THE KID DETECTIVE

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

I suppose The Kid Detective is a textbook case of under-promising and over-delivering, conceptually speaking. Who’s going to have high expectations of a movie about a washed up thirtysomething private detective who used to charm his entire town with his mystery-solving as a kid? That gives it a relatively low bar from which to exceed expectations, but the competence with which this movie is written, directed and performed is objectively impressive.

Writer-director Evan Morgan, in his feature directorial debut, establishes a fairly quiet, mellow tone early on, which somehow makes the humor work perfectly. Morgan has his actors deliver their lines with a certain stoicism, which in someone else’s hands might give the film an air of self-conscious “quirkiness.” Maybe it’s that The Kid Detective is a Canadian film, but the tonal sensibility here is both incredibly endearing and almost relaxing. It got several good laughs out of me, particularly with surprisingly clever callbacks.

You could call this movie a “dark comedy,” but it has more depth and more heart than that might insinuate. Adam Brody is well cast in the title role, Abe Applebaum, a guy with a private investigator practice whose life seems to be going nowhere. He has a goth girl for a receptionist (Veep’s Sarah Sutherland) who answers an old-school telephone, even while everyone else uses smartphones. How the hell Abe can afford to pay her is anybody’s guess, but we’ll just let that one go.

When a teenage girl named Caroline (Sophie Nélisse) comes to him to help her solve the murder of her boyfriend, Abe sees it as a chance to both prove himself and redeem himself in the eyes of a town that lost faith in him. His childhood charms faded in their eyes after the still-unsolved kidnapping of a young girl devastated the town a couple decades before.

And this is what I love about The Kid Detective: none of the details are insignificant, and they always prove important, worthy of attention, because something about them will always resurface in relevance. This movie brings to mind the much flashier 2019 whodunnit Knives Out, where the mystery is the central aspect of the fun. To be fair, Knives Out is a much snappier affair, a slightly better film, albeit one with its own, very different sensibility. But Evan Morgan makes The Kid Detective very much its own film as well, the crime a bit darker but the humor a bit more subversive. And this movie has its own dramatic flairs as well, with a genuinely shocking turn near the end. The Kid Detective isn’t concerned so much with multiple suspects, so much as with Abe’s journey on a path to redemption. It even gets so serious in its final shot, with a sudden outpouring of emotion, I wasn’t quite sure what to do with it, and I can’t decide if it even fits with the tone of the rest of the film.

When taken as a whole, however, The Kid Detective has a subtly seductive power to it, with a unique skill in narrative plotting. The editing particularly impresses, with not a single moment wasted, and scenes ending in places that leave certain events to the imagination when other films would indulge needlessly. It has a unique economy of storytelling, where what gets left unseen is nevertheless crystal clear in our minds thanks to what we did see. The pacing is only deceptively measured, where there is very little action onscreen but the story still seems to zip right along.

As if it’s not enough that the well polished script brings all the story threads neatly together, The Kid Detective’s central mystery is its most satisfying part. Abe may have a knack for solving mysteries, and particularly predicting the end of mystery movies, but The Kid Detective offers us resolutions that make perfect sense but were impossible to see coming. It’s a dark journey that doubles as a chill ride.

It’s so much better than you might guess.

Overall: B+

JUDAS AND THE BLACK MESSIAH

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

It’s a rare thing when you can tell a film is of superior quality from the first frame, and Judas and the Black Messiah is one such example. I was unaware of director Shaka King before this, but you can bet I’ll be remembering that name, seeking out his other work, and looking forward to what he does in the future. That this is only his second feature film is a stunning accomplishment.

That it’s based on an incredible true story is just the jumping-off point. As with any mainstream American movie, certain artistic license is taken, such as characterizing FBI informant Bill O’Neal’s position in the Chicago chapter of the Black Panther Party as much more significant than it really was, or depicting his relationship with chapter Chairman Fred Hampton as much closer than it really was. These details are beside the point; a film’s purpose is to offer a narrative, and this one is a whopper. What remains a matter of historical record, and depicted accurately, is that O’Neal sold out Hampton to the feds, and it was ultimately tragic for everyone involved.

Which is to say, Judas and the Black Messiah is not a fun story. In fact, by the time it reaches its conclusion, the emotions it stirs are difficult to characterize. Shaka King is using this specific story to allude to a far bigger picture, a point in a vast history of a nation built on oppression. Some of the opening shots feature activist audio recordings offering a distinction between rioting and rebellion, which themselves offer some context to several scenes that come later in which Black Panther Party members find themselves in shootouts with police, where police and Black civilians alike are shown getting shot and in many cases killed. It would be a mistake to say this film is offering any defense of any of the violence shown—which, by the way, is uniformly, expertly staged—but rather, what inevitably happens in our communities when injustice is not just allowed to flourish, but actively tended.

And all that is merely the backdrop to a story in which the protagonist is arguably the villain. Shaka King won’t let us off quite that easily; there is too much nuance to any of these characters to put them in tidy slots like “bad guy” or “good guy.” The villain here, really, is white supremacy itself, and that’s what anyone paying any attention at all should take from this film. Bill O’Neal, played with career-best sensitivity by LaKeith Stanfield, is a man whose motives we can understand, if not condone. After being caught impersonating an FBI agent as a ruse to steal cars, the FBI itself recruits him to volunteer with the Black Panthers, and get close to Fred Hampton. His FBI contact is played by Jesse Plemons, who is proving time and time again that he fits perfectly not so much as a leading man, but as the kind of richly reliable character actor whose career will almost certain span decades.

Plemons is one of only two white supporting characters of particular note in this movie, the other being FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover himself, with Martin Sheen nearly disappearing into the small but memorable role. This is a pretty impressive feat given Sheen’s fame, and an incredible hair and makeup job.

Indeed, everything about the production of Judas and the Black Messiah is top-notch, and it’s easy to imagine Academy Award nominations in nearly every category. Daniel Kaluuya is incredible as Fred Hampton, aided in large part, as with every actor, by wonderful costume design and production design. Cinematography by Sean Bobbitt (The Place Beyond the Pines, 12 Years a Slave) is subtle and sleek. Kristan Sprague’s editing forms a polish of the narrative which is perfectly augmented by an original score with an uobtrustive yet infectious groove by Craig Harris and Mark Isham.

Miraculously, none of this gives the film any air of pretension. This is just storytelling at its finest, plain and simple: it offers endless fodder for discussion, perhaps even debate, but the history and politics are not what make it a great movie. It’s the drama itself, the journey of these two men, one who fatally betrayed the trust of the other. (Even the film’s title could not be more perfect.) Certainly the details create a rich tapestry that elevates the film, but it’s the simplicity of the central relationship that draws you in. Crucially, we are never given an easy answer as to whether O’Neal’s clear emotional turmoil has more to do with any feelings of guilt about his betrayal, or merely the increasingly hazardous position he’s put himself in.

To say that the struggles depicted here, and the endless conflicts between Black Americans and the police, are as relevant now as they ever were is an obvious understatement. Judas and the Black Messiah commands attention, not just because of its vital historical context, but because it is every bit as great an artistic achievement. It’s a triumph of cinema.

An incisive study of real-world betrayal.

Overall: A

GREENLAND

Directing: B
Acting: B
Writing: B-
Cinematography: B
Editing: B+
Special Effects: B+

Strange direction I’m going in this week, moving from Little Fish to Greenland—in the world of cinema, moving from a disastrous global virus to a global cataclysm. At least in Little Fish everyone just loses their memory; in Greenland most of the world dies.

That’s no a spoiler, as it’s beside the point of Greenland—the title referring to the location of a deep-underground bunker used to save select humans from an extinction-level event. Shades of the 2009 movie 2012 there. The event here is a comet, a hunk of mass several miles wide headed straight for Earth, preceded by other meteorites of varying size, causing varying degrees of damage, including the wiping out of cities. In that sense, it’s an update on the 1998 film Armageddon. It’s just not dumb as shit.

Greenland might not quite qualify as “fun,” the way the similar blockbusters of two decades ago like Armageddon or Deep Impact (also 1998) were intended to be. This movie is much more unsettling in tone, a few steps closer to realism, the fiery hellscape falling from the sky more often in the background, a backdrop for the story of a couple and their young son trying to survive as the natural world is torn apart around them. Some of these scenes, as staged by director Ric Roman Waugh, brought to mind the panicked crowds featured in Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds (2005). Both films have a particular interest in the human effects of disaster, rather than in the shock and awe of the disaster itself.

And this means the actual imagery of meteorites hitting the earth, in Greenland, is used sparingly, and it is an effective tactic. This is clearly a film with a fraction of the budget of those earlier blockbusters; it was made with $35 million. But Waugh makes all of those dollars count, and when we do get brief shots of a fiery sky, or of molten meteorites raining down on a highway, it makes a longer lasting impact (no pun intended).

It’s a good thing, too, because to be frank, the Garrity family—John, Allison, and young Nathan—just isn’t that interesting. The “plot,” such as it is, still suffers in the same way plots in these movies always do: details shoehorned in to give us a select few characters to care about, who somehow beat the kind of odds that would never be beaten in a similar real-life scenario. John and Allison are estranged, with the most basic marital problems imaginable. Will disaster bring them closer together again? I’m on the edge of my seat! Young Nathan is a diabetic kid, and his need for regular medication is the inciting event that creates extra challenges, without which we would not have the slightest interest in following these characters through such extraordinary circumstances.

Now I’m going to bring up something that might put off some readers with its “wokeness,” and I don’t care! The couple is played by Gerard Butler and Morena Baccarin—both white. How is that relevant, you ask? Well, they live in Atlanta—a city that is 54% Black. If the main characters here were from, say, Seattle or Portland, then their being white would be pretty much expected, just in terms of odds. No doubt Greenland is largely set in Georgia because Atlanta is such a huge epicenter of movie and television production, but if the couple has to be white, the least writer Chris Sparling could do is make them interesting. I guarantee you that there are countless other Black couples in Atlanta whose stories moving through this landscape would be far more compelling. (To be fair, countless other white couples would also be far more interesting.) And it’s not just that the principal characters are white; it’s that combined with the fact that Black people even among supporting characters barely exist, and of course one of the two with speaking parts winds up dead. These are details that reveal the subtle effects of white supremacy, something the filmmakers probably didn’t even realize was at play, but they should be paying more deliberate attention. In Atlanta, of all places.

So, in short, Greenland is far from perfect. When is any disaster movie going to be? Flaws aside, there’s still something to be said for its tone and approach, almost procedural in its observance of people struggling to survive in lethal circumstances. I suppose whether that’s better or if it’s better for a disaster movie to be just fun, escapist entertainment is up for debate. I also gave 2012 a solid B, after all, and that movie was straight-up preposterous on every level. But, the movie still succeeded on its own terms, terms which were different than those at play here. Greenland may still be just another disaster movie, but it’s going for something different. In certain ways it succeeds within those parameters, and it certain ways it doesn’t. If you love the thrill of disaster onscreen, it does offer several effective doses of that particular fix.

Nice job dodging those plot holes!

Overall: B

LITTLE FISH

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

“When your disaster is everyone’s disaster, how do you grieve?” I can’t stop thinking about that line. Surely director Chad Hartigan and writer Mattson Tomlin had no idea when they started making Little Fish that their little indie movie about a pandemic would run headlong into . . . a pandemic. But that’s precisely what happened, and what’s maybe the most curious thing about it is how prescient some of it turned out to be, and how wildly off base the rest of it was.

I don’t recall anyone ever using the word “pandemic” in this film. Do they even use the word “virus”? I can’t remember. Instead, the characters make casual references to what has happened to the world, so that we can piece it all together over time. Some things far more extreme than what we experienced with COVID-19. Grounded flights. Intermittent chaos in the streets. Okay so yes we had that last one in real life, but that was coincidental, about something other than the pandemic.

Other things are depicted as strangely tame in comparison to what we’ve really experienced. In Little Fish, there is all of one scene in which people are wearing face masks. There are no lockdowns. The film does depict government patrols made in an effort to control a wandering population, as the virus here causes dementia—another word never used in the script, but it’s still fundamentally it: people are losing their memories. Like our real-world pandemic, however, the severity and swiftness of infection varies depending on the person. In this case, some people “fade” slowly, and other people just lose their memories all at once.

In that sense, the virus depicted here is very similar to that of the 2008 movie Blindness, in that people around the world are afflicted with something that causes a disability, but they remain otherwise physically healthy. No one in Little Fish comes down with a cough or respiratory illness. They just, in effect, go insane. There are more accidental deaths as a result of “NIA” (“neuroinflammatory affliction”), however, such as when a pilot forgets how to fly. (Tomlin’s script makes no reference to copilots that must have been on that plane. Maybe it' was a small, single-pilot plane.)

This is all the backdrop in which Little Fish tells a micro story within a macro concept: we follow Emma and Jude (Olivia Cooke and Jack O’Connell) as they struggle to keep the memory of their own relationship alive, while Jack’s memory systematically fades. The same is happening to Emma’s mother who is back in England, though we never meet her; we only observe phone calls. Emma also works at a veterinary hospital, where her job has become little more than euthanizing the increasing numbers of lost pets whose owners don’t remember they’ve lost them.

In other words, Little Fish is a fucking sad movie. Do we really need this right now? I would argue no, but from the point of view of the filmmakers, what choice have they got? What insane timing for the making of a movie like this, whose planned premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival in April 2020 had to be postponed due to an actual pandemic. Given the long tail of this globally massive event in all of our lives, there was never going to be a time anywhere close to now when the release of this film would be “better.” So, once at least some of the dust has settled, it might as well be released now. And still, although it’s very well made, especially for the clearly small budget impressively maximized by Hartigan, I don’t have it in me to recommend it. Too much of it hits too close to home.

And I haven’t even yet mentioned that it was filmed in Seattle, which is where I live. I wonder if it goes down easier for people who don’t live here? I sort of doubt it. I keep going back to that line: “When your disaster is everyone’s disaster, how do you grieve?” How could anyone better summarize the year 2020? For literally everyone on the planet? This is supposed to be science fiction.

And to be clear, much of it very much is. An experimental surgical procedure is developed that involves puncturing the brain through the roof of the mouth. This makes for one particularly harrowing scene, but also strains the boundaries of plausibility. And even though this is clearly far from the point of the story, I sure wish someone in the film revealed even the slightest hint of how this virus spread. With the exception of when Jude applies for a clinical trial, no one here walks around wearing a mask. Is this just happening to everyone randomly without explanation? Apparently so, as is the case far too often in movies about a global virus, and it’s a bit annoying.

Chad Hartigan is clearly much more interested in telling a sort of inverted love story, where the young couple starts to forget how they fell in love in the first place. Does that sound like fun? Little Fish is like a mashup of a pandemic disaster movie and one of those movies about an elderly couple coping with Alzheimer’s. Except in this case, the couple is young—which is really the most novel thing about this film. In any event, everything about it is tragic, only the tragedy is realized in a slow burn, a creeping melancholy that might serve as a useful trigger any time you need a good cry. Which, to be fair, far too many people these days absolutely do need. I’m just not sure they need it from something that cuts so deep into the heart of all our actual lived experiences: a collective feeling of heartache and loss.

Had Little Fish been made even one year earlier, I might be more inclined to consider it a recommended watch. It actually is very well done. I could even say it is indeed a recommended watch . . . just not right now. Maybe just bookmark it for a watch five or ten years from now.

What you need to know is this movie will make you very sad.

Overall: B+

THE TRIP TO GREECE

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

I’ve said it before, and I guess I’ll say it again: The Trip, in which Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon play fictionalized versions of themselves driving all over Northern England to review pretentious restaurants, was bright, breezy fun in 2011. The Trip to Italy was more light, breezy fun in 2014. And when they did The Trip to Spain in 2017, it was even more light, breezy fun, albeit with just a hint of diminishing returns. That third film had a baffling twist ending, and left me wondering if these two would do any more of these films. Well, The Trip to Greece, which was actually released in mid-2020, came right on schedule: all four of these films have been released three years apart. In a way, this series joins the likes of the Harry Potter series or “The Up Series” of documentaries, or even the Before Sunrise trilogy. We’re watching people, and their relationships, age in real time.

Somehow, even though I’ve noted it in all three of my previous reviews, I forgot that in every case of The Trip movies, the source material is a six-episode British television series, edited into a feature film. I’d be curious to see the greater depth the series reportedly gets into, although, ironically, watching The Trip to Greece had me thinking about how even the films feel very much like watching a series. Now they are just four episodes with an average length of an hour and 45 minutes, the general tone always consistent, just the setting changing each time. All four films are available to stream on Hulu.

And the thing is, even as feature films, I would argue they work better as a home watch. The Trip to Greece is the first in the series I did not see in a movie theater, and I really couldn’t say for certain whether I would have gone out of my way to see this one in theaters were they open right now. Perhaps I would, but it really would have depended on whether or not it was just the best option at the time, given that typically in February, quality films are harder to come by. We are in very different times now, however, and it’s not at all difficult to find worthy content. Honestly the only reason I am reviewing this movie now, fully nine months after its release, is because I am a completist and don’t want to have only reviewed the previous three.

That said, there is almost nothing to differentiate The Trip to Greece from its predecessors. If you enjoyed the others, you’re apt to enjoy this; if you did not, then don’t bother. It’s essentially more of the same, the change of scenery being immaterial: the whole point is that they are traveling, and nearly every place they have gone through all of these films has been in Europe. There’s not a lot of space for, say, culture shock. Instead, they spend a lot of time at restaurant tables, amusing each other with their endless impressions of famous actors. And I do mean endless: this is a constant theme through all four films. I suppose it would get stale quickly if you did a binge-watch of all four films, but seeing them all three years apart makes it work, a pleasant diversion.

There is a very subtle undertone of melancholy as this series ages, however, and The Trip to Greece even touches on the death of a loved one. Coogan and Brydon spend a fair amount of time making cracks about their respective ages—and to be fair, they weren’t even particularly young when the series began a decade ago, when they were both 45 years old. Add another ten, and you know how old they are now.

And now, they say, this is the end of them producing this series; they want to “quit while they’re ahead,” which is a respectable position to take. I can’t say any of these films is especially vital, but considering they still leave open the possibility of returning to it many years down the road, that could also be an interesting experiment. We certainly don’t need more of these every three years indefinitely; they can only ruminate on celebrity and mortality for so long, and three years is really not that long. It’s a far cry from, say, the nine years between every Before Sunrise sequel, or the seven between all the Seven-Up documentary sequels. Maybe they should make another The Trip movie in some multiple-of-three years from now. How about nine? Someone should slip series director Michael Winterbottom a reminder note in 2029. Coogan and Brydon will be 64 then and even bigger, possibly more entertaining cranks.

Another three years, another European country.

Overall: B

MALCOLM & MARIE

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

“You’re hyperbolic!” snaps Marie, at one point in this movie that is, ironically, maybe the most pretentious I have ever seen. Malcolm & Marie feels like an experiment that failed spectacularly, a worthwhile exercise that should never have been taken any further than just that: an exercise. It’s among the first mainstream films to have been written, produced, directed and completed during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, with only two characters ever seen onscreen and shot in a single location. With all that extra time on his hands, you;d think writer-director Sam Levinson could have developed this abysmal script into something that no longer felt like a first draft.

This movie is all over the place. It has a couple of strong points. Much like Levinson’s previous and far better film, Assassination Nation (2018), the cinematography is one of the best things about it. There are some truly beautiful shots. Malcom & Marie is also shot entirely in black and white, evidently to narrow the focus on the two performers. The problem this time is that shooting this endless string of drivel in black and white only adds another layer of pretension.

At least with this film Levinson managed to snag a couple of bona fide stars: John David Washington and Zendaya as the title characters, a couple returned from a movie premiere. They spend the rest of the night mostly fighting over unbearably stupid shit. I won’t lie, occasionally I did see my own relationship in the petty ways these two went out of their way to hurt each other. The difference is, my husband and I are never this articulate when we’re shouting at each other, nor are we ever shouting about high-minded philosophy of “art.”

Malcolm is the director of the aforementioned film whose premiere they have returned from, you see. I kept wondering if the nonsense coming out of his mouth, about making film, or about his frustrations with certain things film critics focus on, was just Levinson using a character and a film to air his own grievances. Who knows? It’s impossible to tell when it’s already taking a herculean effort just not to tune out the bickering.

What I cannot figure out is who this movie is for. Fans of the actors? People merely interested in seeing how filmmaking can work (or can’t work) in the midst of pandemic-related restrictions? Maybe just rubber-neckers eager to witness a disaster? Why this had to go on for 106 minutes, I’ll never know. After being relatively intrigued for the first third or so of the movie, I lost my patience with it 34 minutes in. I am convinced my stamina in this regard was greater than most.

The acting is good. I’m seeing some people, even harsh critics of the film, saying the acting is “brilliant,” but I just don’t see how that’s possible with dialogue this contrived, between two characters who are both so deeply unlikable. Even great actors can’t save this bizarrely slick ode to self-indulgence. The concept here could have been executed with finesse, if not for Levinson’s decision to make the characters Hollywood insiders, offering commentary on Hollywood. This is supposed to be a so-called “romantic reckoning,” which could be done far more effectively without all that “Hollywood” crap. Maybe this is a “write what you know” approach. It feels like Levinson doesn’t know enough about script revision.

What a wasted opportunity. Malcom & Marie could have been made with just as few people, and with a better script, still been compelling enough to make you forget it was made under unprecedented limitations. But it’s not like movies with only two characters or set in one location have never been made before; in the past, occasionally it was a gimmick for its own sake. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t, but the point is, it can work. There’s no reason this couldn’t have. Instead, Malcom & Marie seems to exist solely to keep otherwise bored filmmakers busy. Some talented people have squandered their talent here, but at least they got some work. Good for them, I guess.

Take it from me, whatever depth you see here is an illusion.

Overall: C

THE DIG

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

The Dig is pleasant enough. Certainly more so than the title might suggest, but that’s a direct reference to the literal story at hand, a “reimagining” of the 1939 archeological excavation at Sutton Hoo in Suffolk, England. It’s based on the 2007 novel of the same name by John Preston, which reportedly takes plenty of historical license on its own.

I’m a little mystified as to how or why “reimagining” this story would be necessary. Is the true story itself not interesting enough? We’re talking about the discovery of early medieval burials dating back to the 6th and 7th centuries. Maybe the real-life discovery did not feature enough drama? (Or romance, as a subplot of this film might needlessly suggest.) Something tells me a straight-up documentary about this subject might be more sustainably compelling.

Instead, in The Dig, we get a film with a fair amount in common with Ammonite—a better film—in that it takes a historical event and then throws in inexplicably fictionalized details. To be somewhat fair to The Dig, Nicole Kidman was first cast as Edith Pretty, the woman on whose land the discovery was made, and Kidman was a far more age-appopriate choice, being 53 years old, and Pretty was 56 at the time of the discovery. Kidman had to bow out due to scheduling conflicts, and was replaced by the always-reliable Carey Mulligan—except, of course, Mulligan is 34 here.

One could argue I am nitpicking, but things get muddled when we’re meant to feel we’re being told a true story—which The Dig never claims to be. In which case, I have the same question I had with Ammonite: why do it this way then? Feature real-life historical figures as fictionalized characters? Would it not work better just to tell a fully fictionalized story “inspired by” the thing that actually happened? Otherwise there is an effect that is ultimately bemusing at best.

Setting all that aside, The Dig is well-acted, with some memorably pretty cinematography by Mike Eley, although its excessive use of handheld cameras and bright beams of sunlight are very reminiscent of Terrence Malick films. As a result it has an almost ethereal aesthetic quality, which makes for a pleasant viewing experience but I’m not certain quite fits the story.

Edith Pretty hires an excavator (Ralph Fiennes) to uncovver the mysteries under large mounds of dirt discovered on her land; ultimately a huge ship full of artifacts, having been dragged inland from a nearby river, is discovered under one of them. It is nice that Pretty and Basil Brown’s relationship, being the central relationship in the story, always remains platonic, serving somewhat more as an example of people connecting across class divides. What doesn’t work as well is the choice to include a romantic sub-plot, almost to make up for it. Pretty’s cousin Rory (Johnny Flynn) is invited over to assist Basil with the excavation, and in turn Rory discovers an attraction to Peggy (Lily James), the married wife of one of the Cambridge archeology team who arrives to take over once they realize the national significance of the find.

And, here we go again: Peggy Piggott was a real person; Rory Lomax was not. Focusing on their romance with the archeological find as the backdrop, but with Peggy also fictionalized, might have also made The Dig a better movie. Not to say that there has to be any romance for the story to be compelling, but with it relegated to an ultimately irrelevant subplot, The Dig is left unable to figure out exactly what genre of movie it wants to be.

The story is otherwise entirely plausible, at least, and it is interesting to learn of the historical context of this particular excavation in British history. Carey Mulligan and Ralph Fiennes are both consummate performers and as such keep the story from ever sagging under any dullness the film might have had otherwise. They both have a comforting, familiar screen presence, playing decent people doing decent things. You could certainly do worse.

Ralph Fiennes waits for his ship to come in.

Overall: B

THE LITTLE THINGS

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

The Little Things is the kind of crime drama that’s compelling enough while you watch it, but once it’s done, there’s not much reason to give it more thought. I can’t imagine ever watching it again. Ironically, I should make a note of it. What if I forget, and somehow wind up watching it again sometime in the future? One time was okay, but watching this movie twice—what a waste of time that would be. I sure am glad I never had to pay for this one in a movie theater. Of course, were theaters open and release schedules normal, I almost certainly never would have gone to see this movie in the first place. Or would I? It is January, after all. I sat at home and watched a movie that felt like the crap that gets dumped in theaters in January with nothing better to see.

Why did I watch it, then? Certainly there are plenty of other films I could watch and expect to be better. Maybe I thought writing a bad review would be fun. Problem is, The Little Things isn’t any fun. It’s just . . . blah. Use that as your pull quote.

Odd things about this movie abound. It stars three Oscar winners: Denzel Washington as a detective who left the LAPD for a smaller force out of town after a botched investigation five years earlier; Rami Malek as the detective who has effectively replaced him; and Jared Leto as the probably-serial-killer they wind up tracking together. Three very talented actors, starring together in a dud. Washington perhaps elevates the material slightly with his performance. Malek spends a lot of time looking like he’s making an effort to be stoic. Leto’s delivery reminded me a lot of his performance in Blade Runner 2049., a very different character speaking with the same cadences. To be fair, Leto plays a sunken-eyed, paunch-bellied creep incredibly well. He also kind of looks like he just stuck a pillow under his shirt.

The story is set in Los Angeles in the nineties, and the only reason I can see for that is simply that writer-director John Lee Hancock’s script is thirty years old, and he just decided not to update the setting. I’m just astonished that after all this time he didn’t find the time to rewrite his preposterous script.

To be fair, the story, and particularly the pacing and tone, are compelling enough for some time. But The Little Things completely lost me about three quarters of the way through, with Malek’s detective making choices that make no sense whatsoever, except to serve as consequential plot turns. Problem is, there is no universe in which any cop as good at his job as this one is supposed to be would make such astonishingly idiotic moves. One or two more plot twists follow, but the are rendered meaningless by this character behaving like . . . well, like a cop in a bad movie script. In other words, suspension of disbelief only works if there is even a sliver of plausibility.

How did three actors of this caliber read this script and think it was a good idea? To me, that will forever be the central mystery to The Little Things. Never mind who the killer really is. Denzel Washington utters the phrase, more than once: “It’s the little things, that’ll get you caught.” We’re meant to take that line in as particularly meaningful, except it never pays off, in any sense. This is a movie that feels unpolished, unfinished, and still easily forgotten.

It appears they have him cornered.

Overall: C+

THE WHITE TIGER

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

How might The White Tiger have done at the box office under normal circumstances, I wonder? “Normal” is relative, of course, and no more so than right now. Still, consider Slumdog Millionaire, a very good movie which still rode the wave of being over-hyped all the way to winning an undeserved Best Picture Oscar in 2009. The White Tiger could be today’s version of that movie, but it could never enjoy the same success. The key difference is that the earlier film is ultimately a fantasy about someone’s dreams coming true on a gameshow, whereas this film is not just about someone rising to the top in India, but what it truly costs to get there. It’s not a sunny picture.

Writer-director Ramin Bahrani, adapting from the best-selling 2008 novel by Aravind Adiga, still manages to make The White Tiger very entertaining much of the time. It’s a slightly deceptive move. Spoiler alert! This is not a “feel-good movie.” It’s a compelling one though, and by degrees provocative, in its examinations of rigid class structures in India and how those barriers are broken or crossed.

Told in voice-over narration by the protagonist, Balram (Adarsh Gourav), we start in his childhood in a village barely scraping by as the villagers have to hand over their earnings to a family that lords power over them. Balram loses his dad, and in young adulthood faces the same fate as his older brother, a marriage that also traps him there for the rest of his life. One of the best lines in this movie is when Balram says, “Rich men are born with opportunities they can waste.” Belram demonstrates well before this line is uttered that the poor have no such luxury, and he bullshits his way into becoming the driver for Ashok (Rajkummar Rao), the grown son of the family who takes most of the village’s money.

What follows is an incisive examination of how society runs in India, the rick and the poor alike referring to the country’s self-image as a “democracy” with contempt. Balram notes early on how he’s learned the importance of not being “a poor man in a free democracy.” A large amount of American influence is woven into the story, with Ahok’s fiance, Pinky (Priyanka Chopra), having returned with him after growing up in the U.S. Ashok has also spent a lot of time there—it’s where they met—but Pinky is the only character in this movie who speaks with an American accent. She’s still as fluent in Hindi as any of the others, though. (Both Hindi and English are spoken about the same amount.)

Pinky brings with her a lot of idealism, as well as some naivete about how entrenched India’s classist and misogynist attitudes remain. She reacts with horror when others treat Balram, a servant, as sub-human. Then, when an accident involving all three of them happens—which we see a glimpse of in the film’s opening sequence and then is returned to halfway through—things get very complicated. The White Tiger has a lot to say about the kinds of power money has over people, and how the power differs depending on the direction from which it’s being approached. Ashok seems unusually decent at first, but in the end his behavior betrays how wealth affords such privilege that certain things considered vital by others can be blithely ignored. Not even ignored, necessarily: it doesn’t even occur to them to consider.

In stark contrast to Slumdog Millionaire, The White Tiger is not about the poor man finding success thanks to a heart of gold. This is a much more realistic story—although even that is still relative. The voiceover narration by Balram also serves as an email—quite a long email at that—he is writing to the Premier of China, who is headed to India for a visit. Balram wants to impress him with his “entrepreneurial spirit.” The conceit is a little corny, but at least it’s the only part of the film that goes solidly in that direction.

It could be said that Balram is an anti-hero, and honestly he’s never truly presented as an actual hero, so I hesitate to call that a spoiler. Bahrani his pulled a sly trick in knowing we assume this character is meant to be someone for us to root for. But The White Tiger is about much more than him: it’s a subtle takedown of class divides, and capitalism itself. Not just that, but national competition on a global scale. There are no white characters in this movie (nor are there any Black ones, for that matter), but white people get mentioned a couple of times, only in the context of getting left behind by the people of both India and China, beating America at its own corrosive, toxic economic games. This movie kind of has a point.

One could also argue that The White Tiger is Darwinist at heart. Survival of the fittest is not a moral phrase. This is a movie that reflects a changing world while illustrating that human nature, or just nature itself, remains constant. It’s a rich and complex story of what happens when a taste of ambition gets results and then becomes a cycle of its own. It’s a pretty cynical worldview on display here, but it’s still worth a look. It’s always the aberrations that get their stories told, but it’s useful to be reminded how success can be redefined by context, as well as how the idea of success being inherently honorable is a myth.

Who’s driving who here?

Overall: B+

MLK/FBI

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

Sam Pollard’s MLK/FBI is a fascinating specimen of documentary filmmaking, in terms of its own inevitable biases, and the myth of objectivity. These are ideas that can be applied to any documentary film, of course, but it seems a surprise to me how much it could be argued that the FBI is let off the hook here.

He is only heard a few times, but one of the interview subjects is former Director of the FBI James Comey, who is heard multiple times referring to the period of the FBI’s well-documented surveillance of Martin Luther King Jr. as '“the darkest period” of the FBI’s history. Never mind that this is the man who arguably cost Hillary Clinton the 2016 presidential election by pointlessly announcing the reopening of the email investigation only two weeks before the election—a detail understandably left out of this film for lack of relevance there, but it still undermines his credibility as any spokesman for when the FBI’s history might be tainted. In the long history of the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation, both that and the surveillance of King are but two examples among countless examples of the FBI’s “dark history.” This isn’t even a matter much up for debate, and yet MLK/FBI entirely sidesteps the other historical atrocities the FBI has committed, thus barely falling short of making the case on its own, that the 1950s and 1960s were the worst times for the FBI.

We also get multiple instances of interview subjects referring to how differently Martin Luther King looked “from the FBI’s point of view.” It skirts very oddly close to empathy for this organization, although to be fair the film is far more interested in the point of view of King himself. It’s just that the pains the film takes to view the FBI itself objectively are strained, and fruitless: the FBI was (and possibly still is) very much the bad guy here, and this film would have been improved by characterizing it as such.

That is really my only true criticism of MLK/FBI, though I would contend it to be a notable one. This film is otherwise a deeply compelling and provocative look at one of the most significant American leaders of the past century, aided in large part by certain cinematic choices and subtle artistic flourishes. The entire film is presented in black and white, almost exclusively of archival footage as the interview subjects’ commentary runs over it. The names of the people speaking appear onscreen to identify them, but none of the subjects are seen until the end credits begin, and even then only briefly. Even those clips are in black and white, a choice that makes sense given that the vast majority of the imagery we are used to from King’s time is in black and white.

A great deal of attention is paid to what here the film refers to benignly as King’s “non-monogamy.” One thing MLK/FBI is very successful at is re-contextualizing this well-documented element of Martin Luther Ling Jr.’s personal and private life, which was quite literally recorded by the FBI via wiretaps and bugs in his home and in hotel rooms. The lengths to which the FBI went, the amount of time it spent in efforts to discredit him as this amoral hypocrite, is not a matter of rumor but of documented historical fact. What is less clear is how his wife, Coretta Scott King, felt about it. It’s notable that this film looks upon King’s many sexual dalliances—a host of which was edited together onto a tape and sent to King, his wife. and others close to him—with a completely neutral eye; even I can remember being told years ago about how Martin Luther King wasn’t a complete saint, “he was a womanizer.” But viewed from the lens of the 2020s, how much do we know about whether that couple simply had some kind of understanding? More importantly, how is it anyone’s business but there’s?

In hindsight, J. Edgar Hoover’s obsession with “revealing” Martin Luther King as “the most notorious liar in the country” (a direct quote which made many headlines) is just another example of misplaced moral superiority, never mind the clear racism that motivated all fervent opposition to King. But this opposition bled over into those who would otherwise be his allies, as even other civil rights leaders spoke out against him when, only a year before his death, King dared to speak out against the Vietnam War as a clear double standard in American foreign policy. His work at the end of his life focusing on poverty in America is unfortunately not what he is most remembered for, but perhaps it should be.

Near the end of MLK/FBI, which is available to stream on VOD for $6.99 (well worth the price), the original footage is shown of Martin Luther King saying, “When white Americans tell the Negro to lift himself up by his bootstraps, they don’t look over the legacy of slavery and segregation. Now, I believe we ought to do all we can and seek to lift ourselves by our own bootstraps. It’s all right to tell a man to lift himself up by his bootstraps, but it is cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself up by his bootstraps.” This cuts to the heart of King’s aim to end poverty, and how deeply racism, white supremacy, and Black poverty are linked. This is what the U.S. government did not want to be held accountable for then—nor does it now, fully half a century later—and is the very reason the FBI sought to vilify him. MLK/FBI illustrates how successful they were in that endeavor in his time, making him far more controversial than current depictions would make him seem. But, at least, in the long run it was a PR battle that the FBI lost.

Nothing can make even a complicated man less of an icon once he is an icon.

Overall: B+