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.