Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (2020)

Score: 5 / 5

Any August Wilson production is more than worth its ticket cost. While the latest film adaptation premiered on Netflix instead of cinemas, it deserves a lot more viewing -- and uninterrupted, distraction-less viewing -- than I fear it will ultimately get. Apart from its glorious adaptation to film, helmed by the great stage director George C. Wolfe, it features two of the best performances on screen in 2020. The first is by the always brilliant Viola Davis, who is utterly transformed into the titular blues-singing diva, complete with feathers, beads, battle-ready makeup, and shining gold teeth. The second is by the late Chadwick Boseman, and it is, in this viewer's mind, the best performance he's given. We will never know if he knew this would be his swan song, but his powerhouse performance is a devastating and brutal reminder that he was taken far too soon.

It's a hot summer day in 1927, but the jazzy blues are hotter in one Chicago recording studio. Famed Ma Rainey, recently contracted by white producers and a white manager, is late for her session, although her band was punctual. As they try to rehearse, they are interrupted by their trumpeter, egotistical and ambitious Levee Green, who scoffs at their practicing and prefers to chitchat, hobnob, and dillydally his way to the performance, puffing himself up in front of the older band members by describing the new tunes he's written and gotten the producers to listen to. Levee wants to break away and make his own record; the band is happy enough to support Ma and be supported in return. You might say, "When you're good to Mama..." but that's another musical.

The band clearly has two divas, but only one is the real deal. Levee, played to revelatory perfection by Chadwick Boseman, aggressively charms even as he passively evades consequence. He knows he's a good horn player, and is old enough to know that is not enough to get where he wants to get. But he's young enough that his charm gets him in trouble, trouble he thinks he can sweet-talk his way through. In fact, his Cheshire grin, though genuine, is as manipulative and seductive as a magician's or even a killer's right before he reveals his trick. It's a dangerous game Levee plays, and Boseman, disguising his burning rage and (perhaps righteous) indignation at his status. He deserves better, and he aims to claim what he deserves. As he is told repeatedly by the other band members, Ma calls the numbers and the style, not Levee. But Levee thinks he has it in with the white manager and producer, so he's going to upset the applecart before launching to the stars.

When Ma finally arrives, she makes demands on the recording that were not agreed to by the band or the producer, and tempers quickly flare. A dazzling Viola Davis (ever an amazing actor, but here transformed almost beyond recognition) is here the openly queer and openly contemptuous icon of greasepaint and blues, dripping with beads, feathers, and furs. Hers is the sort of larger-than-life performance that will stand the test of time, but here it works both because of the heightened reality of this chamber piece and due to honoring the real-life blues singer. As the members come and go on errands, failing to record substantial takes, they soliloquize and philosophize, discussing work, religion, politics, race, and of course their own lives, slowly burning into a somewhat disillusioned but disoriented collective state of mind. But madness itself comes for only one person, and the violent finale comes when Levee's ambition and hopes and fears collide with his choices and his circumstance, forcing him into an impossible position.

A relative lack of plot allows for more time to deal with significant issues, and few writers are better to handle this than August Wilson, whose voice controls every ebb and flow of emotional weight. Though the film features music by Branford Marsalis, Wilson's dialogue is its own chamber piece, scoring itself in long-winded speeches and overlapping dialogue with dynamic rhythms and particular cadences that inform our feeling of the scene as much as the content of the language itself. Wilson's tendency for weaving metaphysical language and even fantastic or supernatural elements into his dialogue is most present here in Cutler (Colman Domingo), whose religious background informs several themes that pointedly inform the eventual climax. In fact, all the roles here have juicy moments, and the actors are altogether brilliant in fulfilling the needs of a demanding script and what was no doubt a demanding shoot.

Director George C. Wolfe, famed Broadway director, here delivers his best film yet; staged as it is, I would almost have preferred it to be actually shot on stage, if only to see what he would have done with it. Being locked in unbroken scenes with these actors in these roles would have felt intoxicating in their nightmarish design. And yet he surprises us with genius visual tricks, shifting our gaze to unexpected and often apparently insignificant elements that don't quite make sense if you're familiar with the play, but suddenly make themselves crucial to our understanding of the drama at work. Case in point: before the climax, during another character's revealing discussion, he closes our focus in on Levee, forcing us to watch Boseman's nonverbal facial reactions to his own mental breakdown, tying two separate symbolic stories at the same time as an unspoken theme becomes all too literal. And then, as Boseman goes in for his climax, Wolfe has the amazing good sense to just let him be, in what is unquestionably the best single scene on film this year. Boseman's fury is almost unwatchable, partly because the man knew he was dying as he filmed the iconic Wilson scene about mortality, legacy, and the pain of life. The illusion is so perfect that it is hard to even call it that; the reality of the art presented to us is, in fact, reality. It's a transcendent moment unlike any I've seen in years. Much will be made of him, and Davis, and not enough will be made of the excellence that is Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, but Boseman is, truly, the best actor in any dramatic performance this year.

Mank (2020)

Score: 4.5 / 5

A challenging, glorious piece that is as unexpected as it is familiar, Mank is the first feature film from director David Fincher since 2014. But for those of us hoping for anything resembling Fincher's regular fare, Mank is not what we expected or wanted. It's a biopic that dramatizes the life of screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz as he wrote Citizen Kane, his most famous work. Interestingly, this movie does not attempt to definitively solve the controversy regarding who actually deserves credit for the screenplay between its titular character and Orson Welles -- both of whom won the Oscar for it -- and while it certainly uses popular scrutiny over that question to frame the drama, Fincher veers away from any determinism to instead craft the year's most fascinating character study.

The year is 1940 and Herman "Mank" Mankiewicz (Gary Oldman) is dictating his newest screenplay to his assistant (Lily Collins) while recovering from a broken leg. His new director, Orson Welles (Tom Burke), has finally been given complete artistic control over his newest film, and the two eccentric, theatrical personalities clearly will have some conflict, as we can see right away. Mank, nursing himself with alcohol, agrees to take no credit for his work, even as he obsesses over the script. From his assistant to his director, people slowly begin to realize the script screams its dangerous similarities to William Randolph Hearst (Charles Dance), a powerful media mogul and political meddler, and try to get Mank to change the material. Refusing to give in, he finally completes it in time, breaks his contract with Welles, and demands credit for what he -- and others -- deem to be his greatest work.

Not perhaps the most interesting plot when described that way, but the meat of Mank lies in its plentiful flashbacks, shown sequentially during the previous decade, as Herman enters the Hollywood scene and hobnobs with the elite. He meets Marion Davies (an amazing Amanda Seyfried), young actress and Hearst's lover, with whom he strikes up a sweet friendship. By ingratiating himself with Hearst, Mank becomes a screenwriter at MGM, ruled by the imposing Louis B. Mayer (Arliss Howard). Of course, Mayer and Hearst -- both wealthy and powerful Republicans in California -- have formed a tight political monopoly on propaganda, and launch a smear campaign against Upton Sinclair, running on a socialist platform. It's interesting to note that these fancy dinner parties are occurring even as the Depression reaches its lowest point and President Roosevelt is unveiling his New Deal. Some of these scenes -- political dialogue and all -- are the most dramatically potent and memorable of the movie, and I can't help but be surprised by Fincher's uncharacteristically timely content.

What's fascinating about this movie is that it's barely about its own plot; otherwise, it would be much easier to follow along, even with its almost inert drama. I think it's deeply about Herman's psychology -- speculative and dubious as it may be -- and about the state of the art. This is no love letter to old Hollywood. The studio system here is as venal and vile as you could imagine, ruled by rich bigwigs and their politics, where no one seems to enjoy their work, much less find interest in moviemaking. And yet, Fincher's typically obsessive control over his craft is palpable, and it is hard not to see this movie as a companion piece to Citizen Kane rather than a movie about its inception. In fact, I immediately rewatched the Welles masterpiece (which I've never much liked, despite the hoopla) and felt that I was seeing it for the first time. Fincher adopts some of the visual style of that landmark movie in his work here, along with cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt, theatrically upstaging crucial elements, casting long dark shadows, and occasionally swirling in some expressionistic imagery just for fun.

Both movies are filmed in black and white, and Fincher even draws little circles in the corners of frames like in a traditional reel change. Mank isn't stark b&w, though, but almost cream and gray, providing more access to a modern audience while quietly shifting our experience from one of fiction to one of dreamlike memory, as if Fincher's drama were a Tennessee Williams play. Why is this interesting? Two reasons, one I think artistically satisfying, and one deeply disturbing. First, this new recreation of classic Hollywood style symbolizes the same kind of pre-Golden Age mythos, disguising a corrupt system of money and politics, that Herman Mankiewicz lived in, loved, and grew to hate. Second, though, is our realization that, especially during the pandemic as cinemas closed and everything went to streaming services, we're watching this movie on Netflix. Netflix and Amazon Prime and Hulu and Disney Plus, among other companies now, are doing exactly what the major studios did before old Hollywood broke up. The companies are in complete control of their means of production and of distribution, controlling their material not in independently owned movie theaters but in millions of screens in every subscriber's home, workplace, and pocket. I can't help but wonder if Fincher's usual thematic interest in the darker sides of humanity is not actually present in Mank, but just hidden better: the major studio system Mank rails against is returning.

News of the World (2020)

 Score: 4.5 / 5

Every few years or so, there's a brilliant new Western released, and I honestly thought the genre was going to die off years ago. It resurfaces now and again with one that tries to be ironic and postmodern (The Sisters Brothers fails, but The Ballad of Buster Scruggs magnificently succeeds) or one that tries to take the genre in a progressive direction and only marginally succeeds (Woman Walks Ahead and Hostiles). It's not a genre I particularly enjoy anyway, but sometimes you just want to hop on a horse, ride through the dust to a saloon, and drink some whiskey, no? News of the World is my favorite since at least 2016, when Hell or High Water and the remake of The Magnificent Seven were released, and I enjoyed it so much I now feel inspired to go watch more Westerns. It's that powerful.

Captain Jefferson Kidd travels from town to town, reading local, regional, and national news to the toiling masses on the American frontier. Setting up a sort of theatrical space by night in the town center, he charges dimes for people to come and listen to him report happenings in the wider world. As he mentions, his audience is too busy (or illiterate) to read about things happening in the capital or on the borders. His service, though, might be a sort of self-imposed exile, and he seems tormented by something unsaid. The year is 1870, only five years after the Civil War officially ended, though news travels slowly in the wide expanses of the American West. Kidd was a Confederate soldier, and many townspeople in the part of Texas he visits are unhappy with the perceived tyranny of Yankees who patrol the region.

The plot kicks into gear when Kidd comes upon a Black man hanging from a tree, an overturned carriage, and a young white, blonde girl hiding in the wreckage. The girl, whom he guesses is named Johanna, comes from German immigrant descent, but was apparently raised by a tribe of Native Americans. She only speaks Kiowa and doesn't seem to know what's happening to her; Kidd learns from her documents that her tribe has been killed and she was being taken to the authorities. After a few disturbing encounters with those authorities, Kidd takes it upon himself to find the orphan a home. They embark on an adventure from town to town, Kidd on a path to find Johanna's last living relatives in an unstable territory rife with peril. The two begin to bond, despite clear obstacles in their ability to communicate, and learn to help each other in moments of crisis.

The movie stars Tom Hanks as a very different kind of captain than he played in Captain Phillips, his previous venture with director Paul Greengrass. Together, the two play with an old-fashioned Western aesthetic, gritty and dangerous and an almost lack of heart. You can tell it's a Greengrass movie by the way he edits and shoots, but thankfully the cinematography is this time handled by Dariusz Wolski, a personal favorite, who slows down the director's usual frenetic energy with sometimes unbearably long takes -- still handheld, but less nauseating -- that force us into the world they're creating. Add a gently supportive score from James Newton Howard, and you have a movie that never beats you over the head with what it's doing. It comes across as a straightforward story, the kind of yarn travelers out West would spin night after night by campfires after a long day's journey, with little apparent art and a keen sense of entertainment value. Its episodic structure eventually reveals itself as a Homerian device, one that builds until its themes and purpose overwhelm you by the climax.

Sure, some of the episodes are predictable, and I think they are sometimes meant to be. Its plot is certainly not ambitious, but its thematic strength and emotional intelligence are perhaps the most nuanced of any Western I've ever seen. A lot of this is due to Hanks's performance, the actor who in recent years has finally refined his subtlety so much that he is never less than believable, even when the part he plays could so easily fall into rote caricature. The smallest eye twitch, momentary breath, or tilt of the head speaks volumes to his otherwise fairly mysterious character, one who exists by simultaneously entertaining and informing about everything but himself. He can read people as well as he can read papers, yet his piercing eye constantly roves for something more. Of course, by movie's end, we learn exactly what he has been looking for.

I am tempted to call this movie Greengrass's most traditional film in terms of content and style, but that's not a bad thing. In fact, he imbues so much energy and thoughtfulness into this picture that in many ways he revitalized the genre for me. His screenplay, co-written with Luke Davies (Lion, Beautiful Boy), includes a few heavy references to 2020, and I admit to a bit of annoyance with a particular scene when Kidd visits an isolated community ruled by a racist, xenophobic autocrat who tries to force the newsreader to proclaim the propaganda he produces. Of course, the complicated identity of Kidd gives way to humility, integrity, and decency as he tries to help the townspeople, something we can now, finally, recognize in our own political climate. But, like in another recent movie starring Hanks, The Post, this movie reminds us of the strength, danger, and ultimate necessity of a free press, and that is a message we certainly still need to see lionized in major pictures like this.

Fatale (2020)

 Score: 2.5 / 5

A sleek and stylish new erotic thriller? Strong aesthetic references to genre roots of the '80s? Plot twists and sexy costumes? A stunning trio of gorgeous actors? And did I mention Hilary Swank -- who has only supported in a bizarre smattering of movies in the last decade -- as the titular femme fatale? Yes, please!

Or, rather, mostly. It's yet another Deon Taylor movie in all the bittersweet senses that credit evokes. I've actually enjoyed the other two movies of his I've seen (Supremacy and Black and Blue), though I'd never rave about them, and I've not really been interested in any others. It's not, I think, that he's a bad director in any falsely objective way, but his vision is usually limited to visual sensation, or as Romeo's friar might say, violent delights. Here, his sleek aesthetic manifests in eyeballing beauty: of his actors, their clothes, their cars, their houses. He follows the all-too familiar plot with a languid, luxurious pace, hoping to draw us with its lurid pleasures. And when the action hits, it hits hard.

The story concerns Derrick (Michael Ealy), a successful sports agent who has a one-night stand with Val (Hilary Swank) while at a bachelor party in Vegas. She's a little spooky, something that clearly intrigues Derrick, even when, attempting to leave at dawn, he discovers she locked his cell phone in the room safe and won't return it unless he gets back in bed. Not long after returning home, Derrick and his wife (Damaris Lewis) are attacked by a home invader. It's a surprisingly violent scene, but things turn worse once the detective assigned to the case shows up. It's Val, and she is not happy that he's married. What happens in Vegas, apparently, doesn't always stay in Vegas.

From here on out, the soapy melodramatic revelations and twists come quickly and without too much consequence. The more I tried to involve myself with the plot, the more I found it dizzying, especially when another affair is revealed involving Derrick's best friend Rafe (Mike Colter, who really deserved a better role). Other messy sequences include Val being attacked by Derrick's cousin with a criminal history, or Val stalking her ex-husband and their daughter, vying to reclaim custody. Thankfully, Swank is up to the bizarre task and manages to keep things grounded, when camping it up would have been a tempting choice. Steely and wicked, her menacing presence is fascinating, even and especially when the unfocused screenplay tries to make us sympathize with her. These scenes, however, do less to help our perception of her character than they make her appear even more unstable, especially when they are paired with her flashbacks of being drunk and endangering her daughter.

Ultimately, Fatale is fun if you like this sort of sleazy thing, but it never really manages to supply what it promised. There is very little actual sex and only a few effective thrills, which doesn't make for much of an erotic thriller. Taylor keeps things moving along between gorgeous houses and offices, shot beautifully by Dante Spinotti, and it's all entertaining enough for a cold, wintry day. I liked it better than the last erotic thriller I remember seeing, Acrimony, but I'd certainly like a more satisfying entry in the genre sometime soon!

Soul (2020)

 Score: 3.5 / 5

Perhaps the most existentially-minded of Pixar's movies, the aptly named Soul hit Disney+ during the most unusual holiday season we've ever experienced. Apart from its sense of joy and entertaining delivery, its themes of finding purpose, self-discovery, building community, and sacrificing for others hit pretty hard given the year preceding its release. It helps, too, that its protagonist is a Black man, it was co-written and co-directed by a Black man (Kemp Powers), and it features the music of a Black man (Jon Batiste). In a genre dominated by white people, produced by a company built on whiteness, and the generally white state of the industry despite recent controversies, Soul is important and cannot be easily separated from its cultural context. Unfortunately, it's also hard to overlook its debut on an exclusive streaming platform rather than in cinemas, and I'm not sure it's as racially progressive as some have touted.

The story concerns a middle school music teacher named Joe (Jamie Foxx) who dreams of making it big as a jazz pianist. When he finally gets the chance to make it big (with Angela Bassett, no less!), he suddenly falls into an open manhole and winds up comatose. His spirit manifests on an ethereal stairway leading to the Great Beyond, much to his horror. Hoping to escape his fate and return to his suddenly successful job and first legitimate gig that night, he flees, falling into a purgatorial realm called the Great Before. Journeying through this strange spiritual landscape, he meets other souls and their mentors/guardians, but one in particular leaves a stark impression. She goes by 22 (Tina Fey), and she's a cynical and bitter but bored soul, absently existing without a "spark" of purpose or interest that would allow her to travel to Earth and live among humanity. Naturally, they work together to return to life, and naturally, they have more than a few misadventures doing so.

It's a lot of fun, helped by lovely music and the sort of absurdist animated humor mastered by Pete Doctor, the credited director and co-writer, who has also helmed Monsters, Inc., Up, and Inside Out, the latter of which feels like direct inspiration for Soul. In fact, the netherworld of spirits in bright lights, ghostly Cubist mentors, and a shifting, candy-colored landscape feels more like a direct counterpart to Inside Out than anything resembling a unique aesthetic. And, like that movie, this feature frolics between entertainment and surprisingly challenging questions about the purpose of our lives, our choices and livelihoods, and the ways we get what we want (or don't) and the consequences of those choices. But it's all fairly light-hearted despite its weight, much like the soulful jazz music Joe plays. When he goes "in the zone," most artists can appreciate the sensation of satisfaction and fulfillment taken for granted by others, but beautifully dramatized here in floating spheres of the spirit world.

And while the film's emotional strengths cannot be overstated -- I openly wept in a scene where Joe confronts his mother, voiced by Phylicia Rashad, who is not supportive of his dreams to play music -- its artistry cannot be praised for novelty, and its unfortunate plot device of turning its Black protagonist into something even more Other for most of the film is all too familiar. More disturbing, Docter himself claimed to know nothing about this trope during production. By the midpoint twist of the film, which admittedly helps its pacing and purpose a lot, the duo find themselves back on Earth, but with 22 inhabiting Joe's body. Get Out, much? And then, apart from a dying Black man preparing to sacrifice himself so the white woman can go live her life on Earth (a conclusion that, thankfully, we were spared from at the last possible instant), there is the most disturbing scene in the film: when a "mentor" or whatever those Cubist spirits are, hunting Joe, mistakes another Black man for his prey and traumatizes him. All Black men are the same, am I right?

I certainly enjoyed the movie, but I suppose my criticisms stem from the disturbing tendency for people to be less than critical when a popular work starts performing its own woke-ness. Don't mistake me: its championing of jazz music as a crucial cultural tradition and touchstone is brilliant, as is one scene that takes place in a Black barbershop. Several small interactions reveal that the film, despite Big Picture issues, succeeds marvelously in centering around a lived experience beyond the usual Disney/Pixar stories of white, middle class normativity. But I must admit to being disappointed in the movie's own lack of internal logic and organization. Inside Out and Monsters, Inc. were fiercely true to their own mythologies, almost overwhelming in their creative structure and rules. But this time, even with the colors and lights, I'm not altogether sure that the various devices and images add up to a cohesive whole. The moral of this story is essentially, I suppose, "It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live," but Dumbledore said the same thing several years ago, and frankly an encouragement card from Hallmark could have a similar effect. 

Soul does, however, boast Graham Norton's vocal talents, which really should have been capitalized upon a long time ago by Disney, etc. And speaking of capitalism, one brief scene has stuck with me since viewing this movie, and I think I finally understand why. While learning about "sparks" and purpose, one lost soul suddenly returns to Earth, freed of the doldrums of his office job, and exclaims in front of his co-workers that he has wasted his life working in hedge funds. It's very funny, and the sort of meta outburst we expect in these movies. But I cannot help but fear that Disney, quickly monopolizing the industry around the world -- which launched an exclusive streaming service for its own material and any products it can get its hands on, which quietly has been locking away its new 20th Century Fox titles in its terrifying "vault", which notoriously sued daycares for murals of its characters -- is playing a strange sort of poorface charade, pretending to lecture us about the moral bankruptcy of modern capitalism.