The Boys in the Band (2020)

 Score: 4.5 / 5

The devastating brilliance of The Boys in the Band is back in a big way with its newest incarnation, which debuted on Netflix recently. This production has been lifted directly from its brief Broadway revival in 2018, including its entire cast and director, and though its stagey delivery will surely invite criticism from some, it allows those of us who enjoy the theatre to experience something of what we might see on stage. With most responsible theatre groups still shut down these days, heaven knows we needed something like this. (And of course Hamilton, but that's been on repeat all summer!)

It's one of the defining dinner-party-gone-wrong dramas, and remarkably noteworthy for many reasons. Mart Crowley's original off-Broadway play premiered in 1968 and was groundbreaking for portraying a group of gay men authentically. They weren't isolated, and they weren't a trope: the villain, the victim, the sidekick. They weren't even heroic, which wouldn't happen yet for many years. The entire play explores their lives in a way that, now, feels like a perfect experience dropped into a time capsule: only the next year, which brought the Stonewall riots, changed queer urban culture forever. Not long after, as AIDS claimed the lives of thousands, gay art grew urgent, preachy, tragic, and poignant. Because of the intersection of queer lives, mainstream media, and increasing social justice, it's terribly difficult for most young people today to grasp the revolutionary power of The Boys in the Band, even if it wasn't all that well-received in its day.

But it's still a magnificent drama on its own terms, and as long as we let its tempo, language, and profound truths guide us, this new film works wonders on the screen. Thankfully, director Joe Mantello and producer Ryan Murphy avoid any attempts to modernize or dumb-down the original text, making this film as important (if more accessible) than William Friedkin's 1970 film. The play doesn't need to be topical because it will always be relevant, and the artists here trust the work to stand on its own. With only a few added moments to make this feel less like it was shot on stage, the film takes place almost entirely within one character's apartment in Manhattan's Upper East Side. What begins as a not-quite-surprising birthday party turns into a night of chaos as the characters drink, play games, and reveal awful truths about themselves and each other.

Jim Parsons plays Michael, the host, whose recent sobriety is put to the test as he prepares for company. His former college roommate Alan has called and wants to visit, but when Michael tells him he's having friends over Alan won't like, Alan breaks into tears (something the very straight character certainly hasn't done before). Michael allows his friend a brief time to come, but before long the gaggle of gays show up and get a little rowdy. It would be easy to classify this bunch of queens as too campy, too effete, too much; but you'd be forgetting that this was a time that their behaviors -- even their identities, as much as the concept existed then -- were strictly illegal. Once in the privacy of a home, they could finally relax and be as flamboyant as they could not in the "real" world. And does that affect their mannerisms? You bet.

You could say the characters are fairly stereotypical, by today's standards, but that washes away the fact that these stereotypes had not yet been cemented as fundamental to queer representation in art. We have effeminate interior decorator Emory, tortured and hunky former lover Donald (who, it is suggested, is undergoing psychoanalysis in an early form of conversion therapy), artist Larry who prefers to sleep around and his live-in boyfriend Hank who is still married to a woman, and finally librarian Bernard, a hopeless romantic and the only black man. We know that, based on the time period and the verbal cruelty of these queers, before long someone will call him the "n" word. And I nearly forgot the guest of honor: Harold, played by a deliciously wicked Zachary Quinto, the lapsed Catholic and alcoholic riddled with a poisonous mix of vanity and malice.

As the night slowly becomes a nightmare, we're locked in the genius world of Eugene O'Neill and Edward Albee, in a party-hell that is as absorbing as it is repugnant. Its grotesquerie reaches a chillingly quiet climax during a particularly nasty party game in which the men take turns calling the one person they've loved the most and telling them. Revelations spiral out of control and the characters are each given chances to dramatically shine; of course the central issue, a now-cliché MacGuffin in which the one most repelled by gay men is probably gay himself, comes to the fore before all ends with tears. Of course, that's not to deny our own devilish pleasure at watching a member of the hegemony get what's coming to him when he is suddenly at the mercy of those he detests. I read that "schadenfreude" was the most-searched vocabulary word after Trump caught the coronavirus. The same concept is dramatic gold here.

If for nothing else, this movie is a delicious drama that perfectly captures real lives lived in a time before what most of us can remember. As such, it can foster lively and enlightening discussions about history, politics, and social justice as easily as it can about friendship, love, truth, and the tragedy of our lives. Boasting memorable performances, beautiful production design, and its timeless script, The Boys in the Band ultimately reminds us all that denying and disguising ourselves can only end with pain, but embracing and building each other up allows us to hope.

Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile (2019)

Score: 3.5 / 5

I have strongly contrasting opinions about this movie, and this is a rare case where my ambivalence does not particularly help the film in my esteem. And it begins with that historically accurate yet terribly cumbersome title.

The story indeed follows the life of Ted Bundy, here played by a more mature Zac Efron than we've seen since The Paperboy. Looking, as he does, uncannily like the handsome serial killer, Efron manages to play the character remarkably straight, never resorting to caricature or even relishing in the horror of the real man, in the way you might expect camp horror to (I'm thinking if Bundy were to ever appear on American Horror Story). His performance is so deeply layered that some might call it opaque, and I wouldn't say that, here, that's a bad thing; Efron does not give us any footholds, displaying Bundy in his charming wonder behind a blinding smokescreen of suavity. It helps that Efron's public persona is almost exclusively positive and popular, but here he is notably not playing any of his own strengths, and I didn't see a single -ism of his on screen. 

Most fascinating to me, though, is how tightly Efron and director Joe Berlinger work together to craft the film around his character. We never see Bundy committing any of his many murders. While I value the utter refusal to glorify his violence, the lack of it entirely almost does glorify it, doesn't it? It seems to suggest that his crimes occurred in a void, affecting no one, and are perhaps even forgettable, despite that many of his victims have friends and family still alive and mourning. Even more interesting, in this context, is that Bundy himself, bereft of the visual dynamic of his sins, becomes an utter void on screen. Efron's magnetic performance pulls us in, but in to what? He is a blank slate, a repository for all the headlines and accusations and charges leveled at him, but one that could possibly be -- forgive me for even suggesting it -- innocent. If the film is indeed trying to gaslight us (which I don't think it's smart enough to do, but more than once I wondered), it is surely because of its real focus.

The film's primary dramatic character is in fact Liz Kendall (Lily Collins), the barely fictionalized Elizabeth Kloepfer who literally wrote the book of being Bundy's girlfriend. Collins plays the character's insecurities to a tee, which makes her less interesting for us but perfect prey for Efron's Bundy. I say "prey" not because she winds up at the end of his knife but because the film eventually edits itself around her perspective as she begins to suspect the dark heart of the man she loves and has entrusted her daughter with. The too-good-to-be-true boyfriend Bundy is shown to us in blissful home video footage even as Liz turns to look at the latest news bulletin on television describing more brutal murders. Even in scenes where we only follow Bundy, Efron and the screenplay refuse to let us in on his secrets. I kept waiting for the murdering, the final blow of violence, and it never came, unless you count his increasingly adamant declarations of innocence. We never hear his thoughts, we never see his past, we never see his sins. The film, smartly I think, doesn't even try to rationalize his behavior by examining his childhood, development, or philosophy. That's obviously because it's impossible to rationalize him, but any attempt to do so belongs with criminal psychologists in a documentary, not in a Netflix drama.

I did, however, wish for a bit more; I just don't know of what. I found the courtroom climax -- courtroom dramas often boast my favorite climaxes -- dull, despite John Malkovich presiding with his deeply biting tone, because we've literally seen it before. There is a time and place for painstakingly recreated drama, and this one is just not it, especially not with numerous other Bundy documentaries streaming online at the same time. I wondered, during the movie, if Berlinger was relying too heavily on Efron and was otherwise incapable of making an interesting movie. And that may be true, but it's also highly possible that Berlinger was about a very different business than capturing a real-life boogeyman. What I liked most about this movie, and why I think I'd recommend it to any true crime fans, is that its refusal to reveal any hint of Bundy's "extremely wicked, shockingly evil and vile"-ness, is what makes the film so terrifying. His evil was real, as the film's deep understanding of him shares with us, and the only people who got to see it firsthand weren't able to warn others.

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