Queen & Slim – 6.5

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More important as a sociological statement than a movie Queen & Slim was ripped from the headlines of white police abusing blacks, and the odds stacked against blacks in that situation. Daniel Kaluuya was as wonderful as he was in Get Out, and his relationship with Jodie Turner-Smith was original and charming. Their encounter with the policeman echoed the story of Sandra Bland I had just read about in Malcolm Gladwell’s latest book; and the fusillade that killed me recalled Bruce Springsteen’s song, “43 Shots.” In between, however, there were slow spots, as their picaresque flight from an unlikely “nation-wide manhunt” moved from one set scene to another. I felt as though the director was stretching to come up with subplots, or secondary messages, and none struck me as terribly successful. Still, the movie kept my attention and made me think, which makes it stand out on those terms alone.

Marriage Story Deep Dive

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What was interesting about Marriage Story was the relationship between Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson, two of my favorite actors.  The attraction was clear, but so was the inevitable conflict. You didn’t see one as right, the other wrong; or one good, the other bad. You saw two individuals – fortunately, talented – who each needed, or expected, something from the relationship that the other wouldn’t, or couldn’t provide. It made sense that at the end, post-divorce, they could remain friends.

What didn’t make sense was most everything else. I know there must be lawyers who take over their clients’ cases and drive them in directions they don’t want to go, and there are clients who don’t know better; but the Ray Liotta and Laura Dern lawyers were so extreme I couldn’t enjoy watching the movie.  Why didn’t either Charlie or Nicole say, Hey, this isn’t what I want, and why am I paying you so much? When Nora Fanshaw tells Nicole, “I got you a 55-44 split on child custody,” over Nicole’s desire for a 50-50 split, I smelled an ethics violation as well as a director’s need to overemphasize a point to caricature. Of course, all the other characters were pretty cardboard, and what was Wallace Shawn doing in this realistic film playing, as usual, Wallace Shawn?

One other nagging issue: while I understood Charlie’s need for control, as a theater director, I couldn’t accept his irrational need to keep his son in New York, let alone the alternate life he had to set up in LA. How did he think he could take care of a young boy with a demanding job and no relatives for backup and uncertain financial prospects; whereas Nicole, in addition to being the mother, had a mother and sister ready to help and seemingly a better job? Wasn’t this reason enough to work out a mutually acceptable settlement instead of a fight?

Hustlers – 2

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No redeeming social value. Weak acting (except Julia Stiles, who appeared to drop in from a different movie), threadbare plot (no suspense or even forward momentum), endlessly repeating scenes (strip club, strip club backstage, ludicrous sexual encounters), unsympathetic characters (sex club customers and stripper-hustlers), plus gratuitous cartoon effects (the stripper who continually vomited). Jennifer Lopez has a pretty smile but can’t carry a movie, as she is asked to here. Or maybI have a blind spot for the all-girl genre flick: Support the Girls and Oceans 8 scored just as low, with Widows not much better.

Marriage Story – 7

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Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver both give remarkably sensitive portrayals of a couple who love each other but can’t get along, and your sympathy slides from one to the other in the world of grey that real people inhabit. Everyone else, oddly enough, is a caricature. This sets the stars apart but ultimately cheapens the movie. Many stretches of the film were painful to watch – undoubtedly Noah Baumbach’s intention but not something I enjoyed. And I didn’t need the blood-letting scene.

Knives Out – 7.9

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As opposed to JoJo Rabbit, which tried – unsuccessfully, in my view – to mix slapstick with serious matter, Knives Out never faltered from its tone: spoof. The whodunit plot clicked into place marvelously, and all the characters got what they deserved , unless you consider the 85-year-old patriarch’s slitting his throat to have been a tad premature. And when I say “spoof,” I don’t mean silly, for there was an undertone of message – as in, being greedy and selfish isn’t the best way to get along with others. Daniel Craig with a Southern drawl set the bar, and all the other actors limboed joyfully under.

JoJo Rabbit – 6.5

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An inventive mishmash of relationships with different, and largely incompatible, tones: JoJo and his friend Yorkie – traditional comic; JoJo and his mother (Scarlett Johansson, why?) – serious and tragic; JoJo and Adolf Hitler – absurdist comic; JoJo and Elsa – sweetly romantic; JoJo and Captain K (wonderful Sam Rockwell) – slapstick; JoJo and Jews – uncomfortable. Indeed, the whole “Hogan’s Heroes” view of World War II doesn’t really work when we see the Gestapo chasing Jews, collaborators being hanged and soldiers dying in the street. (I didn’t like Life Is Beautiful, either, for this reason.)

The Irishman – 7.5

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Robert DeNiro is an emotional black hole at the center of this 3-hour gangster epic. He is the narrator, speaking (to whom?) from a wheelchair in his nursing home, but I never felt anything from or about his extraordinary journey from trucker to hitman to union boss to convict to relic, not from his relationships to his wife and daughters, nor his allegiance and betrayal of Jimmy Hoffa. There are cold-blooded murders aplenty in the movie, with “cold” being the operative word. First, I never saw DeNiro as “Frankie Sheeran.” He was always Robert DeNiro. The twinkly smirk identified the actor, not the character, and I kept waiting for DeNiro the comic over-the-top performer to break out. Second, he wasn’t even remotely Irish. There was more anguish in 20 seconds of Banderas in Pain and Glory than 180 minutes of DeNiro here. You wonder if Scorsese centered his film on DeNiro because they have been friends since they were 16 and the younger DeNiro meant so much to Scorsese’s career, which he was now summing up.

In contrast, Al Pacino and Joe Pesci were wonderful, as the only other characters with any depth of personality. There were scores of others – the credits go on for days – but all of them, especially the wives, are just colorful Post-It notes stuck on DeNiro’s story. The film often plays as a documentary: mobsters are introduced, with their eventual fates superscripted, more for historical “accuracy” than for dramatic purposes. The movie’s structure itself is anti-drama, as the plot rolls on for quite awhile after the main story ends, sort of like life.

Meeting Gorbachev/ Apollo 11

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During my Delta flight to Atlanta I caught up on two notable documentaries of summer 2019, one notable for its narrator, the other for not having one. I am a longtime fan of Werner Herzog’s films and inquiring mind, but not so much that I appreciated his equal billing with the former Soviet leader. Not only did we have to see and watch Herzog’s ponderous interviewing, but when the movie moved beyond “Mikhail Sergeyevich’s” answers we were led by Herzog’s voice-over. Gorbachev played a hugely important and little understood role in world history, and it felt a little uncomfortable to see him treated as a curiosity in a senior-citizen home.

Apollo 11, which boasted unseen footage of the historic 1969 moon mission, was wildly dramatic, even though the story was well known and the outcome was never in doubt. This illusion was aided by the absence of any knowing voice from the present. All the dialogue was taken from contemporaneous TV interviews, tapes of mission participants and the resonant broadcasts of Walter Cronkite, giving a “You Are There” feel to the proceedings. Finally, one couldn’t help but marvel at the still-amazing feat of sending men to the moon, with a small side question of “Who was Neil Armstrong?”

 

Pain and Glory – 8

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In what is both the cleanest and most brightly colored movie of the year, Pedro Almodovar gives a hauntingly autobiographical glimpse of the creative process – its sources, its pressures, its resolutions. The incomparable Antonio Banderas and Penelope Cruz, plus the wildly coiffed Asier Exteandia, never let your intentions stray as the story flashes forward, flashes back and swirls in linear fashion.  At the end, as in Proust (and Patricia Selbert’s House of Six Doors), we reach the beginning of the story we’ve just been watching.

Parasite – 5.5

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Bizarre. Part absurdist comedy, part horror film, part sociological commentary, none of it strikes an emotional chord or makes you think too much. The vibe is similar to Jordan Peele’s movies (Get Out and particularly Us), but there’s no one to root for and the story is full of holes: e.g., how can the son end up the hero after we saw his head bashed in, lying in a puddle of his blood? Maybe the movie would make more sense for a Korean audience, but if this is our glimpse into Korean culture I don’t feel I’m missing much.