Archive for category: Reviews

This is either (1) a biting critique of sex-hungry men (i.e., all men) who take advantage of defenseless women and the women who enable them; and/or (2) a horror film about a psychopath who seeks revenge on all around her through a series of impossible actions. The climax is so implausible that you realize you’d better not think too much about what has come before.  On the plus side, the film is a showcase for Carey Mulligan and her ten-megawatt smile, which makes her unlikely character relatable in a way that Rosamund Pike’s in I Care A Lot never approaches.

This New York Times “Critics Pick” allegedly ” seesaws between comedy and horror,” but being neither funny nor scary, what is left? A cartoonish battle between an icy abuser of senior citizens and a Russian mafioso who exploits mules to traffic drugs. Do we care who wins or survives? Not really. There could be a bigger point of how the elderly are exploited by a corrupt, greed-driven system of nursing homes, conservatorships and oblivious courts, but that’s not the point here. In fact, the system survives, and all that stops the villainy is our lax gun control laws. We tried this movie to take a break from our TV series, but all it did was make us realize how much more we appreciated the real people of Spiral and Call My Agent.

This was a well-made dramatic reenactment of a little known chapter in the book of the FBI’s corrupt oppression of black leaders in the ’60s, a period we’ve visited in other recent films: Chicago 7, MLK/FBI, One Night in Miami. It didn’t, at least for me, go much below the surface. There was no ambiguity in the Panthers: we saw them only giving free breakfast to children. The FBI’s position, via a wasted Martin Sheen as J. Edgar Hoover, was little more than Blacks are bad and dangerous. We weren’t shown what made Fred Hampton a force at age 20. The story of Bill O’Neal, the Judas of the title, had the most potential, but we never really got inside him (and I often had trouble finding him in the crowd). The most interesting character was FBI agent Roy Mitchell, who recalled Jesse Plemons’s role in The Irishman. There were hints of moral doubt there that could have been explored. Maybe knowing how the story would end eliminated suspense, but somehow the emotional engagement wasn’t there. The contrast for me was with The Mangrove, where I was made to feel for the individuals. Here I felt I was watching a history lesson.

A very brave movie, in that it confirmed, indeed celebrated, all my negative stereotypes about India and Indians: corrupt, servile, class-bigoted and dirty, for starters. Politics and religion don’t come off much better. Nor does the movie sugarcoat anything with a happy ending. Our star, “the white tiger,” rises to the top by murdering his boss, paying off officials to eliminate his business competitors and avoiding detection because so many Indians look alike. And success doesn’t diminish his brash obsequiousness as he fawns before the visiting Chinese prime minister. Beyond being true to its unusual vision, the film provided an immersing view of the India behind the tourist facade.

The third installment of Steve McQueen’s Small Axe series continued the story of systemic racism in, now, 1980s London, as (real-life) Leroy Logan, portrayed by the excellent John Boyega, tries to integrate, and humanize, the local police force. By now, whenever we see a white cop we assume the worst. More interesting is the exploration of the tensions within the Caribbean immigrant community as to how to approach the problem.