The Rhythm Sction (2020)

The Rhythm Section turns out to be a fairly simple yet elegant action film. Perhaps simple isn't the right word. It isn't dumb and doesn't talk down to you. It just isn't complicated with superfluous stuff. It starts out with the premise laid out clearly and powerfully, takes us through its story until the end with efficiency and style, and then gives us the catharsis we need. Simple elegance.

Director Morano uses her skills as a cinematographer to ensure her film is lovely and electric. There is a discomfort to the whole thing that puts us in our protagonist's shoes, yet it all looks so wonderful and lush. But she does more than that. She gets honest performances out of her cast and tells her story in a way that grounds it while also making it exciting.

The violence is The Rhythm Section is visceral. You feel it. It's not all glossed and stylized. It feel raw. Lively's character isn't a superhero. She messes up more than she succeeds. But that's a big part of what makes The Rhythm Section work, part of what makes it enjoyable. I often wondered if it was going to work out.

While this is likely a one and done, The Rhythm Section shows a lot of promise and makes me wish this was just the beginning of Stephanie's story. I'm certainly interested in seeing what Morano might do next.

The Rhythm Section
Starring: Blake Lively, Jude Law, Sterling K. Brown, Max Casella, Raza Jaffrey
Director: Reed Morano
Writer: Mark Burnell

Richard III (1995) REVISIT

Richard III is one of the most iconic of Shakespeare plays. It is the culmination of the War of the Roses, it is the climax of 8 plays written by the Bard. It is filled with famous phrases. It has as it's center a deliciously evil villain that is a joy to watch and to watch meet his end. Sure it may not be accurate history but that's not the point and no one expects it to be. It is just really good theatre.

And it turns out it is also quite cinematic. Director Loncraine and star McKellen visioned their ultimate villain as history's ultimate villain. They take the story of the late 15th century King and set it in World War II as a fascist dystopia. They fill their film with all the glorious art deco art direction, swing jazz scoring, flapper costuming/hair, to make it gorgeous to see as well as overwhelming. When the nazi-esque red banners and symbols begin appearing the film strikes fear deep into our hearts. It turns the tale of the evil ruler killing to gain power into a context that makes sense to a modern audience. And that sense is chilling.

At the heart of the film is McKellen and his singular performance. He wasn't as recognizable at the time the film came out and I remember just being shook by him to my core. He is a combination stage and film actor being both larger than life and subtly rich in his performance. And as Richard, as the unabashedly corrupt and evil ruler, he is disturbing to say the least. Now that we've seen him in many other high profile roles we've come to be familiar with him as a star. But it is here as Richard that he first grabbed my attention.

But he's not alone. The always perfect Annette Benning is in her element here playing a powerful and emotional Queen Elizabeth with all the layers the character deserves. The entire cast is strong and despite the prominence of McKellen's character he plays well with the whole team. It's a powerful ensemble that fully dedicates itself to both the text and the setting they've chosen.

For me this film does a great job of grounding this play into something accessible yet palpable. It is viscerally enjoyable. It breaks down the different lineages and plot points in a way that makes its bloody quest for power plot not only understandable and easy for an uninitiated audience but also thoroughly enjoyable both for them and for devotees of the Bard. From the imagery to the 30s music to the performances to the story itself this Richard III is a damn fun film with just enough cultural warnings to give it the gravitas it needs.

Richard III
Starring: Ian McKellen, Annette Benning, Jim Broadbent, Robert Downey Jr., Nigel Hawthorne, Kristin Scott Thomas, Maggie Smith, Dominic West
Director: Richard Loncraine
Writers: Ian McKellen, Richard Loncraine, William Shakespeare

Klaus (2019)

Spanish animator Sergio Pablos cut his teeth in the Disney stable and then hit it big on the Despicable Me franchise. He wrote the first film and the success of that series has lead to him starting his own animation studio, and his debut is Klaus, a highly stylized, slapstick inspired Christmas tale which has swept the award season after it's debut. This "origin story" of Santa, which throws out all our preconceptions of Santa's background and comes up with a fairly original idea, has that Christmas special feel, which I mean in no pejorative way at all, but as the sort of spirit it embodies.

Klaus ends up being rather charming if it does fall a little too far on the silly and predictable side for me. Despite lusher, more textured visuals, you'll notice the absurdity bent familiar from the Despicable movies.  But despite the film coming up with a very different version of Santa than we're used to seeing, it ends up being a rather formulaic. But is a weird mix because along with being fairly predictable it also is a little nonsensical. the story hinges on some motivations which  aren't necessarily logical. Without giving us a good reason, the villains of the story are hell bent on maintaining a feud and so a rather constructed feeling conflict and climax. All of which adds to the silliness of the story and takes away from its potential as a holiday classic.

So for me Klaus was a mixed bag (no pun intended). I enjoyed the visuals and character design, I thought the story was a bit light but just enjoyable enough, but the whole thing was a little too foolish for my preferences, the humour rarely catching for me. The advantage of a holiday themed story is that we tend to be drawn back to them each season. If it wasn't for that I wouldn't likely rewatch this film. But perhaps I'll give it another shot next year as the yule tide approaches.

Klaus
Starring: Jason Schwartzman, J.K. Simmons, Rashida Jones, Will Sasso, Sergio Pablos, Norm Macdonald, Joan Cusack
Director: Sergio Pablos
Writers: Jim Mahoney, Zach Lewis, Sergio Pablos

American Factory (2019)

When I began watching American Factory I had no idea what I was going to be watching. This documentary, following the take over of a shuttered GM plant in Ohio which was taken over by a Chinese glass making corporation, felt at first like it was going to be about an inspiring American story of reinvention in the face of economic adversity. But as it played out the story ended up not being inspiring at all, instead it touched on something far more discouraging. As I watched it became clear it was a first hand account of worker exploitation at the hands of corporate interests.

We are introduced to a group of American workers returning to work in a factory which had provided jobs for their community but had through the rigors of capitalism closed down leaving the community suffering. There is a sense of returning optimism as the factory comes back to life run by a Chinese corporation making glass. There are awkward cultural encounters and I felt like we were being lead down a familiar cross-cultural story of coming together despite our differences. But as the film moved on it takes a different turn. We are shown how the corporate culture, from its union busting inclinations and expectations of worker sacrifice, is creating a new crisis for all those working there, the locals and the immigrants.

American Factory is a localized look at globalization and its effects on a very personal nature. By focusing on the individual stories of those working in this company the film is able to personalize the story. It's powerful seeing how lives are changed (not for the better) and affected by the effects of globalization.

American Factory
Directors: Steven Bognar, Julia Reichert, Yiqian Zhang, Mijie Li

The Last Full Measure (2020)

The Last Full Measure feels like it is having an identity crisis. It seems to want to do one thing but really it wants to do something else and the two don't necessarily jive. This is based on a true story about the campaign to posthumously award a medal of honor to a fallen solider from the Vietnam war. The story involves a plot piece that he was not awarded the medal due to some embarrassment on behalf of people higher up the food chain who wanted the incident swept under the rug, something harder to do if he had won the medal. But the film glosses over that in its attempt to be something else.

Instead of pursuing that drama, the film presents us with a parade of his compatriots, all of whom are suffering (but alive) in the wake of their service. It is PTSD after PTSD. Also the soldier's still living parents, who are as saintly as humanly possible, are showcased. Once again the film had a chance to explore the way the actions of those sending these men into war have scarred them but once again the film chooses a different path.

As the film reaches its climax it is clear the only point to this film is to achieve the medal ceremony for the fallen man for his great sacrifice (the meaning of the title) and those men who served along side him so that there can be a standing ovation and tearful celebration of all who serve. This is a lovely moment for sure but it ignores the essential part of the story. Why they were there in the first place and how the ultimate cost was not proportionate to the goal. The film turns it back on it's subject by romanticizing the death without looking in to the why.  Like so many of these narratives, "serving our country" is just assumed without any evidence to show that the country was actually served. Because if we went there the loss of these lives would be too much to bear.

But it is this story, this cliched, sentimental story which highlights this betrayal. Because there is an element of injustice and that element has been overlooked. The film doesn't do its subject anymore justice than his country did. And that's a shame.

Sometimes performances in a film are way better than the film itself and this is a perfect example. Plummer as the soldier's father is as remarkable as he always is. Samuel L. Jackson is one of the greatest working actors alive which he demonstrates when he's not going his stereotypical Jackson routine. This film is an opportunity for him to truly shine and he does. But he's not alone. Hurt, Fonda and others are all strong. I kept feeling the tragedy of all these great actors doing a great job in such a poorly executed film.

This is a real missed opportunity. It ends up being just a typical gloss over an important story.

The Last Full Measure
Starring: Sebastian Stan, Christopher Plummer, Diane Ladd, William Hurt, Ed Harris, Samuel L. Jackson, Peter Fonda, Bradley Witford, Jeremy Irvine
Writer/Director: Todd Robinson

The Gentlemen (2020)

After being a director for hire for a few years Guy Richie returns to his bread and butter with The Gentlemen, as typical a Richie film as there can be. It's smarmy clever dialogue, riddled with racism/sexism/homophobia, slickly filmed violence, and twisty gangster plot, is punctuated with a lot of heavy accents. If you dig Richie's style this will do it for you. If he's not your thing this isn't likely to win you over.

If you let yourself, watching the scenery chewing performances of this cast, especially Colin Farrell, Hugh Grant, and Mathew McConaughey, can be a lot of fun, even if a lot of their dialogue is cringey in its oh so cool UK thug banter. If Richie did any real analysis of the depravity of these sorts of characters and didn't fetishize them for entertainment value perhaps it could make for something fascinating. But that's not his thing. This, like his breakout Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, plays so that we are to buy into the coolness of this hyper-masculinity.

I did like the way Richie framed his story as a "story within a story," the whole thing presented as being told by Grant's to Hunnam's character. The story is fun enough if you can get through the eye-rolly parts. It isn't too long and there is enough story to fill the time. So while die hard fans might eat it up, the rest of us might find it a mildly entertaining distraction if we can overlook a lot of the grating parts.

The Gentlemen
Starring: Matthew McConaughey, Charlie Hunnam, Hugh Grant, Colin Farrell, Henry Golding, Michelle Dockery, Jeremy Strong, Jason Wong
Writer/Director: Guy Richie

Twelfth Night or What You Will (1996) REVISIT

Shakespeare played with the idea of gender quite a bit in his work but as far as I am aware never quite as directly as in Twelfth Night. Shakespeare often gave his characters plot reasons for cross-dressing but that doesn't really exist here in a tangible way. Night works specifically on a meta level when one thinks about the idea of young men playing women playing men and all of the gender fallout that produces. Modern versions, which cast female actors in the roles loose some of this exploration. Yet there remain elements of sexual experimentation as the "manly" character Orsino finds himself falling in love with a "man" Cesario while the overtly feminine Olivia finds herself wooing another woman, sort of. All of this lends itself to some fascinating gender and sexual high-jinks. And how this is played with over time says much about who we are in each moment.

The 1996 film from director Trevor Nunn (a director who seems to direct one film a decade) chooses to only scratch the surface of this element of the play and instead focus on the farce aspect of Night as if it was The Important of Being Earnest. His strong cast, equally talented with comedy and tragedy, play up the Three's Company style pranks and misunderstandings to great entertainment and that makes his film quite watchable and generally delightful. But for me the fascination of this play doesn't reside mostly in the absurd humour. For me what makes Night truly interesting is what it does with gender and sexuality.

There are moments when Nunn's film begins to explore some of the more taboo ends of the story. A moving scene between Ceasrio and Orsino where the two almost kiss is powerful (but might have been more powerful if both actors were men). Much of the gravity of the film is summoned by the weighty performance of Ben Kingsley whose fool is played quite seriously. But Nunn keeps veering away from those more challenging paths and taking us back into the safe territory of farce.

I assume most of this comes from the time in which it was made when issues of sexuality were still just arising in popular culture and gender expression was still ignored by most of society. Today I think productions of Twelfth Night could truly explore some of the rich commentary the play is lousy with. And that again comes back to the idea of how who we are in our moment, informs how we approach these plays and how they might speak to us. Today when we have a more complex understanding of gender, Shakespeare's gender plays, especially this one, could resonate in new ways. Perhaps one day. But for now we have this, rather delightful but generally light, film which is funny and charming.

Twelfth Night or What You Will
Starring: Imogen Stubbs, Helena Bonham Carter, Toby Stevens, Ben Kingsley, Richard E. Grant, Imelda Staunton, Steven Mackintosh
Director: Trevor Nunn
Writers: Trevor Nunn, William Shakespeare