There's not really too much I have to say here in the intro this week. Um, let's see, um,... I'm...- (Shrugs) I'm sitting at home watching movies a lot, and with COVID-19 still being rampant, it's still only, slightly more strenuous and different then my typical life. Although even this though, I had more unusual issues then normal, and I'll explain some of those issues in some of the appropriate reviews. Other then that, not much to add.
Let's get to the reviews, including my first review of a 2020 feature, "Beats"!
BEATS (2020) Director: Chris Robinson
★★1/2
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You know, I've seen so many of these any-, well, honestly I gotta ask my musicians friends this one, 'cause, well,... just-, is everyone who works in the music industry, just somebody who gets screwed over for discovering a talent?
Maybe this is just me, 'cause I come from film, granted, basically the same outskirts that these characters in music discovery movies seem to live in but still,- it seems like you can be an artist, you can be a producer, you can be a mogul, a right-hand man of a mogul of some kind, or-eh, you can be the guy who spots the talent. On the one hand, basically the guy who, brings in the mark that the rest of the crew is gonna steal from, which is bad in of itself, but like, how is there only like, the one option to screw the talent spotter guy? Film doesn't just have a lot more avenues of entry, but it also has a lot more mixing and blending of skills for entry. Hell, that liaison role between producers and executives with artists, that's a whole industry in of itself in Hollywood. Several in fact, if you watch "Entourage" and see how agenting and managing are differing roles and require different skillsets and education levels, even licensing. But, it seems like anybody can bring an artist off the street and bring them a producer or executive, and then, sign the artist, and then cut the manager out completely, and you know what, I don't know why. How do they get away with that? Why force him out, just buy him out if you don't want him, but even still, doesn't he play an instrument? He obviously knows music enough to find you the unknown what you want? How do you know you can't find some other job for the guy, that might be useful and beneficial to you? Sure, he's a leach too, but the guy could recognize somebody who's talented...-
I know I'm being a little reductive here, but it does seem that way with nearly every film, both real life music bio one and especially so with original stories like "Beats", a story about a school security guard in inner-city Chicago, Romelo Reese (Anthony Anderson) who apparently was a big shot record producer, until he got broke, (So, not as big a shot, I guess) and his main artist, Tone (Tyre Green), who discovers a troubled young man, Khalil (August Everage) who's apparently really talented at mixing beats, but is paralyzed by his sister Kari's (Megan Sousa) who he often still imagines seeing, while stuck at home as he's afraid to go outside, even to high school. His mother also feels it's too unsafe for him to go out into the streets, and yeah, this is modern-day Chicago, there is something going on. So, there's two stories, one is Romelo trying to get back into the music game on August's coattails, trying to get old "friends" and "producers" to look at him, but also just getting comfortable around August enough to want to create and mix and frankly just,- just to go out into the world. His mother, Carla (Uzo Aduba) is also frightened and overprotective of her kid, although it's not like they don't have good reason.
Okay, now is the point where I'm not gonna review or describe the movie anymore, 'cause, I'm not entirely certain I watched the right movie. See, this is one of two movies called "Beats" that came out in 2019,- actually this only screened at Slamdance in 2019, it didn't get a release, theatrical or otherwise until 2020, but there is another called "Beats" that came out in 2019, and I suspect now that that was the movie I was supposed to watch. This is very frustrating and annoying, 'cause this has happened to me, TWICE, within the same review period! If you scroll down to my review of "Revenge" I tell a completely different story of having trouble finding the exact movie I wanted to see, because "Revenge" is so generic a title that streaming sites and avenues kept confusing the film I was looking for, with completely different recent movies, also called "Revenge"!
Now "Beats" is a little weirder of a title, so I'll let this anomaly slide and try to watch the other movie later, but naming a movie "Revenge" is just stupid and lazy, and also annoying; especially for search engines. Like, half of literature is basically a narrative based around revenge; how the hell am I supposed to differentiate one from another?!
As to this movie called "Beats", it's got a couple good ideas and sequences that make it stand out a bit from some other movies like this I've seen, and some good performances; I especially want to single out Ashley Jackson playing Niyah, a girl that August has a crush on and she has a really good speech scene, where she in a prom dress calling out August on his bullshit outside his house, but honestly, this isn't different, unique or good enough for me to recommend outright.It might be decent if you stumble upon it on cable one afternoon, or on Netflix I guess; it's streams on there, but it's nothing special. Mostly I just want to tell filmmakers or all kinds, including writers and producers especially: DO NOT GIVE ME ANY MORE GENERIC MOVIE TITLES OF MOVIES! Seriously, TRY HARDER to be original and stand out! If you're gonna give a movie such a generic one-word title, you better be damn sure that the movie is so good and so distinctive that the movie not only can't possibly be named anything else, but the word itself has to be so thoroughly intertwined with the text of the film that it absolutely has to called that word, 'cause nothing else would make sense.
HARRIET (2019) Director: Kasi Lemmons
★★★
So there's always been a weird joke in Hollywood, especially in writers' circles about Nicola Tesla. Yeah, that Tesla. Anyway, supposedly that's always the ideal, dream screenplay idea that for one never comes about and never gets made, as in a straight biopic of him. That's kind of a slight in-joke in that one Nolan movie about magic where David Bowie plays him in, um, what was it called, um, oh, "The Prestige", where basically he acts like a real wizard that creates actual magic illusions, like he's a catch-all for anything necessary. That's kinda the joke that every big writer's trying to get the Nicola Tesla made and somehow it never gets done. Anyway, I bring it up, 'cause I've also heard the same joke about a Harriet Tubman movie for years.
I think if there's a real distinction, I would probably say the Tubman movie joke is more the producers' version of the joke, while the Tesla version is the writers' version. There's always been a Harriet Tubman movie in development or development Hell, for one reason or another, and I just assumed it would never get made. However, they did eventually make a Nicola Tesla film. It was a bit of a disaster that eventually led to a Director's Cut of the movie getting released two years after it was finished, and I'm fairly certain nobody's seen it. "Harriet" on the other hand, is a bit more of a commercial release and it has garnered an audience and even earned it's star, Cynthia Erivo an Oscar nomination for Best Actress (And also for Best Song, I should mention). It's not like Tubman's story isn't one worth telling; I mean, we put her on goddamn money, she's an important and transcendant figure in American history, but she's also been one of those lives who's always been a bit difficult to form a traditional narrative around, at least that one that's shapes well for a feature film, or for that matter any medium. The only other known production of a Harriet Tubman biopic that I can think of is the TV miniseries "A Woman Called Moses" from the seventies with Cicely Tyson in the role, and, other then the fact that it's streaming on Amazon, there's not much I can find on that. Even on the wikipedia page for it and keep in mind, this is a '70s miniseries, back when those were the biggest shows in television, it's shockingly spare; it talks more about the soundtrack album then the miniseries.
(Shrugs)
So, how about "Harriet", the new biopic that actually got made. It's-eh,... it's okay.
It's-um,... (Sigh) I don't know what to tell you, it's about what you expect. It's-, it's well made, well-shot, well acted for the most part. It's not the best written; I mean the history stuff is,- well, I actually don't know how accurate it is, but it seems accurate enough, mostly the dialogue can be a bit graining and clunky. I mean, I get it, this is a movie that's trying to express how important she is and how heroic she was, and it does a lot of it in the storytelling, although half the time, the movie just turns into William Still (Leslie Odom, Jr.), the head of the Philadelphia Anti-Slavery Society who documents the lives and experiences of escaped slaves like Harriet, it's often just him saying, "You can't do that," to Harriet, and her saying, "Oh, I'm doing this shit!" (Not in those terms, but she does indeed do that shit!) This happens like, almost half a dozen times or so, and you know, yes, what she does is very dangerous, but at some point, it should be both pretty clear that she ain't gonna listen and that somehow this woman keeps finding a way to go down to the South again and come back up with some freed slaves, even after the Fugitive Slave Act is passed. I'm sure a bunch of people warned her all the time of the dangers, and it was ridiculously dangerous and heroic, but it get repetitive.
The beginning of the movie is her escaping from her master Gideon Brodess (Joe Alwyn) who did allow her to marry a freedman John Tubman (Zachary Momoh), but he's backed out of several promises of his freedom, much of with were deals made with his father, Mike (Edward Brodan) but he's also obsessed with Harriet, or Minty as she's known back then. (She changed her name to Harriet after she escaped.)
Gideon also is the one that's constantly trying to find and recapture her: I don't know how accurate this is; I have heard stories of slaveowners seeking out to find their runaway slaves, but at some point, I gotta imagine he gave up long before this. Actually, there's little-to-no knowledge of Gideon, the real villainous character in the Brodess household is apparently the mother, Eliza (Jennifer Nettles). I guess he's a better person to be running out and helping the army of slaveowners that have gathered and try to position themselves at the bridge.
There's like, nothing new in these scenes; they're basically the same sequences you probably have always heard about with slave escape stories, but I guess they're done okay. I like the emphasis on the songs being code; that was done well. Honestly, I was more intrigued by the scenes with her when she's free in the North. It kinda reminded me of "The New World" and how Rebecca is enchanted by Europe. She even does a jump for joy.
Obviously that's short-lived, and the movie basically just canonizes Harriet, and that's why I've kinda always thought her story was never good for a biopic. She is heroic, she is an American hero, an icon and accomplished a lot of amazing things; hell, we're putting her on our currency! (Or, we were supposed to anyway.... ugh.), we only get a minor glimpse of it here believe it or not, but there isn't much else. No other real conflicts or struggles, outside of the actiosn she partakes in. I guess why Kasi Lemmons focused on that as much as she did, 'cause there really isn't much else to talk about with her. There's very little conflict, and she was really headstrong. If anything, the movie actually made her more devoted and headstrong then maybe even she was, 'cause they basically turn into like a classic old west folk hero like Billy the Kid or someone. That's not a negative either, it helps; it actually puts her astonishing acts in the correct context, but I didn't exactly come out of the movie inspired or anything. It's a difficult film to review 'cause it's such a tricky subject matter and there aren't a lot of examples of people working with it beforehand, so I'm trying ot figure out what was the right approach and what wasn't at what wasn't for, in terms of telling her story best in the form of a movie, and I'm conflicted on what that would be. I know, this isn't it, but I know it's not bad either.
I think the movie's ultimately trying to mythologize her, and it succeeds at that, so I'm gonna give it a pass, but I do wonder if there's more interesting ways to tell her story, or for that matter just one of her stories told well in the future. I go back-and-forth whether or not Tubman the historical figure, the icon, the most famous and successful conductor on the Underground Railroad is more or less compelling then Tubman, the person, and I think the film does too, and it's trying to split the difference; I don't know how well they succeeded at either, but I think they succeeded enough at each to at least recommend. It certainly didn't dishonor her, and it highlighted her importance; I just wish it was able to find like something else to hang onto, but you know, if she had something else that compelling, she might not have been able to accomplish as much as she did.
RICHARD JEWELL (2019) Director: Clint Eastwood
★★1/2
Boy, did I pick a bad time to watch "Richard Jewell" of all things. Yeah, David, in the middle of the police protests of the pandemic of 2020, let's watch a movie about the one time they treated an innocent white guy like a villain. (Sighs; eye rolls) I don't want to say it, but frankly, it was next on the list, so I watched it, and frankly I'm not saddened that I got it over with.
So there's this thing I've started noticing with Clint Eastwood's later films recently. Well, first off they've started sucking, but that's not the thing I was talking about, what I'm talking about is actually, his-, well, his fascination with, for-lack-of-a-better-term, sudden fame. Not every movie, but a good deal of his films in this later period of his, good and bad, have dealt with characters who either have to deal with some sudden event that happens to them and either changes their lives forever, and/or, makes them famous temporarily for unusual reasons. He's done this with "The 15:17 to Paris", "Sully", 'American Sniper", to some extent "Hereafter", probably the best of these narratives, "Changeling" and "Flags of Our Fathers". That's basically half the movies he's directed in the last fifteen or so years. It's a pretty recent motif in his work; it doesn't really come up much before "Flags...", but he's definitely intrigued by it, and more lately then ever before, and I'm not entirely sure why. Like, it's actually weird, if there's a director who shouldn't be intrigued by that, it's probably Eastwood, who's been world famous for like, six decades now.
And there's definitely something off with this motif too, 'cause look at the subjects and how he treats them. "American Sniper" is about an obsessed Iraq soldier who's fame came from being both the modern-day Audie Murphy and for spewing some vivid jingoistic hate in his short life. "Sully", he just outright made up a narrative where people supposedly thought that perhaps the hero of the Hudson was somehow, the cause of the crash, all the while, while he's being celebrated on the talk show circuit? "Sully" is weirder and stupider the more you think about it. I haven't seen "The 15:17 to Paris", but he apparently uses the real-life people from that disaster as actors playing themselves, a la, Paul Greengrass's "United 93". And now with "Richard Jewell", he's basically making "Sully", but it actually happened.
Well, mostly, it happened. He takes some liberties here and some of them are pretty shitty. The big one that's noted is the way that he portrays Kathy Scruggs (Olivia Wilde), the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter who broke the story that the FBI was investigating Richard (Paul Walter Hauser) as she apparently has a scene, that according to every report I can find, did not happen, where they basically show that she got that story by sleeping with an FBI agent, Tom Shaw (Jon Hamm). in order to get the story. I've heard stories of the actors from the filmmakers and actors about how this was dramatized, some saying that, why is it okay for James Bond to sleep with women for information...- I-eh, yeah, that's-, that's not the same thing. And especially in this day and time; like this was a real person and this didn't happen, and there's no scenario would she would need to. It's not even a big, shocking piece of information; that they're investigated the guy who found the bomb, well, of course they are. Even in the movie Richard gets that. (And also Kathy Scruggs died a few years after this so she's not here to defend herself, although some of her former co-workers have, thanksfully.)
They do portray Jewell, interestingly here. It's not an inaccurate portrayal by Hauser, per se, I went to look back at some footage of Jewell; they might've made him a little too simple, but Hauser's performance is really good. And the best sequence in the movie is the scene of the explosion, and the confusion and how the bomb was found and then the chaos in the aftermath. That sequence is the best part of the film.
Don't get me wrong here, the Press and the FBI made some bad, huge mistakes regarding this investigation, and focusing most of their investigation on Jewell, was a big one. They did something, that I'm not sure is still used as predominantly in these kind of major cases anymore; I honestly haven't heard the term or the practice since, eh,- I guess, since the DC Sniper was around, and that's "profiling." Not necessarily racial profiling, althought that's apart of it, but is something else. I think we tend to be more intrigued now by DNA and other forensics and more traditional investigative techniques these days, but profiling was a key buzzword for awhile. I even remember there was a bad TV show in the late '90s called "Profiler"; I watched an episode or two, but I wouldn't recommend it. Basically, there was a big idea that based on the kinds of crims and motives behind them, especially certain public crimes like these, or brutal kinds of murder, etc., that you can form accurate profilers of the kind of suspects that you're looking for.
This science, eh,- well, if I remember the DC Sniper case correctly, they got that profile pretty wrong, at least early on. I've seen them get it right just as often, but the FBI's issue in this case, is that they started with a profile, and a very incorrect one. One that didn't even really match Jewell at all even, much less Eric Rudolph, the actual bomber. Now, Jewell was a weird guy though. He lived with his mother Bobi (Oscar-nominee Kathy Bates), and he had a skeptical track record as a security guard and police officer. He knew the law, and respected it a little too much. He had friends, although they depict him as more of a lone wolf, and one who's somewhat ostracized from other law enforcement members because he's a security guard. I'm sure that happened, but it seems like they played that up too much.
Honestly, Richard Jewell is another one of those, real-life people who I kinda tilt my head at when I think about the idea of making a movie about them; not in the same vein as Harriet Tubman obviously, but he basically is a minor footnote. Sure, he's also a hero, but his role in history, it's actually very downplayed in my mind regarding both the Atlanta Olympics themselves, which I have very vivid memories of, most of which involve Kerri Strug, but also in terms of the culture-at-large, this was kind of a blip. It was bad for him, but he was eventually vindicated, and he sued and got his money from the FBI and others. (Not from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution though, he lost his case against them; Eastwood seems to really hate the press in general, but I can't stress this enough, he's really being misleading with them.) Still, is there really enough for a feature-length film about him?
Ehhh, hmm, yeah, there is, but again, this isn't it. This film really isn't it. I don't know why Eastwood has chosen to catch onto this trend of sudden fame and how it effects them, but I really can't say that I think it's a worthwhile endeavor. It's not his only recent motif, and that's ultimately good, but it's not good here. It's a little less annoyingly stupid then "Sully", at least from a factual standard, but it's a little harder to get through. If I had to guess, I think he's trying to show how too much power and media scrutiny can come down on an individual, and that's true sometimes, and he's not giving bad examples here. Obviously, Eastwood's a known Republican who's sketpical of government oversight. He also failed as a mayor once, so it might just be that he sucked at government..., but nevertheless the way he's framing this is as though there's some kind of deeper meaning or truth behind the bad things regarding these institutions. The main narrative change is Jewell recognizing that in the middle of his giving yet another witness statement, this time with his attorney Watson Bryant (Sam Rockwell) being present. And yeah, for him, they did, but this doesn't relate to everyone; this wasn't a case of systemic bias issues within the framework of the FBI or other policing or media agencies. This was bad, presumptive detective work. It was awful, and it was a waste of time while the real culprit was out there bombing for years afterwards.
Also, Kathy Bates got an Oscar nomination for her performance, um... okay, she's pretty high up in the Academy, and the few people who've tried battling her in the past, they've not done well; I know her and Joan Rivers hated each other up Rivers's passing, but, yeah, like, I know why she got nominated. She's fine, but this isn't a special performance of hers. Most of the acting is good, some of it really good, Olivia Wilde has a really badly written character and her performance is a bit of a mess because of it. It's a decent document about the experiences that Richard Jewell had, but this is really framed badly. It's framed from the wrong perspective, there's no other way to say it. Richard Jewell's story does need to be told and be a reminder of what can happen when bad policework occurs in a modern media world, but there are ways to tell his story much better then this.
UNCUT GEMS (2019) Directors: Benny Safdie & Josh Safdie
★★★★1/2
I've spent a couple days trying to figure out exactly how to approach "Uncut Gems". Everybody else I know seemed to absolutely love this film, and all I kept hearing about was how great Adam Sandler was in the film.
(Shrugs)
I mean, I'm not saying not good; this is probably my favorite performance of his so far, but he's usually good when he's not doing his own bad comedies. And I'm not surprised he's good in this. What I was really concerned about was that this was a Safdie Brothers film. It's not that they're not talented either, they've actually made some really interesting and compelling films over the years. They also seem to make a lot of movies about some really reprehensible people. I was one of the ones who wasn't enthralled with "Good Time", their last feature which got a lot of buzz for Robert Pattinson's performance, which,- I guess it wasn't a bad performance, but I struggled with the character. He was the kind of fuck-up who is way out-of-his-league and kept finding some way to get in deeper and deeper shit... Not the first time either, their autobiographical film "Daddy Longlegs" showed a father who seemed to be, well, 'Trying" is not the best word, but yeah, trying to take care of two kids. He wasn't good at it, let's put it at that. And their last film before this, the aforementioned "Good Time" was about two brothers, one who had some kind of disorder and another who was a complete fuck up that kept dragging the other mentally disabled brother along on his misadventures. As somebody who watches his autistic brother all day, that movie, hit some of my trouble spots admittedly, but I still questioned how good it actually was.
I can't say "Uncut Gems" is necessarily a different path then what they've been doing. Sandler plays a flawed and obsessive character who can't help but to fail to his own demons, and seemingly struggles to con his way out of. This one is Howard Ratner and he's quite similar to a few people I've come across in some of my experiences. He runs a very high-scale jewelry store, and we meet him literally during an anal probe as doctors are inspecting him for colon cancer. He spends the rest of the movie, trying to pull a diamond out of his ass. Well, actually, an opal, a rare black opal that he's bought from Ethiopia that's just arrived. In it's uncut form, black opal is pretty valuable, and he's expecting millions from auction, but he gives it to Kevin Garnett, yes that one, playing himself, who's one of the many high-end clientels he gets, and then tries to hustle. He hustles and works everybody. He exchanges Garnett's championship ring as collateral for him to borrow the opal, and then pawns that in order to make a bet, (And a ridiculous bet it is; trust me, I know about sports betting, and, well, he makes a bet that only an unlicensed bookie would take, let me put it that way.) and I'm skipping a bunch of other cons and monetary exchanges here too, because the whole time he's being followed and beaten up and striped naked and shoved into his car trunk by Phil and Nico (Keith William Richards and Tommy Kominick) two of, many people who would like to kill Howard, but these are the most persistent. They work for Arno (Eric Bogosian) one of the mob bosses he owes money to, and who put a stop on a huge bet he was making with another bookie.
Meanwhile, KG won't give him the opal back and he's chasing him back and forth from Philadelphia and to clubs, and fighting with his connection to KG, Demany (Lakeith Stanfield) who's stealing and pawning off his own jewelry that he sells, watches that he sells and pawns...- Howard's basically screwing over everybody, including his family. His wife Dinah (Idina Menzel) is divorcing him, but the family doesn't know, although his kids suspect more then he wants them to let on. He's dating his co-worker, Julia (Julia Fox) who's living in his apartment secretly, although she's too much of a party girl for him really, as he gets mad at her at a The Weeknd concert, which I'm not even gonna try to explain why he's at that. All this takes place, essentially, maybe over a week's time, but it feels like it's constant never-ending ridiculousness and absurdism.
Howard can't help himself; he has to make the stupid decision. He's an addicted gambler, and that high is what he looks for and fundamentally cannot understand why, say the mobsters he owes money to, would stop a bet he's making, just because he owes them money. And it's not like he doesn't have the money; he owns a jewelry store in the jewelry district. He's high end; he's got security doors and camera and incredibly expensive jewels, everywhere around him. That's not a business you can go into without first having a substantial amount of money to begin with, and it seems like he's successful outside of his bullshit.
Honestly, I see people like him all the time in the casinos; they actually have a profession that makes them be with enough high-profile people and make enough money to blow it on some prop-bet parlays that are just ridiculous to ever bet. I won't give out names, but trust me, they bet enough to where you learn their names. So, in that sense, I can relate to the movie 'cause I've seen and am used to this behavior. On the other hand, I've seen and am used to this behavior and that kinda turns me off of it.
Honestly, for all the talk about Adam Sandler's performance being so great, which it undoubtedly is, I don't actually think it's that strange or unexpected a performance from him. He's always played some reprehensible characters, but he always positioned himself, at least in his comedies, as the heroic character; that's the real reason his comedies, at least the ones that he's specifically involved with producing, have always been lacking. He's always been better at some evil characters when he does dramas. Even in something like "Punch-Drunk Love", he's beats the crap out of a lot of people and windows. And here, in "Uncut Gems", here's a guy who, if he didn't make several stupid decisions, everything would've been fine for him.
I guess that's part of my issue with him and with the Safdies, I can never tell if they're making fun of their characters, or if they genuinely care for these characters. If these are comedies, which this could be considered, this is a dark comedy. It's compelling, and kinetic, and gives us a dark look into a deeply flawed man. One of many in this world, constantly trying to sell himself and get a little extra edge up on everyone, trying to gget that one last win.
Oddly, I think that the film that "Uncut Gems", most reminds me of is "People I Know", an obscure, underrated indy where Al Pacino plays a publicist who spends the movie trying to get a major event off the ground, but keeps running into walls, struggles both within his profession and with a dark underworld of his profession that he's up until now, avoided. Howard doesn't avoid the pitfalls, he jumps right into them figuring that he'll always be able to find a way to climb back out. That's what makes him so frustrating and yet so compelling at the same time. That's what also makes "Uncut Gems" such a tricky movie to analyze; I'm been struggling with this review for instance, for two days, and I'm still not certain what to make of the film, other then I think it does what it's trying to do, very well. I guess that's all I need from it, but it does seem hollow. Then again, a diamond is only some carbon, and an opal is just some silica, so I guess I shouldn't expect such shiny gems to be more than things that glitter.
PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE (2019) Director: Celine Sciamma
★★★★★
I don't think I realized until now just how soulful Celine Sciamma's films are. I've been a fan of hers since her debut feature "Water Lilies", one of the best LGBT coming-of-age romances I've seen. All her films are essentially about feminity and what that entails exactly. She's known for writing other films as well, most notably in the west, probably the Oscar-nominated animated feature, "My Life as a Zucchini" but the more I dive into her films, the more I think her real goal is to get into the female mind. Sure, she's a female director, don't all female directors aim for that? Well, Kathryn Bigelow would beg to differ, but no, I really mean that she's trying to visualize it though.
This film for instance, the obvious comparison film to "Portrait of a Lady on Fire" is Ingmar Bergman's "Persona", that movie is specifically about trying to get inside the mind of it's female protagonists. It's also about two girls struggling to connect with each other on an island, and one of them is an artist. Okay, this film is a natural romance, and "Persona" was basically a deconstruction of film entirely but there's still a lot of similarities. When thinking of Celina Sciamma, like Bergman, I think of faces. Close-ups. Like shots of Zoe Haran in "Tomboy" out of breath while playing a game with other kids, or intense close-ups of Karidja Toure taking off her helmet or checking her mail in "Girlhood". And now we have a movie that's centered around womens faces, and picturing them, literally.
In flashback to a class, Marianne (Noemie Merlant) reflects back on a painting she did, a portrait of Heloise (Adele Haenel). Heloise is about to get married off through a few complications have arise, and she's become strangely defiant about being painted, and the upcoming nuptials. There's one painting that's made of just her outfit, this green dress that she's supposed to be posing in, but she doesn't pose for it, so there's no face in the painting, just this, empty space where an alabaster girl's supposed to be.
Actually, the family doesn't commission her to paint her normally, they actually bring her on under the guise of being a hired companion of hers. in order to just, be around her and friends with her enough to eventually paint her from memory, I guess. The rouse eventually fails, but by that point, their rocky beginning kinda clicks. This begins a slow-moving and slow-growing but passionate romance between them as eventually, she begins reluctantly posing.
It's hard to describe the actions per se, which is something I feel about a lot of romances in general, especially brisk unexpected and doomed flings like this one is. I mean, this isn't a romance that's gonna last, that's obvious from the beginning. For one, it's a period piece; it takes place on an island off the coast of Brittany around the end of the 19th Century; I mean, the main narrative for Heloise is that she's being put in an arranged marriage for familial business reasons; even with little presence from the family as most of the time, and even if the main metaphor that peppers their romance wasn't Orpheus and Eurydice, it's not like they're able to run away with each other.
She manages to stay a little bit longer then planned after finishing her first portrait, and then destroying it and explaining to Heloise's mother, known as La Countess (Valeria Golino) that it doesn't accurately capture her daughter. Really, the third character in this castle is Sophie (Luana Bajrami) who is the maid that provides some exposition and seems to have a fairly interesting existence on her own, as at one point both Heloise and Marianne help her out by getting her to have a miscarriage or abortion; I'm not actually sure to be honest on that one. They go to the beach and have her keep running back and forth until she can't.
They go down to the beach a lot, and often spend time exploring the island, both the natural landscape and occasionally the other residents of the island. I got to talk about both the location and in particular Claire Mathon's cinematography too; the only way to describe the look of this moive is lusciously. It not looks beautiful but nearly every shot looks like one of the paintings in the movie which were done by artist Helene Delmaire, who based the paintings on many of the shots of the film.
Let's get to the reviews, including my first review of a 2020 feature, "Beats"!
BEATS (2020) Director: Chris Robinson
★★1/2
You know, I've seen so many of these any-, well, honestly I gotta ask my musicians friends this one, 'cause, well,... just-, is everyone who works in the music industry, just somebody who gets screwed over for discovering a talent?
Maybe this is just me, 'cause I come from film, granted, basically the same outskirts that these characters in music discovery movies seem to live in but still,- it seems like you can be an artist, you can be a producer, you can be a mogul, a right-hand man of a mogul of some kind, or-eh, you can be the guy who spots the talent. On the one hand, basically the guy who, brings in the mark that the rest of the crew is gonna steal from, which is bad in of itself, but like, how is there only like, the one option to screw the talent spotter guy? Film doesn't just have a lot more avenues of entry, but it also has a lot more mixing and blending of skills for entry. Hell, that liaison role between producers and executives with artists, that's a whole industry in of itself in Hollywood. Several in fact, if you watch "Entourage" and see how agenting and managing are differing roles and require different skillsets and education levels, even licensing. But, it seems like anybody can bring an artist off the street and bring them a producer or executive, and then, sign the artist, and then cut the manager out completely, and you know what, I don't know why. How do they get away with that? Why force him out, just buy him out if you don't want him, but even still, doesn't he play an instrument? He obviously knows music enough to find you the unknown what you want? How do you know you can't find some other job for the guy, that might be useful and beneficial to you? Sure, he's a leach too, but the guy could recognize somebody who's talented...-
I know I'm being a little reductive here, but it does seem that way with nearly every film, both real life music bio one and especially so with original stories like "Beats", a story about a school security guard in inner-city Chicago, Romelo Reese (Anthony Anderson) who apparently was a big shot record producer, until he got broke, (So, not as big a shot, I guess) and his main artist, Tone (Tyre Green), who discovers a troubled young man, Khalil (August Everage) who's apparently really talented at mixing beats, but is paralyzed by his sister Kari's (Megan Sousa) who he often still imagines seeing, while stuck at home as he's afraid to go outside, even to high school. His mother also feels it's too unsafe for him to go out into the streets, and yeah, this is modern-day Chicago, there is something going on. So, there's two stories, one is Romelo trying to get back into the music game on August's coattails, trying to get old "friends" and "producers" to look at him, but also just getting comfortable around August enough to want to create and mix and frankly just,- just to go out into the world. His mother, Carla (Uzo Aduba) is also frightened and overprotective of her kid, although it's not like they don't have good reason.
Okay, now is the point where I'm not gonna review or describe the movie anymore, 'cause, I'm not entirely certain I watched the right movie. See, this is one of two movies called "Beats" that came out in 2019,- actually this only screened at Slamdance in 2019, it didn't get a release, theatrical or otherwise until 2020, but there is another called "Beats" that came out in 2019, and I suspect now that that was the movie I was supposed to watch. This is very frustrating and annoying, 'cause this has happened to me, TWICE, within the same review period! If you scroll down to my review of "Revenge" I tell a completely different story of having trouble finding the exact movie I wanted to see, because "Revenge" is so generic a title that streaming sites and avenues kept confusing the film I was looking for, with completely different recent movies, also called "Revenge"!
Now "Beats" is a little weirder of a title, so I'll let this anomaly slide and try to watch the other movie later, but naming a movie "Revenge" is just stupid and lazy, and also annoying; especially for search engines. Like, half of literature is basically a narrative based around revenge; how the hell am I supposed to differentiate one from another?!
As to this movie called "Beats", it's got a couple good ideas and sequences that make it stand out a bit from some other movies like this I've seen, and some good performances; I especially want to single out Ashley Jackson playing Niyah, a girl that August has a crush on and she has a really good speech scene, where she in a prom dress calling out August on his bullshit outside his house, but honestly, this isn't different, unique or good enough for me to recommend outright.It might be decent if you stumble upon it on cable one afternoon, or on Netflix I guess; it's streams on there, but it's nothing special. Mostly I just want to tell filmmakers or all kinds, including writers and producers especially: DO NOT GIVE ME ANY MORE GENERIC MOVIE TITLES OF MOVIES! Seriously, TRY HARDER to be original and stand out! If you're gonna give a movie such a generic one-word title, you better be damn sure that the movie is so good and so distinctive that the movie not only can't possibly be named anything else, but the word itself has to be so thoroughly intertwined with the text of the film that it absolutely has to called that word, 'cause nothing else would make sense.
HARRIET (2019) Director: Kasi Lemmons
★★★
So there's always been a weird joke in Hollywood, especially in writers' circles about Nicola Tesla. Yeah, that Tesla. Anyway, supposedly that's always the ideal, dream screenplay idea that for one never comes about and never gets made, as in a straight biopic of him. That's kind of a slight in-joke in that one Nolan movie about magic where David Bowie plays him in, um, what was it called, um, oh, "The Prestige", where basically he acts like a real wizard that creates actual magic illusions, like he's a catch-all for anything necessary. That's kinda the joke that every big writer's trying to get the Nicola Tesla made and somehow it never gets done. Anyway, I bring it up, 'cause I've also heard the same joke about a Harriet Tubman movie for years.
I think if there's a real distinction, I would probably say the Tubman movie joke is more the producers' version of the joke, while the Tesla version is the writers' version. There's always been a Harriet Tubman movie in development or development Hell, for one reason or another, and I just assumed it would never get made. However, they did eventually make a Nicola Tesla film. It was a bit of a disaster that eventually led to a Director's Cut of the movie getting released two years after it was finished, and I'm fairly certain nobody's seen it. "Harriet" on the other hand, is a bit more of a commercial release and it has garnered an audience and even earned it's star, Cynthia Erivo an Oscar nomination for Best Actress (And also for Best Song, I should mention). It's not like Tubman's story isn't one worth telling; I mean, we put her on goddamn money, she's an important and transcendant figure in American history, but she's also been one of those lives who's always been a bit difficult to form a traditional narrative around, at least that one that's shapes well for a feature film, or for that matter any medium. The only other known production of a Harriet Tubman biopic that I can think of is the TV miniseries "A Woman Called Moses" from the seventies with Cicely Tyson in the role, and, other then the fact that it's streaming on Amazon, there's not much I can find on that. Even on the wikipedia page for it and keep in mind, this is a '70s miniseries, back when those were the biggest shows in television, it's shockingly spare; it talks more about the soundtrack album then the miniseries.
(Shrugs)
So, how about "Harriet", the new biopic that actually got made. It's-eh,... it's okay.
It's-um,... (Sigh) I don't know what to tell you, it's about what you expect. It's-, it's well made, well-shot, well acted for the most part. It's not the best written; I mean the history stuff is,- well, I actually don't know how accurate it is, but it seems accurate enough, mostly the dialogue can be a bit graining and clunky. I mean, I get it, this is a movie that's trying to express how important she is and how heroic she was, and it does a lot of it in the storytelling, although half the time, the movie just turns into William Still (Leslie Odom, Jr.), the head of the Philadelphia Anti-Slavery Society who documents the lives and experiences of escaped slaves like Harriet, it's often just him saying, "You can't do that," to Harriet, and her saying, "Oh, I'm doing this shit!" (Not in those terms, but she does indeed do that shit!) This happens like, almost half a dozen times or so, and you know, yes, what she does is very dangerous, but at some point, it should be both pretty clear that she ain't gonna listen and that somehow this woman keeps finding a way to go down to the South again and come back up with some freed slaves, even after the Fugitive Slave Act is passed. I'm sure a bunch of people warned her all the time of the dangers, and it was ridiculously dangerous and heroic, but it get repetitive.
The beginning of the movie is her escaping from her master Gideon Brodess (Joe Alwyn) who did allow her to marry a freedman John Tubman (Zachary Momoh), but he's backed out of several promises of his freedom, much of with were deals made with his father, Mike (Edward Brodan) but he's also obsessed with Harriet, or Minty as she's known back then. (She changed her name to Harriet after she escaped.)
Gideon also is the one that's constantly trying to find and recapture her: I don't know how accurate this is; I have heard stories of slaveowners seeking out to find their runaway slaves, but at some point, I gotta imagine he gave up long before this. Actually, there's little-to-no knowledge of Gideon, the real villainous character in the Brodess household is apparently the mother, Eliza (Jennifer Nettles). I guess he's a better person to be running out and helping the army of slaveowners that have gathered and try to position themselves at the bridge.
There's like, nothing new in these scenes; they're basically the same sequences you probably have always heard about with slave escape stories, but I guess they're done okay. I like the emphasis on the songs being code; that was done well. Honestly, I was more intrigued by the scenes with her when she's free in the North. It kinda reminded me of "The New World" and how Rebecca is enchanted by Europe. She even does a jump for joy.
Obviously that's short-lived, and the movie basically just canonizes Harriet, and that's why I've kinda always thought her story was never good for a biopic. She is heroic, she is an American hero, an icon and accomplished a lot of amazing things; hell, we're putting her on our currency! (Or, we were supposed to anyway.... ugh.), we only get a minor glimpse of it here believe it or not, but there isn't much else. No other real conflicts or struggles, outside of the actiosn she partakes in. I guess why Kasi Lemmons focused on that as much as she did, 'cause there really isn't much else to talk about with her. There's very little conflict, and she was really headstrong. If anything, the movie actually made her more devoted and headstrong then maybe even she was, 'cause they basically turn into like a classic old west folk hero like Billy the Kid or someone. That's not a negative either, it helps; it actually puts her astonishing acts in the correct context, but I didn't exactly come out of the movie inspired or anything. It's a difficult film to review 'cause it's such a tricky subject matter and there aren't a lot of examples of people working with it beforehand, so I'm trying ot figure out what was the right approach and what wasn't at what wasn't for, in terms of telling her story best in the form of a movie, and I'm conflicted on what that would be. I know, this isn't it, but I know it's not bad either.
I think the movie's ultimately trying to mythologize her, and it succeeds at that, so I'm gonna give it a pass, but I do wonder if there's more interesting ways to tell her story, or for that matter just one of her stories told well in the future. I go back-and-forth whether or not Tubman the historical figure, the icon, the most famous and successful conductor on the Underground Railroad is more or less compelling then Tubman, the person, and I think the film does too, and it's trying to split the difference; I don't know how well they succeeded at either, but I think they succeeded enough at each to at least recommend. It certainly didn't dishonor her, and it highlighted her importance; I just wish it was able to find like something else to hang onto, but you know, if she had something else that compelling, she might not have been able to accomplish as much as she did.
RICHARD JEWELL (2019) Director: Clint Eastwood
★★1/2
Boy, did I pick a bad time to watch "Richard Jewell" of all things. Yeah, David, in the middle of the police protests of the pandemic of 2020, let's watch a movie about the one time they treated an innocent white guy like a villain. (Sighs; eye rolls) I don't want to say it, but frankly, it was next on the list, so I watched it, and frankly I'm not saddened that I got it over with.
So there's this thing I've started noticing with Clint Eastwood's later films recently. Well, first off they've started sucking, but that's not the thing I was talking about, what I'm talking about is actually, his-, well, his fascination with, for-lack-of-a-better-term, sudden fame. Not every movie, but a good deal of his films in this later period of his, good and bad, have dealt with characters who either have to deal with some sudden event that happens to them and either changes their lives forever, and/or, makes them famous temporarily for unusual reasons. He's done this with "The 15:17 to Paris", "Sully", 'American Sniper", to some extent "Hereafter", probably the best of these narratives, "Changeling" and "Flags of Our Fathers". That's basically half the movies he's directed in the last fifteen or so years. It's a pretty recent motif in his work; it doesn't really come up much before "Flags...", but he's definitely intrigued by it, and more lately then ever before, and I'm not entirely sure why. Like, it's actually weird, if there's a director who shouldn't be intrigued by that, it's probably Eastwood, who's been world famous for like, six decades now.
And there's definitely something off with this motif too, 'cause look at the subjects and how he treats them. "American Sniper" is about an obsessed Iraq soldier who's fame came from being both the modern-day Audie Murphy and for spewing some vivid jingoistic hate in his short life. "Sully", he just outright made up a narrative where people supposedly thought that perhaps the hero of the Hudson was somehow, the cause of the crash, all the while, while he's being celebrated on the talk show circuit? "Sully" is weirder and stupider the more you think about it. I haven't seen "The 15:17 to Paris", but he apparently uses the real-life people from that disaster as actors playing themselves, a la, Paul Greengrass's "United 93". And now with "Richard Jewell", he's basically making "Sully", but it actually happened.
Well, mostly, it happened. He takes some liberties here and some of them are pretty shitty. The big one that's noted is the way that he portrays Kathy Scruggs (Olivia Wilde), the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter who broke the story that the FBI was investigating Richard (Paul Walter Hauser) as she apparently has a scene, that according to every report I can find, did not happen, where they basically show that she got that story by sleeping with an FBI agent, Tom Shaw (Jon Hamm). in order to get the story. I've heard stories of the actors from the filmmakers and actors about how this was dramatized, some saying that, why is it okay for James Bond to sleep with women for information...- I-eh, yeah, that's-, that's not the same thing. And especially in this day and time; like this was a real person and this didn't happen, and there's no scenario would she would need to. It's not even a big, shocking piece of information; that they're investigated the guy who found the bomb, well, of course they are. Even in the movie Richard gets that. (And also Kathy Scruggs died a few years after this so she's not here to defend herself, although some of her former co-workers have, thanksfully.)
They do portray Jewell, interestingly here. It's not an inaccurate portrayal by Hauser, per se, I went to look back at some footage of Jewell; they might've made him a little too simple, but Hauser's performance is really good. And the best sequence in the movie is the scene of the explosion, and the confusion and how the bomb was found and then the chaos in the aftermath. That sequence is the best part of the film.
Don't get me wrong here, the Press and the FBI made some bad, huge mistakes regarding this investigation, and focusing most of their investigation on Jewell, was a big one. They did something, that I'm not sure is still used as predominantly in these kind of major cases anymore; I honestly haven't heard the term or the practice since, eh,- I guess, since the DC Sniper was around, and that's "profiling." Not necessarily racial profiling, althought that's apart of it, but is something else. I think we tend to be more intrigued now by DNA and other forensics and more traditional investigative techniques these days, but profiling was a key buzzword for awhile. I even remember there was a bad TV show in the late '90s called "Profiler"; I watched an episode or two, but I wouldn't recommend it. Basically, there was a big idea that based on the kinds of crims and motives behind them, especially certain public crimes like these, or brutal kinds of murder, etc., that you can form accurate profilers of the kind of suspects that you're looking for.
This science, eh,- well, if I remember the DC Sniper case correctly, they got that profile pretty wrong, at least early on. I've seen them get it right just as often, but the FBI's issue in this case, is that they started with a profile, and a very incorrect one. One that didn't even really match Jewell at all even, much less Eric Rudolph, the actual bomber. Now, Jewell was a weird guy though. He lived with his mother Bobi (Oscar-nominee Kathy Bates), and he had a skeptical track record as a security guard and police officer. He knew the law, and respected it a little too much. He had friends, although they depict him as more of a lone wolf, and one who's somewhat ostracized from other law enforcement members because he's a security guard. I'm sure that happened, but it seems like they played that up too much.
Honestly, Richard Jewell is another one of those, real-life people who I kinda tilt my head at when I think about the idea of making a movie about them; not in the same vein as Harriet Tubman obviously, but he basically is a minor footnote. Sure, he's also a hero, but his role in history, it's actually very downplayed in my mind regarding both the Atlanta Olympics themselves, which I have very vivid memories of, most of which involve Kerri Strug, but also in terms of the culture-at-large, this was kind of a blip. It was bad for him, but he was eventually vindicated, and he sued and got his money from the FBI and others. (Not from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution though, he lost his case against them; Eastwood seems to really hate the press in general, but I can't stress this enough, he's really being misleading with them.) Still, is there really enough for a feature-length film about him?
Ehhh, hmm, yeah, there is, but again, this isn't it. This film really isn't it. I don't know why Eastwood has chosen to catch onto this trend of sudden fame and how it effects them, but I really can't say that I think it's a worthwhile endeavor. It's not his only recent motif, and that's ultimately good, but it's not good here. It's a little less annoyingly stupid then "Sully", at least from a factual standard, but it's a little harder to get through. If I had to guess, I think he's trying to show how too much power and media scrutiny can come down on an individual, and that's true sometimes, and he's not giving bad examples here. Obviously, Eastwood's a known Republican who's sketpical of government oversight. He also failed as a mayor once, so it might just be that he sucked at government..., but nevertheless the way he's framing this is as though there's some kind of deeper meaning or truth behind the bad things regarding these institutions. The main narrative change is Jewell recognizing that in the middle of his giving yet another witness statement, this time with his attorney Watson Bryant (Sam Rockwell) being present. And yeah, for him, they did, but this doesn't relate to everyone; this wasn't a case of systemic bias issues within the framework of the FBI or other policing or media agencies. This was bad, presumptive detective work. It was awful, and it was a waste of time while the real culprit was out there bombing for years afterwards.
Also, Kathy Bates got an Oscar nomination for her performance, um... okay, she's pretty high up in the Academy, and the few people who've tried battling her in the past, they've not done well; I know her and Joan Rivers hated each other up Rivers's passing, but, yeah, like, I know why she got nominated. She's fine, but this isn't a special performance of hers. Most of the acting is good, some of it really good, Olivia Wilde has a really badly written character and her performance is a bit of a mess because of it. It's a decent document about the experiences that Richard Jewell had, but this is really framed badly. It's framed from the wrong perspective, there's no other way to say it. Richard Jewell's story does need to be told and be a reminder of what can happen when bad policework occurs in a modern media world, but there are ways to tell his story much better then this.
UNCUT GEMS (2019) Directors: Benny Safdie & Josh Safdie
★★★★1/2
I've spent a couple days trying to figure out exactly how to approach "Uncut Gems". Everybody else I know seemed to absolutely love this film, and all I kept hearing about was how great Adam Sandler was in the film.
(Shrugs)
I mean, I'm not saying not good; this is probably my favorite performance of his so far, but he's usually good when he's not doing his own bad comedies. And I'm not surprised he's good in this. What I was really concerned about was that this was a Safdie Brothers film. It's not that they're not talented either, they've actually made some really interesting and compelling films over the years. They also seem to make a lot of movies about some really reprehensible people. I was one of the ones who wasn't enthralled with "Good Time", their last feature which got a lot of buzz for Robert Pattinson's performance, which,- I guess it wasn't a bad performance, but I struggled with the character. He was the kind of fuck-up who is way out-of-his-league and kept finding some way to get in deeper and deeper shit... Not the first time either, their autobiographical film "Daddy Longlegs" showed a father who seemed to be, well, 'Trying" is not the best word, but yeah, trying to take care of two kids. He wasn't good at it, let's put it at that. And their last film before this, the aforementioned "Good Time" was about two brothers, one who had some kind of disorder and another who was a complete fuck up that kept dragging the other mentally disabled brother along on his misadventures. As somebody who watches his autistic brother all day, that movie, hit some of my trouble spots admittedly, but I still questioned how good it actually was.
I can't say "Uncut Gems" is necessarily a different path then what they've been doing. Sandler plays a flawed and obsessive character who can't help but to fail to his own demons, and seemingly struggles to con his way out of. This one is Howard Ratner and he's quite similar to a few people I've come across in some of my experiences. He runs a very high-scale jewelry store, and we meet him literally during an anal probe as doctors are inspecting him for colon cancer. He spends the rest of the movie, trying to pull a diamond out of his ass. Well, actually, an opal, a rare black opal that he's bought from Ethiopia that's just arrived. In it's uncut form, black opal is pretty valuable, and he's expecting millions from auction, but he gives it to Kevin Garnett, yes that one, playing himself, who's one of the many high-end clientels he gets, and then tries to hustle. He hustles and works everybody. He exchanges Garnett's championship ring as collateral for him to borrow the opal, and then pawns that in order to make a bet, (And a ridiculous bet it is; trust me, I know about sports betting, and, well, he makes a bet that only an unlicensed bookie would take, let me put it that way.) and I'm skipping a bunch of other cons and monetary exchanges here too, because the whole time he's being followed and beaten up and striped naked and shoved into his car trunk by Phil and Nico (Keith William Richards and Tommy Kominick) two of, many people who would like to kill Howard, but these are the most persistent. They work for Arno (Eric Bogosian) one of the mob bosses he owes money to, and who put a stop on a huge bet he was making with another bookie.
Meanwhile, KG won't give him the opal back and he's chasing him back and forth from Philadelphia and to clubs, and fighting with his connection to KG, Demany (Lakeith Stanfield) who's stealing and pawning off his own jewelry that he sells, watches that he sells and pawns...- Howard's basically screwing over everybody, including his family. His wife Dinah (Idina Menzel) is divorcing him, but the family doesn't know, although his kids suspect more then he wants them to let on. He's dating his co-worker, Julia (Julia Fox) who's living in his apartment secretly, although she's too much of a party girl for him really, as he gets mad at her at a The Weeknd concert, which I'm not even gonna try to explain why he's at that. All this takes place, essentially, maybe over a week's time, but it feels like it's constant never-ending ridiculousness and absurdism.
Howard can't help himself; he has to make the stupid decision. He's an addicted gambler, and that high is what he looks for and fundamentally cannot understand why, say the mobsters he owes money to, would stop a bet he's making, just because he owes them money. And it's not like he doesn't have the money; he owns a jewelry store in the jewelry district. He's high end; he's got security doors and camera and incredibly expensive jewels, everywhere around him. That's not a business you can go into without first having a substantial amount of money to begin with, and it seems like he's successful outside of his bullshit.
Honestly, I see people like him all the time in the casinos; they actually have a profession that makes them be with enough high-profile people and make enough money to blow it on some prop-bet parlays that are just ridiculous to ever bet. I won't give out names, but trust me, they bet enough to where you learn their names. So, in that sense, I can relate to the movie 'cause I've seen and am used to this behavior. On the other hand, I've seen and am used to this behavior and that kinda turns me off of it.
Honestly, for all the talk about Adam Sandler's performance being so great, which it undoubtedly is, I don't actually think it's that strange or unexpected a performance from him. He's always played some reprehensible characters, but he always positioned himself, at least in his comedies, as the heroic character; that's the real reason his comedies, at least the ones that he's specifically involved with producing, have always been lacking. He's always been better at some evil characters when he does dramas. Even in something like "Punch-Drunk Love", he's beats the crap out of a lot of people and windows. And here, in "Uncut Gems", here's a guy who, if he didn't make several stupid decisions, everything would've been fine for him.
I guess that's part of my issue with him and with the Safdies, I can never tell if they're making fun of their characters, or if they genuinely care for these characters. If these are comedies, which this could be considered, this is a dark comedy. It's compelling, and kinetic, and gives us a dark look into a deeply flawed man. One of many in this world, constantly trying to sell himself and get a little extra edge up on everyone, trying to gget that one last win.
Oddly, I think that the film that "Uncut Gems", most reminds me of is "People I Know", an obscure, underrated indy where Al Pacino plays a publicist who spends the movie trying to get a major event off the ground, but keeps running into walls, struggles both within his profession and with a dark underworld of his profession that he's up until now, avoided. Howard doesn't avoid the pitfalls, he jumps right into them figuring that he'll always be able to find a way to climb back out. That's what makes him so frustrating and yet so compelling at the same time. That's what also makes "Uncut Gems" such a tricky movie to analyze; I'm been struggling with this review for instance, for two days, and I'm still not certain what to make of the film, other then I think it does what it's trying to do, very well. I guess that's all I need from it, but it does seem hollow. Then again, a diamond is only some carbon, and an opal is just some silica, so I guess I shouldn't expect such shiny gems to be more than things that glitter.
PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE (2019) Director: Celine Sciamma
★★★★★
I don't think I realized until now just how soulful Celine Sciamma's films are. I've been a fan of hers since her debut feature "Water Lilies", one of the best LGBT coming-of-age romances I've seen. All her films are essentially about feminity and what that entails exactly. She's known for writing other films as well, most notably in the west, probably the Oscar-nominated animated feature, "My Life as a Zucchini" but the more I dive into her films, the more I think her real goal is to get into the female mind. Sure, she's a female director, don't all female directors aim for that? Well, Kathryn Bigelow would beg to differ, but no, I really mean that she's trying to visualize it though.
This film for instance, the obvious comparison film to "Portrait of a Lady on Fire" is Ingmar Bergman's "Persona", that movie is specifically about trying to get inside the mind of it's female protagonists. It's also about two girls struggling to connect with each other on an island, and one of them is an artist. Okay, this film is a natural romance, and "Persona" was basically a deconstruction of film entirely but there's still a lot of similarities. When thinking of Celina Sciamma, like Bergman, I think of faces. Close-ups. Like shots of Zoe Haran in "Tomboy" out of breath while playing a game with other kids, or intense close-ups of Karidja Toure taking off her helmet or checking her mail in "Girlhood". And now we have a movie that's centered around womens faces, and picturing them, literally.
In flashback to a class, Marianne (Noemie Merlant) reflects back on a painting she did, a portrait of Heloise (Adele Haenel). Heloise is about to get married off through a few complications have arise, and she's become strangely defiant about being painted, and the upcoming nuptials. There's one painting that's made of just her outfit, this green dress that she's supposed to be posing in, but she doesn't pose for it, so there's no face in the painting, just this, empty space where an alabaster girl's supposed to be.
Actually, the family doesn't commission her to paint her normally, they actually bring her on under the guise of being a hired companion of hers. in order to just, be around her and friends with her enough to eventually paint her from memory, I guess. The rouse eventually fails, but by that point, their rocky beginning kinda clicks. This begins a slow-moving and slow-growing but passionate romance between them as eventually, she begins reluctantly posing.
It's hard to describe the actions per se, which is something I feel about a lot of romances in general, especially brisk unexpected and doomed flings like this one is. I mean, this isn't a romance that's gonna last, that's obvious from the beginning. For one, it's a period piece; it takes place on an island off the coast of Brittany around the end of the 19th Century; I mean, the main narrative for Heloise is that she's being put in an arranged marriage for familial business reasons; even with little presence from the family as most of the time, and even if the main metaphor that peppers their romance wasn't Orpheus and Eurydice, it's not like they're able to run away with each other.
She manages to stay a little bit longer then planned after finishing her first portrait, and then destroying it and explaining to Heloise's mother, known as La Countess (Valeria Golino) that it doesn't accurately capture her daughter. Really, the third character in this castle is Sophie (Luana Bajrami) who is the maid that provides some exposition and seems to have a fairly interesting existence on her own, as at one point both Heloise and Marianne help her out by getting her to have a miscarriage or abortion; I'm not actually sure to be honest on that one. They go to the beach and have her keep running back and forth until she can't.
They go down to the beach a lot, and often spend time exploring the island, both the natural landscape and occasionally the other residents of the island. I got to talk about both the location and in particular Claire Mathon's cinematography too; the only way to describe the look of this moive is lusciously. It not looks beautiful but nearly every shot looks like one of the paintings in the movie which were done by artist Helene Delmaire, who based the paintings on many of the shots of the film.
There's a lot of paintings and drawings as well, this isn't an easy task itself; it kinda reminds of like how that scene in "Titanic" was supposed to happen, only throughout the whole movie has the drawings and paintings help captures the images of their world and the island. Sciamma's always had a great cinematic eye for visuals, I remember some of the swimming scenes from "Water Lilies" that took my breathe away; water and beaches always have strong symbolic meanings in most European cinema, especially French cinema, and it's an important metaphor for life and death here too, but there's so many other little details in the narrative as well to sort through. The kind of powerful subtle details that grow and are built upon with relationships of all kinds. It's almost like a Kieslowski film in that respect. I'm already on my second viewing to pay more attention to those details and just get kinda wisked away and swept up into this world and this complex relationship between these two young women. "Portrait of a Lady on Fire" is a really striking and beautiful romantic film and uncovering true feelings and emotions while discovering new others one and all the joy and struggles they entail. Those kind of feelings that you can see in someone's eye that they truly feel, but you can't kind understand or explain why they feel that way, just like a mystery we get from a beautifully painted portrait.
ONE CHILD NATION (2019) Director: Nanfu Wang and Zhang Lynn
★★★★1/2
Nanfu Wang has quickly become one of the most adventurous and greatest documentarians working today. Her debut feature "Hooligan Sparrow" about the Chinese activist Ye Haiyan, and that movie not only showed Ye going to some pretty extraordinary lengths for her work, which in of itself was daring for any country, much less the People's Republic, but also involved some of the most explosive and shocking guerrila filmmaking I've seen in modern filmmaking. It's one of the very best films of the decade and it's a groundbreaking investigative journalistic work and more-then-that it's just amazing-as-well that it was actually made and finished at all as it exposed some of the most corrupt aspects of Chinese government, giving us faces to the corruption even, but her work led to a conviction of a school principle who raped at least a half-dozen elementary-age girls despite the connections he had, and that's not even getting into Ye Haiyan's ambitious and maverick approaching to activism.
I'm hard-pressed to call "One Child Nation" a disappointment in light of that mastery, but it's subject matter is probably more prescient in these times and frankly, it's doesn't need to guerrila-style filmmaking for most of the film. Sure, there's some interviews that require meetings in hotels and whatnot to protect the exact whereabouts of some but mostly we get a more mature and typical documentary from Wang, and that makes sense, especially considering the global extent of this coverup. She makes a more mature film, although she's also inserting herself into the narrative in this one, moreso then she did in "Hooligan Sparrow", because she is one of the few people of her age who grew up in China, with a brother.
Yes, the One Child Only policy that China famously instituted back in 1979, and only ended five years ago, was purportedly done as a preservation technique in order to save their county for economic turmoil. On the surface this does make some sense, China had a billion people back then and population control is a world issue that needs to be examined.
(Sigh)
This admittedly sounds stupid to talk about while talking about while we're in the pandemic that's turning into a genocide because of one idiot's stupidity and ignorance, but at the time, yeah, you could argue it out as a viable protective measure. Although, if you think about it for a second, it doesn't add up. The population increase wouldn't inherently create economic disaster, would it? Wouldn't other things progress and if there isn't the opportunities at home, wouldn't there also be more outside work they'd pursue? Of course there are more tragic consequences, although most of the that got bogged down by the propaganda for it, which poured over the country.
However, Wang examines the subject from the more personal aspects, those who were most effected and boy were they effected. There's been a lot of movies in recent years that have talked about the major adoption scandals that have been separating families, but honestly, that was often the best scenario of what would happen to unwanted or illegal second childs, if they were even that. At one point, she interviews a family of baby smugglers who were arrested years ago. She used to think about the atrocity of such a thing, but the way they describe it, there was just an epidemic of abandoned babies that they'd find, literally on the streets, or in the markets or basically anywhere, and frankly the babies were lucky if they got found and "taken", 'cause apparently they would usually just stay there until they died.
I mean, sure, if that wasn't the case, then they were probably forced to have an abortion. One artist just scouring landmills and trashpits and preserved the aborted fetuses, sometimes in photographs, sometimes literally, and he found some dead babies as well.
So, yeah, kidnapping and sending them off to be adopted overseas, I guess is the more humane option, but it's still an option that should just not exist, and the more she dives into that, the worst and more shocking it gets. She's not the first one to show this, and she finds a family in Utah that began investigating how unscrupulous the companies were, and the government too. Basically the process involved, paying off the police to file a found child report, that then showed the pictures of the kids in an regular public flyer that nobody ever read, and after sixty days, they were able to be adopted. Usually they'd have stories of the kid being dropped off at various locations, and some other regular stories that they would repeat to perspective parents, but eventually. Once they started gathering the records, they could see the patterns of how they'd constantly repeat the same stories over and over again about how they got the kids. At one point, Wang begins trying to find/match the kids with some of their Chinese relatives, including her aunt who had a child taken from her. They do find a twin somebody who became a major figure overseas of this after her story was documented as her sister was taken from her right after they had learned to walk. They connect over social media ironically enough. There was a movie a couple years ago that documented a similar twins reuniting experience called "Twinsters" that that reminded me of, and suddenly it made me wonder just how many other stories are like that out there. How many are we eventually gonna find out about, how many we won't, how many people are out searching, and how many of them perhaps are searching for ghosts.
China's changed their plan now to a two-child limit, which is something they had originally, and obvious not everybody didn't have a sibling, but this is the big modern sin of modern-day China and they're still recovering from it. And it backfired severely, now there's too many old people in China and not enough of the youth around to take care of them, and some of them are making astonishing documentaries about their corruption. It's an important film, and another good one from Wang, but there's a lot more stories out there to tell about this time and I think we're gonna be getting a lot of them in the future the more we dig into this.
THE BLACK GODFATHER (2019) Director: Reginald Hudlin
★★★★
Clarence Avant, was not a name that was on the tip of my tongue before watching the documentary feature, "The Black Godfather", of course he should've been, and partially I can blame that on my own ignorances, but I wouldn't be surprised if I'm not the only one who has a hard time pinpointing him; in the entertainment industry, he's very important, but he's not exactly somebody you would necessarily know. In fact, entertainment is just one of many industries he seems to be involved in. Avant's position, isn't exactly uniquen or unknown, but it is hard to define. He seems to do a little bit of everything. Mostly, he's involved in music, creating several record levels all of them had levels of success, but he also produced movies and TV shows, and he managed athletes, help promoted politicians,.... the guy does a little bit of everything, and that's basically the point. He is the Godfather, the guy you go to, when you need something done, although not in the Italian sense; he won't do it in exchange for much, although, I'm sure he gets paid most of the time.
Explaining Avant's career is difficult, but the movie fills us up with a bunch of anecdotes from many of the biggest African-American iconic names from the last fifty years, and a few white people as well. In fact, most of his early producing success from his first record label Sussex Records, were white artists, somethings that surprised some of members of the black music community who didn't know that beforehand. Their music rose on the R&B before they realized it. It's one of his several accomplishments. Not bad for a guy who was one of eight kids in Climax, North Carolina, which is as small as you think it is. He didn't make it past the ninth grade, but made his way up north, and never seemed to stop. Basically, he's the guy who puts everybody in the best position to not only get what they want, but also get paid what they deserve.
A lot of the talking heads that talk about him, and worked with him, like Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis, the legendary producers behind Janet Jackson's "Control" album among others, about how they were worried about having to bargain to work for less for Avant, but he came back and insisted that they should've insisted on more money for their work, that they were undercutting themselves too much to make the album they needed. He was right and that's basically his philosophy. He helped make sure that those who deserved the money and to be recognized, well, they got it.
I can think of a couple people kinda like this in entertainment that kinda have a similar role like this, none of them are African-American though, and arguably, none of them have as much reach and influence as Avant has. Not only that, when we cut to interviews of him later in life, often sparring jabs with such longtime friends like Quincy Jones, reminds me of the Carl Gordon character from the old sitcom "Roc"; that whip-smart old man who's a whip-smart wheeler-dealer, and he still seems like the kind of guy who could be secretly running the world with just a few phone calls. The film was directed by Reginald Hudlin, a director/producer mostly known for television, but he's made a new to feature films in the last few years; he made "Marshall" a couple years ago, which was his first feature film is 15 years, 2002's notorious bomb "Serving Sara". He still has some television tendencies in his work, in negative depiction of sitcom-ish, but this is his first documentary, and I can see why he wanted to put out a document to Clarence Avant's accomplishments. I wouldn't be shocked at all if much of his career was due in part to Avant too. And even if it wasn't, I would come up with an excuse to hear him talk about all his stories as well.
THE CHAMBERMAID (2019) Director: Lila Aviles
★★★1/2
Looking around the internet a bit, I saw "The Chambermaid" compared to Alfonso Cuaron's masterpiece, "Roma" a lot. It's not the comparison I'd make, but I get what they're saying. Both are Mexican films that tell stories about maids and they're struggle to work and survive while working for people who are better off then them while simultaneously living their own lives. I'm not gonna say that it's as good as "Roma", but perhaps I'd argue it's a more, realistic tale? Not that "Roma" isn't realistic, that's actually based on real people too, but "The Chambermaid" is the stripped-down, neorealist version the life of a maid in modern-day Mexico City.
In fact, it's actually a little hard to say that it's about her simultaneously living her own life, 'cause for the most part, we only see Eve (Gabriela Cartol) at work. In fact, the only place outside of work that we see her, is a GED class that her Union provides for, one that, eventually they stop providing for, we don't know why.
She does talk on the phone to members of her family at times. We see her campaigning for an open position on the 42nd Floor, which is apparently a preferable floor. I'm not certain of how or why, but it is, although one of her co-workers who now works the elevator talks about that being good for her. She was injured and couldn't work more regularly going around room-to-room and vacuuming and fluffing pillows and changing the sheets. Occasionally watching a baby while the room's current resident takes a shower.
There's also a sequence where she participates in some kind of weird electric shock game, which, um, I really don't get. There's also a scene where she strips off her clothes and masturbates on a bed overlooking a high view. That scene, I actually think I understood more, symbolically. It's a 5-star luxury hotel where people come to both play and live and often in a fantasy world, so she's taking a moment to experience that fantasy as well. (And yeah, a lot of times that fantasy involves sexual activities as well, so why not masturbating.) We also see her taking showers occasionally, which I imagine happens a lot for maids; lord knows what they have to clean up.
The movie is bare bones, profile of a worker and seeing her work. We're seeing the routine, we're seeing the occasional moments that break the daily routine up. The movie's just showing us, her life and that's what it entails, spending her days and nights sometimes at the hotel, in servitude to her employers and to the customers. She's not alone, and not the only one, and that's the point of the movie. Personally, I-, well, I don't really know what to do with that. It reminds me of work, which, I usually try to avoid while watching movie, but I don't think unsentimental escapism is what all movies should be. And there are movies I can think of that are like this, the one that comes to my mind first is "Leap Year (Ano Bisiesto)", but that's a lot more complex of a movie character. (And also, the Monica Del Carmen character in that film didn't work-, well, didn't do her work well, I should say....) Eve, is interesting but she's not that complex a character. That's okay and there's nothing wrong with it, it's what director Luis Aviles wanted; to show the typical struggles of the working everywoman like this.
For that she succeeds, so I'm recommending the film, I wonder how powerful it is. I guess if there's another comparison film I can think of that's kinda hindering me on this, it's James Mottern's indy "Trucker". That's another film about a character who's always at work and never really gets home. Again, slightly more complex though, unlike Eve who does still watch and care for her 4-year-old on the rare occasions that she's not at work, Michelle Monaghan's character left her kid years earlier and was trying to reconnect. Eve's a single mother, so we know there's some kind of past/history, but we never see any of this; we just see her at work. Again, that's the point, but that's also just, work. I don't know, I feel like, even one thing more would've helped here. Of course, I can't remember the last time I asked for one more detail about any actual maid I've met along my days....
MIDNIGHT TRAVELER (2019) Director: Hassan Fazili
★★★1/2
I don't know much about Fazili's previous filmmaking ventures. Obviously, he's a filmmaker, which probably in of itself is something that I suspect ticked off the Taliban enough to put a hit on him. I mean, they'll shoot people for trying to go to school with a vagina, so.... Anyway, Fazili is targeted by the Taliban, not for his films, or any of his other artistic ventures, but because he owned and ran a cafe that other artistic people frequented and had conversations, music performances, etc., etc. That's enough though and him and his family are on the run. And remain on the run; their requests for asylum have either been rejected, or just, not brought up in time, and they occasionally get up in the middle of the night and darkness and travel to the next country, and eventually to the next continent.
They start in Tajikistan, where they were hiding out, although, he first has to dangerously sneak into Afghanistan to see his family, possibly for the last time, and then he and his wife Fatima, who is also a filmmaker, take their kids and start traveling. The entire movie we're told is shot on the only cameras they have, cell phone cameras, as they travel from Tajikistan, to Iran, then Turkey, then Bulgaria, then to Serbia, and then finally to Hungary, where eventually, we find out that their granted asylum, although they're held in a sterile transit zone for refugees. This trip took over a span of months.
There's a lot of drama in between, he captures footage of riots and the struggles and injury of running and hiding in the dark of night. You even get scenes of him, being interviewed on the street by reporters while, he's recording them, as he tries to literally get his story out, while making this movie which is doing the same thing. It's also getting out it's family's story though, and that's actually just as interesting, if not moreso. They struggle to try to keep a normal facade and life going while raising their kids. You get some nice moments between everyone, including some otherwise be fairly trivial, but you see that they don't always agree, and you get shots of the kids trying to make the best of their situations. Creating games and playing with other kids in their refugee camps. There's one powerful scene of their young daughter singing and dancing to some old Michael Jackson songs.
"Midnight Traveler" is a powerful achievement that gives us an inside and different look at the refugee crisis. It also reminds us that the Taliban are still roving around and their influence is still prevalent in parts of the world. Most of the refugee stories we've heard lately have been from Syria for obvious reasons, but it's not just them, and the journeys of these more affluent and cultured of refugee being this striking
ONE CUT OF THE DEAD (2019) Director: Shin'ichiro Ueda
★★★★
Well, I usually have my own regular list of complaints about zombie movies being too similar and not particular different storywise from others or just not being compelling outside of symbolism in films,- well, I can throw all that out of the window, 'cause "One Cut of the Dead" is pretty far outside the typical zombie movies I've ever seen. It's actually a strange film to talk about in general. It's kinda like I stepped into an alternative universe where Jean-Luc Godard, like horror movies more then, um...-, wait, what exactly is the genre likes? Ehh, whatever the hell he thinks he like, and then had Truffaut's love of making movies? Kinda?
ONE CHILD NATION (2019) Director: Nanfu Wang and Zhang Lynn
★★★★1/2
Nanfu Wang has quickly become one of the most adventurous and greatest documentarians working today. Her debut feature "Hooligan Sparrow" about the Chinese activist Ye Haiyan, and that movie not only showed Ye going to some pretty extraordinary lengths for her work, which in of itself was daring for any country, much less the People's Republic, but also involved some of the most explosive and shocking guerrila filmmaking I've seen in modern filmmaking. It's one of the very best films of the decade and it's a groundbreaking investigative journalistic work and more-then-that it's just amazing-as-well that it was actually made and finished at all as it exposed some of the most corrupt aspects of Chinese government, giving us faces to the corruption even, but her work led to a conviction of a school principle who raped at least a half-dozen elementary-age girls despite the connections he had, and that's not even getting into Ye Haiyan's ambitious and maverick approaching to activism.
I'm hard-pressed to call "One Child Nation" a disappointment in light of that mastery, but it's subject matter is probably more prescient in these times and frankly, it's doesn't need to guerrila-style filmmaking for most of the film. Sure, there's some interviews that require meetings in hotels and whatnot to protect the exact whereabouts of some but mostly we get a more mature and typical documentary from Wang, and that makes sense, especially considering the global extent of this coverup. She makes a more mature film, although she's also inserting herself into the narrative in this one, moreso then she did in "Hooligan Sparrow", because she is one of the few people of her age who grew up in China, with a brother.
Yes, the One Child Only policy that China famously instituted back in 1979, and only ended five years ago, was purportedly done as a preservation technique in order to save their county for economic turmoil. On the surface this does make some sense, China had a billion people back then and population control is a world issue that needs to be examined.
(Sigh)
This admittedly sounds stupid to talk about while talking about while we're in the pandemic that's turning into a genocide because of one idiot's stupidity and ignorance, but at the time, yeah, you could argue it out as a viable protective measure. Although, if you think about it for a second, it doesn't add up. The population increase wouldn't inherently create economic disaster, would it? Wouldn't other things progress and if there isn't the opportunities at home, wouldn't there also be more outside work they'd pursue? Of course there are more tragic consequences, although most of the that got bogged down by the propaganda for it, which poured over the country.
However, Wang examines the subject from the more personal aspects, those who were most effected and boy were they effected. There's been a lot of movies in recent years that have talked about the major adoption scandals that have been separating families, but honestly, that was often the best scenario of what would happen to unwanted or illegal second childs, if they were even that. At one point, she interviews a family of baby smugglers who were arrested years ago. She used to think about the atrocity of such a thing, but the way they describe it, there was just an epidemic of abandoned babies that they'd find, literally on the streets, or in the markets or basically anywhere, and frankly the babies were lucky if they got found and "taken", 'cause apparently they would usually just stay there until they died.
I mean, sure, if that wasn't the case, then they were probably forced to have an abortion. One artist just scouring landmills and trashpits and preserved the aborted fetuses, sometimes in photographs, sometimes literally, and he found some dead babies as well.
So, yeah, kidnapping and sending them off to be adopted overseas, I guess is the more humane option, but it's still an option that should just not exist, and the more she dives into that, the worst and more shocking it gets. She's not the first one to show this, and she finds a family in Utah that began investigating how unscrupulous the companies were, and the government too. Basically the process involved, paying off the police to file a found child report, that then showed the pictures of the kids in an regular public flyer that nobody ever read, and after sixty days, they were able to be adopted. Usually they'd have stories of the kid being dropped off at various locations, and some other regular stories that they would repeat to perspective parents, but eventually. Once they started gathering the records, they could see the patterns of how they'd constantly repeat the same stories over and over again about how they got the kids. At one point, Wang begins trying to find/match the kids with some of their Chinese relatives, including her aunt who had a child taken from her. They do find a twin somebody who became a major figure overseas of this after her story was documented as her sister was taken from her right after they had learned to walk. They connect over social media ironically enough. There was a movie a couple years ago that documented a similar twins reuniting experience called "Twinsters" that that reminded me of, and suddenly it made me wonder just how many other stories are like that out there. How many are we eventually gonna find out about, how many we won't, how many people are out searching, and how many of them perhaps are searching for ghosts.
China's changed their plan now to a two-child limit, which is something they had originally, and obvious not everybody didn't have a sibling, but this is the big modern sin of modern-day China and they're still recovering from it. And it backfired severely, now there's too many old people in China and not enough of the youth around to take care of them, and some of them are making astonishing documentaries about their corruption. It's an important film, and another good one from Wang, but there's a lot more stories out there to tell about this time and I think we're gonna be getting a lot of them in the future the more we dig into this.
THE BLACK GODFATHER (2019) Director: Reginald Hudlin
★★★★
Clarence Avant, was not a name that was on the tip of my tongue before watching the documentary feature, "The Black Godfather", of course he should've been, and partially I can blame that on my own ignorances, but I wouldn't be surprised if I'm not the only one who has a hard time pinpointing him; in the entertainment industry, he's very important, but he's not exactly somebody you would necessarily know. In fact, entertainment is just one of many industries he seems to be involved in. Avant's position, isn't exactly uniquen or unknown, but it is hard to define. He seems to do a little bit of everything. Mostly, he's involved in music, creating several record levels all of them had levels of success, but he also produced movies and TV shows, and he managed athletes, help promoted politicians,.... the guy does a little bit of everything, and that's basically the point. He is the Godfather, the guy you go to, when you need something done, although not in the Italian sense; he won't do it in exchange for much, although, I'm sure he gets paid most of the time.
Explaining Avant's career is difficult, but the movie fills us up with a bunch of anecdotes from many of the biggest African-American iconic names from the last fifty years, and a few white people as well. In fact, most of his early producing success from his first record label Sussex Records, were white artists, somethings that surprised some of members of the black music community who didn't know that beforehand. Their music rose on the R&B before they realized it. It's one of his several accomplishments. Not bad for a guy who was one of eight kids in Climax, North Carolina, which is as small as you think it is. He didn't make it past the ninth grade, but made his way up north, and never seemed to stop. Basically, he's the guy who puts everybody in the best position to not only get what they want, but also get paid what they deserve.
A lot of the talking heads that talk about him, and worked with him, like Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis, the legendary producers behind Janet Jackson's "Control" album among others, about how they were worried about having to bargain to work for less for Avant, but he came back and insisted that they should've insisted on more money for their work, that they were undercutting themselves too much to make the album they needed. He was right and that's basically his philosophy. He helped make sure that those who deserved the money and to be recognized, well, they got it.
I can think of a couple people kinda like this in entertainment that kinda have a similar role like this, none of them are African-American though, and arguably, none of them have as much reach and influence as Avant has. Not only that, when we cut to interviews of him later in life, often sparring jabs with such longtime friends like Quincy Jones, reminds me of the Carl Gordon character from the old sitcom "Roc"; that whip-smart old man who's a whip-smart wheeler-dealer, and he still seems like the kind of guy who could be secretly running the world with just a few phone calls. The film was directed by Reginald Hudlin, a director/producer mostly known for television, but he's made a new to feature films in the last few years; he made "Marshall" a couple years ago, which was his first feature film is 15 years, 2002's notorious bomb "Serving Sara". He still has some television tendencies in his work, in negative depiction of sitcom-ish, but this is his first documentary, and I can see why he wanted to put out a document to Clarence Avant's accomplishments. I wouldn't be shocked at all if much of his career was due in part to Avant too. And even if it wasn't, I would come up with an excuse to hear him talk about all his stories as well.
THE CHAMBERMAID (2019) Director: Lila Aviles
★★★1/2
Looking around the internet a bit, I saw "The Chambermaid" compared to Alfonso Cuaron's masterpiece, "Roma" a lot. It's not the comparison I'd make, but I get what they're saying. Both are Mexican films that tell stories about maids and they're struggle to work and survive while working for people who are better off then them while simultaneously living their own lives. I'm not gonna say that it's as good as "Roma", but perhaps I'd argue it's a more, realistic tale? Not that "Roma" isn't realistic, that's actually based on real people too, but "The Chambermaid" is the stripped-down, neorealist version the life of a maid in modern-day Mexico City.
In fact, it's actually a little hard to say that it's about her simultaneously living her own life, 'cause for the most part, we only see Eve (Gabriela Cartol) at work. In fact, the only place outside of work that we see her, is a GED class that her Union provides for, one that, eventually they stop providing for, we don't know why.
She does talk on the phone to members of her family at times. We see her campaigning for an open position on the 42nd Floor, which is apparently a preferable floor. I'm not certain of how or why, but it is, although one of her co-workers who now works the elevator talks about that being good for her. She was injured and couldn't work more regularly going around room-to-room and vacuuming and fluffing pillows and changing the sheets. Occasionally watching a baby while the room's current resident takes a shower.
There's also a sequence where she participates in some kind of weird electric shock game, which, um, I really don't get. There's also a scene where she strips off her clothes and masturbates on a bed overlooking a high view. That scene, I actually think I understood more, symbolically. It's a 5-star luxury hotel where people come to both play and live and often in a fantasy world, so she's taking a moment to experience that fantasy as well. (And yeah, a lot of times that fantasy involves sexual activities as well, so why not masturbating.) We also see her taking showers occasionally, which I imagine happens a lot for maids; lord knows what they have to clean up.
The movie is bare bones, profile of a worker and seeing her work. We're seeing the routine, we're seeing the occasional moments that break the daily routine up. The movie's just showing us, her life and that's what it entails, spending her days and nights sometimes at the hotel, in servitude to her employers and to the customers. She's not alone, and not the only one, and that's the point of the movie. Personally, I-, well, I don't really know what to do with that. It reminds me of work, which, I usually try to avoid while watching movie, but I don't think unsentimental escapism is what all movies should be. And there are movies I can think of that are like this, the one that comes to my mind first is "Leap Year (Ano Bisiesto)", but that's a lot more complex of a movie character. (And also, the Monica Del Carmen character in that film didn't work-, well, didn't do her work well, I should say....) Eve, is interesting but she's not that complex a character. That's okay and there's nothing wrong with it, it's what director Luis Aviles wanted; to show the typical struggles of the working everywoman like this.
For that she succeeds, so I'm recommending the film, I wonder how powerful it is. I guess if there's another comparison film I can think of that's kinda hindering me on this, it's James Mottern's indy "Trucker". That's another film about a character who's always at work and never really gets home. Again, slightly more complex though, unlike Eve who does still watch and care for her 4-year-old on the rare occasions that she's not at work, Michelle Monaghan's character left her kid years earlier and was trying to reconnect. Eve's a single mother, so we know there's some kind of past/history, but we never see any of this; we just see her at work. Again, that's the point, but that's also just, work. I don't know, I feel like, even one thing more would've helped here. Of course, I can't remember the last time I asked for one more detail about any actual maid I've met along my days....
MIDNIGHT TRAVELER (2019) Director: Hassan Fazili
★★★1/2
I don't know much about Fazili's previous filmmaking ventures. Obviously, he's a filmmaker, which probably in of itself is something that I suspect ticked off the Taliban enough to put a hit on him. I mean, they'll shoot people for trying to go to school with a vagina, so.... Anyway, Fazili is targeted by the Taliban, not for his films, or any of his other artistic ventures, but because he owned and ran a cafe that other artistic people frequented and had conversations, music performances, etc., etc. That's enough though and him and his family are on the run. And remain on the run; their requests for asylum have either been rejected, or just, not brought up in time, and they occasionally get up in the middle of the night and darkness and travel to the next country, and eventually to the next continent.
They start in Tajikistan, where they were hiding out, although, he first has to dangerously sneak into Afghanistan to see his family, possibly for the last time, and then he and his wife Fatima, who is also a filmmaker, take their kids and start traveling. The entire movie we're told is shot on the only cameras they have, cell phone cameras, as they travel from Tajikistan, to Iran, then Turkey, then Bulgaria, then to Serbia, and then finally to Hungary, where eventually, we find out that their granted asylum, although they're held in a sterile transit zone for refugees. This trip took over a span of months.
There's a lot of drama in between, he captures footage of riots and the struggles and injury of running and hiding in the dark of night. You even get scenes of him, being interviewed on the street by reporters while, he's recording them, as he tries to literally get his story out, while making this movie which is doing the same thing. It's also getting out it's family's story though, and that's actually just as interesting, if not moreso. They struggle to try to keep a normal facade and life going while raising their kids. You get some nice moments between everyone, including some otherwise be fairly trivial, but you see that they don't always agree, and you get shots of the kids trying to make the best of their situations. Creating games and playing with other kids in their refugee camps. There's one powerful scene of their young daughter singing and dancing to some old Michael Jackson songs.
"Midnight Traveler" is a powerful achievement that gives us an inside and different look at the refugee crisis. It also reminds us that the Taliban are still roving around and their influence is still prevalent in parts of the world. Most of the refugee stories we've heard lately have been from Syria for obvious reasons, but it's not just them, and the journeys of these more affluent and cultured of refugee being this striking
ONE CUT OF THE DEAD (2019) Director: Shin'ichiro Ueda
★★★★
Well, I usually have my own regular list of complaints about zombie movies being too similar and not particular different storywise from others or just not being compelling outside of symbolism in films,- well, I can throw all that out of the window, 'cause "One Cut of the Dead" is pretty far outside the typical zombie movies I've ever seen. It's actually a strange film to talk about in general. It's kinda like I stepped into an alternative universe where Jean-Luc Godard, like horror movies more then, um...-, wait, what exactly is the genre likes? Ehh, whatever the hell he thinks he like, and then had Truffaut's love of making movies? Kinda?
"One Cut of the Dead" is a strange and fascinating, and somewhat of a confusing movie as well. It's become a bit of a cult hit on the festival circuit and eventually made it's way here; it was made on a budget of $25,000, and made $25million at the box office, so throw in "The Blair Witch Project" to this comparison as well. It's director, Shin'chiro Ueda had some shorts beforehand, but he did have a couple feature films before this breakout hit, his first feature film being-
(Stares down at IMDB Page, eyebrows raised, holds back laughter)
wha-?
(Stares at IMDB page, eyes get wider as he scrolls)
Tsk-, ummmm, hmmmm...- tsk, his first feature film being a movie called, "Rice and Boobs".
It's a movie that's described on IMDB and every other place I can find anything on it, as so:
"What would you choose, between rice and boobs, if one of these two would disappear from the world forever? The most boring debate in human history starts now."
Oooooh-kay. wow-eh-. Well I'm not sure how to respond to that; it sounds like the plot of an episode of a Japanese version of "How I Met Your Mother".
Well, that's kind of the bizarreness that, honestly makes sense with this film. Which begins with a single unbroken shot that last 37 minutes, that begins with behind the scenes footage of a cheap, low budget zombie movie that's being made, and then, eventually, the set and the actors and crew get attacked by real zombies. How and why, isn't completely clear, and the Director Higurashi (Takayuki Hamatsu) just continues to shoot everything, whether or not it's a movie or not at this point. This sequence is just amazing to sit through, and this alone is a fairly clever twist on zombie films. Imagine just,- you're sitting between takes, you're an actor on a cheapo set, the director is an abusive hack, and then, real zombies come onto your zombie set, and there's so much blood and prosthetic body parts everywhere that you can't tell the difference between real or fake zombies anymore?! That is genuinely a clever use of zombies, one that, might not be the most original, but it's original enough.
Then, the movie, just, "Persona"'s itself. It double back to before the movie was made, or is it when the zombies were made? Or was this actually a movie about zombies attacking a movie set about zombies attacking a movie set? From the gritty, handheld shot-on-shittio at the opening half-hour, it's kinda sudden to find ourselves in a sterile, slick, casting interview sessions, that remind me as much of my few casting calls as anything else. The chaos of the actors and crew and producers bringing in their own lives, sometimes literally bringing them in to the call, and into the movie chaos;- it's so weird to call a zombie movie, joyful, but "One Cut of the Dead" is really joyful.
"One Cut of the Dead" is a complete deconstruction and reinvention of the filmmaking process from every angle. The movie has multiple credit ending and openings throughout the film, and directors yelling action and cut offscreen. It's just a pure celebration of moviemaking and cheap indy horror is really a good genre to do that with. The people who make it are excited to working on something so fun and unique and you gotta love filmmaking to do some of the, probably not-union agreed to works that that kind of guerilla filmmaking might involve. I like they're improvisation for instance, when the crane is broken for the last camera movement of the take at the end, which is also a fun reminder of how strange it must be to be acting in a movie as well, having to pretend to be another person in another world while there's a bunch of crew members in matching t-shirts running around, trying to set things up everywhere. It's a fascinating deconstruction, and I don't know honestly know quite what to make of it, but I know I appreciated it a lot. Mostly because you can tell that everyone in the appreciated and liked what they were doing.
The whole movie was shot in seven days, two days devoted to that one take, and I like how everything else is shot differently. This Uera guy clearly has ideas and has a passion for putting them onscreen; I'm curious to see what else he's been doing.
I have no idea whether or not I want to track down a copy of "Rice and Boobs" or not; I'm debating on this one.
ISLAND OF THE HUNGRY GHOSTS (2019) Director: Gabrielle Brady
★★1/2
So, this one's a bit weird.... I've heard of thrillers that are shot like documentaries, you know like some found footage horror, "The Blair Witch Project" for instance, or "Cloverfield", but "Island of the Hungry Ghosts" seems to be a documentary that's shot like a thriller. I mean, I can think of documentaries that feel like thrillers, even horrifying ones, but the other way around, where the filmmaking seems like it's trying to be a thriller, that's a bit odd. Which is a shame 'cause this movie actually does have a lot of interesting things going on, and since it's documenting a refugee immigrant population that's currently forced into a detention center on an obscure island where they'll probably not be leaving anytime soon. Also, crabs.
Christmas Island, is a small island south of Indonesia that is technically a territory of Australia. Other then the fact that it's called Christmas Island, the big thing that some people might know about is the crab migration that descend upon the island every year. And they're everywhere. The movie shows several footage throughout the crabs who, they-, I can't stress this enough, they take over the island when they're there. It's like a plague or an infestation; everybody takes brooms everywhere just to sweep the crabs out of their path.
Meanwhile, there's a detention camp filled with refugees from several countries. The movie follows Pho Lin Lee, a trauma counselor assigned to the island to work with the refugees. She's the one, and in interviews we do as well, hear the stories and horror tales of those who are currently going through this other horror of detention on an obscure island that's mostly knows for having crabs around, for half the year. We see her at home, and we see a lot of shots of the island, which most of which I really enjoyed. The movie is good at invoking the tone of the island and I guess that transfers to the haunting and foreboding sense of defeat that the refugees and inevitably Pho feels as she tries to help them eventually get released, only to no avail.
This should be more of a damning critique to the Australian government's treatment of refugees, but the movie is shot like I'm waiting for a giant crab to pop up and spook me. Even the shots indoors of just Poh and her homelife, it is-, I don't want to say "stagey" but it just weirdly lit and framed and it bugged the hell out of me. I don't know what Writer/Director Gabrielle Brady was going for here with this approach. Apparently "The Island of the Hungry Ghosts" was expanded from a short film of hers called "The Island", and maybe this would've been more engagins as a short film, but as a feature, thid dichotmy felt like the wrong storytelling choice. There's a lot of material here and she's got good ideas and themes here. The way the crabs are treated almost as royalty by the locals, a long-standing part of their cultural tradition, is a good contrast to the treatment of the refugees, but I wish she found a much more natural cinema verite way to tell this story. All documentaries are naturally biased just by the notion of a camera being present, and it's how the camera is viewing that matters, and by that notion, and I think she just picks the wrong approach to viewing it.
REVENGE (2018) Director: Coralle Fargeat
★★★1/2
Okay, funny story; I actually tried to watch this film earlier in the week, by looking up the streaming options on my RokuTV and they told me that it was on TubiTV, which it wasn't. I ended up watching an entirely different movie called "Revenge"; it was Swedish, this one's French. Actually, TubiTV currently has five different movies called "Revenge" that they're streaming, and this isn't one of them. If nothing else comes from this, everybody stop naming movies, "Revenge"! It's too vague, it's too common; be a little more creative. You might as well name your movie, "Drama" and try to search for it.
That said, the two movies are really different, and you won't confuse one for the other, despite actually having very similar plots. (As to the other one, I'm not gonna write a review of it, but it's, ehhh. It's a Norweigan film directed by Kjersti Steinsbo, the plot actually isn't too different from this movie called "Revenge", but it's a really boring version until the end, and even then, it's not that special or anything. 2 1/2 STARS, there's no reason to see it on purpose).
This one, um, opens with a weird sun-soaked sequence that I'm still trying to decipher. It involves two people arriving by helicopter to this remote elaborate home that Richard (Kevin Janssens, and of course his name is Richard {Eye roll]) along with, Jennifer. (Matilda Lutz) Okay, so Jennifer is...- I'm not even sure I can even describe her behavior and appearance during these scenes; the best way I can describe her is,- okay, you know the iconic image of Sue Lyon in "Lolita", with the heart-shaped sunglasses, Lolita? Okay, imagine, the schoolgirl porno version of that, and add a lollipop to it for ultimate jailbait ditz irony, and that's kinda what you get. So she exits the helicopter and immediately when the two are alone, they have a sex scene that feels like it's mocking the male gaze in its outlandishness and ends with the girl, barely saying a word, before, well, finding something else to-eh-, forgive me for this, suck on. (You know, I'm trying to remember the last time I saw a movie that began with a blowjob, eh, Catherine Breillat's "Anatomy of Hell" probably; that one was actually much more graphic then this, but this one feels so much sleezier.)
After intercourse, we see Jen, doing a Kirsten Dunst in "Crazy/Beautiful" impression as she walks in her underwear to the kitchen to satisfy her oral fixation with a granny smith apple, and that's when Richard's associates, Stan and Dimitri (Vincent Colombe and Guillaume Bouchede) enter, wearing hunting gear that could easily be mistaken for Rambo-esque. After some guy talk, and more fawning over Jennifer's ass, who excused herself to get a shower and somehow ended up in less clothes afterwords, there's a bizarre time-compressed montage sequence of drinking, drugs, eating, swimming, some bizarre heavily-distorted ripoff of Nine Inch Nails's "Closer" and a pro wrestling sequence on TV. I'm not even ten minutes into this movie by the way, the rest of the night is some general partying.
Then in the morning, Jennifer is raped by one of the associates. After she asks to go home immediately, the boyfriend instead promises her a job in Canada, which he describes as basically like L.A., which I think is where she's supposed to be from based on one of her t-shirts, and when she threatens to call his wife, he beats her up, and then all three guys run her down towards a rocky cliff, and push her off.
Okay, look, I-, I totally understand what writer/director Coralie Fargeat's doing with this setup, and I don't want to sound like I'm "blaming the woman" here; I don't mean to sound to condescending towards this character's actions. Everything I said before, none of that, is her doing anything wrong, I get that. You can be,- you can be flirty, sexual, wear whatever you want, I'm not telling this woman, or any women in particular that they should be doing acting different in order to, you know, not get raped; that's not- I get that. However, can I ask how women end up with guys like these though?!
Like seriously, the boyfriend is full of red flags to begin with, and then you see these associates walk in, the way they walk in, and acting like they do,- like how are you even like in this situation to begin with...?
Do some women just have an under-developed flight response or am I just pickier about sexual partners? Is this just me, and my tepid Sheldon Cooper-esque inability to understand social norms? Like, I'm trying to imagine me in this scenario, with the genders reversed, and-eh, yeah, I'd be trying to leave as soon as the associates showed up, if I for some reason would go out with a female version of this guy to begin with. Obviously, this isn't an exact comparison, my experiences are obviously different then a beautiful young woman's, I don't have women gawking at my body all the time, etc. etc. Maybe it's just that I'm a little too Harold Pinter in this regard, but usually I see or hear about a result of a relationship like this, and my mind just goes to, "How or why did these people end up together to begin with?" Especially on her end, like I get why this sleezeball asks to be with her, I'm just trying to understand how her initial answer was "yes"? Or how she ended up a person who would say yes to this guy?" I feel like these details requires far more explanation in films like these then we usually get, that's all I'm saying. (And I think we often need them in real life too to be honest.)
I don't know, anyway, she survives, because fuck gravity, and now Lollipop, which is what I'm gonna call her now, suddenly turns into uber-survivalist revenge Kill Bill Bitch chick, and now she's out for blood. And it's a bloody film. Blood and insects and maggots, there's a lot of gross stuff in the film. I mean, it's the kind of movie where a main character get impaled, and when she finally pulls out the branch and heals hersel of what she's impaled on, she ends up with an eagle carving into her. (Or she might've been dreaming that, I'm not sure.) There's another strange editing motif, which feels similar in tone to the earlier one, but feels more like a "Sucker Punch"-like dream sequence where she keeps on getting killed and everything she sees is like a flashback reminder of how sick and evil everything was and is with these guys, now seeing them for the parasitic insects that pinch into her skin like they are. It's a revenge fantasy, and I mean fantasy. It's going from dumb, innocent Lolita, and turning into Lara Croft meets Furiosa, over the of a couple days in the-, well it's a French movie about a desert getaway, so-eh, I guess-, well it was shot in Morocco, which, I guess that's where this takes place literally in the film too, so the Moroccan Desert.
I'm trying to figure out exactly what I think of "Revenge" to be honest. I think it hurts a bit that I was reading other reviews of the film before I watched the film, 'cause I didn't realize I was watching the wrong film for awhile (Subject-wise, the two films were similar) and I saw Christy Lemire's review in particular mentions that "'Revenge' is the film we need right now, from a filmmaker we need right now." She wrote that when the movie was release over two years ago in the middle of the height of the #MeToo movement; well, actually I don't know if that's a movement that's got a height anymore, it's just sorta something that's gonna keep on happening now, which is good, and yeah, in that light, I can see the appeal of this. As for me-, well, obviously this film isn't really for me, is it? I can definitely enjoy it, but this is clearly for a different audience, one that's looking for to be a satisfying middle finger to those who've done them wrong before and want to imagine this to be the real scenario of how they acted in that situation, as opposed to how it probably went down. If you want the realistic version, maybe Jessica Thompson's "The Light of the Moon" would probably appeal to you more, but there's room for this as well.
I get it; sometimes we need to hold onto this version in our minds to deal with the actual trauma and sometimes that involves the most insane, unrealistic and blood-soaked scenes of pure violent revenge to get us through and this movie provides us with that fantasy.
Hey wait, is that why there's a pro wrestling clip in that montage? That would make sense, when else does one live vicariously through fictional violence in order to feel good.
A BREAD FACTORY PART ONE: FOR THE SAKE OF GOLD (2018) Director: Patrick Wang
★★★1/2
A BREAD FACTORY PART TWO: WALK WITH ME FOR AWHILE (2018) Director: Patrick Wang
★★★★1/2
Well, first we got a weird movie, or movies actually, here. These two films are....a unique, bizarre deconstructed loving satire/tribute/homage/musical I think? Well, the first part is clearly absurdist satire about a fictionalized town's over whether to keep a long-existing local art/theater establishment known as the titular "The Bread Factory". It's the long-standing artistic center of the community, that's currently struggling financially to survive as a new center that's pushed by the local government and figureheaded by this apparently famous, but bizarre Chinese performance act duo called "May Ray", (Janet Hsieh and George Young) who are accompanied wherever they go by applause and barely seem to say anything even when they talk and do shows performance art where they mime sitting on tables and eating off chairs, are creating their own competive center and they've got the inside funds and connections for the government funding.
May Ray kinda reminds me of SVEN, that Swedish Architecture Collective from "How I Met Your Mother". The movie takes shots at both sides of the artistic spectrum, with say Jordan, the Janeane Garofalo character, who is this crazed indy filmmaker that teaches little kids about filmmaking, that I find her disturbing, hilarious and accurate, like how she threatens to kill a kid's dog so that she understands the kind of emotion she needs to put in her filmmaking. This like nine-year-old girl, I might add. I also like her frustrating friendship with Simon (Keaton Nigel Cooke) the young projectionist. Everybody in art is a bit weird, both those who partake and those who experience it from an audience perspective, I guess, although the lines get blurry to the point of non-existent sometimes in this film, especially in part two, although sometimes in part one, you run into some people who I wonder if they've ever had any actual experience with art, ever.
That said, this movie, is really more of an ensemble piece. There's a lot of characters coming in and out of the film and in and out of the titular Bread Factory, and we do follow a few of the big ones, most notably Dorothea and Greta (Tyne Daly and Elisabeth Henry) the longtime founders and owners fo the Bread Factory, and are now fighting with a City Council that,- well, they've all got their own quirks. It's a quirk-filled movie.
There's some other stuff too...- It took awhile to try to figure out where the hell he's going on with this film, and somewhere near the end of the first part, I think I finally got what he was going for. I've seen several critics struggling to explain or decipher the tone of this film; if I have to compare it to a filmmaker, I think he's trying to make a Robert Altman film.
Altman was one of America's greatest directors, and of course, he was infamous for his multi-narrative features, often involving several characters, many of whom were about several different artistic industries, everything from country music to ballet; I don't think he did anything that was specifically in the save the little local neighborhood place thing, but I think he's definitely going for the tone of something like "Pret-a-Porter (Ready-to-Wear)" or especially "A Prairie Home Companion". Just a bizarre hodgepodge of the coming together of an unusual artistic world with the normal world, although in this case, I don't know if the normal world is any more or less normal.
Part One seems to be about how everybody's caught up in this artistic project fad that seems too bizarre for people to actually get swept up in, while Part Two of this movie, is even stranger, albeit I found it more heartwarming by the end. It starts out fine enough as the movie seems to center around Dorothea and Greta as they put on a production of "Hecuba". And then, we start getting some strange and bizarre musical and dancing performances, sometimes by tourists who take photos with selfie sticks of the most absurd of purported historical tourist sites and traps; there's a chorus-like group of real estate agents who are straining to get a barn sold that's being used for storage for the Bread Factory, mostly storage for their theater productions. (Storage costs basically take up much of a theater's budget most of the time.)
There's also a focus on the local newspaper, which many in the town are amazed is still active, even with a Pulitzer Prize winning critic, Jean-Marc (Philip Kerr) apparently on staff, although by the second half, it's editor Jan (Glynnis O'Connor) just up and leaves and, essentially putting her teenage intern Max (Zachary Sayle) in charge of everything as he's somehow putting out a paper with a group of kids from the factory and Max and his longtime rival Sir Walter (Brian Murray, in his last performance in the first film, and Brian May in the second).
I'm really leaving out a lot here, and I'd need a second or third viewing to be able to fully grasp every narrative thread going on here. Obviously, the biggest picture I can see is that the movie is mostly just all some kind of metaphor for the power and influence of art. Although that makes the weird segment involving Mavis (Nan-Lyn Nelson) who's threatening to vote against the factory because her kid tragically died because of his devotion to his art just a bit odd and out-of-place. And, I think is a bit dark for the film, but the first part is somewhat darker then the second in general. I guess I can think of a few movies that do this two-part structure, but I don't think those are the right comparison; "The Bread Factory" is clearly more inspired by the randomness and uniqueness of theater, the ability to go from the sublime to the absurd as quickly and suddenly as a tap dance in a diner. It definitely feels like one of those two parts five-hour epic play experiences, like "Angels in America" or-, well, not that serious, but something that epic in scope. I mean, the movie climaxes with literal Greek tragedy, and yet, it's all basically just based around a small neighborhood which, that's pretty poetic, that's where most of us would find out Greek tragedy. Although really, the point of art, especially theater and other collaborative arts isn't what's performing it's that we're apart of the experience of putting on a show. and what that means to everybody. I mean, I just watched a documentary called "Bathtubs Over Broadway" about industrial shows and one of the stories in that film was how a couple met and got married during a musical about new toiletries. If that's important and memorable enough to make a lifelong connection, then sure, let's celebrate a place like "The Bread Factory".
This is a weird movie to review; both films were made to be seen together with an intermission, although I feel like most are more inclined to appreciate Part One, subtitled "For the Sake of the Gold", although I'm more inclined to appreciate the zaniness in Part Two, "Walk With Me for Awhile", especially with that beautiful, perfect ending shot. I spent most of the movie trying to figure out why this was made, especially in Part One, and was somewhat befuddled when I did see the name. Patrick Wang is not a household name, but I was familiar with the guy. He made a powerful debut film years ago called "In the Family", where he played a gay man in Tennessee who lost his partner and had to fight for custodial rights of their adoptive son from his lovers family. That movie was probably just as unrealistic as many of the scenes and ideas in "A Bread Factory", I bought into it anyway because of it's sincerity, and that film climax with a deposition where basically Wang, basically described himself. It was the ending speech that was strong enough to seem like the justification of the entire movie, the same way Chaplin's speech at the end of "The Great Dictator" works in much the same way. I had no idea what to expect from him afterwards, but I certainly wasn't expecting this. I haven't seen his second movie yet, "The Grief of Others" which honestly sounds even more depressing then his first one, but this movie comes out of nowhere for him from what I can tell. It makes a lot more sense when you realize he's spent most of the decade working in the New York theater world, and that he comes from Sugar Land, Texas originally, which doesn't quite feel like this small town of Checkford, which seems more like a New York or New England suburb. The movie feels almost outside of it's time. The May Ray performers feel like stuff that was made fun of back in the '90s, while the musical routines with selfie sticks puts this right back to today, but then there's the newspaper run by kids younger then the "Newsies",- the movie is just a hodgepodge of so many different things, and I think that's the point; that the more you experience the more influences you grow from, the more developed you can appreciate and develop appreciation for the work.
SEEING ALLRED (2018) Director: Rebecca Grossman & Sophie Sartain
★★★
In "Seeing Allred", Denise Brown talks about walking into Marcia Clark's office one day, and noticing her office. Noticing everything that's around her, including photos of the crime scene where her sister, Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman's death, including one of her sister's throat being slit.It takes a few moments for Marcia to realize what she's staring at, and eventally she realizes it, and frantically takes the pictures off the wall, apologizing and saying, "Sorry, they're like furniture to me at this point." That when she eventually hires Gloria Allred. It's not Ms. Clark's fault by the way, she doesn't and never represented the Brown family, she represented the state. It's something that you don't think about but yeah, that is fucked up to some degree, that in the criminal courts there really isn't, a representation for the victims of the crimes; that's not the state's job and that's not necessarily what it should be either.
Honestly, I, as somebody who lived through the whole O.J. Simpson trial, and thought I remembered everything about it, forgot that that was Gloria Allred's role in it. Honestly, she's known for so much else, and was well-known for so much else more before then even, that I kinda wrote her part out of that story in my mind. (Although, if I could delete the whole thing from my mind, I would...)
Still, having said all that, I can't say that I was exactly looking forward to seeing "Seeing Allred". Her reputation is one that's,-, well they go over it, for some reason, people don't trust her. For one, she's a lawyer; that's skepticism right there, but two, is the kind of lawyer she is, because she has made a career out of being a lawyer for "victims", mostly for women and those who often seem to make some of the more wilder claims. They even show a clip of Larry Wilmore's old tv show where a panelist even talks about how because she's representing them, "You know someone's lying." In hindsight, I'm not sure how much that's true. I can think of one case, and it was that weird one that's not mentioned where she was hired by clients offended as a pro baseball coach's homophobic slur towards them and their kids and a lewd gesture and then, in the press conference, she's making the gesture with a baseball bat, in front of the kids,- it was weird. I'm kinding just chalking that one up to her taking on too many clients and doing way too many press conferences.
See that's her big thing, she's not so much a typical trial lawyer, but she's a civil rights lawyer you get when you're trying to grab attention to subjects. The movie shows this by cutting between historical footage and interviews about and from her about her, with some modern footage of her, giving press conferences and showing up at protests and defending her clients who were assaulted by Bill Cosby. It's hard to remember now, but there was a time when people not only just didn't believe the women, but even after the evidence kept piling up, the thought that Cosby would ever go to jail for any of his crimes seemed ridiculous and insane. The statute of limitations had long ran out on most of his accusers, something that she is also fighting in order to change state-by-state. It's actually kinda shocking in hindsight just how often she's pulled that off. I never realized that she was fighting for child support taken out of paycheck was something that started state-to-state with California, before it became national, and she was the one that started that. There's a lot of her history and influence that you can document and it's fascinating to go back on.
Her own personal history, even in this documentary, she's still, reserved about. She came from a struggling home in Philadelphia and right into college, got married and had a kid before she turned 20. That relationship, ended early as her husband had an undiagnosed bipolar disorder and eventually they left. Years later, he killed himself, but she began teaching after college and raised her daughter as a single mother. She does talk about her own rape, and the subsequent abortion that nearly killed her afterwards. This was in the before Roe v. Wade era, and said that the worst part of all that, was being in the hospital and the nurse backhandedly saying, "Serves you right?"
She does talk about him, but she doesn't talk at all about her second husband, who turned out to be a fraudster. That wound still seems raw, but her protest and media blitz form form of, activist law practice is what makes her work transcedent and important. The movie's strongest when it's showing this in action, following her through the Cosby blitz, and then seeing his arrest and inevitably, his prosecution. It also shows her up to the 2016 election. She not only was a delegate for Hillary at the convention, but she also was Summer Zevos's lawyer, one of Donald Trump's accusers. Watching her cry at the press conference after the election was startling. She was a Republican, and you can tell that, this engagement was scarring for her. She knows that her attacked is in charge; it's-, well, it's the exact issue that Allred's fighting. Equality of the sexes, and not to have women's role-, well, even that phrase, part of the problem is defining a role for women to begin with.
I don't know if "Seeing Allred" is a great documentary; it's pretty by-the-book, but it's a good document of just how important Allred is. She is the premiere lawyer for a media world, and an activist equal rights attorney we need always, and perhaps should've had for a lot longer. Gloria Allred should'n't have had to invent a Gloria Allred, but thank god she did.
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