Seal

It's been nearly 30 years since Seal (Henry Olusegun Adeola Samuel) released his first self-titled recording and now iconic videos on the world. Almost immediately the stories about his facial scarring took off. Because of his complexion, his clipped British accent and punk-rock fashions, the propulsive beats of his most popular songs and his beaded dreads, he must have been some African prince and the markings part of an exotic ritual. It was actually years before I heard that the scars were left by a form of lupus. Looking back, it seems to be in defiance of something that would inhibit someone less self-possessed that Seal's face is never hidden. His gaze is steady and assured. He won't avert his eyes before you do. That, of course, only adds to his attractiveness.
Lately, I have been revisiting Seal's early catalog -- his first three albums -- Seal I, Seal II and Human Being. He has a distinctive way with a musical phrase that makes his songs eminently singable, even when the message might be a little cloudy. I think I might like this song best -- Newborn Friend: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQOmKZCUAy8I wash my faith in dirty water
'Cause it gives my mind a little order
And I play that game, just like I should do
But my whole world, slips away
I live my life, I live it slowly
And I take my time, I'm in no hurry, yeah I'm livin'
And when I go then I would surely
I would dance with a total stranger
And hold them in my arms
Hell, there could be no danger if I open up
'Cause when the cryin' starts so
If I chant for happiness
Maybe that will make me feel better?
I can't change my ideals, I can't lose my desire
Oh, if I chant for happiness
Maybe that will make me feel better?
I'd be your newborn friend for the world

Highwaters

The Village of Sandhills had been struggling with abandoned storefronts and empty "apartment homes" for years before 'Rona came callin'. World Market closed its location there earlier this year. And, of course, Penney's is bankrupt. Sad.

I was sort of ambivalent about World Market, frankly. While it has cool stuff in it, and they price their wines pretty competitively, thematically I feel the "world" aspect is hype. They do have an eclectic collection of packaged food stuff but nothing I would keep as a staple in the cupboard (if I had a cupboard). And I don't know what global crockery looks like.All of Sandhills looks beset and highwater now. I mean it looks like it's strapped and making due. That was the real shame of wearing "highwater britches" -- it meant your people were too broke to keep you in clothes that fit properly.

At the village, busted "apartment home" windows are boarded, "available for lease" signs are beginning to sag in retail windows, the grass outside the Regal is wild and thatchy, and movie posters for little-seen features are faded from overexposure to the Carolina sun. It's pretty depressing.

Maybe the village will be re-imagined by some really creative types and see a new life, repurposed and popular, like what Steve Urkel and Dolce and Gabbana did for highwater pants.

Where there is life ...

Officer Friendly

I remember the Officer Friendly campaign from when I was a youngster, but I don't remember street cops from my childhood, and I certainly don't recognize the idealized world father and son illustrators Hy Hintermeisters depict in their series from the '50s. It appears to be a suburban enclave where avuncular police officers help little white children get to and from school. Yes, Rockwellesque but I think the Hintermeisters were not as clear-eyed about America as Norman was.

This illustration is going for approachable but serious. I'm not sure that's the message 

that was needed.

It's not clear what's going on here but it's a bit disturbing.

Yes, entitled princess crossing.

I'm not personally familiar with the world the Hintermeister's set this series in 

but it's not unlike the one on popular television of the time.

The series seemed to be committed to displaying good behavior 

and interactions between the officer and the children.

I love this shot from the '70s. I don't really care if it's staged; it has a great vibe to it.

Uncle Natchel

The Hy Hintermeisters were also known for their character Uncle Natchel (Natural), who was the brand image for Chilean Natural Soda, a soil additive mined in Chile. I do not get the connection but the character appeared on Chilean Natural Soda calendars for decades. I only recently discovered Uncle Natchel, as the character, which was introduced in 1935, was retired in the '60s.

The Hintermeisters created a world where this kindly old black man was a companion to, apparently, lonely white children. Absent, of course, is any hint of Uncle Natchel's own family or children.



The Hintermeisters often featured young boys and girls together in manners that didn't seem quite age-appropriate. The freakish bow-tied Buster looks like Howdy Doody.

I'm not sure if this is supposed to be the same couple from the previous slide but the dogs are nearly identical.

This might be my favorite of the series, if one is allowed to favor an image so steeped in racial stereotypes and societal fictions. The banjo, of course, came with enslaved Africans and became a staple of American roots music. The Hintermeisters were from New York, so it's understandable if their knowledge of southern life owed a debt to Harriet Beecher Stowe.

Mark Stewart a/k/a Stew

Mark Stewart a/k/a Stew is my favorite songwriter. I don't think I'm being outre by picking someone few people outside of L.A. or New York know. I'm too old to play that game. And I'm not saying he's the best songwriter in the world because what a ridiculous claim that would be. Stew's songs -- highly stylized baroque pop that comment on everything from romance to race -- never fail to connect with me, even if they're not exceptionally composed -- although his best stuff is. He's just really melodic and literate. Even though he never releases the lyrics to his music.

Stew is probably the most unfiltered enigma performing popular music. For years, he fronted a band called The Negro Problem, in which he was the only "Negro" member. The band were critical darlings and huge scene-makers in L.A. Stew's first solo album, Guest Host, released 20 years ago, was named Album of the Year by Entertainment Weekly. His second full-length recording, The Naked Dutch Painter ...  and Other Songs, received the same accolade two years later.

He and his writing partner, Heidi Rodewald, wrote the 2008 Tony Award-winning musical Passing Strange, the last performance of which was filmed by Spike Lee.  Stew won the Tony for Best Book. The show is a semi-autobiographical tale of a young black man who leaves his home in Los Angeles to discover himself (racially and sexually) and his musical voice in Amsterdam and Germany. The musical features several melodic themes from Stew's earlier work.

Here is a lovely song from late in the show, where the narrator, Stew, explores the connection between performance and pain.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UckfZ8rds-g

Haters gonna hate

The Black Mirror episode Nosedive, one of the most highly praised for the celebrated series, is set in a world where the expression "haters gonna hate" does not exist. One's wealth and well-being depend on how well-liked one is, as measured by interpersonal exchanges that are rated by the other person. High ratings get you substantial discounts and upgrades on purchases and services. What a brilliant way to shape human interactions for the better in an acquisitive, status-conscious world! The episode's lead, an intrepid Dallas Bryce Howard (this woman, Ron Howard's daughter, might be the bravest young character actress currently performing), discovers how quickly one can fall out of favor after a lifetime of building affirmation points. Her fall is precipitous but she eventually discovers her true value through some healthy animosity and truth-telling.

The problem with this clever story (co-authored by Rashida Jones of #blackaf) is, well, "haters gonna hate," no matter what we do. Somebody's gonna resent your drag or your swag -- what you wear or how you act. Some folks have been reared to be sensitive to this possibility and to be complimentary and non-threatening, to cultivate lots of friendships and try not to make other people uncomfortable. We should have people liking the hell out of us at all times because it will pay off in the end.

Others of us may have received the same counsel but learned eventually that hatred will precede some of us into a room and will be sitting at the table waiting. This is why some people of color ask when invited to an unfamiliar place or event, "Who's gonna be there? Anybody I know?" We're trying to gauge the "hate potential." If other people of color will be there then it shouldn't be an openly hostile crowd.

I'm no masochist, but I don't use that meter as much anymore. I think it's more a factor of my age than of my becoming inured to people's hostility. I've been to some events that were cavalcades of microaggressions and left annoyed but relatively unperturbed. I handle indifference and animosity as they come. I set my mind (swag and drag) as I suspect many people of color must -- on "IDGAF." Life's too short to spend it humoring fools and being a fool's fool.

Hambone's Meditations

The single-panel comic Hambone's Meditations was a front-page feature in The (Memphis) Commercial Appeal for 52 years, 1916 to 1968. The title character was a stereotypical minstrel black man whose musings about the boss and Miss Lucy and Ol' Tom were rendered in dialect. He was reportedly based on an actual person. The panel was drawn and written by J. P. Alley until his death in 1934 and later by his wife and children. One can detect changes in the character over time; his exaggerated features became less so but the gutbucket wisdom persisted. Alley's son Cal also drew The Ryatts, a syndicated strip about the domestic adventures of a white family. It stood in stark contrast to the other, a study in inequality. Hambone's Meditations was discontinued in November 1968, following pressure from civil rights organizations who argued its depictions and humor were offensive and harmful. It might also be noted Martin Luther King Jr. was shot to death on the balcony of a Memphis motel seven months before the comic was discontinued. Change follows death.

Tuesday Morning

Tuesday Morning has become my go-to "wanderland," a place in which I roam to marvel at all the brightly colored crap on display for thrifty nesters. Maybe that's too harsh. It's not all crap. A lot of stuff is kinda cool if you're into discount tchotchkes with cloying messages about the joys of being a homebody and how God loves you and me and pets and the United States. You might think only women take their custom to Tuesday Morning but you would be wrong. Every time I've gone, there have been men and women, singles and in pairs, creeping up and down the aisles (now uni-directionally because of COVID-19). They were buying bathmats and birdfeeders and jars of olives stuffed with garlic, pillows and end tables in mad displays of impulsivity. Today I bought shower curtains and a cool drying cloth and wooden rack to use after washing dishes. (I never knew such a thing existed!) The stuff is remarkably chea ... , er, inexpensive and I love the dinginess of the store's carpeting. It's like visiting an elderly relative who's an unreformed hoarder. Shopping there is like going out for comfort food, all the guilt without the carbs. Tuesday Morning is Spencer's Gifts for people who would rather burn pomegranate-scented candles and nosh on tea biscuits than have sex.

Thoughts about deliverance

I've been thinking about deliverance a lot lately. It's a concept that's central to Christianity as I know it. Perhaps it is one of the main contributions of the Judeo in Judeo-Christian.

Christians study deliverance from sinfulness, deliverance from tyranny, deliverance from uncertainty and doubt, deliverance from temptation, deliverance from bondage, deliverance from pain and suffering, deliverance from eternal damnation. It brings to my mind passage through trials.

That's what I suspect those who first sang "Didn't It Rain" were picturing when they first were hearing about the Bible and Jesus. But not, as Massa might have assumed as he listened from the porch of the Big House, the end to Noah's tribulations during the Great Flood and the believer's eternal reward for being "good and faithful servants."

No, they sang about the end to "40 days and 40 nights" of the toil and terror of chattel slavery. But even after Emancipation, and when the words and notes of the great "Negro Spiritual" were set on paper in 1919, the song's full meaning was intact. And I feel it retains its meaning to this day.

"Well, it rained forty days, forty nights without stoppin'
Noah was glad, when the water stopped droppin'
When I get to heaven, sit right down
Askin' Jesus for my starry crown."

While it most certainly intones assurance of heavenly reward, it also says to me, with clarity, the present world will be set aright for it is wicked.

This rousing, jubilant rendition is by Hugh Laurie, known to most who know him as Dr. Gregory House from the television series House. Laurie, as was demonstrated on the program, is an accomplished musician who has great affection for the American songbook. Jean McLain is the featured vocalist.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7MZtyV_X6o

Chernobyl

I've tried NOT to watch Craig Mazin's astonishing TV series Chernobyl -- the nearly hour-by-hour recounting of the 1986 Soviet nuclear reactor disaster -- through the prism of our own national catastrophe. It's really tough when a parade of craven apparatchiks snap to, salute, toady, bleat and lie as millions are poisoned by bureaucratic bungling and incompetence and motions toward truth-telling are silenced by threats of bullets or defenestration.

With apologies to Stephen Stills, "I think it's time we stop, children. What's that sound. Everybody look what's coming down.   

The final episode is wonderfully written and this scene (link below) is particularly powerful, as the two men leading the clean up after the meltdown reflect on human frailty, the tyrannical Central Committee of the U.S.S.R. and the men and women who were forced to do its bidding. Both Stellan Skarsgard and Jared Harris are stellar throughout but especially here. 

I reflect on this scene now, in the midst of a health care and economic catastrophe, the severity of which might have been averted if wisdom had trumped pride, and wonder if its too late for "one good man" to help us. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvod3T945ds&fbclid=IwAR3rYCjJBA_M0kJ3AX48R1AbiVRGTlyWl68P6H6Fv6rZVLCm-fhX_fQUrbA

"https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7366338/" (9.7/10) Do you know anything about this town, Chernobyl? Not really, no. It was mostly Jews and Poles. The Jews were...

The Crowd (1928)

Occasionally my mind wanders back to a silent film I watched when I bought my first video cassette player (it didn't record). King Vidor's The Crowd (1928) dates back to the movie era right before sound but is a classic because its story of lucklessness is pretty freaking universal. The young couple at the center of the picture are nice as they can be even though John is a big talker (well, you know what I mean) and Mary has big hopes for them and is not real good at hiding her disappointment -- especially when his successful buddy is around. The marriage doesn't seem to be working when Mary gets pregnant. John commits to sticking with it and doing better, but he's a faceless drone in an insurance company, another suit in a New York office, and can't seem to make his mark -- until, a detergent company buys his contest-winning slogan for 500 smackers. Now he and Mary and their kids will be on Easy Street! Except, when the happy parents call their kids from their apartment window to come see the presents Daddy has bought with his winnings, the littlest one gets hit by a truck while crossing the street. Yes, it's a festival of unhappiness (albeit with a fairly bright ending) that puts all of the news of pandemic pain and misery in a new light.

Little Richard

Crystal Closet Queen (1971)

To say Little Richard was conflicted is certainly to understate the case. Out/In, Gay/Straight/Omnisexual, his story shifted over the years. It seemed like he couldn't square his sexual nature with Jesus. He ultimately denounced LGBTQ as contrary to God's plan.

Leon Russell may have taken some liberties when he wrote this tune about Little Richard, swapping gender references and titling it what he did. But, to me, it is an affectionate tribute to a man whose style of rock 'n' roll was all through Russell's own high-powered, piano-pounding, scream-and-shout revivalism.

"There's a rainbow around my beautiful face and I'm living in a pot of gold."

Normal People

Streamers who enjoy highly emotive drama with credible characters who you love even when, or perhaps because, they behave badly will love Hulu's sweetly endearing Normal People. We meet two Irish teens in the last year before going off to university. The brainy Marianne (Daisy Edgar-Jones) is icy and angry, and we discover why when we meet her mother and brother. The quietly bookish jock Connell (Paul Mescal) is eaten up with unaccountable insecurities that seem to lighten when he's with the irascible Marianne, who fancies him. His mother works for Marianne's and through that arrangement boy and girl become lovers in some of the most wonderfully tender scenes of intimacy I've seen on screen. But they're a secret, to avoid the "awkwardness" of his mates' ribbing. One can anticipate the inevitable clash, and the crisis is pure devastation, especially for Connell, who doesn't know how to own his feelings. The series, which covers a number of years of romantic entanglements for the pair, features brief episodes filled with insight and candor.

#blackaf

I never got on the Black-ish bandwagon -- something about it struck me as self-serious and pedantic -- but creator Kenya Barris's Netflix series #blackaf is #funnyaf. It covers much of the same ground as Blackish and its offshoots but it feels smarter, less racially brittle, more combative and outrageously profane. (Well, it IS Netflix.)The parents (played by Barris and Rashida Jones) are a hot mess of questionable intentions and their half-dozen Gucci kids wear stylish insecurity, irony, introspection and resentment as if it were hair tint.

Episode 5 of #blackaf might be the "realest" 30 minutes of Black Television ever. In it, Barris tries to have a conversation about black cinema with his faux family, friends, co-workers and even some actual black filmmakers and cannot get anyone except his wokest daughter Drea (Iman Benson) and the white writers on his shows to agree a recently released motion picture, directed by and starring blacks, is actually crap, despite raves on Rotten Tomatoes. Even his wife, Jo (a terrific Jones), thinks its gold, but she's wrestling with her own identity issues.

The conversation between Barris and Tyler Perry, who is a pet target for many among the black and cinematic cognoscenti for making several fortunes shoveling formulaic dreck to, mostly, black audiences, is uncanny. Perry offers his defense, and its persuasiveness will probably depend on how much the viewer likes Madea.

This episode of #blackaf, as most of them in this series, is complex. That's not to say it's "complicated," as in "puzzling." It's complex, as in "that's deep, right there." Barris is inviting us to have an important conversation but I doubt it actually goes beyond this wonderful episode. I, for one, would love to be a part of it.

But, unfortunately, the wheels came completely off in epis 7 and 8. Borrowing from a host of other sitcoms that sent the family on an exotic vacation as a Sweeps Attraction, producers moved the action to Fiji, where all of the cantakerousness could get some sun and, maybe, work some TV magic. The bitter scornfulness among the Barrises (especially parents Kenya and Jo) had apparently grown to nuclear proportions even though it wasn't ever clear to me what was at the center of the animosity between any of the warring family members. Maybe having so much money made life worse for them because now they could retreat to their respective silos of privilege and tell everyone else to bugger off? The word "petty" is tossed around a lot and, perhaps, self-referentially, as the relational matters the narrative seemed most interested in probing just didn't feel that important. Maybe that's the real takeaway here. Dysfunction may just be something we create to kill time.

Tales from the Loop

Amazon's contemplative sci-fi series Tales from the Loop matches strangely forbidding exteriors with even stranger interior landscapes where characters -- often young people -- find disassociation from family paired with disconnection from their own spirits. It reminds me of the science fiction work of Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky -- deliberate, hypnotic and unsettling. The setting of Tales is a bleak little Ohio town that sits atop an experimental laboratory employing the town's best and brightest in activities that early on are not explained and likely little understood. The surrounding forests are littered with robotic detritus and the residue of bad ideas, waiting to cause mischief. Obsession seems to be the coin of the realm. The refreshingly diverse cast is led by Jonathan Pryce and will no doubt remind many of Syfy's Eureka and Netflix's Black Mirror anthology.

Emma.

 

Fashion photographer Autumn de Wilde's Emma. is an admirable work, finely crafted and meticulously composed. Its production values are exquisite; each frame is a study, a tableau of near artistic perfection -- stately interiors of the 19th-century British country estates and the expansively verdant countrysides surrounding them. It's all just breathtaking. 

De Wilde directs an array of fully realized characters nestled in Jane Austen's mannered story space and led by the luminously doe-eyed Anya Taylor-Joy as the title character, a young and unattached woman of means who enjoys playing match-maker but is not particularly well-suited to the task. Her latest project is the school girl Harriet (Mia Goth), whose lineage is dubious but whose devotion to Emma is unquestionable. 

Circling around the two women are suitors with varying degrees of dexterity, played by Johnny Flynn, Josh O'Connor and Callum Turner. Screenwriter Ellen Catton's dialogue is as rich and sumptuous as the tea cakes gracing the parlor tables.

 

As marvelous as Emma. is in its entirety, I was especially taken by Miranda Hart's performance as the bounteously dithered Miss Bates, upon whom Taylor-Joy's Emma directs withering condescension. Of all the manor folk who populate Austen's beauteously appointed but frequently unmannered chambers and porticoes, Miss Bates is the gentlest and utterly without guile. Hart's depiction of this prim bundle of self-deprecation elevates every scene she's in. I was charmed.

 

Homer Price / reflection

Some of my earliest reading adventures were with Homer Price. I read the crazy doughnut story, which has been made into movies, dozens of times and especially loved it when the poor kid -- Rupert Black -- got the doughnut with the diamond bracelet. Even though the passage below would surely give some folks fits, there seems to be a guilelessness to its offensiveness, and Robert McCloskey was such a mensch that it's hard to get mad.

"(T)onight (Friday) was the dress rehearsal of the Pageant. Homer and Freddy and a couple of their friends were taking the part of Indians. They were going to be powdered all over with cocoa, striped with mercurochrome, and draped with towels around their middles. Homer had to get to rehearsal right on the dot, because he started the Pageant by rubbing two sticks together to make a fire. Most of the Pageant was historical, all about Ezekiel Enders and the founding of Centerburg. The organist of the African Baptist Church wrote the words and music for a long choral work, which the choir was going to sing all the while the Pageant was being acted."

William Thomas Jr. / Buckwheat

This is a studio portrait of William Thomas Jr., the child actor who played Buckwheat in the Little Rascals / Our Gang film shorts of the '30s and '40s. His was reputedly the longest continuing character in the popular serials. The serials were criticized by many for perpetuating harmful racial stereotypes, but celebrated by others for featuring black and white children co-existing amicably. Thomas left the series in '43 and entered military service. He never performed in another motion picture. He was not quite 50 when he died 40 years ago this October.

In White America / reflection

Much of my life has been about making discoveries and connections.

One of my earliest memories of serious theater was a production of Martin Duberman's "In White America," performed in a small chapel at Claflin College. It may have been reader's theater. It was 1970 or '71.

I was not familiar with the work but was riveted, chilled and touched by the stories, documented tales of personal and impersonal encounters between the races. The six member cast of black and white actors was a mix of students, faculty and guest performers. In looking back, I figure that by the time I saw this staging, the play had been circulating for a few years. It's original off-Broadway production in 1963 included Moses Gunn (a distinguished stage performer and co-founder of the Negro Ensemble Company) and Gloria Foster (later known to millennials as the Oracle in the Matrix films).

She won an Obie for her performance.

Duberman was born in 1930 the son of a Ukrainian immigrant. He is a historian, biographer and retired professor who was also a tireless civil rights and gay rights activist. In the preface to the 1964 edition of his play, Duberman wrote (in part):

"My starting point was the wish to describe what it has been like to be a Negro in this country (to the extent that a white man can describe it). Neither popular journalism nor professional history has made much effort to tell this story. Both have been dominated by whites, and the whites, whether from guilt, indifference, or hostility, have been slow to reveal the American Negro's past. The revelations are painful, but they must be faced if the present is to be understood, and the future made more tolerable."

Here are a couple of scenes from the play's Second Act.

Oscar Picks

Oscar prognostication is a harmless (and useless) activity that folks who love movies toss at anyone who will listen. I don't know the movie business well enough to really handicap any of the pictures that made the cut this year, but I know that "best" is such a loaded term that it is almost meaningless as a label for quality or importance.

"Big" does not necessarily equal "best," neither do "edgy," "uncompromising," "artful," "sincere" and "truthful." I would attach at least one of those words to each of the nominated pictures. Which is the best? HTFSIK? But here are my thoughts, FWIW.

"The Irishman" was huge, Scorsese's homage to Scorsese, and he's already been celebrated for directing a mob picture.

"Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood" was Tarantino playing in the same auteur's revisionist sandbox he played in with "Inglourious Basterds."

Haynes' "Joker" pulled no punches and Joaquin Phoenix was his usual uncannily committed self. He's protean and fascinating in a picture that puts a disturbing, painted face on gun violence. Maybe too sympathetic?

Gerwig's "Little Women" was a thoroughgoing, beautifully composed empowerment statement using familiar material. Though lovely, no surprises.

Mangold's "Ford v Ferrari" featured some thrilling racing sequences but lacked a firm emotional center. Waititi's "Jojo Rabbit" had tons of heart but satirizing Nazism has been done before and it didn't win then either.

Baumbach's "Marriage Story" is so raw and abrasive in its honesty that audiences likely felt battered by the scheming and vitriol.

This leaves Mendes' phenomenal cinematographic achievement "1917" and Bong Joon-ho's savage opera buffa of class warfare "Parasite."

If Academy voters pick "Parasite" as Best Foreign Picture, the big winner will likely be “1917."

A Fall From Grace

Tyler Perry's Netflix trifle A Fall From Grace is a soapy thriller with monstrous implausibility and criminal misuse of some talented actors. Perry himself can deliver a line when directed but his own narratives are unimaginative, formulaic. In this one, middle-aged divorcee Grace Waters (Crystal Fox) is courted by a young, studly beringed photographer in a Larry Blackmon high-top 'fro (Mehcad Brooks) whom she soon marries. Predictably, he turns out to be a cad and a thief who cheats on Grace in their bedroom! Grace, shamed and taunted, bashes him in the head with a bat and ends up arrested.

A poorly schooled and nearly indifferent public defender, Jasmine, played by Bresha Webb, is assigned to Grace's case to enter a guilty plea but is persuaded something is amiss, because the cad's body was never found. Meanwhile, Grace's BFF Sarah (Phylicia Rashad), who has been in her corner all the while, becomes Jasmine's only hope of winning an acquittal, as Jasmine hopes to convince the jury the Sunday School cookie baker was too nice to kill her husband -- even though Grace admits to having done it. Yes, it's an unholy mess with a howlingly ridiculous twist at the end that will send many viewers screaming from the room -- if they hadn't already done so.

Perry is the fabulously wealthy purveyor of urban market schlock who many people will defend as a dependable and known commodity. You'll never get art from Mr. Perry but his fans don't want that. They want shrieking women in Vera Wang and Red Bottoms and the men who love (or hate) them. One doesn't stumble blindly into a Tyler Perry experience; one enters with eyes and ears wide open. And that's the real crime.

Carnival Row

As allegories go, Amazon’s Carnival Row is on par with celebrated space series Battlestar Gallactica and The Expanse for depth and complexity. Unlike Tolkien’s trilogy, these three programs wear their politics on their sleeves. Tolkien, at least in my scattered readings, was more circumspect about the meanings of his books.

Carnival Row is a thoroughgoing fantasy thriller set in some mythical world where storybook creatures walk (or fly in the case of the Faeries, or Fae) among men. These non-humans have fled war in their own lands, sought asylum and been ghettoized in dank and dangerous districts away from humans, who detest them and debate their fate in Parliament.

Because of the costuming, art direction and British casting — Orlando Bloom (LOTR's Legolas) as the conflicted police inspector Rycroft Philostrate and Cara Delevingne as his winged ex-lover and revolutionary Vignette Stonemoss (the character names are marvelous and ridiculous) — one might assume the setting is Victorian England but the location is as murky as the mysterious creature disemboweling city residents and casting entrails about the vacated carcasses.

It’s all ghastly and gruesome and set against the backdrop of xenophobia and immigrant panic. Its strange appeal is suspended in the air, like the statues of the bound and hanged martyr erected in the churches in this seriously effed up world. This last device was a startling reminder to me that, though we’re inured to them, crucifixes are pretty barbaric religious emblems, for real.

1917

The artistry of Sam Mendes’s 1917, a staggeringly realistic depiction of wartime devastation, doesn’t just push the envelope of cinematography with its nearly hour-long continuous tracking shot (a marvelous visual accomplishment) but also with the intelligence of its narrative. Two young WWI British soldiers — Blake (Dean-Charles Chapman) and Schofield (George MacKay) — are dispatched on a veritable suicide mission to deliver a general's command to stand-down to a hawkish colonel about to send 1,600 men into a German trap. Among the men is Blake’s older brother, which gives the younger much incentive to complete the mission, casting his mission as a coldly cynical order from the general but in keeping with the madness of war. Chapman and MacKay are tireless troupers in Mendes’ experiment to depict the two soldiers narrowly escaping one potentially fatal encounter after another, with the bodies of dead soldiers draped along barbed-wire fences and lining the sides of trenches and craters. It’s a horrifying landscape of misery, and the two men, not entirely up to their mission, trudge along through mud and viscera toward heaven knows what. It is a triumphant testament to modern movie-making and the human spirit.

Just Mercy

Destin Daniel Cretton’s Just Mercy has a compelling and dramatic story and strong lead performances by star / producer Michael B. Jordan, Jamie Foxx and Brie Larson. But it is freighted, as so many big studio pictures about civil rights and social justice, with depictions of racist cops and courts that feel as if they’ve been pulled from To Kill a Mockingbird, which is referenced several times at the outset. The evocation might be the director’s intent, to suggest little has changed over the 60 years since Harper Lee published the book. That makes sense as the film is based on Bryan Stevenson’s published account of his work on behalf of death row inmates in Alabama beginning in the early ‘90s. Jordan plays Stevenson with stalwart resolve and humanity as he puts his Harvard law degree to work for those who can least defend themselves against a bigoted justice system. Foxx is Walter McMillan, a man falsely accused of murder, railroaded by an unscrupulous police chief and sentenced to death on the word of an unreliable witness (a terrific Tim Blake Nelson). The film has more than a few powerful moments — Rob Morgan’s work as war-damaged veteran Herbert Richardson is particularly outstanding — but occasional missteps that detract from an otherwise solid piece of work. A snapping German Shepherd at the entrance to the courtroom felt ham-fisted, and Richardson’s reference to a PTSD diagnosis while certainly possible didn’t feel plausible considering the time period, and Stevenson’s comments to his associate (Larson) about slave ships and lynchings, while all certainly true, felt strangely out of place — directed less at her and more at the audience. Still, the picture packs genuine emotional power.

Fast Color

Julia Hart's Fast Color is visually enticing but lacks the aching self-reflection of Hart's wonderful 2016 feature Miss Stevens. It has a few quiet moments of revelation but is mostly ghostly puzzlement and non sequiturs that fall short of nuance and poetry. Gugu Mbatha-Raw stars as Ruth, a young woman with mysterious, seismic powers that appear to have outgrown her control. She comes from a line of similarly gifted African American women (quite literal "black girl magic"). On the run from scientists with murky agendas, Ruth returns to her family home in Texas at a time when the world's resources have been depleted. (It's not explained what forces beyond human wastefulness are responsible). At home is mother, Bo, (the always engaging Lorraine Toussaint) and Ruth's precocious daughter, Lila (Saniyya Sidney), whom Ruth left with Bo after a near catastrophic incident that is augured and depicted in the film but then abandoned, as is Bo's relationship with the local sheriff, played with strange remove by David Strathairn. Mbatha-Raw (an unconventional beauty) is always luminous on the screen and her performance here strikes me as committed but the material (written by Hart and Jordan Horowitz) is frustratingly thin. Much of the story's weakness is its lack of detail, which is ironic for a film whose central conceit is its main characters' ability to deconstruct and reassemble the physical world.