Tag: Laura Harrier

BlacKkKlansman (2018, Spike Lee)

I’m late on BlacKkKlansman. It plays a little differently in 2021 versus 2018 (or even 2019), because now there’s no difference in the rhetoric of the seventies racist garbage and today’s Republicans. The film opens with Alec Baldwin playing the host of a KKK newsreel and doing multiple takes as to take the racism up a notch. The prologue does a couple things. First, it establishes the language of the film. It’s set in the early 1970s in Colorado. White people resent not being able to say the N word so they have all sorts of euphemisms. Baldwin’s opening draws attention to the word replacements and how intent changes content. Second, director Lee does a bunch with historical pop culture imagery—Gone with the Wind, Birth of a Nation—throughout the film and the prologue sets it up. It’s a jarring, grotesque, transfixing opening.

The film proper kicks off with lead John David Washington interviewing for a job at the Colorado Springs police department. They’re trying to get with the times and the times say they need at least one Black police officer. Washington interviews with unidentified Black man Isiah Whitlock Jr. (somehow the film gets away with a meta-“Wire” reference for Whitlock) and very white police chief Robert John Burke before getting sent off to the records room for a bit.

Washington’s ambitious but Burke doesn’t care, not until Kwame Ture comes to town for a speaking gig and Burke wants someone to see how much the local Black people is getting riled up and ready for armed revolt.

The film’s got a very methodical first act, with Lee taking the time to establish Washington so when Ture’s speech hits him, the result is visible. Washington’s there undercover, spying on Black college students—and flirting with Black Student Union president Laura Harrier—and when he hears Corey Hawkins (as Ture) speak, something changes. It’s not even clear what changes because Washington is affably inscrutable. Based on his interactions with his fellow cops—Burke in particular—he conveys there being a definite limit to how much nonsense about Black people he’ll tolerate without comment, but he’s very intentionally deceiving Harrier.

So BlacKkKlansman is about some bad guys and some problematic guys. The only heroes are the students, which kind of spoils the ending but I won’t go any further into it. Lee makes a very big swing with the ending—eschewing an epilogue—and instead offers a capstone about the danger of trying to capstone “history.”

Anyway.

On a whim, Washington calls the KKK (they advertise in the Colorado Springs newspaper; maybe don’t Google to see if they still do, why upset yourself) and pretends to be a white guy. But not a stupid, overly violent racist white guy, just a regular calm reasonable white guy. So he’s a hot prospect. Only problem is Washington can’t go in person. Oh, and he uses his own name.

The former is more immediately important and so they get Adam Driver to play Washington in person with the Klan guys.

The movie’s then a fairly straightforward procedural about cops Washington, Driver, and Michael Buscemi investigating the local Klan, led by Ryan Eggold, who’s got a loose cannon sidekick, Jasper Pääkkönen, and a drunk and dumb enough to be dangerous Paul Walter Hauser. Eggold’s the pseudo-intellectual white supremacist, so Washington and Driver are able to play to his vanity. Washington will also be really good at manipulating Klan national leader David Duke (Topher Grace) when they become phone buddies. Because racist white men just want other racist white men to validate them. Ashlie Atkinson, as Pääkkönen’s true believer wife, also plays a big part in the Klan stuff. The action mostly sticks close to events Washington and Driver participate in or witness, but then all of a sudden Pääkkönen becomes a second tier protagonist and the film becomes a whole lot more dangerous. Because more than anything else BlacKkKlansman is about taking racist white people seriously (and what happens when you don’t).

It’s great. Washington is a fantastic lead, likable even when he shouldn’t be, and his gentle romance with Harrier is an outstanding subplot. Also good but less important is his relationship with Driver, who’s doing his best to hide his Jewish heritage around his racist fellow cops. BlacKkKlansman isn’t a buddy cop movie or a juxtaposition piece, it’s the story of this case, with Washington’s experience as a Black man being a cop in Colorado Springs in 1972 riding the momentum. Only Lee’s going to make it about the way they’re telling that story, working a fantastic narrative distance and perspective sort of over Washington’s shoulder but also much broader, maybe even documentarian (BlacKkKlansman observes its way too real villains almost entirely without comment, cut it differently and Driver, Pääkkönen, Eggold, even Atkinson, could easily be the protagonist). And there’s a big finish to the procedural, there’s a big crowd pleaser for the more comedic elements (Washington does get to be buddies with fellow cops Driver, Buscemi, and Ken Garito, who know other cops are racist murderers but blue lives matter more or whatever), but then it’s time to look at what we’ve learned and what the characters have learned and what it all means. And it’s a great ending. It’s nauseating. But it’s great. Lee never lets up on the pressure either. He gives the film one release and then he sits down to get serious. He even rightfully retracts the second, bigger release.

The best performance is probably Pääkkönen, who’s never not terrifying, never not real. Everyone’s great though. Harrier, Eggold, Driver, Grace, Hauser, Atkinson, Burke, Garito, Buscemi. Plus a fantastic character actor background cast. And then Hawkins. He’s phenomenal. Harry Belafonte has an excellent cameo, so does Nicholas Turturro, on completely different ends of multiple spectrums.

It’s a phenomenal film; always haunting, sometimes hilarious, it’s particularly outstanding streamlined (read: mainstream) work from Lee. And then so much good acting. Great soundtrack, music by Terence Blanchard, photography by Chayse Irvin, edited by Barry Alexander Brown—Curt Beech’s production design and Marci Rodgers’s costumes are great too—BlacKkKlansman is superlative filmmaking start to finish.

Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017, Jon Watts)

If Spider-Man: Homecoming isn’t the best film with six credited screenwriters, it’s got to be near the top. Additionally, the film’s got director (and one the Sinister Six–wokka wokka–screenwriters) Watts, who kind of manually binds the film together scene by scene. There’s so much different stuff going on–darker than expected villain Michael Keaton’s subplot, which is a “what happens when a psychopath loses his day job” origin, Spider-Man Begins, and a high school movie. The first two interconnect, the second two interconnect, but it’s a lot going on at once. Not to mention Robert Downey Jr. being shoehorned in for franchise purposes.

Watts, through his direction of the actors and the pacing of the scenes, keeps it enthusiastic but never too enthusiastic. The studio credits having the old “Spider-Man” cartoon theme is actually as far as it gets towards too self-aware. Keeping it grounded makes the “Spider-Man excitedly climbing buildings” sequences entertaining. It’s Spider-Man’s enthusiasm, not the film’s. It’s Tom Holland’s enthusiasm.

And Spider-Man: Homecoming is all about Tom Holland. Keaton gets to do his villain arc on his own for most of the movie and it’s flashy, but it’s a small part. Holland’s in every other scene (except when he’s Spider-Manning to save people or to stop criminals). He’s got Avengers training with Downey and Jon Favreau (who looks miserable), he’s got high school with Jacob Batalon, Laura Harrier, and Zendaya, he’s got friendly neighborhood crimefighting, he’s got home with Marisa Tomei. The script balances all of it pragmatically and impersonally.

Homecoming always errs on the side of narrative payoff. Even though everyone implies the potential of letting loose, only Batalon gets anything near the chance and it’s incredibly muted. The film’s focused on Holland’s story and goals, so much the things going on alongside him–Tomei, Harrier–are left out. Except when the script picks back up with them, there’s no gap. Quick, effective expositions, good acting, and Watts’s meticulous narrative distance to Tom Holland, it all comes together. And Homecoming, which has Chris Evans cameos, laser guns, suburban superhero action, Downey, stunt cameo casting, a terribly bland but competent Michael Giacchino score, and everything else–oh, the Ferris Bueller’s Day Off homage–it has so much.

Yet Watts keeps it together. Because he keeps it on Holland and it never seems like a pressure. Holland’s character development arc is a subtle one too. He usually just has to bake it into other scenes, with the script never getting too far into it. Homecoming doesn’t imply things often and it’s very careful when it does; it knows it’s a franchise picture with a familiar IP and it only wants to do what it wants to do.

But since it is a franchise picture, there’s also a lack of urgency. Everything feels very safe. Keaton feels restrained. Not sure letting him loose on a villain kick would result in a better performance, but he’s still holding back. The bad guys in Homecoming are never bad enough to hurt regular people, which sometimes too contributes to the “safe” feeling.

Though it allows a pointless but amusing Donald Glover cameo.

Excellent special effects. Salvatore Totino’s photography is simultaneously warm and crisp, letting the film toggle between thrills and light superhero angst, but it also provides a great backdrop for the CGI. You have to stop and reminds yourself the leaping figure isn’t Holland.

Homecoming finally figures out how to let the actor “playing” Spider-Man give a full performance as Spider-Man. Because Watts and Holland.

All the acting is good. Downey’s doing a schtick at this point, but likably. It’s a PG Downey in a PG–13 movie. Batalon and Harrier are great. Bokeem Woodbine’s good as one of Keaton’s goons. Tomei’s good. Zendaya is likable. She’s got nothing to do but she’s likable. Besides appearing miserable to have agreed to appear, Favreau’s fine. Enough. He underplays an underwritten part.

Keaton’s fine. Kind of good. Never bad, but never anything too special. The script gives him a “little guy trying to survive” thing to do and Keaton can do it. It’s just not a great part. It’s effective and it’s only supposed to be effective.

And Holland’s amazing.

Given its production history (involving Marvel, i.e. Disney, producing a film at Columbia, i.e. Sony, to work it into the Marvel movie continuity), not to mention six credited screenwriters, and being such a familiar film property at this point, Spider-Man: Homecoming starts out with a lot it seems to need to do and a lot it shouldn’t do.

The film does everything it should and nothing it shouldn’t and never in a rush. Nothing’s perfunctory. Homecoming sets up Keaton, then it moves on to Holland, and it just does the movie.

Excellent result from Watts, Holland, and everyone else’s efforts. Except Giacchino. One of Homecoming’s early hurdles is succeeding in spite of Giacchino’s boring score.