One Night in Miami, 02 April 2021, streamed via Prime Video
Muhammad Ali, Malcolm X, Sam Cooke, and Jim Brown walk into a hotel in Miami. Apparently that actually happened. And here we have a movie that includes Aldis Hodge as Jim Brown and Leslie Odom Jr as Sam Cooke PLUS Regina King directed!
Is that Malcolm X taking a picture of the other three? YUP.
I don’t know the details of all these men’s lives, of course, but as far as I’ve read, it does seem like this movie is placed at a time when all four men were at a crossroads in their lives. Cassius Clay--soon to be Ali--is converting to Islam and Malcolm X is thinking about leaving the Nation of Islam. (Malcolm was assassinated a couple of years later.) Jim Brown is going to leave football to become an actor and Sam Cooke is trying to stoke his popularity with white audiences.
I’ve mentioned before that I dig folks who are competent and secure in their competence, right? Because these are four dudes who are good at what they do, are widely recognized for being good at what they do, and also have some pretty distinct and diverse approaches to the world. Like, Malcolm berates Cooke for being disconnected from the movement. Like, in a quiet moment, Brown and Malcolm have a low-key but serious discussion about colorism.
At one point, Clay asks one of Malcolm’s young bodyguards, Jamaal, if he has any regrets about converting, and the kid says he wishes he had done it sooner, as he could have dealt better with a bully. “If I would have gotten with the brothers sooner, we could have nipped it in the bud and put a foot in Rollo’s ass, know what I’m saying?”
“Yeah, you don’t need religion for that, kid, you could just join a gang,” asked Brown.
Jamaal’s response? “What’s the damn difference?”
Like Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, this narrative is also adapted from a play, but this one doesn’t feel as stagey. In fact, aside from the flashbacks, this film hits the three unities perfectly: one action, one time, one place. What makes this stand out, though, is there’s never anything that could be pegged as a spotlight monologue--these dudes are always talking to each other, focused and specific.
This movie is so good. It’s one of the rare non-action and non-rom-com movies that I want to watch more than once.
The United States vs. Billie Holiday, 12 April 2021, streamed via Hulu
So the movie starts off with an archival photo of a lynching, which sort of signals this is not going to be the cheeriest biopic. Then again, it transitions straight into Billie Holiday being interviewed by an old white lady asking her way she keeps performing “Strange Fruit.” Billie’s response: “You ever see a lynching?” Ooof. And her struggle to just get to sing it on stage is a key plot point--her husband, her manager, and the friggin’ FBI shut her down.
“My song. ‘Strange Fruit.’ It reminds them that they’re killing us.”
“You think I’m gonna stop singing that song? Your grandkids will be singing ‘Strange Fruit.’”
TYLER JAMES WILLIAMS is in this movie and nobody told me. WTF, universe? Anyway, Andra Day is as good as everybody is saying she is. (And the film is as much of a bummer as everybody is saying it is.That they let the FBI AGENT straight-up join the entourage, however, is pretty hilarious.)
Wolfwalkers, 13 April 2021, streamed via Apple TV Plus
The titular wolfwalkers are actually humans who can switch to a wholly wolf form. (There isn’t a werewolf transformation--they have two bodies! Wolf body by night, human body by day.) A young huntress, Robyn, travels with her father to hunt the last wolf pack. When she befriends a young girl named Mebh, however, things get COMPLICATED.
When your father’s a hunter who’s been ordered to hunt down all the wolves, but your only friend happens to be a wolf half of the time, what do you do? What do you do if you start becoming a wolf, too?
The voice work is lovely (we hear ye, Sean Bean, we do), and the animation of this movie is more like a whimsical graphic novel than anything else. Despite the adorableness of the art and the cheery music, there are blips of darkness all over the place. There’s a dude in the stocks in the village square. The Lord Protector (it’s frickin’ Cromwell) believes Our Heroine should be confined to a scullery and, oh, that the forest needs to be “tamed.” (Is it, mayhaps, a METAPHOR?)
Clearly I need to watch The Secret of Kells and Song of the Sea ASAP.
Another Round, 14 April 2021, streamed via Hulu
Wait, is this just a movie in Danish about people getting constantly wasted? Mads Mikkelsen, did you get tired of playing sociopaths?
Given all the movies I watch, I really need to develop a more precise vocabulary. All I can say about the filming is, Hey, this looks like they’re filming a documentary. But what do I mean? I think it’s mostly a lighting thing--it just doesn’t look like most of the scenes are being lit by, like, anything manmade, BUT also none of the light seems warm at all.
Anyway, if y’all didn’t know, I’m a teacher by trade. Thus, when our protag gets confronted by a roomful of students and parents so they could say they couldn’t, just couldn’t get C+ grades, and why doesn’t he make things easier? RAGE. RAGE BLACKOUT BEYOND DESCRIPTION. And then, after dinner with his gentleman dudes, he decides that staying buzzed all the time is the key to improving his classes? REALLY. Though, clearly, his difficulty with his teaching extends to the melancholy ennui that pervades his entire life.
And soon all our gentlemen dudes are trying it! And not just for work--for everything. In pursuit of--and they actually said this--psycho-rhetorical effect. Over time, they escalate. Talk about lives of quiet desperation. (It’s serious scientific research, they tell themselves!)
Things end pretty much as you would expect. Helluva ride, though. And it ends with an extended Mads Mikkelsen dance routine and it is AMAZING. Here is an hour of that scene on loop. ENJOY.
The Mole Agent, 17 April 2021, streamed via Hulu
The visuals tell me that this is a for-real documentary, but the soundtrack wants me to believe we’re in the middle of a detective story. Basically, an older dude, Sergio, goes undercover in a Chilean nursing home to investigate the conditions of the residents. (Sergio has a camera pen and video-enabled eyeglasses, but it turns out most of the filming was done by the documentary crew using a The Office-like pretense, which is some dicey ethics. It’s just a lot of layers of artifice!) Over the course of three months, we see Sergio transform from a constantly scribbling detective into somebody who genuinely cares about the people around him and does all he can to make their lives happier, or at least less lonely. It’s very sweet, if you don’t remind yourself it’s all a set-up.
Onward, 17 April 2021, streamed via Disney+
What if D&D was based on actual history? What if Supernatural but elven bildungsroman? But did I still cry at the end? YUP. Curse you, Pixar! (Seriously, I enjoyed this a LOT, It’s silly and fun and has some real emotional stakes. I just don’t have anything else to say about it?)
Over the Moon, 18 April 2021, streamed via Netflix+
If you wanted to be cynical, you could observe that the increasing representation of Asians in films is a bid to break into the market in China. (Movies have to be approved by a government body in order to be shown in theaters there.) But you know what? If it means that there are more people on TV that resonate, more traditions that are familiar, well.
Why have I never heard about this movie? It is DELIGHTFUL. It starts with some heartbreak: this is a story about a girl, Fei Fei, who does not deal well at all when her father starts dating someone four years after her mother passed away. In a move that makes it clear Fei Fei is not to be trifled with, she decides a story her mother used to tell her is true, thinks it might put a stop to this whole dating thing, and then uses maglev railing to shoot a rocket through space and into another dimension.
Then things get weird. Like, think Up but with Wreck-It Ralph everything. Also, Phillipa Soo.
I imagine if I knew anything about the mid-autumn festival, this movie would hit three times as hard. Instead, it takes a myth and teases out how it’s a story of grief, and how to recover from it. Guys, I really need these movies to stop making me cry.
Now somebody bring me some mooncakes.
My Octopus Teacher, 18 April 2021, streamed via Netflix
Y’all, I love octopi. They are the best. What makes this documentary something other than a typical National Geographic piece, though, is the angle of it. This isn’t about the octopus--it’s about the one person’s relationship with the octopus. By beholding we become changed, etc, etc.
This is such a soothing movie. I mean, until you start thinking about how unhealthy it is for this poor dude to try working through his own issues by anthropomorphizing a cephalopod. (And yes, I am well aware of how clever octopi can be. YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN.)
Time, 19 April 2021, streamed via Prime Video
This documentary comes up from behind you. It’s black and white and starts out with just a woman talking to the camera like it’s a home video. And it’s basically generations of a family that’s been way, way impacted by incarceration. It’s pretty short (82 minutes) and the best thing about it is the film is never explicit. That is, there is no point when some VO tells us what we’re supposed to be seeing. You’re there, with the family.
Pieces of a Woman, 19 April 2021, streamed via Netflix
There a whole thing going on with Shia LaBeouf, right? But I like Vanessa Kirby, so, and it’s Oscars season, so. *shrug*
The most striking thing about the film is that there’s no music for most of the film. It’s just us, listening to a woman in labor--Vanessa Kirby’s Martha--and getting freaked out by it. It is really, really awful. And then the rest of the story is just everybody falling to pieces after losing the baby. Also really, really awful. (In terms of discomfort while watching characters have emotions, this feels a lot like Manchester by the Sea.)
At one point, Martha and her mother are arguing about a lawsuit against the midwife for malpractice and her mother says, “If you had done it my way, you’d be holding your baby in your arms right now,” and I shouted at the TV, Just murder her, argh.
Oscar-nominated Live Action Short Films, 20 April 2021, streamed via Shorts.tv
It’s short film time! For these clutches, I am extremely relieved to be able to watch these online. In the theatre was nice, but those showings were, like, four hours or more. At least at home I can lie down.
Oscar-nominated Animated Short Films, 21 April 2021, streamed via Shorts.tv
Tenet, 21 April 2021, Blu-ray via Redbox
“Its entropy is reversed.” Oooooo-kay. I’m going to start greeting people with, “We live in a twilight world,” though. Washington is great in, like, whatever the hell he’s supposed to be doing. Debicki and Pattison, too. (I dig that he and Kristin Stewart took their Twilight dollars and now they can do whatever the heck they want.) But anyway, I want to know much more about Priya the arms dealer. This movie may or may not make sense, but it sure is fun to watch.
Love and Monsters, 22 April 2021, streamed via Amazon
H-how did this movie garner an Oscar nom? I mean, I am all the way for genre movies to get some attention, but did this one even move the dial? I guess this is what happens when the big franchise tentpole movies get postponed because of COVID. It’s a delightful B-movie throwback that delightfully dips its toe into satire but mostly misses. It is SO FUN. (Also, the movie’s monsters have a distinct Henson-y feel to them, which is pretty cool.) It’s got the same feel as Warm Bodies, so if you’re into that kind of thing...
It’s post-apocalypse, the Earth is now ruled by irradiated monsters, and our protag, Joel, lives down in a bunker. He is terrified of everything. He gets separated from his girlfriend, Aimee (played by Iron Fist’s Jessica Henwick, woooo), in the initial end of the world. Seven years later, his bunker is breached by a giant bug thing, and he decides if he’s going to die, he’d rather do it after he’s reunited with Aimee. On the way, he meets a dog, a kid, a curmudgeon, and a robot. And I actually got teary-eyed at a couple of points! I enjoyed this a LOT.
Oscar-nominated Documentary Short Films, 22 April 2021, streamed via Shorts.tv
Better Days, 24 April 2021, streamed via Hulu
Hey, a mystery! I did not expect that from an Oscar-y movie, but then again, I didn’t expect Parasite, either. Though, uh, “Why did this student at a super-competitive school jump off a building,” isn’t the type of story you enjoy, necessarily. Then again, “Bullied teenage girl gets a young criminal to protect her from bullies, then they fall in love,” is intriguing. The bullying is horrifyingly rough, though.
Given all the movies I watch, I really need to develop a more precise vocabulary. All I can say about the filming is, Hey, this looks like they’re filming a documentary. But what do I mean? I think it’s mostly a lighting thing--it just doesn’t look like most of the scenes are being lit by, like, anything manmade, BUT also none of the light seems warm at all.
Anyway, if y’all didn’t know, I’m a teacher by trade. Thus, when our protag gets confronted by a roomful of students and parents so they could say they couldn’t, just couldn’t get C+ grades, and why doesn’t he make things easier? RAGE. RAGE BLACKOUT BEYOND DESCRIPTION. And then, after dinner with his gentleman dudes, he decides that staying buzzed all the time is the key to improving his classes? REALLY. Though, clearly, his difficulty with his teaching extends to the melancholy ennui that pervades his entire life.
And soon all our gentlemen dudes are trying it! And not just for work--for everything. In pursuit of--and they actually said this--psycho-rhetorical effect. Over time, they escalate. Talk about lives of quiet desperation. (It’s serious scientific research, they tell themselves!)
Things end pretty much as you would expect. Helluva ride, though. And it ends with an extended Mads Mikkelsen dance routine and it is AMAZING. Here is an hour of that scene on loop. ENJOY.
The Mole Agent, 17 April 2021, streamed via Hulu
The visuals tell me that this is a for-real documentary, but the soundtrack wants me to believe we’re in the middle of a detective story. Basically, an older dude, Sergio, goes undercover in a Chilean nursing home to investigate the conditions of the residents. (Sergio has a camera pen and video-enabled eyeglasses, but it turns out most of the filming was done by the documentary crew using a The Office-like pretense, which is some dicey ethics. It’s just a lot of layers of artifice!) Over the course of three months, we see Sergio transform from a constantly scribbling detective into somebody who genuinely cares about the people around him and does all he can to make their lives happier, or at least less lonely. It’s very sweet, if you don’t remind yourself it’s all a set-up.
Onward, 17 April 2021, streamed via Disney+
What if D&D was based on actual history? What if Supernatural but elven bildungsroman? But did I still cry at the end? YUP. Curse you, Pixar! (Seriously, I enjoyed this a LOT, It’s silly and fun and has some real emotional stakes. I just don’t have anything else to say about it?)
Over the Moon, 18 April 2021, streamed via Netflix+
If you wanted to be cynical, you could observe that the increasing representation of Asians in films is a bid to break into the market in China. (Movies have to be approved by a government body in order to be shown in theaters there.) But you know what? If it means that there are more people on TV that resonate, more traditions that are familiar, well.
Why have I never heard about this movie? It is DELIGHTFUL. It starts with some heartbreak: this is a story about a girl, Fei Fei, who does not deal well at all when her father starts dating someone four years after her mother passed away. In a move that makes it clear Fei Fei is not to be trifled with, she decides a story her mother used to tell her is true, thinks it might put a stop to this whole dating thing, and then uses maglev railing to shoot a rocket through space and into another dimension.
Then things get weird. Like, think Up but with Wreck-It Ralph everything. Also, Phillipa Soo.
I imagine if I knew anything about the mid-autumn festival, this movie would hit three times as hard. Instead, it takes a myth and teases out how it’s a story of grief, and how to recover from it. Guys, I really need these movies to stop making me cry.
Now somebody bring me some mooncakes.
My Octopus Teacher, 18 April 2021, streamed via Netflix
Y’all, I love octopi. They are the best. What makes this documentary something other than a typical National Geographic piece, though, is the angle of it. This isn’t about the octopus--it’s about the one person’s relationship with the octopus. By beholding we become changed, etc, etc.
This is such a soothing movie. I mean, until you start thinking about how unhealthy it is for this poor dude to try working through his own issues by anthropomorphizing a cephalopod. (And yes, I am well aware of how clever octopi can be. YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN.)
Time, 19 April 2021, streamed via Prime Video
This documentary comes up from behind you. It’s black and white and starts out with just a woman talking to the camera like it’s a home video. And it’s basically generations of a family that’s been way, way impacted by incarceration. It’s pretty short (82 minutes) and the best thing about it is the film is never explicit. That is, there is no point when some VO tells us what we’re supposed to be seeing. You’re there, with the family.
Pieces of a Woman, 19 April 2021, streamed via Netflix
There a whole thing going on with Shia LaBeouf, right? But I like Vanessa Kirby, so, and it’s Oscars season, so. *shrug*
The most striking thing about the film is that there’s no music for most of the film. It’s just us, listening to a woman in labor--Vanessa Kirby’s Martha--and getting freaked out by it. It is really, really awful. And then the rest of the story is just everybody falling to pieces after losing the baby. Also really, really awful. (In terms of discomfort while watching characters have emotions, this feels a lot like Manchester by the Sea.)
At one point, Martha and her mother are arguing about a lawsuit against the midwife for malpractice and her mother says, “If you had done it my way, you’d be holding your baby in your arms right now,” and I shouted at the TV, Just murder her, argh.
Oscar-nominated Live Action Short Films, 20 April 2021, streamed via Shorts.tv
It’s short film time! For these clutches, I am extremely relieved to be able to watch these online. In the theatre was nice, but those showings were, like, four hours or more. At least at home I can lie down.
- The Present, Farah Nabulsi (Palestine)
A Palestinian father and daughter go shopping for a new fridge. They get detained. The border guard won't let a delivery truck through, so poor dude has to wheel a fridge home on a trolley. Then the next set of guards won't let them through. It is awful. - Feeling Through, Doug Roland and Susan Ruzenski (USA)
A homeless kid is looking for a place to crash, but then he (somewhat reluctantly) decides to help a deaf and blind man get home safely. It is both sweet and really stressful. - Two Distant Strangers, Travon Free and Martin Desmond Roe (USA)
So, uh, it's a short film of a Black man the morning after a very good first date. Then he gets stop-and-frisked, then killed, then it was a dream? And then it happens again. And again. And again. It's like Groundhog Day, but for police brutality. (Which is the point: No matter what he’s doing, the cops will always kill him. It’s…holy shit, this film.) - White Eye, Tomer Shushan and Shira Hochman (Israel)
A dude sees his stolen bike and calls the cops on the poor dude who accidentally bought a stolen bike. The poor dude gets deported. The first dude tries to break the lock on the bike and ends up sawing the bike in half. - The Letter Room, Elvira Lind and Sofia Sondervan (USA)
STARRING OSCAR ISAAC HI POE HIIIII. Anyway, he plays a prison guard who gets assigned to the letter room--reviewing the mail prisoners receive. He, both creepily and sweetly, gets very invested in the correspondents.
Oscar-nominated Animated Short Films, 21 April 2021, streamed via Shorts.tv
- Burrow – Madeline Sharafian and Michael Capbarat (USA)
A little bunny dude is trying build his own underground home, but it turns out the below-dirt neighborhood is pretty populated already! The animation for this is lovely and simple--it sort of has the feel of a old-fashioned picture book made into a film. I dig it. - Genius Loci – Adrien Mérigeau and Amaury Ovise (France)
This category is so weird. The previous film was about a bunny, this one is an extremely stylized--often even abstract--portrayal of a woman going about her day. “All around me...I find chaos,” she says at one point. It’s like if you do a mash-up of Persepolis and Guernica. It’s possible the protag is actually a dog? Seriously, what is this? - Opera – Erick Oh (USA/South Korea)
It’s like someone took a mandala and sliced it open! (I went to a talk by a Buddhist monk once--he explained mandalas are actually birds-eye views of a garden or city or whatever. Meditation can be looking into the mandala and imagining yourself traversing that space.) Anyway, eventually a tiny war breaks out. - If Anything Happens I Love You – Will McCormack and Michael Govier (USA)
This one’s about a couple who forget how to talk to each other after their child dies. There’s a neat little conceit, where in the background their shadows are interacting like they used to. Then we go into flashbacks and I’M NOT CRYING, YOU’RE CRYING. And...it was a school shooting, guys. Triple oof. - Yes-People – Gísli Darri Halldórsson and Arnar Gunnarsson (Iceland)
This looks claymationy. It’s just, like, a day in the life of some people in an apartment block? I don’t know. - BONUS FILMS:
Kapaemahu (USA)
This starts with Hawaiian myth, I think? Four healers (who happen to be non-binary) visit the indigenous people of Waikiki; they imbue four large stones with their power. Seven hundred years later, they’ve been erased from history.
The Snail and the Whale (UK/Germany)
This is the most like a Pixar short, or maybe more like Marcel the Shell. It’s Marcel the Shell but also Finding Nemo. All he wants to do is sail!
To Gerard (USA)
Also very Pixary! This time about an older gentleman who wanted to become a magician and passes on that love to a kid. It’s very sweet.
Tenet, 21 April 2021, Blu-ray via Redbox
“Its entropy is reversed.” Oooooo-kay. I’m going to start greeting people with, “We live in a twilight world,” though. Washington is great in, like, whatever the hell he’s supposed to be doing. Debicki and Pattison, too. (I dig that he and Kristin Stewart took their Twilight dollars and now they can do whatever the heck they want.) But anyway, I want to know much more about Priya the arms dealer. This movie may or may not make sense, but it sure is fun to watch.
Love and Monsters, 22 April 2021, streamed via Amazon
H-how did this movie garner an Oscar nom? I mean, I am all the way for genre movies to get some attention, but did this one even move the dial? I guess this is what happens when the big franchise tentpole movies get postponed because of COVID. It’s a delightful B-movie throwback that delightfully dips its toe into satire but mostly misses. It is SO FUN. (Also, the movie’s monsters have a distinct Henson-y feel to them, which is pretty cool.) It’s got the same feel as Warm Bodies, so if you’re into that kind of thing...
It’s post-apocalypse, the Earth is now ruled by irradiated monsters, and our protag, Joel, lives down in a bunker. He is terrified of everything. He gets separated from his girlfriend, Aimee (played by Iron Fist’s Jessica Henwick, woooo), in the initial end of the world. Seven years later, his bunker is breached by a giant bug thing, and he decides if he’s going to die, he’d rather do it after he’s reunited with Aimee. On the way, he meets a dog, a kid, a curmudgeon, and a robot. And I actually got teary-eyed at a couple of points! I enjoyed this a LOT.
Oscar-nominated Documentary Short Films, 22 April 2021, streamed via Shorts.tv
- A Love Song for Latasha – Sophia Nahli Allison and Janice Duncan
This is tough--a young woman shares her story of finding out her friend was murdered, which contributed to the LA riots in the following days. - Do Not Split – Anders Hammer and Charlotte Cook
A street-level documentary about the protests in Hong Kong. “Maybe some of us will be caught. Of course they will get beaten. We used to call the rule of law our value, but now I don’t really find it here." - Hunger Ward – Skye Fitzgerald and Michael Scheuerman
Due to war and famine, children in Yemen are facing starvation. This film follows the work of folks who are working to combat those conditions. - Colette – Anthony Giacchino and Alice Doyard
A woman who was in the French Resistance travels back to Germany, in part to see where her brother died. I experience feelings. - A Concerto Is a Conversation – Ben Proudfoot and Kris Bowers
I love this. Like, I come from multiple generations of musicians; this made me think about my grandparents a lot.
Better Days, 24 April 2021, streamed via Hulu
Hey, a mystery! I did not expect that from an Oscar-y movie, but then again, I didn’t expect Parasite, either. Though, uh, “Why did this student at a super-competitive school jump off a building,” isn’t the type of story you enjoy, necessarily. Then again, “Bullied teenage girl gets a young criminal to protect her from bullies, then they fall in love,” is intriguing. The bullying is horrifyingly rough, though.
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