MANK

Directing: A-
Acting: A-
Writing: A
Cinematography: A-
Editing: A-

It’s been ten months now since I last saw a film in a movie theater, and in all that time, I have indeed missed movie-going dearly. But, it’s been in a much more abstract sense, being in terms of the overall experience as opposed to being tied to a specific movie I wished I could have seen on the big screen. This is hardly a surprise, given all the blockbusters that were delayed again and again, many of them even now delayed until next year. But even this depends on things like the studio and its parent company: not everyone has an HBO Max they can pivot their entire slate to as part of a long-game strategy.

That said, things are shifting, and in a way few people imagined possible a year ago. And this includes more movies, coming sooner than later, which actually would indeed work better on movie theater screens than they do on home television screens. David Fincher’s new film Mank is the year’s first notable example of that.

And it’s not because it’s a blockbuster of any sort, but because it’s great cinema. Its technical finesse just doesn’t translate as well on the small screen, and I found myself really wishing I could have been watching on a projector screen. Now, if I were to offer Mank any concrete criticism at all, it’s that although it remains an excellent film on its own merits, it is also somewhat self-conscious about being “great cinema.” This is a key distinction from the many other films that have gained attention this year in a way they could never have any other year, revealing themselves to have shifted into the realm of greatness through a far more organic process. I would never quite call Mank “organic.” In fact it’s rather focused on a meticulous attention to detail, both in its present-day storytelling and its references to cinema history—fundamentally, it’s about artifice. But in Fincher’s context, that is done in all the best ways.

Mank is the kind of film that won’t ever top my best-of list, but I wouldn’t be bothered by it eventually winning Best Picture anyway. Of course, like everything else in 2020, the Academy Awards are to be wildly different this year, starting with being scheduled two months later than planned. Thus, even with all the Oscar buzz this film is getting now, there’s plenty of time for people to forget about it in favor of something else to be released between now and then. And honestly, this film has gotten so much critical praise that some might come away from it feeling it was over-hyped. For the record, I don’t really agree with that assessment.

I would say that its script, but David’s late father Jack Fincher, after decades of trying in vain to get it made until Netflix bankrolled it, is rather dense. It is also absolutely enhanced by a working knowledge of Orson Welles’s seminal 1941 masterpiece Citizen Kane. Some even suggest watching that film just prior to this one as a double feature, but even in quarantine, who has the time or the bandwidth for that? I considered it myself, but came back to my long-held conviction that a film should work on its own merits. And Mank absolutely does. It’s just that its universe expands in richness the more you delve into it—the degree to which you do that is up to you.

One thing about the casting is a bit odd: Gary Oldman is 62, playing Citizen Kane script writer Herman Mankiewicz (hence the title, his nickname), who reveals himself at one point to be 43. Granted, Mankiewicz was evidently quite the drunk, which surely ages a man, but Oldman still seems like a stretch. Then again, Oldman’s performance is so great, conveying a uniquely charismatic casual confidence, it’s easy to overlook. The true standout, however, is Amanda Seyfried, of pop trash Mamma Mia! (2008) fame. Here she is unrecognizable, giving an Oscar-worthy performance all her own as MGM actress, and William Randolph Hearst’s longtime mistress, Marion Davies.

Hearst unsurprisingly plays a key role in this film, played flawlessly (as always) by Charles Dance, as the newspaper mogul has always been known as the unofficial target/subject of Orson Welles’s portrayal in Citizen Kane. More importantly, he was the target/subject of Mankiewicz’s original script—the credit for which he shared with Welles, even though Welles really didn’t write any of it; and for which the film later won its single Academy Award. It’s also notable that Welles, played here by Tom Burke, plays a minor role in the Mank story, existing onscreen in but a few select scenes and otherwise existing solely on the other end of phone calls during Mankiewicz’s convalescence after a car accident.

Mank is a historical drama, shot in beautiful black and white cinematography in a clear ode to Citizen Kane itself, about a particular moment in 1940s Hollywood, but it’s about a whole lot more than just the making of what many critics still regard as the best film ever made. A particularly notable and memorable subplot involves the 1934 California gubernatorial campaign of Republican Frank Merriam, who beat Democrat Upton Sinclair with the help of MGM’s hiring of actors to pretend to be real voters in their campaign ads. It’s a subtle reminder that the “fake news” bullshit we get so exasperated with today is far from new—it’s been going on for decades, the better part of a century.

Lastly, I must bring up the editing, as Mank follows a relatively similar narrative structure to Citizen Kane itself, with many flashbacks to nonlinear dates in the past used to inform the “present-day” of the story. They key difference here is something I rather liked: with each flashback, a line of script stage direction appears onscreen, identifying the year we’re going back to, and always specifying “(FLASHBACK).” It works incredibly well, making it impossible to get confused as to where or when we are, and it’s less patronizing than it is just plain useful.

Mank is available to stream on Netflix right now, and incidentally was always produced as a Netflix film. In fact, it’s the third year in as many years we’re getting a Netflix film that is some level of Oscar bait, after the jaw-dropping technical proficiency of Roma (2018) and last year’s good-but-wildly-overrated The Irishman. The previous films both garnered many Academy Award nominations but not as many wins as Netflix clearly hoped for, and I suspect the same will be the case with Mank. That said, while I still think Roma is objectively the best of the three, even with the density of its excellent script, I would venture to say Mank is the most accessible. They key is just to get you to press “play” on this one even when there are countless other, perfectly worthy options over many streaming platforms. All I can tell you is it’s absolutely worth it.

Mank takes his appealingly casual confidence on to the next scene.

Overall: A-

Small Axe: RED, WHITE AND BLUE

Directing: A
Acting: A
Writing: A
Cinematography: A-
Editing: A-

There is so much about Red, White and Blue that is . . . tricky. Once again, the first tricky thing is it being the middle installment out out of the five “Small Axe” films by Steve McQueen being presented weekly on Prime Video (this one went live today). So much of this entire project exists in the margins of categorization: this installment, for example, runs at 80 minutes—short for a movie; long for a television episode. I still lean toward regarding these all as feature films, but given that there are five of them, it’s a commitment. Who besides the film-obsessed like myself is going to watch them all?

And the thing is, even though they are not sequels, it’s becoming clear that their thematic connection is important. They each certainly stand on their own, but they are enhanced by watching them as a series. And Red, White and Blue might very well be the best of them yet. Mangrove got slightly better reviews on average, but I suspect at least part of that is first impressions of a clearly great project. Or, I suppose, I am currently experiencing recency bias. What does it matter when both films are great? The one that came second, last week’s Lovers Rock, didn’t strike me as quite as strong, but now that there are three, it feels in retrospect like a perfectly appropriate interlude. That one has its darker moments but on the whole is an expression of joy through music . . . the other two films in the series so far are much more direction focused on excessive force by the police.

And, like the first film, this one is also based on a true story, about a young Black man in 1980s London who finally decides to join the police force in an attempt to change it “from the inside,” after his immigrant Jamaican father is severely beaten by police. The Caribbean heritage has been a through line in all three films so far, making me expect now that the next two will be as well.

Boy, are these films well timed. Then again, they would be any time—but 2020 is a particularly relevant year for it. Some American films have tacked it as well, but given how many movies focus on cops (usually characterizing them not just as heroes, but easily assumed to be), it’s not that often you see the story of a Black person joining the force specifically because of its institutionalized racism.

Here McQueen deftly weaves in threads of multiple forms of racism, as well. When Leroy Logan (John Boyega, excellent) graduates and is assigned to the precinct in his home neighborhood, he meets and befriends a Pakistani man already also a cop there. Leroy is now the second of only two nonwhite cops there, and they immediately bond over shared experiences. Leroy also soon encounters the very same shit Asif (Assad Zaman) has been enduring all along, with colleagues openly mocking their races in their presence.

And this gets us back to what’s tricky: it’s tough to be in a position like this no matter what, but it’s especially tough when you’re the first. Leroy clearly doesn’t think of himself as a trailblazer per se, nor does this film call attention to that, but it’s what he is. He makes little headway in making the changes he set out to do in London policing, but his very existence makes it easier for another to come along after him and push things a little further along. This context is not discussed or presented at all in the film, in fact, but I sure thought about it. We watch his spirit getting slowly broken, but it’s on his shoulders on which those who follow him will be standing. Or did stand: this is based on a true story, after all.

Red, White and Blue is also compelling in technical ways, as I particularly enjoyed the cinematography in this film. There’s one tense sequence in which Leroy is navigating a factory maze of heavy machinery, with the camera moving ahead, behind and around him as he twists and turns in a long, unbroken take. It’s much like 1917 except without it being a gimmicky selling point. I’m using it to sell it to you now, however: it’s great work. It’s also the kind of camera work that’s only particularly appropriate in this one sequence, so it never distracts from or strains the storytelling. It still places the focus on the character, showing in real time how he’s in pursuit of a dangerous suspect, he calls for backup no fewer than three times, and for the entire chase he’s left on his own.

The entire series of “Small Axe” films is intended to represent the history of Black experience in Britain, and two installments now focus directly on the police—this time from within its ranks. Not only does Leroy face persecution from his colleagues, but since others in his community quite rightly regard the police as their enemy, they think of Leroy as a traitor. He gets his support from a narrow supply channel, mostly through his Aunt Jesse (Nadine Marshall) who works as a Police Liaison, and his wife, Gretl (Antonia Thomas). Incidentally, Tyrone Huntley appears in a few brief scenes as Leroy’s cousin, Imagination singer Leee John, and his being gay is merely subtly hinted at. Leee is incredulous, though, when he first hears of Leroy’s intention to become a cop.

So it takes much of Leroy’s family some time to even slightly warm up to the idea. Leroy faces uphill battles on all sides with this decision, and all these angles are seamlessly woven into this tight hour and twenty minutes, all of it absolutely worth your time.

Out of the frying pan and into the fire.

Overall: A

Advance: SOUND OF METAL

Directing: A
Acting: A
Writing: A
Cinematography: B+
Editing: A

I can’t say enough good things about Sound of Metal—literally have no bad things to say about it. I’ll be open to whatever criticism there might be by others, to be fair, particularly those who are part of key groups represented. Namely, the deaf community and addicts, or to be sure, deaf people in twelve-step programs. I belong to none of these groups, but from my perspective, this film absolutely kills it when it comes to representative intersectionality.

The cast is diverse in just about every way imaginable, and Darius Marder, offering a stunning directorial debut, directs a cast of supporting characters actually hired from the deaf community. Much of the story takes place at a home for addicts, and the people there are diverse even aside from being deaf. And a key part of the plot involves all these deaf characters having the fervent belief that being deaf is not a disability, “not something to be fixed,” while the main character is eager to get implants to regain his hearing.

Riz Ahmed is phenomenal in the lead role, his learning both the drums and ASL in preparation clearly paying off. From very early on in this film, I kept thinking of the excellent 2014 film Whiplash—what I felt at the time was the best film of the year—and not because both films are about a drummer; that’s really just a coincidence. Whiplash was about musicians and being the best at honing talent at all costs; Sound of Metal is about adapting to a sudden and permanent change to your world and reality. But in both cases, from the very start, you cannot look away. The film hooks you, and you are deep in it through the end.

In a way, it’s even more effective in the case of Sound of Metal, given that films usually use music to tell their stories, often in manipulative ways. By contrast, in this movie, you hear a score, and a subtle one at that, maybe three percent of the time. What Marder does is use sound to tell his story, and if this film does not get an Oscar nomination for Sound Editing it will be a travesty.

As the film begins, we are seeing Ruben (Ahmed) playing the drums in a band gig, his girlfriend Lou being the singer. Lou is played by Olivia Cooke, who had previously impressed me a great deal in the 2018 film Thoroughbreds. It’s only one or two scenes later that we see Ruben experiencing sudden hearing loss, so the film gets right to that point: the story isn’t so much about his hearing loss, but about how he deals with it. And at first, because Ruben has difficulty dealing with curve balls in life, he attempts to ignore it. But, the problem gets bad enough quickly enough that he sees a doctor, who tells him his hearing is at about a quarter of what it should be.

Sound of Metal is in a class all its own, always taking its own path, a story that commands attention. It also provides much food for thought, such as that notion of getting surgery for hearing loss being wrong-headed. I can’t decide if I agree with it, or at least, maybe it depends on the person. After all, the experience of someone born deaf is far different from that of someone who grew up hearing and then suddenly loses it. And Ruben’s entire livelihood is tied to his hearing, so it’s understandable for him to feel desperate to get it back.

Now, I’m going to get into quasi-spoiler territory, so be warned. Ruben gets this surgery, and how the film presents the way he hears things after his implants are “activated” is fascinating. I wonder, first of all, how accurately represented that sound could possibly be? The movie is made by hearing people, after all; and even if those who have actually had this surgery can explain it, that can only go so far—no one could possibly truly know how the brain processes sound with the implants unless they actually have them, I would imagine. Ruben’s experience is that the sound is very tinny, and often distorted, especially when there’s a lot of noise around. I found it interesting that sound of his “corrected” hearing would be tinny, on top of his being in a metal band, hence the film’s title. That’s how I took it, anyway; to be fair, no one in the film ever refers to his band’s music as “metal.”

All that said, one of the messages of this film does seem to be that this kind of surgery is not all it’s cracked up to be, or at least it won’t be the solution some think or hope it will be. That’s far from its primary purpose, however, which is one of the many things that make it exceptional. Its purpose is to tell a great story, which it does with flying colors. All these other things, the finesse of its representative intersectionality (I particularly enjoyed Ruben’s friendship with a lesbian addict staying at the group home with him), the sensitivity of its character portrayals, the smart casting, are all bonuses. And they combine to make what is easily one of the best films of the year.

Riz Ahmed learns a new way of navigating his world.

Overall: A

Advance: HALF BROTHERS

Directing: B-
Acting: B-
Writing: C
Cinematography: B-
Editing: B-

Of all the many, many movies I have watched in my life, Half Brothers is backward in a unique way. When it’s sweet, it works; but the funnier it tries to be, the less it works. It’s usually the other way around, but in this case, there is greater success when director Luke Greenfield is actually taking things relatively seriously.

A running gag involves a goat, and this is my least favorite thing about the movie. I kind of hate it. The majority of the film follows half-brothers who never knew they had the same dad, one from the U.S. and one from Mexico, on a road trip through the American Southwest. Renato (Luis Gerardo Méndez) is the successful engineer who built up a company in Mexico; Asher (Connor Del Rio) is the younger, irresponsible American who never holds down a job. Even with that in mind it makes little sense when Connor takes them sixty miles off course to tour a goat ranch and then kidnaps one, escaping with guys literally shooting at their fleeing car. The goat basically becomes a third main character from then on, designed to provide comic relief that mostly falls flat. It’s utterly pointless, and Half Brothers would have markedly improved without that stupid goat.

The goat is not the only attempt at humor that falls flat, however. A lot of it is just plain distractingly unrealistic, as when Renato and Asher happen to first cross paths in coffee shop by coincidence in Chicago, and Asher literally asks Renato, who happens to be standing behind him in line, to spot him two bucks so he can pay for the coffee he just ordered. What? Okay, the coincidental meeting I can suspend my disbelief about, but why the fuck is Asher even at a coffee shop placing orders if he has no money on him? One of the plot threads is the possibility that Asher has something mentally wrong with him, and while we are clearly meant to take that as unfair judgment against him, this behavior is strong evidence otherwise.

A peculiar case of caricature in Half Brothers is something that, upon further reflection, I have decided is kind of fair. With the exception of Asher himself, who is actually given multiple dimensions, every other American encountered in this film displays an exaggerated ignorance, all of them absolute stereotypes of fat, dumb Americans, who constantly speak slower and louder at anyone with an accent. It’s uncomfortable and objectively dumb, but . . . maybe turnabout is fair play? God knows we’ve spent a lifetime seeing movies and TV shows with Mexican characters similarly presented—Americans can take a turn for once. What I can’t decide is whether this was Greenfield’s intention, and given this film’s broader lack of sophistication, I kind of doubt it.

I also keep thinking about how these two men’s father (Juan Pablo Espinosa) never told them of each other’s existence, and sending them on this riddle-addled scavenger hunt to unlock an explanation for it all is supposed to endear them to him and forgive him his transgressions. Once you get past the “feel-good” tone of the movie, though, you might realize that their father is basically inflicting emotional abuse even after his death.

I did laugh out loud a few times. I’ll give Half Brothers that much, even though some of the time I still didn’t think the movie deserved it. Sometimes cheap shots still work, after all. I found the story much more engaging, however, when it focused on the bond Renato had with his father early in life, and on Renato and Asher’s road trip serving as a bonding experience. I’m just not sure sending them on a wild goose chase was the most rational way to make that happen.

Méndez and Del Rio’s performances as the title characters are honestly the best things about this movie, which alone make it relatively engaging. Their personalities are winning enough to make it pleasant enough to hang out with them—in spite of Renato’s exaggerated propensity for getting uptight, and Asher’s exaggerated idiocy. Everything in this movie is some level of exaggerated. Even that would be bearable if not for the script, which is just boneheaded too much of the time.

A generous dose of Mexican-American cheese. And a goat.

Overall: C+

THE NEST

Directing: B
Acting: B+
Writing: B
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B

I can’t quite decide what to make of The Nest, a drama that seems to traffic exclusively in subtleties, and which only ever hints at something sinister going on. Is this a thriller? A drama? It’s the latter, I guess, but with a couple of twisted turns that are either impossible to explain or simply sailed right over my head.

The is the first feature film by writer-director Sean Durkin since his 2011 cult-escape drama Martha Marcy May Marlene, and it’s both a little more straightforward and a little more mystifying than that one. An entrepreneur (Jude Law) who has spent ten years in the U.S. with his American family moves them back to his native Britain after ten years, chasing opportunity. He buys a gigantic country estate, gets construction going on horse stables for his wife, and plays the part of a good dad to his two children.

Of course, things are a little more complicated than that—although, what I can’t really decide is, if they are complicated enough to make for a compelling movie. To be fair, relatively slow as its pacing was, I found myself compelled by this movie. On the other hand, I truly cannot think of a single person I would recommend this to you. Perhaps you, dear reader? I mean, do what you want.

The Nest certainly has strong performances going for it. Jude Law can generally be relied on, and this is the first co-lead in a feature for Carrie Coon, whose most memorable roles to date have been on television (Fargo, The Leftovers). She plays Law’s American wife, increasingly frustrated with his insistence on uprooting the family yet again, and with his gradual unraveling as his new position in London does not deliver on what he thought to be its promises.

The kids are a bit older, a teenager and a preteen: Oona Roche as Samantha, and Charlie Shotwell as younger Ben. It’s curious neither of them spend any time at all complaining about being moved from New York to London. Are they really that agreeable? The two kids seem largely just along for the ride, although Sam finds a way to get in touch with her rebellious side.

There are subtle hints that there is something about this very old house that is affecting them all, turning them into basket-case versions of their formal selves. The transition is very gradual, and Sean Durkin never inserts anything into his scrip directly to suggest anything supernatural. The closest is one scene in which Coon turns her back, turns back, and a door is suddenly ajar. That’s it. Well, and the fact that her horse has died, and in a truly bizarre later scene, she finds the horse’s buried body starting to stick out of the ground, and starts trying to dig it out again with her hands.

Really, The Nest is just a family drama, and I’m not certain it succeeds on strictly those terms. It’s like it exists just to the left of family drama, one tiny step closer to thriller, but never any closer than that. Richard Reed Parry’s original score is always just slightly sinister in tone, while Jude Law’s unraveling husband and father keeps making misguided mistakes, and Coon’s increasingly fed up wife reacts. In the end, it’s the children who come to the rescue, sort of, as the film’s final shot settles on bemusing ambiguity.

My guess is how much interest The Nest might hold will depend on how versed you are in its pedigree: how much you like the actors, or how much you’ve liked previous films by those who have made this one. With no knowledge of any of that, I cannot estimate how much interest this film will hold. I do have a feeling it might gain greater depth of meaning upon multiple viewings, except I have no desire to watch it again. That doesn’t mean I didn’t like it; I actually kind of did. I just can’t quite figure out why.

Prospects aren’t looking as good as we thought.

Overall: B

Small Axe: LOVERS ROCK

Directing: B
Acting: B
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B-
Music: A-

So here we get the second of the “five films” that make up the Amazon Original series Small Axe, all of them purportedly about the history of Black experience in England. Just as was the case with last week’s Mangrove, the characters are either Caribbean immigrants, or the children of said immigrants. There’s a curious difference in storytelling, however, wherein last week’s first installment was very much a clear-cut feature-length film at 124 minutes; and this week’s “film” is all of 68 minutes in length, and is much more episodic in both presentation and tone.

It fascinates me that the critical consensus is even more positive for this piece than for Mangrove—which got a rating of 90 at MetaCritic, and this one gets a whopping 95. That puts both of them in their “Must-See” category, and while I won’t dispute that per se, I also won’t be quite as likely to tell people they have to see this one. Then again, to what degree is any one of these meant to stand alone, anyway? They may be called films, but it’s still a series, after all. Granted, they are also not sequels: each film has its own distinct set of characters.

And that’s sort of the thing with Lovers Rock: its characters are comparatively far less distinct. Nearly the entire run time is set at a West London house party in the eighties, director Steve McQueen’s camera lingering, for one extended shot after another, on a thick crowd of Carribean people dancing. I will say this much: Lovers Rock is packed to the gills with fantastic music. Many songs are featured, most of them some variation of reggae but also included are disco, and one particularly prominent track: “Silly Games,” a 1979 single by Janet Kay. That song’s genre, according to wikipedia? “Lovers rock”—apparently a more romantic style of reggae which enjoyed popularity specifically in London in the seventies. I knew none of this. I learned something new today.

And that illustrates the unfortunate issue with my even trying to approach this film with any kind of standard critical eye, actually: I’m an American white guy who was born in the seventies. When it comes to this stuff, what the fuck do I know? I can only assume this film speaks in particular to those who have a life experience with a kind of specificity represented here. To McQueen’s credit, this film does offer a window into this world for outsiders like myself. It’s a fully realized world for sure; I don’t have to fully understand it to see that much.

Lovers Rock is also not much concerned with plot, however. More than anything, it’s an extended vignette, a portrait of a world within a world at a particular time. McQueen does touch on a few dark sides of this world, usually with a subtle hand, such as when Martha (Amarah-Jae St. Aubyn) walks out into the street after a friend leaving the party, and a group of white guys down the street start making monkey noises at her. This is one of only two times white people are even noticed in the movie. The vast majority of the time, we’re just watching people dancing in the house party, almost like an extended music video.

After some time, Martha is revealed to be the primary character here. She intervenes in a sexual assault taking place in the house’s backyard. She and the man she meets at the party, Franklin (Micheal Ward), are the only two seen in a brief sequence the following morning. We do meet another volatile character in the form of Martha’s cousin Clifton (Kedar Williams-Stirling), a brief and tense conversation between them being the only limited amount of back story given to anyone in the movie.

Even that doesn’t happen until about halfway through. When Lovers Rock begins, we see handheld cameras following several guys moving furniture around, setting up for the party. There are women in the kitchen cooking, and they break out into song, the lyrics later revealed to be from the aforementioned “Silly Games.” Later when the DJ plays it for characters to dance to—McQueen’s camera lingering for quite some time on one couple grinding their groins together sensuously to it—and after several verses, the music stops, but the whole crowd just continues dancing and singing the lyrics on their own, belting it out passionately. It goes on so long it almost gets uncomfortable.

I know people who would watch Lovers Rock and find it repetitive and dull. I felt a little too far removed from its world for it to speak to me specifically, but I still found I could appreciate it. It was always compelling, if occasionally mystifying. In the end, we are told it’s “For the lovers and the rockers.” These are specific kinds of lovers and rockers, maybe not quite the conventional definition many of us have for those words today. If nothing else, Lovers Rock is a great example of how specific representation can still be accessible. The more a piece of art tries to be everything to all people, the more bland and pointless it becomes. This is a film that does not have that problem and is better for it.

Dancing to their own beat: lovers and rockers.

Overall: B

HAPPIEST SEASON

Directing: B
Acting: B+
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B
Editing: B+

Listen, Happiest Season won me over in a way that I truly never expected, even after about a third of the way into the movie. But let’s get the truly negative out of the way first, because we have to talk about that absolute turd of a title. It bears repeating, because I literally keep forgetting it: Happiest Season? What kind of generic-holiday randomized generator title is that? I hate it. It sounds like a spit balled title place holder that no one bothered to replace.

For much of the first half of this movie, I found myself thinking about how great it is to be getting a Christmas romantic comedy that features a gay couple, and how great it would be to have such a movie that is special enough to be rewatchable every Christmas, and . . . this movie is not it. Except, maybe it is? It pains me to say: probably not. But not because it’s not worthy. It’s because the title sucks. It sounds like the title of the holiday episode of a third-tier network sitcom.

So, please. Please, please, please! Forget about the title. Or wait, strike that. Write the title down! HAPPIEST SEASON. Put it somewhere you can reference it easily, lest you fall victim to how forgettable a title it is. Because this film is absolutely worth watching.

Directed and co-written b Clea DuVall, in her sophomore feature film effort, I’m still not convinced directing is her calling. This was my biggest issue with the film early on, that its direction was adequate at best. Sometimes, however, a script can make up for a lot, and the writing here absolutely does that. Granted, I have a specific bias here: as a gay viewer, I can not only relate to the issues related to coming out to one’s family, but in the end, I was deeply moved by this story. As such, I can see a pretty widely varied response among audiences, depending on their own personal experiences. To be sure, anyone with the slightest capability of empathy, this movie will work. But this movie will also really speak to some people in a way it just can’t to others. And I am definitely among those some people.

Luckily, Happiest Season also has a great cast. The gay couple at the center of it are Abby and Harper, played respectively by Kristen Stewart and Mackenzie Davis. They make a believable couple, although I found Davis’s height occasionally distracting. Abbey’s sisters Sloane and Jane are respectively played by an uptight Alison Brie and a rather funny Mary Holland; stepping into the role of the sisters’ parents are Victor Garber and Mary Steenburgen. We even get Aubrey Plaza as one of Abby’s exes, and best of all, Daniel Levy as Harper’s close friend. This movie would not have suffered without a gay male character to throw a bone to the gay men in its audience, but I sure was delighted to see him, and he provides a good amount of the comedy, without ever quite overdoing it.

In fact, Levy’s character John is essentially the heart of the movie, being the caring friend that every decent person deserves. Abby could use a friend of the same caliber, and does not seem to have one; she’s far too preoccupied with keeping up appearances for the sake of her dad’s campaign for mayor of his town. And this is another thing I love about Happiest Season (ugh, that title!): it breezily sidesteps gay clichés from start to finish: no melodramatic histrionics, and no reducing family members to small-minded caricatures. They aren’t even presented as especially conservative, and when it comes to how scary it can be for a person to come out, this is a key point: the family doesn’t have to be conservative for it to be a frighteningly uncertain prospect.

DuVall, to her credit, offers a great deal of empathy for Abby, even as she basically makes by far the shittiest choices, often to the detriment of her partner. But the broader point is that a person must be ready for such a huge step, and this actually fits perfectly with movies about the spirit of Christmas: the spirit of giving and of goodwill. Considering this is a romantic comedy—albeit one that made me cry much more than expected—it’s no spoiler to say that things work out in the end. The predictability here is immaterial; the very real struggle before such inevitably happy endings is what we are meant to understand. And we are still reminded that not every story is so happy, as told by Harper’s friend John. This isn’t his story though; it’s Abby and Harper’s, and Christmas movies must end with uplift. Happiest Season delivers on that front, in more ways than one.

Just be sure to write that title down so you know what to look for when you go looking for it on Hulu.

You’ll be happy you watched it this season.

Overall: B+

RUN

Directing: B+
Acting: B+
Writing: B
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B+

In effect, Run is Misery for Gen Z. I suppose that might pique the interest of boomers more than Genzers. Do the latter even know about Misery? They should; it’s a definitively better movie—but, this one is still lots of fun, and to the credit of director and co-writer Aneesh Chaganty (Searching), he gives clear credit to Misery as an influence, with a particular character being a sort of Easter-egg reference to it. I won’t spoil it; you’ll have to catch it while watching it yourself.

For most of Run, there are all of two characters: the protagonist, Chloe, a sickly wheelchair user who is homeschooled—and otherwise excessively sheltered—by her mother, Diane. It’s not really a spoiler to state that Diane is the absolute villain here, and it’s fun to see Sarah Paulson playing such a role rather than as a victim of the many horrors she endures as characters on American Horror Story. Most interestingly, Choe is played by Kiera Allen, a very young actor who happens to be actually a wheelchair user. And while it’s pertinent to note the rarity of disabled actors being cast in parts that are disabled characters, a curious twist in this casting is that Chloe, the character, was not only never meant to be disabled, but presumably, without her mother’s interference, she would actually not be a wheelchair user now at all.

Because Diane, you see, has some kind of mental illness that, I suppose, comes closest to Munchausen By Proxy: in a bent response to a tragic turn of events with her baby delivered some seventeen or so years ago, she is feeding Chloe multiple medications that cause the very ailments she claims they are meant to improve. In fact, the opening title card offers specific definitions to five of them: athsma, arrhythmia, hemochromatosis, diabetes and paralysis. Some of these play into the plot more readily than others, particularly the athsma (with Chloe fighting for breath on multiple occasions), and of course the most visibly obvious one, paralysis. We do see her taking what are at first assumed to be insulin shots, though, and syringes do later play key parts in plot turns, as do the medications Chloe has been told are for the other conditions.

It’s only when Chloe is rummaging through a grocery bag and discovers a bottle of pills actually prescribed to Diane that she begins to suspect something is amiss. Eventually, things like Chloe’s long wait for unanswered college applications start to come into sharper focus for her. Side note, speaking of colleges: Run is set in a small town in Western Washington, although it was filmed entirely in Canada and mostly in Winnipeg, of all places—but, Chloe’s clearly top choice of college is Seattle’s own University of Washington, which gets an almost absurd amount of product placement in this film. I wonder what kind of deal was struck for that?

Anyway, unlike in Misery, in Run the protagonist is not bed ridden through most of the movie; in fact, Chloe is given a pretty atypical amount of agency for disabled characters usually seen in movies. Her mother is still effectively keeping her captive, though, and Chaganty creates very effective, meticulously edited sequences—which he openly states are mostly influenced by Alfred Hitchcock and M. Night Shyamalan—where Chloe is persistently getting the best of her limitations, the very ones that her mother has created for her. One such sequence with Chloe making her way from her bedroom window around the roof of her house and over to her mom’s bedroom window is especially nail biting.

I’d be curious to hear how disabled people, and wheelchair users in particular, respond to this movie. It’s entirely possible it misses something crucial that my own biases are preventing me from seeing. But, barring that, it strikes me as a step in the right direction to allow a disabled character to exist on her own terms, even in a trashy thriller. Because, lets face it, that’s what Run really is: a trashy thriller. It’s also a very good one, as trashy thrillers go.

It’s also somewhat surprisingly subtle. This is, perhaps, the difference between “thriller” and “horror,” in that horror is much more inclined to go over the top, which Run never does. It traffics less in shocks than in suspense, and it’s better for it. When it comes to new, feature-length content on streaming services in 2020 (this one can be found on Hulu), you could do a lot worse. I enjoyed it enough to recommend it.

A new challenge of wits between daughter and mother.

B+

THE PERSONAL HISTORY OF DAVID COPPERFIELD

Directing: B-
Acting: B+
Writing: B-
Cinematography: C+
Editing: B

This is a tricky one. It may come as a surprise to many that I have never read a single novel by Charles Dickens—an oddity that I hope one day to rectify—but it would also come as no surprise that I have seen many film adaptations of Dickens novels. Because, of course, who hasn’t? And I usually enjoy them quite a lot.

This new adaptation of The Personal History of David Copperfield, by director Armando Ianucci (In the Loop, The Death of Stalin), however, leaves me a bit bemused. Well, except for the fact that, in my looking through Ianucci’s past filmography, it seems this is a truly rare director with a consistent record of making movies other critics on average like notably more than I do.

Indeed, although this David Copperfield is a period piece that goes far back in time than his other works, the filmmaking style becomes recognizably distinctive when regarding Ianucci’s filmography. But the thing is, the most interesting thing about this film is its casting of nonwhite actors in several of the key parts, including the title role—and, quite rightly, that fact in an of itself turns out not to be all that interesting at all. It’s not a gimmick, nor does it particularly make any difference.

The character, David Copperfield, is played by Dev Patel, and he fits well into the part. In fact, by and large, I enjoyed the acting all around, and quite like the cast overall, including Tilda Swinton as David’s Aunt Betsey; Hugh Laurie as Betsey’s cousin Mr. Dick; Gwendoline Christie as David’s stern step-aunt Jane; and Ben Wishaw, unusually unattractive as the villainous Uriah Heep, among others. (If you’re wondering about other nonwhite actors in the cast, a perfectly reasonable desire after my calling attention to it, these include Nikki Anuka-Bird as the snobby Mrs. Steerforth; Rosalind Eleazar as David’s friend Agnes; and Benedict Wong as Agnes’s father Mr. Whitfield, also among several others.)

But, acting alone is not enough, and I found this Personal History of David Copperfield to be too frenetic for its own good, the the persistently zigzagging handheld cinematography a constant distraction. I may not have ever read any Dickens, but I understand it to be fairly dense; here Ianucci tries rather too hard to cram too much story into a mere two hours. I suspect it’s a lot easier if you have read the novel, but at the risk of sounding like a broken record given how often I say this, a film should stand on its own merits. I have not read the novel and I found the plotting often incomprehensible, difficult to follow. This plots the entirety of Copperfield’s childhood and young adult life, and the characters are countless.

To its credit, this film does have several visually clever editing transitions, which would be easier to enjoy were the rest of the editing such that I could keep all the characters and the story threads straight. And, although by all accounts the novel is far more serious, the story here is presented as much more farcical, and I will admit to laughing out loud several times. This movie does have its moments. Audiences with a better working understanding of Dickens’s work will perhaps enjoy it the most. For the rest of us, however, this is a lesser work of Dickens adaptation, at best a moderate disappointment.

It’s too bad when great actors are in something that could have been better,

Overall: B-

Small Axe: MANGROVE

Directing: A
Acting: B+
Writing: A-
Cinematography: B+
Editing: A

Here is where the line between film and television is blurred, perhaps in a way it never has before—and also in a way that might just have been inevitable. This has been the direction things have been headed for a while; a global pandemic just hastened certain elements. The hastening might be why its presentation is somewhat confusingly inconsistent: IMDb.com lists Small Axe as a “miniseries,” each installment listed like television episodes. Except that, although one of them clocks in at a mere 68 minutes, most are feature length, and the Amazon Original digital posters for it refer to Small Axe collectively as “A collection of five films.” Indeed, the first three films had their debuts just last month at the New York Film Festival.

So there’s a lot of context to consider with today’s release of the first installment, Mangrove, which happens to be a triumph of filmmaking—a movie with a lot in common with last month’s Netflix release of Aaron Sorkin’s The Trial of the Chicago 7, an Oscar-eligible film that certainly has its merits but doesn’t quite stack up to this one. But, I guess, all Mangrove can hope for is Emmys? I mean, setting aside the ridiculous artifice of respective weight and importance between these different awards, still: whatever Mangrove qualifies for, it deserves to win a lot of them.

Mangrove makes incredibly judicious use of its 124 minutes, telling the true story of West Indian immigrants living in the 1960s version of Notting Hill, when it was a neighborhood far removed from what is seen in that other film from the nineties starring Hugh Grant. Much like The Trial of the Chicago 7, which is set within just a few years of the events depicted here, Mangrove is also a courtroom drama—although that is confined to the second half.

This film is very clearly set in two parts, the first half focusing on the Mangrove restaurant from which the title is taken, its West Indian immigrant owners and patrons, and the deeply racist local police force constantly raiding the establishment with no provocation. It gets so bad that the Black community demonstrates, and when they react angrily to yet more arrests without just cause, nine of them are charged with “rioting and affray.”

And thus, because of them getting charged multiple times over the course of several years, it is roughly halfway through the film that Mangrove jumps forward half a decade. There is where the editing in this movie most impresses, as confining the story of something happening over the course of years into a mere two hours is a challenge. Director and co-writer Steve McQueen, who is himself British and set out to tell stories of the Black experience in the UK with this collection, threads it all together with a steady hand. Not a moment is wasted; not once is there a lull.

In fact, much of Mangrove is a bit chaotic. These people are angry, as they have every right to be, and they express their anger forcefully and often. Nearly all the principal characters speak with a strong West Indian accent (close to what Americans would most readily recognize as Jamaican), and keeping the closed captions on—something I always do when watching anything at home anyway—is likely to be helpful.

It’s certainly a fascinating exercise to get a bit of a history lesson on these issues from elsewhere in the world, see how similar they can be to American racial injustice, and how all of these legacies inform what still goes on today. This is, of course, a direct reference to police departments in and their institutionalize racism in particular.

Mangrove is very much an ensemble in terms of its cast, and the performances are excellent without exception. It is made up of relatively unknown actors, the most recognizable of them Leticia Wright, who had played younger sister Shuri in Black Panther (2018). If anyone qualifies as a lead and also deserves specific mention, it’s Shaun Parkes as Mangrove restaurant owner Frank Crichlow, who anchors the story and provides both an anchor and a tipping point for the aforementioned anger. But, these were only two of “The Mangrove Nine,” and that’s not to mention the judge (Alex Jennings) or their lawyer (Jack Lowden) or any number of the other many characters.

What truly elevates Mangrove is its script, which remarkably manages to avoid the kind of emotional manipulation typically expected of films telling stories of this sort. McQueen presents this story entirely without sentiment, letting the facts of the events as they happened speak for themselves. He does give multiple characters pretty powerful monologues that are affecting, but in a way that feels based in reality, and in authentic struggles. This is the kind of movie that illustrates what a long road it’s been and how far we still have to go, and as such commands attention.

Standing up for themselves and leading by example.

Overall: A-