Glass Onion (2022)

Score: 5 / 5

Thank goodness they're back at it. Rian Johnson returns with Daniel Craig for another quick-witted, topical whodunnit to follow up Knives Out. And, befitting a sequel, this one is glossier, flashier, and bigger. The Gothic tendencies of the first are still present, but now in chic modern trappings. The self-aware political dialogue of the first is somehow more trenchant and expansive now. Think of this as like Branagh's new Poirot films: the first was more isolated and spooky, the second was more glamorous and brutal. It helps that Glass Onion takes place on a picturesque private Greek island topped with an enormous glass globe, because murder in paradise is always more fun.

It's the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and a group of old friends gathers for their annual vacation together at the island paradise home of Miles Bron, a billionaire techie and patented idiot played to perfection by Edward Norton, who plays against type to hilarious effect. One wonders if his idiocy has led to paranoia, because the group of friends he amasses are surely close-knit but they each hide devious secrets that only each other knows. They affectionately refer to themselves as "The Disruptors," which reveals their collective narcissism and smug self-righteousness, and their various pursuits smack of shady dealings and ill-gotten gains. Guarding each other's secrets as they do, they might best be described as frenemies.

Much as with the first installment, Johnson both honors and inverts typical whodunnit tropes. Yes, everyone in the large ensemble cast is a suspect, but they're also all deeply conflicted and ambiguous characters. The pool of suspects Johnson treats as a microcosm of social ills: the first film's insular family felt a bit Trumpian in its hyper-fixation on money and entitlement as well as their performative tolerance, and this film's fraternity of friends is more than a little echo chamber-y in its treatment of social media and its condemnation of greedily inspired tech advancements. Johnson also structures his delightfully twisty plot with knowing loops on itself, making it deucedly difficult to predict, much like the first film. Adding in metafictional flair -- such as his numerous gobsmacking cameos from people like Ethan Hawke and the late great duo Stephen Sondheim and Angela Lansbury -- only adds to the festive wackiness and off-the-wall ingenuity.

Daniel Craig leads again as Benoit Blanc (now confirmed to be gay and partnered to Hugh Grant) as the Cajun detective with a mind like a steel trap, although this time he plays more of a character than before. His attention was piqued when he receives an invitation to the Disruptors' vacation: each invitation takes the form of a deviously complex puzzle box Blanc declares to be silly and simple. However, Blanc was more or less recruited by a character played by Janelle Monáe. SPOILER ALERT: it is Monáe who really owns this movie in a dual role of twin sisters determined to bring down Miles for his criminality and dangerous new alternative fuel. And so, Blanc himself is a bit more relaxed and even goofy during the film's first act, which is a memorably blissful change in style for him.

The rest of the cast is uniformly great (including Kate Hudson's model and influencer with a penchant for racist tweets, Dave Bautista men's rights YouTuber, and a surprisingly nuanced Madelyn Cline as his sexed-up girlfriend Whiskey), although I personally felt that Leslie Odom Jr.'s tortured scientist and Kathryn Hahn's shady governor up for a senate election were underused despite being arguably the most dynamic actors of the ensemble. It's nice to see the actors play into or against type intentionally, and I wondered more than once how much of that was intentional to this movie in particular, to tie in with the symbolic ambiguity of its titular structure.

The plot, characters, performances, and themes are all pretty clear, but the layers get more interesting and intricate as they are peeled back. That's the brilliance of Johnson's creation in this series; it's like what Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson did with the Scream franchise in honoring the genre traditions while flipping them on their heads in intelligent and daring ways. Other recent satires like The Menu aren't dissimilar in targeting hot topics with complex, half-joking wit. And Glass Onion takes everything we loved about Knives Out and gives us more of it all, which makes it one of the best movies of the year and a joyous addition to what we can all hope will be a thriving new Netflix series.

Antebellum (2020)

 Score: 4 / 5

It begins with a daring long take as we weave through the field surrounding a Louisiana slave plantation. The costumes and rustic set design appear to be from the mid-nineteenth century, in the titular American antebellum period. In fact, the gorgeous natural lighting, the swaying Spanish moss, and the brutal conditions of the plantation reminded me almost immediately of Steve McQueen's 12 Years a Slave. Then, in slow motion, a woman flees through the tall grass, chased by slavers on horseback; a closeup of her face as a lasso loops around her neck and she is pulled back, dragged along the ground. It's the sort of unbearably violent thing that will get people riled up, filmed in that beautiful-and-disturbing way that could be exploitative. I wondered what movie I was getting into, and this is just the opening sequence.

Antebellum is a rarity. I went in knowing almost nothing about it, and I think that served me well. Because it's ultimately doing a whole lot in terms of plot and theme, and very little of it is clearly defined. At the end of Act 1, which I'll guess is loosely the first forty minutes or so, the entire movie suddenly changes as the rug is pulled from beneath us. It takes some getting used to, but it's the kind of twist that made M. Night Shyamalan famous, and frankly the twist strongly reminds me of one of his movies in particular (can't say which, or I'll spoil it for you!). Some will see it as gimmicky, but by the end I was struck by just how horrifyingly plausible the entire premise is in our country today.

But I don't want to go down that rabbit hole, because it's too difficult to talk about this movie without starting to give away its secrets. Perhaps it would be better to praise Janelle Monae at this point, because she is magnificent as always. Here she plays Eden, a slave planning to escape, and a dual role as Veronica, a renowned sociologist in the present day. Both are strong women working to assert themselves, but their enemies are closing in. The two characters exist quite separately, and we aren't sure of their connection, if there is any. It's a gamble on the filmmakers' part, and one that will leave some people scratching their heads for a while. Thankfully, cinematographer Pedro Luque works hard to capture lots of detail in his gorgeously framed shots; the gritty, tactile warmth of the plantation and the sleek, modern coolness of a bourgeois home clearly belong in the same movie.

Without giving anything else away, I want to end by saying that the movie juggles a lot. I'm not sure it handles its weighty ideas with any real ideological intention or even much conviction. There are themes, but few morals. Despite its contrived plot and major reveals in the latter half, it hardly manages to feel urgent, much less important. Mostly the movie feels angry. Righteous anger from the last four years (and of course, the last several hundred) is past due, and if more movies were made out of raw passion like this I'd be much more critical. The pain and anger fueling this movie could have serviced any number of concise, coherent meanings, but Antebellum as it is seems content to just express itself. With its brilliant, troubling premise, I am surprised it didn't delve deeper to become something profound.

Harriet (2019)

Score: 4 / 5

It's amazing that the dynamic life of Harriet Tubman has never been adapted to film by a major studio for a mainstream audience. The slave who became an abolitionist -- indeed, perhaps the most visibly active abolitionist -- is brought vividly to life and takes central focus in Kasi Lemmons's newest film. Cynthia Erivo embodies the icon in a stunning and overdue leading star turn, and her performance demands all the acclaim and respect it is getting. But what's fascinating to me about this film isn't Erivo's recreation of the character, but the way the character is presented.

Harriet is basically a superhero story. Fitting, because the historical Tubman is certainly nothing less than a superhero. The film dresses her in velvet, once she frees herself, and her finery stands out sharply against the burlap and sackcloth of her enslaved escapees. She never looks unkempt, never looks unduly victimized or exploited. The film allows her a dignity and beauty surprising in a movie about such ugly violence. She is, in many ways, the Captain America or Captain Marvel of the antebellum mid-south. We follow her from slavery to freedom, and back and forth as she becomes "Moses", singing secret songs to summon her people out of bondage and into the wilderness.

But for a historical drama -- a biopic -- to so lionize its own protagonist could be suspect to the wrong audience. And it is: I myself found parts of the formulaic plot structure somewhat dull. And more than once I bristled at the truncated bits of fact being sidelined in favor of seemingly fictitious drama. In the second half of the film, Tubman's former owner hires a black bounty hunter to catch his runaway, and their encounters -- including his unspeakably brutal murder of Janelle Monae's character -- feel cheap and contrived. No wonder some are arguing that these additional scenes are problematic. They are, especially if you choose to view the film as historical record.

But, for it being only the first major picture about Tubman, I think it's a damn fine attempt. Sure, it sacrifices some aesthetic integrity for mainstream purposes, but this is the kind of movie that will become a perennial classroom viewing event. Perhaps nowhere is it more clear that this story is not meant as historical treatise than in the strange depiction of Tubman's famed affliction. She calls it God talking to her. It looks like a sort of epilepsy. The film allows us to see her visions: sometimes as flashbacks, flash-forwards, or altered versions of events we're not quite sure where to place, the visions are presented in an unfocused blue-scale hue. What to make of it? Think carefully, because your answer may change your interpretation of the character.

You can argue Lemmons's choice to minimize bloody brutality in favor of thrilling escapes and grounded drama. You can criticize the fictionalized parts and dissect the facts. You can say this should be a sweeping epic about the hero who should be on our $20 bill. Or you can take the film as the appropriate-for-younger-audiences picture it is. You can accept the film's simplistic approach to its subject because it paves the way for future, more nuanced, approaches. You can dig into its inspiring, intersectional feminist message. But really, any movie that ends with a black woman leading a raid on Southern forces is more than worth a watch.

Welcome to Marwen (2018)

Score: 3 / 5

I really think this movie would have worked better had it not given away its entire story and spectacle in marketing.

Robert Zemeckis does his typically brilliant directorial work in visualizing the story of Mark Hogancamp (played by Steve Carell), an artist who was brutally attacked by five men and left with severe PTSD and precious few memories. As he cannot draw anymore, he creates a small town of miniatures and photographs them as his therapeutic practice, calling the town Marwen. Its citizenship of dolls share uncanny likenesses to people in Mark's life, though the town is set in Belgium during WWII. Mark's artistic successes belie a man attempting to cope with debilitating pain and disorientation, but the film depicts his journey to a sort of self-actualization when he can finally stand up for himself and function in society again.

There's a lot going on in this picture that we could spend hours discussing. Mark's identity as a cross-dresser, for example, is curiously specific yet largely unexplored by the film, which never uses terminology beyond his attempt to get close to women's "essence". The men who attack him repeatedly call him "queer", and the women he develops intimate relationships with befriend him with great kindness and sincerity; one, though, perhaps thinks he's gay until he proposes to her. It's a fascinating dynamic that is never fully realized; then again, this might be a fabulously non-judgmental portrayal of transvestism that is almost never seen on screen.

Too, we might analyze the questionably feminist tendencies of the film. The cast of mostly women are wonderfully diverse, in ethnicity and culture as well as personality and performance of womanhood. All are strong, though, and their love for Mark is infectious. His love for them, though, is occasionally questionable, and Zemeckis's focus on their bodies (especially breasts and shoes) arguably serves to fetishize their bodies. It's not incompatible with Mark's fixations -- we see him enjoying pornography, his collection of 280+ women's shoes, and miniature scenes of an often erotic nature -- but create an ambiguous tone that battles between the male gaze and the dialogue and themes, which repeatedly praise empowered women.

And while these elements are worthy of discussion, they are also largely matters of lenses and preference. The film as a whole is a mess of such lenses, and we're lurched between what could (and probably should) be an ensemble drama and what is, in fact, an intensely personal character study. Mark battles drug addiction and antisocial tendencies, incarnated by one of his dolls named Deja, a witch whose turquoise color she shares with Mark's pills and whose jealousy of other women keeps Mark perpetually alone. The climax of the film comes when he vanquishes her, letting her disappear in a time machine he built (that is basically the DeLorean time machine, thank you Zemeckis) and washing his pills down the drain. He attends the sentencing of his attackers and proclaims that he'll "be okay," aiming for a future of reality more than fantasy.

Speaking of which, the real joys of the film come from the astounding visual magic when his dolls come to life. Their little adventures weave seamlessly into and out of Mark's life (though the film itself is not seamless, their integration is a thing of wonder), making our experience of him something between reality and fantasy, much as Mark experiences life. As they kick Nazi ass -- another element worthy of hearty discussion, elsewhere -- they help him make decisions and make sense of his own tragedy.

There's a lot to admire here, if you can stay on track with a meandering screenplay and a strong split between narrative focal points.

IMDb: Welcome to Marwen

Hidden Figures (2017)

Score: 5 / 5

In an age of superheroes with countless sequels and even television spinoffs, it's hard to immortalize figures that aren't white or male. Especially when you can't buttress them with smash-bang special effects. Especially when they have to be based on real people doing real things, and the main thing of those things is math.

Hidden Figures does that, though, and does it well. Concerning the real-life heroes behind the US space race, the film follows its three black women as they rise up in the white-male-dominated world of NASA and Virginia and, through their brilliance and diligence, ultimately enable the first American to orbit Earth. Most importantly, the film never uses conventional means of shame, punishment, or even much tribulation to torment these women as a result of their skin color or gender. They are consistently brave, smart, beautiful, and successful in their endeavors, and are never victimized by the camera or screenplay. Even these days, it's hard to find such a film. To be sure, we see the evils of segregation and more than once the visceral hatred of white people against our heroes, but the film by no means normalizes those moments. Try finding that in many other mainstream movies.

Some might argue that the film plays a lot safe, and with good reason. It's all very PG, and while moments may take some time explaining to the kids, it's a clean and wholesome way to spend your family movie night. While that may not excite some of our palates, it is by no means a bad thing here, where the technical aspects of the film are so keen and deliberate they rival major awards contenders. Sometimes the editing is distracting and sometimes the cinematography bland, but when the story is as rich and engaging, the themes timely and urgent, and the performances nuanced and fun, who cares?

Hidden Figures, for all its feel-good, Hallmarkian packaging of sentimentality, is easily one of the best movies of the year simply because it does what no other film has done this year. Sure, it was directed by a white guy, and sure, it plays a lot of white sympathy cards, but in our current sociopolitical climate, the more white people use their privilege to create art like this (and the more white people go to experience this kind of art), the better. The last two films I saw in a theater as crowded as the one for this film were Sully and Passengers, and frankly those were both full of white people applauding for white things. This time it was only mostly white people, and they broke into applause in exactly three scenes: when the boss took a crowbar to the "Colored" sign over the bathroom, when Janelle Monae proclaimed her right to ogle fine men in every color, and when Taraji P Henson told her boss to act like a boss. Nothing like a whole lotta black girl magic to start the new year out right!

I'll happily sit in a theater like that again.

*NOTE*
I was shocked when, during the opening scene for the film, subtitles indicate that Henson's character, Katherine Johnson, was born in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, just a few miles from where I lived in my adolescence. I had never heard of her before, nor had I heard about her story. I'd heard loads about Homer Hickam, and he was from an even smaller town in a nearby county. After I went home and read more about Mrs Johnson, I found out she had pursued graduate studies at WVU and helped to desegregate the program. How had I not heard about this?

Then I came across this article, and I hope you check it out. One of my favorite undergrad professors is working to install a statue of Katherine on my old campus, West Virginia Wesleyan College, to inspire the students, visitors, and local community, and the project can use your help!

IMDb: Hidden Figures

Moonlight (2016)

Score: 5 / 5

Moonlight is one of those films impossible to effectively describe, because any attempt at doing so lessens its importance, impact, and beauty. But obviously I'm going to try to do that here.

In a form befitting its theatrical origin, the film follows young Chiron through three stages of his life, each named after the labels and identifiers others place upon him. It's a calm, calculated, and precise film, focusing in on the character drama at play as we quickly fall in love with our main man. With intimate camerawork and lyrical style, the film engrosses our attention as it seduces our senses, enveloping us in a very specific world we almost never see on the big screen.

Director Barry Jenkins leads with intoxicating compassion, setting up the places and people in his picture and almost immediately subverting our expectations, shattering stereotypes and narrative tropes with deceptive tranquility. Most importantly, he unravels his complex themes -- notably questions of identity -- in such a way that long-silenced voices may be heard loud and clear. Despite the seemingly preachy nature of its themes, including family, poverty, sexuality, black masculinity, gay masculinity, crime, addiction, and adolescence, the film doesn't actually try to get a single message across; rather, it offers us a glimpse of a beautiful life on the edge, and we are left with impressions and emotions and understanding, to handle as we are able. Chiron (played alternately by Alex Hibbert, Ashton Sanders, and the incredible Trevante Rhodes) ventures through a world of isolation and a culture in which he seeks meaningful connection, and as we follow him we lose ourselves to him. His silence speaks volumes, and in an otherwise somber picture, his life shines through as a flame of hope.

It's like nothing I've ever seen on film before. If I had to, I'd compare it to Boyhood in sheer scope and emotional effect. But where that film proudly declares its importance, Moonlight quietly slides under your skin and shakes you to the core. Its unassuming, unpretentious style paradoxically heightens the film beyond a simple story of a young man coming of age and turns it into an iconic masterpiece. See it. It'll change your life.

IMDb: Moonlight