Best of Year (so far): Regina King's superlative could-have-happened ONE NIGHT IN MIAMI

For all the good things you've heard about ONE NIGHT IN MIAMI, the movie turns out to be even better. It starts well, builds consistently into something richer and more meaningful than you could have imagined, even given the subject matter --  the night spent together by four black icons (Cassius Clay Jr., Sam Cooke, Jim Brown and Malcolm X), all of whom had at least a nodding acquaintance with each  other and actually attended the world heavyweight boxing match that Clay had won earlier that evening -- and ends reaching the highest level of thought and emotion of which movies may be capable. How? Best I can figure is simply via an extraordinary intelligence and simplicity.

This is thanks to the film's writer Kemp Powers (adapted from his play of the same name), its director, Regina King (shown at right), and its amazing cast, especially the four leading actors. How Mr. Powers manages to encapsulate so much of Black American history, philosophy and ideas in such a natural, off-the-cuff manner is exemplary. His dialog grabs you and holds you, first to last, and best of all, he does right by each of his characters.

As director, Ms King, who has over and over again proven herself a very fine actress, comes at this material in the most naturalistic manner. She, along with her cinematographer (Tami Rekier) and editor (Tariq Anwar) have the knack of understanding where to place the camera and seize the moment without ever appearing to do so. The direction of this movie never calls attention to itself, and that is Ms King's great achievement. 

Unfortunately work like this rarely wins awards. It should, for it is quietly extraordinary. Even when King moves from the movie's main location -- a simple hotel room -- to the outside and even to past events, all this unfolds so gracefully and naturally that no underscoring is ever needed.

As to that cast, these four amazing actors could not be bettered, TrustMovies believes. No one grandstands or is in any way better than his co-stars. Each achieves his character's major and minor qualities in the most natural, direct manner. The performances themselves keep you riveted. As Malcolm X, Kingsley Ben-Adir (three photos up) brings the man's intelligence, passion and paranoia (that last quite justified) to full bloom, while Eli Goree (two photo above) makes Clay's braggadocio, as well as his talent, not merely believable but hugely entertaining.

Leslie Odom, Jr. (two photos up) lets Cooke's layers of intelligence and enormous feeling emerge ever so slowly, and in so doing makes them resonate all the more, while the quiet strength and power in Aldis Hodge's performance as Jim Brown (above) commands both the screen and the movie via its stillness and subtlety. Sure, these guys were all legends. What we have here are the humans behind those legends.

What the movie has to say about the Black experience -- then and now -- is paramount, of course. Powers and King don't preach. They simply show and tell. I can't imagine that audiences who genuinely care about this fractured country of ours, where it has been and where it is going, will not hang on every word and every beautiful, eye-, mind- and heart-opening performance on view. For me, so far, this is the year's best film.

From Amazon Studios and running 114 minutes, the movie is in theaters now, as well as streaming on Prime Video. Miss it and you will not be doing yourself any favor.

Lynne Sachs' FILM ABOUT A FATHER WHO breaks new ground in the "family" documentary department

Every year there seem to be a couple (if not more) of new docs that, in telling their strange and troubling stories -- often about a family that the movie-maker is exploring (sometimes his or her own) -- practically cry out, Can you top this?!  2021, which has barely even begun, offers one that pretty much tops them all: FILM ABOUT A FATHER WHO. 

The filmmaker here is Lynne Sachs (shown above), who has spent 35 years -- 1984 through 2019 -- researching, compiling her information and finally turning her film and video into a very compact 74 minutes of footage. That's barely over two minutes per year, yet the result is something for which running-time seems quite beside the point. (Before you start to feel too badly for Ms Sachs, know that she has completed a number of other films over that same time period: Click on her IMDB profile, at the link above). 

All of us, TrustMovies would guess, are at some point in our lives, interested in our parents and their history, however checkered it might be. As Ms Sachs explores this regarding her father Ira Sachs, Sr., shown above and below (her sibling, Jr., is himself a noted filmmaker: Leave the Lights On, Love Is Strange), she learns more and more that becomes so increasingly jaw-dropping that you will eventually have to pick that body part up from the floor. Ms Sachs also explores, to a lesser extent, the history of her mother and grandmother. But it's Dad who's key here. 

To even try to explain what we learn in this film would be to give away the entire store, as it were. Really: once the film gets going, a new spoiler crops up literally every few minutes. Eventually you will find yourself asking, Who the fuck is this man?, and it's clear that his offspring have all asked themselves the same question plenty of times over the years. In terms of film-making technique, Sachs has assembled her footage -- archival to near-present-day, with interviews conducted all along the way -- pretty much in the necessary manner to allow that "mystery of identity" to reveal itself, play out as it needs to, and still, yes, remain something of a mystery. 

According to her IMDB resume, Sachs explores "the intricate relationship between personal observations and broader historical experiences by weaving together poetry, collage, painting, politics and layered sound design," and she is "strongly committed to a dialogue between cinematic theory and practice."  In Film About A Father Who, she gets what I would call a little too creative and artsy once or twice, which, in the context of all we see and hear, simply calls attention to itself and not much more. Fortunately she and her editor Rebecca Shapass concentrate mostly on the faces, words and thoughts of the people we meet, and this is more than enough to keep us in tow.

As the movie came to a close (spoiler ahead: See the film before reading the rest of this paragraph), I found myself thinking that Ira Sachs, Sr., is the absolute and perfect poster boy for vasectomy. Though that, of course, would rob us of his progeny -- all of whom seem like decent enough folk. And, to his credit, the man at least monetarily cared for his offspring. I also would have liked to know, since DNA does count for quite a bit of our heritage, much more about the man named Harry Richman (I believe that's the spelling of the fellow who was our titular father's actual father). But perhaps there was simply no further information available on this guy.

In any case, Film About a Father Who takes its place as a whopping good exploration of family, parentage and parenting, secrets and -- if not outright lies, then some pretty heavy withholding of information. From The Cinema Guild and running 74 minutes, the documentary opens in virtual cinemas nationwide today, Friday, January 15. Click here for more information and venues.

Sam Pollard's MLK/FBI further exposes yet another shameful episode in our nation's history of law enforcement

Back in 2017 producer/director/editor Sam Pollard (shown below) co-directed one of the year's best documentaries, Acorn and the Firestorm. He's back this week with the new doc, MLK/FBI, the acronym-titled movie all about the connection between and harassment and illegal surveillance by our Federal Bureau of Investigation of Martin Luther King, Jr., the leader at this mid-20th-Century time of America's black population and the chief organizer of the non-violent protests for racial equality going on throughout the USA.

As one of the film's interviewees, James Comey, points out, this lengthy episode is one of the most shameful in the FBI's off-and-on shameful history. And Mr. Comey should know, being himself no stranger to shame,  having later headed the FBI and served briefly under that icon of Presidential shame, Donald Trump. 

Many of us have long heard about this FBI harassment of King, as well as of others such as actress Jean Seberg and just about any black man or woman -- Fred Hampton to Angela Davis -- who rose to prominence in the movement for black equality. What MLK/FBI gives us is a broader, deeper look into the whole sleazy mess of FBI wire tapping and audio taping than has heretofore been seen.

Pollard and his writers (Benjamin Hedin and Laura Tomaselli) bring the history of the tapping and taping of MLK on the phone, in hotel rooms and elsewhere, along with many important details of what went on at this time. In the process it also gives a richer, somewhat clearer portrait of Dr. King, shown above. As one of the several narrators points out early on, "Whatever comes out on these tapes" -- the tapes themselves will not be released until 2027, though official FBI memos exist and are shown here, explaining some of what is heard on those tapes -- "will help us better understand him (MLK) as a human being. And that's our duty: to understand."

To that end, we learn of the FBI memo which says that King must be destroyed because he is the most dangerous Negro in America. Why? Due to his supposed ties to Communism, of course. To that end,  we learn about lawyer Stanley D. Levison, one of King's best friends, and himself a former Communist. Yet, after much investigation, the FBI knew that there was no evidence linking Levison to any Communist  plot. Still the agency proceeded with its sleazy and unnecessary surveillance, taping King's hotel-room sexual trysts.

The documentary makes no excuses for Dr. King's sexual needs nor the way in which he fulfilled them outside of his marriage. It also makes clear that King was dishonest in telling the FBI he no longer had contact with his good friend Levison. To help pictorialize the history, Pollard uses clips from old movies -- The FBI Story, Walk a Crooked Mile, I Was a Communist for the FBI -- but fortunately these are limited in both number and the time spent on each.

Pollard doesn't much explore J. Edgar Hoover's rumored sexual proclivities, either, though he does note how Hoover's FBI seemed to be made of mostly hunky, young white men of the sort that the Director keenly appreciated.

What's best about MLK/FBI is the deeper look it gives us of King himself, via his ideas, speeches, interviews and the like. Details such as the plane flight on which he picked up a number of current magazines to read and was so moved and chastened by the photo essay in Ramparts magazine that showed the results of our military's napalm bombing on Vietnamese children that he immediately went back to heavily criticizing our role in Vietnam. This resulted in the worst press coverage he had yet received, as well as anger from not only his enemies but many of his black friends and supporters.

Watching interviews by the press of some of those folk who hated King and their talk of how the man had "attended Communist Training School" will put you in mind of today's QAnon conspiracy nuts and how so little in some ways -- given even the Internet -- seems to have changed over more than half a century. Learning of black FBI informants among King's closest allies and workers (the fine photographer Ernest Withers was one of these) will also give you proper pause.

From IFC Films and running 105 minutes, MLK/FBI opens in select theaters, digitally and on cable VOD this Friday, January 15. It is definitely worth a watch -- even if it's not quite yet the definitive version of history. Click here for more information on the film and how to view it.

ACASĂ, MY HOME: Radu Ciorniciuc's beautiful, provocative doc opens in virtual theaters

 

The theme of individual freedom against the power of the state only recently received an amusing, thoughtful and emotional workout via the Netflix movie from Italy, Rose Island, and now here it is back again, even more powerfully and movingly explored in the new Romanian documentary, ACASĂ, MY HOME, directed by Radu Ciorniciuc (shown below) who also produced the film and, along with Mircea Topoleanu, handled its often ravishing cinematography.

This "individual vs the state" idea also cropped up rather hugely and nastily here in the USA last week, as those protesters (or, depending on your viewpoint, domestic terrorists) attacked Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. TrustMovies' view of this individual vs state thing often rests on whether those individuals offer a live-and-let-live attitude rather than the inflict-damage-overturn-a-democratic-election-and-maybe-end-some-lives kind of clashing that these deplorable, brainwashed Trump & Fox "News" followers exhibited.

In Acasă, My Home, Mr. Ciorniciuc offers a situation in which a large Romanian family, having lived for years (the kids were born there) in a wild area that will soon become an official nature preserve -- "the largest urban nature park in the European Union!" as one official puts it -- is soon to be "relocated." From the start, as we follow the oldest brother and his young siblings as they fish (by mouth!) and glide over the water, playing with the local wildlife in a near-idyllic, gorgeously photographed paradise, it is clear that this is probably to be a losing battle for the family.

And yet, for the most part, the State seems to be trying to act at least somewhat justly toward the family, and the filmmaker lets us see and understand this -- even though we also know that bureaucracy almost never takes in the individual situation with the nuance and caring that it deserves. And yet, the family's head, a very set-in-his-ways father, is also shown to be too intransigent (there's a brief but devastating scene of "book-burning" midway along that will bring you up short). 

Ciorniciuc allows us to consider both the pros and the cons of "civilization" and, once the family is moved into its new quarters inside the city, we experience these ups and downs with them as their lives move ahead. All this is handled with such finesse and understanding that you might imagine the filmmaker had spent his life doing documentaries, yet this is but his first attempt. He plays fair, it seems to me, with everyone. Clearly, he managed to gain the trust of this family, as well as of the various bureaucrats with whom he and the family had to deal, and they, too, appear to have been fairly considered.

Early on we get one of those breath-taking surprise shots that shows, with a shock, nature and civilization, side by side, while at the nature preserve, we meet the Prime Minister, a female government minister, and even England's own Prince Charles. Later, in town, we get a little local prejudice and some police brutality. "Someone call the police!" is screamed out at one point, followed by (and spoken by the brutalizers) "We are the police!" Oh, right. Finally and just barely, the filmmaker takes us, with only a little kicking and screaming via the eldest brother, into the next generation.

Toward the end of this "family moves from the country to the city" saga, I was put in mind of Visconti's great narrative melodrama Rocco and His Brothers. Acasă, My Home is that powerful and meaningful. What it might lack in narrative plot, drive and force, it makes up in breadth, scope and good old-fashioned documentary realism. And it is so very beautiful -- in its generous images of people and place -- as to be both exemplary and memorable. 

From Zeitgeist Films and Kino Lorber, in Romanian with English subtitles, and running just 86 minutes, the documentary hits virtual  theaters this Friday, January 15. Click here and scroll down for more information on the film and the venues in which you can view it.

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. 

Film Maudit 2.0 Festival returns for 12 days of free online screenings, including Ivo van Aart's timely, dark, comic thriller, THE COLUMNIST

Free movie screening are nothing to sneeze at, particularly in these pandemic times, so the upcoming 12 days of (we hope) fun and frolic via the legendary Los Angeles performance space and gallery, Highways, as it presents the Film Maudit 2.0 Festival (the original Film Maudit Fest premiered in 2019) should be worthwhile. Showcasing/ celebrating new outré, unusual and startling films, the festival, running from January 12 - 24,  features over 125 works of cinema from 25 countries, including films rarely, if ever, seen in festivals: works addressing -- according to the press release TrustMovies recently received -- "socio-political issues and taboo subject matter that challenges conventional artistic assumptions and sexual mores." Sounds like exactly your cup of Crysanthemum Tea, right? 

 

Film Maudit 2.0 will offer virtual, online screenings of 18 feature films, 21 shorts programs, specially commissioned programs, and a new film score performed by artists who reflect the diversity of Los Angeles. Inspired by French avant-garde filmmaker and writer Jean Cocteau, who created the original Festival du Film Maudit (literally “cursed films”) in 1949 to celebrate overlooked, shocking and experimental films, the festival is funded in part by the California Arts Council, L.A. County Department of Cultural Affairs and the City of Santa Monica Cultural Affairs CAP Program.  

The single film on the program I've been able to watch -- THE COLUMNIST, from The Netherlands and directed by Ivo van Aart (shown above) from a screenplay by Dan Windhorst -- proves a relatively smart, dark, comic thriller dealing with online trolling and bullying and the not-so-nice results for those trolls who bully.

This 84-minute movie may be short on character development and even on character itself (most of the people we meet here are pretty close to one-note clichés -- if even that (some are seen so briefly that that their only role is near-faceless victim). What saves the film is its timely theme, fast pacing and the momentum that the writer and director keep building. 

Katja Herbers (at right and below) excels as the not terribly bright title character who seems to best know how to tread a popular, safe middle-of-the road path but who, as a somewhat noted woman, manages to easily rile up a lot of online males.

The tale told involves her high-school-age, free-speech-loving daughter and the columnist's oddball-but-hot-looking new boyfriend, who turns out to be the most "together" man in the movie. When the online nastiness grows heavier and seemingly more life-threatening, our "heroine" manages to move from surprised and put-upon victim to a serial murderer in no time flat.

This is in no way believable but it's all handled so fast and furiously that it is never less than fun. And while The Columnist deals with an increasingly dire worldwide problem, its "take" on trolling and shaming proves so extreme that the darkly comic elements outweigh all else. Which is fine, so far as it goes. Ms Herbers is impressive in the lead role, and the supporting cast nails each mostly obvious role (only that boyfriend -- Bram van der Kelen -- brings some welcome mystery and surprise to his).

You can access the complete program for Film Maudit 2.0 here . And remember, whatever you choose to see, thanks to Highway and the co-sponsors, as of January 12 through the 24, it'll be free!

Dzintars Dreibergs' WWI blockbuster, BLIZZARD OF SOULS, is Latvia's submission to the "Oscars" as Best International Film

BLIZZARD OF SOULS (aka The Rifleman) is also, not coincidentally, the little country of Latvia's biggest box-office success in 30 years. And why not? The movie's got, as we used to say, everything. Said to be based (very loosely TrustMovies conjectures) on a true story, there's history, nostalgia, action, war, bloodshed, suspense, humor, emotion, a love story and even a little nudity (male, rear-end only). As directed by Dzintars Dreibergs, with a screenplay by Boriss Frumions (from the novel by Aleksandrs Grins), the film begins in bucolic beauty -- idyllic first love, farm and family life -- and then, all too quickly, descends into the hell of wartime. After centuries of rule by various countries, it took the plight of World War I to push little Latvia into its own statehood.

Mr. Dreibergs, pictured right, shows such skill at crafting a big-budget, multi-character, pull-out-all-the-stops war movie that I can't imagine it will be long before Hollywood comes calling. His leading character -- the suddenly conscripted younger son of a family in which Dad is already an honored war hero and older brother already in the military -- is extremely well-played by newcomer Oto Brantevics (below), who brings everything from naivete and grace to cunning and sex appeal to his character who must suddenly grow up very fast. Or die.

Our hero does what is necessary (and plenty more: the movie is nothing if not incident-heavy) and carries us along with him on his very wild ride, withstanding German attacks via plane, sniper and gas -- not to mention some hand-to-hand/bayonet combat.

The film is full of specific detail -- from a soldier foraging in the snow for berries and plants to another trying to protect his horse during a gas attack. Blizzard of Souls is also highly nationalistic, hence its huge box-office success, and properly (if a tad pushily) anti-German, given its WWI setting.

Much of the action is very well handled, too, in particular a lengthy behind-enemy-lines mission that leaves a lot of men dead. (Best not to grow too attached to many of the characters along the way.) There is also a genuinely emotional and very moving scene in which a mother's letter to her solider son (whom she does not know is now dead) is read aloud to the entire company. There's even a modicum of a love story (two of these, in fact), as our hero falls in and out of love with one young woman (Ieva Florence, above) and later and more successfully with a sweet and smart young nurse (Greta Trusina, below).

Ever so slowly, the Communist revolution intrudes (even on the war itself), forcing soldiers and commanders alike to choose sides and helping bring events to a head. Finally, though, having a single young soldier (even as good as Brantevics' performance is) stand in for an entire coming-into-being country proves a little too much for the film to bear. Blizzard of Souls offers an awful lot of coincidence and luck before ending on a note of near feel-good nostalgia bathed in a golden glow.

From Film Movement, in Latvian with English subtitles and running a solid 123 minutes, the movie opens in virtual cinemas this Friday, January 8. Click here then scroll down for more information on the film itself and/or how to screen it.