Drama

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom

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  • Title: Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
  • IMDb: link

Ma Rainey's Black Bottom movie reviewAdapted from August Wilson’s play, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is most notable for the performance of Chadwick Boseman who earns the plum role of Levee, a dissatisfied horn player in Ma Rainey’s (Viola Davis) band. The role was the last of Boseman’s career, who died during postproduction, and it’s one of his best as both of the script’s most memorable scenes center around his character. The film definitely feels like a stage adaptation, even claustrophobic at times, with the band rehearsing in a small room prior to recording a new album.

Colman Domingo, Glynn Turman, and Michael Potts complete the remainder of the band with Jeremy Shamos and Jonny Coyne rounding out the cast as the white producers desperate to get the recordings who Ma continues to fuck with over the course of the film by arriving late, insisting on doing the songs her way, and even including her stuttering nephew (Dusan Brown) on the recordings. As with the play, the film touches on themes of racism, art, power struggle, and the exploitation of black recording artists (the last of which is never more clear than in the film’s final scene).

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Nomadland

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  • Title: Nomadland
  • IMDb: link

Nomadland movie reviewNomadland is a quiet, contemplative film not unlike Into the Wild or Wild in which a character leaves behind the conventions of society in search of something their former life can no longer offer. In the case of writer/director Chloé Zhao‘s tale, adapted from the book by Jessica Bruder, our character is an older widow who has lost nearly everything in the Great Recession including the home she made with her late husband when the town completely collapsed.

Taking to the road in a van, we travel along with Fern (Frances McDormand), meeting a number of other people in the same position searching for a way to make due with the little they have and hang on to the last of their independence. We discover a large community of the nomads, helping each other learn the tricks to survive. Bruder’s book took an in-depth look at the real nomad culture of older Americans hitting the road in RVs of all shapes and sizes looking for work and a way to get by. We don’t have to guess about the reality of these characters as many people play themselves in the film making Zhao’s tale an unusual blend of dramatic character study and documentary with Fern acting as the audience’s doorway into this world.

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Kajillionaire

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  • Title: Kajillionaire
  • IMDb: link

Kajillionaire DVD reviewThe latest from writer/director Miranda July borders at times at being too quirky for it’s own good, but it’s also a surprisingly sweet story about one hell of a dysfunctional family and finding love in the most unexpected places. Richard Jenkins, Debra Winger, and Evan Rachel Wood star as a family of low-rent con artists in a perpetual desperate need of cash. When the latest attempt to bilk $1,500 out of the airlines fails to earn them the quick score to pay for one of the oddest apartments in the history of cinema, it also introduces the family to a new friend (Gina Rodriguez) on the return flight.

The script takes some twist and turns, as various cons go awry in ways that lead the absurdly named Old Dolio (Wood) to finally come to terms with who her parents are while finding friendship, and perhaps more, in Melanie (Rodriguez). While taking the place of a student (Rachel Redleaf) in a positive parenting class, Old Dolio begins to start to see the world differently while also becoming jealous of the attention her parents are showing Melanie (although they have ulterior motives).

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One Night in Miami

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  • Title: One Night in Miami
  • IMDb: link

One Night in Miami movie reviewRegina King brings Kemp Powers’ award-winning play to the silver screen offering a fictionalized account of the gathering of four prominent Black Americans, – Cassius Clay (Eli Goree), Malcolm X (Kingsley Ben-Adir), Sam Cooke (Leslie Odom Jr.), and Jim Brown (Aldis Hodge) one night in Miami after Clay beat Sonny Liston (Aaron D. Alexander) to become the Heavyweight Champion of the World. The contemplative gathering, coordinated by Malcom X, is far from the raucous celebration the others expected, but it delivers dramatic tension aplenty as tempers flare over disagreements on the role of prominent black men in America.

Kemp Powers is on-hand to adapt his own screenplay, and Regina King adds some nice touches here (including showing us some of the Liston/Clay fight) to help set the stage. The real movie takes place once the four men get in a room together. Despite relying on larger-than-life characters, the film doesn’t caricaturize them in any way, presenting them of men of the time with strong opinions and passions. Four men alone in a room arguing may not sound like the key to crafting a can’t-miss film, but King and Kemp pull it off.

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Mank

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  • Title: Mank
  • IMDb: link

Mank movie reviewMank tackles one of cinema’s most legendary controversies about who should get credit for the script of what many believe to be the greatest film ever made. By the name of the film, the friendly nickname given to writer Herman J. Mankiewicz (Gary Oldman), you can guess which side director David Fincher takes. Using the screenplay from his father Jack Fincher, Mank delivers a story from the perspective of the writer hired by Orson Welles (Tom Burke) to anonymously write the screenplay for a thinly-veiled take on William Randolph Hearst (Charles Dance) which would become Citizen Kane.

The script glosses over early discussions between Wells and Mankiewicz, and ignores the numerous rewrites Wells made to the script while depositing the narrative that Welles was seemingly only nominally aware that a script was even being written. Despite some beautiful cinematography from Erik Messerschmidt, punchy dialogue from the elder Fincher, and solid performances from all involved, Mank is a bit uneven. The first hour, largely focused on introducing Mank’s over-the-top personality, is nearly flawless, but as the second-half of the film attempts to get more dramatic things get maudlin and melodramatic.

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