Category: Film Reviews

  “Red, White and Blue,” Episode 3 of Steve McQueen’s Small Axe (season 1) December 29, 2020, Amazon Prime. It’s the early 1980s, and Leroy Logan (John Boyega) is the British-born son of Afro-Caribbean migrants in this based-on-a-true-story film from Steve McQueen. He grew up in a profoundly proper working-class home with a strict, hardworking,…

“Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” December 22, 2020, Netflix.  We both really liked and recommend this exceptional adaptation of August Wilson’s first major Broadway show.  The late Chadwick Boseman (too soon, too young) and Viola Davis lead a stellar cast in this story of racism and culture in the 1920s.  “Mother of the Blues” so-called, Ma…

“Lovers Rock,” Episode 2 of “Small Axe,” December 14, 2020, Netflix.  Welcome to the party.  Steve McQueen shakes up the structure with a video snapshot in lieu of an ‘historical arc.’  Yet the purpose is the same: to take you inside a cultural milieu in the process of creating itself in the face of racism…

  “Mangrove,” Episode 1 of “Small Axe,” December 10, 2020, Netflix.  The first piece in Steve McQueen’s history of the Post-War Anglo-Caribbean experience in London.  He wrote and directed these, he said, for the community itself.  This introductory piece, is very much a primer for youth today, showing the travail their elders experienced.  It looks…

  “Mank,” December 5, 2020, Netflix.  Who really did write Citizen Kane?   Was it Orson Welles, boy genius?  Or his fellow original screenplay Oscar winner, quick-witted, alcoholic playwright and screenwriter, Herman Mankiewicz?  Or was it a true collaboration?  Mankiewicz, or “Mank,” (an excellent, boozy, and burned-out Gary Oldman) is certainly director David Fincher and his…

  “The Lady Vanishes,” November 20, 2020 (1937), DVD.  This comic-thriller from Alfred Hitchcock is generally regarded as one of the greatest British films of the 20th century.  What am I missing?  It’s not that I disliked it entirely.  Rather, while a few of the bits were funny in their slapstick way and Michael Redgrave…

  “The Battle of Algiers,” November 17, 2020 (1966), DVD. This brilliant 1966 film by Gillo Pontecorvo examines the growth of the first years of the Algerian revolution in Algiers.  Filmed in the grainy style of a newsreel, this is entirely post-revolutionary, staged footage.  It is remarkable and there are reasons this is considered one…

   “My Octopus Teacher,” November 10, 2020, documentary, Netflix.  First a brief prologue.  When I grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, I never knew people ate octopuses.  My only contact with the beasts was at the aquarium or in bad sci-fi movies.  When we moved to New Jersey when I was 16, I only slowly came…

  “The Queens Gambit,” November, 2020, Netflix Limited Series.  Several folks asked that I do a review of this limited TV series.  It is very hard to do without numerous spoilers, but I’ll try.   I very much enjoyed this 7-episode drama about a young woman chess prodigy during the 1950s into the 1960s.  It…

  “Grey Gardens,” October 31, 2020 (1975), DVD.  This is considered by most film cognoscenti to be one of the great American direct cinema documentaries.  It is reality filmmaking, the predecessor of reality TV.  But the subjects here, unlike the current crop,  live as they are, regardless of the camera’s presence.  Or so it appears. …

  “The Divine Order,” October 25, 2020 (2017), DVD, Swiss-German with subtitles.  In a way, this third film in three days brings elements of “Marriage Story” and “Portrait of a Lady on Fire,” together.  The synergy was not planned but the films just fit very well.  This last is the simplest of the three offerings….

  “Portrait of a Lady on Fire,” October 24, 2020 (2019), DVD. Auteur Celine Sciamma has produced a period piece that is less interested in being a record of the time than an exposition on art, gender, power, love, class, and myth. It posits a woman’s world in what might also have been outside the…

  “Marriage Story,” October 23, 2020 (2019), DVD of film made for Netflix.  I’ve been a big fan of director Noah Baumbach since I emerged deep in thought (well, for me) from his 2005 The Squid and the Whale.  This look at a Brooklyn couple’s dissolution in 1986, as one artistic career, the father’s, collapses…

  “The King of Staten Island,” October 21, 2020 (2020), DVD.  Pete Davidson stars in and, with director Judd Apatow, wrote this look New York’s working- and middle-class bedroom, Staten Island.  Davidson play Scott Carlin a 24-yo slacker, ADD tattoo artist wannabe (of dubious talent at best) living at home, hanging with his stoner homies,…

  “The Trial of the Chicago Seven,” October 18, 2020, Netflix.  It has been forever since we’ve seen a movie, as we’ve been watching various series on TV.  However, I read about this film in the NYT and in a friend’s comment on Facebook from Denmark.  Both B and I really looked forward to it. …

  “Molly’s Game,” August 22, 2020 (2017), Netflix.  Our daughter Bronwen recommended this one to us and we caught it last night.  A good, solid, based-on-a-true-story film.   It is also an excellent film about father-daughter relationships where the parent demands fealty, total commitment, and over-achievement from their child.   I wonder if there was a message…

  “Little Women,” August 14, 2020 (2019), DVD.  There are very good reasons critics loved this most recent incarnation of Louisa May Alcott’s classic novel of the March family as written and directed by Greta Gerwig.  This is a sumptuous presentation filled with the gender challenges, edginess, and several of the possible ways of dealing…

  “JoJo Rabbit,”  August 1, 2020 (2019), DVD.  Anachronistic serio-comedy from Taika Waititi about the surreality that ruled during the last days of the 3rd Reich and in our own times; well, those before Covid and the US’s imperial collapse.  Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, as the world collapses around them.  Its 1944/45, and…

  “They Shall Not Grow Old,” documentary, July 26, 2020 (2018), DVD.  Crafted by New Zealander, Peter Jackson, this non-narrative documentary relies entirely on film from WWI from the War Museum and other sources, magazine graphics for battle scenes, interviews with veterans done during the 1950s and 1960s, and amazing tech work on the film. …

“A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,” July 18, 2020 (2019), DVD.  I was in great need of something that was essentially nice.   Covid induced isolation, concern for my family and friends, and the insanity of racist violence and Donald Trump destroying the nation are not making me crave films that feed my anxiety.  I did…

  “Disturbing the Peace,” documentary, June 2, 2020 (2016).  Members of Combatants for Peace, men and women on both sides, made this film over a decade to show their entry into peace work and their efforts to bridge the seemingly unbridgeable gap between Israelis and Palestinians.  The Israelis had all served in the IDF, the…

  “Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorcese,” Real/imagined documentary, May 23, 2020 (2019), Netflix.  Pieced together by Scorcese from other materials and concert footage from the Rolling Thunder Tour in 1975, Scorcese invents an understanding of Dylan’s second great return to the road.   Most of it seems to be lifted from…

  “Unorthodox,” TV Series, May, 2020, Netflix.  Yes, we finally got Netflix.  This 4-part series is loosely based on the memoir of the same name by Deborah Feldman.  It follows Esther “Etsy” (the amazing Shira Haas) as she fleas the hidebound, ultra-Orthodox Satmar religious community in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.  Starved for both experience and affection, the…

  “Catfight,” May 21, 2020 (2016), Netflix.  Funny thing.  We wanted to see “Killing Eve” and thought it was on Netflix.  It took us to this, and as we’ve never seen “Killing Eve,” we thought this was an episode because it stars Sanda Oh.  Over time, we realized it wasn’t and we figured we’d see…

  “Springsteen on Broadway,” May 15, 2020 (2018), Netflix.  I really like Bruce Springsteen as a writer and performer.   I’ve been to one show (thank you Dr. Yates) but can’t afford the freight to see this man of the people.  I suspect he gets the paradox. Bruce’s one-man/one-woman show (featuring Patti Scialfa, his wife and bandmate for many…