Malcolm and Marie

Sam Levinson's Malcolm and Marie is more trial than triumph. Though Zendaya and John David Washington deliver Levinson's abrasive lines capably, the animus between them feels inconsistent and so unpersuasive. Zendaya is the more persuasive as the addictive and self-loathing Marie, than is Washington as the genius filmmaker who has used his lover's pain as inspiration. They take turns butchering one another with revelations and confessions, tearing at each other because they both love and despise the other -- and themselves. Malcolm and Marie is exhausting and exasperating and left me wondering "Why?"

Director Tim Story also has a recent releases. Story has directed the live action/animated rehash of the classic cartoon Tom & Jerry.

Story made his name with music videos. He has directed one commendable movie -- Barbershop (2002) -- but mostly blockbuster movie dreck that are panned by critics but generate dollars for the studios. For example, the blustering and bombastic Ice Cube / Kevin Hart vehicles Ride Along and Ride Along 2 drew in more than $200 million at the box office. Story's films aren't deep. Thematically, they're far from the emotional convulsions in Levinson's M&M. That Story's T&J, which I have no intention of seeing, will be judged as a banal money-grab is assured. And, frankly, that's fine with me.

Levinson's Malcolm and Marie is a race and sex minefield through which the two characters meander, setting off explosions for an hour and half for no apparent reason other than, perhaps, to feed the public's fascination with warring couples and to address the near absence of vitriol at this level being voiced by Black actors. Levinson is a relatively new filmmaker whose pictures are generally well-regarded but they don't make money. Why he chose to try to articulate the complexities in the relationship between a Black man and woman is not clear. But I'm cool with it.

I would love it if Levinson's Malcolm and Marie were truthful but he should be free to try and fail. And Story should be free to direct brainless fodder, the cinematic equivalent of the wings special at Applebee's.

That's what a post-racial America looks like.