Monthly Archives: February 2021

I had heard about this film for a long time and started to think that maybe it was being overhyped. This is certainly better than going into a film with overly high expectations. I watched this film and was completely absorbed by it. It pulled me in. Maybe because I’m getting close to the age that many of the characters are and identifying with the crossroads many of them find themselves. It felt like a 70s film which is a compliment. I love 70s films. This is a beautiful character study and also a look at a real lifestyle of RV living and traveling from one place to another, picking up work and sleeping in your van. The film is based on the 2017 non-fiction book Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century by Jessica Bruder. The reality of people getting to retirement age and not having any money and choosing a transient lifestyle to get by.

The film takes place in 2011 right after the new great depression has hit. It follows Fern (Frances McDormand) who lives in a small town called Empire in Nevada. The town dies after the US Gypsum plant shuts down. Fern and her husband worked there, and after his recent death and the loss of her job she puts most of her belongings in storage and buys a van. She goes on the road in search of work while living in her van. She gets a job at an Amazon plant and makes a friend Linda who tells her about a desert rendezvous in Arizona where a man named Bob Wells gives seminars on how to survive as a nomad and offers a support system and a sense of community.

Fern makes more friends here including Swankie who gives her helpful tips and Dave (David Strathairn) who develops a crush on her and she she learns more and more about how to survive on the road. She keeps moving and runs into Dave again where they both have picked up jobs at Badlands National Park. They strike up a deepening friendship and its obvious Dave is smitten with Fern. While working at a restaurant in Wall Drug, South Dakota, Dave’s son comes looking for him. His wife is pregnant and he wants Dave to come back home with him.

I don’t want to say anymore because I want you to watch it and experience the film for yourself. The film is filled with non actors playing themselves and it gives the film a real genuine feeling, a slice of life that is both astonishing and freeing as well as terrifying. Is this the life that these people really want or just what is left to them? Is this how Fran wants to spend the rest of her life? Or will she choose to settle down again? Because she has choices. The film really struck a chord with me. It reminded me of when I was a young man traveling Europe by myself for five months. It was a melancholy time but a great learning experience. Or perhaps its from spending this past year in Covid isolation and all the anxieties of mortality bubbling at the surface I responded greatly to Fern and her friends and the lifestyle of drifting around, surviving and living lightly. It’s a profound film.

Frances McDormand is one of the producers and asked Chloe Zhao to write and direct which she did with great skill and passion. The film was shot over 4 months in the Fall of 2018 with a small crew who lived out of vans the entire time. McDormand is very good as she usually is. The film has a documentary like fell to it, you feel like you’re peaking into her life and she is just so real and vulnerable. A friend of mine asked me if it was a “downer” and I said no, it wasn’t a downer but that it was a somber film and a beautiful film. It’s a film about life and choices and not living in the past but continuing on down the road.

I was familiar with Fred Hampton. I knew he was a Black Panther leader and that he was assassinated by the FBI. Just recently, I had watched The Trial of The Chicago 7 in which Hampton was a supporting character and his death had been shown as part of that story. But beyond that I didn’t know much about Fred Hampton. And I didn’t know that the FBI had an informant, William O’Neal, planted in Hampton’s Chicago Black Panther chapter and that he assisted in his assassination. The film was produced by Ryan Cooler and Shaka King, who also directed and co-wrote the script with Will Berson and it’s bookended by an interview with O’Neal for a PBS documentary from 1989.

William O’Neal (Lakeith Stanfield) is a young, small time car thief who gets caught and courted by an FBI agent, Roy Mitchell (Jesse Plemmons) to infiltrate the Black Panthers and provide them with info. FBI director J. Edgar Hoover (Martin Sheen) had Hampton (Daniel Kaluuya) in his sights and was very worried that he could be a ‘black messiah’ to the ever increasing anti-establishment movement. He wanted to find a way to discredit the movement and stop Hampton.

Hampton was a young charismatic man who wasn’t afraid to step up and be a leader. He sought to unify the various gangs/groups in Chicago, black and white, to join together with the common denominator that they were suffering because they were poor and the poor were always powerless but together they could exert real power. This made him a dangerous man, of course.

O’Neal wasn’t as tuned in to the cause. He was a young thief who was just looking for a way to stay out of jail and make some money but the more he works with the Panthers and Hampton the more conflicted he becomes. Hampton also gets involved with a smart young woman. Deborah (Dominique Fishback, The Deuce) who sees the sensitive, shy man beneath the brash, inspirational speaker. We know how this ends but seeing the entire story is powerful and heartbreaking.

Plemmons continues to build a strong body of work and he’s very good again here as the manipulative FBI agent who also has moments of pause over the FBI’s methods. Stanfield also gives another strong performance as the hesitant informant who feels there’s no way out. I first saw Fishback in the HBO series The Deuce and she’s one to keep an eye on. She’s really lovely here as Hampton’s girlfriend who loves what Hampton is fighting for while being scared for what it will mean for both of them. Kaluuya delivers a powerhouse performance as Hampton. He transforms himself, physically as well, and is simply mesmerizing. It’s an Oscar worthy performance, no question.

The young director, Shaka King does a good job keeping the narrative moving and the focus tight on a small group of characters. The film tells a strong story, one you think you know and gives it new light and life. It hits a chord that still resonates today only too well. A powerful film I highly recommend .

This is the kind of British drama that you don’t see much of any more. based on the true story of the 1939 excavation of Sutton Hoo, a rural estate in suffolk which revealed the ruins of a ship and artifacts dating back to the Anglo-Saxon, 6th or 7th century.

The film is directed by Simon Stone (his 2nd film) and written by Moira Buffini (Jane Eyre 2011) based on the novel The Dig by John Preston. It is a lovely film with a strong cast that tells an amazing story which I had never heard about before.

In 1939, Edith Pretty (Carey Mulligan) hires Basil Brown (Ralph Fiennes) a local excavator and self taught archeologist to dig into some large burial mounds on her estate. There is some tension at the start but they come to respect each other and Brown takes a liking to Edith’s young, imaginative son, Robert (Archie Barnes). Soon enough, Brown, with the assistance of two of Edith’s employees, make a huge discovery. The local museum and eventually the National British Museum come in and take over the dig but Edith is insistent that Brown stay on. More help comes led by renown archeologist Charles Phillips (Ken Stott), Stuart (Ben Chaplin) and Peggy (Lily James) Piggot and Edith asks her cousin Rory (Johnny Flynn) to take photos. Meanwhile, Edith is diagnosed with a weak heart and her health begins to worsen. The Piggots are newly married and Peggy becomes aware that Stuart is not as much interested in her as he is in one of their male colleagues and begins to start a romance with Rory. Brown, encouraged by his wife, May, stays on in the hopes of receiving some credit for the initial discovery and also to look after Edith’s interest.

What they find is amazing, a treasure trove of artifacts and then there is the struggle as to what will be done with the artifacts as the country prepares for war.

This really is a lovely film. Fiennes and Mulligan are very good and you root for them to succeed. I loved the relationship between Basil and May, she knows him and supports him and pushes him to fight for credit. The other stories are woven in nicely with a cast of familiar faces. The young son delivers some heartfelt moments that I wasn’t expecting. The love triangle is thrown in to add a little romance and those actors are pretty and future stars in their own right. Historically, the film does take some liberties but it brings us an amazing piece of history that most probably never heard of, like myself.

The Dig may not be a great movie but it’s solid, old fashioned storytelling and a nice respite from these anxiety filled times.

A two hour two hander that’s reminiscent of Contempt (1963), Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) and Cassavetes but not as successful.

Written and directed by Sam Levinson (Euphoria) and filmed during Covid with a very small crew, Malcolm and Marie was shot over two weeks at a private residence in Carmel, California . It’s two characters are played by two talented and fast rising stars John David Washington (Tenet) and Zendaya (Euphoria). The film takes place in real time as a couple confront each other about everything that is going wrong in their relationship.

Malcolm (Washington) is a young black filmmaker and Marie (Zendaya) is his much younger, gorgeous muse. The film starts with them coming back from the successful premiere of Malcolm’s new feature film. He is floating on air. He puts on some music and sings and dances around the house as Marie quietly starts cooking up some Kraft Mac and Cheese for him. He finally notices her quietness and asks what is bothering her. And they are off to the races! What follows is almost two hours of two people getting everything off their chest, fighting then making up, almost making love before they start fighting again. Painful things are said, startling revelations are flung and tears flow.

Marie is upset that Malcolm did not thank her in his speech after the screening. Malcolm is dismissive of Marie, charging that she is jealous and antisocial and not knowledgeable enough of film to feel comfortable with his friends. Marie feels she has been taken for granted and charges that he is too insecure in his work to give her any credit for her support and inspiration. They face their demons and each other and don’t always like what they see but they continue to try and work things out. It ends on an ambiguous note which is good. It would’t have been realistic to think everything would be resolved after one night of should searching.

The performances are very good. They look terrific and it’s very believable to see them as a couple. It’s very intense but the actors are so good you get into their relationship and it doesn’t feel forced. I’m sure everyone will be able to relate to them in some way. We’ve all had similar fights with our partner and know that these type of fights can last for hours. It feels more like a play, which is why I mentioned Virginia Woolf. I would have liked a little more humor thrown in from time to time to break up the tension but I still found it a very powerful experience.

This may not be to everyone’s taste, but it is a very exciting piece of work with engaging actors and lovely black and white photography. Open a bottle of wine and enjoy the fireworks. Watch it with your significant other and I’m sure you’ll have a rollicking good conversation afterwards.

This film boasts three Academy Award winning actors which ups it’s expectations and makes it a ‘prestige’ film. Unfortunately, it does not come close to becoming a classic. Writer/Director John Lee Hancock has a good visual style and methodical approach and creates an eery atmosphere but the payoff falls flat.

The story follows a Kern County deputy sheriff, Joe ‘Deke” Deacon (Denzel Washington) who is sent to Los Angeles to pick up some evidence for an important murder case. His quick trip gets hung up in red tape and he ends up having to spend the night in LA. We learn that Deacon is well known in LA. He was a hot shot detective who had a mental breakdown five years earlier and is now just a burnout biding his time until retirement. The new hot shot detective, Jimmy Baxter (Rami Malek) is at first annoyed by Deacon, perhaps intimidated because of his predecessor’s legendary status but he still asks him to tag along to the scene of the most recent murder of a serial killer that Baxter is trying to catch. Deacon sees a similarity to an old unsolved case of his and stays in LA to not just help Baxter but find some closure and redemption for himself. There are hints as to why Deacon had his breakdown and it is associated with that unsolved case.

The more time Baxter spends with Deacon the more he gets sucked into Deacon’s habits and tendencies. When Deacon suspects a weird loner, Albert Sparma (Jared Leto) Baxter follows his hunch and this leads them both down a path that neither one of them are prepared for.

The Little Things reminded me a bit of Seven (1995) but also a little bit of The Pledge (2001) and Tightrope (1983). It has all the earmarks of a classic thriller, older detective, younger detective, unsolved serial killings, weird guy suspect and the mystery past of the older detective. It definitely is intriguing and the performances are good but endings are the hardest thing to pull off. Hitting the landing is the hardest part. I felt that the build up was there but the execution failed. I think I know what the film is trying to say and what it wanted to convey but it just didn’t work for me. This doesn’t mean that the film isn’t worth seeing. I’m a big advocate for ambitiousness.

My favorite scene in this film is where Deacon is following Sparma on the freeway. Sparma pulls over to the side of the road, Deacon passes him then, he pulls over but Sparma doesn’t drive on. Deacon decides to go in reverse back to where Sparma had pulled over and he’s not there. He looks across the highway and sees Soparma now parked directly across from him, going the other way on the freeway. Deacon then takes the offramp to go to theater side where Sparma is but again, he’s gone. He’s now back on the other side of the freeway. Sparma then goes over to where Deacon is parked and pulls up beside him. The cat and mouse game is on!

I think the film tries for something profound, it just didn’t quite get there. Perhaps, because the expectations were too high, given the cast, or given that so many films are trying to achieve the very thing that The Little Things is shooting for. Most fail to.

***********SPOILER ALERT***************

What would have made it better? Where should the film had gone? My first thought was that Deacon was the killer of the group of women from his case from five years earlier and he wanted to pin them on this new serial killer. Picking Sparma and getting Baxter to believe it would ensure he could be free of capture.

But I like the idea of things not being resolved. Deacon is haunted by the case he couldn’t close, especially since he had accidentally shot one of the victims, which was covered up and led him to his breakdown. Baxter’s hero worship of Deacon gets him in trouble and when he loses his cool and kills Sparma, Deacon sees what happened to him happening to Baxter. He tries to save him by sending him the red beret that one of the victims was known to have worn as a way of convincing Baxter that Sparma was ‘their boy’ and alleviate his guilt. What was missing is perhaps more character development between the two characters, more mirroring of Baxter being the young Deacon and Deacon being more self destructive or even unstable. Perhaps the killer from his old case had been caught but Deacon’s guilt about killing that one victim prevents him from accepting that. And Sparma needed to be something more relevant to Deacon. Perhaps, Sparma was who Deacon had targeted five years earlier as the killer so they would know each other and Sparma’s antagonistic attitude would make sense.

It’s a near miss for me but a miss all the same.