Rocks (2019) | Directed by Sarah Gavron

 4.5/5

Sarah Gavron’s Rocks is a powerful, deeply moving film that walks a delicate line in depicting the struggles a teenage girl and her young brother face after their mother abandons them. This is an honest, raw, and painful film that never becomes exploitive or veers into melodrama. Much of the film’s strength comes from the outstanding performances of the young, untrained actors. There’s a depth and honesty in all of these performances – especially in the two central roles – that is stunning. The film’s loose, handheld camera helps create a raw, unfiltered intimacy that brings us in close to the characters and embeds us in the narrative, which wisely avoids giving us too much exposition or explaining too much of the family backstory. In a film like this, it’s tempting to push the story further and further into miserablism, inflicting greater and greater trials and suffering on the protagonist up until the very end, but the film becomes a story of resilience and community, a tale of the ways that friendship can help you weather life’s difficulties – even if there are no easy solutions.

Where to Watch

The Little Things (2021) | Directed by John Lee Hancock

 2/5

John Lee Hancock’s The Little Things is a boring and predictable thriller that aims for depth and profundity, but winds up saying nothing and wastes the skills of the perennially excellent Denzel Washington. Like so many serial killer narratives, the film revels in female terror and the images of victimized women, while at the same time privileging white, female innocence – especially evident n the shot the teenage girl driving alongside Washington’s character that inspires him to help solve this series of murders. The script is filled with half-baked dialogue containing references and allusions to moments that have been excised from the film in its many revisions. While Hancock is attempting to craft a weighty meditation in obsession, guilt, and regret, the film keeps our protagonist’s past and motivations such a mystery that we never care about his journey toward redemption. On the mystery side of the equation, details and clues become maddeningly obvious (at one point, a clue’s even written in bold on sandwich board for all to see), until Hancock decides to throw the details out and make up new rules for us to follow as it goes along. Unlike the films noir it seeks to emulate, the film is more steady accumulation of coincidence rather than fate shaping the lives of its characters. Hancock is desperate trying to produce a subtle and nuanced thriller with an ambiguous ending, but the elements just don’t come together.

Judas and the Black Messiah (2021) | Directed by Shaka King

 4.5/5

Shaka King’s Judas and the Black Messiah is a thoroughly compelling biopic told through the structure of a political thriller, giving us a more nuanced, complicated, and honest look at the Black Panther Party than most mainstream narrative films have been willing to attempt. In splitting the narrative’s focus between Fred Hampton’s work with Black Panther Party and Bill O’Neill’s work with the FBI to surveil Hampton, King and his screenwriters have almost created two separate films that overlap and merge as the characters’ lives becomes more intertwined. It’s a technique that works surprisingly well, giving us the tender and powerful moments of a Hampton biopic while we watch him form the Rainbow Coalition and fall in love. And in O’Neill’s story, we’re given the beats of a political thriller as we watch a young man in over his head, manipulated and coerced by his handlers to make choices that will haunt him the rest of his life. The two central performances are stellar – Daniel Kaluuya and Lakeith Stanfield each bring such a different and unique energy to their respective roles that keeps us fully invested in both characters’ arcs. King’s use of archival material at the beginning of the film is highly effective, especially in the way it transitions us into the main plot, showing the ways that images of Black solidarity are immediately threatening to white authorities. Like a few other films that have been released in the last few years, the film’s depiction of police racism and brutality is a necessary corrective to Hollywood’s near-constant glorification of the profession. There’s also a timeliness in the way the film shows how uncomfortable it is for the established powers that be (as well as white, paternalistic liberals) when the Black community (or any BIPOC community) demands equality rather than waiting to be granted equality out of beneficence. It’s a powerful film – hopefully just one of many necessary correctives to decades of popular cinema’s demonization of the Black Panthers and the Black Power movement.

Where to Watch

Two of Us (2019) | Directed by Filippo Meneghetti

 3/5

Filippo Meneghetti’s Two of Us is an overwrought, sensationalized LGBTQ melodrama with two really strong performances at the center that keep the film from getting too emotionally unbelievable. The film ends up falling squarely in the tradition of LGBTQ trauma theatre. While it may be understandable that two older French women might have difficulty revealing their relationship to their children, Meneghetti keeps needlessly piling on the suffering in ways that smack of cruelty and arise out of misunderstandings that could have been cleared up with characters being honest with one another. This causes the plot to feel more mechanistic, functioning more in service of the director and his co-writer’s whims and caprices, rather than anything that arose from genuine character or relational motivations. Meneghetti does make use of some fantastic close-ups throughout the film to highlight his two leading performers, showing how much they can convey with the simplest flicker of emotion across their faces or the smallest darting of their eyes. Similarly, the production design is quite evocative and used to beautifully (and painfully) illustrate the characters’ isolation from one another during the film’s second act. But Meneghetti throws in unnecessary and heavy-handed dream imagery that, while beautifully shot, is entirely out-of-place in this film that wants to be more grounded in genuine relationships. And he also can’t resist adding unnecessary, and at times pulpy, complications to what could have been a beautiful and simple narrative, taking the film well past the point of credulity by the time the credits roll, so that we have lost much of the emotional connection we have with these characters. It’s a film with so much promise, but it ended up a convoluted mess.

Collective (2019) | Directed by Alexander Nanau

 3.5/5

Alexander Nanau’s Collective is an effective primer on Romanian politics, their broken health care system, and the nightclub fire that launched massive protests against government corruption. However, the film’s narrative construction is disjointed and slightly haphazard, keeping viewers at a distance from what should be an intensely personal story. For the first half of the film, we primarily follow the journalists of Sports Gazette, a daily sports paper whose investigative journalists broke the news of widespread corruption throughout Romanian hospitals. Over the second half of the film, we follow a new, reform-minded Minister of Health as he tries to battle the corruption. And through it all, we get glimpses of one of the survivors of the nightclub fire as she attempts to rebuild her life. All of the information presented is compelling on its own, and the film touches on vital issues about the importance of journalism and the threats of rising fascism across the globe. However, the three segments are never effectively integrated, and any attempts to make the pieces fit together feel forced – such as the moment the Minister of Health meets with the survivor on the eve of a major election. There’s compelling content throughout the film, it just never fully comes together.

Where to Watch

Bacurau (2019) | Directed by Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles

 5/5

Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles’s Bacurau is a glorious film that walks a delicate tightrope between high-minded, art-house, political treatise on the corrosive effects of capitalism and colonialism on the one hand, and deliriously pulpy, blood-soaked thriller borrowing elements from science fiction and horror on the other. The fact that this mash-up of tones and styles all works – and that each disparate piece serves to compliment the other – is something of a miracle. Filho and Dornelles’s use of wipes, crossfades, and slow dissolves harken back to the socially-conscious, near-future sci-fi films of the ‘70s – placing this film in direct conversation with many of the eco-minded, nuclear dystopias of yesteryear. The use of music inspired by (and even one track composed by) John Carpenter links the film to ‘70s horror, but Filho and Dornelles take all of these influences to make BACURAU their own sublime work of art. They take all of these pulpy elements to explore the ways in which western colonial powers attempt to erase Indigenous cultures and communities in order to get what they want from them. And yet, Filho and Dornelles haven’t made a two hour film where we watch a poor community suffer. Instead, it’s a stirring portrait of what it means to come together and unite for the common good. It’s an incredible film – vibrant, funny, violent, and one that has a whole lot on its mind.

Where to Watch

Small Axe 5: Education (2020) | Directed by Steve McQueen

 5/5

Steve McQueen’s Education, the final film in the Small Axe anthology series, is so deeply moving, and moves us further into a space of hope for the future and a resolve to change the present. McQueen still explores the targeted racism faced by this community – this time focusing on the ways the education system fails Black children – treating their behavioral issues more harshly than their white peers, assuming a lack of intelligence and letting them fall further and further behind, and finally shuffling them off to “special” schools in order to improve the “regular” school’s test scores, all the while denying them access to the educational opportunities they so desperately need. Once again, McQueen shows how people’s political consciousnesses are awakened through connection and community, learning that they don’t have to accept the injustices that have been foisted upon them by a broken society. McQueen continues his use of powerful and poetic imagery to capture these moments of fractured and mended connections – a mother walking away from her son as he’s about to leave for this “special” school for the first time, the family coming together again in a tight embrace as they all realize how the system has cheated them. While much of the Small Axe series has focused on the power of music to unite, this installment features a long, stultifying sequence showing the power of music to dull and numb, whereas reconnecting with a heritage that has been stolen and repressed has the power mend divisions and inspire a young child to look to the future. McQueen ends the film – and the entire cycle of films – on an image of hope that is so stirring, powerful, and transformative. This is cinema at its best.

City Hall (2020) | Directed by Frederick Wiseman

 5/5

Frederick Wiseman’s City Hall is an absolute masterpiece of non-fiction filmmaking. After four years of living through the Trump administration (and writing review this from a region whose local government is frequently more beholden to corporate and business interests than its residents), there is something so beautiful about watching four and a half hours of civil servants doing all they can to make their city a better and more just and more equitable place. Wiseman alternates footage of Boston city council meetings, community gatherings, and briefings by city task forces with smaller sequences showing sanitation workers, health inspectors, courthouse marriages, and even traffic hearings. All of this is broken up by transition shots taken around Boston, reminding us of the city’s rich history and heritage, as well as its present. Taken together, Wiseman has crafted a comprehensive portrait of local government – the ways that it touches so many parts of our day-to-day lives, as well as the ways that having a functioning government makes our lives better. It’s an extremely compelling film, and even with the long running time, it flies by. And in this time of cynicism and ugly political opportunism, it’s an extremely hopeful film. When we come together and elect public servants who care about the community, we can see real change happen.

Where to Watch

Wolfwalkers (2020) | Directed by Tomm Moore and Ross Stewart

 4.5/5

Tomm Moore and Ross Stewart’s Wolfwalkers is an absolutely gorgeous work of animation – a delightful family film from beginning to end. The hand-drawn images evoke medieval Irish illustrated manuscripts – the flattening of perspective, the highly detailed and intricate patterns around the edges of the frame, the use of split-screen as if they were separate illustrations laid out on the same page – giving the film a rich sense of myth and legend and folklore. The vocal performances are all fantastic and draw us deeply into the story, getting us to care (and believe) in the midst of all of the narrative’s mystical events. The film’s central conflict – humanity’s voracious appetite for conquest versus the untamable wildness of nature; the brutal constraints of certainty versus the freedom and joy to be found in mystery – is compelling, and the two girls at the story’s center are thoroughly engaging protagonists. So many children’s films speak down to their audience, so it’s refreshing to see a work of animation that treats its core audience with so much respect – never hiding the difficult truths of the world, never distracting its audience with scenes that belong in an amusement park instead of a movie, and never being afraid of letting a little danger and sadness seep into the story. It’s an incredible film, beautiful, joyous, empathetic, and deeply moving – exactly the kind of art we should be encouraging our children to seek out.

Notturno (2020) | Directed by Gianfranco Rosi

 3.5/5

Gianfranco Rosi’s Notturno is a documentary with mesmerizing and haunting sequences that unfortunately tries to do too much in the space of its limited running time. The ways in which Rosi presents these slices of life in the Middle East, on the edges of conflict, are all extremely compelling – a husband and wife smiling a hookah on the roof of their apartment, mothers and widows wailing for the dead, a young man in a boat out hunting ducks, traffic attempting to navigate a bombed out roadway – all while we hear gunfire and artillery off in the distance. But the film begins to lose the cumulative power of the images it has been building as it returns to sequences without a sense of purpose or overall structure. There isn’t any rhyme or reason for Rosi returning to the patients at the mental hospital rehearsing a play on the history of Iraq, or the soldiers on patrol, or the family whose eldest son works as a guide to hunters. And then these vérité sequences are punctuated by passages detailing the atrocities of ISIS – told by children in therapy in one instance and as a series of voicemail messages in another, all feeling a bit too manipulative in the context of the film’s other footage. If there was less structure to the film – if Rosi weren’t coming back to as many of the latter sequences and simply allowing this to be slices of life, this would have been a highly effective portrait of individuals eking out an existence in the midst of chaos and conflict. And if this was more rigidly structured in the way it returns to previous scenes or sequences, that also could have worked quite well. As the film stands, there are only moments and brief sequences that effectively convey what life is like in these conflict zone. The rest gets lost in Rosi’s attempt to do everything in the space of 100 minutes.