One Night in History: Watching the Earth Move in One Night in Miami...

Movie Reviewed: One Night in Miami...

Director: Regina King

Date Reviewed: 13 March 2021

jamesintexas rating = ***

Streaming on Amazon

Regina King's directorial debut is the drama One Night in Miami... that features four African-American icons of the early 1960's all inside one hotel room for an ostensibly celebratory party after the victory of Cassius Clay over Sonny Liston.  However, instead it captures the quietness of the moment, the compromising of values, and the ebb and flow of economic power amidst great social inequality.   Clay (Eli Goree) is the Heavyweight Champion of the World, about to become Muhammed Ali with spiritual advisor and friend Malcolm X (Kingsley Ben-Adir) by his side and escort into the Nation of Islam.  Soulful crooner Sam Cooke (Leslie Odom, Jr.) is staying at the still segregated Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami but comes to these more modest environs to be with his friends, and NFL Star Jim Brown (Aldis Hodge) arrives with the emotional weight of a powerful opening scene where the top football player in the world returns to his home county to be confronted by powerful racists.

Based on a stage play by Kemp Powers, of which I am unfamiliar, the film hinges upon different pairings of men throughout and the intellectual discourse therein.  Cassius and Malcolm must unpack Malcolm's desire to have Cassius's conversion to serve as an example to the world while also considering his own crumbling relationship to the Nation of Islam and whatever his next steps will be.  Sam and Malcolm go round and round in examinations of artistic integrity, the types of songs that resonate with the movement, and the efficacy of different approaches to social change.  Brown internalizes his rage from the opening scene but serves as a sounding board for Cooke and others, as he weighs his own options and desires.  

Besides the obvious appeal of the early 1960's aesthetic with its neon-lit businesses and its impeccable suits and dresses, One Night in Miami... offers much more substance: a deep examination of the roles these men played within their own communities and the larger American community during a time of great upheaval.  King's camera is incisive and slowly zooming in often, while also filling the frame with all four men in different positions and relationships to each other, mirroring the political and social movements of the time.  Hers is a confident hand telling this story, and it may result in a Best Director nomination.  The film offers smart, groundbreaking people having conversations that speak to the heart of their passions: preach, sing, entertain, and represent.  One Night in Miami... offers a prism through which to see the myriad of richness these men encompass, and the coda offered by King in the film presents the divergent, devastating roads ahead as these men follow their hearts and consciences.  A stand-out to me in a cast of terrific performers is certainly Ben-Adir in the showiest role as Malcolm X; however, I cannot shake Leslie Odom, Jr's performance of a song late in the film out of my head.  It is searing.  And Hodge's work is quiet yet completely captivating.  I could not take my eyes off of how he was internalizing Jim Brown's emotions.  And Eli Goree, new to me, was straight up fun to watch; clearly, he is a student of the verbal and facial rhythms of Cassius Clay, and of all four, he seems to be having the most fun.

And, the night in question is February 25th, 1964.  My dad was 14, and my mom was 12.  The world was and is certainly turning.  I recommend this film.

Heavy Metal Drummer: Sound of Metal Soars

Movie Reviewed: Sound of Metal

Director: Darius Marder

Date Reviewed: 13 March 2021

jamesintexas rating: ***1/2

Streaming on Amazon.com

On the anniversary of the lockdown beginning here in Houston, I finished Darius Marder's Sound of Metal which features a phenomenal performance by Riz Ahmed, who will hopefully be nominated for his first Best Actor Oscar, as Ruben, the drummer of a heavy metal duo that tours the US in a vintage Gulfstream RV playing small, passionate gigs with his singer girlfriend Lou, played by Olivia Cooke.  Ruben finds himself increasingly suffering from hearing loss, depicted painfully through Marder's thoughtful sound design until one night at a gig, it all goes away.  Ruben's unpacking of his newfound hearing loss and what it means to his identity as a drummer, as bandmate, as a partner to Lou is unnerving and raw.  There are moment of grief and terror here where Ahmed uses his face and whole body to manifest his character's devastation and fear in ways that truly took my breath away.  His is a marvelous performance; the word Brando-esque comes to mind in my limited capacity as a filmgoer, but it seems completely appropriate.  

Ruben must contend with joining a deaf community, learning sign language, and renegotiating who he is.  Joe, played by Paul Raci, runs a home of sorts for the deaf in a rural environ where Ruben must surrender his car keys and cell phone.  Joe's own story as a Vietnam Veteran who stepped on a landmine resulting in hearing loss intersects with his identity as an alcoholic, and Sound of Metal threads the line in talking about multiple avenues of pain many characters encounter at once which feels real to me and encompassing of how life actually works.  Often, being an addict can also be combined with one or more additional challenges, but Sound of Metal never seems like an issues movie.  Marder keeps us firmly in the corner of Ruben, right or wrong, as he negotiates his way through his new life, forging small connections on the playground with a young boy, leading a drum circle, considering steps that may lead him back to Lou but could also isolate him further.

The third act of the film is jarring and still echoing around in my head.  The intentional sound design provides an aesthetic component to Ruben's journey.  Marder resists the urge to turn Lou into a stereotype or anything less than a fully-formed flawed character, and a late appearance by Lou's dad played by the great Mathieu Amalric is completely captivating in its capturing of his own flawed humanity.  Marder has constructed a film where two people talking to each other in a bed can be the height of both poetry and drama.  I was completely mesmerized by this film, its intricacies and its pain, and I sincerely hope you seek it out.  Its last minutes will stay with me for a long time.

Relevant and Raw: 13th's Searing Depiction of Injustice

Movie Reviewed: 13th

Director: Ava DuVernay

Date Reviewed: 30 June 2020

jamesintexas Rating: ***1/2

The Thirteenth Amendment of The Constitution states, "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."  The emphasis is on "except as a punishment for crime," and that phrase contains the crux of the matter.  

In the aftermath of the George Floyd murder, protests occurring in cities big and small all over this country, and subsequent police brutality that shocks because it is fully aware of being filmed and does not seem to care, I finally watched Ava DuVernay's 13th, a searing documentary depiction of injustice that doubles as a history lesson that I never received.  It would have fit in the curriculum of my US History Seminar teacher's class during my junior year; instead of breadth, she emphasized depth with Howard Zinn's People's History as a seminal text, John Sayles's Matewan, a week-long reenactment of the My Lai massacre trial as well as the trial of George Pullman.  The course seems to run out of steam (and time), ending in the 60's-70's, glancing at Watergate (I think) and mentioning Reagan and the Clinton era (our time, circa 1994-1995).  DuVernay's work continues my unfinished education and brings in acclaimed authors and scholars like Bryan Stevenson, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Jelani Cobb, and Angela Davis and infuses the film with archival footage from Birth of a Nation to center the audience in the injustice.  In short, the Thirteenth Amendment includes a clause about slavery being abolished "except as punishment for crime," which funneled thousands of Black Americans into the prison systems on trumped up charges.  DuVernay's systematic unpacking of the cruel, unjust, abhorrent history of our nation's practices and its insidious legacy today is simultaneously horrifying and relevant.  From unpacking the codes of what is meant when a political operative recommends talking about "voters' rights" instead of outright racism to the rise of the prison-industrial complex from Presidents Reagan, Bush, and Clinton, the film's outrage is directed at the systems that were allowed to thrive and play on the fears of white America. 

Take the "Three Strikes and You're Out" rule from the 90's which included mandatory life sentences, effectively taking the decisions out of the hands of judges, removing sentencing discretion.  The film explains how the rise of the Democrats in 1992 with Clinton-Gore came with the emphasis on getting tough on crime and the authoring of the new crime bill.  That crime bill included brutal punishments that singled out Black and Brown offenders and crushed communities as a result, transforming families, schools, and industries as a result.  Recent documentaries such as this are causing me to unpack history that has occurred in my own lifetime, a weird thing to consider, but now that I am older than nearly all MLB and NFL players, it makes sense to see critiques of policy and history that I vaguely remember.  Even though I read the paper and we got Time Magazine at my house, I am woefully and demonstrably ignorant on so many matters.  The work continues.

There is no way to watch DuVernay's film and not be charged with action.  Like her work Selma, DuVernay offers a rich, layered examination at history and the idea of being an American that could not be more relevant in 2020 and beyond.