ellie was a child. After one sleepless night in the student residence hall, she finds lodging in the home of a elderly woman, Miss Collins, played by Diana Rigg.

Nearly immediately, Ellie begins to have visions of a young woman named Sandy, an early resident of the room (Anya Taylor-Joy), who explores Soho night life in the '60s, looking for work as a singer. Music of the period replaces the noise of the city streets, and Ellie is entranced by what appears to be a glamorous and exciting life, with a charming potential love interest and talent scout (The Crown's Matt Smith). 

Wright's camera does astonishing work seamlessly blending the two young women deeper and deeper into Sandy's world as they trade places on the dance floor, in lounge mirrors and, ultimately, in more dangerous encounters with lurking patrons. Wright wraps a clever murder mystery around this spooky tale of the powerless clairvoyant who watches as an ambitious young woman gets devoured by London. 

This film's weaknesses take place outside of the narrative's main story -- an unconvincing romance between Ellie and an agreeable classmate John (Michael Ajao) and the animus of a mean-girl quartet of classmates toward Ellie. The movie's big reveal is immediately impactful but will likely raise more questions than it answers after the credits have rolled, not the least being "how was this possible?"

Fire Shut Up In My Bones

Jazz trumpeter and composer Terence Blanchard’s earnest and heartfelt Met opera Fire Shut Up In My Bones, based on Charles M. Blow’s stirring memoirs, is often powerful with many moving performances by its principals (Will Liverman, Latonia Moore, Angel Blue), including a boy soprano as the young Charles (Walter Russell III), but I didn’t love the work as much as I wanted to.

Blanchard and librettist Kasi Lemmons have crafted a collection of beautiful pieces — borrowing from classical, jazz and gospel traditions — for solo and multiple voices. The opera is set in Blow’s Louisiana hometown and nearby Grambling University but the narrative — aside from young Char’seBaby’s (Russell) sexual assault by an older male cousin — is pretty inert. And the piece has a sameness of perspective and tone, inward directed and woeful, due, of course, to the nature of the source material, a first-person account of childhood isolation and abuse.

Even so, the opera does offer audiences levels of meaning, and an interesting storytelling device in that Destiny and Loneliness appear as characters played by the same actress (Blue) who then plays college-age Charles’s (Liverman) short-lived love interest. Other elements — a baptism and a fraternity step show performance were entertaining but seemed to serve more as African American cultural markers than fully integrated narrative pieces.

As the first piece by a Black composer on the Met’s main stage, the pressure was great and expectations high, of course. Some will wonder why such a contemporary piece that veers away from the modes of more traditional works? Why not present an established work by a Black composer or commission a work with more expansive scope and historical perspective? Fair questions.

It is clear the Met — and many of the other keepers of the venerable canon created by white males — are looking to diversify their seasons and their audiences. Fire Shut Up In My Bones is a worthy though not truly spectacular beginning.

Dune (2021)

 

Denis Villeneuve's Dune is an expansive visionary interpretation of an "unfilmable" work; a stunning, production department masterpiece that will likely sweep art direction, sound design and costuming categories during award season, but its performances may be a tad more intuitive and translucent than the complex story needs. Finding the balance between over- and understatement will always plague this material because the novel is so immersive.

The Rescue (2021)

Directors Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi won an Oscar for their vertiginous 2019 documentary Free Solo, which focused on Alex Honnold's untethered climb up El Capitan. Their cameras scaled the sheer face of the rock along with Honnold, putting viewers as close to the action as possible.

Chin and Vasarhelyi have taken the same intrepid approach in depicting the 2018 heroic campaign to rescue a team of 12 young Thai soccer players and their coach who were trapped in one of the country's labyrinthine caverns during monsoon season, which meant most of the caves were underwater and eventually every inch would be submerged. The directors' primary subjects are an international team of cave divers who have the skills and equipment to navigate the darkness and rushing waters that the Thais lack.

Just like Free Solo, The Rescue is crystalline in capturing the obsession and peculiarities driving the team of cave divers, who readily admit being an odd lot, drawn to challenges from which others would cower -- finding deep satisfaction in the solitude of cave discovery. Each talks about fearing only one aspect of the Thai rescue, however -- being responsible for another person's life.

The film is gripping, nerve-wracking and occasionally overwhelming, but also, in the end, tremendously life-affirming and a testament to the human capacity for selfless goodness.

Lamb

 

Valdimar Jóhannsson's film debut, Lamb, is unsettling and disorienting, evoking feelings of uncertainty and distress. But it's also beautifully made and quite a story.

Noomi Rapace (of The Girl With .... series) plays Maria, the sturdy wife of an Icelandic farmer Ingvar (Hilmir Snær Guðnason) with whom she raises sheep and plants potatoes on a sprawling and remote farm. They are childless, but we discover deep into the film that they were not always. Their lives change dramatically one day as they are in one of their barns helping ewes with birthing. And the film, which aside from a curiously ominous prologue, takes a turn away from reality toward the supernatural.

What audience members do with Johannsson's film, he is also co-writer of the screenplay, will depend on how much grace they are willing to give the filmmaker and the attractive young couple, whom Johannsson has invested generous amounts of kindness and fortitude.

Still, some viewers will undoubtedly feel betrayed by them, especially Maria, whose drastic action midway through the film signals darkness will ultimately descend in this land of endless daylight, where the young couple tell a visitor they have rediscovered happiness.

The Last Duel

 

In Ridley Scott's gripping adaptation of Eric Jager's The Last Duel, everyone and no one gets what they desire or deserve -- which is probably true of most of life and those living it.

In 1386, the French knight Jean de Carrouges (Matt Damon) challenges his former friend and fellow vassal to a vain count (Ben Affleck) to fight to the death because Carrouges' wife, Marguerite, a remarkable Jodie Comer, has accused Jacque Le Gris (Adam Driver) of raping her while she was alone in the Carrouges castle home earlier that year. Jean must avenge his and his wife's honor and so he petitions the king (Alex Lawther) to permit him to duel Le Gris, who denies the charge -- thus letting God decide what is true.

Scott's film relates the events in three chapters, each devoted to one of these three principal character's perspective. Though the particulars in each version vary, the fact that Le Gris entered the home uninvited and forced himself upon Marguerite is not disputed. Both the assault and the aftermath are in keeping with the conventions of the day: women were the property of men -- first their father's then their husband's, if they were to marry -- and men were free to do pretty much as they wished, as long as they did not violate the rights and privileges of other men.

That Carrouges, a brutish, battle-scarred bruiser, is not favored by the count, despite being a fearless warrior, does not help his cause. But the assault on his wife is the latest in grievances he has against Le Gris, who enjoys the count's beneficence because Le Gris is well-educated, handsome and a fellow libertine.

Further complicating matters is Marguerite's not incidental attraction to Le Gris and her growing dissatisfaction for her much-absent husband. That she expressed to a friend liking the cut of Le Gris' untrustworthy jib does not help her case but is not enough to exonerate the accused. The men mount their horses in full chainmail and leave the outcome to the angels.

Scott, an accomplished and celebrated director who has yet to win an Oscar though he's been nominated many times, has created an immersive period epic that feels meticulous in its historical accuracy. it is nonetheless also a compelling comment on contemporary issues that is free of sanctimony and anachronistic sloganeering. It is an intelligent and provocative picture.

No Time to Die

 

At its best, the James Bond 007 series has celebrated clear-eyed heroics in service to humankind. At its worst, it's been about the objectification of women and the diminishment of actual threats to life for cartoonish perils and psychotic villains who were more mincing than menacing.

The Daniel Craig era maintained the testosterone of the classic Sean Connery series and amped it up even more with phenomenal physical feats that Craig insisted on doing himself. Now that the Craig era is over -- and good for him for bowing out on a thunderous high note -- the question for some has become what and who is next.

I don't care as much about those as some -- as the decision will no doubt be focus-grouped and tested for optimal bankability -- because the latest feature is such a whiz-bang send off, with delightful grace notes for diehards (look for Craig's delivery of the signature Bond turn and fire during the last reel) and tips of the cap to the Bond legacy and the actors who breathed so much life into the most recent iteration -- Craig, Jeffrey Wright as Felix Leiter and Judy Dench as M -- by those who, presumably, will carry the torch.

This story of No Time to Die, directed with finesse by Cary Joji Fukunaga, features a "retired" Bond being matched with the new 007 (a sleek Lashana Lynch) to pursue a scarred and vengeful madman (a deliciously understated Rami Malek) who has plans to rid the world of all that he finds upsetting (which is to say most things) using biological warfare created by a Russian scientist (a hilariously madcap David Dencik). Complicating the chase is Bond's lost love Madeleine (Léa Seydoux) who is harboring a secret present and past.

The action sequences are, as expected, pretty epic, and, in keeping with most films in the series, high on body count but low on bloodletting -- to retain that PG-13 rating -- and the tender moments are not mushy or clanging downers but hearty hails for jobs well done. Bravo.

Black as Night

 

Amazon's Black as Night, directed by Maritte Lee Go, is monster horror in the age of BLM and black girl magic.

Asjha Cooper stars as Shawna, a New Orleans teen born during Hurricane Katrina. Her mother (Kenneisha Thompson) has fallen into drug addiction and is living among the homeless and dispossessed in one of the city's last housing units for the poor. Shawna lives with her father (Derek Roberts) and brother (Frankie Smith) and is best friends with an out-and-proud Hispanic boy Pedro (Fabrizio Guido).

One night while walking home from a party at which she tried and failed to connect with her crush Chris (Mason Beauchamp) she is attacked by a vampire who draws blood before being scared away. Shawna discovers her mother was also attacked but did not survive. She recruits Pedro, Chris and a white girl who leads a vampire lore interest group (Abbie Gayle) on a quest to hunt the blood suckers.

Writer Sherman Payne has laced throughout this fairly standard fare notes about racism and colorism, Black enslavement, empowerment and restitution, though not the sort generally mentioned these days.

These embellishments give the film, which is often moribund, some vitality but it is not sustained, even with the always-entertaining Keith David as a community activist on a secret mission. Still, it's a fairly commendable attempt to breathe life into a creaky genre.

Venom: Let There Be Carnage

 

The Venom series is a minor Marvel franchise that turns the villainous alien symbiotic creature in the comics and previous film appearances into a more-or-less devourer of bad guys. The "more" is due to the creature's ravenous appetite for human brains, and the "less" to the restraint of his host Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy, who also voices the wisecracking slime beast). It is the "relationship" between the haggard San Francisco reporter and the entity living inside of him, introduced in the original 2018 film, that turns a fairly routine MCU actioner into something almost heartwarming.

In Venom: Let There Be Carnage, directed by performance capture artist Andy Serkis (Gollum of the LOTR's series), Brock meets with lunatic death row inmate Cletus Kasady (a bewildering Woody Harrelson) who bites Brock and contracts alien blood into his system. The Red Venom that emerges while Kasady is being executed is not suppressed by his better nature because Kasady doesn't have one and so all hell breaks loose as he wreaks vengeance on those who did him wrong and sets out to free his lethally shrill girlfriend (Naomie Harris) from a sanitarium.

Midway through the picture, Brock and Venom have an acrimonious parting of the ways, with Venom "coming out of Brock's closet" and jumping between unwitting hosts, none of whom seem to be compatible.

At one point, Venom wanders into the middle of what appears to be a combined Pride and Day-of-the-Dead celebration. Partiers compliment him on his outfit as he grabs a mic and makes a speech from the bandstand about not being afraid to be who you are. I'm not sure the moment works entirely but props to Hardy and co-writer Kelly Marcel for going there.

The Many Saints of Newark

 

Alan Taylor's The Many Saints of Newark assumes a familiarity with the world of organized crime David Chase created so convincingly in The Sopranos, which ran for six seasons on HBO. Fans will nod knowingly at Vera Farmiga's battle-axe of a Livia Soprano and John Magaro's hunched and bouffanted Silvia Dante and, of course, Michael Gandolfini (the late James Gandolfini's son) as the diffident miscreant teen-aged Tony Soprano, the mobster-in-waiting.

The brutality and treachery ring true and authentic but the film's backdrop of the urban riots of the late '60s feels less so. Expanding the mobster universe to include black folks trying to get a piece of whitey's action lacks a full-bodied treatment, and feels like a diversity and inclusion gesture that might be read by some as commendable and by others as opportunistic. Coupling lawlessness with black consciousness is also problematic.

Still, A-gamer Leslie Odom Jr. (One Night in Miami) delivers a fine performance as Harold McBrayer, a bag man for Dickie Moltisanti (screen-idol handsome Alessandro Nivola), who becomes leader of his family's enterprises after his rage-fueled murder of his tyrannical father, played by Ray Liotta. That young Tony Soprano idolizes his handsome and successful uncle is of little concern to anyone except Dickie's imprisoned / jazz-loving / Buddha-quoting uncle Salvatore, also played by Liotta.

That McBrayer and Moltisanti would turn on each other was inevitable but the animus between the upstart black gangster and his former associate is scrubbed of racial invectives, which struck me as odd. Even when the Sicilians are alone in their lair, their conversation is blessedly free of slurs. Most instances of the n-word being used are among the black characters when they're referring to themselves. Dickie uses it to refer to McBrayer after his mistress tells him she'd had sex with the black man, a stale and predictable trope.

Blue Bayou

Korean-American writer/director/actor Justin Chon has created in Blue Bayou an insistent modern fable set in New Orleans that packs devastating impact. In this beautiful and painful film, Chon plays Antonio LaBlanc, a Korean immigrant brought to American by adoptive parents when he was three and raised in Louisiana. Antonio is married to the loving and pregnant Kathy (Alicia Vikander), and is the doting step-father to Kathy's precocious daughter Jessie (Sydney Kowaslske). 

Events lead to an encounter with the police, among them Kathy's ex-husband and Jessie's father Ace (Mark O'Brien), who abandoned the family shortly after his daughter was born. Antonio, who makes "honest money" as a tattoo artist and "dirty money" boosting motorcycles, is threatened with deportation after the run-in with the cops and the vise of America's immigration policies begins to tighten around him and his family. 

Watching human and system failures is always gut-wrenching, but Chon mixes Antonio's personal agony with the story of a Vietnamese woman named Parker (Linh Dan Pham), who is dying of cancer. She wants a tattoo of a fleur-de-lis as it reminds of her home. From that encounter, Parker shares some of her life and wisdom about being both rooted and rootless, as so many of the Dreamers are. 

Chon, who is not an immigrant, has rich insight about the mental and emotional terrain inhabited by those who are brought to the land of opportunity, conditionally, and with little recourse if access is suddenly denied. All many of them have are tears and broken hearts -- much like the audiences for this wonderful picture.

Copshop (2021)

Joe Carnahan's grindhouse feature film Copshop is set in a remote Nevada police station but has as much to do with law and order, strictly speaking, as Swan Lake has to do with ornithology. The film's set up is a mysterious bad man (Frank Grillo) is being chased by a mysterious worse man (Gerard Butler) and Officer Val Young (Alexis Louder) is the only person standing between them and an even worse man (a brilliantly unhinged performance by Toby Huss), and the whole posse is in the sights of a bad cop. The rest is layer-upon-layer of vulgarity and balderdash between and among the officers of the station and the prisoners.

Carnahan and co-writers Kurt McLeod and Mark Williams have included red herrings and complications that are not fully explained or resolved; they just energize some action and place characters on needed markers. In other words, they're plot devices. The writers do seem to be interested in demonstrating how seemingly unstoppable criminal psychopaths can be, until confronting the proper force. They aren't extolling lawlessness in this brutal and bloody modernized Western showdown. Rather they are resurrecting the Lone Ranger mythos and merging it with Black Girl Magic.

Young, who is terrific as the Lone Ranger, is introduced in the film performing gunslinger quickdraw tricks for her boss (Chad L. Coleman of The Wire, The Expanse, Walking Dead) that will come in handy during the film's final reel, as everyone who has ever seen a movie would expect.

Dear Evan Hansen

 

No, Steven Chbosky's film adaptation of the Broadway musical sensation Dear Evan Hansen is not the horror-show some movie critics have deemed it. And star Ben Platt only sporadically looks too old for the role of the high school senior of the title. I found it entertaining and think the degree to which one will enjoy it will vary based on one's appreciation for the staginess of the show, the starkness of some of its viewpoints and the patness of its final act. The story itself might be revealing or off-putting, depending on an audience member's proximity to teenagers, depression or suicide.

The music by Justin Paul and Benj Pasek, the film's greatest asset, is tuneful and infectious, every performance on the money, and will likely lead many to set aside that the film is about an emotionally distressed young man, Evan Hansen, who crafts out of whole cloth a relationship with a classmate, Connor (star featured player Colton Ryan), who has killed himself. A letter Evan wrote to himself as part of his therapy is discovered and confiscated by Connor and later found in the dead boy's pockets. His parents (Amy Adams and Danny Pino), finding the letter, conclude Evan and Connor were friends and they press Evan for information about the son neither they nor their daughter Zoe (Kaitlyn Dever), whom Evan is pining for, barely knew. Thus begins what is at first a dream and then a nightmare for Hansen.

I was bothered a bit that the narrative does not explore the cause(s) of the mental or emotional illness on display in the film's characters -- primarily Evan and Connor but also by a high-powered student leader Alana (the lovely Amandla Stenberg), who identifies with Evan's immobilizing fear but is on meds to treat it. Perhaps the reasons are too complex to deal with in 2 1/2 hours, but the storyline seems to point to divorce and abandonment and familial fragmentation. In fact, Evan's tearful confession to making up the lies refers to his desire to be a part of Connor's family, despite having a loving and dutiful mother of his own (a fantastic Julianne Moore).

That Evan was abetted in creating a history of email exchanges between himself and Connor by a jokey "family friend" named Jared (Nik Dodani) turns what began as misguided empathy into callous manipulation. This, more than anything, might set some viewers off.

The film is by no means for every taste. Many will likely avoid it because people do indeed break out in song as part of the movie's exposition. Others will object to the subject matter or Platt's hair. In the final analysis, its message about authenticity and connectedness are worth considering. And the songs are pretty.

Thoughts on a Tale of Two Faces

 

Thoughts on a Tale of Two Faces --

Ben Platt and Timothée Chalamet are roughly the same age (27 and 25, respectively) and they both attended Columbia but are occupying entirely difference spaces in the cinematic universe right now.

Platt is being savaged as the star of what many critics say is the grossest miscalculation in movie history, that is, turning the celebrated Broadway musical Dear Evan Hansen, which starred Platt, into a movie musical starring Platt. Setting aside the subject matter -- mental illness and suicide among teens -- Platt's appearance is way out of character and because the film spends so much time on his face, the camera is not his friend, critics say.

On the other hand, there's Chalamet, who seems to go from strength to strength, moving between contemporary and period pieces, from comedy to drama, anchoring each performance in what appears to be studied discipline. His choice of material is age-appropriate; he plays the youthful Paul Atreides in the upcoming Dune, directed by Denis Villeneuve. The film has received nothing but critical and movie-goer praise, mostly for Villeneuve's fresh and authentic treatment of the source material.

Platt is first and foremost a stage performer with a truly wonderful voice and he's a decent songwriter. He lacks Chalamet's striking visual presence and the younger man's acting range, but Platt's no chump.

Except, perhaps, for saying yes to playing Evan Hansen on the screen. It was no doubt a safe choice, in that he knew the role by heart and his father is one of the producers, but it probably wasn't wise.

Chalamet has demonstrated impressive professional wisdom in his choices, working primarily with auteurs -- Villeneuve, Christopher Nolan, Woody Allen, Greta Gerwig, Luca Guadagnino, Wes Anderson. He is as sagacious a judge of material and his craft as they come. He also has a disarming, ingratiating manner that seems to come from a place of generosity. He may have the bone structure of a Grecian statue but he's no prima donna.

Platt, meanwhile, has responded to criticism of his film -- which, granted, has been brutal -- a bit more defensively than his agent would likely recommend. But I guess that's what happens when the distance between you and your role has shrunk to nearly nothing. Still, he has many fans and will weather this storm, wiser for the wear.

The Eyes of Tammy Faye

Director Michael Showalter's riveting The Eyes of Tammy Faye proposes that the Bakkers (Jim and the eponymous Tammy Faye) were lovable loons who turned piety and pity into a global bonanza first through The 700 Club and later The PTL network.

The film's tone is split between the parodic (delivered mainly by Andrew Garfield as the boyishly goofy Jim) and the pathetic (captured in Jessica Chastain's uncanny impersonation of Tammy Faye). Though Showalter skewers evangelistic arrogance and fraudulence on occasion, the film is not at all condemning. In fact, it feels sympathetic and quite often kind toward the highly flawed Bakkers, who fell from grace after taking millions from listeners and supporters for their own enrichment.

Showalter begins the film with young Tammy Faye's conversion, which invites the audience to see later events through the eyes of a person desperate for love, perhaps imitating the spirit baptisms she'd observed to show she was accepted by God, and so must be by his followers, namely her disapproving mother, Rachel (a wonderful Cherry Jones).

Tammy Faye fed her need for love and attention through an ecstatic religious sect and later through amateurish puppetry, a marriage given to its own kind of fakery, mediocre vocalizing and make-up grotesqueries. Showalter's film sets Tammy Faye's life inside a frame of both devotion and delusion. And it's thoroughly captivating.

Cry Macho

Clint Eastwood's latest film is a sauntering tale of a broken-down bronco buster sent on a rescue mission to retrieve a friend's (Dwight Yoakum) renegade teenage son (Eduardo Minett), who is running wild in Mexico City with his fighting rooster, Macho. Most of the movie is about the old gringo and the young firebrand busting each other's chops on a circuitous journey to Texas.

Eastwood is a steady and reliable filmmaker, even with material as relatively uninspired as this. He has included some beautiful desert vistas and a sweet romance between Eastwood's aged saddle tramp and the winsome proprietress (Natalia Traven) of a homey cantina in a lonely Mexican village. That may be the picture's saving grace.

Cry Macho, while not up to Eastwood's usual standards, is warm and by-the-numbers, awash in dust and fading sunlight and charm.

The Card Counter

 

Those of us who have acquired a taste for director Paul Schrader's films -- especially those he also wrote -- know he sets many of his stories in the territory between the lead character's interior and exterior worlds. These men -- and they are almost always men -- are often struggling with self-examination while negotiating some troubling event or circumstance. The cerebral quality of Schrader's texts sometimes belie the films' reptilian intensity.

In The Card Counter, Schrader's subject is a pathologically fastidious professional gambler who calls himself Will Tell (it's unclear whether the irony is deliberate), played by Oscar Isaac. Tell joins the World Series of Poker casino caravan with the help of a gambling broker La Linda (Tiffany Haddish), who secures backers for Tell's high-stakes gaming. La Linda is curious about the circumspect Tell and tries, unsuccessfully, to get his story, but that doesn't keep sparks from igniting.

When Tell has a chance encounter with a young man named Cirk (pronounced Kirk), played by Tye Sheridan, we learn Tell was a guard at Abu Ghraib, under the supervision of the sadistic Major John Gordo (Willem Dafoe). Cirk, recognizing Tell as one of the men who along with his now-dead father was prosecuted for torturing prisoners, invites Tell to join him in executing murderous retribution against Gordo, who was not prosecuted. Tell counter-offers by inviting Cirk to join him on the road, for reasons that become clearer as the story burns on it.

Schrader's pacing is deliberate, and the story is punctuated with voice-over notes from Tell taken from journal entries and others that explain gambling strategy. I did not find this gaming metaphor, if that is indeed what it is, altogether successful but the dynamic among the film's three principal players was interesting.

Haddish, who is not often cast in dramatic roles, was fine in a part that was oddly underwritten, especially in light of the film's final frame, and Sheridan's character was nearly as much of a puzzlement as Isaac's, with the young actor offering a combination of naivety and malice.