Outlaw/King & BlacKkKlansman

I am in Los Angeles, and I'm trying to see as many movies as I can, which means I'm way behind on writing about the movies I've seen. Here are two 2018 movies I saw last month.

I really liked Outlaw/King. The fight sequences are great and numerous. And this violence is excellently done. (Sidebar, for me, "well done" violence means violence that the audience can't quite enjoy, violence that doesn't lie about the anguish it causes or the destruction of bodies and lives that it wreaks. I honestly didn't find Outlaw/King to be much more than an action movie set in the early 14th century, but it does that action very well, and it's a gripping, intense, and enjoyable film with a solid group of performers and an engaging plot. David Mackenzie, who directed 2016's Hell or High Water (with Pine and Ben Foster), directed the movie.

The acting in Outlaw/King is uniformly fine. Chris Pine is strangely subdued here. His usual wicked dynamism seems placed in check either by the fact that he's playing Robert the Bruce or perhaps by his lack of interest in his female co-star. It's puzzling. Florence Pugh, who was utter perfection in last year's Lady Macbeth is good here, but seems as subdued, in many ways, as Pine. Maybe this was a directorial thing? I think of all three of the main actors (the other is Aaron Taylor-Johnson) as wild-card performers who often opt for the outrageous in their work, but all of the acting in Outlaw/King is played quite straight. For me the main bright spot was Billy Howle's beautiful performance as the Prince of Wales, Edward (who would become Edward II). Howle was very good in (the boring) On Chesil Beach earlier this year, and is even better here.

Should we talk about Pine's peen? Almost all of the press surrounding Outlaw/King involved discussion of the fact that Pine has a scene in which he goes full frontal. But it's an eye-roll of a scene: a tiny moment in the movie. Don't watch the movie for Chris Pine's genitals. Watch for the action. It's great.

* * *

BlacKkKlansman is also great. I know Spike Lee can be a hit-or-miss director, and often his films don't feel produced as well as they should be, but there's no dying that Lee has a characteristic, clever, ironic style. I always enjoy his approach to movie-making, and Klansman uses this style in some beautiful ways.

Klansman is – how could it not be with its plot? – frequently good, campy fun. Lee approaches the 1970s as a time filled with racism, when law enforcement ignored the terrorist activities of the KKK and didn't bother them, but this approach is... fun. Normally I would find this kind of an attitude toward a serious issue to be annoying, but Lee never allows the stakes to evaporate. Racist bigotry is absurd, and the Klansmen in the movie are idiots whose logic makes no sense. But they're still dangerous. They still have guns. They still want Jewish and Black folks to die. Lee never lets us forget the stakes that are in operation in the 1970s.

A side note on camp. Lee sets the tone of this movie with a cameo from Isiah Whitlock, (a Lee alum – he was also in 25th Hour, Chi-Raq, She Hate Me, etc.) doing his famous bit from The Wire, in which he says sheeeeeeeeiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit for so long it begins to sound like an aria. I screamed with laughter when this happened. This is Whitlock's only scene, but it sets the tone of BlacKkKlansman perfectly.

The acting is pretty great across the board, and Klansman may even end up with two Oscar nominations. I think my favorite performance in the movie was Ryan Eggold's, but Laura Harrier, Adam Driver, John David Washington (Denzel's son), and Topher Grace (as David Duke) are all excellent.

Where Lee really hits his film out of the park, though, is with the film's ending. I don't think it's spoiling anything to tell you that the end of BlacKkKlansman jumps forward to the racist violence during the "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017. There's the KKK again, doing what it's been doing since the 1970s, and... there's David Duke, speaking about "good white men" and Donald Trump in the same breath, forty years later. It's absolutely chilling, and if the movie has been funny and clever, and if we've been able to laugh derisively at the absurd racist antics of the Klan members in BlacKkKlansman, it's impossible to laugh at that same racism in 2017. It's a powerful movie.

Oscar Noms 2017: 3 of 13

Part 1 - La La Land, Moonlight, Arrival
Part 2 - Manchester by the Sea, Hacksaw Ridge, Lion

Part 3:

Fences

4 Nominations

• Picture
• Actor: Denzel Washington (Flight, Training Day, The Hurricane, Malcolm X, Glory, Cry Freedom)
• Adapted Screenplay: August Wilson
• Supporting Actress: Viola Davis (The Help, Doubt)

Director: Washington

Cast: Washington, Davis, Jovan Adepo, Russell Hornsby, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Mykelti Williamson, Saniyya Sidney

You can read my review of this movie here. I loved it, incidentally. Word on the street is that Washington really wanted a Best Director nomination for this movie; it didn't happen, but he may end up taking home another Oscar for acting (it would be his third) if the SAG award is any indication. It is important that I say again that Viola Davis should not be campaigning in this category, but, hey, what can you do? I think if I had to vote, I would still vote for her. She is great in the movie. The screenplay nomination is actually sort of baffling to me; I have no idea what these writers were thinking. I mean, Wilson has been dead for years, and that nomination could have meant something to a screenwriter like Jeff Nichols (Loving) or a team like Park Chan-wook & Chung Seo-kyung (The Handmaiden). It is weird to me that they did not think of this.

Will Win: Supporting Actress

Could Win: Actor

My Rating: #16 out of 86

Hell or High Water

4 Nominations

• Picture
• Original Screenplay: Taylor Sheridan
• Supporting Actor: Jeff Bridges (True Grit, Crazy Heart, The Contender, Starman, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, The Last Picture Show)
• Film Editing

Director: David Mackenzie

Cast: Chris Pine, Ben Foster, Jeff Bridges, Gil Birmingham, Katy Mixon, Dale Dickey, Joe Berryman

I really liked this movie too. Have I noted yet how surprised I have been to have liked everything so much this year? It really is sort of strange. It is worth noting that this is a screenplay nomination that will really make a difference. Taylor Sheridan is primarily known as an actor, and so this will certainly have an appreciable effect on his career. I don't expect Hell or High Water to win anything on February 26th, but I think that's just fine. This movie surprised everyone by continually appearing on awards lists and top-ten lists. It is a strange movie for people to have noticed, I think, but I don't mind. It's an exciting movie, with a pretty great stick-it-to-the-man attitude and a really lovely fraternal relationship at its center.

Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: #18 out of 86

Hidden Figures

3 Nominations

• Picture
• Adapted Screenplay: Theodore Melfi & Allison Schroeder
• Supporting Actress: Octavia Spencer (The Help)

Director: Melfi

Cast:Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, Janelle Monáe, Kevin Costner, Kirsten Dunst, Mahershala Ali, Jim Parsons, Glenn Powell, Aldis Hodge, Olek Krupa, Donna Biscoe, Kimberly Quinn

This movie is fine, but I sort of don't get the hype. I have gotten tired of this candy-coated version of the early 1960s that we are all somehow supposed to believe happened. This is actually one of the reasons why Ava DuVernay's Selma was such an extraordinary achievement: the version of the 1960s we are usually fed these days pretends that most white folks weren't actually racist, they were actually nice, welcoming white people who were just waiting for a black woman with a little gumption to challenge the status quo. This is a bunch of nonsense – and also not how racism actually works. Still, the actresses at the center of Hidden Figures are a pleasure to watch (especially Taraji Henson), and the movie has a lot of fun in the candy store it builds. It is a delight to watch Henson show up a racist Jim Parsons by doing really complicated math in front of him, and it is fun to see Monáe bring a court order into her all-white engineering class and tell everyone in the class to go fuck themselves (it's actually PG; no one tells anyone to go fuck himself). I love seeing representations of black folks in fabulous clothes doing awesome things on my movie screens. But all of this comes at a price. We cannot start to believe that Jim Crow wasn't that bad; if we do, we deny the violence and daily humiliation that black folks in the U.S. had to put up with constantly. To my mind, even the phrases "first black woman to..." and "first woman to..." hide within them a kind of denial of the racism on which this country was built – they make it seem like it was some power inside the individual that allowed him or her to achieve something others could not. That isn't really how it worked, of course. Think of the many, many people who came before (Troy Maxson from Fences is precisely this type of character) who were prevented from achieving their dreams, not because they didn't have the gumption of Dorothy Vaughan or the talent of Jackie Robinson, but because the racist laws in Virginia and South Carolina and Florida and Louisiana – and the racist "gentleman's agreements" in Arizona and California and Illinois and New York – demanded that they be kept from exercising their capabilities. So, call me a curmudgeon, but although I thought Hidden Figures was fun in a bubble gum kind of way, I found myself frequently annoyed.

Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A
My Rating: #46 out of 86

Jackie

3 Nominations

• Actress: Natalie Portman (Black Swan, Closer)
• Costume Design: Madeline Fontaine
• Score: Mica Levi

Director: Pablo Larraín

Cast: Portman, Billy Crudup, Peter Sarsgaard, Greta Gerwig, John Hurt, Beth Grant, John Carroll Lynch, Max Casella

These three nominations for Pablo Larraín's movie make perfect sense; they are essentially what this movie is. Jackie can be boiled down to its costumes, its central performance, and its haunting horror-film score. I appreciated Jackie, but as I said in my notes on it, I didn't really enjoy the movie, even though I sort of got what it was trying to do. I am really pleased for Mica Levi and her nomination, too, even though I was not really a big fan of her score for this movie. I was obsessed with her score for the strange sci-fi/horror movie Under the Skin, my favorite film for 2014, and so I am glad she is getting some recognition. I only predicted a lone nomination for Portman for this movie (with the possibility of a costume nod), so I am honestly surprised by the three nominations Jackie picked up. This means that it connected with audiences way more than I thought it would – and clearly more than it connected with me. Still, don't expect it to take anything home on the 26th. Jackie's just happy to be invited to the party. She'll be wearing black.
Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: #50 out of 86

Back to:
Part 1 - La La Land, Moonlight, Arrival
Part 2 - Manchester by the Sea, Hacksaw Ridge, Lion

Serious and Sentimental

You've probably heard good things about Hell or High Water, the new Texas-based crime film from Scottish director David Mackenzie. Everything you've heard is true. Hell or High Water is a superbly balanced mix of intensity, comedy, and thoughtfulness. This is a heist film starring Ben Foster and Chris Pine as the criminals and Jeff Bridges (still cranking out excellent performances) and Gil Birmingham as the Rangers trying to catch the criminals.

What is perhaps most intriguing about Hell or High Water is the way the film distinguishes these two, though. Many a heist film in the twenty-first century is interested in framing criminals and law enforcement as identical forces, more or less equally matched and more or less morally equivalent. But in Mackenzie's film, the criminals are dirt poor, totally broke – and law enforcement is well funded, obviously the protectors of a civilization that the film equates with the middle-class. This difference between the two forces undergirds the entire film, but is almost never discussed in a way that felt to me didactic. There is a moment in the film's third act, for example, when Hell or High Water finally visits Jeff Bridges' house. The camera sits, quietly looking over a green, well-manicured lawn onto a tidy suburban street. It takes a second to sink in: green grass. We hadn't seen anything like this for the entirety of the film – the majority of the film takes place in burning fields and deserted trailers, in cheap restaurants, abandoned banks, and depressed townships – and now here it is, a beautiful irrigated lawn. This is a place the film's criminals could never have hoped they could live.

Mr. Foster and Mr. Pine.

The acting in Hell or High Water is excellent across the board. The first person we see is Dale Dickey, and as soon as I saw her I was delighted. She's an excellent character actress, and beginning with her boded well for the film. Bridges is in top form (he's very funny in this, in fact), and the leads (Foster and Pine) are doing excellent character work. I know Foster is not everyone's cup of tea, but I love him. He's energetic and engaging, and he has a way of being an asshole with a heart that I find very moving. And let's take a moment and give props to Chris Pine. This is an actor who is the star of an enormous franchise; he plays James Tiberius Kirk for god's sake. And yet he constantly does movies like this, much smaller character parts (like last year's Z for Zachariah) where he is delving deep into intriguing characters. One of my favorite performances in Hell or High Water, though, is Katy Mixon as a sweet waitress taking to make ends meet. Mixon brings everything to this little part and creates a beautiful character.

It is Mackenzie's directing and Taylor Sheridan's script, though, that are the real standouts of Hell or High Water. Both have done excellent work here. This is a tightly plotted, emotionally moving film that surprises even when it seems to move in predictable ways, and that leaves room for deep character development even as it often functions in a high-octane, heavy action mode. It's just excellently done.

* * *

And then last night I opted for something sentimental. A based-on-a-true-story kind of conquer-your-demons thing about a Māori chess champion dealing with schizophrenia and poverty. I watched The Dark Horse for its star, Cliff Curtis, whom I almost always love, but I was gritting my teeth in preparation for the film to be "inspirational" and "heartwarming". I am almost never interested in this kind of sentimental narrative.

This is a story about a down-on-his-luck man who gets a second chance at life teaching chess to poor kids, many of them homeless, orphaned, and hungry. Meanwhile, he must battle poverty as well as his own mental health, which is precarious, and deal with his brother's masculinist, violent treatment of his nephew Mana, who comes to depend on his unstable uncle.

But The Dark Horse is better than its genre at almost every turn. Curtis is good, even if the plot is full of clichés, and he is supported admirably by Wayne Hapi, Kirk Torrance, and especially James Rolleston (who is really fantastic). I really liked The Dark Horse and found it engaging throughout, even if I already knew all of the moves it was going to make.