By: Henry J. Fromage –
My second event-less weekend in a row (although not for COVID, thankfully) sees another random assortment of films old and new.
766. Candyman (1992)
Growing up in the ghetto in the mid-90s, I heard all about Candyman, but it wasn’t exactly the kinda flick my parents would let me watch, and later I assumed it was along roughly the same quality lines as other ghetto horror ‘classics’ like the Leprechaun sequels. That’s all to say, I never go around to watching it until now, and, well, I was wrong. This is more along the lines of later Friday the 13th sequels (say, A New Beginning) than the later Halloween ones. It’s easy to see how Tony Todd reached horror icon status after only one film (and Virginia Madsen turns in an excellent scream queen performance of her own), and while this is undoubtedly a movie that ultimately betrays a White POV, it’s easy to see why Jordan Peele and Nia DaCosta decided it was time for a sequel. Three Beers.
767. Candyman (2021)
We’ve been waiting a couple years for this one since that dope first trailer dropped, and I’m happy to report that the Jordan Peele magic horror touch remains effective. DaCosta and Peele (and Win Rosenfeld, who shares co-writing credits) do a brilliant job of taking the bones of the original film (and the original Clive Barker story it was based on) and overlaying current concerns and paranoias, from the gentrification cycles that Chicago has seen so much of to the legacy of horror wrought on black bodies to the far from new specter of police violence. Everyone nails their parts, with Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and Teyonah Parris matching up brilliantly to Tony Todd’s returning nightmare visage and Colman Domingo’s best-in-class threatening voice. It covers a lot of territory in a scant 90 minutes, and doesn’t 100% successfully reconcile all the dangling threads from the original, but it very much creates something new in its image and scares the pants off you to boot. Two Beers.
768. Vacation Friends
I wasn’t expecting a ton out of this Hulu comedy that dropped on Friday night- just a few laughs from the mismatching pairing of Lil Rel and John Cena (and their respective partners, Yvonne Orji and Meredith Hagner). I got those, in greater volume than I was expecting due to everyone’s chemistry and comic chops, but also a surprisingly sweet ode to friendship in all its forms. Yeah, the comedy is not always the most original of setups or even executions, but when everyone’s this game and having this much fun, it’s infectious. Two Beers.
769. The Outside Story
It’s kind of insane this is Brian Tyree Henry’s first lead role after he’s spent the last several years stealing his every scene in every show and movie he’s been in, but I have to expect it’s just the first of many. Here he plays a just shy of agoraphobic New Yorker whose broken up with his girlfriend in part because he has little interest in leaving his apartment. When he’s locked out he needs to depend on the kindness of strangers to navigate a trying day. Director Casimir Nozkowski has a tight handle on tone, keeping things from getting schmaltzy or unrealistic. Instead he lets his actors create characters that fit the story and Henry’s journey, which makes it a pleasure to go along on. Heart-warming stuff that looks easier than to deliver than it is- not many filmmakers can pull this kind of story off. Two Beers.
770. Sour Grapes
This was the last of the documentaries recommended to me on my wine trip a few months back, and it may be the most fascinating, telling the story of uber-wine connoisseur Rudy Kurniawan, who was behind some of the most prolific and expensive wine fraud ever seen- to the tune of millions of dollars. Interviewing folks on all sides of his story, Reuben Atlas & Jerry Rothwell do a great job building his story detail by detail through the eyes and words of his peers, friends, and pursuing officers. When you think about what he was able to accomplish… you kind of have to hope he’s got a job waiting for him on the other side. Two Beers.
771. Blast Beat
This drama played Sundance last year, and it’s very much a Sundance kind of film- a coming of age and immigration story with familiar bones but interesting detail and good execution. Mateo & Moises Arias (who are actual brothers, which I just learned right now) play Colombian brothers who leave Colombia with their much too young mother (Orange is the New Black‘s Diane Guerrero) to join their father (an also, but not unbelievably young Wilmer Valderrama) in the US to avoid a shakedown in their native country. Moises (as he usually plays) is a hothead, while Mateo combines the strangely specific qualities of being a metalhead and a bit of a genius whose life’s dream is to work at NASA. Estaban Arango shows well in his feature debut here, as do all of his actors. Two Beers.
772. The Diaspora Suite: Forged Ways
Before this year’s excellent The Inheritance, Ephraim Asili shot this cycle of five short films about the African diaspora experience over the coures of 7 years in 6 countries. This first was shot between Ethiopia and the U.S. back in 2010. It’s a heady blend between Ephraim’s first-person perspective, village life in Ethiopia, and a man’s experiences in the streets of Harlem, drawing parallels and differences between each to accentuate the bonds between African Americans & the continent of their (and all of our, we too easily forget) heritage. Two Beers.
773. The Diaspora Suite: American Hunger
The second film in the cycle continues to deliberate on the same themes through the similarly elliptical imagery, this time hopping across time and between Philadelphia, the Jersey Shore, and the capital of Ghana, Accra. It’s honestly hard to separate it from the first, although teh slave fortresses of Accra do bring an angle that Forged Ways did not. Two Beers.
774. The Diaspora Suite: Many Thousands Gone
This is the shortest of the Suite, and oscillates between only two locations- Harlem and Salvador, Brazil. Jazz musician Joe McPhee scored the film in real-time via what he called “light reading” and while the imagery is from contemporary life in both cities, the reputation of Salvador as the last city in the Americas to outlaw slavery hangs over everything. Two Beers.
775. The Diaspora Suite: Kindah
This short was shot between Hudson, New York, and Accompong, Jamaica. which was founded by rebel slaves after successfully fighting for their freedom from the British in 1739. The ‘Kindah’ in the title refers to the Kindah Tree that the leader of the revolt, Cudjoe, rallied his compatriots and brethren under, and which still stands to this day. Here we see Asili developing his cycle to reflect on the legacy of a successful bid for freedom among so many others that were brutally crushed over the centuries. Two Beers.
776. The Diaspora Suite: Fluid Frontiers
This final (so far?) film in the series landed in 2017, and is the longest of the bunch (although still just over 20 minutes). Here Asili focuses on just a single location – Detroit- but across several temporal locations, from the status of the Detroit River region as a key near-final terminus on the Underground Railroad to Dudley Randall’s influential Broadside Press’s heyday in the 1960s to todays young artists, musicians, and poets from the city who keep their eyes on the prize of equality and justice. Two Beers.
777. Jolt
Kate Beckinsale puts her ass-kicking boots on again in this Amazon action film that feels like a lot of the stylish ‘distaff John Wick’ mashed together with Crank of all things. Beckinsale is a woman with an impulse control problem- if she doesn’t shock herself as she feels her anger building into uncontrollable violent rage, then whoever’s drawn her ire is in for a very bad time indeed. It’s thin stuff, but fun, with Stanley Tucci getting to chew a few scenes and Susan Sarandon promising a sequel in the end. Also good on Tanya Wexler accomplishing what the folks behind Sweet Girl last week failed so profoundly at- making a 110 pound human being looking like an absolute wrecking ball. Three Beers.
778. The Banishing
This pre-WWII-set British horror film starts slowwww, but once it finally decides to start moving, it picks up its pace quickly. Director Christopher Smith engineers some trippy imagery as the haunted house a young, overly stolid reverend (John Heffernan) and his wife with a dark past (Jessica Brown-Findlay) recently received to live in begins to really break down their minds and souls. It’s a bunch of silly bullshit with a patina of progressive ideals thinly applied over it, but any minute Sean Harris (playing a drunk spiritualist who is their only aide and possible hope) and his weird-ass voice are on screen is precious. Four Beers.
779. Superhost
Shudder’s been sending me all of their screeners these days, and I do have to say it just goes to show you how damn good they are at uncovering horror films well worth your time- there’s almost no duds, which is kind of remarkable. This one is about a couple who have an obnoxious Youtube series reviewing AirBNB-type vacation rentals whose host ends up at first being great… TV, or whatever you’d call it, before becoming more of a handful than they expected (see: that header image). This four-hander (Sara Canning, Osric Chau, Gracie Gillam, and the legendary Barbara Crampton) is short and vicious, with Brandon Christensen keeping things humorous until they very much aren’t, going admirably dark. Horror fans will definitely dig this. Three Beers.
780. Respect
Jennifer Hudson’s latest stab at returning to the Oscars stage is one she’s been working on for awhile, a biopic of Aretha Franklin that got the Queen of Soul’s own blessing prior to her passing in 2018. Here it’s finally completed, and while Liesl Tommy delivers a film with plenty of production value, earnestly belted musical classics, and showy performances, it’s wrapped up in one of those straightforward musical biopic structures that Walk Hard was lampooning almost 15 years ago. Hudson will retain some awards season buzz that she rightfully earns here, and Aretha deserves her Ray as much as anyone, but you’re not going to get anything but what you expected. Outside of Mary J. Blige flipping a table as an enraged Dinah Washington, I suppose- that was great. Three Beers.
781. Ride Lonesome
Budd Boetticher doesn’t often get mentioned among the John Fords, Sergio Leones, or Sam Peckinpahs, or even Howard Hawks of the Western oeuvre, but for a period in the 1950s he was as prolific a director in the genre as anyone, and he had a no-nonsense, muscular style that would go on to influence later greats. Here he pairs a frequent collaborator, the granite-jawed Randolph Scott, with under the radar or very young talent like Bonanza actor Pernell Roberts, frequent TV guest star Karen Steele, babyface in several senses of the word Lee van Cleef, and a debuting James Coburn. The story is straightforward- a bounty hunter uses one captive to lure in the one he really wants, while being aided by another couple of outlaws who want to take the opportunity to go straight- but well-delivered. Two Beers.
782. Downstream to Kinshasa
Cannes 2020 only selected a handful of documentaries for its non-festival lineup, and this was one that made the cut. It details the struggle of disabled civilian survivors from the Congolese city of Kisangani who were maimed by the actions of two other countries (Rwanda and Uganda) who fought a short war inside neither of their borders. In 2000, international courts levied billions of dollars in reparations, and, surprising nobody, not a penny has been paid out to the victims. So, they travel downriver to the capital of the DRC to ask for help from their own government, or push for a change in that government to one that gives more of a shit about its people. These are extremely brave people, and following them through their struggles, but more important their victories, is worth the journey. Two Beers.
783. West Michigan
This microbudget indie is about a sister and brother (Chloe Ray and Riley Warmoth, who also also directs) who roadtrip across the underrated forested coasts of western Michigan on the way to see their dying grandfather. Across the board (acting, writing, directly), these two admirably walk a tonal tightrope between believably light rapport between the two and serious issues of depression and suicidal ideation. It may be the lightest movie about suicide I’ve ever seen, yet it earns it. Here’s hoping it opens some doors for both of them. Three Beers.
784. The Suspect
I snuck in a Korean film mid-week after skipping out on my usual one a weekend pace. This one probably should have gotten more play when it hit back in 2013, since it does the best job of any film at aping the shaky-cam-but-it’s-brutally-exhilarating aesthetics of the Bourne franchise and the Daniel Craig Bond films (or at least Casino Royale). Gong Yoo stars as a North Korean defector on the tail of his former brother-at-arms who he believes killed his wife and child, who is pursued by a South Korean paramilitary badass who he probably has more in common with than not (Park Hee-soon). The plot probably has a twist or two more than it needs, but the action is simply spectacular, particularly an early parachuting scene and two car chases that make the most of Korean’s tight city streets and up and down terrain to create uniquely spectacular action. Three Beers.
785. Coming Home Again
This Korean-American film stars Justin Chon (who’s on the cusp of his own Steve Yeun moment with Cannes’ Blue Bayou, debuting this month) as a barely fictionalized version of renowned Korean-American author Lee Chang-rae, whose New Yorker essay this film was based on and who co-wrote with director Wayne Wang. The story is a no-doubt depressing one about a young man coming to terms with his mother’s terminal cancer and a tracing of his low-key estrangement and reconciling with his family told via their shared relationship with family-cooked Korean meals (which all look delicious). It’s a very well-wrought and acted one, though. Two Beers.
786. Vivo
Lin-Manuel Miranda clearly has the keys to all the kingdoms these days, and now he gets in the obligatory Netflix flick- here an animated musical about a Cuban kinkajou (played by himself) who teams up with a self-admittedly ‘extra’ little girl from Miami (whose introductory song is… a bit of a banger) to track down the lost love of his recently deceased organ grinder owner/lifemate. Kirk DeMicco of The Croods (the animation style makes more sense to me now) directs with a good eye for kinetic action, and kids will learn life lessons about learning to sing in harmony with those with different perspectives, etc, but overall this is a pretty healthy dose of fun. Michael Rooker as the noise-hating swamp python was pretty ace casting, too. Three Beers.
