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Yakuza Princess

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  • Title: Yakuza Princess
  • IMDb: link

Yakuza Princess is as dumb, although sadly not nearly as bonkers, as its title suggests. The straight-faced Brazilian martial arts film is a joyless experience that struggles with a heavy dramatic tone that simply doesn’t fit the B-Movie plot of a Yakuza leader’s daughter (MASUMI) and an amnesiac assassin (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) coming together to find their destiny.

The tone is completely wrong for a film that struggles to entertain for more than a few minutes at a time over its near two-hour running time. While there is some action to be had, it’s few and far between and nothing compared to the Japanese films Yakuza Princess hopes to emulate. Instead we’re left with a dour drama about destiny as not one but two characters previously oblivious to their connection to the Yakuza discover their path in the world as they get caught up in a war within the syndicate. 

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Last Night in Soho

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  • Title: Last Night in Soho
  • IMDb: link

Writer/director Edgar Wright‘s nostalgic love letter to the 1960s is glamorous spectacle. The story involves would-be designer Ellie (Thomasin McKenzie) who, shortly after starting university in London, begins dreaming life alongside a would-be singer named Sandie (Anya Taylor-Joy). The dreams start vibrant and hopeful, influencing Ellie’s actions during the day, but soon turn dark and violent before they spill into Ellie’s life even further.

Despite its lavish beauty, Last Night in Soho is a mess. If not for the great soundtrack, I’d say it would work better with the sound off as the story often gets in the way of the terrific visuals. Sadly, Ellie isn’t all that interesting as a character, nor are her struggles fitting in at college worth screen time. It’s only in the 60s when Sandie’s life takes over does the film come to life. And when the two stories crash together the film becomes a jumbled mess.

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That’ll Do, Nicolas Cage

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  • Title: Pig
  • IMDb: link

Nicolas Cage stars as former chef turned hermit and truffle hunter who is pulled out of his seclusion when his pig is kidnapped. With the reluctant help of the supplier (Alex Wolff) to whom he was selling his truffles, Rob (Cage) begins a search for his missing pig (who, despite the love Rob obviously has for the pig, doesn’t appear to have a name).

Pig is something like John Wick or Taken with all of the violence taken out (okay, almost all of the violence). The film relies on Cage’s performance and the atmosphere provided from the visuals of cinematographer Patrick Scola in exploring both Rob’s wilderness experience and also the underbelly of big city restaurants. Pig glosses over some nagging plot questions and supplies a not-completely-satisfying ending, but that don’t detract too much from Rob and Amir’s (Wolff) unusual journey.

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MLK/FBI

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  • Title: MLK/FBI
  • IMDb: link

Director Sam Pollard‘s film examines J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI‘s extensive, and legally ambiguous, investigation into Martin Luther King Jr.‘s life through recently declassified documents, archival footage, and interviews from those involved.

The documentary is a sobering reminder how the broad brush of Communism could justify nearly anything during the height of the Red Scare, even allow Hoover and his minions to wiretap King in hopes of discrediting one of the leaders of the Civil Rights movement based not on his political or civil rights agenda but the man’s private life taking place behind closed doors. With the wiretaps themselves not declassified until at least 2027, the documentary mainly has to speculate what is on those tapes (and their legitimacy), but the range of the FBI’s dirty tricks to discredit a black man who they saw as dangerous to their own interests couldn’t be more clear.

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Mass

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  • Title: Mass
  • IMDb: link

Written and directed by Fran Kranz, Mass offers an intimate setting to delve into two families’ pain. Six years after a school shooting, the parents of two children involved agree to meet in the basement of a local church. On one side we have Jason Isaacs and Martha Plimpton as the parents of one of the victims and on the other Reed Birney and Ann Dowd as the parents of the shooter who also took his own life. Both couples are still wracked with pain and seeking answers to a brutal event that changed both families forever.

Mass is a film designed to put its four characters, and the audience, through the wringer as both sides work through their pain attempting to make sense of a senseless crime as the family of the victim and that of the perpetrator discover a shared pain.

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