The Prom (2020) | Directed by Ryan Murphy

 3.5/5

Ryan Murphy’s The Prom, while deeply flawed, is a much better film than it has any right to be and is likely to strike a chord in the heart of any former (or current) musical theatre kid. There’s a wry cynicism in the first act’s skewering of the ways in which celebrities (or pseudo-celebrities in this case) can attempt to hijack a worthy cause and make one person’s struggles all about themselves in an effort to “help.” There are also some lovely, emotionally honest moments throughout about what it’s like to be an LGBTQ+ teen living in a more intolerant community, making this a film has the potential to be really important for LGBTQ+ youth today. However, the film starts to fall apart in the middle and you can see the plot machinery grinding along to its inevitable, charming finale. Character motivations become fuzzy, plot points cease to have stakes, and some of the most important character arcs are resolved with a single line of dialogue, cheapening the investment we’ve placed in their growth. Meryl Streep finds the best balance between self-obsessed narcissist and wanna-be savior, and both Keegan-Michael Key and newcomer Jo Ellen Pellman transcend the material, while the rest of the cast turn in admirable performances – with a few one-note exceptions. Director Ryan Murphy never quite gets a handle on the visual language needed to make the transition from a Broadway production to a feature film – especially in the editing rhythms and the moments when he leans too heavily into the under-lit naturalism of the prom sequences – but when he allows for moments of cinematic theatricality, the effect is magical. It’s far from perfect, but I found it unexpectedly moving, and if there are those who find solace in this, who am I to complain?

Sorry We Missed You (2019) | Directed by Ken Loach

 4.5/5

Ken Loach’s Sorry We Missed You is another fiery, angry film from the master of working-class British realism and an essential look at the ways modern capitalism dehumanizes the individual while pretending to be giving us more choice and greater flexibility. This time it’s the gig economy and contract work that call under Loach’s carefully researched microscope, and the film takes care to show how the options for regular, full-time employment have become more and more limited, pushing more workers into jobs with no protections, no benefits, no time off, and the illusory promise of “flexibility” that really mean lost wages and fines. The film’s rhythms are intentionally suffocating, barely giving us a moment to breathe before the narrative hurtles us to the next task, the next delivery, the next job, without a moment’s respite, leaving us as emotionally exhausted as the characters. And the film is carefully structured to show us the toll this type of work takes, not just on the individual, but on the family as well. It’s an angry, urgent film that cries out for better protections and safeguards for everyone forced into gig employment, demanding better from those in power.

Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948) | Directed by H.C. Potter

 3.5/5

H.C. Potter’s Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House is a delightful little comedy from classic Hollywood – narratively slight, perhaps, but delightful just the same. Cinematographer James Wong Howe’s long tracking shot that opens the film and introduces us to the Blandings family’s “cramped” apartment is exquisite – it’s the perfect way to set up the plot, especially after the quick succession of ironic clips about how idyllic life is in the hustle and bustle of New York City. Cary Grant is great, as always, as is Myrna Loy, and rounding out the trio leads is Melvyn Douglas with a fantastic performance as friend of the family and the sole voice of reason in the midst of all the shenanigans. I love that Loy is just as unreasonable and over-the-top with her demands as Grant – and there’s a touching moment toward the end where an honest contractor brings the film out of its deepest point of crisis. But the whole endeavor feels a little too slight at the end of the day – the stakes aren’t very high and the narrative is really just a series of building mishaps. A series of very funny building mishaps, but not much to string a feature film around. Still, it’s light, enjoyable entertainment, and you can do worse than to have a few hours with the Blandings.

The Mole Agent (2020) | Directed by Maite Alberdi

 4.5/5

Maite Alberdi’s The Mole Agent is such a charming and delightful little documentary – filled with so much warmth and melancholy sadness. This undercover “spy” film is filled with delightful noir touches – from the high contrast lighting during Sergio’s “reporting” to his boss, to the way our 84-year-old mole trails his targets in the retirement home and attempts to be inconspicuous, but (as one of the few lucid male residents in the facility) is chatted up by all of the women who pass by. As charming and funny as the film can be, it also quickly reveals the aching loneliness of aging and the ways that we in so many societies warehouse our elderly. Sergio becomes our window into a world and a community that few of us have ventured into for any extended period of time. Alberdi’s genius is situating this all within a playful framework that allows for more depth and emotion to show through.

Dick Johnson Is Dead (2020) | Directed by Kirsten Johnson

 4.5/5

Kirsten Johnson’s Dick Johnson Is Dead is such a lovely, heartbreaking, joyous, and life-affirming meditation on life, death, family, and what it means to lose the ones you love. It’s especially captivating to see how messy and almost unformed the film is at times – you can see Johnson discovering the film, uncovering her themes and ideas, as she is making it. It’s also incredibly heartening to see how readily she engages with the ethics of making a film about the impending loss of her father while her father is still alive, yet while his is in the beginning stages of senility – even though he seems eager and ready to try anything, she never shies away from showing the moments where he is no longer able to distinguish what is real and what is part of the movie, or from showing the real pain that this exploration of death causes his close friends. Then there are the moments of pure joy, such as the recreations of heaven – complete with dancing and feathers and confetti and chocolate fountains – or the macabre death sequences deconstructed before our eyes. It all gets at some deeper truths about family, love, loss, and learning to let go.

Where to Watch

Mayor (2020) | Directed by David Osit

 4.5/5

David Osit’s Mayor is a riveting documentary following the Christian mayor of Ramallah in Palestine as he attempts to run a functioning city government under the pressures of a foreign occupation. Opening with a swelling score that links Mayor Hadid’s efforts for Ramallah with the the efforts of mayors in other great cities of the world – New York, London, Paris, Berlin – we’re shown a man who is doggedly insistent on providing for his citizens – whether it’s simply taking care of the city’s sewage, fixing the doors on a local school, or keep the lights on for the city Christmas tree. In watching Hadid’s daily struggles of trying to keep a city running while illegal settlements on the outskirts of the city are dumping their sewage into the city, or while occupying soldiers invade and harass citizens, the film does more to show the indignities of life under Israeli occupation than any informational documentary could ever do. Lest you think it’s all grim and depressing, the film is still filled with so much warmth and humor – opening with a city council discussion on branding (What is branding? How do you brand a city?), a Christmas celebration that includes multiple Santa Clauses rappelling down the sides of buildings, and a public fountain that Mayor Hadid is desperately trying to perfect before it officially opens to the public. But hovering over all of the municipal projects that Hadid is attempting to oversee, there is the specter of America’s decision to formally recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and move the American embassy to Jerusalem – a move which threatens the stability of Ramallah and all of Palestine. Osit captures all of this with a quiet, vérité approach, letting us discover key details along the way – whether it’s large moments like Israeli soldiers invading Ramallah or small moments like Hadid constantly fiddling with his e-cigarette as his anxiety grows. This is a fantastic documentary that is a necessary corrective to so much of the propaganda we receive from our own government about the relationship between Israel and Palestine.

First Cow (2019) | Directed by Kelly Reichardt

 5/5

Kelly Reichardt’s First Cow is another masterpiece of quiet restraint, patient storytelling, and richly down characters. Reichardt trusts her audience’s patience and takes her time guiding us into the narrative, revealing the characters, and slowly building on her themes and ideas. So many westerns, so many pioneer stories, are about the promise of America, the myth that this is a country in which anyone can build their fortune and make their dreams come true. Reichardt is interested in exposing the lie at the heart of so much of our American myth-making – ingenuity and resourcefulness is rarely enough, the American dream is often achieved through theft, bloodshed, or some other access to power and privilege. She also continues her exploration of outsiders seeking connection and stability inside a world and system that doesn’t have a place for them. The restrictions of the 1.37:1 aspect ratio help us feel as boxed in by the narrative as our two protagonists do by their situation, and the natural lighting keeps us from romanticizing their endeavors, even as they continually attempt to romanticize their stab at the American dream. It’s an incredible film – a gentle heist film by way of buddy dramedy that is all-too honest about the endings of such reckless endeavors.

Where to Watch

On the Rocks (2020) | Directed by Sofia Coppola

 4/5

Sofia Coppola’s On the Rocks is an absolutely lovely and effervescent film that is all-too-easy to dismiss on account of Coppola’s ease and effortless grace in pulling off such a charming romantic comedy. Even though the film may take on many of the beats and even the form of a screwball comedy, it still contains all of Coppola’s languid rhythms that captures the monotony of life within the cages that women find themselves – gilded or otherwise. Murray and Jones make for a delightful comedic pairing and have a sparkling onscreen chemistry, and it’s charming to see Coppola poking a bit at Murray’s offscreen persona in this portrayal of a father who constantly uses his privilege in some of the most obnoxious ways to flirt, get out of altercations with the police, and railroad others into doing what he wants. The film’s loose, shaggy-dog detective narrative ends on a surprisingly honest note that confounds most of the expectations we bring to the film – after decades of exposure to more emotionally explosive conclusions in romantic comedies, it’s nice to have something so quiet and honest. Coppola captures the monotony of married life with a graceful efficiency – cutting from a shot of the happily married couple skinny dipping, their clothes on the ground, to a shot of the children’s clothes on the floor as Jones’s character cleans up after her family. Similarly, Coppola uses delightfully comic montages of ferrying children from one activity to another, compressing each one subsequent sequence, until we’re left with the impression that this routine is just one more unbearable burden on Jones as she believes that her marriage is falling apart. It’s a lovely little film, rich in details and honest about the fears and the anxieties of a marriage in distress.

I’m Thinking of Ending Things (2020) | Directed by Charlie Kaufman

 4.5/5

Charlie Kaufman’s I’m Thinking of Ending Things is an eerie and haunting meditation on mortality, missed opportunities, and the passage of time – all wrapped up in a dissection of narcissistic masculinity’s inability to let go of the past. The film features a male character that, in previous Kaufman films, would have been where all our sympathies lie. However, the film is structured in such a way that our entry and point-of-view lies almost entirely with the young woman who would normally only exist as the object of this character’s romantic obsession. This gives us a much more honest vantage from which to observe the controlling obsessiveness in so much of toxic male behavior, and it manages to show the consequences for this behavior on others – even as we question what is real and what is delusion. While so many of Kaufman’s films are filled with a kind of wistful melancholy that allows you to look fondly on the characters and their existential crises, here, the use of the slowly drifting camera, the restrictive Academy ratio, and the jarring edits all combine to keep us off-killer, expecting horror or terror to seep into the frame at any moment. It’s an uncomfortable, difficult film that invites us to return for a further interrogation of its narrative and its mysteries, while simultaneously encouraging us to interrogate the self-deceptions we live with each and every day.

Where to Watch

Beastie Boys Story (2020) | Directed by Spike Jonze

 4/5

Spike Jonze’s Beastie Boys Story is a completely unexpected and thoroughly delightful blending of live performance and documentary that allows the surviving members of the Beastie Boys to tell their own story with warmth, honesty, and a surprising amount of humor. It’s fun to see that Jonze is becoming a skilled director of live performance pieces for film. The film’s use of live oral history is a joy to watch in front of the live audience as Mike Diamond and Adam Horovitz are both incredibly compelling storytellers. The inclusion of archival footage in the live stage production is a nice choice, and there are some fun gags they’re able to use that Jonze takes full advantage of for this film version – such as coming in for a close up as they pantomime walking against street footage. But the most compelling part of the film is their reflection on the mistakes of their early career, the growing awareness of their own privilege and the sexism in their early work, and the ways they have tried to rectify those mistakes and push back against the sexism they once helped perpetuate. It’s a surprisingly hopefully story of continued growth and change and maturity. And the celebration of the life and creativity of Adam Yauch throughout the film is incredibly moving. Whether you’re a fan of the Beastie Boys or new to their work, this is a wonderful ode to their creativity and music, as well as our capacity to grow and change.