→ May 7, 2021
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Minari.

Minari was the last film we caught before the Oscars, completing our run through the eight Best Picture nominees (and all of the Director and Acting nominees, except for Hillbilly Elegy). Nominated for six films, with Youn Yuh-jung winning Best Supporting Actress, it is a lovely, funny slice of nostalgia base don writer-director Lee Isaac Chung’s childhood, and gives a different take on the immigrant experience in America.

Steven Yeun stars as Jacob Yi, who moves with his wife Monica (Han Ye-Ri, formerly of Hello My Twenties!), daughter Anne, and son David (Alan Kim), the last of whom is Chung’s stand-in in the film. Jacob has brought his family to rural Arkansas, where he intends to build a farm and grow traditional Korean produce he can sell to restaurants and the growing immigrant communities of the American South. He and Monica will work as chicken sexers to earn enough money to get the farm started, but Monica isn’t on board with the whole farming plan, and the whole family has trouble assimilating until Monica’s mother Soon-ja (Youn) arrives to help Monica take care of the kids and provide substantial comic relief.

What happens from there is almost beside the point, although there is certainly drama to come, and the family will be forced to confront the cracks threatening to tear them apart, to choose how they’ll respond when everything is on the verge of falling apart. This is far more a study of its characters, of Jacob and David specifically, and of its time and place – Arkansas in the 1980s, in an overwhelmingly white community that by and large welcomes the Yi family, even if sometimes they don’t exactly go about things in the best ways. Chung’s script is full of heart, and empathy for its characters – there really are no antagonists here other than the vagaries of nature and fate.

Chung tells the story mostly through David’s eyes, although there are a few scenes with his parents by themselves, and the growth of the relationship between David and the grandmother he doesn’t know becomes one of the emotional touchstones in Minari. The movie takes its name from a resilient, edible dropwort, also known as Korean watercress or Chinese celery, that David’s grandmother plants on the banks of a stream near the family’s farm; in addition to the metaphor of the vegetable itself, water, or the lack thereof, is one of the recurring symbols of Minari, showing up right at the start when Jacob encounters a charlatan with a divining rod but refuses to pay him for his “service.” Soon-ja is unflappable, even as David rejects her at first, and her often coarse humor is one of the film’s best facets, and a surprising contrast to her dour, reticent daughter’s exterior affect.

Minari‘s magic is in how Chung manages to take something so small and make it feel so broad and universal; nearly everything in this movie is about the Yi family and what happens within their household, right up until the one big dramatic twist at the end – and even that event functions as another way to explore and demonstrate the way the family holds together. The story is sweet, sometimes bittersweet, but not saccharine, and full of heart. It’s frequently funny, between Soon-ja’s witticisms and the extremely eccentric farmhand Paul (Will Patton), and its tragedies feel real, not forced.

Youn’s win for Best Supporting Actress was well-deserved, and there seemed to be no real pushback before or after her victory. The film was also nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Best Actor (for Yeun, who deserved the same honor for Burning but was snubbed), and Best Original Score. I loved Minari, but wouldn’t have voted for it in any of the other categories, just because it was up against two movies – Nomadland and The Father – I liked a bit more. It did, however, make my top 5 among 2020-eligible movies; I’ve seen everything from that cycle I intended to see except for First Cow and a couple of international films. So here’s my almost-final rankings for 2020:

1. Nomadland

2. The Father

3. A Sun

4. Minari

5. Promising Young Woman

6. Wolfwalkers

7. Never Rarely Sometimes Always

8. Judas and the Black Messiah

9. A Personal History of David Copperfield

10. Borat Subsequent Moviefilm

11. Collective

12. The Nest

13. Boys State

14. Palm Springs

15. One Night in Miami

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→ April 25, 2021
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Oscar picks, 2021 edition.

The Oscars are happening tonight, about two months later than usual, so I’ve put together this post with some loose predictions, my own picks for each award, and, most importantly, links to every one of these films I’ve reviewed. I’ve seen all of the Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Screenplay nominees, and all but one of the films in the four acting categories, as well as all five documentaries and all five animated features, with 50 total films seen from the 2020 awards cycle (which ran fourteen months).

Best Picture

The Father
Judas and the Black Messiah
Mank
Minari
Nomadland
Promising Young Woman
Sound of Metal
The Trial of the Chicago 7

Who will win: Nomadland

Who should win: Nomadland

I don’t feel that confident in the prediction here; I’m a little concerned that Chicago 7 will win, as it’s such an actor-focused, Very Important Film that it might resonate with the same voters who picked Green Book two years ago. I’ve seen Minari, and loved it, but haven’t posted a review yet.

Snubs: A Sun didn’t even make the Best International Feature cut (it was on the shortlist), but it belongs here, as does One Night in Miami, the exclusion of which I simply do not understand. Never Rarely Sometimes Always would have been a good if out-of-the-box choice. I haven’t seen First Cow yet.

Best Director

Another Round (Thomas Vinterberg)
Mank (David Fincher)
Minari (Lee Isaac Chung)
Nomadland (Chloé Zhao)
Promising Young Woman (Emerald Fennell)

Who will win: Zhao

Who should win: Zhao

This award and Best Picture used to be more closely linked than they are now, but I’m not sure I see them splitting the votes this time around. Vinterberg’s nomination seems inexplicable, unless it’s a sympathy vote, as his daughter was killed in a car accident during filming; she helped inspire the script and he dedicated the film to her.

Snubs: Regina King was supposed to be a lock for this category for One Night in Miami. I would have given Florian Zeller a nod as well for The Father.

Best Actress

Viola Davis, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
Andra Day, The United States vs. Billie Holliday
Vanessa Kirby, Pieces of a Woman
Frances McDormand, Nomadland
Carey Mulligan, Promising Young Woman

Who will win: Mulligan

Who should win: Mulligan

Davis could win this, but I don’t think this is particularly close on the merits. Mulligan gave one of the two best performances I saw this year, and if pushed I think she gave the best one. I was very glad to see Kirby get a nomination even though she has no chance to win – she is that movie, and she’s clearly a star on the rise.

Snubs: Carrie Coon for The Nest and Sidney Flanigan for Never Rarely Sometimes Always would both have been better choices than Day, who does a fine job with a terribly written part.

Best Actor

Riz Ahmed, Sound of Metal
Chadwick Boseman, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
Anthony Hopkins, The Father
Gary Oldman, Mank
Stephen Yeun, Minari

Who will win: Boseman

Who should win: Hopkins

Boseman’s going to win, obviously, and he was very good … but Hopkins was just better, in a more significant role. I wouldn’t want to see the reaction if Hopkins were to win.

Snubs: I’m good with these five. Dev Patel was great in A Personal History of David Copperfield.

Best Supporting Actress

Maria Bakalova, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm
Glenn Close, Hillbilly Elegy
Olivia Colman, The Father
Amanda Seyfried, Mank
Yuh-Jung Youn, Minari

Who will win: Youn

Who should win: Youn

I feel like this is a lock, and of the four I’ve seen – I haven’t seen Hillbilly Elegy and see no good reason to do so – I’d put Youn and Colman as 1 and 1A, Bakalova second, and would give Seyfried a participation trophy. Maybe Close gets some sort of lifetime achievement thing here, especially after losing to Colman a few years ago when she was supposed to win, but people forget that The Wife was actually a shit movie.

Snubs: Tilda Swinton was superb in The Personal History of David Copperfield, certainly deserving of Seyfried’s spot.

Best Supporting Actor

Sasha Baron Cohen, The Trial of the Chicago 7
Daniel Kaluuya, Judas and the Black Messiah
Leslie Odom, Jr., One Night in Miami
Paul Raci, Sound of Metal
LaKeith Stanfield, Judas and the Black Messiah

Who will win: Kaluuya

Who should win: Kaluuya

I’ll say this – if Raci wins, it’ll be an amazing story, and I’ll cheer for him. But Kaluuya was slightly better in a much more significant role, and he’s one of the best actors going today. Of course, he was really the lead actor in Judas, but that’s another story entirely, I guess.

Snubs: I’m also good with these five, although Kingsley Ben?Adir was pretty amazing as Malcolm X in One Night in Miami.

Best Documentary Feature

Collective
Crip Camp
The Mole Agent
My Octopus Teacher
Time

What will win: Time

What should win: Collective

I just don’t know; I thought Time was the shoo-in here, but Tim Grierson thinks My Octopus Teacher – easily my least favorite of these – is going to win, and no matter what, Collective should win, because it’s the best story and it’s told so effortlessly.

Snubs: Transhood. It’s on HBO Max. You should watch it.

Best Writing, Original Screenplay

Judas and the Black Messiah
Minari
Promising Young Woman
Sound of Metal
The Trial of the Chicago 7

What should win: Promising Young Woman

What will win: Promising Young Woman

The screenplay categories have become a way to honor a film that has no shot at Best Picture (or maybe anything else) with a little pat on the head to say, “good job, we liked your little movie.” In this case, though, I’m good with Promising Young Woman taking this award home but not getting Director or Best Picture; the script itself is daring and novel and gets at least some of the credit for enabling Mulligan’s performance.

Snubs: A Sun, Never Rarely Sometimes Always, The Nest.

Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay

Borat Subsequent Moviefilm
The Father
Nomadland
One Night in Miami
The White Tiger

What should win: One Night in Miami

What will win: The Father

I could go either way here with those two screenplays; The Father is a better movie, because of Hopkins and some directorial choices, but Miami gets a very slight edge for me in the writing department.

Snubs: A Personal History of David Copperfield. You may remember the original.

Best Animated Feature Film

Onward
Over the Moon
Shaun the Sheep: Farmageddon
Soul
Wolfwalkers

What should win: Wolfwalkers

What will win: Soul

Pixar just has such a huge advantage in this category that it seems contrarian to predict any non-Pixar film to win, but I’ll pull for Wolfwalkers, another hand-drawn film from Cartoon Saloon, even knowing it probably has no chance. Soul might be fourth for me among these nominees.

Snubs: The only other eligible film I saw was A Whisker Away, an anime film you can see on Netflix, which offers a far better story than Onward.

Best Animated Short Film

“Burrow”
“Genius Loci”
“If Anything Happens I Love You”
“Opera”
“Yes-People”

What should win: “If Anything Happens I Love You”

What will win: “Burrow”

“If Anything Happens I Love You,” available on Netflix, follows a couple after their only child has been killed in a school shooting. It’s devastating, and the style of the art further evokes those emotions. But I always assume Pixar is going to win this category. (I haven’t seen “Opera,” which appears to only be streaming on the subscription site ShortsTV.)

Snubs: “Cops and Robbers,” also on Netflix, can’t quite match the animation quality of “Yes-People” or the style of “Genius Loci” (which bored me), but the story, told as spoken-word poetry, is more relevant and more powerful. I don’t think dialogue gets you far in this category, though.

Best International Feature Film

Another Round
Better Days
Collective
The Man Who Sold His Skin
Quo Vadis, Aida?

I’ve only seen Another Round and Collective here; I’d vote for Collective of the two, but I think A Sun was better than both. The last two are now both on Hulu, so I’ll get to them eventually.  

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→ April 21, 2021
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The Father.

Nominated for six Academy Awards this year, including Best Picture, The Father gives a devastating portrait of dementia from the perspective of the sufferer, recasting the experience as a psychological mystery – but one without the promise of a neat ending. It brings together an incredibly clever screenplay and a BAFTA-winning performance from Anthony Hopkins, while making superb use of the limited space of a film set almost entirely in one flat. (It’s available to rent now as a premium/early access option for $19.99 through amazon and other VOD sites.)

Adapted from the stage version by the playwright Florian Zeller, The Father starts out simply enough: Anthony (Hopkins) is arguing with his daughter Anne (Olivia Colman, also nominated for an Oscar) because he has scared off his most recent carer. He says it’s because she stole his watch, and rants about his other daughter, Lucy, whose name seems to bring the film to a screeching halt whenever Anthony broaches the topic. In the following scene, Anthony finds a strange man (Mark Gatiss) in his living room, and the man says he’s Paul, Anne’s partner, whom Anthony doesn’t recognize – and when Anne returns, she’s played by a different actress (Olivia Williams) and Anthony doesn’t recognize her either. Is this just his memory failing, or is something more sinister at play?

The Father utilizes those tricks and more – details of the flat change as well, part of the nonlinear nature of time in this film – to express Anthony’s disorientation to the viewer beyond having him show his confusion. His flat and his daughter’s share a structure, but things like light fixtures, furniture, and wall colors differ slightly, just enough to throw Anthony and the viewer off as we try to figure out not just where we are, but when. Hopkins is truly incredible here, still showing a plus fastball here at age 81 (when it was filmed), delivering the sort of performance the film requires and that you’d expect to see in a stage production. His confusion is palpable, his attempts to mask it through word and action realistic, and his rapid mood shifts – one of the scariest aspects of dementia for family members – are just a series of hard line drives, impressive because they’re subtle and yet impossible to ignore. The script avoids the obvious, such as having Anthony become violent, or scream obscenities, or other possible behaviors of someone with his condition, and instead lets Hopkins deliver the smaller but no less devastating changes in a way that hammers them home to the viewer.

This film is as replete with symbolism as any I can remember watching, perhaps a reflection of its stage origins, although in this sense it felt just as much like a classic novel. The color blue is everywhere in this film – walls, backsplashes, furniture, clothes – which seems like an obvious nod to the sadness and depression suffered by both a patient developing dementia and their loved ones, while the color also appears in a new setting at the end of the film that makes the connection more explicit. Anthony’s obsession with his watch, which can be a common behavior in patients with memory loss, may also represent his slipping grasp of time; in one scene, the time jumps from early morning to evening without a cut, leaving Anthony, still in his pajamas, even more confused than usual. There could be more – the shattered tea cup, the painting above the fireplace, the trees – but I will assume the chicken is, in this case, just a chicken.

The one quibble I have with The Father is the ending, which may be completely realistic but does take away some of the mystery that Zeller built up in the preceding 100 or so minutes with a resolution that, again, is probably accurate to such stories, but took some air out of the dramatic balloon. We spent much of the movie trying to come up with possible explanations for everything that was happening – for example, are Gatiss and Williams some sort of confidence artists? – but the story is much simpler than that.

Hopkins is just incredible here, my favorite lead actor performance of the year, although I don’t think there’s any chance he wins the award over Chadwick Boseman for Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (and I’m not sure I would want to see the reaction if he did). Colman is superb as well, my favorite of the three nominees I’ve seen, although it appears the favorite is one I haven’t seen, Youn Yuh-jung for Minari. It’s also nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay, which could be its best chance for a win on Sunday. As for the film itself, I would still lean towards Nomadland for Best Picture, but this sits at #2 on my ranking of movies from the 2020-early 2021 awards cycle, with just a couple of candidates left to see, and one more that made my top 5 still left to review.

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→ March 21, 2021
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Promising Young Woman.

I still can’t believe Camilla Parker-Bowles is now a two-time Oscar nominee, but she absolutely deserves it.

Emerald Fennell, previously best known for portraying Prince Charles’ affair partner on seasons 3 and 4 of The Crown, now has nominations to her credit for writing the screenplay for and directing Promising Young Woman, a brilliant, shocking, and powerful revenge story that feels incredibly well-timed. Featuring a tremendous lead performance from Carey Mulligan, the film earned five nominations – two for Fennell, one for Mulligan, one for Editing, and, perhaps the big surprise of the five, one for Best Picture. (It’s available to rent on amazon and other streaming services.)

Mulligan plays Cassie, who, as the film opens, is in a bar, alone, and so drunk she can barely sit up straight. A guy in the bar offers to help her get home, but then takes her to his place, where he tries to sexually assault her, at which point Mulligan looks right up at the camera to reveal that she’s stone sober – and she confronts the creep before leaving. This is a regular weekend act for her, and we learn that she dropped out of medical school when her classmate, Nina Fisher, was raped by a classmate at a party, and the school did nothing about it. She’s working in a hipster coffee shop when another classmate, Ryan (Bo Burnham), walks in, and the two start gradually start to have a meet-cute – just at the same time that Cassie gets wind that Nina’s rapist is about to get married, at which point she launches a more elaborate plan to take revenge on everyone involved in the rape and abortive investigation.

Fennell leaves all kinds of clues in the film to indicate that Cassie’s calm exterior demeanor hides the fact that she’s not quite right. Over the course of the story, we learn how Cassie’s life seems to have just stopped after the assault and immediate aftermath. She lives with her parents, who say she has no friends and hasn’t had a boyfriend in years. She’s still wearing a childlike pattern of pastel colors on her nails. Her wardrobe, which seems rather extensive, often veers towards clothing maybe ten years too young for her. She’s supposed to be 30, but alternates between looking 25 and 40 throughout the film. She’s our heroine, and there’s a distinct pleasure in watching her dish it out to various awful men across the film, but there’s also something amiss here, from how and why she left medical school on to just how deranged her plans for the rapist and his enablers are, and Fennell does a spectacular job of balancing those elements so that the conclusion can still work.

The ending is shocking and the subject of many thinkpieces already – this Variety piece has spoilers and does an excellent job breaking it down, and the video with Fennell and Mulligan is well worth the time – and I haven’t stopped thinking about it since we watched the movie. Listening to Fennell in that video, in addition to getting a window on to her brilliance as a writer, changed how I interpreted the ending, and that in turn changed some of my thoughts on what came before. Cassie’s life just stopped after Nina was assaulted and everyone – the school administrators, most of their classmates, even one of Nina and Cassie’s best friends – chose to look the other way, and as the film progresses it becomes clearer that the revenge fantasy is at least mixed with the story of Cassie’s unraveling, a satirical condemnation of a system stacked against victims but also a tragedy of a woman whose promise – who was, at least, on her way to living the life her parents wanted for her – is gone. The fact that Cassie would take the risks she ultimately takes without any regard for the effect her injury or death might have on her parents, for example, is a mostly unspoken indicator that Fennell didn’t write Cassie as a flawless heroine.

I’ve seen four of the five Best Actress nominees so far, and Mulligan would be my pick for the award, although the one I haven’t seen is Andra Day, who won the Golden Globe in this category, and the other three nominees are all outstanding – this might be the most loaded category of the season. I’ve also seen four of the five Best Original Screenplay nominees (I’m waiting on Minari), and would choose this over Sound of Metal, Judas and the Black Messiah, or the extra-Sorkiny The Trial of the Chicago 7. I wouldn’t put it over Nomadland for Best Picture, but it might be my #2, with Minari and The Father still on my list to see. I’ll be pulling for this to take home those two honors, though, as it’s tremendous even when there are minor plot points I wish had unfurled differently.

(My wife and I discuss every movie we watch at length, so her opinions always appear somewhere in these reviews, but here she deserves particular credit for shaping my interpretation of this film. As a man, there are issues here I’ve just never had to face in the world, and her perspective was invaluable.)

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→ March 18, 2021
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Mank.

Mank led all films with ten Oscar nominations this year, and after seeing the film (which is on Netflix), my reaction is best summed up by the GIF of Ryan Reynolds saying, “but why?” I think the answer is actually obvious – it’s a talky black-and-white movie about Hollywood, all things the voters find hard to resist – but it doesn’t make it any easier to accept this adequate if somewhat boring movie taking home spots that could have gone to many more deserving films.

Mank is Herman Mankiewicz, a cantankerous screenwriter who was often called in to ‘fix’ scripts by other writers from the 1920s through the 1940s, and who worked with Orson Welles on the script for Citizen Kane, which won them both the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. The film tells the story of the writing of that script, with flashbacks explaining how Mank managed to become persona non grata in much of Hollywood, and his relationship with actress Marion Davies and partnership with her nephew Charles Lederer.

I really enjoy some of Orson Welles’ work, and appreciate Citizen Kane for its artistic merit and historical importance, and I can certainly get into some making-of stories, but I can’t express how little I cared about what was happening on the screen in Mank. It’s the story of a self-destructive white man handed one gift after another only to throw them away via drink, gambling, or just general assholery. It’s also told through a poorly-structured series of flashbacks that bounce around in time so often it makes it too hard to follow when things are happening, especially since Gary Oldman is 20 years older than Mankiewicz was in 1940, when the latter wrote Citizen Kane, and thus nearly 30 years older than Mankiewicz is supposed to be in flashbacks, with no real concession made to the age gap.

Oldman is busy chewing scenery when he isn’t throwing it back up, and it’s especially frustrating because it seems like he took the message the Academy gave him when they named him Best Actor for a lengthy Winston Churchill impression in Darkest Hour as a sign to go even further in this direction, forgetting the actor he showed he could be in Léon, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, or even Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, where he used his scene-chewing ability to far better purpose. Amanda Seyfried earned her first Oscar nomination for her work here as Davies in a role that doesn’t have a lot of screen time and is probably most notable for her accent here; I’m not sure she does much more than Lily Collins does as Mank’s amanuensis Rita, and really none of the women here are that well-written in the first place. The most compelling supporting performance might be Tom Burke’s as Welles; Burke absolutely nails Welles’ voice in a way I found thoroughly distracting (in a good way), although he loses it a little in a critical scene late in the film where he and Mankiewicz feud and break over the final edits and what credit Mank might receive.

Mank is just so self-indulgent and so insular that I couldn’t help but think back to The Artist, which won Best Picture a decade ago for being a black-and-white movie that told everyone how great movies are, as well as for its central gimmick as a mostly-silent film. They’re movies that appeal not just to the presumed interests of Academy voters, but to their identities: Both give movies an importance beyond reality, and, unfortunately, both rely on the assumption that viewers will care far more about inside-baseball stories about how movies are made than they actually do. The best movies about making movies are great movies first that happen to have elements of moviemaking within their stories – Singin’ in the Rain, ostensibly a story about the first talkies, is far more a tale of fakery and integrity, along with a slapdash romance and some great dance numbers; Boogie Nights, a movie about the golden age of porn, is really about this group of misfits and outcasts who form (and break) familial bonds while working in an industry that embraces them for their weirdness. Mank is a movie about a white guy who got more chances than he deserved and drank them all away. It made me want to pour myself a tall one more than it made me want to go watch Citizen Kane or any of the classic films of that era.

As for those nominations, David Fincher getting a Best Director nod over Regina King for One Night in Miami is just … it’s exhausting. And that latter film missing out on Best Picture with two slots still unfilled and Mank getting one of the eight nominations is baffling. I’d have given Gary Oldman’s spot in Best Actor to Dev Patel for David Copperfield, and I think it’s telling that Mank‘s screenwriter, Fincher’s father Jack, didn’t get a nomination for Best Original Screenplay, especially with the intricate flashback sequences making this story harder to follow. Fincher’s done some great work, and this project had to be more personal to him than anything he’s done before, but if this film had received a theatrical release, I bet it would have tanked, and perhaps taken some of its Oscar helium with it.

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→ March 17, 2021
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Sound of Metal.

This week’s Oscar nominations included a bunch of surprises, including Sound of Metal, available now on Amazon Prime, earning a Best Picture nod among its six overall nominations. It’s an extraordinarily well-acted piece, with well-earned nominations for Riz Ahmed and Paul Raci, with a story that has its heart in the right place but that has some plot holes I found it impossible to overlook.

Ahmed plays Ruben, the drummer for a two-piece hard rock band called Blackgammon along with his girlfriend, singer-guitarist Lou (Olivia Cooke). During one of their shows, he notices his hearing has almost vanished, and a subsequent trip to a doctor reveals that he’s lost about ¾ of his hearing, and while Ruben doesn’t want to accept it at first, it’s permanent and will require him giving up his career. He’s also a recovering addict, clean for four years, but when he tells Lou about his hearing loss, she freaks out and calls his sponsor, who quickly arranges a place for him a house for deaf people recovering from addiction run by Joe (Raci). Ruben spends at least several weeks at the house, gradually adjusting to his deafness, learning American Sign Language and working with some deaf kids at a local camp, but still wants to get the implants he thinks will save his hearing and his career – but that doesn’t work out at all like he planned.

Ahmed and Raci are this film, no offense to Cooke, who is fine in a modest role (other than her eyebrows, which appear to have been bleached in an unfortunate industrial accident). Ahmed wears this haunted look through so much of Sound of Metal that defines Ruben’s inability or unwillingness to accept his deafness, and that cuts through even scenes where he’s supposed to be happy. You can feel his frustration at the hand he’s been dealt – or that he’s dealt himself through his music, although that question is never acknowledged in the film – in almost every scene, but when he can no longer deny that he’s never getting back to where he once was, Ahmed delivers a moment that drives home the devastation. Raci’s nomination has to be the feel-good story of awards season, as he’s 72, with a limited resume in film and TV; Wikipedia has him appearing in just seven films before this, all in minor roles. Raci is the son of deaf parents, so he knew ASL already and I presume is very familiar with deaf culture, but without the credibility and compassion he provides in his role as the leader of the rehab house and a mentor who takes a particular interest in Ruben’s case, the film wouldn’t work. Once he exits the story, you can feel a little of the air escape, because the interactions between Ruben and Joe are the center of the film, and also its most credible elements.

The script works too hard to get Ruben to the rehab house, and struggles to give him a realistic path once he leaves. Ruben sees one doctor for a hearing test, and the doctor tells him about cochlear implants, but there’s no extensive consultation and somehow Ruben thinks the implants will restore his previous hearing – continuing to believe this right up until he gets the implants and has them activated. You don’t get cochlear implants without a long consultation first, and no doctor is going to wait until after the surgery (as Ruben’s does) to explain that implants don’t let you hear through your ears again. When Ruben reveals his deafness to Lou, she immediately reacts as if he’s relapsed, before he’s shown any indications of a problem. After Ruben gets his cochlear implants and asks Joe if he can stay a few more weeks while he waits for the activation, Joe tells him to leave immediately – which itself seems unrealistic, and antithetical to this sort of self-help program – and somehow Ruben, who said he was broke, ends up on a plane to Paris, where he shows up at the house of Lou’s father, who has never met Ruben and didn’t seem to know he was coming. There are just too many of these little plot conveniences for the film’s good, especially since some of them could have been addressed with modest changes.

The film landed six nominations, including the two for Ahmed and Raci; Ahmed has no chance to win against the late Chadwick Boseman (Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom) but would certainly be a worthy winner, while Raci seems like he’s going to lose to Daniel Kaluuya (Judas and the Black Messiah) yet would also be deserving of the award. I understand both of those nominations as well as the one for Best Sound, since so much here depends on the way the movie manipulates sound, often putting you into Ruben’s head to show how little he’s hearing. The nomination for Best Original Screenplay, however, seems to reward Sound of Metal for its greatest weakness – a script that takes shortcuts to get its main character where he needs to be – and why the movie ultimately fell short of Best Picture status for me.

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→ March 2, 2021
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Judas and the Black Messiah.

Daniel Kaluuya’s Golden Globes win might bring some more attention to the superb Judas and the Black Messiah, available now on HBO Max, a biopic that focuses on the final months of Fred Hampton’s life by focusing equally on the man who betrayed him. It’s a different angle than a more typical biography, and I can see an argument that it gives Hampton short shrift, but the two lead performances absolutely drive this movie.

Fred Hampton (Kaluuya) was the head of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party when Edgar Hoover’s FBI decided he was a threat to the nation and, with the help of the members of the Chicago Police Department who weren’t busy assaulting protesters, executed him in his bed while his pregnant girlfriend listened from the next room. The FBI was able to do this because one of Hampton’s lieutenants, William O’Neal (LaKeith Stanfield), was an FBI informant who ratted out Hampton to avoid a felony charge of car theft. O’Neal not only provided information to his FBI handler, Roy Mitchell (Jesse Plemons), but slipped a sedative into Hampton’s drink the night of the execution so he’d be unable to flee or fight back.

Judas and the Black Messiah follows O’Neal’s story from his arrest to Hampton’s murder, bookending the film with footage from Eyes on the Prize II, in which O’Neal gave his only public comment on his involvement in Hampton’s assassination. The narrative focus shifts away from O’Neal to Hampton as needed, giving more time for Hampton’s character to develop, and more time for Kaluuya to show how a magnetic speaker like Hampton could develop such a strong following in such a short period of time – he first became active in social justice movements at 18, and the FBI had him executed when he was 21. (Kaluuya and Stanfield are both much older than the men they portray.)

Stanfield is the lead actor here, at least by how the film’s producers have submitted the pair’s names for awards, but most of the film’s strongest moments belong to Kaluuya. It’s unsurprising, given his superb performances in Get Out and Widows, but he is an unbelievably compelling Hampton whenever he’s speaking to any sort of crowd, friendly or hostile. Kaluuya was positively creepy in Widows as a remorseless, vindictive killer, and here he channels that same implacable calm in any situation, such as when Hampton speaks to a group of Appalachian whites, transplants in Chicago, who rallied under the Confederate flag but also shared some progressive views with the Panthers (a meeting, and subsequent alliance, that occurred in real life).

Meanwhile, despite a strong performance by Stanfield, the script doesn’t give us enough insight into why O’Neal was willing to betray Hampton, to work with the FBI and against his own community, even when he gets clear evidence that the Panthers were creating positive change. His initial willingness to sign up as an informant, avoiding what the film says would have been six years in prison, is easy to grasp, but as the demands on him grow, and he’s more entrenched within the Panther organization, why wouldn’t he balk? Where’s the hesitation beyond what the script gives us in a phone call or two where he threatens to walk away and then changes his mind when reminded of the charges hanging over his head. Stanfield is very good at portraying anguish, speaking through clenched jaws with his head slightly bowed, but there’s something lacking in the character’s portrayal here – although even the actual interview O’Neal gave shortly before his death (the same day that Eyes on the Prize II aired) fails to provide a satisfactory explanation, as he seems unwilling to confront the consequences of his own actions. It’s at least plausible that director Shaka King and writers Keith and Kenneth Lucas made an active choice to leave O’Neal’s character vague because of the paucity of information on his motivations and feelings after the fact.

Between this film and the contemporaneous The Trial of the Chicago 7, it’s a strong year for ACAB in movies (or perhaps ACCAB, since both films involve gross misconduct by Chicago police), which speaks to much of the present mood in large portions of the country even though both events took place over 50 years ago. The idea of our own government executing a 21-year-old citizen in his sleep, where the police fired 90 shots and the Panthers in the apartment fired just one, should still shock and horrify us, and Judas and the Black Messiah doesn’t shy away from the corruption and police-state authoritarianism that allowed these events to take place – and the men behind them to walk away unscathed. It’s infuriating without feeling manipulative, unlike Sorkin’s film, because Judas’ script hews far more closely to the true story. It’s a film-world crime that The Trial of the Chicago 7 got a Best Picture – Drama nomination at the Globes, and a screenplay win, when Judas received neither, something I hope is remedied when the Oscars come out with their own slate of nominees in two weeks, with Kaluuya also deserving of a nod. Judas is an imperfect film in a few ways – I could have done without some of the inside-the-FBI stuff too – but between Kaluuya’s performance and the sheer power of the story behind it, it’s one of the year’s best.

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→ February 24, 2021
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The Trial of the Chicago 7.

The Trial of the Chicago 7 (now on Netflix) has a great movie at its heart, with all of the quick, witty dialogue you’d expect from an Aaron Sorkin script, but it is the most over-Sorkined thing imaginable. The actual story of the Chicago Eight (later reduced to seven, when Bobby Seale was granted a mistrial) is compelling enough that Sorkin had to do nothing more than supply the dialogue. Instead, he fabricated events and added melodrama to a story that didn’t need it.

The Chicago Seven were seven men who were involved in some way in the protests against the Vietnam War held in Chicago during the 1968 Democratic National Convention, which itself took place in the wake of the murder of Robert F. Kennedy. Those protests descended into violence when the Chicago Police Department responded with violence to the protesters’ mere existence, but the city, and then the new Republican Administration of President Nixon, chose to charge eight men with conspiracy to incite violence. The eighth, Seale, wasn’t at the protests, but was the co-founder of the Black Panther Party, and had the misfortune to be in Chicago for a few hours during the convention, so he was arrested too on a charge that was even more bogus than those faced by the other seven. The trial was a farce, over before it started, thanks in no small part to a judge who kept one foot on the scales the entire time.

Sorkin chose to tell the story of the trial, giving us the protests and the violence through flashbacks, which is a reasonable device for explaining this part of history, especially given the historical populiarty of courtroom dramas on TV and in film. With the cast he’s assembled here to play the courtroom principals, he can get away with most of the action taking place inside that room, giving them the dialogue and letting the likes of Sacha Baron Cohen (Abbie Hoffman) and Eddie Redmayne (Tom Hayden) handle the rest.

There are portions of this film that work, which makes it all the worse when Sorkin decides to tinker with the story. The actual courtroom was something of a circus; Hoffman and fellow Yippies co-counder Jerry Rubin (played by Jeremy Strong) did pull a lot of the antics you see in the film, the judge (Frank Langella, good in a one-note role) really was this crooked, and what happens to Bobby Seale in the movie did happen in the real trial. So why would Sorkin insert so much fiction into this narrative? Why would he have the pacifist David Dellinger (John Carroll Lynch) punch a bailiff in the courtroom, when no such thing happened? Why do we get this fake honeytrap storyline around Rubin, with an FBI agent who never existed? Why wouldn’t Sorkin show any of the testimony from the many celebrities, including Phil Ochs, Judy Collins, and Allen Ginsburg, who did appear at the real trial? And the ending of the film, while certainly stirring, is a complete fantasy, and it is maddening that Sorkin decided that actual history wasn’t good enough for him or for us.

Cohen may not quite have the most screen time, but he’s clearly the star of the film, and if anyone gets a nomination for this movie – and the oddsmakers have it getting a whole bushel – it should be him. The secondary framing device showing Hoffman retelling the story of the protests and trial during a standup routine doesn’t work either, but Cohen is tremendous inside the courtroom and in the flashbacks, especially when he’s on the stand – he and Rubin were the only two of the seven to testify – and we get more of Hoffman than just the wisecracks. It’s not really an Oscar-worthy performance because the role itself is too slight, but Cohen runs it right up to its ceiling. Rylance also stands out for his performance here, also in a limited role, and this might be the movie that truly deserves the Best Ensemble Cast award rather than any individual honors.

How this got a nomination for the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture – Drama over Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom or The Nest, to name just two superior films, is beyond me. It’s entertaining, beyond a doubt; the movie never drags, and Sorkin can write some great dialogue, but this script is too bombastic, too overwritten, and, weird as it is to say, too slanted in favor of the defendants to call it a great work of art. I’m not even arguing for the side of the prosecution and certainly not the cops, not one of whom was convicted of any crime in connection with the riot they started, but Sorkin is trying so hard to canonize these seven men that he often turns them into cartoon characters. They can be heroes without Sorkin’s help, and the film is worse for his efforts.

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→ February 22, 2021
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Nomadland.

Nomadland has been the front-runner for Best Picture for several months now, taking home the Golden Lion at Venice, winning Best Film or Best Picture from multiple cities’ film critics associations (Boston, Chicago, Toronto, San Francisco, Houston, DC, Dallas, Seattle, and London), and landing four nominations at the upcoming Golden Globes. It’s a very different sort of film than anything I’ve seen, layering a traditional, fictional narrative on top of a work of cinema verité, based on an acclaimed non-fiction book but with Frances McDormand delivering what might be her third Oscar-winning performance. The movie is now streaming exclusively on Hulu.

Nomadland is about vandwellers, people who have chosen, or been forced to choose, to live itinerant lives in their vans or RVs, traveling around the country and taking on seasonal or other short-term work, but avoiding the fixed lifestyle and long-term obligations of home ownership. The book, by Jessica Bruder, was non-fiction, and explored this subculture of outcasts, misfits, and nonconformists, and the movie brings in many of the same people who appeared in Bruder’s book as the backdrop for the fictional story of Fern (McDormand), who is forced into this life when her job and the company town where she lived all go away in the span of a few months in 2011. (She’s not a real character, but the town, Empire, Nevada, became a ghost town, and the factory shown in the movie is still shuttered, although the gypsum mine has since re-opened and there are about two dozen people living in Empire.)

Fran is widowed and has nothing to tether her to Empire, including, it would appear, no real ties to friends nearby, so she buys a van, refits it for nomad life, and hits the road, starting out by working at an Amazon warehouse for her first seasonal job, then connecting with a group of nomads who teach her a little about the lifestyle and offer some tips. Many of these wanderers are real vandwellers from the book – Swankie, Linda, and the evangelist of the vandwelling lifestyle, Bob Wells, whose history of failing to pay child support is not mentioned in the story. One who isn’t is David, played by David Strathairn, whose voice would give him away even if you didn’t recognize him through his unkempt hair and white beard. He’s smitten with Fern, and the two run into each other multiple times, with David trying to convince Fern to come along with him and, eventually, to join him when he decides to give up van life and settle down with his son’s family.

Director Chloe Zhao’s previous feature, The Rider, also used non-actors in most of its roles, with its protagonist playing himself, so she’s mining some familiar ground here, but it is hard to imagine this movie without McDormand in it. She is utterly essential to this film, not her story specifically but the way she inhabits this niche in our world and makes it entirely plausible that she is, in fact, Fern, a woman abandoned by fortune who is trying to avoid going over the cliff. Her portrayal of an anguished, grieving person looks so effortless and so delicate that it reminds me of when extremely athletic players (often players of color) are accused of showing too little effort when the truth is that they’re just that talented.

Zhao also films this in a way that empathizes with the vandwellers without patronizing or mocking them. This could easily be misery porn, or a screed about our broken economic system (especially around health care), or a sort of weird cautionary tale about how people end up living out of their cars. Instead, Zhao presents this world without judgment, giving us the people in it as they are, so that their humanity is at the heart of the film, not their choices, and not their misfortune.

Nomadland is also frequently gorgeous as Zhao gives us soaring landscapes across the American West and some close shots of forests or other natural vistas, including the view from what I presume was supposed to be Fern’s old house, now abandoned but still intact. The film doesn’t romanticize the vandwelling life, but there’s a certain romance in the idea of getting in a van or an RV and just driving across these great unpopulated swaths of land, without so much as a destination in mind, although I find it hard to fathom doing that alone – and that’s without the added concerns that a woman would have making the same sort of journeys by herself.

Right now, Nomadland is my #1 movie from 2020, and my wife’s as well. I’ll go out on the shortest of limbs to say it’s going to take at least four nominations at the Oscars – Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, and Best Cinematography – and I can at least see why it’s the favorite to win the first one, because it’s a great movie and, in a roundabout way, speaks to the economic uncertainty of modern American life. It also gives Zhao an excellent chance to become the second woman and the first woman of color to win Best Director (Kathryn Bigelow won in 2010 for The Hurt Locker). We should see two women nominated in that category in the same year, with at least one of Regina King (One Night in Miami) and Emerald Fennell (Promising Young Woman) joining Zhao, which would be a first, although knowing the Academy’s history I wouldn’t be shocked to see them screw this up too and give one nod to, say, Aaron Sorkin instead.

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