Review: The United States Vs. Billie Holiday

Image courtesy of Hulu.

Lee Daniels' "The United States vs. Billie Holiday" is at its most interesting when it's exploring the relationship between the singer and the iconic "Strange Fruit," which protests the lynching of Black Americans. Unfortunately, that element - which is ever present throughout the film - ends up taking the back seat to the film's almost obsessive detail of the amount of drugs and alcohol Holiday consumed as well as the abuse she suffered at the hands of the men to whom she was married.

Singer Andra Day does a pretty impressive job of disappearing into the role of the singer, and her performance nearly saves the movie, although during much of the film I wished her work could have been utilized for a better film, such as, say, 1972's "Lady Sings the Blues." Even when the material fails her, Day delivers.

One of the issues with the picture is a strange framing device in which an oddly coifed man interviews Holiday for some sort of radio program and asks questions that might provoke a laugh or two, although I'm not 100 percent sure they're supposed to.

There's a compelling story there about the FBI's seeming obsession with arresting Holiday. Although they claim its for drug charges, the real reason - as Holiday points out - is because her singing "Strange Fruit" reminds them of the nation's sins against African Americans. There's also a romance between Holiday and an FBI agent named Jimmy Fletcher (Trevante Rhodes), which I've read is mostly fictionalized, although there was an agent who apparently felt guilty for his role in her persecution.

Mostly, the film focuses on every detail of Holiday's sorrow - scene after scene of her using drugs, being arrested, drinking too much or being punched or slapped by a man - to the extent that it feels less like a biopic, and even less like the pointed commentary it aims to be when it addresses the story of "Strange Fruit," and more like what has been called "misery porn."

"The United States vs. Billie Holiday" isn't a bad movie - while Lee Daniels has made some good movies, such as "Precious" and "The Butler," his "The Paperboy" is a bad one - and it has some strong elements: the music, obviously, is great; Day's performance carries the picture; there's some decent supporting work; it's often funny, despite the gloominess of the entire enterprise; and there are some stylistic touches that work well too. 

But overall, the filmmakers fail to recognize its most compelling element - what "Strange Fruit" means to Holiday and how her singing it in public is what compels the FBI to persecute her - and opts instead to focus on its most pedestrian one (the drugs). It's an average movie that could have been a better one.

Review: I Care A Lot

Image courtesy of Netflix.

I'll admit I struggled with "I Care a Lot" - for much of the film's running time, my sole concern was that things would end badly for its various characters. Now, there is no requirement for me that I must like or feel sympathetic toward the lead characters in a movie I watch. Hell, many of my favorite movies are about people who are somewhat awful - consider most gangster movies or Daniel Day Lewis' sinister, but brilliant, turn as Daniel Plainview in "There Will Be Blood." 

However, the characters in "I Care a Lot" are a special breed of heinous - and the stylistic glee with which the film follows their exploits is, at times, a bitter pill to swallow. That being said, this is a very well made movie that is often uncomfortably funny, stylish and tense. It takes a fair amount of talent and craft to make me hate a group of people as much as I did those who populate "I Care a Lot."

The film's opening 30 minutes or so are among the most grueling I can recall in recent years. Rosamund Pike plays Marla Grayson, a state-appointed guardian who uses shady doctors to declare aging wealthy people unable to care for themselves, so that Marla can step in, get appointed by a clueless judge (Isiah Whitlock Jr.) to be their guardian and then take control of their lives, including their finances and assets. She is joined in this venture by her equally unscrupulous girlfriend Fran (Eliza Gonzalez).

But Marla and Fran make a mistake when they get a rich aging woman (Dianne Wiest) with seemingly no family locked away in a senior living home and begin pilfering her house for goods. As it turns out, the woman isn't who she says she is and happens to be connected to some very dangerous people, including a crime boss played ruthlessly by Peter Dinklage.

As the film progresses, it becomes a contest of sorts to see who is more of a shark - Marla's guardian (and her network of corrupt doctors, senior living center directors and judges) or Dinklage's organized crime leader and his cronies. It's a tough call. But despite the bleak and often outright evil nature of the proceedings, there are some laughs to be had, especially during a kidnapping attempt at an old folks' home gone wrong.

Pike has played sinister character before - remember her turn in "Gone Girl"? - but she really outdoes herself here. I guess it attests to her acting ability that I despised her character as much as I did. Wiest gets some major mileage out of a juicy supporting role, and Dinklage's portrayal always borders the line between menace and hilarity (nice added touch on his psychopathic crime boss's obsession with donuts).

So, whether you'll enjoy - if that's the word - "I Care a Lot" depends on your tolerance of being in the presence of truly despicable people. The film is engaging, gorgeously shot, bitterly funny, occasionally frustrating and has a particularly bleak - albeit astute - view of an unchecked system in which greed is able to run wild. It's a pretty decent movie, although you might feel the need to take a shower afterwards.

Review: The Violent Heart

Image courtesy of Gravitas Ventures.

"The Violent Heart" has an interesting central mystery - albeit one I figured out fairly early on in the picture - and a setup that is often intriguing, so it's a little disappointing that the film ultimately is more interested in wrapping up a plot than more closely examining its various concepts.

The film opens with a mystery - a young boy named Daniel (who is played by Jovan Adepo in the grownup version later in the movie) is playing in the woods late at night some years ago. He hears a noise and goes to investigate. He spots his teenage sister cavorting with a man whose identity is masked by the night. Daniel hears a gunshot, runs to investigate and finds his sister dying.

Years later, Daniel is a sullen man in his early 20s. He works at a mechanic's shop, but has plans to enlist in the Marines - his father is a big shot in the military - but first needs a letter of recommendation. As it turns out, some years prior when he was in high school, Daniel spent time in jail after getting into a fight and blinding another kid. His aim is to put his life back on the right track.

The film's other leading protagonist is a spunky high school senior named Cassie (Grace Van Patten). She gets good grades in school, comes off as carefree and her best friend is her father, Joseph (Lukas Haas), who also happens to be her English teacher. During class, they text each other and often eat lunch together in the cafeteria, as opposed to Cassie joining her other classmates.

Through mundane circumstances, Cassie meets Daniel and the two appear fond of each other. Soon, a relationship develops and Cassie finds herself gravitating toward the mechanic and away somewhat from her home life, although this is also exacerbated when Cassie believes she has stumbled upon Joseph having a tryst with a fellow faculty member and is, therefore, cheating on Cassie's mother. Daniel's home life includes drama involving a younger brother named Aaron (Jahi Di'Allo Winston), who believes his mother (played by Mary J. Blige) favors Daniel over him.

The various dramas and the central mystery involving the murder of Daniel's sister are fairly compelling. Less so are the plot mechanics that turn Daniel and Cassie's romance into a "Romeo and Juliet" style of tragedy or the subplot about Cassie skipping school and her parents objecting to her relationship with Daniel.

There's also a somewhat glaring plot hole in the film that I can't discuss too much in detail - it involves the identity of the murderer and how it should have been fairly easy for the police to identify the perpetrator, considering a piece of information that arrives via a big twist at the film's end. I can suspend disbelief much of the time in movies, but this one is, well, a little difficult to swallow.

Regardless, "The Violent Heart" isn't a bad movie - in fact, there's a fair amount going for it. Van Patten and Adepo make for compelling leads, it's well shot and decently paced. But the film doesn't reach its full potential, and its lesser elements occasionally detract from its more engaging ones.

Review: Minari

Image courtesy of A24.

       
Lee Isaac Chung's "Minari," a huge hit at last year's Sundance Film Festival (and it's easy to see why), is a film that personifies the description "bittersweet." This lovely - and often very funny picture - tells the story of a Korean family that relocates from California to rural Arkansas in the 1980s as its patriarch, Jacob (Steven Yeun), chases his dream of starting a farm where he'll grow Korean vegetables and sell them to big city markets.

We learn early on that Jacob's family - which includes wife Monica (Yeri Han), pre-teen daughter Anne (Noel Cho) and adorable young son David (Alan Kim), who has a weak heart - struggled in California because Jacob and Monica worked in chicken sexing - a process involving the determination of a young chick's sex - and while Jacob was fast at the job, Monica wasn't as talented.

Monica isn't impressed by the vacant plot of land in the middle of nowhere that Jacob has purchased for the family, and she has difficulty believing that his plans for a farm will be a success. Several other characters enter the family's orbit - including Paul (Will Patton), a deeply religious man with offbeat habits, which include him dragging a large cross down a country road every Sunday, who becomes Jacob's assistant at the farm, and Soonja (Yuh-Jung Youn), Monica's mother, who moves from Korea to come live with the family.

Soonja is a character, to say the least, and she's one of the film's two most memorable characters - the other being David. She (lovingly) calls her opponents - typically her grandchildren - "bastards" when playing them at cards, enjoys watching pro-wrestling and doesn't do, as David points out, typical things you'd expect from a grandmother. It's the relationship between the young boy and his grandmother that is the best part of a movie that's overall very good.

At first, David doesn't trust Soonja, and he even plays a prank on her that many might have a difficult time getting over, but she takes it in stride. Telling David - whose heart problems leave Monica and Jacob uneasy about his wandering far from the house - that he's stronger than he thinks, Soonja often takes the boy down to the river to plant minari, a type of water celery, by a creek bank. Their budding friendship is among the funniest and sweetest of any film of recent memory. And as David, Kim gives one of the most delightful and best child performances I've seen in some time.

The film isn't always as jolly as that duo's relationship. Jacob struggles in his farming, David's health problems are ever present and Monica and Jacob's relationship is often strained - near the film's beginning, they scream at each other while their two children throw paper airplanes with "Don't Fight" written on them into the living room where the argument is taking place. But the film goes about its sadness with gentleness, and never becomes the tragedy I often feared it could be.

"Minari" follows some of the typical beats of the immigrant-in-America story, but its offbeat sense of humor, great characterizations and strong performances and quirky story make it uniquely satisfying. This is a truly winsome little movie featuring a great cast as well as strong writing and directorial work. For a small independent film with primarily unknown cast members, it has garnered a lot of attention - and that's because it's very good.

Review: Judas And The Black Messiah

Image courtesy of HBO Max.

Daniel Kaluuya is sensational as slain Illinois Black Panther Party chairman Fred Hampton in "Judas and the Black Messiah," a fast paced historical drama that plays like a thriller and has a sense of urgency in our current moment. Much like Andrew Dominik's great "Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford," Hampton is played as the iconic, mythologized character, while the man who betrays him - William O'Neal (LaKeith Stanfield, also great), a car thief turned FBI informant - is the lead character.

When we first meet O'Neal, he is posing as an officer of the law as he attempts to pinch a vehicle in a gang-controlled section of Chicago. He gets busted and ends up in front of Roy Mitchell (Jesse Plemons), an FBI agent who wants to use him to infiltrate Chicago's chapter of the Black Panthers in order for the bureau to be able to keep tabs on Hampton, whose soaring rhetoric and socialist ideals are appealing not only to members of the city's Black community, but also Latinos and, surprisingly, white rednecks.

I don't believe it's a spoiler to note that Hampton was shot in his sleep by police on Dec. 4, 1969 in an apartment where he was staying with his then-pregnant girlfriend, Deborah Johnson (Dominique Fishback), and several other Black Panther affiliates. According to the film and what I've gleaned from interviews, O'Neal also helped to drug Hampton, so that his execution could be carried out without a struggle. O'Neal later committed suicide.

Now that we've got all that out of the way, I'll note that "Judas and the Black Messiah" is, for a film in which we know how it's all going to turn out, expertly paced, riveting and suspenseful. Director Shaka King, making his sophomore feature, although the film is for all extents and purposes his first to garner attention, shows some real chops as a filmmaker. The picture is incredibly stylish and often looks incredible - particularly a great shot introducing O'Neal as he walks down a quiet city sidewalk with his jacket flapping in the wind, or as Hampton delivers a rousing speech to a crowd and the camera often ends up behind him at a podium.

As is often the case in films that follow this type of storyline - for example, "Donnie Brasco," in which a lawman infiltrated the mob - the one doing the spying ends up feeling for his target. In this case, the target is Hampton - and it's easy to see why O'Neal takes a liking to him. While the FBI and J. Edgar Hoover - portrayed as a nasty old coot here by Martin Sheen - try to paint Hampton as a violent revolutionary, his biggest concern often involves how he's going to get a medical center built in his community or other forms of community outreach. The man speaks truth to power, and O'Neal clearly feels guilty about selling the guy out.

But while Hampton is mythologized here, the film's portrayal of his relationship with Johnson adds heart to the story, rather than just relying on Hampton's speechifying moments, despite how electric they are. Another moment during which he visits with the mother of a young man gunned down by the police and just sits quietly and listens does the same.

"Judas and the Black Messiah" might be at its most exciting as the Panthers clash with police or when Hampton meets with local gangs during a tense moment in which he attempts to promote collaboration - or especially during the scenes when Hampton speaks to crowds - but it's these quieter moments of characterization that make it even more impactful. This is only King's second film as a director - his first is unseen by me - but I'd say he's undoubtedly an upcoming filmmaker to watch. This is a gripping and, considering the historical moment we're in, timely movie that is well worth seeing.

The Best Movies Of 2020

Nomadland. Image courtesy of Searchlight Pictures.

Needless to say, like everything else 2020 was an odd year for movies. A number of high profile movies - some of which would have been likely to have been on this list - were pushed back to 2021, and are in the process of still being pushed back. A majority of the films I saw this year were screened in the comfort of my own living room. Yeah, COVID-19 has sucked.

That being said, there were still a number of great movies this year and more than a few genuine surprises. Although I still haven't seen a handful of highly acclaimed movies - such as "Collective," "Boys State," "To the Ends of the Earth" and "Another Round" - I have put together my top 10 of the year, plus 10 runners up.

Any of the aforementioned movies will be added to the list, which will be updated if necessary when the time comes. For now, here's my belated list of 2020's best films.

Runners Up
20. David Byrne's American Utopia (Spike Lee) - Reviewed here. 
19. On the Rocks (Sofia Coppola) - Reviewed here.
18. True History of the Kelly Gang (Justin Kurzel)
17. Bad Education (Cory Finley)
16. Sylvie's Love (Eugene Ashe) - Reviewed here.
15. Sorry We Missed You (Ken Loach)
14. I'm Thinking of Ending Things (Charlie Kaufman) - Reviewed here.
13. Promising Young Woman (Emerald Fennell) - Reviewed here. 
12. Tigertail (Alan Yang) - Reviewed here.
11. Minari (Lee Isaac Chung) - Reviewed here.

Top Ten
10. The Climb (Michael Angelo Covino) - Reviewed here.
  9. The Vast of Night (Andrew Patterson) - Reviewed here.
  8. First Cow (Kelly Reichardt) - Reviewed here. 
  7. Soul (Pete Docter) - Reviewed here.
  6. Crip Camp (James Lebrecht and Nicole Newnham)
  5. Never Rarely Sometimes Always (Eliza Hittman) - Reviewed here.
  4. Small Axe, Pts. I-V (Steve McQueen) - Reviewed here. 
  3. Mank (David Fincher) - Reviewed here.
  2. Da 5 Bloods (Spike Lee) - Reviewed here. 
  1. Nomadland (Chloe Zhao) - Reviewed here.

Malcolm & Marie

Image courtesy of Netflix.

Sam Levinson's "Malcolm & Marie" has two very good actors, some snazzy black-and-white photography and some decent camera work, so what is it about the film that left somewhat of a bad taste in my mouth? Let me first state this: The film is not a bad one - in fact, it's competently made from a technical standpoint and there are moments when the dialogue snaps.

That being said, it's often been noted that the success of a movie is not so much what it's about, but how it's about what it's about. That's one explanation for why "Malcolm & Marie" doesn't exactly work - the how isn't that compelling. There's also a slightly more sinister reason why the film ultimately falls flat that I'll get to in a bit.

The setup is this: Malcolm (John David Washington) is an up-and-coming movie director who has just debuted his latest film about a young drug addict's harrowing journey to cleaning herself up. He has taken his girlfriend, Marie (Zendaya), to the premiere and returned home jubilant, especially after noting the strong reaction from the crowd and a few critics he spoke to after the movie.

But something is amiss upon his return home. Marie seems fussy, and Malcolm is not the type to let sleeping dogs lie. Upon pressing her, he realizes she is angry that he didn't thank her during his speech after the screening, but managed to give shout-outs to literally everyone else. As the night progresses - and the fights pile up - we learn that this mistake is particularly egregious when one considers that Marie believes Malcolm used her own life and struggles for the purpose of his film. Add to the grievances that Marie herself is an actress, and Malcolm didn't consider her for his film, which is based - at least partially - on her own life.

There are a lot of grievances in "Malcolm & Marie" - too many, in fact. This is the type of film in which two characters have a bitter, nasty fight and then seem to make up. But there are multiple segues that allow the fight to continue - which is what it does for the film's hour-and-42-minute running time. Often, it seems that the fighting continues solely for the purpose of padding the movie's running time.

I've never required that movie characters are likable for them to be compelling - hell, look at all the great films about gangsters, murderers and other corrupt individuals. But for them to be compelling, they at least have to be interesting - in this film, Marie is a cypher and Malcolm is somewhat of a gaslighting, self centered narcissist. And neither is that interesting, despite the fact that both of the people portraying them are talented actors.

But the film's biggest - and, by now, most well documented - problem is a centerpiece argument during which Malcolm rails against a positive review he receives in the Los Angeles Times by a white female critic. Malcolm takes issue with the fact that the reviewer notes that his story is about the struggles of Black women in the health care system, and notes on multiple occasions that the film is a political one. Malcolm is angry that, as a Black filmmaker, everything he does is viewed through a political lens. He asks Marie why the reviewer compares him to Spike Lee, but not, say, William Wyler.

This concept is an interesting one - how Black artists are viewed differently than their white counterparts, and how white critics often read into the work of Black filmmakers what they want to see through a lens that they may have assigned themselves. Malcolm does not believe that his work is intrinsically political simply because he's Black, whereas the L.A. Times reviewer has assumed his film is. Again, this idea is one worth being explored.

However, Levinson - the director of "Malcolm & Marie" - is a white man. This alone shouldn't disqualify him from addressing such concepts in film, but there's a backstory. Levinson's previous film, "Assassination Nation," of which I was also not a fan, was given a particularly bad review by Katie Walsh, of - you guessed it - the Los Angeles Times. In her review, she attacked how the film sexualized its female leads - one of whom was a trans actor - and then, at the picture's end, tried to lecture viewers on feminism. She argued it was an example of how you can't eat your cake and have it too.

So, the problem with "Malcolm & Marie" is that Levinson clearly devotes a large section of the film in which his lead, Malcolm, attacks the "white lady from the L.A. Times" over her review of his film, and uses it as a means to vent about an incident from his own life. 

In other words, the director portrays a Black man venting about how he, as a person of color, is misunderstood by critics due to his race as a vehicle so Levinson can rant and rave about how he, a white man, was misunderstood (in his mind) by a critic - and now he wants to whine about it. The way this material is played in the film is very specific, and the overall effect is that it makes the arguments Malcolm is vehemently expounding upon seem insincere (coming from a white writer-director), and merely a means of allowing Levinson to complain about what he sees as past slights. 

"Malcolm & Marie" could have been a better film - it has a strong cast of two and it looks good - but it's ultimately a misfire. Had the director taken a more serious approach to the material - rather than as a passive aggressive airing of grievances - it might have been more compelling.

Review: Nomadland

Image courtesy of Searchlight Pictures.

Chloe Zhao's "Nomadland" finds poetry and beauty in the dilapidated towns hollowed out by the 2008 financial crisis and economic downturn as well as some stunning vistas of the American West in telling the tale of Fern (Frances McDormand) and a group of modern day nomads who roam from town to town, often living out of their vans or trailers and finding work where they can.

On the surface, it might sound like Fern's life is a tragedy. Her backstory is certainly one that is likely to gain your empathy: When the gypsum plant where her husband worked for decades in Empire, Nevada closed in 2011, it put everyone in the area out of work, and the town's zip code even disappeared shortly thereafter. Then, Fern's husband died, leaving her alone and without enough money to maintain their small home.

So, Fern takes to the road, working seasonal hours at an Amazon distribution center and picking up work where she can along the road in the Dakotas, Arizona and other parts of the western and Pacific northwestern areas of the United States. Along the road, she continually bumps into other vagabonds. But while Fern's story might sound like a sad one, it's strangely not a depressing one. Once we've settled into the film's beautifully melancholic and somber rhythm, we recognize that Fern lives the nomadic lifestyle primarily out of choice and on her own terms. When given the opportunity to settle down elsewhere - several offers are made - she prefers the lifestyle on the road.

One of the elements that makes "Nomadland" so interesting - and why it often feels like a docudrama - is that other than McDormand and David Strathairn, a fellow nomad who has somewhat of a crush on Fern, most of the rest of the cast is made up of actual nomads, playing themselves to an extent, who were featured in the book - Jessica Bruder's 2017 nonfiction tome "Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century" - on which the picture was based. 

There is no Fern in Bruder's book - her character is an amalgam of various people who live the lifestyle - but Linda (Linda May), an older woman who acts as a mentor of sorts on the nomadic lifestyle for Fern; Swankie (Charlene Swankie), a woman with cancer who wants to make it to Alaska one last time; and Bob (Bob Wells), a kindly man who looks like Santa Claus and hosts an annual gathering of nomads to give them tips on how to survive on the road, are all characters who were featured in some way in the book.

While "Nomadland" has some political commentary to be found within - especially regarding how in America citizens work their whole lives, often for little to show for it, and end up being discarded once they are no longer able bodied and have the ability to contribute to the workforce, and often left behind - it's not an overtly political film. The film is set in 2011 and 2012, and the aftershocks of the 2008 economic meltdown are ever present. But the film is equally about the concept of finding peace with oneself, and how that concept can vary among people.

For example, after Fern's van breaks down, she takes a trip to see her well-established sister, who has sympathy for Fern's dedication to the nomadic lifestyle, but also wants her to come live with her and her husband. Strathairn's character is only partially dedicated to the nomadic lifestyle, and when an opportunity arises for him to live under a roof - a birth in the family - he takes it, and seems genuinely surprised when Fern rebuffs an offer to get off the road for awhile herself. This should come as no surprise. In an early scene, Fern finds a stray dog, but decides not to keep it. It's not that she doesn't like others - she's obviously very close to Linda and enjoys Dave's (Strathairn) company - but it seems that after the loss of her husband, she doesn't want to get tied down to anyone.

That "Nomadland" is such a piercing, insightful and moving work is pretty astounding. It bears similarity to Zhao's previous picture, the bull riding drama "The Rider," in terms of style, locations and tone. But what makes it amazing is that Zhao, who has done a better job of chronicling the lower class lives of the American West than most U.S. directors of recent years (with the exception of Debra Granik, whose "Winter's Bone" and "Leave No Trace" are in Zhao's distinguished company), was born in China. She has claimed this territory as her own and left an indelible mark.

There are moments in "Nomadland" that are beautiful enough to take your breath away - notably, gorgeous sunsets, rocky crags in the Dakotas, a photo taken of the world's loneliest dinosaur at a rundown theme park and a late night piano playing session. There's visual poetry in the film, but also actual poetry - a former student of Fern's touchingly recalls a passage that Fern, who was once a substitute teacher, taught her, while Fern herself recites a few stanzas from "Romeo & Juliet" to a young nomad who doesn't know what to write to his girlfriend.

Perhaps, the loveliest concept of "Nomadland" is one relayed by Bob Wells, who tells a heartbreaking story of how he ended up living the nomadic lifestyle, and notes that what he likes about the way of life is that there's never a "final goodbye" between fellow travelers. He just tells them, "See you on down the road," and he often ends up doing so when he least expects it. 

Fern also lives by this mantra - after living a life for decades that seemed safe only to come unraveled by economic forces beyond her control, her simpler lifestyle in which every new vista feels like an adventure and there are fewer things to latch onto, and possibly lose, seems more appealing. "Nomadland" is a deeply meaningful film that, like an old friend, I can see myself revisiting and catching up with again somewhere on down the road.