Dark Waters (2019)

Score: 4.5 / 5

Todd Haynes has done it again. Nobody would have thought he'd jump into a legal thriller, much less one about the DuPont poisoning scandal in West Virginia. But here it is, one of the best pictures of the year.

Mark Ruffalo stars as Robert Bilott, an Ohio attorney who stumbles upon a troubling problem in the foothills of Parkersburg, West Virginia: cows are becoming mad, getting sick, and dying en masse. The farmer whose cows have been plagued is convinced that DuPont is dumping chemical waste nearby, and even though Bilott's firm represents the chemical manufacturer, he cannot shake the feeling that something is horribly wrong. This protagonist is a more or less typical Haynes character study in that he is an outsider looking for belonging and purpose and ends up in way over his head. His timid, almost turtle-like demeanor belies a fiercely obsessive intellectual bent, and Bilott quickly becomes, as the headline said, "The Lawyer Who Became DuPont's Worst Nightmare."

Ruffalo here proves his mettle in the kind of "everyman" role that James Stewart thrived on, an awkward but unshakably decent man determined to do the right thing. And in a case like this, the right thing will prove to dominate the rest of his life, much to the chagrin of his wife, the woefully underused but always reliably excellent Anne Hathaway (who really should have played opposite Cate Blanchett in Carol, but that's another rant). It's one thing, after all, to prove wrongdoing. It's quite another to prove intent and lasting damages for such a long period of time and, as we learn, over so much global ground.

Because, thrilling as the film often is, its earnest delivery of corporate-sponsored destruction of lives and property is ongoing, making questions of our own health and complicity requisite topics of conversation for post-screening reflection. While the film pulls at our patience -- the story spans decades, friends -- writers Mario Correa (I don't know of him) and Matthew Michael Carnahan (Lions for Lambs, State of Play) do their best to keep the important parts in, balancing crucial plot development with key character turning points, making the film remarkably intimate and vast at once. It can all get pretty thick and heavy, and Haynes wades into surprisingly dark water here (forgive me). Thankfully, the righteous anger of Dark Waters comes with a strange optimism: even this little guy could take on the big business. The film allows Bilott the platform to help laypeople like me understand how this disaster could have happened, how and why it's been covered up for so long, and of course how it's possible -- indeed, our duty -- to resist.

I was left with cold sweat and a warm feeling in my heart despite the agony of viewing, but I was also left with the burning question of why on earth Haynes decided this story would fit into his body of work. But as I reflected on his early film Safe, in which Julianne Moore develops a mysterious illness to everything around her, I recognized Haynes's sense of paranoia and invisible stressors that loom over the proceedings. And as I thought of Far From Heaven, I wondered if Haynes was drawing a parallel from that picture's depiction of racism/sexism/homophobia and in this film finally highlighting economic status and class as similarly dangerous social constructs that alienate victims and disenfranchise individuals most at risk. And, of course, Haynes controls his art with a sure hand and remarkably insightful eye, making even the slightest of focus shifts sing with purpose and injecting electrified tension into each emotional beat between actors. This movie is a masterclass in directorial artistic integrity, and it's also a damn important story to see on screen.

Queen & Slim (2019)

Score: 4.5 / 5

Few films have harnessed the power of myth as efficiently or effectively as Queen & Slim. It feeds off the tradition of cinematic folktales while it repurposes those tropes to craft a fresh and compelling story that, for all its specificity and alarming cultural relevance, becomes an epic in its own right.

Its title characters are never actually referred to by their nicknames in the film. In fact, their real names are unknown until quite late, thanks to the news reports about them. All we know, when the movie begins, is that "he" and "she" are having an incredibly awkward first date. She is a defense attorney who had a bad day and didn't want to eat alone; he is a little too forward and eager with her, and he masticates loudly. We can tell this is their first date and their last date: his license plate says TRUSTGOD and he prays before he eats, but he's happy to suggest they continue their evening together at home. She is cold as ice, wearing a full white outfit, and content to shut him down repeatedly.

Things suddenly take a worst-case scenario turn as he is driving her home. They get pulled over by a cop for "driving erratically" and, despite their initial compliance with his clearly antagonistic racism, things get heated. When she gets out of the car to record the evil cop on her phone, his trigger-happy finger blows up the night with violence. But it is our two leads who survive the encounter, killing the cop in a moment of glorious self-defense. But Queen (I guess we can call her that?) makes the insightful claim that they will be hung out to dry by the law, not vindicated. I personally found this to be the single moment that infuriated me; the evidence at the scene should surely exonerate the two from persecution. But they decide to run, and so the legend of Queen and Slim is born.

The two leads -- Daniel Kaluuya and newcomer Jodie Turner-Smith -- drive the film magnificently both in terms of acting talent and literally, as the film turns Green Book on its head. This is a road picture, one fraught with life-and-death peril, from Ohio to Florida. Our protagonists flee to the Deep South, planning to somehow cross the big water to Cuba and live there together. Despite the change in cardinal direction, the film becomes fascinatingly analogous to an Underground Railroad. Queen and Slim have become national sensations, sparking protests and riots against police brutality, and wherever they go people recognize them, hiding them when necessary and helping them travel to a hope for freedom.

The police are never far behind, and not all black folk are sympathetic to their action or what they have come to stand for. But therein lies the film's amazing ability to make an archetypal story -- a modern odyssey -- with archetypal characters who are relentlessly their own individuals. Queen and Slim are black, sure, but they are fully fleshed characters who, the film seems determined to hammer into our heads, do not represent and can not represent all black people. They are not icons, they are not intending any of the social phenomenon that they become. But by being unapologetically themselves, they are mythic.

Moreover, it's crucial to note that Queen and Slim are not criminals. Her uncle, one of their railroad conductors, you might say, calls them the "black Bonnie and Clyde" half-jokingly, and the new and police clearly have them painted as ruthless cop killers. But their only alleged crime initially is in self-defense; there is no reason to be shot when you are pulled over for swerving once and you have no illegal substances or weapons in your possession. Their later crimes are a matter of survival, such as stealing a couple cars and gas. And, thrilling as the film is, it resides almost exclusively in moments that are not action-packed or even violent; rather, we spend most of the two-hour-plus runtime in relative silence, breathing with our protagonists and experiencing the beauty of the U.S. heartland with them.

First-time director Melina Matsoukas does some amazing work to this end, dwelling with her characters and letting us in on their sensory experience. She interposes bits of context and exposition, often including brief moments of violence, usually in terms of radio or television. Sometimes these jumps or juxtapositions feel a bit forced, sometimes a bit bizarre, but they make sense the more you give yourself over to her vision. Often awkward conversations tread an engrossing line between sensationalistic, morose, and absurdly funny, and I found it to be at once more lifelike and more profound than if the script detailed lengthy, poetic passages in heightened language. This is an earnest film, an artistic film. This is a film that buttresses its anger with tragedy, combines its dirge with its call to action, and celebrates the simple fact -- a fact that has come under assault as political propaganda by those who choose to not understand -- that black lives matter.

21 Bridges (2019)

Score: 2.5 / 5

I suppose it's a lot to ask for these days: a police action thriller not based on real life that is made honest-to-goodness for a movie theater and not for an hour of weeknight television. The beginning of this movie suggests grand things. A young Andre Davis attends the funeral of his father, a NYPD officer murdered while on duty; a monochromatic sea of black under an overcast rain shower before the police fire their weapons in his honor. As an adult, Andre has become a renowned officer in his own right, and quickly is assigned to the latest case.

The economy of this film is admirable in many ways (apart from its terrible title). Because of his recent credits, Chadwick Boseman doesn't need much introduction for us to believe he's a total badass. Because of the introduction, we know the story's gravity without so much as a single word of dialogue. Because of the casting choices, including JK Simmons as the cop captain and Sienna Miller as the narc detective, we're keenly aware that Andre's skin color puts him in a somewhat dangerous environment at work, even when he's not chasing down criminals.

Unfortunately, the actual plot of the film is disappointingly straightforward and simple. There's not a single twist I didn't see coming by the end of the inciting incident. Basically, after the funeral, we get the crime: Taylor Kitsch and Stephan James (I think they had character names, but nobody cares) break into a winery after hours to steal 30 kilos of cocaine from the . We already have questions, like "why the hell are these small-time drug thieves armed as if they're heading to war?" and "is this how bougie restaurants in big city downtowns stay in business?" But suddenly everything goes awry. They discover at least ten times the amount of cocaine, and then an entire squad of police show up for seemingly no reason. The two criminals shoot their way out, murdering a bunch of cops along the way, and embark on an odyssey through a New York City night.

It's not hard to guess that these cops are dirty, and that before the end of his chase Andre will be fighting street thugs along with more cops than he'd like to count. What's interesting about this movie is that everyone is written more or less sympathetically. The thieves and cop killers are desperate for money just as much as the cops whose wives are sick or whose kids need to go to school. Andre gets put into several hard places to hold people responsible for the evil things they do, proving himself smarter and faster and more principled than all of them. While the film doesn't try to take us on a roller coaster of plot twists and shocks, it asks us to consider the heavy moral weight Andre puts on each decision he makes as one of the only people with integrity in the whole movie.

Then again, for such a short film, I'd have preferred more story and characterization than all these chases on foot and by car, shootouts, and bullets-flying standoffs.

The Perfection (2019)

Score: 2.5 / 5

What a weird movie.

It's set up as a sort of All About Eve thing without the psycho-biddy undercurrents of similar horror films. It quickly becomes apparent, through the subject matter and early scenes, that we have a more psychotic artistic bent a la Black Swan or Whiplash. Then enters the intense body horror, the cultish art school, and the sudden threat of child rape, and you just don't know what to do with it all. It's too much muchness, I say, and all of it meaning nothing.

We begin with Charlotte, played by the skilled Allison Williams, a talented cellist who reconnects with her former mentor Anton. After her abrupt exit from Anton's music academy -- I say academy, but we don't see more than one student at a time -- to care for her mother, Charlotte was seemingly replaced by a new star pupil, Lizzie (Logan Browning). These two ladies become judges along with Anton and the faculty members Theis, Geoffrey, and Anton's wife Paloma in a competition to recruit new young musicians in Shanghai. Tension between Lizzie and Charlotte is palpable, but we aren't sure if it's jealousy, awe, or sexual desire.

Turns out, it's all of the above. The women become quick friends (with benefits) and embark on a bus trip tour through China. After a night of partying, Lizzie is clearly sick. In this sequence, we are drawn into the sensory world of their plight. She repeats her expressions of pain ad nauseam, literally, but nobody on the bus speaks English. The bus driver won't stop; they're in the middle of nowhere and he seems to be in a hurry. The music rises in pitch and volume. It would almost be funny if it weren't so terrifying. Just as I started to feel like I might get sick from watching, Lizzie vomits. And things get really crazy.

I'm going to try not to spoil too much of the plot itself, because part of the joy -- if joy is the right word -- of this film is letting it take you on some truly bizarre twists. After what feels like the end of a short film or television episode, director Richard Shepherd literally rewinds the film back several scenes, and then we revisit the entire sequence but with key moments filled in that completely change the narrative and characters involved. This happens later too, though the gimmick simply isn't effective after that first shock. We begin to expect that things won't make sense until they suddenly do via flashback, which is a cheap ploy to keep your audience paying attention.

Speaking of cheap ploys, the film is so over-the-top -- while still being reasonably grounded -- that I found it hard to take much of anything seriously. I wondered more than once if this movie is meant to be camp, especially given its grotesque ending. While the argument could be convincingly made that the film's excesses are its thematic significance, and the narrative's general plotlessness make this possible, I found that the film was working too hard to push buttons. Arguing its camp sensibility isn't really my interest here, because it's also a really difficult film to watch. The threat of rape and the underlying theme of child abuse as basic conceptual plot points make this entire affair really awful, not to mention that its leads can only overcome their trauma and brainwashing by brutalizing each other.

It's just hard to justify the artistic merit of a film that so blatantly pushes the message that rape-revenge is possible once you've butchered your body and all but conjoined with another victim.

The Aeronauts (2019)

Score: 4.5 / 5

It would be easy, in our age of alien invasions and intergalactic wars and superheroes that fly, to forget some of the most basic horrors of our world. Namely, that of the vast expanse of the sky. There's something at once comforting and terrifying in our atmosphere, as it sustains life within its strangely limited reach into the void. But we so often are limited in film to focusing either on terrestrial great heights (mountains, skyscrapers) or space itself; if we find ourselves in the in-between places of clouds and weather, it's almost exclusively within the confines of technology (an airplane). Rarely are we subjected to the great unknown of the sky, the one thing science can only marginally predict and never control.

But in the hands of such a detail-oriented artist as Tom Harper, air travel indeed becomes nothing less than horrifying. The Aeronauts tells a historical fantasy tale of two individuals sailing into the upper atmosphere: one an adventurer, one a scientist, each hoping to prove something. The scientist, historical figure James Glaisher, is played by Eddie Redmayne, and it is his intention to study meteorology in the atmosphere. The adventurer, Amelia Rennes, is a fictitious composite figure of famous balloonists played by Felicity Jones, and her struggle to overcome trauma provides the story's emotional weight. Together, the two embark on an amazing journey to the highest reaches of the atmosphere; it quickly becomes, however, a thrilling fight for survival.

The introduction consists of Amelia and James taking off in their balloon in front of a crowd of spectators. Through flashbacks, we see segments of their lives before this event, including James's attempts to gain respect for his theories about predicting the weather and Amelia's ill-fated balloon trip that ended with the tragic death of her husband. But the meat of this film takes place up in the air, as they ascend, shattering the height record while putting their lives at risk time and again. Sudden storms, freezing temperatures, and lack of oxygen threaten them as they continue to rise, along with their own egos. But the battle-of-the-sexes seemingly set up by the introduction quickly gives way to a profoundly human story about the risks we take to learn more about our place in this world.

To that end, the existential horror of being isolated in a death-defying basket tens of thousands of feet in the air hits home hard. Thanks to some amazing visual effects and stunning cinematography, The Aeronauts feels a bit like Life of Pi or Gravity in its glorification of earthly beauty. Sweeping vistas and sunlit clouds seem to be painted on the screen as if it were to be hung in a gallery, and even the scary stuff is dreamily gorgeous. But the film never lets us forget that the basket and balloon are not particularly safe, and there's always a clear understanding that a single wrong move will end in death. Its beauty pairs well with its danger, making The Aeronauts one of the most delightful and transcendent surprises of the year.

Trial by Fire (2019)

Score: 2.5 / 5

Based on the galvanizing New Yorker article of the same name, Trial by Fire plays much like an op-ed manifesto against the death penalty. And for good reason. The story concerns Cameron Todd Willingham, who was executed by the state of Texas in 2004 for the deaths of his three children over a decade earlier. The devastating and controversial story is pretty straightforward here, as we follow Willingham through his trial, incarceration, and sentencing. As a sort of parallel, we see a playwright named Elizabeth Gilbert who grows attached to the accused man and fights for his vindication.

The movie makes the most sense when the two leads share a scene. Jack O'Connell and Laura Dern play expertly off each other, and their watery eyes seem ready-made to search for hope and humanity in each other. I found Gilbert's story the more interesting of the two dramatized here simply because I was less familiar with it, and Dern is firing on all fronts in what amounts to a performative polemic. Gilbert entered the prison system as a volunteer pen pal; soon she meets Willingham face to face and discovers a man she is sure is innocent. Her friends and others suggest more than once she's in it for prurient purposes -- who can forget the women chasing after Ted Bundy and Charles Manson? -- but she remains steadfast and intentional.

It's a fascinating story, but this film never quite manages to ignite itself. The characters seem realistic and deep, and of course the injustice of it all is incendiary, but director Edward Zwick here offers little to no sense of style for the proceedings. The workmanlike film lumbers onward to its well-known conclusion with scarcely enough dramatic energy to inspire hope or much interest. Perhaps this is partly intentional, as a sort of dirge for criminal reform or, more classically, some kind of tragic call to action. And while I'm glad writer Geoffrey S. Fletcher seems to stick to the New Yorker article fairly closely, I can't help but want to read it again. I remember reading it made me feel excited, scared, horrified, and righteously angry. This movie just made me feel sad.

The Irishman (2019)

Score: 0.5 / 5

I hate this movie. And I hate that it lasts over three and a half hours.

I hate the pretense that made this movie. I hate that you can't even talk about it without referencing others in the genre, which is to say the genre of Scorsese crime films. I hate that this film by definition can only exist in context of other lengthy, expansive, self-indulgent movies about organized crime. I hate the woeful predictability of the whole affair, which starts with the titular protagonist in a nursing home describing his career as a Mafia hitman. I hate that, as he jokes about what must be the film's alternate title ("I heard you paint houses," the only on-screen text) and how it refers to blowing brains out, he also makes a meta-commentary on needing to relieve your bladder before the story really gets underway. I hate that the film lasts over three and a half hours.

I hate the digital de-aging of the actors, which made this one of Scorsese's most ludicrously expensive movies. I hate the way De Niro plays Frank Sheeran, a WWII veteran-turned-hitman and absolute sociopath, who is supposed to be a thirtysomething killer for most of the movie; his face might look young, but the 76-year-old actor can't make his body look like anything but a stiff board and his voice has the gravelly edge of age he can't disguise as gruff testosterone anymore. I hate the way the CGI faces mold into the actors' real faces in an artificially bright way, making them look like corpses fresh from the mortician or like watery reflections that haven't quite settled yet. I hate that the film lasts over three and a half hours.

I hate the Botox-infused false faces of old men playing young men, which feels like a distinctly unspoken problem in the wake of so many vitriolic discussions of accurate Hollywood representation of subjects. I hate the way the de-aging technology stole roles from younger actors like Leo DiCaprio, when De Niro himself played a younger Marlon Brando in the second Godfather. I hate that it unforgivably distracted from an amazing performance by Al Pacino. I hate that the film so abuses Anna Paquin as Sheeran's daughter, utilizing her for probably half a dozen scenes and giving her half as many lines as that. I hate that the wives are discarded and Paquin's role is solely to judge her father for his failures. I hate that these criticisms remind me that I criticized Tarantino for sidelining Margot Robbie in his big feature this year and that Scorsese has publicly called for another similar artist's freedom (a character in that Tarantino flick) to return to the USA despite that man's convictions for rape. And I hate that the film lasts over three and a half hours.

I hate that the film uses Sheeran -- who is by essence unreliable as a narrator -- to craft a sort of bizarre Tarantino-esque, Forrest Gumpian revision of history that suggests the Mafia elected Kennedy and then killed him, to say nothing of the other attempts at bizarre fictional historicity the film hints at. I hate that the film seems to call back to, or even bookend, earlier movies like Goodfellas, Mean Streets, and Casino, but fails to set itself up as a unique work or even one that matters in comparison. I hate that this film at once leans into its lament for ageing and tries so hard to erase its aged stars; near the end, Sheeran makes friends with a visiting priest who prays with him, "Help us see ourselves as you see us," in a cruel critique in which Scorsese himself must have missed the irony. And I hate that this film lasts over three and a half hours.

I hate that the movie is such a step backward for Scorsese, who chose not to continue his streak of amazing, fresh, unique movies (Hugo, Silence, The Aviator) and chose instead to retread old ground long left, rightly, to rot. I hate that the film's themes of human mortality and moral decay in age are undercut by the sad performative reality of his presentation that age is inevitable and even attempts to stop or rewind can only make things worse. I hate that Scorsese seems to think he can perform the magic to this effect when the whole story seems hell-bent on delivering a profoundly human story; then why not give us real humans instead of these CGI Frankenstein creatures? I hate that this film turns Scorsese's disdain for Marvel movies back onto himself, arguably helping to justify claims that he's the Hollywood Old Guard, passing into the sunset with irrelevance and, more horrifying, desperation to not become obsolete. And I hate that this movie lasted over three and a half hours.

Them That Follow (2019)

Score: 4 / 5

For some, snake-handling churches might just be an urban legend. But for those of us who know they exist, Them That Follow paints an eerie portrait of the realities of this fringe religious community. It's a belief system -- usually based in a speaking-in-tongues Pentecostal congregation -- that dares its practitioners to handle the devil's pets in order to prove their faith. After all, God is stronger than nature, and will surely deliver them from the venom of rattlesnakes. But maybe not from their own hubris, or stupidity.

We are immediately introduced to Mara, played by Alice Englert, the daughter of the town preacher. I say "town", but this remote community lost in the mountains of Appalachia scarcely resembles anything you might call incorporated. Mara is being courted by Garret (Lewis Pullman), but we're never quite sure if he really wants her or if he just wants to get closer to her father Lemuel (Walton Goggins). Lemuel uses his religious fervor to hold sway over the town, and fiercely guards his church and its serpentine secrets. This controlling environment quickly becomes hostile as we learn Mara is pregnant.

But this is the kind of story that can only go from bad to worse. The father of her child-to-be, Augie (Thomas Mann), is an ex-member of the church, and so is a sort of social outcast. Before Mara can be given to Garret, her virginity needs to be ascertained by Hope Slaughter (a lovely name, don't you think, played by the equally lovely Olivia Colman), the mother of Augie, who at once understands the girl's situation. Hope intends to keep Mara's secret, but shames Augie into repentance. Augie returns to the church, no doubt to make things easier for Mara and everyone, but Lemuel sees an opportunity to strike.

The film feels like an indie adaptation of a documentary or expose, and uses its setting, lighting, and design to claustrophobic effect. The "hollers" of this community are dark, heavily wooded and home to messes of deadly snakes. They frame the ramshackle buildings like a Dark Romantic proscenium, indicating that all is not well with the spiritual health of the land, and so the physical appearance suffers as a result. As Macbeth would say, light thickens, and the oppressive church structure and home interiors become increasingly menacing. The effect of these techniques is to close in around the viewer, helping us feel as trapped as Mara.

And, because of the blatant gravity of these elements, we also dread the inevitable, which makes the film almost unbearably monotonous. While this is no doubt intentional, it is also not a result of the screenplay, which could have used more than a little help. The seriousness of this film denies the possibility of even passing dry humor and never dips into black comedy, and so it is a mostly joyless affair. Even Winter's Bone had the emotional awareness of itself to include some bleak moments of absurd fun. Not so here, where the film asks us to peer into profound horror without ever actually taking us there. Thankfully, the writing/directing team are more visually skilled than narratively, so we feel the horror without being consciously aware of it.

As a final note, this movie won me over because, although it threatens a sort of hicksploitation (it fits better than redneck-sploitation), it never quite reaches that point. Instead, it becomes a sort of dirge for the poor and uneducated in oppressive rural America before its explosive climax. After wondering the whole film whether Mara will succumb to Lemuel or Garret or both, she rises above her situation royally and rescues herself and Augie -- poor, sweet Augie -- nonverbally declaring her family and home to be morally bankrupt. It's an unexpectedly positive turn at the end of the story that makes you feel slightly less icky about the whole affair.

Where'd You Go, Bernadette (2019)

Score: 2.5 / 5

It's a dangerous business, dear reader, to expect something too specific from a movie. With a title like Where'd You Go, Bernadette, I was so sure this would be a delightful romp of a global mystery. A sort of spectacular fantasy mix of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and Eat, Pray, Love that features a disappearing mother and her trail of clues for her daughter to follow, leading to a place of fulfillment and healing for both. And, in a way, that's what this movie is, except that it's completely tonally different, stretching out the melodrama while cutting the mystery woefully short.

Bernadette (Cate Blanchett) is a loner. Reclusive physically and emotionally, she hides in her large, somewhat unkempt house, only comfortable when she's working on some kind of project. We learn, after some time and an unwieldy (but quite funny) expository device, that Bernadette is a world-renowned architect. After a professional setback -- her environmentally-friendly magnus opus gets bulldozed by a competitor, provoked by Bernadette's pride -- she cuts herself off. She doesn't seem to be agoraphobic so much as misanthropic, deliberately making herself unlikable in her limited interactions with real people. Her disdain and eccentricities play off each other as she recedes into her own mind, going so far as to trusting even menial household chores to an Indian personal assistant named Manjula who actually lives in India.

It would all make for a fascinating character study and star vehicle for Blanchett if there wasn't a half-baked plot to go along with it all. Her daughter Bee, having received excellent grades, asks her parents to take her to Antarctica on a vacation. And this is where the film really threatened to derail for me (unfortunate, as this is the first scene) because it frames the whole thing immediately as rich people problems. How many kids are allowed "anything they want" as a result of getting good grades? And how many of them choose to go to Antarctica -- nearly impossible logistically, not to mention legally -- only to have their parents casually discuss it before acquiescing? It's a pretty tone-deaf approach to a story arguably about empowerment and fulfillment.

Bernadette's gauche social hostility gets her in trouble with her neighbors and her husband, but it also gets her into trouble with her audience. I think the blame here must go to director Richard Linklater, who doesn't seem able to bridge the gap between his protagonist's strangeness and her charm. He's out of his element here, playing off Bernadette's hilarious inability to function while showcasing her as a sassy elitist whose casual racism and brilliant neighborly antagonism are forgivable because of her supposed story arc. See, being a mother changes you, the movie seems to say. Bernadette gave up her artistic and professional passions for her family, which apparently has resulted in festering resentment and debilitating anxieties. So in order to reconnect with herself, she has to leave her family and go to the ends of the earth.

It's a weird piece, and one that could open up fascinating conversations about gender, wealth, and artistic integrity. But will it? I'd say not, as the generic film hardly brings enough attention to itself to warrant much discussion. It doesn't even feel like a Linklater film and has very little visual style except in the climactic "intervention" scene. That and the overused "Time After Time" song suggest to me that Linklater didn't really know what he himself wanted out of this movie. We're left with a mostly inaccessible story about privileged people behaving badly in a lackluster film that can't quite muster the courage to do what Bernadette did: something.

After the Wedding (2019)

Score: 1.5 / 5

I've been waiting to watch this year's star-studded soap for some time, and a holiday weekend pushed me right in. There's always at least one -- an glamorous vehicle for major stars to do the easy crap usually offered on daytime networks -- and this year it boasts Michelle Williams and Julianne Moore. What's not to like, right? Turns out there's a lot to be desired in the latest from Bart Freundlich, who is apparently married to Julianne Moore, but I've never seen any of his other films. And now I probably won't.

Isabel (Williams) is the American founder and manager of an orphanage in India; we meet her as she travels to New York to meet Theresa (Moore), a potential major donor to her cause. Isabel seems more than a little anxious at having to leave her chosen home, and more than a little annoyed at having to justify Theresa's charitable giving. The film feels too pristine, too rich; the kind of bourgeois arthouse film that a wealthy film student might have made for his thesis. Everything is soft light, shining surfaces, tastefully simple decor; most of the film takes place in rich people's houses and offices where panoramic views through floor-to-ceiling glass reveal cityscapes or private estates. Make no mistake, this is a movie about sad rich white people who try to do the right thing but can't quite manage to escape themselves.

There's not much plot, but the film is determined to eke a few gasps from you on its way to an underwhelming climax. Structured much like a soap opera, the story works through revelations and confrontations to reveal that Isabel was once in love with Theresa's husband Oscar (Billy Crudup) and that together they had a daughter. Isabel, not ready to be a mother, gave her child up for adoption and left for India; Oscar fell in love with his baby and kept her, named her Grace, and didn't tell Isabel of these changes in his life. Theresa became a mother to Grace, and the weekend of Isabel's arrival is of course the weekend of Grace's wedding. On top of it all, Theresa has been diagnosed with terminal cancer and has a few months to live.

I think somewhere in all this mess could have been a moving story about motherhood; Isabel is ironically a great foster mother to many dozens (if not hundreds) of children in India, and Theresa has clearly been a good mother to her non-biological daughter. In the same vein, it could have been a biting critique of the demands we put on mothers, and how even an unfit mother, once given a time and place to enact motherhood on her own terms, can far exceed our societal expectations. Unfortunately, these are not thematic concerns with this film, and actually motherhood itself is largely invisible here, betrayed by a surprising lack of interaction between either mother and Grace.

Another lens on this film might reveal the disturbing ways rich people commodify and control the lives of people they deem beneath themselves. Theresa summons Isabel to a place she intentionally left and all but forces her to beg for this large donation. But because it's in the name of charity, we're supposed to go along with it? Similarly, Isabel's seeming generosity towards Indian children is bankrupt when she's faced with her former lover and alienated daughter, and she is suddenly ferociously selfish. The film becomes a sort of catfight between the three leads over secrets and lies, but it's all done in such a Hallmark style that we never see much of the fighting itself. The scene cuts right before the climactic arguments and resumes shortly afterward, debilitating any emotional response the film might possibly elicit.