Pig

Michael Sarnoski's debut feature film Pig slowly and deliberately ponders human emotions without being ponderous.

The story, which he co-wrote with Vanessa Block, is a quest tale about a loner truffle hunter named Robin (Nicholas Cage) searching for his hunting partner and companion, a beloved pig, who is kidnapped one night from Robin's cabin in the wilderness outside of Portland. Assisting Robin, albeit reluctantly, is Amir (Alex Wolff), a flashy young striver with "Daddy issues" who peddles Robin's truffles in the highly lucrative gourmet restaurant supply chain.

In many ways, the evolution of Robin and Amir's relationship can be anticipated. That's not to say watching it develop is dull; as Cage's taciturn wild man clashes with Wolff's brash urbanite. Both actors are terrific.

What was more surprising to me was the elegance with which Sarnoski, whose camera blends tones and temperatures throughout, discloses the truths that are driving the unlikely pair -- Robin's past notoriety and enduring pain and Alex's essential emptiness that Robin's mix of genius and madness seems to fill.

Noah Reid of Schitt's Creek

 

When Noah Reid's character Patrick Brewer was introduced in the third season of the highly celebrated Canadian comedy Schitt's Creek (nine Emmy wins last year), viewers no doubt wondered if the kind, understated and disarming business consultant, who was also closeted, could survive the lunacy that is life in the Creek, much less stoke a romantic spark he felt for the cluelessly affected and self-absorbed budding entrepreneur David Rose (series co-creator Dan Levy).

The casting and storyline was a calculated risk that paid off; that spark turned into an inferno among Creek chat room fanatics, both queer and straight, who pulled for the couple and, by extension, David's transformation from a wounded warrior scarred by big city romance into someone open to happiness and fulfillment.

Noah Reid is a triple-threat (as the aging soap opera queen Moira Rose would aver) -- actor/singer/dancer -- and his reworking of Tina Turner's "Simply the Best" in the fourth season episode "Open Mic" was for many viewers a high point of the show's six seasons. It is a thoroughly engaging and tender moment that is wonderfully affirming.

Despite the utopian openness of little Schitt's Creek to the relationship of these two men, many fans, straight and queer, set aside cynicism and posted that everyone deserves a Patrick. Which is to say, everybody deserves to be valued and loved.

Black Widow

 

If Cate Shortland's Black Widow was as sure-footed as its leading character, the film might have more staying power. For a Marvel "origins" picture, it spends most of its screen time on Natasha Romanoff's discovery of her past through present battles with old foes and new (or rediscovered) allies. Shortland has assembled a half dozen exciting action pieces on both sides of the human story, which gives the movie tones that are mixed but not necessarily well-matched.

We're told that Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) was one of many "widow" soldiers bought or kidnapped as children and turned into lethal weapons by the diabolical Dreykov (Ray Winstone) for purposes that are not entirely clear, although one might assume, this being a Marvel story, it has something to do with vanquishing Shield or the Avengers.

In its strange prologue, we're introduced to the 10-year-old Natasha, her younger sister, Yelena (played as an adult by Florence Pugh), and their parents, Russian agents Alexei (David Harbour) and Melina (Rachel Weisz). It's strange because it spends no time establishing for us the connections shared by this quartet, choosing to rely on familiar narrative constructs as shorthand and devoting most of the opening to a daring airplane escape (from whom is not clear) to Cuba, where the girls are delivered to Dreykov.

The picture's two hundred million dollars bought a lot of locations and vehicular destruction, but the banter (what would an MCU film be without banter) between Johansson and Pugh and Harbour's scenes as the regretful, washed-up, incarcerated former Russian Super Soldier the Red Guardian are priceless.

Roadrunner

 

Morgan Neville's Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain -- despite its questionable but generally undetectable AI enhancements -- offers a thoughtful reassessment of the public and private life of the eponymous media icon, celebrity chef, gourmand and world traveler. The audience will undoubtedly know that the charismatic Bourdain committed suicide in 2018, after a period of international celebrity as the author of Kitchen Confidential and host of CNN's culinary travelogue Parts Unknown. That knowledge does not dull the edge of the film's point that his death was painful to many, made more so because Bourdain lived with gusto and daring.

Neville pairs archival footage of Bourdain with accounts from friends and family, all of which depict a man with an unquenchable thirst for exploration and, perhaps, distraction. A recovered drug addict, Bourdain discovered new obsessions in his work, exploring and writing about the folkways of people around the globe, particularly in unfamiliar corners and quarters. 

Failed romances, late fatherhood and a grueling travel schedule took a toll, unnoticed at that time, on Bourdain's mental and emotional health. His fall, in the last year of his life, was precipitous and puzzling, involving the idolization of a new muse, actress and women's rights activist Asia Argento, and the rejection of old friends, who, the film suggests, feel not only loss but betrayed by a man they loved dearly but who didn't love himself enough.

Respect trailer

I've seen the trailer for the Jennifer Hudson-starring Aretha biopic, Respect, several times now and am always left feeling uneasy about this film, which will be released next month. The art direction, costuming and hair all appear top notch, but some of the lines are clunky and land harshly on the ear. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTtxoz3OIlU)

For example, the flawless Audra McDonald's instruction to the child Aretha (Skye Dakota Turner) to demand "respect" from others is so lacking in nuance that it might as well have been carved in the side of a mountain. Forest Whitaker plays Aretha's father C.L. Franklin and delivers a line that reads "You have a talent that folks call genius," which is so awkwardly phrased it nearly doesn't make sense. Marlon Wayans plays Aretha's husband/manager/controller Ted White, with whom Aretha butts heads over her "bidness," a word she spits with a Sistahgirl neck swivel, though the scene is set in the '60s. And her clap back to Daddy Franklin when he accuses his daughter of losing her mind is pure Sapphire: "Maybe I found IT!" 

The film will undoubtedly snap and crackle and I'm saying a little prayer the music will sweeten what the trailer suggests will be some sour notes.

I've seen the trailer for the Jennifer Hudson-starring Aretha biopic, Respect, several times now and am always left feeling uneasy about this film, which will be released next month. The art direction, costuming and hair all appear top notch, but some of the lines are clunky and land harshly on the ear. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTtxoz3OIlU)

For example, the flawless Audra McDonald's instruction to the child Aretha (Skye Dakota Turner) to demand "respect" from others is so lacking in nuance that it might as well have been carved in the side of a mountain. Forest Whitaker plays Aretha's father C.L. Franklin and delivers a line that reads "You have a talent that folks call genius," which is so awkwardly phrased it nearly doesn't make sense. Marlan Wayans plays Aretha's husband/manager/controller Ted White, with whom Aretha butts heads over her "bidness," a word she spits with a Sistahgirl neck swivel, though the scene is set in the '60s. And her clap back to Daddy Franklin when he accuses his daughter of losing her "damn mind" is pure Sapphire: "Maybe I found IT!" 

The film will undoubtedly snap and crackle and I'm saying a little prayer the music will sweeten what the trailer suggests will be some sour notes.

Zola

Television director Janicza Bravo's first feature film, Zola, which stars Taylour Paige in the title role, is based on waitress and part-time pole dancer A'ziah King's now legendary 2015 "Ho Trip" from Detroit to Tampa with a young woman, Stefani (Riley Keough), a sketchy dancer/stripper she waited on one day, Stefani's menacing "manager" (Colman Domingo) and her clueless boyfriend (Nicholas Braun). King posted 148 viral tweets during the weekend escapade, which involved prostitution, extortion, gun play and an attempted suicide. The story is told almost entirely in "hood rat" and features "internetual" embellishments -- emojis, bells and whistles -- for added spice. While the picture is most assuredly a hilarious "pitch black" comedy of the ill-mannered, it is also a pretty astute study of cultural appropriation, sex trade economics and the truly hard work of knowing one's worth.

F9: The Fast Saga

Justin Lin's F9: The Fast Saga is an unbelievably expensive and shameless exhibition of all that has made this fearless fast-car franchise so bankable --  a negligible storyline (which I won't bother to recount here), neo-family values sanctimony, multi-culti casting and preposterous vehicle chases that defy the laws of physics. It's gotten so bad (or good, depending on your POV) that characters are now commenting on their own indestructibility. All of the bruising insanity is held together by Vin Diesel's inscrutable visage and his ability to maintain his composure (and facial expression) from the first implausible racing set piece to the big family dinner that has become the epilogue for the series. Wonderfully explosive stuff.

Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go For It

 

Mariem Pérez Riera's loving documentary on the life and career of actress / activist Rita Moreno is an often-revealing tribute that occasionally wanders into cringe as Moreno, a self-described "attention seeker," hams and mugs for the audience between the tears. The stronger elements of the film are the stories of Moreno's nearly exclusive early casting as "island girls" and "dusky beauties" and her victimization by Hollywood's studio machinery. The maltreatment included a sexual assault by her agent (whom she does not name) and publicity pairings with movie actors, one of whom she disastrously married -- Marlon Brando.

Moreno's on-camera recollections are supported by friends and admirers, many of whom are also Puerto Rican, and scholar / historians who provide the important backdrop of racial and sexual discrimination that will inform viewers' understanding of Moreno's bouts with self-doubt and self-destructiveness.

Moreno, 90, has worked steadily in film and television for 70 years. Though perhaps best known by some of us as the fiery Anita in 1961's West Side Story (she will also appear in this year's remake), younger generations will know her work on The Electric Company, HBO's OZ and most recently Netflix's One Day at a Time. Moreno was first billed as Rosita Moreno in 1950, and the story of her evolution from that star-struck "island beauty" to an EGOT-winner is an important part of the intricate fabric of America's cultural history.