Not fun. Viola Davis and Chadwick Boseman play characters that are so unremittingly unpleasant you almost don’t want them onscreen, and the usually reliable Jeremy Shamos is just as bad–that is, sickly fawning–in the other direction. The movie comes across as a play: e.g., stop the action while a character tells his life story. The final five minutes shock the movie to life, but by then it is too late and the dramatic points feel unearned.
Exhilarating. The story combines George Floyd and the Chicago 7 in 1970 London, and I was stunned at the end to learn it was also based on a true story. Steve McQueen creates a foreign world–a community of Caribbean immigrants in Notting Hill–and populates it with people we believe in and come to care deeply about. The triumph of hard-working, disadvantaged Blacks over an ingrained, abusive, and in some cases rotten, system of white privilege makes for stirring drama, while the reggae soundtrack keeps things just joyful enough to pull you through it. I only hope that the next four installments of Small Axe make me feel as good.
I have no idea what someone not familiar with the titular book would think of this scrapbook of moments culled from its pages, but maybe there isn’t such a one who would be watching. As it is, we are left to compare the movie’s impersonations of the memorable characters, from Uriah Heep to Mr. Micawber to Mr. Dick, with our own mental impressions, whether formed from reading, from Phiz illustrations or, most likely, from the 1935 film with W.C. Fields, Basil Rathbone and Edna May Oliver. Interestingly, the least memorable figure is David himself, which helps make Dev Patel’s surprise casting the most satisfying role in this production. The story itself is presented with little narrative thrust or integrity, producing no emotional response in the viewer. And the casting is disconcerting–not because it includes Blacks, Indians and Asians, but because, for instance, the muddle-headed Mr. Dick is played by Hugh Laurie, who always comes off as the most intelligent person on screen.
Everything you need to know about one of my favorite groups in less than two hours, this documentary was loving but not fawning, with samples of their best songs (out of the 1,000 they wrote). Archival footage was mixed in good proportion with current interviews, and I couldn’t take my eyes off the Greek-god looks of Barry Gibb. Not innovators or, therefore, critics’ darlings, the Bee Gees followed musical trends–specifically, the Beatles and disco–but their catchy tunes and beautiful three-part harmonies made one overlook lyrics that were banal or even nonsensical. The less depth, in the music and this movie, the better.
The punch line, of course, is that Dick Johnson isn’t dead in this loving documentary by his daughter Kirsten. She uses his growing dementia as an excuse to grapple with his inevitable end, in ways it might occur (but probably won’t), how it will affect people and where he will go (which he clearly won’t). How much you like the film depends on how much you like Dick Johnson, or perhaps how much you want to think about death, but I couldn’t help but feel that the sweet old man was being exploited.
Bravo to the journalists of Sports Gazette who doggedly exposed scandal in the Romanian health system. Bravo to the young Minister of Health who tried to clean up the scandal. And bravo to the filmmaker who somehow managed to record the private deliberations of both. But as a film, this came across as an amateurish rough draft: slow, repetitive, lacking drama, in need of context and focus. The scandal meandered from diluted biocides to bribery and kickbacks to unqualified hospital management to wrongful accreditation to Trump-like politics. The villains remained offscreen. There was a death, but the question, was it suicide, murder or an accident, was never answered. The film gave us an interesting, if depressing, view of Romania; but I can’t fathom why it is #2 on Time’s Top Ten for the year instead of the far superior, in every way, Athlete A.
A thoroughly unpleasant two hours of snark, cynicism, cigarettes and a drunken boor, with nary a witty line to be heard nor a noble man in sight. Mank’s wife and secretary, who also look alike, are the only people who exude any decency. The story is a “who-cares?,” and it goes back-and-forth with flashbacks to mask its vapidity (granted, the act of writing a screenplay is not inherently dramatic). The movie relies too much on reflected luster from Citizen Kane and Hollywood names from the ’30s, coupled with black-and-white cinematography that mimics its subject. For a good self-referential movie about Hollywood, see Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon A Time… David Fincher’s Mank is DOA.
Taken for what it is–a raunchy and absurdist political comedy–this sequel to Borat (the original moviefilm) was less offensive, less remarkable, less groundbreaking but still rather astonishing. By now I am more familiar with the acting talents and intelligence of Sacha Baron Cohen (see, e.g., Trial of the Chicago 7), but I still have no idea how he gets away with what he films. The scene with Rudy Giuliani was a masterstroke, and I’m guessing it shaped much of what precedes it in the film, which makes the relative coherence of the “plot” more explicable but still impressive. The subjects he mocks are deserving and well chosen, and this time around I felt less need to immediately take a shower.
Perfectly competent account of the ACLU’s fight against abhorrent Trump policies, with a focus on the men and women leading the charge–very similar to Liz Garbus’s series last year about the New York Times reporters. More than a nuanced movie, it came across as a solicitation for the ACLU, certainly a worthwhile cause.
Stunning photography, both above and underwater, made this a pleasure to watch, and the novelty of an octupus’s life, up-close and personal, made it fascinating. Like almost all nature docs, there was a fair amount of anthropomorphism: I submit that the title character was acting on (animal) instinct, not employing “intelligence” to teach his human visitor. Craig Foster’s disdain for Scuba gear was a bafflement: how could he be so patient in observing an octopus in its den when he must regularly and repeatedly resurface for air? Presumably whoever was filming him–another mystery–had an air tank, making possible the shots of pajama sharks swimming around. The overlay of Foster’s finding himself added little, but the brief lifespan of the octopus was enough.
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