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. 

Review: The Little Things

Image courtesy of Warner Bros.

John Lee Hancock's "The Little Things" makes up for what it lacks in originality with atmosphere, mood, style, solid performances and a great open ended finale. Its plot mechanics might seem as if they've been selected from the David Fincher playbook - the picture's style resembles that director's classic "Seven," although the screenplay for "The Little Things" was written years before that film - but its eerie, obsessive aura is often compelling.

The film is set in the 1990s, and there's a good explanation for that. Hancock wrote the screenplay about three decades ago and sat on it for years. Updating a criminal investigation picture would have required a complete overhaul, considering today's reliance on forensics and all sorts of new technology that is used to aid homicide investigations.

The film opens with a young woman on a deserted highway outside of Los Angeles, singing along to The B-52's "Roam," an ironic choice, and then being tormented by a creep in a car. She just barely escapes with her life. We cut to Bakersfield, where deputy Joe Deacon (Denzel Washington) is dealing with small town cop issues. He was formerly a big shot L.A. detective, but we get the sense that his stint in the City of Angels ended poorly.

Deacon's boss gives him an assignment that will require him to travel to L.A. and coordinate with that city's police department. Once there, he overhears a press conference being given by a hot shot cop named Baxter (Rami Malek) on a series of brutal murders that seem to ring a bell for Deacon. On occasion, we see flashbacks of a previous case Deacon had worked in L.A. that culminated with the discovery of several young women discovered nude, dead and tied to a rock. Similar to the case being investigated by Baxter, the young women had bags placed over their heads.

Although the two men get a bad first impression of each other, Baxter eventually asks Deacon - who is stuck in L.A. for the weekend due to the assignment given to him back in Bakersfield - to get involved in his investigation. Baxter is seemingly impressed by Deacon's observations at the crime scene of the serial killer's latest victim. And yes, this plot thread is a bit far fetched, but it's necessary for the two to team up. 

Much like David Fincher's far superior "Zodiac," Hancock's film is less about serial killing than it is about obsession, and how his film's two detectives go desperately down the rabbit hole - albeit for different reasons - in their attempts to catch the killer. The film heads in a different direction after they stumble upon a suspect - a creepy mechanic named Albert Sparma (Jared Leto, looking like Charles Manson) - who seems too good to be true.

Leto appears to be having fun hamming it up as Sparma, a self-described crime buff who seems to understand the logistics of police work, and appears to be - as the British say - taking the piss with the two detectives, leading them on to believe he might be the killer, but withholding just enough to make them doubt. Sparma's actual motives might seem questionable - and again, far fetched - but his taunting of Deacon and Baxter is what ultimately leads to the film's ambiguous, open ending - which I personally liked, although I can see it infuriating others.

As I've mentioned, "The Little Things" doesn't really break any new ground narratively, although to be fair it was written several years before the glut of 1990s serial killer thrillers like "The Bone Collector," "Kiss the Girls" and "Copycat." It's way better than those entries in the genre, although not on par with such classics as "Zodiac," "Seven" or "The Silence of the Lambs."

However, the film still has quite a bit going for it - Washington gives the typically strong performance you'd expect of him as the obsessive workaholic Deacon, while Leto's work is fun in an over-the-top manner and Malik is more of the straightforward, by-the-book cop - that is, until he isn't.

The film is also visually compelling - the moody night photography accompanied by Thomas Newman's almost soothing score goes a long way - and like many neo noirs, it makes great use of Los Angeles as a backdrop, from the entrancing scenes in which cars trail other vehicles on darkly lit, lonesome highways to one particularly memorable shot of a woman jogger being pursued by a vehicle down a dark alleyway with the L.A. skyline in the distance.

So, while "The Little Things" may have an aura of familiarity in terms of its storytelling devices and its focus on detectives given over to obsession - although, for me, that theme is often what makes these types of films compelling - the movie is rich in style and presentation, and by the time I reached its haunting culmination, whether the case was brought to a satisfying conclusion was almost besides the point. Hancock's film isn't a classic of the genre, but it's an effective and enjoyable potboiler. 

Review: The White Tiger

Image courtesy of Netflix.

Ramin Bahrani's films are often centered around those who are down on their luck - "99 Homes" and "At Any Price" - or outsiders with economic challenges - "Goodbye Solo." In some cases, his films are about both concepts - such as his early pictures "Man Push Cart" and "Chop Shop." The one thing that most of these films had in common was that one could relate to and feel sympathy for his lead characters.

In his latest film, "The White Tiger," which is based on an excellent, award-winning novel of the same name by Aravind Adiga, the lead character, Balram (Adarsh Goulrav), is certainly down on his luck, an outsider and a person of little consequence in the world that surrounds him. However, while Balram's story is compelling, it's often hard to sympathize with him - but this is no matter as many films about captivating characters, such as gangsters and other criminals, keep us compelled even if the characters leave much to be desired as humans.

"The White Tiger" also marks another change for Bahrani - while his previous pictures often have a low budget, handheld indie aesthetic, his latest is more stylistically flashy. While the film adheres to the concept that the movie is never quite as good as the book - although there are more than enough examples of the opposite - it's a compelling crime drama about an extremely poor man pulling himself up out of poverty, mostly through cunning, but occasionally via cold blooded behavior.

Bahram hails from the slums of India, but he recognizes the respect that an aging man who is part gangster, part benefactor to his town gets. Bahram ingratiates himself to the man's more forward thinking son, Ashok (Rajkummar Rao), while attempting to avoid the other thuggish son, The Mongoose (Vijay Maurya), and lands a job as Ashok's driver.

Both Ashok and his wife, Pinky Madam (Priyanka Chopra), take to Bahram, occasionally allowing him to take liberties with them that he wouldn't dare attempt with others outside his caste. But Ashok - especially as the film goes on - eventually finds that he has no problem berating Bahram, even after the servant nearly takes the rap for a horrific accident that Pinky somewhat inadvertently causes. 

The film is narrated by Bahram and includes stylistic touches that might seem at home in a Scorsese film. All that's missing is the record scratch and the voice over noting, "You might wonder how I got here..." Bahrani's film is a swiftly paced rags-to-almost-riches saga about an underdog who learns to swindle by observation and ends up clawing his way to the top - but, as usual, at a stiff price. The narration and framing device is Bahram writing a letter to former Chinese premier Wen Jiabao, who is in the process of making a visit to India in the earlier 2000s.

While Adiga's novel felt fresh and exciting, Bahrani's picture occasionally sticks a little too closely to the cliches of its particular genres - one might describe "The White Tiger" as a blend between a Scorsese crime film and a story of a street kid attempting to escape poverty a la "Slumdog Millionaire" or "Salaam Bombay!" That being said, it's a fast paced and compelling film, even if the earthier style of "Chop Shop" and Bahrani's earlier works was slightly missed.

As Bahram becomes corrupted by the lure of money and we see Ashok's true nature come out when his marriage hits the rocks, I was reminded of the scripture regarding a camel going through the eye of a needle being easier than a rich man entering the kingdom of heaven. "The White Tiger" is another story that reminds one to be careful what one wishes for. As a film, there's not a whole lot going on that we haven't seen before - both stylistically and dramatically - but Bahrani's movie is an engaging, well made movie about money's corrupting influence.

Review: One Night In Miami

Image courtesy of Amazon Studios.

In the past month, I've seen two films based on acclaimed stage productions - first, August Wilson's "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom" and, this week, Kemp Powers's "One Night in Miami." Although both movies are good, the latter - which is the directorial debut of Regina King - is the one that works slightly better as a movie.

While "Ma Rainey" was an acting showcase and a good film, it felt slightly stagey, whereas King's "Miami" does a better job of translating from the stage to the screen and, as a result, it feels more cinematic. Although King's film also - since it was first a play - relies mostly on dialogue to move its narrative forward, it involves more camera movement and variety of location.

The film - and Kemp's play - bears some similarity to Terry Johnson's play and Nicolas Roeg's experimental movie adaptation of "Insignificance," a 1985 film that imagined an alternate history during which Albert Einstein, Marilyn Monroe, Joseph McCarthy and Joe DiMaggio were stuck in a hotel room together.

In "Miami," four iconic Black figures of the mid-1960s - Malcolm X (played by Kingsley Ben-Adir), Cassius Clay (Eli Goree), Jim Brown (Aldis Hodge, whose vocal imitation and cadences of the football legend and Blaxploitation actor are spot on) and Sam Cooke (Leslie Odom Jr.) - wind up in a hotel room after Clay, who has yet to change his name to Muhammad Ali, defeats Sonny Liston during a boxing match in Miami in 1964.

Malcolm X, who would be assassinated about one year later, has Clay's future on his mind, acting as a spiritual guide for the boxer, and hoping that he will officially join the Nation of Islam, and then flee it with the Civil Rights leader when he decides to start his own organization. Cooke is coming off a flop of a performance at a famed British music hall, and gets prodded by Malcolm X for primarily writing love songs, although he's inspired to write his Civil Rights anthem "A Change is Gonna Come" during the course of the picture.

Brown's role in the story is slightly more nebulous - although after making the case to Malcolm X that Cooke is the freest of the four due to his owning his own record company, we see his character follow a similar path by deciding to leave the NFL to pursue an acting career. However, there's a powerful moment early in the film during which he visits an aging white man played by Beau Bridges, who appears to be some sort of mentor or bigwig in Brown's hometown. After praising Brown's athletic performance and calling him a tribute to the town, he nonchalantly tells Brown that he won't invite him into his house because, you guessed it, he's Black. Despite being a "hero" to Americans, he is still subjected to their casual racism.

For starters, you have to admire the four lead actors - all of whom are quite good - for taking on such iconic roles, especially considering the fact that Malcolm X has already been portrayed by Denzel Washington in a landmark performance, while Will Smith did a solid job already of portraying Ali.

During the course of the evening, the four men discuss race in 1960s America, how they believe they are contributing to the cause of civil rights and the possibility of life changes, from careers to actual names in Ali's case. The men bicker, but there's an obvious love and admiration among them for each other that is best exemplified when Malcolm X regales them with a story of how Cooke - these two men argue more than any other of the four - once brought down the house at a concert when the sound equipment failed. 

The squabbles between them primarily revolve around their roles in American society - Malcolm X especially recognizes that his three friends aren't just athletes and a musician, but that their success and national recognition give them a voice that can be used to advocate for change. 

So, while the setup of "One Night in Miami" is one that's been seen before, it gets a lot of mileage out of its substance. It's also well written and acted, and King shows assurance behind the camera in her directing debut. Among stage-to-screen adaptations of recent years - and there have been more than a few - this is one that does a very good job of translating the confines of a play into an experience that feels cinematic.

Review: Shadow In The Cloud

Image courtesy of Redbox Entertainment.

 Much like the recently overlooked - albeit uneven - "The Empty Man," Roseanne Liang's "Shadow in the Cloud" is an ambitious genre match-up that works for much of its running time, but contains enough moments that stumble for it to not quite be what one might call a "good" movie.

Unlike "The Empty Man," which is very long for a horror movie, Liang's film is surprisingly short - only about 75 minutes if you subtract the credit sequence set inspiringly to Kate Bush's "Hounds of Love." Its brevity means that the overabundance of exposition and genre switcheroos come at you pretty fast.

As the film opens, a young, mysterious woman named Maude (Chloe Grace Moretz) with a British accent boards a plane filled with soldiers from England, Scotland and the United States on an apparent mission during World War II. The plane is about to cross the ocean, and there's an uneasy feeling from the beginning when many of the men make unsettling comments toward Maude that might lead one to believe they're burgeoning rapists.

For about the first half of the picture, Maude is relegated to sitting in the plane's bottom turret, and much of the dialogue is centered around what exactly she's doing on the plane as it takes place over the intercom system. The men onboard the plane don't trust her, and her cause isn't helped by the package she's brought onto the plane that she claims is highly classified.

Oh yeah, there's another passenger on the plane who causes some trouble - a gremlin that Maude first spots on the plane's wing. She has difficulty getting the soldiers to believe her regarding its presence. "Shadow in the Cloud" vacillates between being a feminist World War II action movie - which is impressive that the filmmakers have managed to make it so, considering how its screenwriter has #MeToo accusations hanging over him - and a horror picture with a gruesome creature terrorizing a plane. 

For the most part, it's a pretty fun genre picture - that is, until the filmmakers decide to go overboard, starting with a sequence during which Maude must crawl out of the turret and chase the gremlin around the plane's exterior after the creature gets ahold of her secret package. The film remains slightly ridiculous right to the end, although a scene on the ground once the plane has landed packs an exciting punch.

The film's success often rides on Moretz, whose one-woman show during the film's first half is impressive. The special effects for a low budget film of this sort are also good, and despite its brief running time, it packs a lot in and remains entertaining. I could have done without some of the more over-the-top scenes, which threaten to throw the film off balance, but all in all this is a reasonably decent action-horror movie with a strong central performance and at least one twist you won't likely see coming. 

Review: Promising Young Woman

Image courtesy of Focus Features.

You've probably seen this person before - slumped over at a bar after having had too much to drink, and your immediate thought is, "Will this person be able to get home safely?" At least, that should be your immediate thought, but there are those with darker instincts. 

Emerald Fennell's "Promising Young Woman" might lead you into believing it's a modern take on "Looking for Mr. Goodbar," but you'll soon see that this razor-sharp thriller and (sort of) comedy has much more on its mind. This is a movie containing scenes that go from hilarity to horror in a matter of seconds, but Fennell makes the transitions feel organic - its intent is to keep you on your toes.

In the film, Carey Mulligan plays Cassandra, a once promising medical student who works at a coffee shop and lives with her parents at age 30. She appears to not have much motivation in life other than the revenge she metes out on a weekly basis to creeps who take home women who are too drunk to resist them for the purpose of having nonconsensual sex with them.

In the film's opening scene, Cassandra gets taken home by a young man pretending to be a "nice guy" who will help her get home. But in the cab ride they're sharing, he changes gears and gets her to come to his apartment, where he then tries to put the moves on a seemingly drunk-to-the-point-of-passing-out Cassandra. When she asks, completely sober, what he's doing, he's shocked and has no explanation for his behavior, other than that he thought they had a "vibe."

She repeats this process until she finds new purpose after a seemingly nice guy with whom she went to school and now works as a pediatrician wanders into her coffee shop. They flirt and she kinda likes him, and eventually goes out on a date with him. Their romance blooms, but she also finds out in the process that he's connected to a number of people with whom she went to medical school, where seemingly something awful happened years before and prompted her to drop out.

Cassandra, reminded of the past, comes up with a list of past acquaintances from medical school against whom she bears a grudge and tracks them down with the purpose of making them squirm - or worse. As it turns out, her best friend from school was gang raped during a party in which a bunch of frat boys watched and laughed - and everyone from the school's dean (Connie Britton) and fellow students (including one played by Alison Brie) to a lawyer (Alfred Molina) who has since grown a conscience played a part in covering it up.

"Promising Young Woman" is a righteously angry thriller that often veers into dark comedy, but always aims to make its audience uncomfortable. I mean this as a compliment. There have been a number of #MeToo movies in recent years - such as 2020's critically acclaimed "The Assistant" - but this one is among the sharpest and gutsiest.  

Mulligan gives one of her finest performances as Cassandra, a woman whose character is often framed in the film as the villain - it doesn't recognize her as such, but the way specific scenes are shot, it makes her look like one and those she torments like the victim, until you suddenly realize that the roles are reversed - and she carries what struck me as a challenging role with apparent ease.

There are several twists in the film - one foreseen by me, which doesn't prevent it from still feeling like a gut punch, and one I didn't see - but in the case of this picture, they add to the film rather than come off as gimmicky storytelling devices. This is a mainstream movie that has something rather urgent to say, and for a first feature it's surprisingly assured. The director of "Promising Young Woman" is undoubtedly one herself.