ANTEBELLUM and THE HUNT added to TrustMovies' "Best of Year" list

Having this week just caught up with (and been blown away by) ANTEBELLUM, I've got to add it to my best-of-year list, along with a movie I saw months and months ago, THE HUNT, which was, at the time of its originally-to-be-released date (fall 2019), considered too topical and provocative to hit theaters. Yeah, sure: Critical and public response to both movies are typical examples our current cancel culture at work. In fact, both films actually deal with the extremes of this idiot culture, via the ever-popular movie genre of the survival thriller. 

These two movies are first and foremost "entertainments" whose plots and themes just happen to be so timely and important that they grab the intelligent viewer on several levels and never let go.

Antebellum -- written and directed by Gerard Bush and Christopher Renz -- actually doubles as a mystery whose complete solution does not unveil itself until literally the film's final shot -- which then has you immediately going back and back into what you've just seen to start piecing together those oddball fragments that didn't quite make sense at the time. Now everything fits. With most mysteries, the set-up and the mystery are a lot more fun than the conclusion and solution. Antebellum turns the usual expectation on its ear.

If you don't know much about the movie's plot, please keep it that way. This is the one film this year that was most undeservedly ruined by critics' (and audiences') spoilers. The opening scenes set in our Civil War, complete with traumatized slaves at work, are difficult to watch for their violence and injustice. Yet by the finale, this will have taken on such new and important meaning that the necessity to the film of this violent beginning increases tenfold. In fact, those would-be revolutionaries who attempted this week to take over Capitol Hill would undoubtedly applaud the sleazy scenario going on in Antebellum. The movie is that timely. 

Plus, it has Janelle Monáe (above right, with Kiersey Clemons, and further above) giving what is certainly her most important performance to date. Even more so than Get Out and Us, the movie brings to life the results, small and huge, of America's continued racism, while holding up a mirror to the way we lived then and live now. Why the American South has been allowed to purvey its constant memorializing and celebrating of its treasonous war appears even more ridiculous and stupid in our current times. Old habits die hard -- especially when they keep alive the economic policies and racism that have served the white elite so well for so long.

Not as exceptional nor quite as interesting a film is THE HUNT. Yet it's still special enough to make an end-of-year "best" list by demonstrating how a good genre movie can tackle important social themes while providing crackerjack entertainment. What dismayed many viewers seems to be the fact that this movie turned the table on the expected roles of hunters and victims. Yet this works wonderfully well by calling into question our seemingly current need for political correctness to dominate rational thinking.

The movie has a marvelous heroine in Betty Gilpin (below), who imbues her role with smarts, street-savvy and plain old physical strength and endurance. Directed by Craig Zobel from a screenplay by Nick Cuse and Damon Lindelof, the movie begins with a bang and never lets up on the pacing, thrills and suspense. Surprisingly, actors such as Emma Roberts and Ike Barinholtz are dispensed with quickly, which leaves the remainder of the film to Gilpin and, finally, Hilary Swank, as her nemesis.

One of the major points made by The Hunt is that class and economics, rather than race or racism, is causing our country's huge divide -- worth considering and exploring and then acting upon until something is really done about the disgusting wealth gap. Meanwhile, we've got this little movie to make its point in mostly breathtaking and breath-holding fashion.

If you haven't seen these modern-day political movies-cum-genre-films, stick 'em on your list ASAP. 

ROMA: Yes, Alfonso Cuarón's much-lauded movie is indeed one of the year's best

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Sorry for the delay in covering Alfonso Cuarón's very impressive movie ode to the Mexican woman who helped raise him and his rather large immediate family, but due to a scheduling glitch with my monthly correspondent Lee Liberman, the film fell through TrustMovies' cracks for a bit.

So: Is ROMA -- named for the Mexico City neighborhood in which Cuarón (shown below) grew up -- as good as the blurbs on its poster, left, would indicate? I think it is, though I must admit that several good friends of mine, intelligent movie-lovers all, found the film slow-moving enough to have to stop and then return to it two or three times, in order to finish watching.

How shall I put it, exactly? This is not an "action" movie. Yet for anyone who can appreciate a film about family dynamics, separation, child-rearing, not to mention class and economic differences, racism, and the many different and equally important forms of love involved in the life of a shy, quiet but remarkably morally-centered young woman, Roma hits the sweet spot again and again.

Aside from the sometimes breath-taking and always lovely black-and-white cinematography by Cuarón himself (as was the direction, screenwriting and even much of the editing: this is a very "hands-on" movie), what impresses me most about the film was how much of it has been shot in mid-range/middle distance and how very few enormous close-ups we are asked to view.

This has the effect of not allowing the viewer to so easily or immediately get "close" to the characters. Instead we have to spend the time noting the small details and tiny incidents -- the parking of a car, for instance -- that slowly build character and lead to our further involvement. Middle distance also helps avoid the easy sentimentality found in so much of what we see in film and on television.

As you might expect from this sort of endeavor -- a near-documentary approach to showing us life -- the performances are all terrifically real yet about as unshowy as seems possible under these circumstances. In the leading role of the maid, Cleo, newcomer Yalitizia Aparcio (above) is quietly extraordinary, as befits a character whose job it is to serve others. Less quiet but equally fine is the much-more-seasoned actress Marina de Tavira (below, right) in the role of the broken-hearted mother of the family.

Though much of the movie is given over to small, seemingly sort of static scenes of daily life, there eventually arise a few whoppingly amazing moments that build into some unforgettable situations that Cuarón handles equally well. The first of these occurs as Cleo's boyfriend, Fermin (Jorge Antonio Guerrrero, below) does a nude and full-frontal demonstration of his martial arts skills that, while impressive (in several ways), leaves us wondering just who this guy really is. That slowly, clearly becomes more and more horribly apparent.

Roma also boasts the most memorable and moving birth scene I've yet experienced (for reasons that would be a spoiler to dwell on), and another that suddenly shows us the result of government brutality to its student population that is as sudden as it is spectacularly ugly and believable.

The film climaxes with the scene shown on the poster, top. Before I viewed the movie, this "family hug" --  used extensively in the publicity materials and posters for the film -- looked rather sentimental. Once you've actually seen the whole film, I think you'll agree that this landmark moment, thanks to the filmmaker's style, story, and in particular his skillful use of middle distance, arrives completely and absolutely earned.

From Netflix and still playing its limited release in theaters, even as it streams most everywhere else, Roma, running two hours and fifteen minutes, is definitely one of last year's best film. I am adding it to my list right now. 

TrustMovies' BEST OF 2018

This year, at the top my my list, are three narrative films and two documentaries that are as different from each in style and content as would seem possible. What unites them, in my mind at least, is that they are, in their own way, "progressive" -- politically, socially and/or sexually. And while they may not be the "best" movies in terms of their embrace by other critics, they tackle themes and ideas that need to be explored and do this in a way that I think justifies their inclusion.

The five sheer and outright comedies on the list (including one comedic anti-superhero blockbuster) -- two from major Hollywood studios, two independents, and the other from Spain -- are there because first-rate comic entertainment is not all that easy to come by these days. So here are my top five, with the rest of list appearing further below. (Click on the title link to see my earlier, longer review of each film.)

THE CAKEMAKER is that rare thing: a movie about spirituality that takes in physicality, sexuality and our five senses as necessary contingents.

Everyone I know who has seen the film has liked it -- but each for a different reason. It's that inclusive. And rich. All about love, lust, baking and acceptance, that the movie also delivers its own wonderful "take" on Jewish-German history and possibilities is just, well, the proverbial icing on the cake.


BEL CANTO moved and surprised me more than any narrative film this year. Granted, I knew next to nothing about it going it (I read little if any press material prior to viewing), but I came out of the film shaken and sad yet filled with a renewed sense of humanity's possibilities (yeah, even in this age of the idiocy of Donald Trump). And though the movie deals with freedom fighters and hostages, its other great theme is how art can affect life. Together, these make for a movie that must be seen and considered.

ARABY is a genuine "art" film -- at least so far as its form is concerned. The narrative twists around and into itself, making the character you imagine to be the hero little more than subsidiary. Yet the movie slowly but completely builds into one of the most progressive I've yet seen in terms of its skill in fusing character and theme with economics, politics, sociology and so much else. By the finale, it is as fine and moving a narrative depiction of society and the individual reduced to near economic slavery as any you'll have seen.


THE CHINA HUSTLE came and went this past spring with little fanfare. Yet it is a model of investigative reporting, as well as a remarkable look at how to make some very complicated financial scamming both understandable and anger-provoking.

The documentary indicts not only China (for, oh, so many reasons) but especially our very own usual suspects: the Wall Street and banking hustlers who manage to come out far ahead, even as their little-folk investors lose their shirts (and all else). The movie also asks that seemingly eternal question: When will we finally rein in and really regulate our fucking disgusting financial industry?

MOYNIHAN is also a model documentary, even if its focus is simply the life and times of one man -- Daniel Patrick Moynihan -- whose career spanned most of the mid-20th Century into our current one. The film is so astute psychologically that it captures character in a wonderfully full fashion, while giving us a look at a politician and man who well understood the virtues of knowing what a "fact" actually is, along with the need for "working together" (which is not, by the way, the same thing as compromise) to achieve a necessary objective. In these current and seemingly end-of-times, we certainly could use more of this kind of proactive thinking and behavior.

Below is TrustMovies' "best" list (38 this year) which includes only the films I've seen this past year -- starting with the earliest date that each was released, through to the end of the year. (More may be added as I catch up.)

Click on the title of any film link to read my entire review.


IN THE LAND OF POMEGRANATES

IN BETWEEN

VAZANTE

THE INSULT*

KANGAROO

BEFORE WE VANISH

FILM STARS DON'T DIE IN LIVERPOOL *

SUBMISSION

GAME NIGHT

12 DAYS

THE LAST SUIT

THE DEATH OF STALIN

THE CHINA HUSTLE

NANA

ACORN AND THE FIRESTORM**

CAPITALISM **

EVERYTHING ELSE

FILMWORKER

DEADPOOL 2

SUMMER 1993

ARABY

THE CAKEMAKER

EXTINCTION

TOC  TOC**

STRANGE VICTORY**

MEMOIR OF WAR

CIELO

LEAVE NO TRACE

RAZZIA**

TAINTED SOULS**

GOOD MANNERS

BEL CANTO

MOYNIHAN

DESTINATION WEDDING

THE OATH

DEFAULT

THE BALLAD OF BUSTER SCRUGGS

THE FAVOURITE

ROMA

*An asterisk after the title means that the movie in question, though officially opening on either coast by the end of 2017 (or was a last-year Best Foreign Language Film contender), did not open here in Florida until 2018.

**A double asterisk means that the item did not receive a theatrical release -- but is available in DVD form or via streaming as, in one case, the French-Canadian television series Capitalism that is simply too important and exceptional not to include.

Best film of the year (so far): Paul Weitz's beautiful, brilliant, moving BEL CANTO

What a surprise is BEL CANTO, the new movie directed by Paul Weitz (and which could hardly be farther away in subject, tone and skill from his first film, American Pie!), with a screenplay adapted by Anthony Weintraub and Weitz from the award-winning novel of the same name by Ann Patchett. Mr. Weitz, shown below, has now directed in so many different genres that he is can certainly not be pigeon-holed -- which is undoubted as he wants it. Still, I would in no way have expected to be this strongly engulfed by and then finally moved -- not to tears; at least, not right away -- to the kind of deep, profound sense of possibility, joy and then loss that the performing arts so rarely provide. (Several hours post-viewing those tears unexpectedly arrived; the movie sticks with me, even now, days after viewing it.)

When we finished the film, my spouse at once remarked how much it reminded him of Our Country's Good, that great play by Timberlake Wertenbaker that had a too-short Broadway run back in 1991. In Bel Canto, the humanizing force, rather than residing, as in the play, in the power of theater, is instead found in music, specifically opera. The result is the same: the bringing together of diverse people and ideas into the kind harmony that progressives so desire, and that those in power so often deliberately prevent.

What genre of a film is Bel Canto? Without giving away much of the wonderfully imagined and executed plot, the movie's a mash-up. Part love story(ies), thriller, social/political critique, art-about-art, terrorism (but by whom?) and lots more, the movie puts you in touch with characters who grow and change, finally becoming as memorable as any you're likely see this year (or for that matter last year or next).

Not having read the novel (which is probably better than the film because novels almost always are), I can only judge this movie. What Weitz and Weintraub especially excel at lies in their ability to create the illusion of time passing both artfully and believably so that everything we see here seems viable, given the circumstances and characters.

That sense of days and weeks passing is vital to the tale's credibility, and it is handled here as well as I've ever seen it. The film has been cast exquisitely, too. Though its lead actors -- Julianne Moore (above) as a world-famous opera singer (we hear Renée Fleming on the soundtrack doing the singing) and Ken Watanabe (at left on poster, top) as an uber-wealthy and successful businessman -- are maybe not the most memorable of the characters, Ms Moore smartly captures both this singer's entitlement and her humanity, while Watanabe's eastern reserve and inscrutability slowly, effectively crumble.

The film's most interesting character -- the likes of which movies so seldom bring to life this well -- belongs to the Japanese translator (beautifully played by Ryô Kase, shown above, center), fluent in several languages, who accompanies Watanabe and discovers so much new about himself during the "siege." Also in the fine international cast are Sebastian Koch (below) as a harried Red Cross worker and Christopher Lambert (in the penultimate photo, below) as a hostage who proves multi-talented.

The "terrorists" are almost equally memorable. There are quite a few of these, and each is brought to fine and specific life with a few smart brushstrokes by actors who make the most of every one of their moments. Especially strong are Tenoch Huerta (as the Commander) and Maria Mercedes Coray, shown at right in the photo at bottom (who plays the young female recruit named Carmen).

The film is full of little ironies, sometimes involving language and translation. One of the richest and funniest is what most unites the film's missing dictator with some of the terrorists in this Latin American country. Of course, it's a telenovela.

As it moves along, the movie takes on almost the quality of a long-hoped-for fantasy -- one into which, from it outset, we know that reality must finally intrude. Until then, a wondrous little society is created that may take a permanent place in your mind and heart. TrustMovies found Bel Canto the most beguiling, appealing and finally moving piece of cinema he's seen in a long while. No other film has made him think, feel and care this much about such a diverse set of characters living through such a singular event.

From Screen Media Films (by far the best movie I've yet seen from this particular distributor) and running just 102 minutes, Bel Canto opens this Friday, September 14, in New York City (at the Cinepolis Chelsea) and in Los Angeles (at Laemmle's Monica Film Center). Here in the Miami area, the film opens the following Friday, September 21, at the Bill Cosford Cinema and in the weeks to come will hit another 25 cities and theaters nationwide. To see all currently scheduled playdates, cities and theaters, click here and scroll down.

December Sunday Corner With Lee Liberman: Dee Rees' MUDBOUND

“The arc of the moral universe is long, 

but it bends toward justice.”

 ....Martin Luther King, Jr.

Writer/director Dee Rees (below) and screenwriter Virgil Williams adapted this quietly painful yet transcendent saga from a novel by Hillary Jordan — a tale of the daily rigors of two families who work the same unforgiving land in the Mississippi delta of 80 years ago. The ensemble drama, MUDBOUND, gives voice to the point of view of each of the main characters, bound as they are to each other and the mud, furrows, and trials of eking a living off the land. It is also as pure a study of bigotry as you’ve ever seen — the everyday condescension that blacks and other minorities still endure. The movie captures the relentless dailiness of this as if it were today, not the 1940s.

In that way it is also the story of our original sin — the polar opposite of the flag we fly: “all men are created equal and are endowed with inalienable rights…..”. The current iteration of American racism smacks of repressed rage at not being so white and Christian anymore; the sounds of America have gotten meaner as our non-white population increases. The President sings the same tune as everybody’s racist uncle and Mudbound’s foul-mouthed Pappy. Trumpism is racism, says Adam Serwer, an Atlantic editor.

Trump’s appeal doesn’t originate in economic suffering; his followers are driven by the desire to suppress non-white America’s civil and voting rights. The film plunges us into the murk of racial memory, the metaphorical mud of the delta; it stars everyday meanness in its Jim Crow rules and poverty. The Washington Post film critic Ann Hornaday’s review of Mudbound compares it to great literature of Faulkner and Steinbeck and the sweeping film sagas of William Wyler and John Ford. The difference in Mudbound is that it is the daily earth-bound struggle itself that is epic — the warp and weave of farm life under segregation in rural Mississippi during the 1940’s, writ large.

The landowner is laconic Henry McAllan, his cheerless wife Laura (Jason Clarke and Carey Mulligan, below), their daughters, and sadistic, racist Pappy (Jonathan Banks). Henry’s younger brother Jamie (Garrett Hedlund, early in his years of leading-man heart-crushing) goes off to war and then returns home.

Their tenant-farmer neighbors, shown below, are the Jacksons: Hap (Rob Morgan), his wife Florence (a poignantly heroic Mary J. Blige), and their children including oldest son Ronsel (Jason Mitchell) who also makes the round trip to war and back home to the delta.

Hap Jackson grieves his ancestral ties to this earth: “What good is a deed? My grandfathers and great uncles, grandmothers and great aunts, father and mother… worked this land all their lives, this land that will never be theirs… They sweated until they bled; they bled until they died… Died with the dirt of this same 200 acres under their fingernails… all their deeds undone. Yet this man, this place, this law say you need a Deed--not deeds.”

Laura McAllan dreams in brown, knees and hair encrusted in mud (constantly refreshed by downpours), boot-shaped brown patches marching across the floor. Violence is part and parcel of country life, she says. “You’re forever being assailed by dead things. Dead mice, dead rabbits, dead possums. You find them in the yard, you smell them rotting under the house. And then there are the creatures you kill for food. Chickens, hogs, deer, frogs, squirrels. Pluck, skin, disembowel, debone, fry, eat. Start again…..” There is miscarriage, incest, adultery, murder, and Klan violence quietly woven into the fabric. But the central relationship is that of the returning warriors: Jamie a bomber pilot and Ronsel a tank sergeant in the black battalion that General Patton used to spearhead his army (archival photo below).

The story occurs at a turning point referred to as the ‘forgotten years of the black revolution’ — World War II and it’s aftermath.

Ronsel (above, right) says: “Home again, home again jiggity jig; coon, spade, darky, nigger. Went off to fight for my country and found it hasn’t changed a bit. Over there we were the liberator, they were lined up waiting for us, throwing flowers and cheering. Here I’m just another nigger pushing a plow…..

“The army gave us separate barracks, separate blood supply, separate latrines... But them European girls they didn’t have any problem with us at all… But that was then… and right now I guess I’m right where I should be — throwing my life away.”

The two depressed men get drunk together, flouting the ingrained habits of segregation and leading Pappy (below, left) to scold Ronsel: “I don’t know what they let you do over there, but you in Mississippi now — you leave by the back door”. It doesn’t take long for both former soldier-heroes to feel like aliens in a South they have grown out of.

In fact, the end of legal segregation in America and the British de-colonialization of Asia and Africa were the unplanned outcomes of war fought against German and Japanese racism. Although, as Ronsel says, they were segregated as soldiers, they got jobs, pulled their weight, and black and white fought as one against the enemy. Dee Rees makes the point with a U.S. flyer shooting down Germans who were pummeling Jamie’s plane, after which the rescuer, a black pilot, hi-fives Jamie on a fly-by (archival photo of black airmen below).

In the 1920’s the socialist speaker/writer, A Philip Randolph, organized the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters; during the 1941 war build-up he organized a march on Washington demanding that blacks be hired for factory jobs. When Randolph assured the president that 100,000 would show up and demonstrate, Roosevelt signed the order, the march was pre-empted, and blacks entered the workforce.

After the war, Truman ordered the integration of U.S. armed forces. Black voters then turned out to help Truman defeat Dewey in the 1948 presidential election. The next leap forward for civil rights wasn’t until 1963, taking us into the modern era of integration.

No -- Mississippi held no post-war hope for Jamie or Ronsel, and Rees crafts off-ramps for them, leaving the delta to marinate in Jim Crow. The viewer comes away feeling waked up again to the fact that ever since slaves were brought to America we have been mired in racism. Still, this movie with its mostly note-perfect story-telling is uplifting rather than depressing. Last week Mississippi opened its civil rights museum and a Democrat, civil rights lawyer Doug Jones, just won an Alabama Senate seat ("turning back the dead hand of George Wallace," said Howell Raines, retired editor of The New York Times and an Alabama native). We are on a journey and must move forward.

Mudbound got raves on the festival circuit but was not picked up for distribution until content chief at Netflix, Ted Sarandos, stepped up. Yet this might be one of the more absorbing and meaningful films of the year in its quiet revelation of America’s original sin. It came to theaters and has been streaming on Netflix since late November and has received some nominations for awards, including Mary J Blige’s ‘Mighty River’, a spiritual she co-wrote and sang for the film (press here to have a listen).

The above post was written by our 

 monthly correspondent, Lee Liberman.

Martin McDonagh's THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI: year's best?

As someone who detested In Bruges but very much enjoyed Seven Psychopaths, TrustMovies has now become a firm fan of writer/director Martin McDonagh (shown below), whose latest endeavor, THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI, is currently gracing screens nationwide. This is, head and shoulders, the Britisher's best, deepest and most grown-up work yet.

In it, characters keep evolving (or at least broadening and deepening), even as the tale takes one surprise twist after another, not one of which seems finally off-base in the least. If that were not accomplishment enough, the movie is acted to near perfection by its entire cast. And as crazy as events sometimes seem, the actors keep it all grounded in reality, even as we audience members gasp, chuckle and laugh aloud at the goings-on. So adept is McDonagh at dialog, as well as in his understanding of human behavior, violence, caring, family and other concerns that he and his cast nail every scene while keeping us glued and on our toes.

Every cast member deserves great praise, but the movie belongs to its three stars: Frances McDormand above, left), Woody Harrelson (above, right) and the as-usual amazing Sam Rockwell (below).

The less said about plot, the better, since you deserve to be a tabula rasa going into this movie. You might call it a "police non-procedural" if you were so inclined, but murder mystery, family drama/comedy, character(s)-in-transition study, and unique vision of small town American life would do just as well.

I won't say more so that I can get this post up today. Just put Three Billboards on your must-see list. From Fox Searchlight and running 115 minutes, the movie is playing all over the country. Click here to find the theater(s) nearest you.