BACURAU

Directing: B-
Acting: B
Writing: B-
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B

It’s said that Bacurau is packed with subtext, so it may very well be that it works better for Brazilian audiences, or at least non-Brazilians with a deep knowledge of Brazilian history and politics. I must admit that I am almost completely ignorant of such things, save for such broad details as their horrible President Bolsonaro, or Brazilian wildfire deforestation, neither of which are referenced at all in this film. At least not directly. Whatever co-directors Juliano Dornelles and Kleber Mendonça Filho are getting at with this film exactly, I don’t have a clue what it is. I feel like I need some sort of cinematic version of Cliffs Notes.

The film doesn’t even seem to know what genre it is, and I sure don’t. It certainly can’t settle on a particuar tone. Consider the genres listed for it on IMDb.com: adventure, horror, mystery, thriller, western. The very beginning, when a young woman and a young man are returning to the rural Brazilian town of the film’s title, feels much like a documentary without narration. The woman has returned to pay her respects to the town’s matriarch, who has recently passed. The entire town is in mourning.

I great deal of time is spent setting the scene here, with not much of anything at all going on. It goes on long enough to make even the most dedicated viewer lose interest. Bacurau does get interesting, if never quite coherent, but did it have to insist on waiting until well over half its 131 minute run time to do so? I’d be tempted to get far more critical even than this, but for the fear that maybe there’s more to this film that I’m just not seeing due to my ethnocentric perspective on it.

Bacurau is certainly unique, I’ll give it that. At least three times, you become convinced you’re starting to get what kind of movie it is, and it throws you for a loop. Locals in this small town discover that Bacurau seems to have disappeared from all digital maps, and they lose their phone signals. A pair of motorbike riders, presumed tourists, show up, soon after several members of a farm family outside of town are discovered bloody and murdered. And a drone that’s in the shape of a B-movie UFO starts to get spotted flying overhead.

It took me a minute even to realize it was supposed to be a drone, as opposed to an actual UFO that’s just being rendered with terrible special effects. There’s a moment that feels very Ed Wood, until you realize what’s actually going on. And this is where Bacurau most severely turns on its own head, introducting non-local characters who all speak English to each other. Even that gets dangerously close to spoiler territory, and I don’t want to ruin it . . . although for whom, I have no idea. Who in the world would I ever convince to watch this movie?

Maybe someone who is intrigued by this tidbit: Bacurau winds up being an ultra-violent film. I suppose fans of Quentin Tarantino might enjoy it, although Tarantino at least writes stories whose pieces all fit together, even when he’s playing with time. Bacurau is entirely linear in its presentation; it just has pieces that, while they do fit together in the end, you still can’t quite make out the picture once they’re all fastened together. Is it about aliens? About something supernatural? These questions actually get answered pretty early on, through a series of baits and switches. The opening shot, in fact, is from outer space, looking down on Brazil, closing in on the land as it moves beyond an orbiting satellite. Don’t get attached to anything about that opening shot, because it has little to nothing to do with the rest of the movie. You could say the same amount most of the sequences in the first third or so, in fact.

If you like to be surprised, I suppose, then Bacurau is full of rewards. You just have to wait a long time to get them.

Droning on in its own special way.

Overall: B-

MANK

Directing: A-
Acting: A-
Writing: A
Cinematography: A-
Editing: A-

It’s been ten months now since I last saw a film in a movie theater, and in all that time, I have indeed missed movie-going dearly. But, it’s been in a much more abstract sense, being in terms of the overall experience as opposed to being tied to a specific movie I wished I could have seen on the big screen. This is hardly a surprise, given all the blockbusters that were delayed again and again, many of them even now delayed until next year. But even this depends on things like the studio and its parent company: not everyone has an HBO Max they can pivot their entire slate to as part of a long-game strategy.

That said, things are shifting, and in a way few people imagined possible a year ago. And this includes more movies, coming sooner than later, which actually would indeed work better on movie theater screens than they do on home television screens. David Fincher’s new film Mank is the year’s first notable example of that.

And it’s not because it’s a blockbuster of any sort, but because it’s great cinema. Its technical finesse just doesn’t translate as well on the small screen, and I found myself really wishing I could have been watching on a projector screen. Now, if I were to offer Mank any concrete criticism at all, it’s that although it remains an excellent film on its own merits, it is also somewhat self-conscious about being “great cinema.” This is a key distinction from the many other films that have gained attention this year in a way they could never have any other year, revealing themselves to have shifted into the realm of greatness through a far more organic process. I would never quite call Mank “organic.” In fact it’s rather focused on a meticulous attention to detail, both in its present-day storytelling and its references to cinema history—fundamentally, it’s about artifice. But in Fincher’s context, that is done in all the best ways.

Mank is the kind of film that won’t ever top my best-of list, but I wouldn’t be bothered by it eventually winning Best Picture anyway. Of course, like everything else in 2020, the Academy Awards are to be wildly different this year, starting with being scheduled two months later than planned. Thus, even with all the Oscar buzz this film is getting now, there’s plenty of time for people to forget about it in favor of something else to be released between now and then. And honestly, this film has gotten so much critical praise that some might come away from it feeling it was over-hyped. For the record, I don’t really agree with that assessment.

I would say that its script, but David’s late father Jack Fincher, after decades of trying in vain to get it made until Netflix bankrolled it, is rather dense. It is also absolutely enhanced by a working knowledge of Orson Welles’s seminal 1941 masterpiece Citizen Kane. Some even suggest watching that film just prior to this one as a double feature, but even in quarantine, who has the time or the bandwidth for that? I considered it myself, but came back to my long-held conviction that a film should work on its own merits. And Mank absolutely does. It’s just that its universe expands in richness the more you delve into it—the degree to which you do that is up to you.

One thing about the casting is a bit odd: Gary Oldman is 62, playing Citizen Kane script writer Herman Mankiewicz (hence the title, his nickname), who reveals himself at one point to be 43. Granted, Mankiewicz was evidently quite the drunk, which surely ages a man, but Oldman still seems like a stretch. Then again, Oldman’s performance is so great, conveying a uniquely charismatic casual confidence, it’s easy to overlook. The true standout, however, is Amanda Seyfried, of pop trash Mamma Mia! (2008) fame. Here she is unrecognizable, giving an Oscar-worthy performance all her own as MGM actress, and William Randolph Hearst’s longtime mistress, Marion Davies.

Hearst unsurprisingly plays a key role in this film, played flawlessly (as always) by Charles Dance, as the newspaper mogul has always been known as the unofficial target/subject of Orson Welles’s portrayal in Citizen Kane. More importantly, he was the target/subject of Mankiewicz’s original script—the credit for which he shared with Welles, even though Welles really didn’t write any of it; and for which the film later won its single Academy Award. It’s also notable that Welles, played here by Tom Burke, plays a minor role in the Mank story, existing onscreen in but a few select scenes and otherwise existing solely on the other end of phone calls during Mankiewicz’s convalescence after a car accident.

Mank is a historical drama, shot in beautiful black and white cinematography in a clear ode to Citizen Kane itself, about a particular moment in 1940s Hollywood, but it’s about a whole lot more than just the making of what many critics still regard as the best film ever made. A particularly notable and memorable subplot involves the 1934 California gubernatorial campaign of Republican Frank Merriam, who beat Democrat Upton Sinclair with the help of MGM’s hiring of actors to pretend to be real voters in their campaign ads. It’s a subtle reminder that the “fake news” bullshit we get so exasperated with today is far from new—it’s been going on for decades, the better part of a century.

Lastly, I must bring up the editing, as Mank follows a relatively similar narrative structure to Citizen Kane itself, with many flashbacks to nonlinear dates in the past used to inform the “present-day” of the story. They key difference here is something I rather liked: with each flashback, a line of script stage direction appears onscreen, identifying the year we’re going back to, and always specifying “(FLASHBACK).” It works incredibly well, making it impossible to get confused as to where or when we are, and it’s less patronizing than it is just plain useful.

Mank is available to stream on Netflix right now, and incidentally was always produced as a Netflix film. In fact, it’s the third year in as many years we’re getting a Netflix film that is some level of Oscar bait, after the jaw-dropping technical proficiency of Roma (2018) and last year’s good-but-wildly-overrated The Irishman. The previous films both garnered many Academy Award nominations but not as many wins as Netflix clearly hoped for, and I suspect the same will be the case with Mank. That said, while I still think Roma is objectively the best of the three, even with the density of its excellent script, I would venture to say Mank is the most accessible. They key is just to get you to press “play” on this one even when there are countless other, perfectly worthy options over many streaming platforms. All I can tell you is it’s absolutely worth it.

Mank takes his appealingly casual confidence on to the next scene.

Overall: A-

Small Axe: RED, WHITE AND BLUE

Directing: A
Acting: A
Writing: A
Cinematography: A-
Editing: A-

There is so much about Red, White and Blue that is . . . tricky. Once again, the first tricky thing is it being the middle installment out out of the five “Small Axe” films by Steve McQueen being presented weekly on Prime Video (this one went live today). So much of this entire project exists in the margins of categorization: this installment, for example, runs at 80 minutes—short for a movie; long for a television episode. I still lean toward regarding these all as feature films, but given that there are five of them, it’s a commitment. Who besides the film-obsessed like myself is going to watch them all?

And the thing is, even though they are not sequels, it’s becoming clear that their thematic connection is important. They each certainly stand on their own, but they are enhanced by watching them as a series. And Red, White and Blue might very well be the best of them yet. Mangrove got slightly better reviews on average, but I suspect at least part of that is first impressions of a clearly great project. Or, I suppose, I am currently experiencing recency bias. What does it matter when both films are great? The one that came second, last week’s Lovers Rock, didn’t strike me as quite as strong, but now that there are three, it feels in retrospect like a perfectly appropriate interlude. That one has its darker moments but on the whole is an expression of joy through music . . . the other two films in the series so far are much more direction focused on excessive force by the police.

And, like the first film, this one is also based on a true story, about a young Black man in 1980s London who finally decides to join the police force in an attempt to change it “from the inside,” after his immigrant Jamaican father is severely beaten by police. The Caribbean heritage has been a through line in all three films so far, making me expect now that the next two will be as well.

Boy, are these films well timed. Then again, they would be any time—but 2020 is a particularly relevant year for it. Some American films have tacked it as well, but given how many movies focus on cops (usually characterizing them not just as heroes, but easily assumed to be), it’s not that often you see the story of a Black person joining the force specifically because of its institutionalized racism.

Here McQueen deftly weaves in threads of multiple forms of racism, as well. When Leroy Logan (John Boyega, excellent) graduates and is assigned to the precinct in his home neighborhood, he meets and befriends a Pakistani man already also a cop there. Leroy is now the second of only two nonwhite cops there, and they immediately bond over shared experiences. Leroy also soon encounters the very same shit Asif (Assad Zaman) has been enduring all along, with colleagues openly mocking their races in their presence.

And this gets us back to what’s tricky: it’s tough to be in a position like this no matter what, but it’s especially tough when you’re the first. Leroy clearly doesn’t think of himself as a trailblazer per se, nor does this film call attention to that, but it’s what he is. He makes little headway in making the changes he set out to do in London policing, but his very existence makes it easier for another to come along after him and push things a little further along. This context is not discussed or presented at all in the film, in fact, but I sure thought about it. We watch his spirit getting slowly broken, but it’s on his shoulders on which those who follow him will be standing. Or did stand: this is based on a true story, after all.

Red, White and Blue is also compelling in technical ways, as I particularly enjoyed the cinematography in this film. There’s one tense sequence in which Leroy is navigating a factory maze of heavy machinery, with the camera moving ahead, behind and around him as he twists and turns in a long, unbroken take. It’s much like 1917 except without it being a gimmicky selling point. I’m using it to sell it to you now, however: it’s great work. It’s also the kind of camera work that’s only particularly appropriate in this one sequence, so it never distracts from or strains the storytelling. It still places the focus on the character, showing in real time how he’s in pursuit of a dangerous suspect, he calls for backup no fewer than three times, and for the entire chase he’s left on his own.

The entire series of “Small Axe” films is intended to represent the history of Black experience in Britain, and two installments now focus directly on the police—this time from within its ranks. Not only does Leroy face persecution from his colleagues, but since others in his community quite rightly regard the police as their enemy, they think of Leroy as a traitor. He gets his support from a narrow supply channel, mostly through his Aunt Jesse (Nadine Marshall) who works as a Police Liaison, and his wife, Gretl (Antonia Thomas). Incidentally, Tyrone Huntley appears in a few brief scenes as Leroy’s cousin, Imagination singer Leee John, and his being gay is merely subtly hinted at. Leee is incredulous, though, when he first hears of Leroy’s intention to become a cop.

So it takes much of Leroy’s family some time to even slightly warm up to the idea. Leroy faces uphill battles on all sides with this decision, and all these angles are seamlessly woven into this tight hour and twenty minutes, all of it absolutely worth your time.

Out of the frying pan and into the fire.

Overall: A

Advance: SOUND OF METAL

Directing: A
Acting: A
Writing: A
Cinematography: B+
Editing: A

I can’t say enough good things about Sound of Metal—literally have no bad things to say about it. I’ll be open to whatever criticism there might be by others, to be fair, particularly those who are part of key groups represented. Namely, the deaf community and addicts, or to be sure, deaf people in twelve-step programs. I belong to none of these groups, but from my perspective, this film absolutely kills it when it comes to representative intersectionality.

The cast is diverse in just about every way imaginable, and Darius Marder, offering a stunning directorial debut, directs a cast of supporting characters actually hired from the deaf community. Much of the story takes place at a home for addicts, and the people there are diverse even aside from being deaf. And a key part of the plot involves all these deaf characters having the fervent belief that being deaf is not a disability, “not something to be fixed,” while the main character is eager to get implants to regain his hearing.

Riz Ahmed is phenomenal in the lead role, his learning both the drums and ASL in preparation clearly paying off. From very early on in this film, I kept thinking of the excellent 2014 film Whiplash—what I felt at the time was the best film of the year—and not because both films are about a drummer; that’s really just a coincidence. Whiplash was about musicians and being the best at honing talent at all costs; Sound of Metal is about adapting to a sudden and permanent change to your world and reality. But in both cases, from the very start, you cannot look away. The film hooks you, and you are deep in it through the end.

In a way, it’s even more effective in the case of Sound of Metal, given that films usually use music to tell their stories, often in manipulative ways. By contrast, in this movie, you hear a score, and a subtle one at that, maybe three percent of the time. What Marder does is use sound to tell his story, and if this film does not get an Oscar nomination for Sound Editing it will be a travesty.

As the film begins, we are seeing Ruben (Ahmed) playing the drums in a band gig, his girlfriend Lou being the singer. Lou is played by Olivia Cooke, who had previously impressed me a great deal in the 2018 film Thoroughbreds. It’s only one or two scenes later that we see Ruben experiencing sudden hearing loss, so the film gets right to that point: the story isn’t so much about his hearing loss, but about how he deals with it. And at first, because Ruben has difficulty dealing with curve balls in life, he attempts to ignore it. But, the problem gets bad enough quickly enough that he sees a doctor, who tells him his hearing is at about a quarter of what it should be.

Sound of Metal is in a class all its own, always taking its own path, a story that commands attention. It also provides much food for thought, such as that notion of getting surgery for hearing loss being wrong-headed. I can’t decide if I agree with it, or at least, maybe it depends on the person. After all, the experience of someone born deaf is far different from that of someone who grew up hearing and then suddenly loses it. And Ruben’s entire livelihood is tied to his hearing, so it’s understandable for him to feel desperate to get it back.

Now, I’m going to get into quasi-spoiler territory, so be warned. Ruben gets this surgery, and how the film presents the way he hears things after his implants are “activated” is fascinating. I wonder, first of all, how accurately represented that sound could possibly be? The movie is made by hearing people, after all; and even if those who have actually had this surgery can explain it, that can only go so far—no one could possibly truly know how the brain processes sound with the implants unless they actually have them, I would imagine. Ruben’s experience is that the sound is very tinny, and often distorted, especially when there’s a lot of noise around. I found it interesting that sound of his “corrected” hearing would be tinny, on top of his being in a metal band, hence the film’s title. That’s how I took it, anyway; to be fair, no one in the film ever refers to his band’s music as “metal.”

All that said, one of the messages of this film does seem to be that this kind of surgery is not all it’s cracked up to be, or at least it won’t be the solution some think or hope it will be. That’s far from its primary purpose, however, which is one of the many things that make it exceptional. Its purpose is to tell a great story, which it does with flying colors. All these other things, the finesse of its representative intersectionality (I particularly enjoyed Ruben’s friendship with a lesbian addict staying at the group home with him), the sensitivity of its character portrayals, the smart casting, are all bonuses. And they combine to make what is easily one of the best films of the year.

Riz Ahmed learns a new way of navigating his world.

Overall: A

Advance: HALF BROTHERS

Directing: B-
Acting: B-
Writing: C
Cinematography: B-
Editing: B-

Of all the many, many movies I have watched in my life, Half Brothers is backward in a unique way. When it’s sweet, it works; but the funnier it tries to be, the less it works. It’s usually the other way around, but in this case, there is greater success when director Luke Greenfield is actually taking things relatively seriously.

A running gag involves a goat, and this is my least favorite thing about the movie. I kind of hate it. The majority of the film follows half-brothers who never knew they had the same dad, one from the U.S. and one from Mexico, on a road trip through the American Southwest. Renato (Luis Gerardo Méndez) is the successful engineer who built up a company in Mexico; Asher (Connor Del Rio) is the younger, irresponsible American who never holds down a job. Even with that in mind it makes little sense when Connor takes them sixty miles off course to tour a goat ranch and then kidnaps one, escaping with guys literally shooting at their fleeing car. The goat basically becomes a third main character from then on, designed to provide comic relief that mostly falls flat. It’s utterly pointless, and Half Brothers would have markedly improved without that stupid goat.

The goat is not the only attempt at humor that falls flat, however. A lot of it is just plain distractingly unrealistic, as when Renato and Asher happen to first cross paths in coffee shop by coincidence in Chicago, and Asher literally asks Renato, who happens to be standing behind him in line, to spot him two bucks so he can pay for the coffee he just ordered. What? Okay, the coincidental meeting I can suspend my disbelief about, but why the fuck is Asher even at a coffee shop placing orders if he has no money on him? One of the plot threads is the possibility that Asher has something mentally wrong with him, and while we are clearly meant to take that as unfair judgment against him, this behavior is strong evidence otherwise.

A peculiar case of caricature in Half Brothers is something that, upon further reflection, I have decided is kind of fair. With the exception of Asher himself, who is actually given multiple dimensions, every other American encountered in this film displays an exaggerated ignorance, all of them absolute stereotypes of fat, dumb Americans, who constantly speak slower and louder at anyone with an accent. It’s uncomfortable and objectively dumb, but . . . maybe turnabout is fair play? God knows we’ve spent a lifetime seeing movies and TV shows with Mexican characters similarly presented—Americans can take a turn for once. What I can’t decide is whether this was Greenfield’s intention, and given this film’s broader lack of sophistication, I kind of doubt it.

I also keep thinking about how these two men’s father (Juan Pablo Espinosa) never told them of each other’s existence, and sending them on this riddle-addled scavenger hunt to unlock an explanation for it all is supposed to endear them to him and forgive him his transgressions. Once you get past the “feel-good” tone of the movie, though, you might realize that their father is basically inflicting emotional abuse even after his death.

I did laugh out loud a few times. I’ll give Half Brothers that much, even though some of the time I still didn’t think the movie deserved it. Sometimes cheap shots still work, after all. I found the story much more engaging, however, when it focused on the bond Renato had with his father early in life, and on Renato and Asher’s road trip serving as a bonding experience. I’m just not sure sending them on a wild goose chase was the most rational way to make that happen.

Méndez and Del Rio’s performances as the title characters are honestly the best things about this movie, which alone make it relatively engaging. Their personalities are winning enough to make it pleasant enough to hang out with them—in spite of Renato’s exaggerated propensity for getting uptight, and Asher’s exaggerated idiocy. Everything in this movie is some level of exaggerated. Even that would be bearable if not for the script, which is just boneheaded too much of the time.

A generous dose of Mexican-American cheese. And a goat.

Overall: C+