Promising Young Women (Amazon Prime)

 

Promising Young Women (Amazon Prime)

This is film noir in daylight. Cassie  Thomas, as played by Carey Mulligan, has a normal and somewhat dull existence. She is thirty years old lives at home and is a barista at a local coffee shop. This is what you would not expect from a promising young woman. Her career in medicine was derailed by an incident in medical school. She was top of  her class but dropped out. The film is her journey to settle scores. She no qualms going to extremes. The plot is complex with the twists and turns.

The role is a bit of out of character for Mulligan. She usually plays more positive gentler roles. Here she gives an intense psychological performance. Her character is deceptive and manipulative which Mulligan plays perfectly.

The movie is not all dark, there are some lighthearted moments. Her parents played by Jennifer Coolidge (Stifler’s mom in American Pie) and Clancy Brown give her a suitcase for her thirtieth birthday. Their home is classic kitsch. Different style chandeliers, a plastic tablecloth and gold detail on the padded headboard. Her parents do not have a clue what Cassie is doing.

The supporting cast is another strong point of the film. Bo Burnham plays her almost boyfriend (they have issues). He has no idea what he is getting into when he starts dating Cassie. There is also Christopher Mintz-Plasse ( McLoven from Super Bad) and Sam Richardson ( from Veep). Alfred Molina plays the lawyer and Molly Shannon, who unfortunately has a small role.

The film never petters out. The climax is stunning.  This movie is worth your while.

 

News of the World

 

News of the World (Amazon Prime)

Let’s get to it. This is a slow movie, 115 minutes slow. For a western most of the plot is pretty  predictable. The heart of the movie is the tender relationship Hanks develops with his co-star, Helena Zengel. Tom plays Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd, a former Confederate soldier and Helena plays Johanna, an orphaned ten year old German girl who was abducted by Indians after they massacred her family. Tom travels from town to town reading the news to rural towns people charging a dime for admission. Besides informing the locals of the news the readings were a welcomed distraction from their hardscrabble life.  The film takes place in post-Civil War Texas. Under Reconstruction confederate soldiers had to show loyalty cards and could not carry firearms. The Texas landscape is bleak and baren, a metaphor for a defeated state and its people.

Captain Kidd finds Johanna abandoned on the road. After her parents were killed by Indians she was raised by the Kiowas and no longer speaks English. The majority of her dialogue is a few native words  and some broken English. Kidd obligates himself to return Johanna to her only relatives, her aunt and uncle.

This is basically a two actor film. There is a smattering of Indians and ex-confederate soldiers, but the main drama is between Captain Kidd and Johanna. Tom Hanks is a versatile actor who has played roles from the beloved Forest Gump to a cast away FedEx executive. Here Hanks is like Mr. Rogers on horseback. He is sincere and caring. Over the course of their journey he develops a fatherly affection for Johanna.

Helena Zengel is a Germain actress (what else) with little screen time in the US. With limited dialogue the majority of her performance is portraying emotions and nonverbal communication which she does  well. She is sad but strong willed. Their relationship is not easy. She is defiant and resists returning to the white world. Her relationship with Captain Kidd is tumultuous but they bond over time.

This movie is like comfort food, welcomed and easy to digest. News of the World is a reprieve from cable news.

 

WW1984

WW1984 (HBO  Max)

I am having a bit of trouble writing this review. This movie has been widely anticipated but parts it are disappointing. The first Wonder Woman film in 2017 (for the rest of the review the shorthand will be WW2017) was a success on several fronts. It introduced a new superhero into the DC franchise and also  made a big push for the coveted female audience. Patty Jenkins received high praise for directing a mega hit which garnished  93% from Rotten Tomatoes and a box office of $882m (budget $140m).

WW1984 has some problems, mainly with the script and casting. The script for WW2017 had a continuous arch, the story was focused on WW I. Even when it expanded into mythology , when Diana battled Ares (God of war) the story remained coherent.

In WW1984 the script is all over the place and is over ambitious. It starts with the schemes of a lowly Ponzi con man, played by Pedro Pascal, and escalates  into an apocalyptic crisis. The premise  of the story is  based a combination of Aladdin and Midas myths. This approach is taken to absurd  levels. Even comics have to be somewhat rational.

Gal Gadot is beautiful and an effective superhero. Her character is basically a continuation of  WW2017. Aside from showing some new childhood experiences with the Amazons, Jenkins does not take this opportunity to further develop Diana’s character. How has she handled the last 66 years? It would make her character more interesting.

 Pedro Pascal is one of the villains. His performance is absolutely awful. He over acts, his mannerisms are exaggerated even his speech is annoying. He needed better directing .The other villain, villainess, is played by Kristen Wiig.  She is best known as a  comedian who played in  Bridesmaids and was a former member of SNL. She is miscast in this role. She first appears as a dorky gemologist and is transformed in to an uber villain. It just does not work. Her evil persona is forced and not convincing.

As you may recall in WW2017, Steve Treavor (Diana’s lover), played by Chris Pine, died while piloting a German aircraft filled with poison gas  and crashed  into the ocean.  As part of the WW1984 plot he is  brought back to life. His resurrection is lame. The writers lacked imagination or were just looking for an easy way out to bring Trevor back.

The film does have a lot of action although the main fighting scenes come  in the latter parts. I am not sure why they picked 1984. Some of the  outfits were hideous. Chris Pine wears the ubiquitous  Men’s Club jacket of the 80’s. Gadot looks stunning in anything. Part of Kristen Wiig’s transformation into the dark side is wearing  tacky outfits.

China is a big market for superhero movies. The producers anticipated a box office of $58m, but only realized $18m (Covid was not big factor). With most movie theaters closed in America current  box office is not a measure of success. WW84 was released on HBO Max for free. One explanation for doing this  was the producers wanted to keep the fan base in tack. WW2017 had a Rotten Tomato score of 93%, WW1984 scored 66%. There is word of WW III.

Soul

 

Soul (Disney)

Soul is a “ computer-animated fantasy comedy-drama” produced by Pixar. It is absolutely wonderful. As they say it is a film for all ages. This is another Pixar gem.  It is about finding purpose in life and being true to what you want to be. Aside from these serious themes the movie is funny and the animation beautiful. Soul is in the tradition of other great Pixar movies: Toy Story, Up and Monsters Inc.

For an animated film, the story is involved. Joe Gardner is a band teacher whose passion is to be part of a jazz ensemble. He has a fatal  accident and winds up on the conveyor belt to the Great Beyond. After some adventures he meets 22 in the Great Before who is a soul looking for the spark to complete her badge of traits so she can go to earth. To complete her training 22 has been coached  by some of the great minds in history and their interaction is hilarious. Joe and 22 manage to go back to earth but wind  up in the wrong bodies and 22 inhabits Joe’s body and Joe winds up in a therapy cat. The interaction between the two is the heart of the movie.

The voice actors are first class. Jamie Foxx  voices  Joe Gardner, Tina Fay voices 22, Questlove is the drummer and Phylicia Rashard is Joe’s mother. There are these soul councilors in the Great Before all named  Jerry and one dogged accountant who keeps an accurate tally of all souls who are bound to the Great Beyond. Like Toy Story the intended audience is universal.

The Midnight Sky

 

The Midnight Sky (Netflix)

The Midnight Sky is like getting a Christmas present  wrapped in fancy paper but when you open it you find pair of socks. The fancy wrapping paper in this case is the impressive cast. The socks is the plot. Most doomsday films end either in a cataclysm or salvation. Here the earth ends from tediousness.  

 George Clooney is the lead actor and he also directs. The astronauts are Felicity Jones, Kyle Chandler and David Oyelowo with others. In search of a habitable planet to save humanity the astronauts  journey to one of Jupiter’s moons. Sci-fi  makes up its own realities and if you want to have fun you go along with it. Here a google search makes plot seem silly. Why go to Jupiter which takes six years one way when you can go to Mars in eight months? Also Mars has soil and maybe water.

Clooney is an ailing  scientist at an Artic observatory which is being evacuated.  Later on in the empty station he finds a mysterious little girl who was accidentally  been left behind. At first she does not talk and tags along with Clooney. This is the sad  Clooney unlike the suave Ocean’s Eleven Clooney. With grey hair and grey bread he tends to mumble a bit (put on subtitles). Nothing really happens until he shoots at some wolves. In the subzero artic all of a sudden the ice breaks opens and Clooney is swimming  under water. This is an obvious hint at global warming. It seems Clooney is impervious to hypothermia.

Felicity Jones is in the spaceship returning to earth with her husband David Oyelowo. She is well into her pregnancy. NASA spends billions on rocket ships but  can’t afford a few busks for condoms. Everything is harmonies in the ship and nothing much happens  until there is a meteorite strike.  The ship survives but one crew member dies. The best special effect is seeing what blood looks like in zero gravity. It looks like red Milk Dudds.

 Clooney tells the crew not to return to earth because of the catastrophic conditions. So they turn around and make another six years journey back to Jupiter. Are they the last vestiges of humanity? The film is heavily laden with green messaging, a somberness which permeates the movie. There is an a’ha moment in the end which sort of  comes from left  base. The one green thing this film does not have is bucks. It cost $100m and so far has made $63k. The positive thing about the film, if you have Netflix you do not have to pay for it.

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom

 

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (Netflix)                                                                          December 20, 2020

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is a multi-level film. It is about the blues of the 1920’s, about race, about ambition and defiance. It is an August Wilson play of the same name and the film has the intimacy of a play. The dialogue is powerful and  emotional. It reunites actors from another August Wilson play Fences. Viola Davis, who won an Academy Award for Fences, and Denzel Washington who is a producer in Ma Rainey.

Ma Rainey was a blues singer of the 1920’s. She was not a stereotypical black woman of her time; she was a force of nature. Viola Davis plays her with defiant energy. She knew the worth of her voce and that  white producers wanted to put it on their “race records”. Davis is absolutely amazing. She is in a fat suite and with grease paint make up sporting gold teeth making her look hideous. She is the definition of sass. If her demands are not met she did not sing; it is her arrangement or nothing.

Chadwick Bosemen is the other lead who is Levee, the trumpet player. This is his last performance. To think he was being treated for colon cancer and delivered this phenomenal energetic performance is mind boggling. If he wins the Oscar it will not be out of sympathy  but for his defining performance. Levee has ambitious plans to form his own band and clashes with Ma over and their artistic differences. His inner demons are rooted in the rape of his mother as a boy and his resentment of religion for failing him. His fury results in tragedy and he destroys him.

The supporting cast is outstanding. Whereas Bosemen is in constant revolt, the rest of the band just want their money and do what Ma says. They too have their tragedies and wounds but they internalize them maintaining the accepted stereotypes of the time. The two white actors represent the record company. They put up with Ma’s demands to get her voice recorded. They pay her $200 dollars for releasing the song to the record company without royalties and  pay Levee $5 for songs he wrote. Racism does not always need a cross.

Do not see this movie because it is Chadwick Bosemen’s last film. See it for the performances of Viola Davis and Chadwick Boseman. Rotten Tomatoes gave it a 99.

Tenet

 

Tenet (Amazon Prime)                                                                                   December  16, 2020

How do I begin? Tenet is a complex and confusing movie. Christopher Nolan’s movies such as Inception and Interstellar have intricate and challenging plots. Tenet is on a whole other level. It is sci-fi bent on itself. Nolan has been gestating this project for twenty years. There is an opening scene in Memento (2000) which is a precursor for Tenet. Time flows from the past to the future and back. As time rewinds you see people walking backwards and objects reversing themselves such as a bullet going back into the barrel of a gun. In some scenes the same characters appear as present and future versions of themselves. They use the word entropy a lot but I have no idea what it means (I was a history major). When you Google Tenet one of the choices is Tenet explained.

The title Tenet is a palindrome and is a metaphor for the fluidity of time. The title is derived from a Sator Square containing a five-word Latin palindrome with Tenet in the middle. The plot, plots, involve the CIA, a Russian oligarch, an Indian arms trafficker, an unwitting art expert, climate change and the end of the world.

Tenet was supposed to be the blockbuster of the year. Like other movies it was derailed by the Covid virus. The movie cost about  $350m (including marketing).Warner Brothers expects to loss about $50m, much because of delayed theater releases in the United States. Rotten Tomatoes gave the film a rating of 71%.  

John David Washington (Black Klansman, Denzel’s son) plays the title role. He is the protagonist  and his name in the movie is the Protagonist. The man swaggers while sitting down. He is the ultimate CIA agent, resourceful and fearless. He does yeoman’s work, but no awards here.

The femme fatal is Elizabeth Debicki, she is married to the Russian oligarch. I do not know much about her but she is 6’ 2” and has a prominent jaw line. She is very English and willowy. She has an unhappy marriage to oligarch and he blackmails her by controlling access to her son.

The villain is played by Kenneth Branagh as Andrei Sator (remember the Sator Square). When I think of Branagh I think of a classically trained Shakespearean actor or as professor Gilderoy Lockhart in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, but not an evil Russian villain (if they wanted evil they should have cast Harvey Keitel). I think he over acts a bit by being what he is not. His pronounced Russian accent is the most menacing thing about him.

Robert Patterson plays Neil the Protagonist’s handler. They make a good team and are together for a large part of the movie. This is a bit of a departure from his Twilight series, but he has bulked up a bit and is less dewy eyed.

The international arms dealer is played by Dimple Kapadia as Priya. She only a few scenes but is a lynch pin. She is an attractive woman of a certain age and plays her role as an adroit ruthless weapons dealer. Love her name.

Michael Caine has a brief role as a British intelligence officer. It is the wittiest part of the movie and worthy of a chuckle.

The movie is filmed in various locations around the world and there are some impressive stunts. There is no sex in the movie, none, nada, zippo!

The film is on  Amazon Prime for $19.99. I saw it twice, had to. Use subtitles, the sound mix is poor.