Polite Society (2023, Nida Manzoor)

Polite Society is the story of British-Pakistani teenager Priya Kansara. She goes to an expensive London private girl’s school, where she’s got two best buds—Seraphina Beh and Ella Bruccoleri—and a nemesis—Shona Babayemi. Complicating matters is Kansara’s passion for martial arts stunt work. It leads to lots of fighting, which quickly reveals Polite’s major conceit: Kansara’s living in a PG-13 martial arts action movie. Writer and director Manzoor makes no attempt to rationalize this reality, which is otherwise close to our own. It’s just a universe where everyone’s ready to kick ass. And has to kick ass, because there are supervillains.

Not costumed supervillains, just rich people supervillains (see, it’s like reality). They’re not trying to take over the world or, I don’t know, create a clone army, but there’s something very suss about them and Kansara certainly isn’t going to let her big sister, Ritu Arya, marry into that world.

Polite’s opening titles and most of the first act juxtapose Kansara and Arya. Kansara’s trying not to get into too much trouble while still having some self-respect in high school, while Arya’s licking her wounds as an art school dropout. While Kansara’s sure she’ll be a stuntwoman and Arya will be an artist, everyone else assumes Kansara will be a doctor and Arya will be a trophy wife. Including mom Shobu Kapoor, who’s trying to keep up with the Joneses in her friend circle, and unintentionally puts Arya into the crosshairs of queen bee Nimra Bucha.

Bucha’s trying to marry off super-stud son Akshay Khanna, who might charm all the moms and aunts, but Kansara sees right though to the mama’s boy underneath. Unfortunately… Arya doesn’t agree and, after a single date montage, she falls for dreamy Khanna. Act two kicks off with Kansara enlisting Beh and Bruccoleri to help her sabotage the relationship. She’s worried Arya’s not in her right mind (the art school thing) and everyone’s taking advantage of a setback to make her conform. Dad Jeff Mirza actually sums it up for Kansara during a great montage sequence.

But then things get worse—Arya’s buying into the fantasy (Khanna wants to whisk her off to Singapore to live in tropical luxury) while Kansara’s pretty sure it’s actually a nightmare. And then it turns out she’s literally not wrong.

It’s too bad Manzoor didn’t find some way to keep Arya active once she’d detached from Kansara’s plot line, but otherwise, Polite’s basically perfect. It’s funny, it’s got a fount of heart, it’s so smart. Manzoor's a perfectly solid director; she and cinematographer Ashley Connor shoot Panavision ratio, which is fine for the prosumer action movie vibe, but Manzoor’s rarely filling the frame. There’s an iffy effect or two, but they always come with some winning character moment, so it doesn’t matter and sometimes lends to the scene. Manzoor does a phenomenal job using the composite to showcase the performances. And Connor’s photography is good. Great is Robbie Morrison’s cutting. The editing is incredible.

Maybe the neatest thing about Manzoor’s script is the way she foreshadows the very distinct acts; Polite’s got different chapter titles, riffing on Jane Austen novels, and fighting games, but it’s also got major act breaks. They stand out because Kansara, Beh, and especially Bruccoleri examine everything regarding acts. When Kansara’s griping about Arya dating Khanna, Bruccoleri, and Beh explain, it’s just because Arya’s in the second act of her comeback. When it becomes clear the third act isn’t an art show but a wedding, they again discuss it in those terms. Manzoor’s got a really nice way of setting it up, and the self-awareness tips the hand a bit. Foreshadowing for later, more significant moves.

And the other thing about losing track of Arya (sorry, forgot where we were headed; Polite’s so well put-together it’s easy to get lost admiring)—it just means more Kansara, who does get to graduate to a more dangerous nemesis in Bucha, but also gets to have a big character development arc missing Arya.

All the performances are good or better. Kansara’s a charismatic, funny lead, Ayra’s got depth even as she Stepfords (which is such a weird and nice detail—the movie makes that comparison in scene), Khanna's a charming science stud and mama’s boy, and Bucha’s a fantastic baddie. Then the supporting cast—Kapoor, Mirza, Beh, Bruccoleri, and Babayemi—are all delightful. The more Polite asks of its cast, the more they deliver.

Polite Society’s badass.

Silkwood (1983, Mike Nichols)

I wholeheartedly recommend Silkwood. It’s beautifully made, with a singular performance from Meryl Streep and great performances from its astounding ensemble. I need to remember to list all the supporting actors in the film. But I caution against reading up on the actual history. The film’s very accurate; the problem isn’t with veracity; it’s with the dramatic choices for the finale. The film refuses to make any claims about union organizer Karen Silkwood’s mysterious death, which occurred while she was on her way to blow the whistle on her plutonium manufacturing bosses. They’d been really shitty about telling people they’d probably get cancer and die from their jobs, plus doctored reports to make things seem safer.

Streep gets involved with the union after her first contamination; she’d been building to it, concerned about one of her friends at the plant, but experiencing it herself pushes her over. Her life quickly changes, as she’s instrumental in involving the national union in the Oklahoma plant’s business. But with Streep’s increasing involvement, her relationships suffer at home and work. Home is stud muffin boyfriend Kurt Russell and their roommate Cher, a lesbian who’s in love with Streep but also thinks Russell’s swell. They all get high, bitch about work, visit Streep’s kids, and get poisoned by their job together. The first act is all about the trio; the second is about breaking up the trio, and the third is about them having to get back together because it’s partially a medical melodrama.

A damned good one.

But the finish skips ahead a lot, focusing on Streep’s still hot and heavy relationship with Russell, ignoring both her work stuff and her increasingly strained friendship with Cher. Despite the film’s abrupt, tragic ending, there’s some kind of closure with Russell and Streep. There’s nothing with Cher. Even though Cher shows up in the ill-advised closing montage, apparently having been present for a scene the film implies but doesn’t show. Because to show it would be to take a stand on Silkwood’s death.

The ending’s frustrating—I mean, Silkwood gets away with doing an actual pre-made Oscar reel for Streep’s nomination video, so it can frustrate all it wants, actually—but knowing there was more potential content—historically solid content, too—is upsetting. The film proposes there’s just not enough information to do anything else with the finish. But the real story had some more information. There were other choices.

Before reading up on the actual history, I had intended to start talking about Silkwood in terms of staying too strict with the reality, except it didn’t even make that choice. It did something entirely different. And the film can’t get away with it.

Silkwood starts a somewhat standard outsider drama. Streep, Russell, and Cher are stoners; their coworkers think they’re a truple; they don’t fit in. For example, even though Streep’s okay with Russell’s giant Confederate flag, she doesn’t join in racist conversations with her coworkers. The film’s Americana, but that Americana. Given Russell eventually getting uncomfortable with Cher taking up with another lady is a plot point, the film is aware of that focus. It just entirely dumps it, like they weren’t allowed to cut anything throughout the film but had to stop at exactly 131 minutes.

The film’s mostly a technical marvel—Miroslav Ondříček’s photography, Patrizia von Brandenstein’s production design, Ann Roth’s costumes—but Sam O'Steen’s cutting is only just okay. It’s often good, but because of the content, not because O’Steen’s got a good feel for that material. Though the Oscar reel partially redeems the lackluster final montage; Silkwood effectively gets away with nostalgically repeating something from two scenes before. It’s not great, but it does the job–it reminds how Streep’s performance over the last two hours and eight minutes has been absolutely mesmerizing.

So cast your votes for her.

Before I forget, here’s that supporting actor costar list. It’s entirely men, but major shout out to E. Katherine Kerr, who plays the other woman in Streep’s work crew. Also, Craig T. Nelson plays a creep coworker, and he’s in the movie a lot, so I’m not counting him. Bruce McGill’s also got a lot to do but much less than Nelson. The biggest part otherwise goes to Fred Ward, and in continuing descending order of importance: Ron Silver, Charles Hallahan, David Strathairn, Josef Sommer, J.C. Quinn, M. Emmet Walsh, James Rebhorn, Bill Cobbs, Gary Grubbs, Anthony Heald, and Will Patton–the Nichols Thirteen or something.

Russell and Cher are both good but not great. Well, wait. Cher’s always good but never great, while Russell’s often good but never bad. He’s really good with the bump and grind scenes, where he and Streep slobber on each other, but he doesn’t really get a character arc.

Nora Ephron and Alice Arlen co-wrote the screenplay, which technically never runs out of stream since there’s no dialogue after a certain point. Silkwood doesn’t want to do a thriller sequence in the third act—supposition and all—and their solution of flashing forward into the epilogue is unsuccessful. Nichols loses track of the story at just the wrong moment.

But, like I said before, it doesn’t really matter. Silkwood’s already knocked it out of the park; Streep’s astonishing, Nichols’s direction—big thanks to Ondříček’s lightning—is excellent, and the story’s always compelling.

Though—and I promise I’ll get back to an uptick for the end—we need to talk about Georges Delerue’s score before we go. Delerue starts doing honky tonk, which is fine, but then it stops and never comes back. He does lots of melodrama instead, which is fine too, but just when the music should be figuring out how to combine those two genres, Silkwood punts. The film gives Delerue a vote of no confidence with the ending music choice; it’s a cold burn to Delerue.

But, of course, Silkwood makes it work because it’s a superlative piece of work.

This post is part of the Everything Is Copy Blogathon hosted by Rebecca of Taking Up Room.

The Watermelon Woman (1996, Cheryl Dunye)

The Watermelon Woman is the story of video store clerk slash filmmaker Cheryl Dunye making a film about a 1930s Black female actor known only as “The Watermelon Woman.” At least initially. Dunye, in character, will spend the film discovering more and more about her subject, culminating in a documentary short. Surrounding Dunye dans le personnage’s professional aspirations are her friends and lovers. Dunye’s best friend is fellow video store clerk and videography business partner Valarie Walker.

Walker’s the film’s comic relief (until she’s not). Woman is split between Dunye’s documentary footage in the film, shot on video; she and Walker’s professional videography outings, shot on video; the dramatic narrative, shot on 16mm; flashback film footage to 1930s movies, played on video; and occasional still photographs, sometimes on film, sometimes part of the video documentary, maybe sometimes just on video without being part of the documentary. Woman’s an editing masterclass. Dunye en tant que réalisateur and editor Annie Taylor do some sublime cutting, which isn’t always easy since Woman’s scenes all end in fade out. Dunye and Taylor will drop whole subplots in the fade-out, adding another layer. Woman’s about Dunye, the character, making the documentary, and the video stuff in Woman is footage from that documentary, but assembled—presumably—with agency by Dunye (the character). In the film made by Dunye, the writer and director. It plays incredibly naturally, down to Dunye just enjoying having the camera for the weekend and having fun.

And that natural feel also works in the reverse; when Dunye, the character, gets to the third act, she’s cagey about everything except her final product (which we don’t see her assemble). As well as Woman being the general story of her and Walker being two Black lesbian best buds in Philadelphia in the mid-1990s, with their dating and professional woes, it’s this particular, intentionally unexplored romantic drama about Dunye and Guinevere Turner. Turner’s a hip, upper-class WASP, who Walker can’t stand. Things just get worse when Dunye starts involving new video store clerk Shelley Olivier in their videography business; Walker really doesn’t like Olivier, and it’s when Walker stops being comic relief and instead Woman becomes this uncomfortable friendship drama, except Dunye (the filmmaker) doesn’t show much once Dunye (the character) strikes research gold.

Only then the research doesn’t reveal what Dunye (the character) expected, which plays out not in narrative drama but through videography narration.

Woman’s indie budget, but Dunye makes it work for the film instead of against it. The cost-saving measures (16mm only for controllable shots, video for the rest) and the occasional scene where they could’ve used another take (or ADR) add to Woman’s pulsing grip on reality. Because the film’s fiction. Dunye, the director, wanted to make a documentary about forgotten Black female actors of the 1930s and discovered they’d been forgotten. So she created the history for the film, with Zoe Leonard creating the period photographs while Dunye, Alexandra Juhasz, and Douglas McKeown made the old films. Woman’s from the better universe where women made independent movies in the 1930s and then made it to Hollywood. Just white women, so better comes with caveats.

Juhasz plays the 1930s director in photos and film clips, which strikes a chord with Dunye (the character). Except Juhasz is a white woman director involved with her Black female star (Lisa Marie Bronson), while Dunye is the Black woman director involved with a white girl (Turner). Dunye dans le personnage’s relationship with the material changes orbits during the film multiple times, often in reaction to events shown in the “uncut” footage from the documentary shoots.

It’s sublime narrative weaving.

With fades to and from black transitioning every scene, Dunye (often thanks to Walker) gets some great mic drop moments, and there are numerous good, encapsulated scenes. There are some definite standouts, but watching Camille Paglia say interracial dating didn’t exist in the thirties because Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? was in the sixties….

It’s hilarious. And one assumes Dunye just asked Paglia to play the bit like she’s a male film professor.

Technically, Woman’s outstanding. In addition to that wondrous cutting, Michelle Crenshaw’s photography is fantastic. The 16mm sequences are exquisite. Really good score from Paul Shapiro.

Watermelon Woman’s awesome.

Night Shift (1982, Ron Howard)

Night Shift distinguishes itself immediately. The opening sequence is magnificent, featuring two crooks (Richard Belzer and Badja Droll) chasing down pimp Julius LeFlore and inciting the incident for the film. Director Howard has three credited editors on Night Shift—Robert James Kern, Daniel P. Hanley, and Mike Hill—and their cutting is deft. Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel’s script gives them plenty of opportunities for layering the narrative impacts just right, and Howard and cinematographer James Crabe are big on keeping things fluid. The camera moves, the people move. There’s maybe one mediocre sequence in Night Shift, and it jumps out because the rest of it has been so sublime. Starting from the prologue, which leads directly into the opening titles.

The film’s got one great eighties montage sequence—the story’s about two morgue attendants who decide to offer their location and management services to LeFlore’s call girls, who are having a tough time without him. Shift’s filmed—in part and quite effectively—in Dirty Old New York. However, even with the spots of violence, it’s not about the city being dangerous. The characters sometimes find themselves in danger, but everyone’s jazzed to be living in the Big Apple. Or at least, not un-jazzed.

Anyway. That great eighties montage sequence is when the girls go to work for the the guys (Henry Winkler and Michael Keaton); as Keaton drives them around, buys them glamorous clothes because Winkler’s a Wall Street burnout who starts investing for the girls, and is able to get them into legit businesses… in less than four weeks. Don’t pay attention to the timing; just enjoy the movie. Especially with that accompanying Al Jarreau song.

For some wonderful, peculiar reason, Night Shift went with Burt Bacharach for the score, which is a great move on its own, but then Bacharach and Carole Bayer Sager and friends wrote original songs for the film. There are some more familiar ones than others, but Bacharach’s on fire, with the soundtrack always lending to Howard’s constant movement themes. Again, Night Shift is all about fluidity.

Winkler’s the protagonist. He’s the nebbish burnout who no one takes seriously—not boss Floyd Levine, not fiancée Gina Hecht, not mom Nita Talbot—who finds himself demoted back to the night shift at the morgue so Levine can give nephew Bobby Di Cicco an easy gig. Di Cicco’s only in a few scenes, but he’s an awesome dipshit. No notes.

Starting on the night shift with Winkler is new guy Keaton, who’s a delightful jackass.

In addition to breaking in the new guy and fretting over the wedding with Hecht—the wedding is in nine months—Winkler also starts hanging out with neighbor Shelley Long, who just happens to be a call girl. They meet in the second scene, when Long’s identifying a body and realizes she knows Winkler, who does not remember her and who the investigating cop is sure is a john. Eventually, there’s confusion involving Hecht, who the film does no favors in the nagging girlfriend part. Overcoming how poorly Hecht gets treated is one of Shift’s initial hurdles. It clears, but just barely. They delay the fallout from Winkler and Long’s new friendship until they’ve got Hecht in a part to make her seem villainous in addition to pitiful.

Hecht being really good helps.

At the heart of the film are Winkler and Keaton. Keaton’s trying to convince Winkler they’re in a buddy picture, while Winkler just wants to be left alone. Lots of good friendship bonding, with lots of laughs (and then heart), for Winkler and Keaton.

For most of the second act, their friendship is the core; then things gracefully transition to Long and Winkler.

The third act opens clunky–Night Shift certainly seems like they went back and re-did some of the film to make it work better. It’s so clunky it entirely stalls the film. Then, in an effort worthy of Atlas, Winkler singlehandedly (though Vincent Schiavelli contributes) gets the film moving again. It’s all in a big comedy set piece with multiple moving parts moving across plot levels, and it’s glorious. The finish is then gravy, pay-off after pay-off.

Keaton gives one of the exceptional comic performances, Winkler’s a wonderful lead, Long’s outstanding. It’s so well-acted, so well-made. So surprisingly unproblematic in its portrayal of the subject matter (I mean, there are some problems, but a lot less than you’d think).

Night Shift’s phenomenal.

Bullitt (1968, Peter Yates)

Bullitt is from the period when Hollywood wasn’t calling the Mafia the Mafia yet—it’s “The Organization” here—and none of the mobsters had Italian names, but they are mostly Italian (heritage) actors. It’s especially funny because part of Bullitt’s conceit hangs on WASPs like up-and-coming senator Robert Vaughn not being able to tell Italians apart.

But that inability figures into Bullitt’s solution, which is beside the point. It’s such a nothing burger, the whole thing gets explained in two and a half lines as lead Steve McQueen and sidekick Don Gordon head off to the next set piece. Because while the film’s all about McQueen’s investigation, it’s about McQueen investigating. The film’s a character study of a hotshot San Francisco detective during one of his cases, and, despite the property damage, it might not even be one of his biggest cases. We don’t know. Vaughn wants him on the case because McQueen makes good press, but there’s never any press in the movie.

And we do see the occasional newspaper. Director Yates is hyper-focused on McQueen, though that focus doesn’t mean we get the full procedural. We don’t even see the resolution to the elaborate, exquisite car chase. Instead, we skip ahead to the next time McQueen’s going to do something idiosyncratic.

So, despite being (apparently) beloved by his fellow coppers, McQueen is very much not a regular cop. He hangs out with a happening crowd, dating British architect (I mean, she’s working on an architecture project) Jacqueline Bisset. She doesn’t know about his work life, and he likes to keep it that way. For good reason, it turns out. While there are probably a couple significant events in McQueen’s character’s work life covered in the film, the tack-on subplot about his girlfriend realizing he’s around poor people in poor places all day and not liking it seems the most consequential one.

Though, who knows, because the most relationship-building the film does for McQueen and Bisset has him being charming and then admiring. Otherwise, he’s a little busy with work.

The film opens with a gorgeous titles sequence (from Pablo Ferro Films) and expressive Lalo Schifrin music recounting a mob accountant getting away from goons in Chicago. In some ways, the titles set the tone for the film; in other ways, very much not. For instance, Schifrin’s score will barely figure in during the main action; Yates is far more interested in the diegetic sound; John K. Kean has the sound credit, with Duane Hansel, the uncredited sound editor. They do singular work. Bullitt’s got its share of genre and style innovations, but the sound design is on a whole other level.

However, the camerawork in the titles is similar to the rest of the film. Yates and cinematographer William A. Fraker alternate between vérité and precise movement. Yates likes his crane shots too, even limited ones indoors—lots of Bullitt is about watching people work and listening to the environment around them. More specifically, it’s about watching McQueen watch people work. The first major dramatic sequence in the second act involves ER doctor Georg Stanford Brown operating while McQueen (and eventually Vaughn) wait. Vaughn’s agitated, McQueen’s… seemingly not, seemingly reserved, but what’s under the surface? Yates points the camera at McQueen and inspects, which he’s already established as a motif in the first act (when McQueen’s admiring Bisset). Such good direction.

Until the third act, when Bullitt becomes a detached action thriller—with Yates, Fraker, editor Frank P. Keller, and the sound department all using previously established techniques on a giant set piece set at the airport—it’s all about watching McQueen’s face, his eyes, his breaths; waiting for him to act and react.

Other characters get similar inspection too. Usually, when dealing with McQueen or Vaughn, but also not: cabbie Robert Duvall takes it all in from the first scene in San Francisco, as the mob accountant turned witness works his way around town. Police captains Simon Oakland and Norman Fell both especially get to stare daggers while waiting on McQueen and Vaughn. But bad guys John Aprea and Bill Hickman watching McQueen (or, more accurately, his car) is maybe the most remarkable since Yates and Keller are implementing the technique in the middle of a car chase. Again, such good direction.

Most of the performances are outstanding. McQueen’s spell-binding; Oakland, Duvall, and Brown all have great moments. Vaughn’s a piece of shit politician, so he’s somewhat limited, but he’s real good at it. Similarly, Bisset’s a little too thin, but she’s fine. No time for love or architecture in Bullitt. Gordon’s a good sidekick and the occasional comic relief. He and McQueen have fantastic rapport, which makes their scenes work more than the dialogue.

The script—credited to Alan Trustman and Harry Kleiner, based on a Robert L. Fish’s novel not starring a character named Bullitt (and written under the pen name Robert L. Pike)—is terse and willfully obtuse at times. Bullitt feels like Yates and Keller, especially, made it in the editing studio, but who knows, maybe Trustman and Kleiner really did write it so remote. There are some great one-liners, though; it’s not overtly macho but enthusiastic about its procedural jargon–such a strange, transfixing combination.

Fraker’s photography is glorious and would be the easy technical standout if it weren’t for Keller’s peerless cutting.

The third act’s got a handful of problems, but Bullitt weathers them well thanks to McQueen, Yates, Keller, Fraker, and company. It’s a masterful piece of work.

Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949, Robert Hamer)

I don’t think I’ve ever referred to a performance as delicious before. I haven’t on The Stop Button (if Google is to be believed), but I’m also pretty sure I’ve never said that phrase before. Delicious performance.

Dennis Price gives a delicious performance in Kind Hearts and Coronets. He narrates almost the entire film; there’s a prologue to establish the setting and ground situation a little. It’s the late nineteenth century (which director Hamer and co-screenwriter John Dighton forget numerous times), and a British royal is due for the gallows in the morning. Price is that royal. He’s spending his last night on Earth writing his memoirs, which will eventually get to his conviction, but first, he’s got to cover all his other crimes.

Price’s narration starts with his childhood, which succeeds thanks to Audrey Fildes’s performance as his mother. She’s out of the film, tragically, in a dozen minutes or so, but her character’s incredibly complex in that time. Fildes ran off with an Italian singer (also Price, but in a mustache), who died upon hearing his son’s first cries. Fildes’s noble family cut her off, even in her tragedy. Thanks to the flashback device, we get to see Fildes and Price (as her husband) in the salad days, which carries her character development through into Fildes as a widow. By the time Price is playing the part, in his late teens, presumably, Fildes has become obsessed with reclaiming her position.

Along the way, Price’s character makes some friends who are important (and not) later on.

It’s a wonderfully done summary sequence, though it does delay Kind Hearts kicking off. Part of Price’s initial success is distracting from the inevitable—Alec Guinness playing eight different parts. It’s no secret, he’s credited with all of them in the opening titles, but the film takes its time before bringing him in. And the first time is just a walk-on, walk-off so Price can get a look.

Fildes can’t wait forever for her family to take her back; eventually, after one tragedy and slight too many, Price decides he’s going to commit to pruning his family tree until he and Fildes’s line is back in contention for the title.

Once Price starts hunting Guinness in his various parts, the film takes on a slightly absurdist tone, and it works. It’s having fun with Guinness doing different parts—including one woman—at various ages, though all snooty. Price is also snooty, which ingratiates him to a couple of his targets. One’s an old bank manager; the other’s a young layabout photographer with a beautiful wife, played by Valerie Hobson. Price is taken with her, but he’s been carrying on a long-time affair with childhood friend Joan Greenwood, who threw him over—marriage-wise—for a man with a career while Price just had a job.

The second act of Kind Hearts is Greenwood realizing she’d made a big mistake not latching on to Price’s star and Price realizing he lucked out Greenwood was as shallow as him because he’s got an idea on getting Hobson away from her Guinness.

Thanks to Price’s narration—which comments on his motivations, feelings, and thoughts throughout—he’s able to remain the star of the film, which Guinness otherwise ought to be walking away with. The film never addresses, other than the Italian patriarch, why Price doesn’t look like Guinness. It’s also unclear how Fildes fits into the family and who she would’ve been abandoning when she ran off.

Another missing piece is Greenwood’s brother, who apparently doesn’t survive to adulthood in any meaningful way for Price (or Greenwood).

Greenwood’s actually where Kind Hearts goes the most wrong. Well, she and Hobson. Hamer and Dighton write the Guinness roles as caricatures, which Guinness then inhabits and exudes pure brilliance, but the female characters aren’t even caricatures. They’re entirely one note. Sure, they’re from Price’s perspective because he’s narrating, only they’re not. Hamer’s direction manages to showcase Greenwood and Hobson, but never their performances. It’s too bad.

Great music from an uncredited Ernest Irving, Douglas Slocombe photography, Anthony Mendleson costumes—Kind Hearts is a fantastic production. Hamer’s direction is solid, other than the aforementioned problems, but never particularly impressive. The production and the performances drive the film’s success.

Nice little turns from Miles Malleson and Clive Morton in the prologue.

Kind Hearts and Coronets: plenty of Guinness to nibble on, but Price’s the feast.

This post is part of the 9th Annual Rule, Britannia Blogathon hosted by Terence Towles Canote of A Shroud Of Thoughts.

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018, Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, and Rodney Rothman)

Like most superhero origin stories, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse suffers from some third-act problems. It doesn’t just have a lengthy final fight scene between new Spider-Man (voiced by Shameik Moore) and Kingpin (Liev Schreiber in maybe the film’s only pointless voice casting), it’s got some inherently reduced stakes being an animated movie with a PG rating (i.e., it’s doubtful Moore’s going to die), but also no particular animus between Moore and Schreiber. The film starts with Schreiber disposing of the original Spider-Man (Chris Pine) while Moore watches. Pine isn’t in it long enough to make an impact, but he also isn’t in it so much he’s clearly not making an impact like Schreiber. Pine’s Peter Parker Spider-Man, Moore’s Miles Morales Spider-Man.

But Moore’s just met Pine, and while they do have a quick banter about Pine training Moore, they don’t have a relationship. Not like Moore and pretty much every other character in the movie, including one who’s got a significant relationship with Schreiber and could have a major third act pay-off… but doesn’t because Schreiber’s unaware of it.

Unlike most superhero origin stories, Spider-Verse can pull out of the tailspin for a nice set of epilogues. It’s a montage setting up Moore as the new Spider-Man, which the movie’s been setting up since a few minutes in, so it saves the day.

Kingpin might just be a bad villain, outside Vincent D’Onofrio anyway. He’s also not the point of the story here. Sure, he’s trying to open a portal to other universes to get back his family, unintentionally ripping the fabric of the multiverse and letting various Spider-People in from alternate dimensions, only for Moore’s universe to reject their cells and slowly destroy them. So while Schreiber’s responsible for the stakes, he’s really got nothing to do with them.

Enough complaining, however, because Spider-Verse is otherwise a joyful, heartbreaking trip through the Spider-Man mythos. Yes, there’s Moore’s journey to taking up the mantle, but there’s also a bunch of other Spider-People who all inform the mythos one way or another. Principally, there’s Jake Johnson as a forty-something loser version of Spider-Man; he’s like the Pine variant gone wrong, which made me assume he did the voice for the first Peter Parker Spider-Man too. Pine’s seriously not in it enough for it to matter. Johnson reluctantly becomes Moore’s mentor and has the best character arc of the Spider-People.

Mainly because no one else has any stakes other than surviving the movie. Johnson’s learned to love the web again thanks to his adventures with Moore. Plus, Johnson’s from a universe where he’s lost people, and they’re still around in this one.

Then there’s Hailee Steinfeld’s Spider-Woman (or Spider-Gwen). She’s the “What If the Spider Bit Gwen Stacy and Not Peter Parker” issue. Steinfeld’s delightful, probably the second-best performance in the film—Moore’s far and away the best—she just doesn’t have any conflict. The film presents short origin stories for all the Spider-People, starting with Pine’s Spider-Man, and Steinfeld’s gives her some gravitas just nowhere to use it. She’s trapped in another universe, nothing else.

Ditto Nicolas Cage’s Spider-Man Noir, who’s a gag turned into an exemplary supporting cast member—he gets played for laughs the entire time—Kimiko Glenn’s Peni Parker (she’s from a manga future), and then John Mulaney’s Peter Porker, the Spectacular Spider-Ham. He’s from a cartoon universe. Except it’s an animated movie where the very fabric of reality is tearing so it’s frequently cartoony even when Mulaney’s not around. Glenn’s sympathetic, Mulaney’s fine, Cage’s fun. But the best of the Spider-Friends outside the central trio (who don’t get to be the central trio for long enough) is Lily Tomlin’s Aunt May. She’s the tech brains behind Spider-Man, and it’s a wonderful turn.

So all those Spider-People need to get home and stop Schreiber from destroying this universe while Moore’s also dealing with family issues. Dad Brian Tyree Henry is pressuring Moore to go to an elite private school, where Moore’s class and race set him apart from the rest of the students. He just wishes he could stay in Brooklyn and hang out with his uncle, played by Mahershala Ali. Mom Luna Lauren Velez is in the movie so little you’d think Christopher Nolan wrote it.

Henry makes it known right off he doesn’t like web-slinging vigilantes, making him the wrong person for Moore to consult about his new spider-powers. Worse, Ali’s got a complicated relationship with Spider-Man, too, cutting Moore off from his family.

The movie tries to play up the family angle at the end, but it doesn’t work. It’s another third act stumble to recover from, and it does.

Great direction and animation—it almost always emphasizes the emotionality of the situations the characters find themselves in, finding the sadness at the core of the Spider-Man character and relating it not just between inter-dimensional Spider-People, but also to the core of regular people. It’s an incredibly thoughtful, deliberate exploration of the character through variants of that character. Like, very cool work from writers Phil Lord and Rodney Rothman. They discover something exceptional in Spider-Verse.

The direction and animation are also crucial. Particularly for the pacing. Spider-Verse gets to speed up and slow down using devices not just from film and animation but also incorporating comic book techniques. The comic book style stuff works out great, which is another reason the busy, neat, action-packed, and dramatic finale still comes up short. It doesn’t fulfill the creative ambitions in the rest of the picture.

Excellent music from Daniel Pemberton and then the soundtrack selections as well. And not just because they use the St. Elmo’s Fire song for some reason; it’s kind of awesome when they do.

Spider-Verse is so one of a kind and wonderful, I’ve forgotten to mention Kathryn Hahn until this point. She’s the scientist who’s trying to unlock the multiverse and turns out to be more tied to the Spider-People than it first appears. She goes from being Schreiber’a seemingly unwitting flunky to being the best villain in the movie. It’s not a particularly high bar, of course, but there’s an excellent surprise runner-up to her before it’s all the way down the hill to Schreiber.

Tombstone shows up for a bit, which is cool, but he’s background more than an actual villain.

Spider-Verse is a fantastic motion picture. Moore, Stenfield, and—to a lesser extent—Johnson create some very special characters. Well, along with the animation team, who do phenomenal work on the performances. The voice acting’s great, but the animators make sure the visuals are equal in caliber. Maybe another reason Schreiber’s Kingpin is so wanting, they don’t give him anywhere near the expressiveness of the rest of the characters.

It’s great. Especially since they’re able to save the end… though the end credits tag is utterly skippable. It’s technically and culturally amusing but too slight after the main action.

Beverly Hills Cop (1984, Martin Brest)

Beverly Hills Cop opens with a montage of Detroit street scenes. Kids playing, people talking, walking, Black and white. It’s beautifully cut—even at its most tediously cop action movie procedural, the editing is always glorious (though there’s lots of technical magnificence in Cop—and is well-done enough you even forgive the film for Glenn Frey’s The Heat is On. The thing about really tightly chosen soundtracks is when a song doesn’t fit the characters, and Glenn Frey is definitely not what Eddie Murphy’s Detroit super-cop puts on the stereo hi-fi. It’s okay enough. And the montage is excellent.

But it’s nothing compared to the first action sequence, which has a cigarette smuggler wreaking havoc in a stolen truck on the streets of Detroit, all the cops in pursuit, Murphy swinging around the back of the trailer, The Pointer Sisters’ “Neutron Dance” blaring, every shot cut perfectly to the music. It’s mesmerizing. And director Brest makes sure to show off Murphy’s reaction shots. After that opening scene with the cops arriving to set off the truck chase, the entire movie is pretty much watching Murphy figure out the story. Brest just sets the camera on him and waits for Murphy to lead the scene to its finish with his deliveries and expressions. So when Lisa Eilbacher is just staring at him on the job, waiting for him to find the next clue, it makes perfect sense. He’d be just as transfixing to the people around him.

Brest directs Cop with a spotlight on Murphy, leveraging Bruce Surtees’s very grim and gritty photography (even for an action movie) and Murphy’s ability to make the comedy work. Because everyone’s Murphy’s sidekick in a series of sketches. Well, until the third act. And it’s sluggish through the second act when Murphy teams up with Beverly Hills cops and buzzkills John Ashton and Judge Reinhold. The movie takes a while to really loose Ashton and Reinhold as a comedy duo—they’ve got a whole slapstick number at one point, with Harold Faltermeyer’s scorekeeping the energy up until they’re able to take it through unfunny into a good gag. And the last one before the big action finale.

It’s a decent big action finale, with Murphy able to deliver the thriller goods while Ashton and Reinhold take over the comedy. There are a lot of reasons Beverly Hills Cop could never get made today, not least of which being if a bunch of white guys with assault weapons are shooting at a Black man (even one with two white friends) on their Beverly Hills estate… would the cops even show up? Cop ages rather strangely. Starting with none of the white cops just shooting Murphy when they don’t recognize him. It’s uncomfortably optimistic.

But there’s also the Beverly Hills angle. Cop’s able to treat it as an absurd foreign land, where every car is a Mercedes, every person white but polite, and the cops tattle on each other for infractions. It leads to a lot of funny scenes. Murphy, Brest, and Cop can get quite a bit of material from it. The big changeover in tone comes after the strip club scene, which isn’t the worst eighties action movie strip club scene, but it’s still utterly pointless. Cop doesn’t have female characters—Eilbacher’s art gallery director is only female because they wouldn’t have been able to sell a straight male art gallery director. She and Murphy don’t have any romantic chemistry; they’re just old friends. The first act of Cop is very much about old friends. And it’s definitely not about girls. If you look in the end credits, it’s Eilbacher then fifteen guys (and only one Black guy) before you get to the next female character. Murphy spends the entire time in the strip club flirting with the waitress, and there’s not even a reaction shot. Cop’s about boys.

To be incredibly fair to it and what they pull off: Beverly Hills Cop takes place over four days, three of them consecutive, and there’s only dull moment is trying to figure out if Bronson Pinchot is intentionally stalling the scene. Brest and the editors time everyone else in the movie with Murphy, but Pinchot against him, and it’s almost like a dig to make Pinchot more unlikable. Like maybe he was actually too likable, and they screwed it up for a laugh. But the laugh is he’s foreign and an art gallery clerk.

Paul Reiser does better in his bit part as Murphy’s Detroit sidekick, but he’s really just there to dump exposition and set up jokes.

The best supporting performance is probably Ronny Cox as the Beverly Hills captain. He’s got the least to do in terms of action but the most character while doing it. Then probably Steven Berkoff’s off-putting but successful villain. Then Eilbacher holds her own against everyone and helps maintain Murphy’s energy even when he’s in Beverly Hills. Ashton and Reinhold are both good, likable, funny. Reinhold’s got a couple long comedy bits, but they eventually pay off enough. Brest doesn’t care to showcase anyone else. He just wants to watch Murphy, which makes sense because Murphy’s almost indescribably good. Nonpareil. It’s a profoundly successful showcase (and very unfortunate he and Brest never teamed up again); Beverly Hills Cop is no crappy blue Chevy Nova; it’s the perfect star-making vehicle.

The great technicals just make it better. Cop’s unimaginable looking different from Surtees’s contrast heavy but still muted photography or playing differently than how Arthur Coburn and Billy Weber cut it. Not to mention the Faltermeyer score. Or the often great soundtrack (Patti LaBelle contributes the two other big songs, not Frey).

And Brest’s direction is excellent. The film’s a singular success.

Pig (2021, Michael Sarnoski)

Pig is an anti-noir. Writer and director Sarnoski sets it up as something of a neo-noir in the first act, with seemingly inscrutable modern-day hermit Nicolas Cage having to travel back to civilization and civilization being scared of him. And even though Cage’s adventure routes through shady settings, they’re just background to the actual journey and immaterial to the actual character. Pig is a character study—or a couple of them—in quirky (but not as quirky as it initially appears) wrapping. Sarnoski also delays the start of the character study to emphasize how unjustified expectation can affect a narrative; Pig does a great job of fulfilling promises to itself, not the audience.

Cage is a truffle farmer in rural Oregon. He lives within walking distance of a one-café town and driving distance of Portland, where rich foodies crave truffles. How else can they do artful, soulless winter menus; got to have truffles. His only contact with the outside world is his truffle dealer, overcompensating wiener Alex Wolff. Cage lives in a shack in the middle of the woods, Wolff brings him supplies in exchange for the truffles, which Cage finds with the help of his only friend, his truffle pig.

We get Cage’s name early, never get the pig’s, barely get Wolff’s. Names aren’t important for the protagonists specifically but also in general. Proper nouns are some of Pig’s noirish red herrings, seemingly significant but actually distractions from the main course.

After some adorable moments with the pig and Cage’s sorrowful solitary existence—Pig takes much of the first act to gradually establish; it certainly doesn’t appear they’re going to be able to go the character study route at the beginning. Cage and Sarnoski do a lot of work, the character development hurrying to make its appointment with the narrative when the action really gets going.

So soon after the pig’s established as cute and Cage’s existence (farming truffles for hipster foodies) is established as sad, bad guys kidnap the pig. Cage is going to need Wolff’s help getting her back because Wolff’s got a car.

Their rescue mission soon leads them to Portland, where Wolff is trying to establish himself as an elite restaurant ingredient supplier, and it turns out Cage has a unique history. Wolff’s very much under study, too, with Pig generally juxtaposing the two men, not specifically. There are faint echoes between the character development arcs, but universal ones, not ones precise to the characters. See, Cage has a very particular set of skills, skills he acquired over a very long career. And he’s going to have to use them, and it’s going to change everything for a very select group of people.

Now, Pig doesn’t spend much time with its supporting cast. One of Cage’s most crucial character revelation scenes is entirely in long shot, so the exposition has more significant effect than the actual acting. The delivery’s excellent and all, but it’s about the space he’s in and how he interacts with it. Sarnoski’s got good and better composition (there are occasional moments when it seems like cinematographer Patrick Scola trips and jiggles unintentionally—also ones where he’s intentionally jiggling), but Sarnoski always knows how to shoot the scene. The narrative distance is superb.

The primary supporting cast member is Adam Arkin. He’s great. He’s the Mr. Big in the anti-noir, and he’s got to do a significant shift real fast. Cage has to do a big shift gradually. Arkin gets a close-up to entirely change the course of the film.

David Knell and Darius Pierce are the other two principal supporting actors, both stops along Cage’s quest through his past. Knell’s outstanding in the first scene to really show off Cage’s skills, which is also where Pig’s very high aims start coming into view, and the film assuredly realizes them.

The whole show is not Cage. Wolff’s excellent too. Sarnoski’s direction is strong. The writing’s strong. But Cage could be the entire show. You’d need the script, but Cage could carry it without anyone else. The performance is mesmerizing start to finish. It gets richer as the film moves along and more details come out, but Cage is never changing, just revealing layer upon layer. He’s magnificent.

And Pig’s real good.

Judas and the Black Messiah (2021, Shaka King)

Judas and the Black Messiah has some third act problems. They end up drawing too much attention to LaKeith Stanfield’s character—the Judas—not having enough, well, character. Especially since director King uses footage of the real guy (it’s a true story) in the denouement, after opening the film with Stanfield in old age makeup playing the guy in the footage.

The film’s about Fred Hampton (The Black Messiah, played by Daniel Kaluuya) and Bill O’Neal (Stanfield). Hampton was the chairman of the Chicago chapter of the Black Panther Party. O’Neal is the FBI informant who aided in his murder. In 1989, O’Neal gave an interview for Eyes on the Prize 2 where he explained his informant status and complicity in the murder. The entire transcript is available online, with King using some of the unaired footage, which suggests he had access to the whole thing. Only O’Neal—in the interview—utterly copped out on accepting any responsibility for being a Judas. And the film doesn’t empathize with him about it, severely knocking down the effectiveness of Stanfield’s performance and even story arc. Particularly since—after an action beat—instead of seeing Stanfield’s reaction, the film uses Jesse Plemons’s white FBI guy as the scene protagonist. Basically once we get a scene of Martin Sheen in J. Edgar Hoover makeup being a scumbag and Plemons deciding he’s going to go along to get along, that plot line starts going downhill.

It unfortunately coincides with Hampton’s temporary release from jail, which has King shifting the perspective on his storyline from Kaluuya to Dominique Fishback, as Kaluuya’s conflicted girlfriend. So. Third act problems. The film’s able to do a last minute save thanks to the historical facts, which it presents on title cards (though, given Stanfield’s narrating from go and then the title of the film, it might’ve been better with the cards at the beginning versus the end); King does that ever precarious move in the biopic of bringing in the real people. It works thanks to Fishback’s person’s future, but also—and more complicated—Fred Hampton footage. The title cards draw attention to Hampton’s age at the time of his assassination—twenty-one—though Kaluuya’s not twenty-one. And Stanfield’s not twenty-one either. So there’s this biopic-y feel all of a sudden; it doesn’t have long enough to be problematic (would it have been better with age appropriate leads, et cetera) because of the real Hampton footage.

It’s impossible to have someone—anyone—play Fred Hampton. Even with the magic Kaluuya makes in his performance, it’s nothing like the actual Fred Hampton. Even in a thirty second clip, it’s clear he’s singular and the tragedy of the story punctures the soul. So King manages to all of a sudden go unsteady with the real O’Neal footage—basically using it to cop out to not giving Stanfield a fuller character—then to immediately ratchet it tight with the rest of the title cards and the Hampton close. Even if the Hampton close does Kaluuya no favors. Between the actors and the truth, King chooses the latter.

Otherwise, Judas and the Black Messiah is spectacular.

Until the second Sheen scene—Sheen opens the film lecturing to an auditorium of FBI agents about the dangers of Black people getting rights (generally getting rights; he gets specific in the scene opposite Plemons later) and it’s unclear he’s J. Edgar Hoover, unless the makeup was supposed to be a giveaway—but until that second Sheen scene, it’s Kaluuya’s film. Stanfield and his occasional narration and his meeting up with Plemons is just the narrative angle on introducing Kaluuya and the Black Panther chapter.

Kaluuya transfixes. He starts quiet in a speech to a college—where he meets Fishback and she plants the seeds to their romance, which is fantastic throughout—getting louder and louder until he sort of projects out of the screen. It’s one of the great performances from go, with Kaluuya capably handling his reduced presence and King’s revised narrative distances. But he’s the film. Even when he’s no longer the film, he’s the film. Right up until reality crashes in.

Stanfield’s good but it’s a bland part. Everyone else in the Panther party is better, starting with Fishback, but also supporting players Ashton Sanders and—especially—Albee Smith. Smith ends up with the most consistently tracked arc (versus Stanfield’s arc really being Plemons’s, Kaluuya’s transferring to Fishback) and it’s phenomenal. Darrell Britt-Gibson gets to play the sturdy sidekick guy throughout and is ever reliable. Great cast, great performances. King does really well with his actors.

Technically, it’s always outstanding. Sean Bobbitt’s photography is great, Craig Harris and Mark Isham’s score, Kristan Sprague’s editing, Sam Lisenco’s production design is excellent. Judas always looks, sounds, and moves great.

Okay, minus the Sheen and FBI stuff. King doesn’t know how to do the bad guys winning.

Judas is a big, gut-wrenching success for Kaluuya, Fishback, and King.