Woman of a Certain Age

Movies: Gloria Bell

It's telling that Sebastian Leilo's Gloria Bell has a 94% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, according the to critics, but only a 47% rating according to audience members. Why the discrepancy? I believe it's because the previews for Gloria Bell advertise a slightly different type of story than what you experience during the actual movie. The previews tell a story of a radiant, middle-aged woman (Julianne Moore, a revelation of humanity in this film), Gloria, who falls for a kind, lonely man, Arnold (John Turturro, wonderful as always). The actual movie depicts a story slightly more complicated, but nonetheless absolutely beautiful and deeply empathetic.

Leilo, who has quickly become one of my favorite directors, based this film on his own 2013 film, Gloria, which basically is the same plot but set in Chile (Leilo's country of origin). In this Americanized update, Gloria Bell is a stunning woman in her 50s who is divorced with two grown kids (Michael Cera and Caren Pistorius) and a pretty fulfilling life without a partner. She does well at her job at an insurance company, takes "laughing yoga" classes where groups of women engage in laughter exercises, and goes out to a disco that caters to middle-aged men and women. Gloria is the woman I aspire to be at that age: grounded, kind, strong, and quirky enough to engage in activities that keep life fun and interesting.

When she meets Arnold at the disco, they hit it off immediately, making love the first night they meet. Arnold is more recently divorced and seems glued to his constantly-ringing phone. But he also owns a paintball park and teaches Gloria to shoot a paintball gun and then reads Spanish poetry to her. He's fun and cute (he's John Turturro giving serious DILF vibes) even if he is a bit quiet and depressed.

*** Spoilers***

But the red flags start flying when Gloria brings Arnold to her son's birthday party and he reveals the level of dependency his ex-wife and adult daughters have on him. They don't work, they emotionally abuse him, and he's still very tied to them in an unhealthy way. Additionally, Arnold can't deal with meeting Gloria's ex-husband (Brad Garrett in an excellent small role), who is a bit of a sad sack himself, but very vocal about how much he and Gloria were in love back in the old days. Without telling anyone, Arnold leaves the party. Gloria is worried, then humiliated, then angry. But Arnold desperately tries to get a second chance, only to blow it a second time in a hugely spectacular way.

Despite these blows, Gloria never loses her sense of dignity and humor. Even when she's falling down drunk after a massive disappointment, you know that this is an adventure for her, not a defeat. And you know that the only one who deserves to feel embarrassed is Arnold who throws away an amazing woman to be at the beck and call of his emotionally destructive ex and wretched daughters.

***end spoilers***

What makes Gloria Bell so different from all those other "women of a certain age" films like It's Complicated and Something's Gotta Give is that this film is so much more true to life, and yet not a downer even when things get rough for the characters. It hits the sweet spot between "real" and "hopeful". Gloria LOVES dancing, and even when she's down on her luck, music is something she can always turn to. The film may be a bit "Hollywood" in the sense that Moore honestly has the body of a 30 year old (you see a lot of her hot bod in this movie), but otherwise is one of the least Hollywood depictions of middle-aged love and life I've seen. It revels the beauty to be found in the small things, like taking a yoga class or drinking a cold martini or hearing "Gloria" by Laura Branigan on the radio.

I've heard people lament aging not only because of the physical and health aspects of getting older, but also because once you've had X number of experiences, life stops being fresh and interesting. I personally feel that life is as exciting as we choose to make it--there's no rule that says we can't try new things or seek pleasure as we age. There's no rule that says we can't find joy in the mundane. There's no rule that says we can't have sex and create new friendships and romances as we age. Realistically, many people are single in middle-age, especially these days. Divorce numbers are down, but they're still high. So my question to you, reader is this: if you end up "alone" in your 40s, 50s, or older, what are you going to do? Personally, I hope I "go down dancing" like Gloria Bell says she wants to. Because I know that age really is just a mindset and that life has the potential to be fun, joyous, and meaningful until the end.

Grade: A

Danse Macabre

Movies: Climax

Director Gaspar Noe is infamous among movie buffs for his violent, decadent films. He is probably most well-known for directing the film Irreversible which features a 9-minute, extremely realistic rape scene. I have not seen Irreversible and though I am curious, I gotta say that I'll probably never be in the mood to watch graphic depictions of assault.

Climax is the first Noe film I've seen and it has been called his most "accessible" film by movie critics. Even so, it is a doozy. I saw the film alone in a theatre with maybe 10 other audience members, four of whom walked out (one guy said "fuck that!" as he left, as if anyone cared about his opinion).

The film follows a troupe of French dancers who have a rehearsal in what appears to be a church or school basement. After the rehearsal, which is filmed in real time and is visually stunning to watch (the entire cast, with the exception of actress Sophia Boutella, are professional dancers), the dancers cut loose, drink, eat, and chat with one another. But all of a sudden, everyone simultaneously begins to feel weird...they quickly realize that someone has spiked their sangria with LSD or some other hallucinogenic drug.

From that moment, the party descends into a nightmare of paranoia, violence, questionably coercive sexual hookups, and absolute mayhem. Noe uses the camera to disorient the viewer, turning it upside down so it looks like the floor is on the ceiling, and following the dancers and they movie throughout the building, which is dimly lit in gaudy, fluorescent red and green lights.

If you want to avoid spoilers, stop reading now!

I will give Climax this: it is visually stunning. The dance sequences, the camera work, and the lighting all add up to an intoxicating, immersive experience. Some might find it nausea-inducing, but I really dug it. The use of dancers instead of actors was a good choice as well, since actual dance sequences take up at least 20-30 minutes of the entire film (and they are truly amazing to watch). It also gives the film a lot of diversity in terms of race, sexual orientation, and gender expression which is really cool.

That said, I understand why some people walked out. Climax quickly becomes unnecessarily cruel. When the discovery of the spiked sangria first happens, one character who refused alcohol earlier because he doesn't drink is confronted and locked outside of the building in the snowy winter weather. Another character who wasn't drinking is confronted and when she reveals she's not drinking because she is pregnant, another female dancer calls her a liar and proceeds to knee her in the stomach and then kick her stomach when she falls down. As she begs for help, the other dancers gather around and scream at her to kill herself.

If you think that's bad, just wait until one of the young son of another dancer, probably 7 years old, who was watching the rehearsal sneaks out of his bed and is caught drinking the sangria. Mom, high as balls, locks him in the electrical closet, telling him not to touch the electric wires. Mom promptly loses the key to the closet and, of course, the power goes out and the dancers yell "Hahaha! Tito's fried" Tito's mom then commits suicide. Funnnnnnnn.

Still with me? There's also a scene where a male dancer makes out with his biological sister even though she tells him to stop and runs away crying while he chases her. There's another lesbian make-out that is, if not coercive, definitely not enthusiastically consensual.

There's also screaming (so, so much screaming), a dancer pissing themselves on the dance floor, a fistfight, and more! All of this debauchery and ruthlessness adds up to one big "why?" I'm fine with movie violence and cruelty if it serves even the smallest purpose, but Noe's thesis here appears to be "drugs are bad, mmmmkay?" And I have to wonder, does LSD actually cause this much of a freak-out? I mean, I guess if it's ingested in large doses and everyone else is taking it too it could lead to some crazy hallucinations, but you would think that people who have enough sense to either 1) call the police/an ambulance or 2) just go to their rooms and lock the door until they're sober again.

And the cherry on top of the bizarre sundae? You find out who spiked the sangria at the end when the person uses LSD eyedrops from a box that says "LSD" on it in big, black letters. Now, I'm not much of a drug user myself, so maybe I'm naive, but I don't think LSD comes in a box labeled "LSD". Maybe in France?

Overall, I'd give Climax an "A" for visuals, a "C-" for plot and a "B-" overall.

Grade: B-

Sheer Cliff

Movies: Free Solo

Free Solo is an undeniably excellent documentary in part because of how polarizing it can be to the audience.

The film follows Alex Honnold, a rock climber know for his incredibly difficult (and mind-blowingly dangerous) feats of free solo climbing, which is basically rock climbing but without ropes. Directors Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin--the latter of whom has spent ten years filming Honnold climb--follow Honnold as he prepares a free solo climb never accomplished before: climbing El Capitan in Yosemite National Park. Though other climbers have scaled El Cap, no one has attempted to free solo it. Probably because it is a nearly impossible feat and, of course, one wrong move will have the climber plunging to their death.

This narrative crux is what makes Free Solo both exhilarating and upsetting. Free solo climbers die doing what they love often and the filmmakers don't know whether they'll capture a gambit so daring, so bananas, that it will go down in the annals of history...or just a really classy snuff film. They also don't know if by agreeing to film Honnold's climb they will inadvertently push him to take risks he would not normally take, thus taking on some responsibility if he were to die.

Honnold himself is an incredibly polarizing figure. He mentions that previous girlfriends have suggested that he has a personality disorder and, well, yeah, it kind of feels that way at times. The camera cuts away during a scene where he fills out a medical form that asks if he is depressed, but according to this article, Honnold answers that question in the affirmative during a podcast. Likewise, an MRI reveals that Honnold's amygdala, the fear center of the brain, has very low activity--meaning that it takes a lot to get his fear response to work.

Viewers are treated to cringe-inducing scenes of Honnold and his girlfriend, Sanni McCandless, who seem poorly matched by my (limited) view. Honnold tells her multiple times that he would never put her worries before his own desire to climb. When a fellow free solo climber Ueli Steck falls to his death during the period when Free Solo was being filmed, McCandless recounts bringing up Steck's wife to Honnold and Honnold saying "well, what did she expect?" And fair enough, it's McCandless's choice to remain in a relationship with Honnold, but putting aside the fact that he could basically die at any time--in fact, is likely to die given what his career is--Honnold comes off a a low-level sociopath. Or maybe that's too strong. He comes off as flat, single-minded, uncaring of other people generally, and unaffectionate. What a prize.

But the awkward scenes between Honnold and McCandless only add to the depth and nuance of Free Solo. It's interesting to see a man who basically doesn't care if he dies be held up as an athletic hero and it's hard to decide what you personally feel as a viewer of this film--should dare devils like Honnold be held up as heroes, exemplars, and examples of the power of (indescribably) hard work? Or should the be allowed to do what they do but not celebrated, considering how dangerous their passion is?

The film itself is absolutely thrilling--watching Honnold explain the intricacies of a particularly challenging section of El Cap that involves holding yourself to the rock using half your thumb and a toe while you karate kick to a slightly better foothold is dizzying. And then he fucking does it. Without rope. It goes from dizzying to vaguely nauseating.

The article I linked to above, which is from a climbing magazine, does a better job at explaining the mixed emotions one might feel about Free Solo--especially if one is a rock climber (I am not) and truly understands how insanely dangerous free soloing is. The author wonders if others will be inspired to take up free soloing after seeing the film--the implication being that the movie could directly lead people to, well, die. On the one hand, adults should feel free to pursue dangerous hobbies as long as no one else gets hurt. On the other hand, if Honnold were expounding the joys of auto-erotic asphyxiation, would we see him as a hero, or as someone in need of help and mental health services? How close to tempting death can a person get before they move from daring to suicidal?

Grade: A-

Fatal Mom-traction

Movies: Greta

From Whatever Happened to Baby Jane to Single White Female to Fatal Attraction, audiences seem to be unable to get enough of women losing their shit. While I find depictions of bunny boiling and hysterical screaming to be distasteful at best and downright offensive at worst, I found myself in the theatre watching Greta and moderately enjoying acclaimed veteran actress Isabella Huppert lure ingenue Chloe Grace Moretz into a game of cat-and-mouse by using the younger woman's own helpful nature against her.

Moretz plays Frances, a recent college graduate who moves into a lovely Tribeca loft with her wealthy friend from college, Erica (Maika Monroe, too talented for this role). When Frances sees a handbag left on the subway, she uses the owner's ID to find where she lives and return the bag in person. The bag's owner, Greta Hideg (Huppert) is an elegant, lonely woman in her 50s who lives in a cozy little apartment by herself. Frances and Greta bond over their losses--Greta's husband has passed and Frances lost her mother only a year ago. Frances convinces Greta to adopt a dog and the two women develop a friendship despite their age gap.

But...

Spoilers Spoilers Spoilers

...


One evening Frances is making dinner with Greta and stumbles across a cabinet containing nearly a dozen handbags identical to the one she found on the subway, each with the name of the person who returned it along with their phone number. Confused and upset, Frances abruptly leaves...only to turn her phone on the next day and see dozens and dozens of missed calls, texts, and voicemails from Greta. The woman is officially off her rocker. Oh, also? The dog dies. Don't see this movie if you don't wanna see a dog die.



***

End spoilers (kinda)


While Greta is fun in a campy way, especially in its final third which is reminiscent of Takashi Miike's Audition in some very specific ways, it's still upsetting to see depictions of what is clearly mental illness be used to goose audiences into a fear response. Much is made of Greta's loneliness and she has legitimate reasons to be lonely. Her husband is dead, her daughter is mysteriously not in the picture, and she's an older woman living by herself who longs for company. But the film is not interested in exploring the nuances of loneliness and fucked up family dynamics--it just wants to show Chloe Grace Moretz tied to a bed with a gag in her mouth.

On the other hand, Greta shows the consequences of authority figures not taking stalking seriously, even when the stalker becomes more aggressive by the day. The film is realistic in showing how the burden is placed on the stalkee to keep themselves safe while the stalker can get away with any number of behaviors that cause mental distress to their victim.

But ultimately Greta, directed by Neil Jordon who has made his career in directing high art trash pics such as Interview with the Vampire and the notoriously transphobic film The Crying Game, isn't a film that cares about much more than getting the audience to scream in fear and glee. It's moderately entertaining, but otherwise an empty and jaded movie that reminds us that no good deed goes unpunished.

Grade: B-

Love in a Communist Climate

Movies: Cold War

Cold War, from Polish director Pawel Pawlikowski, is an elegant, gorgeous, bleak love story that covers three decades (starting in 1949 and ending in 1964) and crosses half a dozen European countries in a slim 85 minutes.

In post-WWII Poland, Wiktor (Tomasz Kot, the embodiment of "tall, dark, and handsome"), a musician, travels with a small group of music producers across rural Poland to tape people singing folk music. Their goal is to gather a group of young, talented singers and dancers to put on shows as the "Mazurek Ensemble" so that "the music of the people" will not be forgotten (that Polish authorities eventually co-opt the group to produce Communist propaganda annoys Wiktor--who is not sympathetic to Communism--to no end).

In the formation of this group, Wiktor meets Zula (Joanna Kulig, who looks like Kate McKinnon with her blond hair and feline eyes), a young woman probably 15-20 years younger than he--beautiful, talented, mysterious, and heartlessly fickle in the way young, beautiful women can sometimes be. The two embark on what other movie critics call an "impossible" love affair that is heartbreaking in that it is, in fact, not impossible--it's simply that the two lovers can't mold their personalities to fit the others' needs.

Wiktor, despite his age and experience, is presented as the more lovestruck, more vulnerable half of the couple. He is a true artist who is willing to live in poverty for his art and perhaps follows his heart when he should be following his head. Zula is ambitious and opportunistic--she'll fuck, or even marry, whomever can boost her career or provide security. She is also jealous and, as I said, fickle, allowing her to drop Wiktor only to pick right back up where they left off years later.

Shot is gorgeous black and white at a 1:88 aspect ratio with a transcendent soundtrack filled with sad jazz, Cold War feels very European and very old school. If it weren't for the (relatively modest) sex scenes and uses of the term "fuck" and "cunt", one could easily believe this movie was filmed during the actual Cold War. It's retro in the most lovely way. Even its views of love are retro--hopelessly romantic and doomed, like Casablanca. It recalls a time when people loved with their entire hearts, as opposed to today where there is perhaps more freedom in love, but less devotion and intimacy.

Despite rave reviews from critics, I would say that Cold War left me wanting. It's a very good movie, don't get me wrong, but it was hard to believe in Wiktor and Zula's love since it seemed to come out of nowhere and appeared very one-sided. One definitely believes in their passion--there is no doubt that the lovers have an intense, undeniable attraction that pulls them back towards each other through time, across countries, and despite marriages and children. But is it *love*? Love worth years of suffering and worth abandoning everything for? It's hard to say. Wiktor and Zula recall perhaps the most infamous lovers of all time: Romeo and Juliet. They share a connection that makes both of them run headlong into foolish and dangerous choices without a second thought, simply for the chance to spend 10 minutes together.

Cold War is worth the watch--and worth watching on the big screen--especially if you're a fan of artsy, European movies. This one is far more art than entertainment, but as far as art goes, it is about 80% a masterpiece and 20% frustration.

Grade: B+

2018: The Best and the Rest

Movies: Best of

Y'all, 2018 was an...underwhelming year for movies. Unlike 2017, where my top three of the year (Get Out, Ladybird, and Call Me by Your Name) were movies that I have and will watch over and over and made me feel all the feelings, most of the movies this year struck me as good, but not great. Ironically, I have a top 12 this year, whereas most years I have a top 10 or 11. I think that's because, as far as I'm concerned, numbers 2-12 feel pretty equally good (while my #1 of the year is truly unique and stands apart).

That's not to say that the movies on my list are "meh"--they're quite good and for very different reasons. But compared to 2012-2017, there are just fewer films that really blew me away (2011 was also a crappy year for movies, in my opinion). There are also a few movies that I haven't seen yet that may or may not have made the list if I had seen them in time. Specifically: Eighth Grade, Cold War, First Reformed, and Roma.

But without further ado, here are my personal favorites of 2018:

12. Isle of Dogs
I had to include Wes Anderson's beautiful (if perhaps culturally problematic) stop-motion film because not only is it lovely to look at, it gives the ol' heartstrings a great, big tug. With an excellent voice cast, led by Bryan Cranston (who was born to voice a mangy mutt with a heart of gold), Isle of Dogs takes a simple plot--a boy looks for his missing dog--and elevates it into hipster art in the way only Wes Anderson can.

11. A Star is Born
Speaking of heartstrings, holy shit! When I first saw the preview for the fourth (!) adaptation of the classic tale of a washed-up, alcoholic musician who mentors (and marries) a younger ingenue, I assumed the film would be hot garbage. But I, like anyone else with a heart, got sucked in during Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper's goosebump-inflicting performance of "Shallow", which was (rightly, in my opinion) named the "Best Scene of the Year" by the A/V Club. And, ok, I guess I like Bradley Cooper now? I tried to resist him for years, but he's really good in this movie! Look, A Star is Born isn't breaking any molds, but it made my cold, dead heart feel something and for that, it gets a place on this list.

10. Tully
Tully takes a common, but deeply misunderstood phenomenon--post-partum depression--a spins a fairy tale of sorts out of it. Charlize Theron, teaming up with director Jason Reitman for the second time, plays Marlo--a mother of three who is not just stressed, but burned out to the point of apathy. He rich brother pays a night nanny, Tully (Mackenzie Davis, an absolute delight), to help Marlo and the two bond is surprising ways. Tully's message that "it takes a village to raise a child" shouldn't be controversial, but in a culture where women are supposed to be able to "have it all" (with a shameful lack of paid time off from work and--if the woman has a male partner--an unequal division of labor at home) it still seems taboo to suggest that when it comes to parenting, sometimes the exhaustion outweighs the joy.

9.  Black Panther
With a talented director, a glorious cast, a Kendrick Lamar-heavy soundtrack, and the best villain of the year, Black Panther was destined to be great. And as the first Mavel movie to have a nearly entirely black cast, it couldn't afford to fail. And fail it did not. It currently sits as the 9th highest grossing movie of all time, and the highest grossing film by a black director of all time. Clearly, audiences wanted this movie and director Ryan Coogler did not disappoint. It helps that the central conflict of the film is one where you can understand both sides. Killmonger is not a two-dimensional bad guy--he's a bad guy who has a really fucking good point.

8. Won't You Be My Neighbor?
The only movie to make me actually cry this year, Won't You Be My Neighbor? proved that Fred Rogers was too good for this world. Rogers' approach to reaching children on their level and not condescending to them or acting authoritarian over them was both radical in its day, and still radical to this day. His emphasis that not only is it *ok* to feel feelings, but that it's good to feel feelings is a message that makes sense intellectually, but that so many children and adults struggle with because our culture has so many ways of squelching our humanity and encouraging us to buck up (and buy shit--capitalism is invested in no ever feeling whole). While Rogers would be the first to denounce being treated as a saint, he definitely came close in his important and eventful life.

7. Searching
Hey, remember that movie where John Cho's daughter goes missing and he has to navigate websites like Tumblr and Venmo to discover her whereabouts? Probably not, since the film slipped in and out of theaters in late summer, but I'm here to remind you that it was a damn good movie! In fact, it might be the most purely entertaining movie I saw this year. Filmed entirely through POV screens (and using FaceTime and Skype heavily), Searching could have been gimmicky and dumb, but it succeeded for two reasons: 1) Cho's lived in performance as a single dad desperate to find his missing daughter and 2) the power and mystery of THE INTERNET. As someone who loves to google stalk, this movie got me, and I was right there on the edge of my seat with Cho the whole time.

6. The Favourite
In 2016, director Yorgos Lanthimos directed my favorite film that year (The Lobster). In 2017, he directed my least favorite film that year (The Killing of a Sacred Deer). This year, he directs a solidly good film that puts scheming, witty, wicked, and ambitious women front and center (relegating the foppish men to the sidelines) in this story about Queen Anne (Olivia Colman) and two women (Rachel Weisz and Emma Stone) fighting over her favor. The Favourite is dirty and edgy--not what you'd expect from a period film. It's similar to Whit Stillman's Love and Friendship, only sexier and meaner. A delight for people who love costume dramas...or DRAAAMA of any type.

5. If Beale Street Could Talk
In 2016, Barry Jenkins directed Moonlight, the film that famously ousted La La Land for Best Picture. That glorious paean to growing up black and gay in America turned out not to be a one-and-done for Jenkins. His follow up, based on the novel by James Baldwin, is just as lovely and just as gentle in the face of equally harsh--if not harsher--realities of the black experience in the United States. Tish (KiKi Layne) and Fonny (Stephen James) are *just* starting out in adulthood--they're in love and looking for a place to live--when Fonny is falsely accused of rape and jailed indefinitely. And then Tish finds out they're going to have a baby. Jenkins takes a devastating situation and infuses it with integrity, love, and beauty--not to fetishize suffering but to take back the narrative. Complete with the most beautiful cinematography and musical score of the year, If Beale Street Could Talk is a film worth celebrating.

4. Hereditary
Take all the feels you felt while watching Won't You Be My Neighbor? and go in the complete opposite direction and that's what you feel during Hereditary, which is the best horror movie of 2018. Emotions like pure, unadulterated terror; a gut-feeling of wrongness; devastation; shock...you might ask why the hell I would recommend such a film, and all I can say is that it's cathartic as fuck. Toni Collette plays Annie Graham, who is trying to hold her family together after a series of devastating events. The film is about how grief and resentment can murder relationships and how parents, as much as they try to avoid it, can pass down nasty legacies to their children. Hereditary has some issues, especially in the back half, but if you love horror you owe it to yourself to experience this rollercoaster of a nightmare.

3. Border
Despite 2018 being a so-so year for movies (in my humble opinion), there were a lot of films that made me say "wow, I've never seen anything like that before!" and Border is one of those films. A Swedish film, directed by Ali Abbasi, Border almost flew under my radar until I kept seeing reviews of it pop up on body positivity websites. The film follows Tina (Eva Melander), a Swedish border security agent with a keen sense of smell and a face only a mother could love. Tina believes she has a rare birth disorder that gives her a heavy brow, "ugly" features, and makes it unable for her to have children. But then she meets a man who has the same "disorder" as her...and her life and perception of herself radically change. That's all I'll say--other than, seek this unique film out! 

2. Can You Ever Forgive Me?
This criminally underseen film which features Melissa McCarthy in an excellent dramatic role as Lee Israel, a writer who forged letters to make some extra money, really snuck up on me. It's a film I would describe as "autumnal", which its laid-back feel and cinematographic palette of browns and grays. I love autumnal films--Good Will Hunting, Dead Poets Society, Wonder Boys. They're movies that feel cozy, lived in, and give you all the *feels* even if they aren't showy about it. Directed by Marielle Heller and co-starring the hilarious Richard E. Grant, Can You Ever Forgive Me? takes a couple deeply unlikeable characters and makes you empathize with them.

1. Sorry to Bother You
No other movie on this list surprised me as much as Boots Riley's Sorry to Bother You. The film, set in a slightly alternative universe version of Oakland, CA, is funny, shocking, political, and outrageous. With extremely good performances by Lakeith Stanfield, Tessa Thompson, Armie Hammer, Danny Glover, and Steven Yeun as well as voice acting by David Cross and Patton Oswalt, STBY satirizes the struggles of black people to get ahead in a white-dominated society and how capitalism is essentially evil and eats up everything and everyone in its sight. But STBY manages to do this critiquing with a deft hand and balls-out audacity at the same time. It avoids being heavy-handed while also punching you in the gut (and tickling your funny bone along the way). I don't think I've seen a movie about racism that's this funny. It takes inspiration from films such as Spike Lee's Bamboozled and Jordan Peele's Get Out but remains uniquely its own thing. If there is one film to capture the feeling of nightmarish dystopia and ironic humor that *is* 2018, it's Sorry to Bother You.

murder murder murder the white patriarchy










***

Honorable Mentions:

The Hate U Give, Thoroughbreds, Mandy, Suspiria, Disobedience, A Quiet Place, Beautiful Boy, BlacKkKlansman

***

Coulda Been Better:

Annihilation
Did director Danny Boyle bother reading Jeff VanderMeer's "Southern Reach" trilogy? Because over half the plot seems to be missing from his adaptation. This is definitely a situation where the book is waaaaayyy better than the movie.

Crazy Rich Asians
I wanted to like John M. Chu's film more than I actually did. But rom-com tropes and bad-boyfriend behavior made me roll my eyes one too many times.

***

Worst of the Year (that I saw, anyway):

Apostle (last movie reviewed in this entry)
Don't bother with this Netflix film about a man (Downton Abbey's Dan Stevens) who travels to a remote island to rescue his sister from a cult. Sounds really interesting, but a total mess and a snooze.


That's all folks! See you in 2019!

Holy Love

Movies: If Beale Street Could Talk

I recently read a review of Barry Jenkins' transcendent film If Beale Street Could Talk that said the film "carves a holy place in a hard, hard world". Indeed, just like Jenkins' deeply humane portrait of a gay, black man in 2016's Moonlight, If Beale Street Could Talk seems too good for this terrible world.

Set in 1970s Harlem, Beale Street follows 19 year old Tish (newcomer KiKi Layne) and 22 year old Fonny (Stephen James, who wowed in Sam Esmail's Homecoming earlier this year). Tish and Fonny are childhood friends who grew into lovers. "There was no cause for shame between us" Tish narrates. The two are planning to find an apartment and get married when Fonny is accused of rape, despite having a solid alibi. He is jailed and the trial date keeps getting pushed back when the woman who accused him leaves the country. Meanwhile, Tish finds out she's pregnant.

The plot weaves back and forth between the present (Fonny in prison) and the not too distant past (the lovers struggling to find a place to live in a city that won't rent to two black people). Much like Moonlight, Jenkins is able to infuse suffering and injustice with beauty--not because there is something inherently beautiful about suffering, but rather because love and family and beauty keep happening despite suffering. It's really remarkable what Jenkins has created in his portrayals of black life in the United States. Even I can't fully quantify it in words.

Beale Street is heartbreaking, though not devastating. It shows that life goes on despite hardships. People fight, adapt, and step up to help each other--in particular, the black community of families around Tish and Fonny do what they can to give help, or at least hope, to the two young people who are forcibly separated for no reason other than the authority of a racist cop (Ed Skrein) who claims he saw Fonny at the scene of the rape. The audience knows that Fonny is innocent and that the cop went out of his way to fuck Fonny over, but it doesn't stop the injustice from happening.

A group of white women sitting in front of me visibly bristled during a scene where Danny (Bryan Tyree Henry, in a brief but powerful role), a friend of Fonny's who was recently released from prison after serving two years on a false car theft charge, says that after being in prison he understands why Malcolm X called the white man "the devil". This scene, more than any other, is deeply upsetting due to Henry's acting--his haunted, sad eyes as he insinuates the violence he faced in prison without giving details. But the audience knows, or at least the smart ones do. Pair this film with Ava DuVernay's 13th and you'll be ready to step up for prison reform.

That's all there is to say about Beale Street. The acting is out of the world, particularly Byran Tyree Henry, but also Regina King as Tish's mother, Sharon, who goes on a heartbreaking journey of her own. The cinematography is sublime and dreamy. The soundtrack is gorgeous. The plot is simple, yet profound. Just go see it.

Grade: A