The Works and Days (of Tayoko Shiojiri in the Shiotani Basin) (2020) | Directed by C.W. Winter and Anders Edström

 5/5

C.W. Winter and Anders Edström’s THE WORKS AND DAYS (OF TAYOKO SHIOJIRI IN THE SHIOTANI BASIN) is an astonishing meditation on aging, mortality, grief, and the simple things that can help us as we move on and begin to heal. We, the viewer, are invited to enter into this rural Japanese community, to hear the stories of family members, to sit with Tayoko Shiojiri during the final year of her husband’s life – to bear witness and respond with the same empathy that the filmmakers display. At eight hours in length, the film is precisely attuned to the rhythms of the day (routines we come to know so well over the course of the film), the changes in season on the ever-shifting landscape with which we grow ever more familiar, and the cycles of the year and the way it brings family and friends in and out of the narrative as naturally as our own friends and family come in and out of our lives. The film is suffused with incredible images, capturing the subtle shifts of light that occur during the day and the small, incidental details in the foreground as characters carry on lengthy monologues in the background. Dense soundscapes orient us to the location and help us find our bearings as the film carries us over the course one year. While the film is a work of fiction, it’s grounded in real events that happened to the performers. The filmmakers are so embedded in the community that they become part of the film, and the performers become integral to the filmmaking process. This is such a compelling and captivating work that, while the duration is vital to the experience, you’re never left feeling burdened by the film’s eight hours. It’s a monumental work of cinematic empathy that will have you eager to revisit this quiet village, continue peeling back the film’s layers, and sit with its reflections on our mortality and our place in this world.

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Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021) | Directed by Andy Serkis

 3.5/5

Andy Serkis’s Venom: Let There Be Carnage is a surprisingly delightful bit of comic book insanity that has the potential to even enthrall viewers who were less than impressed with the first film in the series. The obligatory superhero elements recede into the background for much of the film, becoming merely the framework from which to hang the much more enjoyable romantic comedy elements that really make this installment sing. The best part of the previous film was Tom Hardy’s unhinged performance, and the sequel doubles down on that, spending most of the runtime on the relationship travails between Eddie and Venom as they learn to live with (and within) one another. Our nominal heroes go through each stage of our favorite onscreen, romantic couplings, making for a playful and charming comic book outing that never takes itself too seriously – even to the point of using the body horror elements as fodder for slapstick at points. But the comic book story still has to reassert itself by the end, and Serkis and his screenwriters are having so much fun with the romantic comedy angle that the more serious story points don’t always like up coherently. Add in some bad computer generated effects during the finale and violence that desperately wants to be bloodier than the PG-13 rating will allow, and you can see the corporate interests reasserting control over an otherwise charming comic book diversion.

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Spencer (2021) | Directed by Pablo Larraín

 5/5

Pablo Larraín’s Spencer is a gorgeous and lush film, haunted by a past that’s always threatening to encroach on the present – and often does just that. This is a film filled with impeccable performances working with an astonishing script – no moment in the film is wasted and every performer (especially Kristen Stewart) is doing some of their best work. Seemingly innocuous lines of dialogue can have multiple meanings based on the performer’s reading, a polite menace hangs in the air behind forced pleasantries, and Stewart effortlessly conveys the sensation of being trapped and crushed by centuries of tradition – her hushed whisper, the quiet desperation in each attempt to connect or break free. Larraín fills the frame with stunning images – haunted mist rising over the grounds at night, elegant gowns become suffocating cages, curtains thrown open bathe Diana in a soft, comforting light. And the score is exquisite – it anchors us in a classical past while using discordant motifs to convey Diana’s discomfort and heighten our sense of tension at her ever-increasing loss of freedom. At every turn, Diana’s agency has been taken from her, her personhood robbed by the institution she has married into, and this film is a poetic exploration of the ways her freedom was curtailed and her struggles to break free. It’s an outstanding work.

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Ascension (2021) | Directed by Jessica Kingdon

 5/5

Jessica Kingdon’s Ascension is a masterful work of creative nonfiction that slowly traces its way through the rungs of Chinese society to examine the “Chinese Dream.” The documentary tactics here are strictly observational – there are no interviews, voiceovers, or onscreen text to orient us to the images and sequences presented. But through Kingdon’s meticulously conceived organizational structure, we’re given a series of images and sequences that are juxtaposed in such a way that it raises questions about inequity, working conditions, the obsession with western ideas of wealth, and our own reliance on underpaid labor to bring us inexpensive goods. Edits and cuts are made with visual or thematic resonances in mind, so that the transitions move us from factory work, to trade schools, to the wealth of the upper middle classes. The cinematography throughout is gorgeous, the procession of images hypnotic and mesmerizing. Kingdon has crafted a remarkable film that, while specifically about China’s rapid growth, asks us to reflect on the consequences for any society in which capitalism is allowed to create unfettered inequity.

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Attica (2021) | Directed by Stanley Nelson

 5/5

Stanley Nelson’s Attica is a powerful and sobering look at the institutionalized racism that infects our policing, our prison industrial complex, and the very fabric of our nation. The interviews with surviving inmates of the Attica prison uprising (as well as the surviving family members of the guards, members of the media, and other key participants) are all profoundly moving – and at-time gut-wrenching at times – as they tell of the horrors they endured and the crimes that have been covered up for far too long. Nelson includes extraordinary archival materials – from contemporaneous news reports and footage behind the prison walls, to surveillance footage used by corrections officers, and stomach churning photographs of the aftermath. All of these sources are combined to methodically lay out the circumstances that led to the uprising and provide a day by day account – right up to its tragic end. Without needing to make direct parallels, Nelson does as good as draw a straight line between the law and order campaigns of Rockefeller and Nixon and the modern GOP. This is an essential historical documentary that still has so much significance for our country’s ongoing fight for racial justice.

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Like A Rolling Stone: The Life & Times of Ben Fong-Torres (2021) | Directed by Suzanne Joe Kai

 4.5/5

Suzanne Joe Kai’s Like A Rolling Stone: The Life & Times of Ben Fong-Torres is an unexpectedly emotional, deeply moving tribute to journalism, curiosity, and integrity all wrapped up in the documentary profile of Ben Fong-Torres, the writer who helped shape Rolling Stone during the magazine’s formative years. Kai includes a treasure trove of archival material, including some incredible audio clips from interviews that Fong-Torres conducted with everyone from Jim Morrison and Marvin Gaye, to Stevie Wonder and Elton John. Modern day interviews with colleagues, musicians, friends and family, and those who were influenced by Fong-Torres are all insightful and honest, and the interviews with Fong-Torres himself are filled with a beautiful candor. The photographs that accompanied many of his stories – as well as the other archival footage – are laid out across the screen like a magazine spread throughout the film, and audio clips are often played over text from his articles, so we’re given the opportunity to see how Fong-Torres took the raw material of an interview and transformed it into a finished piece. The film pointedly addresses the racism he endured in his youth – and the racism that still exists today – and it embraces the notion that the politics of art are inseparable from the art itself. This is a rich and beautiful biographical documentary about a remarkable music journalist.

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King Richard (2021) | Directed by Reinaldo Marcus Green

 3/5

Reinaldo Marcus Green’s King Richard is a pleasant enough crowd-pleaser that may do a better job than most major studio dramas at exploring issues of race within American society, but it fails to fully engage with the complexity of the titular real-life character at the center of the film – opting instead for heart-warming and saccharine drama. Will Smith is always a delight to watch onscreen, and while there are moments in this performance of his that really shine, for far too much of the film, it comes across as an impersonation of this public figure rather than a true character study. Saniyya Sidney and Demi Singleton, the two young actresses portraying Venus and Serena Williams, are fantastic and convey all of the hope, determination, and weight of the pressures placed upon their shoulders in two incredibly nuanced performances. It’s refreshing to see the film provide us with a few moments that call into question some of the harsher choices made by Richard Williams during the training of this daughters, but so much of the film is spent abandoning any semblance of nuance and justifying all of his decisions since they were part of his plan for success – not to mention conveniently leaving out some of his more egregious acts of control over the family. The resulting portrait becomes a romanticized look at the American Dream that never calls into question the myth that tells us, “As long as you have a dream and a plan, and as long as you work hard, you’ll make make those dreams a reality.” I appreciate the fact that it’s tempered by the honesty of the racism embedded in the world of tennis, but it’s not enough to truly ground the film’s rose-tinted glow.

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Try Harder! (2021) | Directed by Debbie Lum

 4/5

Debbie Lum’s Try Harder! is a thoroughly compelling look at the struggles of high school students in a prestigious public high school as they attempt to apply for elite universities. The students that Lum chooses to follow make for great interview subjects and provide a range of the experiences and reactions to the familial and societal pressures and expectations. Even though the film has a light tone through much of its runtime, it never shies away from exploring the racism that’s baked into the college admissions process and the ways university recruiters rely on stereotypes of Asian American teenagers during the application process. There are genuinely moving and heartbreaking moments throughout, as well as moments of genuine triumph. And as competition for college placement continues to get even more intense across our country (exacerbated by the pandemic), the film is a good reminder that the system we have in place now puts an inordinate amount of pressure on students. This is a really strong, very enjoyable film that’s more timely and relevant than ever.

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The Neutral Ground (2021) | Directed by CJ Hunt

 4/5

CJ Hunt’s The Neutral Ground is a rare first-person documentaries that manages avoid the snarky condescension of the format, due largely to Hunt’s genuine warmth and curiosity toward his interview subjects he follows the attempt to remove Confederate monuments in New Orleans. The meat of the film provides a thorough overview of the debate over Confederate monuments, as well as an important corrective and accurate history over how they came to be. The tone throughout is playful and gentle without ever mocking or belittling monument supporters – yet all the while still challenging their egregious beliefs. As the film proceeds, it becomes more sincere and more genuinely moving as part of an attempt to honestly reckon with the history of slavery in this country and the desire to help people wake up from their own ignorance. It’s an emotionally powerful, incredibly sobering, and thoroughly entertaining film about a difficult subject that we need to be having as a country.

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Passing (2021) | Directed by Rebecca Hall

 5/5

Rebecca Hall’s Passing is an exceptional film, filled with incredible performances from the entire cast – especially Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga. The black-and-white photography is luminous, and the use of light and shadow helps accentuate the different worlds our two protagonists move through and whether they are passing or not. The use of mirrors throughout opens up the spaces and reflects back the ways characters see themselves within a racist, oppressive society obsessed with surface appearance. And yet, the heavy reliance on point of view shots – often with limited vision, blurry, or obscured and altered – highlights how impossible it is to rely solely on our own perceptions and interpretations of a situation. This is a film that would all-too-easily become an easy sermon or message film, but Hall wisely allows the characters to remain complicated and nuanced, with class distinctions within the Black community and white benefactors adding additional layers of hierarchy to the relationships and obscuring motivations. Portions of the film are shot to look like a missing film from the late ‘20s or early ‘30s, a missing melodrama or proto-noir about the lives of Black women, and you can’t help but reflect on the stories and films from that period that we’re missing because of the voices silenced due to racism. This is a fantastic film, a nuanced and beautifully crafted work.