Deep Water (2022)

Score: 3.5 / 5

A Hulu exclusive? Ugh, I'm getting tired of this streaming frenzy. I get that Disney owns everyone now, but if they're going to financially back movies for adults, why do they have to dump the releases unceremoniously on Hulu?

Okay, now that that's out of the way, I really liked Deep Water, the poorly titled new erotic thriller from Adrian Lyne (Fatal Attraction, Jacob's Ladder, Indecent Proposal). I thought Lyne had retired or something, but thankfully the master (of sorts) is back in form after, what, a decade or more? I confess to loving a solid erotic thriller, and the subgenre has been considered dead for a long time now. Of the most recent ones that come to mind, Fatale was a bit disappointing, Acrimony was pitifully misled, and I actually really enjoyed Careful What You Wish For. But that's about it in the last decade or more! I love movies like this, where the sexual tension is palpable and laced with murderous intent; the actors are usually gussied up to look like glamorous off-duty models and the drama is forced, uncomfortable, and delicious.

This story, based on the Patricia Highsmith novel (Highsmith's work always gets high scores in my roster), concerns Vic and Melinda Van Allen, a married couple with a young daughter Trixie and absolutely no love between them. We're not sure why they're together, except maybe for Trixie's dubious benefit, as in the opening sequence we see Melinda actively cheating on her husband as he watches. He later corners her new lover at the same party to quietly warn him that he killed Melinda's previous extramarital partner. Ben Affleck plays Vic in a powerful performance so understated we're never really sure what he's capable of doing. And that's okay, because the point is made loud and clear. He could be killing off her partners, and that's what matters for their relationship.

Ana de Armas plays Melinda with a cool, sexy suavity engendered by disillusionment. She's unexpectedly amazing in this role, and she seems to be having a lot of fun with it. De Armas and Affleck together have an unlikely chemistry, and Lyne films them in stunning clarity, emphasizing their physical connection in counterpoint to their mental games. She seems to know what he's capable of, to the point that when yet another of her lovers ends up dead -- at a party they are still present for -- she is utterly convinced Vic did it. A nosy acquaintance at the party (played by Tracy Letts), who writes for a living, takes a keen interest in their dynamic and the murderous potentiality of Vic's behavior, starts poking around after Melinda's accusations find purchase in his mind. It's then that the plot really gets going.

This isn't a mystery. It's also not a standard drama. You have to know the subgenre to appreciate a movie like this, and if you do, there is a lot here to admire. The performances are all great, and the writing gives them some juicy stuff to gnaw through, though it stops short of the kind of spectacle you might expect. Utterly earnest as it is, it brilliantly plays everything deadly serious, keeping the psychosexual tension humming like in Gone Girl or others (I thought of the Fincher film because Affleck is playing a similar character, with a few notable changes). I wanted a bit more dialogue to flesh out some more heady concerns of the screenplay, such as the ways in which most characters attempt to commodify and use each other for selfish purposes. Especially near the end things get really dark really quickly, and I wanted more of that. But thankfully this is a feature film, not a miniseries, and we need to maintain the value of not drawing things out needlessly.

Judas and the Black Messiah (2021)

 Score: 5 / 5

What a great movie to watch during Lent. In this riveting, incendiary film, we follow Judas through his fall from grace, his seduction by money and power, and his torment as he prepares to betray his savior. But this particular story takes place roughly nineteen hundred years after Iscariot handed the radical Jesus over to the Romans. This Judas is, rather, William O'Neal, the infamous FBI informant whose work in the late 60s directly led to the murder of revolutionary Fred Hampton in Chicago. And while the film features both men in nearly equal capacity, there is a clear narrative and thematic focus on O'Neal, much as in the musical Jesus Christ Superstar. The story will be tragic, and will force us to face our own demons, much as Judas did unsuccessfully.

With the immeasurable help of its two leading men, Judas and the Black Messiah takes us on a tour de force of acting, of history, of production design, and of course, of allegory. LaKeith Stanfield, one of the most talented young actors working right now, is mesmerizing as the tormented Bill O'Neal. Carrying the heaviest weight of the drama, he internalizes everything around him; some of the film's most unforgiving scenes are between him and the white men using him for their own ends. When his FBI handler ingratiates O'Neal, he does so by an unusual form of intimidation; this isn't Detroit, but something more akin to Othello. In one of the more chilling scenes, a visibly uncomfortable O'Neal is invited to the home of his handler, played by Jesse Plemons, who tells him to make himself at home and offers him "the good stuff" from his bar cart. It's a noticeably underwritten scene, one that shivers with anxiety and dread as the white hospitality is a little too thick. And while, over the course of the film, Stanfield could be written off as being one-note in his performance (due, I think, to the screenplay's determination to not give him many truly dynamic moments), I found his nuanced shifts endlessly fascinating, his ability to absorb everything around him and then internalize and deal with it a masterclass in acting.

On the other hand, Daniel Kaluuya as Fred Hampton is equally brilliant in a role that will be more appreciated and more praised. The screenplay definitely gives him ample time to show off his skill set, and Kaluuya has never been better. Several scenes allow him to raise his voice in front of his audiences, not so much performing as he is channeling the kinds of speeches that made his character famous in Chicago and beyond. He looks a bit like Hampton but he sounds exactly like Hampton, commanding every space through the immense, operatic power of his voice and his vibrant, revolutionary ideas. Though, historically, I only really knew about Hampton's untimely death, this movie reminds us that his life was truly incredible, short as it was. At his most electrifying, and in the film's fraught midsection, Hampton goes to Hispanic and white supremacist group meetings to build bridges and found the Rainbow Coalition.

It's a brilliant move to remind us of his most radical and beautiful legacy, but it's also a devastatingly timely observation to make. In an age when even being Facebook friends with bigots can be damning, to say nothing of decades-old social media posts, we've turned identity politics into something not unlike a social pandemic, a means to isolate ourselves further from the sizable communities that could work together for change. But Hampton, in identifying capitalism as the root of all injustice in America, succeeded in teaming up with significant (and significantly different) organizations to demonstrate against their collective oppression. More importantly, none of the parties lost dignity or compromised their beliefs to do so. In only a few brief scenes, the movie reflects on the current state of social movements and politics and finds us sorely lacking.

Of course, it is exactly this kind of firebrand revolution that terrified J. Edgar Hoover (Martin Sheen is deeply disturbing in his two or three scenes), whose covert COINTELPRO is put under direct scrutiny here. Coining Hampton the "Black Messiah," the FBI sought to systematically discredit him before removing him from the game board entirely. Obviously they needed an inside man to do this, and so caught O'Neal red-handed on his desperate thievery spree and used his need to survive against him. Grooming him as an ideal new member of the Black Panther party, they had him get close to Hampton and relay private information back to the FBI, including the layout of Hampton's apartment. It was this that ultimately led to Hampton's murder, in an assassination staged as a raid exactly twenty months after the assassination of the previous Black Messiah, MLK. 

Sean Bobbitt's beautiful and harrowing cinematography effectively pulls us into both the historical world and the fraught psychological landscape of this movie. And Dominique Fishback, who plays Hampton's girlfriend, magnetically pulls us along on a tightrope between strength and sass, heightening the tragedy we know will ultimately happen. Her final scene, haunting and brutal, will hopefully bring her more starring work soon. Writer and director Shaka King, who I wish had provided a little more depth to his Judas, has suddenly made a huge name for himself, and we can all pray he will keep up this momentum. This movie is just amazing, guys. Go see it, go see it again with a friend, purchase it when you can, and share it with everyone. It's already in my top 10 of 2021.

Get Out (2017)

Score: 5 / 5

When a young man goes to meet his girlfriend's family, it's only a matter of time before tensions run high, right? Add some of the smartest social satire in years, throw in a dash of classism, sprinkle on some fanciful psychology, and then pour all that onto the main course: a blistering indictment of casual racism in America. It's a bombshell of a film, one that sparkles with wit before it lances your sensibilities. Apparently taking its inspiration from The Stepford Wives and Rosemary's Baby, but by no means a simple re-imagining, Get Out is a masterwork, and its writer and director, Jordan Peele, has never helmed a feature film before.

Structuring classic horror tropes and thrilling plot devices isn't what makes Peele's achievement here. It's his obviously passionate awareness of everyday interactions and people's "good intentions", his vivid recollection of historical racism and how it affects us today, and his talent for disarming humor that ignites the film. From the very first scene -- a lone black man (LaKeith Stanfield) trying to find his way through a suburb at night is followed and attacked, and if you don't immediately think about Trayvon Martin you're part of the problem -- Peele forces us to confront the racism so ingrained in our culture that we scarcely recognize it.

What might be called the most savvy element to Peele's satire is his risky, not-quite-veiled assault on mainstream white liberalism, whose proud "colorblind" and superficially anti-racist remarks belie true motivations that are both engendered by and pursuing racist agendas. The wealthy white parents (played to perfection by Bradley Whitford and Catherine Keener) are aware that having black servants working around the house looks bad, but they happily explain it away in terms of "family". They flaunt their approval of President Obama and "Tiger" and appropriate jargon and slang, seemingly proving their postracial bona fides. Their wealthy white friends touch the young black man's muscles without asking, ask his girlfriend about his sexual prowess, and objectify his every feature. It's not a comfortable sequence to watch, and Peele seems intent on forcing his white audience to be as hyperaware of race as we often accuse black people of being.

It's a gamble, of course, lashing out at comfortable liberalism and wealthy whiteness, not because we don't deserve it, but because it's not as funny or familiar as caricatures of conservatives and poor racists. Seemingly sweet and apparently harmless, it's the white liberal sensibility -- petrified of being perceived as racist -- that can create spaces of whitewashed colorblindness, structured by racist history and allowing rank oppression to grow beneath the linoleum. In fact, early in the film, the white father declares offhandedly that their basement has been sealed up, a result of rampant "black mold".

While the final act reveal is neither as unpredictable nor as realistic as some might prefer, it deserves a few comments as well. Outlandish as the idea may be (I'm trying really hard not to spoil it for you, but know that it involves an unholy mix of neuroscience and hypnosis), it is little more than a modern incarnation of eugenics. The villains' previous discussions of cultural appropriation and racial objectification come to a vicious head in the climax. Afterward, of course, there is little else for the film to do but follow through to its bloody, brutal denouement. Peele even here avoids genre pitfalls, keeping our awareness of race heightened as bodies drop one by one. Even when cop car lights show up at the end, it's not necessarily a sense of relief, as we fear that even more racial profiling will undermine the hopes we have in our young hero.

PS: The best performance in the film belongs firmly to Daniel Kaluuya, our leading man, whose relaxed, nuanced, and grounded delivery is relentlessly believable. The other showstopper, however, would be Betty Gabriel, who plays the maid Georgina. Her electrifying presence on screen reaches a screaming climax about halfway through, when she meets the protagonist in his bedroom. I want to see more of her!

IMDb: Get Out