Category Archives: Biography

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.