The Whale          4 stars

Darren Aronofsky’s adaptation of the play, The Whale is a devastating character study of a broken man on a path of self-destruction, but with real redeeming qualities. We meet Charlie, (played by Brendan Fraser who we have not seen on the screen in several years) a severely obese man living in a dirty, cheap apartment who is an English professor still teaching classes online. His laptop camera is always turned off when talking with his students. We slowly learn of his circumstances through his interactions with the other characters that include Liz, his friend and a nurse (the great Hong Chau), his estranged daughter, Ellie (Sadie Sink of Stranger Things), a young door to door missionary (Ty Simpkins) and his ex-wife (Samantha Morton). Charlie is a man who has suffered great pain in his life and abandoned his family years earlier. His great weight gain is attributed to this pain, resulting in his massive size of over 600 pounds and restricting his movement inside the apartment where he can only get around with the help of a walker. The entire movie takes place in the apartment where Charlie spends the majority of his time on the couch with his laptop and watching TV. The sight of his massive body created by a fat suit and some effective special effects is something that the audience cannot forget. Fraser does the best acting of his career, as the critics have said, expressing a wide range of emotion, from despair to self-loathing to hope for those around him. His greatest moments come when he sees the best aspects of others including seventeen year old daughter, Ellie, when others can only see failure. Much of the movie will feel like a real downer, but Charlie’s eternal optimism brings some real uplifting moments by the time it ends. Look for Fraser to be nominated for the Best Actor Oscar and I would not be surprised if he ends up actually winning. As for director, Aronofsky, The Whale adds to a list of successes that includes Requiem for a Dream, The Wrestler, Black Swan and mother! (the last one especially for horror fans). For those that have yet to see The Whale, the title does not refer to the main character. I highly recommend it.

Women Talking                 4 stars

The title of Sarah Polley’s new movie Women Talking is indeed very descriptive of the events that transpire on screen. There are both plenty of women and talking. We are introduced to the women of a religious community where something horrific has occurred that must be dealt with. At first it is hard to tell when and where the movie takes place as the furnishings and the wardrobe are fairly primitive. It could be in the early 1900’s but the events eventually reveal that the year is 2010. Periodically, a woman of the community wakes up with bruises or an infection or is pregnant resulting from being raped while being drugged. The elders of the community (all men naturally) attribute this to “an act of wild female imagination”, but the women are not fooled. The movie consists almost entirely of a debate among the women held in a barn to decide what action they should take. They can stay and fight for their rights against the men or they can collectively leave the community and start over somewhere else. The women are brilliantly portrayed by actors Claire Foy, Rooney Mara, Michelle McLeod, Sheila McCarthy, Judith Ivey and Jessie Buckley, among others. Each has their own way of expressing their feelings ranging from relative to calm to outrage. The violent acts are never portrayed on screen and we only capture brief glimpses of the men. There are peaceful scenes that take place in the fields with the children that remind us that there are more lives at stake here. The only man with a film role is August (Ben Whishaw), a teacher who was educated at a university and is present to take the minutes of the meeting because none of the women can read and write. Also, August is secretly in love with one of the women. The movie, written and directed by Polley is based on a book of the same name by Miriam Toews, itself based on actual events that occurred in Bolivia. The actor turned writer/director has been away from filmmaking for many years, but has created some memorable works including Stories We Tell, Take This Waltz and Away from Her. This present work is a subdued and effective way of dealing with a culture of violence against women that is all too prevalent worldwide.

Aftersun              3 stars

I picked Aftersun to watch because I saw that one of the stars of the film, Paul Mescal, is up for the Best Actor Academy Award for his role. I would say he does give a good performance, but in a movie that is well understated, telling a story that leaves much to the imagination of the viewer. The entire movie follows Mescal as Calum at about 30, a young father taking his eleven year old daughter, Sophie to a resort hotel in Turkey for a few days. We watch as the two do typical father daughter things like hang out at the hotel swimming pool, play a game of pool, go to the beach and do some Karaoke. We pick up a few details like we know that Sophie lives with her mother in the UK and we surmise that Calum doesn’t have a lot of money. Some of their trip is caught on video camera which is important because years later the adult Sophie is looking back on the occasion, but says nothing about that trip. We have the feeling that things did not go well for Calum in his life. He obviously cares about his daughter, but he is too young and not prepared for fatherhood. In the movie no details about his life before or after the vacation are shared. We really only see this short time that Calum and Sophie share in the hour and a half runtime of the movie. We will have to be satisfied with the writer/director’s (Charlotte Wells) choices in leaving out the background of these characters in this, her first feature film. Some of this information I had to glean from movie reviews as I was left wondering after only watching the movie. Mescal gives a good performance but I can’t help but think what other male performers were passed over for this nomination.

Living                     4 ½ stars

A long time ago a masterpiece of a film called Ikiru was created by Akira Kurosawa about a Japanese bureaucrat in the 1950’s who has found out that he is dying of cancer. I never saw that groundbreaking film but feel that much of its feeling has been recaptured in the British remake Living. Bill Nighy (of Love Actually) stars as Mr. Williams, the London bureaucrat in the Public Works department in Oliver Hermanus’s film. The opening sequence looks so much like an early 50’s film you at first wonder if it is a long lost treasure from that era. The first scenes move slowly and feature very stilted conversations among the bureaucrats that convey how repressed British society is at this time and Bill Nighy is the perfect actor to portray a man hiding his emotions. When the cancer diagnosis is made we can hardly tell what effect it has on him. We follow him as he explores various avenues of spending his final months like going out on the town to strip clubs and having lunch with a young woman he used to work with. Ultimately, he decides to make a difference by doing some good for the community, seeing a project to construct a playground to completion, all the while keeping his condition a secret. The slow pace of this film may turn some viewers off, but the challenge the filmmakers took on pays off mainly due to the talents of Nighy in what is probably one of the best roles of his thirty plus year career. I don’t know if he will receive an Oscar for the performance but he certainly deserves his Best Actor nomination.

Causeway           4 stars

I viewed another Oscar Nominated performance in Causeway, the recent movie by director Lila Neugebauer available on Apple tv+. This low budget drama stars Jennifer Lawrence (of The Hunger Games fame) as Lynsey, a soldier recently returned from duty in Afghanistan after suffering a brain injury in an IED attack. At first the movie is about her rehabilitation in New Orleans, seeing doctors and caregivers and going through physical therapy and the frustration  of trying to regain physical function. But it is also about her forming a bond with James (Brian Tyree Henry of Atlanta), a local Black auto mechanic who has suffered his own trauma (though not war related) who sees someone suffering and is in need of a friend. Lynsey also has her mother, but she is very self-centered and of little use in Lynsey’s recovery. The two find that despite their widely different backgrounds there is a connection between them though it gets a bit rocky along the way. It’s a straightforward story without complicating flashbacks that owes a lot to the great acting skills of Lawrence and Henry. Brian Tyree Henry is honored with a deserved Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor.