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.

Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice

Directors Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman offer fans a musical treat in their bio documentary Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice. Epstein and Friedman (The Celluloid Closet) are masters of the narrative arc and smartly recount Ronstadt's discovery and rise, her musical experimentation and embrace of her Mexican roots and these later years that have been quieted by Parkinson's disease. The joy of the film is not just in the soundtrack, which is irresistible, but in hearing Ronstadt tell her own story throughout. She reveals herself to be not a detached superstar but insightful and reflective about herself and the world. She's had one hell of a career, inspired numerous other female artists in popular music and been a cherished friend. Hearing Emmylou Harris's story of Ronstadt's generosity will fill your heart and hearing Ronstadt join her cousin and nephew in a lovely Spanish love song will break it.

Dark Ages

 

 

If you ask me, black folks have been catching hell ever since the church made up white Jesus and the black devil. Since then darkness has been the code for badness. It's a deep, deep stain in Western culture. So deep we've laughed at it and cheered it on. Now that's powerful.

Marguerite (film short)

Canadian director Marianne Farley's beatific short film Marguerite (2017) is a two-character portrait of an aged woman in her last days and the young home-health nurse who makes daily visits. The film has barely a page of dialogue but the women are involved in an intimate exchange of care and trust. So much is said with their smiles and eyes. When Marguerite learns nurse Rachel has a girlfriend, at first her face shows surprise but then she seems to wander off into memory. We learn of Marguerite's lingering regret and are nearly broken when she asks Rachel, haltingly, what it is like to make love to a woman. "C'est beau," the nurse says, tenderly. "C'est beau," the older woman repeats. This exquisitely humane story is wrapped in fallen snow and downy comforters and warm light: it speaks to our need for love and our capacity for loving.

El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie

Vince Gilligan's El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie is smartly crafted but cruises rather than races. Compared to the original series, the film feels lethargic in spots, but that's purposeful. Gilligan has crafted an epilogue for fan reflection and contemplation. There's gun play and explosion, but this picture, this chapter closes the book softly. Quietly.
Aaron Paul's performance is wonderful. His Jesse Pinkman does the heavy lifting for the story about the meth-chef's next steps after escaping from brutal bondage with a vital assist from his mentor Walter White (Bryan Cranston) in the series' final episode.

The unfamiliar might assume El Camino is a wanderer's tale, in which the hero encounters various characters, some familiar and some new, each holding a valuable piece of his fate. It is that tale, for sure, but it is also something more existential. It's about a human's transformation.
Pinkman -- once high wattage and "bitch" obsessed -- is now a low drone. His speech is laconic, his eyes are steely. His PTSD is authentic, his scars are quite visible and his future is an open question.
The film's close is satisfying, if not certain. And such is life.

Judy

British director Rupert Goold's Judy depicts an iconic figure, Judy Garland, near the end of a life that's been addled by a drug addiction spawned by a merciless motion picture studio system when she was a teenager. Renee Zellwegger, stripped of her cherubic girlishness, is a gaunt and enervated Garland, kept alive by booze and pills and love for her children, performing a series of concerts in London just months before her death at 47. Though the script by Tom Edge has moments of near campy hysterics, it also has some lovely, quieter moments that resonate. Judy's evening with a gay couple (Andy Nyman and Daniel Cerqueira) is respite from the grind of performance, isolation and insomnia. She enjoys a meal and a moment of genuine connectedness. It's a passage of warmth in the film to counterbalance the alienation the character has felt most of her life. The film's unevenness in tone will keep it out of the running for Best Picture but Zellwegger's total encasement in the body of an abundantly talented and tremendously tragic woman will most assuredly get a nod.

Joker

That Joaquin Phoenix’s physical form appears to have been broken and improperly mended adds levels of credibility to his performance as Arthur Fleck a/k/a Joker in Todd Phillip’s brutal character study. The picture, an origins film of sorts for the Batman saga, depicts a grim and violent Gotham City, the filthy home to teeming masses of the discarded and forgotten and a few wealthy princes of the city. Phoenix’s Joker is a distressing, sunken presence who dreams of making it big as a stand-up comedian but lacks the imagination to pull that off. Instead he works as a clown-for-hire, tends to his feeble mother (Frances Conroy) and fixates on a local late-night talk show host (Robert DeNiro). After a punishing beatdown by teenaged thugs and a series of other indignities, Arthur decides to fight back against a world that threatens to devour him. His actions inspire imitation and insurrection. Phoenix gives his usual masterful performance in a movie that taps contemporary societal stressors to leave viewers shaken and disoriented.

Joker / reflection

A critical and unsettling moment in the film Joker showed the slowly crazing clown-for-hire Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix), who had just discovered a connection between his family and Gotham City's most powerful industrialist, reaching through the gates at stately Wayne Manor and using his thumbs to push a smile into young Bruce Wayne's face. It's sad and creepy and for this viewer a foreshadowing of the masked misery that lay ahead for both characters in the universe of Batman lore. But it also struck me as a larger statement from director / writer Todd Phillips and co-writer Scott Silver about the lack of authenticity in human interactions. We smile but aren't happy. Ask "how are you" but don't actually care. We clap, stand, kneel, march, weep as the crowd dictates and attack those who don't do as directed. Fleck / Joker laughed when he was nervous or upset because of faulty wiring and his condition brought on several beat downs because he was off-script and the world could not handle it. The madness that eventually led to societal chaos was not of Joker's making. It and he were products of society's relentless despair. The last scene of a "city on fire" was a metaphor for our current condition of deepening dysphoria.

Hustlers

Lorene Scafaria'sHustlers serves up heavy doses of social commentary and feminist homilies as it retells the story of a crew of underemployed pole dancers in post-economic  collapse New York who operate a scheme, directed by the crew's stripper goddess / badass Ramona (Jennifer Lopez), to entice, drug and fleece horny Wall Street traders and bankers to fill the ladies' empty designer purses. Constance Wu (Crazy, Rich Asians) plays Destiny / Dorothy,  the new dancer who is befriended and schooled by Ramona and becomes the crew's CFO. Though Scafaria tries to add layers to the women at the center of this story, the film never moves much beyond its two-dimensional cat-and-mouse construct. Both Ramona and Destiny have children but motherhood is more a device to soften the women than to actually reveal more about their capacities. They talk about their duality more than act within it, I feel, which isn't to say the picture is weak. Its message of empowerment and vindication are welcome, even if the glow fades pretty quickly.

Ad Astra

James Gray's space mission film Ad Astra (Latin for "to the stars") is intriguing because it successfully navigates on two planes -- the planetary exploration plane and the personal, existential plane. And Brad Pitt, in an exceptionally contemplative role, is the agent at the center of both of those stories. Gray, who co-wrote the screenplay with Ethan Gross, has set the action in the "near future," after the moon has been colonized by earthlings and turned into a bit of the Wild West with marauding bands of pirates robbing anyone who happens to wander away from the safe zone. From the moon, Pitt's Maj. Roy McBride hitches a ride to Mars to send a message to his father (Tommy Lee Jones), who captained an exploration to Neptune in search of life. Something has gone wrong with that party, and its cargo of anti-matter is fueling power surges that threaten all life in the solar system. During all of this doom and catastrophe, Pitt's McBride reflects on his interior life, his relationship, actually lack of one, with his father, and anyone else, for that matter. This has left him a highly functional clutch player for the space program but not much else. In this way, the film, which will no doubt remind some viewers of 2001: A Space Odyssey, is less in the mold of Kubrick's space masterpiece and more like last year's First Man, the story of a stony Neil Armstrong's personal quest to set foot on the moon and the human cost required for such a feat.

Fauve

Canadian director Jeremy Comte's disturbing French-language short Fauve follows two boys -- competing alpha males -- playing daring games in the environs of a Quebecois mine until one of them gets stuck in a pit, fun turns to fear and the natural world intrudes abruptly and definitely. The last 5 minutes, filled with expanses of barren grayness, are haunting.

It Chapter 2

The best of Stephen King relies more on the horror of being human than inhuman. The terror of Andy Muschietti's It Chapter Two is homegrown -- crash and slash abuse and neglect and enervating guilt and fear. Yes, there's a toothy clown (Bill Skarsgård) snacking on the children of Derry, Maine, but that's almost secondary to the hurting the townspeople are putting on themselves. Or maybe this hateful clown is feeding the town's nastiness.This message is introduced in Chapter Two with a lamentably tone-deaf gay bashing that opens the film. I found it a perplexing stunner that got me wondering if this is indeed the movie about the scary clown, until he appeared to finish the job the haters began. Yep, this is the place. This misstep along with the film's excessive length and jokiness (provided by Bill Harder and James Ransone) make for a long, strange trip -- and not in a good way.

Celine Dion

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Madre (Mother)

I took a 20-minute break from the hell that is Trump's America to visit the private hell of Madre, in which a Spanish mother gets a call from her 6-year-old son who has been abandoned by his father on a deserted

beach in France. Director Rodrigo Sorogoyen shot the incredible Oscar nom in nearly one single, unbroken take and it's an absolute nightmare. 

Marta Nieto plays the titular mother who unravels before the audience's eyes

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Timothée Chalamet

I'll be presenting a paper on Timothée Chalamet's breakout film Call Me By Your Name (2017) at the Popular Culture in the South con this month. I've analyzed how time is threaded through the film's narrative. For a young actor, Chalamet takes on some exceptionally difficult parts -- most of them with a lot of interior performance -- brooding, uncertainty, self-destruction. I don't know this film, The King, but Joel Edgerton, one of the most interesting writer / director / actors to come along since Mel Gibson, is attached to the picture so I expect it will be serious and well-crafted. Chalamet is also starring in Greta Gerwig's Little Women with Saoirse Ronan and Emma Watson, which will be released around Christmas.
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