Tag: 10s

Just Mercy: a Social Justice Courtroom Procedural

Just Mercy

The review:

Just Mercy is a solid courtroom procedural, directed by Destin Daniel Cretton, that draws attention to the faulty mechanisms of justice, specifically concerning prisoners on death row.* Michael B. Jordan brings his best intense focus** to assist Jamie Foxx’s Walter McMillan in his quest to clear his conviction for murdering a woman he had zero contact with. While this movie is slightly too long, it does a lot, not only with plot, but also by giving example after example of how the scales of justice are more equal for some than others.***

The verdict: Good

Cost: Cost: $1.425 due to Redbox promos, but actually free because I used a gift card.
Where watched: at home

Consider also watching:

Further sentences:

*It’s been a while since I’ve seen a movie dealing with the courts, which was a welcome change.
**He is so good at intense focus!
***And this, not really equal at all.

Questions:

  • What do you think of the statistic given at the end of the film? For every nine people put to death in the US, one has been freed.
  • What aspect of discrimination was the most difficult for you to view in this film?

Favorite IMDB trivia item:

In one scene, Bryan and Eva sit on the banks of the Alabama River and watch a recreation of a nineteenth-century riverboat sail by. Bryan says to Eva, “Nobody wants to remember that this is where thousands of enslaved people were shipped in and paraded up the street to be sold. Ten miles from here, black people were pulled from their homes and lynched and nobody talks about it. ”

This is a nod to the fact that years after this movie takes place, Stevenson’s organization the Equal Justice Initiative expanded its mission. Although it continues to provide legal defense and advocacy for prisoners on death row, children in adult prisons, people who have been wrongfully convicted, and others in need of defense, they also started to memorialize the history of slavery and lynching in America.

In April 2018, EJI opened two new facilities. One was the Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration, a museum located in a former warehouse where black people were enslaved in downtown Montgomery, Alabama. The other was National Memorial for Peace and Justice, dedicated to the legacy of enslaved black people and people terrorized and murdered by lynching. EJI also works with communities to install historical markers that acknowledge lynchings in those cities’ pasts.

Other reviews of Just Mercy:

Just Mercy

Teen Spirit Teaches You to Relax Your Jaw

(and other handy things to know about singing)

Max Minghella’s Teen Spirit is so very blah that if not for the electrifying performance at the end, it would not at all be worth watching.* Elle Fanning’s Violet is so tamped down in her emotions that even as her star started rising, I didn’t feel much of anything. This is the kind of film that doesn’t even inspire me to write three sentences.

The verdict: Skip

Cost: Free via Kanopy
Where watched: at home

Further sentences:

*As is, it’s still not worth watching, but that end performance was a good payoff for my boredom.

Consider watching instead:

Questions:

  • What would have perked this film up?
  • What did you think of Elle Fanning’s accent work?
  • Can you name the Beatle’s song that mentions the Isle of Wight?

Favorite IMDB trivia item:

In an interview with Hollywood XYZ, Director Max Minghella confirmed that all of Elle Fanning’s singing in Teen Spirit in the film is real and in fact recorded live, not in post-production.

Other reviews of Teen Spirit:

The Dark Knight Rises: The Best of the Trilogy

The Dark Knight Rises

The review:

Having given us the Batman movie everyone else loves,* Christopher Nolan gave us the Batman movie that I love with The Dark Knight Rises.** In some ways, it’s an origin story all over again, what with Bruce Wayne having to be coaxed out of retirement. And it’s one last chance for Gary Oldman”s Commissioner Gordon to be the moral center.***

The verdict: Recommended

Cost: $3.99 via Redbox on demand
Where watched: at home

Consider also watching:

Further sentences:

*The Dark Knight
**You know why? This one is fun. And it has two women in it! I know! Plus Tom Hardy, whom everyone loves. And they got the Bane voice just right.
***Also, Joseph Gordon-Levitt is in this. And he’s great!

Questions:

  • What would you say is the definitive Nolan stamp on this franchise?
  • How did Bane’s mask work, anyway?

Favorite IMDB trivia item:

Writer, producer, and director Christopher Nolan said that this movie’s theme deals with “pain”. For Batman Begins (2005), it was “fear”, while The Dark Knight (2008) dealt with “chaos”.

(Clearly I’m a “pain” girl.)

Other reviews:

The Dark Knight Rises

Men in Black: International Delivers

Men in Black: International

The review:

F. Gary Gray continues the entertaining series with Men in Black: International.* Aside from getting to see Chris Hemsworth on screen,** I totally went for the setup of this film and Molly/Agent M’s story.*** There are aliens and fight scenes and cool hardware and all the things one would expect from the franchise.

The verdict: Good

Cost: $1.80 via Redbox
Where watched: at home

Consider also watching:

Further sentences:

*I’d had a hard day, and I wanted only to be entertained. My expectations were low, and this film easily cleared that bar.
**Always a treat, and even more so when the movie makes fun of his eye-candy status with in-movie jokes plus a winking Thor reference.
***I like someone who is a striver, and Tessa Thompson captured the excitement and uncertainty of being the new person at the dream job.
****I think I’ve only seen this third one. But you don’t have to watch them in order or anything. Another plus.

Questions:

  • What’s your favorite thing about the MIB franchise?
  • Is it a good use of your time to watch a movie that you will mostly forget a week later?

Favorite IMDB trivia item:

The MiB Agents have been wearing the same standard issue Hamilton Ventura watch since the beginning. The iconic Ventura watch was first released in 1957.

(I googled. It’s about $875 for that watch.)

Other reviews:

Men in Black: International

20 Feet From Stardom: Pain and Refracted Glory

20 Feet From Stardom

The review:

Morgan Neville’s 20 Feet From Stardom brings light to that visible but invisible maker of music: the backup singer. As we follow the careers of singers from the 1960s onward, we see the pleasure and pain that comes of lending your talents to music that becomes famous while only sometimes crediting your work. Given the stories of the backup singers,* this could have been a depressing catalog, but the film is celebratory and hopeful; still, it left me wondering how a woman would have captured the dismissal of such talented women.**

The verdict: Recommended

Cost: Netflix monthly fee ($8.99)
Where watched: at home

Further sentences:

*While Darlene Love’s story starts as gaspingly awful, she seems to have come out of it okay. Whereas Claudia Lennear’s career trajectory caused both myself and the boyfriend (who was only partially watching) to make audible noises of protest.
**”There can be only one Aretha, only one Whitney.” A lot of backup singers swinging for stardom ran into that sentiment. But why can there only be one woman, when there can be so many men?

Questions:

  • Do you think we’re yet past the “there can only be one” sentiment when it comes to women artists?
  • Which was your favorite story?

Favorite IMDB trivia item:

The film has been compared to the similarly themed book The Wrecking Crew: The Inside Story of Rock and Roll’s Best-Kept Secret, which chronicles the stories of uncredited studio musicians.

(Pssst. It’s also a 2008 documentary: The Wrecking Crew!)

Other reviews:

20 Feet From Stardom

One and Two is a Story Missing a Story

One and Two

The review:

While Andrew Droz Palermo’s work as a cinematographer for A Ghost Story should be celebrated, the same cannot be said of the directing skills on display in One and Two which is a movie so boring that I couldn’t even find anything to hate about it.* This is a film that shouldn’t be bothered with as the unexplained stuff is never explained, or even hinted at,** the time period is unclear for much of the film, and the ending doesn’t give any clues about the future. The only possible reason to watch this film is to see what Kiernan Shipka and Timothée Chalamet make of their roles.***

The verdict: Skip

Cost: $3.99 via Google Play
Where watched: at home

Consider watching instead:

Further sentences:

*I don’t remember the last time I’ve been so bored by a movie.
**We know the kids have powers, we know their father fears these powers, we don’t know where the powers come from, what causes the father to fear, how or if the mother’s illness is connected to the powers, or how that massive wall got built.
***Chalamet gets to emote a lot, which I think he enjoys. Shipka brings her ability to puzzle through and push against things. I quite like this vibe, which was present when she played Sally Draper in Mad Men and I’m curious if this is her thing, or if she does other things in other roles. Perhaps I will check out the Chilling Adventures of Sabrina.

Questions:

  • Is it worth it to you to watch the movie just for the performances? Why or why not?
  • How do you think that wall got built?
  • How useful do you think the siblings’ powers would be?

Other reviews:

One and Two

Men, Women & Children is Worth Missing

Men, Women & Children

The review:

Men, Women & Children continues to prove that I love Jason Reitman when paired with Diablo Cody’s writing, and not so much any other time.* Which is not to say I didn’t enjoy watching this film; I spent my time trying to figure out why this was such a bad movie.** This movie is populated with actors I adore*** yet it was a terrible, terrible film.

The verdict: Skip

Cost: free via Hoopla, the library’s lesser streaming service. 13 Going on 30 is on there now. Watch that instead.
Where watched: at home

Consider watching instead:

  • The Meyerowitz Stories (Serious Adam Sandler!)
  • Laggies (More Kaitlyn Dever!)
  • The Ice Storm (really brutal Ang Lee!)
  • Boogie Nights (Porn stars! But through Paul Thomas Anderson’s lens)

Further sentences:

*Juno I love. Young Adult I love. Tully I adore (and why haven’t you watched it yet?) Up in the Air left me cold. Granted, I still need to see Thank You for Smoking, Labor Day, and The Front Runner to have a clear picture, but so far non-Cody-written films aren’t winning.
**My verdict: it might be a book-to-movie problem. It’s certainly a too-many-characters problem. With about ten character arcs, people get flattened to one personality point. Because the movie is about sex and the internet, every single character interaction save one couple has to do with sex. Ansel Elgort and Kaitlyn Dever were my two favorite characters because their interactions had nuance. (And they had nothing to do with sex.) As someone who is interested in depictions of sex in film and books, this was fascinating. Update! I read the first section of the book on which the film was based to see if the characters were more well rounded. They were not and the dialogue was wooden. This was not a book-to-movie-problem, the story wins in no formats. (Though maybe interpretive dance?)
***Rosemarie DeWitt! Judy Greer! Emma Thompson! Jennifer Garner! Kaitlyn Dever! Serious Adam Sandler!

Questions:

  • Have you seen this? Did you find anything redeeming?
  • What do you think the key to a good ensemble cast movie is?

Favorite IMDB trivia item:

Writer, producer, and director Jason Reitman felt so much of the acting in this movie was based on reactions to texts, chats, and photos that using dummy screens with no text would not suffice. The production team had to create very realistic-looking versions of popular websites, all on their own tightly controlled software, with which the actors and actresses could interact in real time. According to Reitman, they spent “the same amount of budget on creating the digital world as we did creating the physical one. People know what Facebook looks like better than they do a hotel lobby, you stare at it all day, so it had to be convincing.”

I did think this was one aspect that the movie did well.

Men, Women & Children

Lady Macbeth: Great Acting; Good Scenery

Lady Macbeth

The review:

William Oldroyd’s Lady Macbeth is a great opportunity for Florence Pugh to dazzle you with her acting, and for Ari Wegner to dazzle you with his cinematography. It was one of those movies where early on I didn’t go for a plot turn,* and thus didn’t believe the rest of the movie was possible. It was also fairly unpleasant subject matter** which made for a tedious viewing experience punctuated with great sweeping views of the English landscape.

The verdict: Skip

Unless watching for Florence Pugh’s acting.

Cost: Free via Kanopy, the library streaming service
Where watched: at home.

Consider watching instead:

Further sentences:

*And worse, the turn in plot had me asking, “Did a man direct this film?” He did, as it turned out, but a woman wrote it.
**To be fair, they gave me fair warning with the title. It’s not like Mr. Macbeth was a cheery cruise ship director-type. And I read a synopsis of the 1865 novella the movie is based on,*** and this seems to be a much briefer portrait.
***Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District by Nikolai Leskov.

Questions:

  • Did I miss a switch from revulsion to attraction? Did you see it?
  • What do you think happened after the film ended?

Favorite IMDB trivia item:

iFeatures is a joint collaboration between the BBC and the BFI. Every year, they produce three feature films for £350,000 as a springboard for first-time directors. Lady Macbeth (2016) was chosen out of over 300 applicants.

It looks like Oldroyd hasn’t directed anything since, which is too bad. I would be willing to watch something else he directed.

Lady Macbeth

The Weekend Has a lot of Walking

Despite what this picture wants you to think, it is not animated.

The review:

Stella Meghie’s The Weekend is a quality film illustrating the difficulties of staying friends after a breakup and the ramifications when you try to buck that system.* Sasheer Zamata’s Zadie is a prickly floundering fledgling comedian** who doesn’t really try to make the best of the weekend away with her ex-boyfriend and his current girlfriend. This movie had a lot of walking and talking, most of which seemed to be orchestrated to move plot along; despite that, it was an enjoyable film.

The verdict: Good

Cost: $1.80 via Redbox (celebrated my newly unemployed status!)
Where watched: at home

Consider also watching:

Further sentences:

*It’s also an amusing film.
**Sexism alert! I quickly read half of the short synopsis on IMDB (A comedian goes away for the weekend with an ex-boyfriend and his new girlfriend). At “comedian” I got a picture of a man in my head which did not leave until several minutes into Zadie’s stand-up routine that opens the film.

Questions:

  • How do you feel about the acting quality of the men in this film?
  • Did Zadie deserve what she got?

Other reviews:

Queen & Slim Should be on Your To-watch List

Queen & Slim

The review:

Melina Matsoukas’s debut feature* Queen & Slim gives us a zeitgeist film that has (unfortunately) flown under most people’s radar. Daniel Kaluuya (Slim) and Jodie Turner-Smith** (Queen) begin as a couple on an awkward date, though their fates change when they are pulled over.*** What follows is a lot of different films: road trip, political story, heist, escape, love story and by the final scene the movie will have taken you on a rough and fulfilling journey.****

The verdict: Recommended

Cost: $1.80 via Redbox
Where watched: at home

Consider also watching:

Further sentences:

*If this is any indication of what’s to come, we have a very exciting filmmaker to watch.
**In this very American story, it was interesting to hear the two leads’ British accents during the making-of bonus features.
***Even people who don’t follow the news will recognize that a plot point involving Black people and a traffic stop doesn’t bode well.
****I went in mostly blind to this film. I heard “really good!” and “women director” and didn’t look further. It’s the kind of film where people might dismiss as too sad, but there’s so much life among the sadness, I would suggest you don’t pass it by.

Questions:

  • What are your feelings about Queen and Slim being viewed as heros?
  • What was your favorite encounter the couple had on their journey?

Favorite IMDB Trivia Item:

According to the writer, the divergent world views of the two protagonists were based on the differences between Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X.

Other reviews:

Queen & Slim