Category Archives: Biography

King Richard

King Richard       4 stars

If you want to see another inspirational sports movie then go see King Richard, directed by Reinaldo Marcus Green and written by Zach Baylin. But the movie is more than that as it is also about the unwavering belief and determination of Richard Williams, father of future tennis stars Venus and Serena Williams. Will Smith portrays Richard, the girls’ father who has a written plan for his two daughter’s success and will not accept defeat even in the face of the odds against them, coming from the streets of Compton in the early 1990’s. Even though we know what the eventual outcome is, stardom in the all-white tennis world for two young black women, the obstacles facing them appear all too real. Richard works with the young girls on run-down neighborhood tennis courts while having to fight off the young men of the streets threatening them and forces his way into meetings with the white coaches who are needed for the girls’ success. Richard tells a lot of stories of his growing up in a world of racial prejudice with a father who would not look out for him. (The movie does not even include the worst of it.) He is determined not to have this experience repeated on his daughters. Fortunately, there is also a mother, Brandy (Aunjanue Ellis) who looks out for their interests and calls out Richard when he tries to go too far without consulting her. The white coaches are perplexed at Richard’s insistence that the girls be pulled from the junior tournament circuit when he sees how the parents of the other girls are treating their daughters and the resulting behavior as spoiled brats. Of course the movie would not be the success it is without Will Smith’s convincing acting performance as the father who won’t take No for an answer. He is deserving of the acting Oscar he received (despite all the ceremony controversy). This sports movie delivers with the expected climactic competitive scene as is the tradition, but the focus shifts from the father to daughter Venus when she faces the best in the world. The movie is available on HBOMax.

Back to Black

Back to Black      2 stars

One genre of film that I really like is movies about the making of music. These are the ones where we see the process of coming up with and writing a good song. They can be either fictional or about a real artist. Unfortunately, we don’t get that in the new Sam Taylor-Johnson biopic called Back to Black, the movie about the rise and tragic end to British pop star Amy Winehouse (starring Marisa Abela) who died of alcohol poisoning back in 2011. Instead, the movie focuses mainly on her troubled romance to husband Blake (Jack O’Connell) who was addicted to drugs and alcohol and played a major part in allowing Winehouse to share in the addiction. We do get several stage performances of Winehouse and her disagreements with the record producers. (She could certainly stand up for herself.) But I didn’t see enough of her composing music and feeling it in the process, other than one scene early in the movie. Abela does a decent job portraying the singer, even using her own voice in some of the songs. (It’s unlike Elvis then where Austin Butler only did lip syncing.) Much better examples of artist biopics were Rocketman (Elton John), Bohemian Rhapsody (Freddy Mercury) and even Ray (Ray Charles). We also get too many scenes of her getting more tattoos, but we do see how that enormous signature beehive hairdo came to be. If you saw the documentary, Amy, from 2015 you would see some significant details that are left out of Back to Black. The movie treats her father, Mitch (Eddie Marsan) far too sympathetically as he in reality only returned to Amy’s life after she became famous and did little to help her out of her addiction. Her record producer and band members are treated as mere background characters, and her bodyguard is left out altogether, even though in the movie she is hounded by the paparazzi. In the end the movie is reduced to one about a bad romance and I think we already have plenty of those.

Navalny

Navalny                5 stars

If you are going to see one documentary from 2022, Navalny by Daniel Roher must be the one to choose. Alexei Navalny is the Russian dissident who challenged Russian President Vladimir Putin, calling out the brutal nature of the government and the lies he tells the people of Russia. The film follows Navalny and investigative journalist Christo Grozev starting from the attempted assassination of Navalny until he is arrested and put in prison upon his return to Russia. The film plays like a thriller as we see him suddenly fall ill on a flight to Moscow forcing the plane to land in Omsk to seek medical attention for him. There he is kept by the authorities, however his colleagues fearing the worst find a way to fly him to Berlin, Germany where it is determined he was poisoned, a sure sign that the Kremlin was involved. While in Berlin and on the path to recovery, Navalny and Grozev undertake an investigation using telephone records and flight records to find possible candidates for assassins with Kremlin ties. The rest is fascinating to watch as the truth is uncovered and the crime is broadcast around the world revealing the monstrous practices of Putin. All of this happened well before the invasion of Ukraine, thus we now know just how corrupt Putin is and what he thinks of the common people. The film also includes moments with Navalny’s family so we see what he is risking with his political moves. The film serves as an effective reminder of how bad things can be when living under an authoritative dictatorship. This is the film that won Best Documentary at the Academy Awards this year. If you are interested in documentaries that tell provocative stories as they happen, you should really see it.

Sound of Freedom

Sound of Freedom          no review

I have not seen the Jim Caviezel movie Sound of Freedom, nor will I ever see it. The ads for it have been appearing regularly on television. The movie has had some very high box office numbers and has created a stir in the right-wing world so I felt compelled to make a public service announcement and warn people about it. The thriller action movie appears to be part of a crusade against child trafficking and features Caviezel as a sort of one man super hero out to rescue the victims of the sex trade. (Caviezel is best known for his portrayal of Jesus Christ in the Mel Gibson movie The Passion of the Christ.) In reality, it is a propaganda piece put out by the people who adhere to QAnon fantasy conspiracy theories such as the traffickers are harvesting children’s organs and extracting adrenochrome before killing them. The movie appears to be appealing to a mostly older white audience who are there to reinforce their views of what is wrong with the government and the country. Based on what I have read of the movie it is full of implausibilities and condemnations of the government. The movie was reportedly made in 2018 and it took this long to find someone to distribute it as it was considered to be a money loser. I have a suspicion that certain churches and right-wing groups have been buying out theater tickets in order to inflate the numbers. This has been a practice for other such propaganda movies. If you have not seen the movie you are warned to stay away from it. If you have seen it then you have my sympathy for enduring the pain.

Oppenheimer

Oppenheimer   4 ½ stars

“Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” These are the words that J. Robert Oppenheimer, played by Cillian Murphy says early in the Christopher Nolan new epic film Oppenheimer about the life of the theoretical physicist who was chosen to head the Manhattan Project during World War II. We don’t know if Oppenheimer really said this but it demonstrates just how troubled he became as he would come to terms with the incredible destructive power unleashed with the atomic bomb. The film gives us the story of Oppenheimer’s life and how he led the project located in the desert at Los Alamos, New Mexico, including the scandal of an affair and the drama of two court hearings. The movie packs a heck of a lot in the three hour running time. It is about the creation of the bomb, but is just as much a tense political thriller. It follows multiple time lines and a myriad of characters from academics and the military using both color and black and white footage sometimes interspersed with images of explosions and rotting corpses and faces. Nolan often uses short scenes with only a few longer ones all of which are packed with dialogue jumping from one time to another. It would be nice to see the years the scenes occur in, but there are many clues given as the time lines stretch from the nineteen twenties to the nineteen fifties. Oppenheimer’s (Cillian Murphy) main enemy in the film is Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.), the chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission after the war who first recruits Oppenheimer then seeks to destroy his career. One may be surprised to see that the achievement of completing the first atomic explosion happens about two-thirds of the way through the film with the hearings taking up the remainder of the movie. In the first, occurring around 1954, Oppenheimer is accused of being an agent for the Soviets with communist leanings when it is brought out that his views toward the weapon changed with the development of the H-bomb and that his wife, Kitty (Emily Blunt) may have been a member of the Communist party many years before (the worst accusation in the America of the 1950’s). In the second, a Senate hearing is held for the confirmation of Strauss as the Commerce Secretary for President Eisenhower in 1959. We seem to go through endless testimony from individuals who played a role in the Manhattan Project, some on Oppenheimer’s side and some who are not. Throughout the entire movie, it is Murphy’s performance that makes it a success more than anything letting us see Oppenheimer’s talent as a visionary who is also deeply troubled by the threat brought to humankind by this creation. There are a great many actors with supporting roles in this complicated story that will be familiar to audiences. To mention a few there are Matt Damon, Josh Hartnett, Rami Malek, Kenneth Branagh, Casey Affleck, Florence Pugh and Jason Clarke without going into the individual roles. (Gary Oldman is great as Harry Truman being a real jerk.) To really understand what is going on, one would have to see the movie more than once. I can guarantee that it will keep your attention throughout, thanks to Nolan’s writing and an excellent score by Ludwig Goransson. I would say though that the sex scene in a hallucination that Oppenheimer has could have been left out and nothing would be lost. It is safe to say that this is one of two must see movies of the summer. We will be looking for many Academy Award nominations for Oppenheimer next year, I am sure.

Dumb Money

Dumb Money                    4 stars

The new based on real events movie Dumb Money by Craig Gillespie (I, Tonya) starts by introducing the players on screen showing us their estimated worth. That way it becomes clear who the good guys are and who the bad guys are in the stock trading world, or who are the billionaire hedge fund managers and the retail traders (who the billionaires refer to as Dumb Money). In the early days of 2021 while America wasn’t watching the news about Donald Trump’s second impeachment, they were following a story about a small publicly traded company called Gamestop that was being promoted by a single nerdy small investor named Keith Gill (Paul Dano of Little Miss Sunshine and There Will be Blood). He broadcast his message of belief in the stock on Youtube and Reddit under the name of Roaring Kitty, convincing thousands of small investors to buy it to show the big guys on Wall Street that the stock was undervalued, making the phrase “I like the stock” a rallying cry. The hedge fund managers are all betting against them, selling Gamestop short, allowing them to make a lot of money when and if the stock crashes in value. (I don’t really understand how this works but the movie helps to explain it.) The billionaires are portrayed by Seth Rogen, Vincent D’Onofrio and Nick Offerman who strut around in their luxury suites and tennis clubs. The little guys who buy into the stock and hold it with religious fervor are a nurse named Jenny (America Ferrera), a retail clerk (Anthony Ramos), and a couple of college students (Talie Ryder and Myha’la) who are all desperate for money. The movie provides some non-investing characters to ask questions about what is happening, allowing Gill to explain it in easy to understand terms. These include his wife, Caroline (Shailene Woodley) and his idiot brother Kevin (Pete Davidson in another well executed smart-ass role). All this eventually leads to the climax of a congressional inquiry when there is an apparent impropriety that protects the billionaires from further losses. The movie effectively tells the story of what happens when Wall Street greed collides with the power of social media combined with the isolation brought on by the pandemic. Dumb Money is not The Big Short by any means but dramatizes a story about stock trading done in a way that makes it relatable to the average viewer. Also, fans of hip-hop artist Cardi B should be pleased by the choice of music.

Napoleon

Napoleon            1 ½ stars

The long-anticipated Ridley Scott epic Napoleon about the man who sought to conquer all of Europe appeared in theaters on November 22 and I was there for the first day. It combines my interest in movies and military history so it was a must see. Joaquin Phoenix (of Walk the Line and Gladiator) portrays the emperor from his rise to power from an artillery officer to claim the throne through a coup, to his ultimate demise and exile from France. We also get a big dose of his love life with his wife, Josephine, taking up way too much of the film. The movie can be described as a spectacle of grand scale battle scenes, grandiose balls with aristocrats decked out in their finest and comical love scenes between the horny Napoleon and the standoffish Josephine. One would expect it to be a difficult task to cover such an expanse of history in a two and a half-hour film, but Scott’s version of it is especially hard to follow to the point of being laughable. There is little to connect the scenes as we pass through the events of history. During the revolution there is a representation of Robespierre, but we don’t really see what he is about or why he was so powerful. A few Marshals of the French army are there, such as Junot, Ney and Berthier, but they are just characters in the background with Napoleon barely interacting with them. During the movie there are scenes depicting the battles of Toulon, Austerlitz, Borodino and Waterloo with great looking clashes of soldiers and cavalry charges, but we never get much explanation of why they are being fought. There is no mention of the peninsula war, very little about the Prussians, a major participant in the wars, or of any naval actions. After the burning of Moscow in 1812, we immediately go to Napoleon’s ouster from being emperor ignoring the two years of the war in Prussia. In much of the movie we see a very petulant Napoleon who is all about settling scores with other heads of state, but none of his genius in his vision of a united Europe. In the battle scenes themselves there is nothing to show the tactics of warfare of the time, not to mention all the historical inaccuracies. The British were not entrenched at Waterloo like the movie shows us and there is nothing to show how the British defended farm buildings or used slopes of hills to their advantage. In one scene, Napoleon points to Waterloo on a map saying that is where he will defeat the enemy. (Nevermind that it is the defender that chooses the site of battle, not the attacker.) The funniest line is when Napoleon rages against the British saying “You think you’re so great just because you have boats!”. I had to laugh. Also ridiculous were the sex scenes between the emperor and Josephine making them appear like animals in the act. I would have to say that they did a good job with the uniforms of the soldiers and the weapons of the time. The firing of the artillery and the effects on people and horses did look realistic. But the movie was not worth two and a half hours of my time and I am sure there are much better dramatic works available about Napoleon and the wars in Europe of this period. I don’t know what came over Ridley Scott to create this mess.

The Iron Claw

The Iron Claw     4 ½ stars

“Mom tried to protect us with God. Pop tried to protect us with wrestling.” These are the words of Kevin Von Erich speaking of how his father, Fritz Von Erich drove his sons to be successful in the professional wrestling arena, but ultimately as we discover to tragic results. The movie The Iron Claw, by Sean Durkin (Martha Marcy May Marlene and The Nest) is about the real life Von Erich family, the kings of professional wrestling in Texas in the eighties. The movie is inspired by the lives of Fritz, the father of the clan (Holt McCallany), oldest son Kevin (a muscular Zac Efron like you’ve never seen him before) who is filled with drive to be the best but is haunted by what he sees as a curse on the family, second son David (Harris Dickinson), the tall lanky blond who tag teams with Kevin, third son Kerry (Jeremy Allen White who you will recognize from The Bear (also Law & Order)) who left a career in track and field for the chance to join his brothers in the ring and finally Mike (Stanley Simons) who saw himself as a country musician; that is, until he too joined his brothers in the ring. The movie is about a family of wrestlers, but it is also about the firm grip of control that Fritz had over his sons, wanting them to be the best and earn the championship belt that eluded him in his wrestling career. “The Iron Claw” is the name of Fritz’s signature move, the use of his hand to squeeze an opponent’s head until they surrender, but it also symbolizes the way he controls his family including his wife (Maura Tierney) who must watch the destruction of the family as they pursue pop’s dream. (Fritz is not going to win any parenting awards with his approach.) The actors, especially Efron obviously had to work up their physique and train hard to wrestle to make this movie. The action in the ring looks as comical as the real thing to me. There is some reference to the staging that is done in pro-wrestling, it being the best performers that end up being champion, so I have no doubt that it looks as real as possible. Unfortunately for the Von Erich family the tragedy that befalls each is only too real as well. The effect on Kevin is devastating as we watch his descent into depression. This is probably Zac Efron’s best performance to date. (We should forget about 2015’s We Are Your Friends.) “The Iron Claw” is far from an upbeat movie and you should be prepared to shed some tears. But it does deliver its message about being loyal to one’s family no matter what.

Maestro

Maestro               5 stars

It has been five years since Bradley Cooper’s directorial debut of A Star Is Born, a remake of a true Hollywood classic that he also starred in alongside Lady Gaga. Now he has co-written, directed, and starred in Maestro, a biopic on the life of Leonard Bernstein, the legendary American composer and conductor. Cooper elected to focus on his twenty-five-year relationship and marriage to actress Felicia Montealegre (played masterfully by Carey Mulligan (An Education, Drive, She Said, Promising Young Woman), showing us how they met at a New York gala, how she stayed with the man she loved through many difficult years until her death from cancer. We see Bernstein’s rise to fame after he directed the New York Philharmonic and the attention to his career by the media. The film does not show us much of his creative process in his compositions, choosing to show us his conducting skills (which I understand are very accurate thanks to Cooper’s attention to detail), and his tendency toward having affairs with men causing great strife for Felicia. I think that he made the right choice in not making the movie too broad as often happens with biopics. I really liked some of the creative elements used in the picture, such as the moving camera work in an opening scene where Bernstein learns he is to conduct the New York Philharmonic and we follow him from a bedroom as he moves through hallways and appears in the concert hall all in one continuous motion. The early scenes in the forties and fifties are all done in black and white making it look like old Hollywood, but when we get to the sixties and seventies the screen turns to bright colors displaying the difference in the eras. I loved the fantasy sequence showing dancing sailors giving us a hint of On the Town, but with Bernstein showing up in the act as a foretelling of the troubles to come. The film wouldn’t be nearly the success that it is without Carey Mulligan as Felicia who loves Bernstein but must suffer through his infidelities and his selfishness over his own greatness. The scene of the two confronting one another in their apartment during a Thanksgiving parade, (complete with Snoopy balloon) with her exploding in rage is equal to what I’ve seen in Anatomy of a Fall and Marriage Story. I have admired her acting skills since 2010’s An Education. She has been nominated for acting Oscars twice before and will surely be nominated for Maestro come Oscar time. She could very well win it this time. Bradley Cooper has Bernstein’s mannerisms down cold and keeps the energy of the film high with the quick dialogue he delivers along with the rest of the cast. The makeup on Cooper is convincing as we see Bernstein age through the decades. Undoubtedly, the movie will be rewarded for this. The only problem I had was with the movie not telling us what pieces are being performed when Bernstein is conducting. It is assumed the audience knows them and while they are familiar to me, I would like to know what they are during the movie. I am just glad I got the chance to see it in the theater to get the full effect. All music lovers should see this one and even if you’re not you shouldn’t miss it. Maestro is one of the best movies of the year.

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.