Author Archives: Ron

About Ron

I like to watch movies and share my thoughts on them. I have been writing reviews and distributing them since 2013.

American Fiction

American Fiction                               5 stars

From first time director Cord Jefferson comes the satirical comedy American Fiction, an  adaptation of the novel Erasure. This sharp-witted movie takes on the subject of the publishing world’s pandering to white guilt with the publishing of Black authors’ works that feature the worst in Black stereotypes. Jeffrey Wright who is known for his many supporting roles such as Dr. Narcisse from Boardwalk Empire and Bernard from Westworld gets the lead role as Thelonious “Monk” Ellison, a professor and intellectual writer whose books do not sell well. His agent (John Ortiz) wants him to write more “Black”, but Monk wants nothing to do with writing in a ghetto style which is what the successful Black authors are doing, such as the writer Sintara Golden (Issa Rae), who is making the talk show circuit with her new book “We’s Lives in Da Ghetto”. The book is very popular with white audiences, but Monk despises such work. But then after some devastating events in his family, out of frustration Monk sets out to write something portraying the worst in drug abuse, family conflict, rappers and cops killing Black men. He calls it “My Pafology” and his agent is taken aback by it. They both decide to try marketing it to publishers and are surprised when they are eager to publish this very gritty work. (Monk uses a pseudonym, “Stagg R. Leigh” in order to maintain his anonymity.) The publisher offers an advance greater than he has ever seen before. Further, Monk has to take on a fake persona as a street talking ex-con when being interviewed to give him more street cred. When talking with a movie producer (Adam Brody) he is offered even more money for the movie rights. (The producer is bragging about his new film, “Plantation Annihilation”.) Monk is disgusted by all of this but since he needs the money he goes along with it. Wright is completely convincing as the intellectual Monk, but is also good with the family scenes. He is dealing with a mother (Leslie Uggams) with Alzheimer’s disease, a less than responsible brother, Clifford, who has recently come out as gay (Sterling K. Brown) and a new girlfriend, the neighbor across the street (Erika Alexander). This story line helps to make Monk’s character seem that much more real as he must deal with these various crises. The movie is made completely real based on the acting ability of Wright who can register his character’s feelings with the expressions on his face. I have always been a fan of his since Boardwalk Empire where I first saw him. He (and Paul Giamatti as another unsuccessful writer in The Holdovers) are completely deserving of the Best Actor Academy Award nominations they received. Cord Jefferson has created a movie that must be seen. The movie has been nominated for five Academy Awards including Best Picture.

Perfect Days

Perfect Days                       5 stars

What would you think if I said one of the best movies I have seen this year is about a man who cleans toilets for a living? You might not believe it but that was what I found when I saw Perfect Days, the new movie by German filmmaker, Wim Wenders, starring Japanese movie star Koji Yakusho. This 68-year-old actor has been a steady performer in Japanese cinema for decades and is known to western audiences from Shall We Dance? And Tampopo. He is able to display his emotions and the contentment of his character by his facial expressions while hardly saying a word. His plays Hirayama, an older man who lives in a small apartment, gets up at dawn every day and sets out to travel the city of Tokyo and clean the many public toilets as an employee of The Tokyo Toilet. We follow him as he goes about his routine, preparing for the day and meticulously cleaning each toilet in the bustling city. Along the way we find out his varied interests of raising Bansai trees, photographing trees in the park using an old film camera, listening to 60’s and 70’s popular music on cassette and reading essays and novels, like William Faulkner. Through his work routine he is respectful of those he meets at the restrooms and seems completely content. As the film goes on, he has some encounters with regulars at a bar and the restaurants and public bath that he frequents. There is a rather flaky young co-worker he shares a shift with who is more interested in impressing a girl than with the job. Koji handles him with ease and only has to say a few words to deal with the co-worker’s begging for money. Eventually, we do learn a bit more about his past when a long absent niece and his sister come to pay him an unexpected visit. We know that something must have happened in his family years ago, but he found his own way of dealing with the issues of life. Through his meetings with those he knows well and his encounters with strangers, he puts them at ease and gives them the feeling that he can be trusted. And he does it all while remaining satisfied with his situation in life and listening to the likes of The Rolling Stones, Otis Reading, Lou Reed and Nina Simone. The writer-director, Wenders came up with the idea of this story while visiting Tokyo and doing a documentary on the modern public toilets that Japan offers. They really are quite a technological marvel compared to what we are used to. Wenders has successfully given us a positive picture of those public service workers who quietly go about their business of making life easier for the rest of us and doing it with a smile. Perfect Days is nominated for the Best International Film Academy Award.

The Zone of Interest

The Zone of Interest                       4 ½ stars

Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest is such an unconventional movie it’s hard to compare it to anything we have seen coming out of Hollywood. The subject is of course the Holocaust set in Auschwitz, the concentration camp in Poland during World War II. Holocaust movies have been a staple of Hollywood going back at least to Schindler’s List in 1993, but Glazer has done something with these horrors that we haven’t seen before. The focus is entirely on the day to day lives of the Commandant of the camp, Rudolph Höss (Christian Friedel), and his wife, Hedwig (Sandra Hüller of Anatomy of a Fall) and their family who live in their house and garden right outside the walls of the infamous camp. We watch as the family goes on outings to a lake or host get-togethers with their neighbors and Rudolph’s colleagues or attends to their children. Throughout the movie we never see any of the victims of the atrocities, but there are constant reminders as we see the walls of the camp in the background, see the smoke belching from the tall smokestacks and hear the sounds of gunshots and dogs barking in the distance. The cameras are set up in fixed positions inside the house making it seem like we are watching a reality show, spying on the inhabitants instead of watching a dramatic movie. There are few dramatic moments and that is the point that Glazer is making. He is showing us just how normal and mundane are the lives of those perpetrating one of history’s greatest crimes. There are scenes designed to make it clear that the family is completely aware of what is going on such as the wives distributing baby clothes and women’s dresses taken from the camp inmates, or when Hedwig threatens her young prisoner servant with execution if she doesn’t perform her tasks better. One son collects teeth with gold fillings. Later on, we see a scene with Nazi officials in a meeting in Berlin calmly discussing plans to send more Jews to the death camps with corporate like efficiency. This all serves to remind us of what is termed the banality of evil, how those involved can become blind to the evil of what is being perpetrated, though it is obvious to the rest of us. As I alluded to before, there is no normally constructed story here, but rather a portrayal of the rationalization of the characters’ actions. Jonathan Glazer has demonstrated how unconventional he can be before. One just has to go back to his previous movie, 2013’s Under the Skin, the “alien invasion” movie in which the alien predator portrayed by Scarlett Johansson lured Scottish boys to its feeding tar-pits. That’s one I will never forget. The same can be said about The Zone of Interest. The movie is nominated for Academy Awards in Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best International Film.

Rustin

Rustin                   3 ½ stars

I have seen news clips of the March on Washington of August 28, 1963 and read references to it dozens of times for decades. Dr. Martin Luther King’s speech of that day is legendary, but I had never heard of the organizer behind that event until seeing the movie Rustin by director George C. Wolfe (Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom). The movie focuses on Bayard Rustin (played by Colman Domingo of Zola, Selma and If Beale Street Could Talk), a civil rights leader of the era who was the person regarded as most responsible for pulling off this historic event. This movie has the distinction of having Barack and Michelle Obama among its executive directors, so it has some pretty high expectations. Since I had not heard this story before I read some more about it to see how accurate the movie is. It appears that Hollywood’s enthusiasm to create a moving story of a civil rights icon may have led to shading a few facts. A. Philip Randolph (portrayed by Glynn Turman in the movie) should have credit for proposing the march, but this seems to have been missed in the movie by giving Rustin the credit. The movie also doesn’t give much credit to the labor movement even though the UAW played a large part in this and other events of the period. From the movie, it would seem that Rustin almost alone was responsible for making the march happen. The movie ends with the conclusion of the march showing Rustin helping to clean up the Washington Mall instead of meeting with elected officials, leaving that to King and the other civil rights leaders. Therefore, it leaves out his later contributions to the movement in the mid-sixties. Colman Domingo, who has typically played supporting roles before, is quite effective in showing the determination and resilience of Rustin when faced with major hurdles. He deserves the role and rightly received an Academy Award nomination for the performance. There are several other notable appearances of actors in historical roles including Chris Rock as Roy Wilkins, leader of the NAACP, Audra McDonald as Ella Baker, CCH Pounder as Anna Hedgeman, Aml Ameen as Dr. King and of course, Jeffrey Wright as Representative Adam Clayton Powell. The writing probably doesn’t measure up to Oscar winning status though. The movie does not shy away from Rustin’s homosexuality, including his affairs and indiscretions that nearly got him removed from his organizing position. Domingo really owns the line “On the day that I was born Black, I was also born homosexual. They either believe in freedom and justice for all, or they do not.” In this respect it brings the struggle for gay rights into present terms. The movie deserves to be seen as long as one is aware of some shading of the truth.

Dune: Part Two

Dune: Part Two                 5 stars

Do you remember back in 2021 when we saw the movie adaptation of Frank Herbert’s famous science fiction novel Dune, but then were disappointed to see that it only covered the first half of the book? At the time it wasn’t known how well it would be received or whether there would be another movie. Well, after waiting on the actors and writers strikes last year that delayed several movies’ releases into this year, we finally have the second half, Dune: Part Two by director Denis Villeneuve. This epic presentation of the classic book is truly a spectacle. The viewer gets his fill of action filled battles on a wide expanse, a reluctant hero seeking to find his true path, mysterious characters who talk of mysticism, a budding romance, some truly evil murderous villains, and those giant sand worms that roam the desert. In Dune (Part One) we left off with the dreaded Harkonnen’s invading the planet Arrakis and wiping out House Atreides, killing the Duke, so that they could control the spice, the most valuable substance in the galaxy. But unknown to Baron Vladimir Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgârd), the Duke’s wife, Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) (who is pregnant and is able to talk telepathically with her unborn daughter) and son, Paul (Timothée Chalamet) have survived the invasion and are under the protection of the native people of Arrakis, the nomadic Fremen. The story is far too involved and there are so many characters for me to adequately describe here, but I can say that the movie captures the feel of the novel as we watch Paul Atreides grow from a confused young man to become the foretold messiah of the Fremen, known as Muad’Dib. He and his mother, Lady Jessica gradually win over the confidence of the Fremen with the help of a hallucinogenic substance called The Water of Life administered by the Bene Gesserit, and the belief of the Fremen leader, Stilgar (Javier Bardem). Along the way we learn that the Emperor (Christopher Walken) was behind the plan to annihilate the Atreidis family all along. And that the mysterious Bene Gesserit through their control of genetics for centuries have been manipulating these characters from behind the scenes. The central theme of the book is successfully portrayed in the movie and that is how the need for absolute power can corrupt and become destructive, a lesson that is especially relevant even today. Besides those portraying the characters I have mentioned so far there is a long list is A-list actors in Dune. Zendaya returns as Chani, the Fremen woman of Paul’s dreams, and Florence Pugh puts in a performance as Princess Irulan, the Emperor’s daughter. From House Harkonnen, there are the two nephews, Dave Bautista as Beast Rabban and Austin Butler as the psychotic Feyd-Rautha, who brags about killing his own mother. Léa Seydoux appears briefly as one of the Bene Gesserit and Anya Taylor-Joy makes an even shorter appearance as the adult daughter of Lady Jessica. The use of special effects is truly amazing in that an entire new world is created on screen with everything appearing immense in size. The gladiator arena on Giedi Prime filled with cheering bald headed male spectators is especially impressive and of course there are those giant sand worms. I recommend that you see the movie on the largest screen possible to get the total effect. Villeneuve’s movie bears no resemblance to the David Lynch 1984 movie called Dune which in my opinion was incomprehensible. It should be the standard for measuring all future science fiction epic movies.

Nyad

Nyad                     4 stars

It is Oscar season which is certainly clear from the number of A list actors that
have put in some notable performances in recent months. Certainly among them
are the two women appearing side by side in the true story of endurance swimmer
Diane Nyad simply called Nyad. Four-time Oscar nominee Annette Bening has the
title role of the woman who failed in her first attempt to swim from Cuba to
Florida, a distance of 103 miles in the open ocean in 1978, but then had the
vision to take up the challenge again at the age of 60. Jodie Foster has the
role of Bonnie Stoll, Nyad’s lifelong friend and coach who volunteers to be
with her to realize her dream to be the first to accomplish this seemingly
impossible feat. What stands out the most in this “biopic” is the close
personal bond this pair has, especially when they go toe to toe at each other
in highly emotional scenes. Add to this, a third character, their navigator,
John Bartlett (Rhys Ifans) who adds to the drama during the film’s many
harrowing moments. The film is the work of the pair Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi
and Jimmy Chin who have worked primarily on documentaries like Free Solo in the
past. Over the film’s two hours we get a steady dose of the challenges this
small group faced that include storms, a swift moving current, cold
temperatures, hallucinations and attacks from sharks and box jellyfish. We also
get a lesson in some of the science involved in such a feat of human endurance
such as the nutrition needed, the equipment used to defend from sea creature attacks
(Nyad did not use a shark cage) and the navigation methods employed. An
important element is the encouragement from Bonnie she gives to Nyad during
moments of disorientation and confusion. The scenes have a very real sense to
them. Interspersed throughout the movie are actual footage of Nyad’s first
attempt at the swim when she was 28 and flashbacks to her childhood and time
with her father. The movie may seem predictable at times, but it is made
memorable by the performances of Bening and Foster, both of whom are well above
the age of most women having major roles in movies today. It’s rare to have two
in the same film and rarer still to have two with Academy Award Acting
nominations at the same time which is true for Nyad.

Bob Marley: One Love

Bob Marley: One Love                    2 stars

Bob Marley: One Love by director Reinaldo Marcus Green brings the legendary reggae artist to the big screen, focusing on the singer’s rise to fame during the two years from 1976 to 1978. So instead of doing the standard musical biopic we start and stop with two important concerts in Marley’s life, a free concert in Jamaica intended to quell the violence in the country over which political party would be in control, and the One Love Peace show when he returned to his home country. In between we see an attempt on his life, how he and his wife, Rita, had to leave the country for their own safety with Marley going to London, the creation of the Exodus album and their European tour. Of course, we also get plenty of performances of the music of Bob Marley and the Wailers with that distinctive reggae sound. The thing I didn’t get was a sense of anything special about Bob Marley, or his vision for peace. It feels a little too much like a standard music biopic with flashbacks to his childhood growing up poor and having a father who didn’t care for him. The actor playing Marley, Kingsley Ben-Adir (who previously has portrayed Malcolm X and a Ken doll) does a creditable job with the performances, but the whole film felt rather ordinary. One criticism that I rarely make of movies is how the dialogue is very difficult to make out. The heavy Jamaican accents really call for the use of subtitles. Without them there were many points in the film that I just couldn’t understand. In particular, there are conflicts within the band and between Bob and Rita that didn’t make sense to me because I couldn’t understand what they were saying. And there is a frequently used word, Rastafar that is important to Marley, but I have no idea what it is. Director Reinaldo Marcus Green previously did much better with King Richard in 2021. It was good to hear the music and to remember Bob Marley’s impact in the world, but overall, One Love was a miss for me.

Blonde

Blonde                  1 ½ stars

Blonde from 2022 is a fictionalized biopic of Marilyn Monroe by director Andrew Dominick (2007’s The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford). Fictionalized is correct as the movie is out to emphasize Monroe as a victim, exploited by Hollywood and the men around her and sexually abused through much of her career. Missing from the movie are how she was a true acting talent and was able to influence others and control a room as well as any sense of joy. With Ana de Armas doing a decent job as Marilyn (usually referred to as Norma Jeane), we follow the actress from childhood to her untimely death starting with her mentally disturbed mother trying to kill her, being sent to an orphanage at age eight, being abused by studio executives and being misunderstood by her husbands. She is consumed by a portrait of her absent father constantly dreaming of him returning to her someday. There are even scenes where she imagines seeing him passing on the street and hearing his voice saying he will see her. Then there is the horrible treatment of Monroe hoping to have a baby but being forced to have abortions or having an accidental miscarriage. These scenes are played out on the screen with graphic detail which was unnecessary. I found the scenes with Norma Jeane communicating telepathically with her unborn children (a la Lady Jessica in Dune Two) to be just weird. We get a dose of the abuse she experienced from husband Joe DiMaggio (Bobby Cannavale) who doesn’t seem to understand what he signed up for, but things do go better for her with husband Arthur Miller. (The credits refer to them as the Ex-athlete and the Playwright which I find to be pretentious.) She always refers to her lovers and husbands as Daddy like a child apparently showing how she wants to be united with her real father who she has never met. The style of the movie changes throughout using different aspect ratios and alternating between color and black and white for reasons unknown. In general, the movie is obsessed with showing Marilyn Monroe’s life as hell and I found it to be the most depressing thing I have seen in years. At 2 and three quarters hours it is more a test of endurance than entertainment.

Limbo

Limbo    4 ½ stars

Limbo is a film noir set in the Australian desert that follows the investigation or “review” of the murder of an indigenous girl that occurred 20 years earlier. Director/screenwriter Ivan Sen has created something very stark and bleak in this film depicting the disregard for indigenous people’s lives by the white population of Australia. Besides directing and writing, Sen was also responsible for the cinematography, the music, the editing, and the casting. He doesn’t star in the movie though. That is up to Simon Baker who plays Travis, the officer who must question those originally involved and affected by the case 20 years earlier. If you remember Baker from the TV show The Mentalist, you won’t recognize him. He has a buzz cut, is sporting a beard, and has glasses and many tattoos. Travis arrives in the town of Limbo where the crime occurred. He takes up residence at the Limbo Motel, an isolated building dug out of the earth. The town has few buildings and is sparsely populated with some indigenous and some white inhabitants, all of whom are poor. Many live in homes that are carved out of the earth like the hotel in order to escape from the heat of the desert. The name of the town is symbolic of the conditions they live in, seemingly in the middle of nowhere. Travis, who besides being a cop is a heroin addict, sets out to question the murdered girl’s relatives and others who were originally questioned years before. There is a brother and a sister of the girl who resent that so little was done by the police after the disappearance. It would have been very different if it were a white girl. There are others who were questioned by the police before, but that investigation went nowhere. Travis with his drug use and way of speaking, appearing distant makes him seem very aware of what this world is like. The movie isn’t so much about solving the crime as it is about exploring the hopelessness of these characters and how they have to struggle to survive. The landscape appears vast and barren using wide shots, including drone footage with everything filmed in black and white. It makes the people of the town appear small and insignificant. Don’t expect there to be any justice realized in this case. None of the characters do, including Travis. I have seen other Australian movies depicting the divide between the races in the country and this one is among the starkest and most unnerving among them. Ivan Sen is noted for directing a crime drama TV show set in the outback called Mystery Road. Judging by his work in Limbo that would be a series to check out.

The Beast

The Beast (La Bête)         4 ½ stars

The Beast by director Bertrand Bonello (Titane) has to be one of the most unusual films of the year so far and can be described as surrealistic. Based on a novella by Henry James, this science fiction drama is set in the near future at a time when AI has taken over society. Unemployment is very high as most available jobs are menial and meaningful jobs are hard to get. Technology also allows people to erase their feelings from past experiences that they find painful. Gabrielle (Léa Seydoux of Midnight in Paris, The Grand Budapest Hotel as well as the James Bond movies) applies for a better job, but in order to do so she must undergo a procedure that will make her relive and confront her past lives. (Yes. Reincarnation exists here.) It is while undergoing the procedure that she finds she is destined to be linked to Louis (Adam MacKay of 1917), a young man who pursues her both in the past and in the present. Louis is also present for a procedure so the two meet and find that they may or may not share memories of the past. For the rest of the movie this pair relive their past lives together, first in France in the early 1900’s when Gabrielle is married to a less interesting man and the couple run a doll making company and Louis is a sophisticated Englishman. Later, they meet in the early 2000’s when Gabrielle is a model in Los Angeles trying to get into acting. But Louis is a disturbed misogynist vlogger who is out to make women pay for his lack of success with women. Both actors give excellent performances in this movie that is about love (but only sort of). Seydoux plays each role very distinctly and often is on screen alone but makes each scene quite emotional. There are some interesting devices used in the film including pigeons, dolls, and fortune tellers and even a Roy Orbison song! I was never sure where the movie was headed but it kept my interest throughout. The dialogue is in both French and English. (Both actors are fluent in French.) At the end of the movie instead of rolling credits, a QR Code appeared on screen giving the audience the chance to view it on their phones instead of on the screen, but I wasn’t fast enough to catch it. Is this something we will see more of?