Minari Soars!

Movie Reviewed: Minari

Director: Lee Isaac Chung

Date Reviewed: 30 May 2021

jamesintexas rating = ****

Streaming on Amazon

Director Lee Isaac Chung's new film Minari's delicate rhythms and quiet moments explore the nature of family, the nature of devotion, the setting of roots in a new place far away from the familiar, and the essence of the American Dream.  In a story set in the 1980's about Korean immigrants, Steven Yuen (so good on The Walking Dead) gives a shining, powerful performance as Jacob, a father trying to do right by his family, transplanting them from California to rural Arkansas to farm the land and live in a trailer there, throwing everything they have into this risky endeavor.  Monica (Yeri Han) plays his wife, fiercely protective of their daughter Anne (Noel Kate Cho) and son David (Alan S. Kim) while also great nervous at the precariousness of their new life.  Chung's camera tracks a walking Jacob as he paces the lengths of his land, searching for water and the proper elements to make his dream come true.  Similarly, he also tracks a walking David as he explores the hidden spaces in their new home and navigates both school and friendship, always with unexpected results.  

Mother-in-law (Yuh-jung You) arrives to help the struggling family, and her Oscar-winning performances electrifies the movie, giving it a rich humor and pathos.  To say more would be a sin, but Minari explores the idea of making it in America and all the struggles therein; its evocation of family and beauty evokes Terence Malick's great film Tree of Life.  Chung has crafted a masterpiece here, examining precisely what it means to be American, a thing that could not be more powerful in 2021.  

Simply put, Minari is one of the best films of the year. 

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.  

Face/Off, Waste/Of (Time) & Broken, Severely Broken Arrow

Movie Reviewed: Face/Off

Director: John Woo

Date Reviewed: 4 February 2021

jamesintexas rating = *

I don't know what I was doing in 1997.  That summer was after my freshman year at Kenyon College, I was working at the Elmhurst Park District Camp Adventure Seekers at Berens Park, planning my Eagle Scout ceremony, and definitely seeing movies.  But not Face/Off.  A touchstone of sorts (the poster and basic plot seem ingrained in my DNA despite not seeing it), the film captured a strange moment in time.  John Travolta's second career resurgence (though for me, his career started with Look Who's Talking) had just occurred with Pulp Fiction in 1994, and Nicolas Cage had reached the apex with Leaving Las Vegas, quickly followed by The Rock, Con-Air, and this film.  Both stars were shining brightly and united for this high-concept thriller.  I guess.  I was not thrilled.  I do not think I would have been in 1997 either. 

Starting with The Rock in 1996, I began to turn a bit on the soulless, mindless action films embodied by director Michael Bay.  There was something excessively slick, dumb, and nihilistic about that film, and I had a reaction to mass (casual) carnage that spun me away from these types of films.  Listening to Lindy West's new book about films from the 90's exposed this gap in my viewing, so I finally caught up with Face/Off.  To sum up, there is nothing in Face/Off that is enjoyable or worthwhile, except, perhaps, the joke that it spawned in Melissa McCarthy's face off with Jason Statham in the marvelous and fun Spy.

Nicolas Cage is an uber-villain full of thrill and flair named Castor Troy with a penchant for licking people's faces and preening.  The scenes of bug-eyed, over-the-top Cage are wonderful, and I'd much rather watch an entire film with that performance.  FBI Agent Sean Archer aka John Travolta's son was the victim of Troy's botched attempt on his life, and the two men are headed on a collision course.  Of course, there's a bomb with an extended countdown sequence that leads to the wonderfully silly use of the face/off technology to save the world.  But the switcheroo leads to another crisscross when the faceless Troy wakes up from a coma to wreck havoc on the world AFTER getting Travolta's face grafted onto his.  

There's more here to unpack, but one man gets placed in a kind of Super Mario Brother-style prison with heavy boots and needs to instigate a prison break while the other man gets promoted within the FBI and gets to leer at his daughter and sleep with his wife.  Poor Joan Allen.  The film takes truly sickening turns, feasting upon Cage as Travolta behaving badly while Travolta as Cage acts sullen.  It is a bit fun to see future cast members of The Wire pop up here and there, as well as Margaret Cho.

It seems so completely ridiculous, with jumping while firing two guns, the world's least secure funeral of an FBI Director ever, slow-mo doves, culminating its superfluous boat race fight sequence (just because?), and then there is the end sequence which in some ways is the most nightmarish of all, tossing adoption, family reconciliation, and intense trauma aside for slow motion walks through the doorway and easy sibling camaraderie.  I'm 42, so I'm clearly not the demographic for this film, but I honestly don't think I ever was?  Again, so weird to think that Travolta was doing Pulp Fiction three years before this film and Cage, Leaving Las Vegas only a year before.  The 90's were weird, indeed. 

Shout out to Daniel Day-Lewis for never devolving to this level and for Robert DeNiro to delaying it a bit longer.

Move Reviewed: Broken Arrow

Director: John Woo

Date Reviewed: 11 February 2021

jamesintexas rating = *

And then there's Broken Arrow.  I think chronologically this one came earlier.  Plusses include John Travolta's hair (divine!) and a commitment to catch-phrases and the f-word.  Gorgeous Utah, SW scenery.  Negatives: Christian Slater seems to be trying to do a stoic Keanu Reeves-ish Speed performance of the undercard to Travolta's big bully big-mouthed boxer.  Howie Long.  An under-used Delroy Lindo.

Broken Arrow is the definition of a completely forgettable film.  Travolta does look like he is having fun here, and his hair is a thing of beauty.  And his smoking, with his masterfully swooping away with his fingers of his cigarette to punctuate his statements.  This is the kind of film that detonates a nuclear bomb but counters with it being "completely safe" because it was "completely contained."  

I like the scenery.  I like the cursing.  I like the seamless transitioning from Stealth bombers carrying nuclear weapons to Humvees to coal mines to boats to trains.  There's far too much self-seriousness here though, and the belaboring of its symbols and bets between these two guys wears out its welcome.  It ultimately feels bland, action without style, humorless and stale.  

I could write more, but I'm not going to.  Skip this one.  

Completely Bonkers: Sorry to Bother You Delivers

Movie Reviewed: Sorry To Bother You

Director: Boots Riley

Date: 23 May 2020

jamesintexas Rating: ***

On Hulu

Bonkers is not a word that I get to use very often.  Boots Riley's film Sorry to Bother You is bonkers, jarring, and completely unique in its dark comedy set in contemporary but alternate reality Oakland.  Cassius Green (LaKeith Stanfield) lives in his uncle's garage, loves his sign-twirling struggling artist girlfriend Troit (Tessa Thompson), and follows best friend Salvador (Jermaine Fowler) into telemarketing call center job where he discovers a previously unknown talent.  "Just use your white voice," old head Danny Glover tells him, after announcing that he's "too old for this shit," and when Cassius does, he finds that his David Cross mimicry leads him to become a vaunted Power Caller in the company, headed to corporate ascension and unlimited success.  However, as this is a science fiction fantasy of sorts, this Oakland consists of a mysterious company offering lifetime employment and housing for workers, and Cassius soon finds his initiation into the upper levels of the call center hinge upon that sort of capitalistic greed and oppression of workers.  He finds himself clashing with Troit and his friends as he takes on more and more responsibility and rises in status.  A co-worker Squeeze (Steven Yuen) reaches out about organizing for workers' rights within the company, and though Cassius goes along, he quickly finds himself at odds with his friends.  Hovering in the background is CEO Steve Lift (Armie Hammer), an acclaimed corporate architect of great fortunes with shadowy origins and racist undertones who is eager to exploit Cassius.  It is no surprise that Cassius finds himself asked to perform a rap in front of a nearly all-white audience at a party at Lift's house in just one of a series of upsetting scenes.  The film is totally committed to its completely unique vision, and instead of going off the rails, it just surprises and surprises, which is different. 

Riley's work here takes turns that are deeply unsettling.  He employs a strong sense of humor into the proceedings with Stanfield and Fowler's compliment-off being one highlight for sure.  Thompson has many great moments, especially in a brutal art gallery scene.  The cast is very strong, and the visual style employed drops Cassius into scenes with his call receivers, sometimes even fading the walls of scenes out and in like Michel Gondry in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, another surreal, jarring film.  Stanfield and Thompson have great chemistry and ease with each other and the story, and the sharpness of the film shows up in the second half as more secrets unfold leading to increasing darkness and intensity.  It is fun to drop your jaw and be very unsure of where a film is going.  Riley steers his film ably through to the end, sticking with his conceit through and through, though I cannot say that I want to see this film again any time soon.  Like BlacKKKlansman, which came out the same year, Sorry to Bother You's skewering of race and class are cogent and timely, and if the voices used took me out of it a bit, that is a small criticism.  Overall, Riley's vision and confident storytelling build and build, and Sorry to Bother You is a powerful debut from a new voice in film. 

Something Wildly Fun: 1986's Something Wild

Movie Reviewed: Something Wild

Director: Jonathan Demme

Date: 24 May 2020

jamesintexas Rating: ***

On HBO

I am a Jonathan Demme fan, and the chance to revisit one of his earlier films was a treat.  I was eight years old when Something Wild came out; my entry into Demme's work was seeing ads on HBO for Married to the Mob as a kid and then in 8th grade seeing the terrifying The Silence of The Lambs, for which he won the Oscar.  Here, Jeff Daniels and Melanie Griffith play Charlie Driggs, an uptight New York yuppie who likes to dine and ditch, and Lulu/Audrey Henkel, a free spirited adventurer, respectively, whose paths cross when Lulu picks him up, and lead to a weekend (it seems longer; a week?) of wildness together.  The film hinges upon the singular charisma of Griffith who is more than up to the task.  I remember her being very striking in Working Girl, and the film goes all-in on her wild card persona: stealing money out of the register, drinking and driving, handcuffing Driggs and never unlocking him, coaxing him to sing along with The Troggs to "Wild Thing."  They debate the merits of freedom and rebellion as a long weekend driving trip turns into a faux marriage, multiple costume changes, a trip to Henkel's high school reunion, and the chance encounter with the recently sprung from jail Ray Sinclair (Ray Liotta), Audrey's old flame who wants to pick things up again.  Ray's machismo brutality comes up against the quick-thinking Driggs who has to figure out what he values and what he is willing to sacrifice for this long weekend escapade and maybe more.

Demme's film is centered upon all three performances: Daniels, Griffith, and Liotta, all great.  They really are all stars, and it is fun to watch them work.  It is a bit of a road movie with a travelogue quality of motels, diners, and highways making up much of the non-NYC scenes.  My limited understanding of 1980's films reflects on how they depict the uptight conservative values of Manhattan bankers and businessmen who really, deep-down, just want to party and go a little crazy.  Driggs insists that he is really a wild guy: "I may look straight," he says, "but deep down, I got what it takes."  And the film is an exploration of that conceit.  Demme's love of music here features a rich soundtrack of David Byrne, Oingo Boingo, and The Feelies.  He also works with some of his usual supporting actors like Charles Napier (an officer disemboweled by Hannibal The Cannibal, but here, an aggressive chef) and Buzz Kilman (supporting host of Jonathon Brandmeier's Loop morning show that I used to listen to in Chicago, and also, a victim of Hannibal The Cannibal, but here, a tv newscaster).  There is also some humor here as Driggs finds his own capacity to lie and tell tales, with Daniels spinning his dialogue out wildly, making it up as he goes, most notably when a work colleague happens to see him at the reunion, allowing Driggs the chance to act out in a most un-Charlie Driggs way.

There is a rich sort of humanism at work here without an epic scope or archness to the proceedings.  These are flawed people, negotiating the currents that swirl around them, with Driggs being neither a complete dope or a hero, but someone with a real level of pathos to him.  If the film's climax is a bit underwhelming, it certainly does not veer off into the realm of heroic fantasy and does not make Driggs into some sort of superhero.  Demme handles the final scene with a lightness of touch that is sweet and returns us to the opening scene, and he ends the film with a musical performance from Sister Carol East that is quite wonderful.  Overall, this modest film is light, lifted by its three strong lead performances, and showcases Demme's touch as a director which I have to think, in my limited experience, is drawing out amazing, charismatic work out of his actors and actresses, telling a good story, and layering in well-chosen music.  Those hallmarks are on display here in Something Wild.