HARRIET

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

There are great things about Harriet, and there are less-than-great things about Harriet, and the first thing about it to distract me was a little odd: as soon as Harriet and her husband John opened their mouths in the opening scene, I thought to myself, damn—those slaves sure had excellent dentists! Their teeth shone with such pearly-white perfection, it made them look like . . . actors.

Which is to say: there’s a lot wrong with Harriet. Or if not wrong, then certainly sort of off. There’s a vague indecisiveness to its tone, as though director Kasi Lemmons can’t decide if it’s a straightforward biopic or a spiritual treatise. This makes it all the more impressive how often star Cynthia Erivo, as Harriet Tubman, rises above all that. Any time Harriet is absorbing in spite of its imperfections, it is because of her. She has a unique talent for conveying vulnerability and strength in equal measure, easing from the former to the latter over the course of the film.

There is no denying that Harriet Tubman, as a historical figure, was an extraordinary woman. A century and a half after she escaped a life of slavery in Maryland, she remains an enduring symbol of both racial justice and feminism. Learn just a fraction of her accomplishments, and it becomes clear that it is far from hyperbole to say she deserves to be the both the first black person and the first woman to be pictured on American currency. (The complications of conflating her accomplishments with material wealth is a conversation for another place and time.) And setting the inevitability of artistic license in movies aside, Harriet depicts a large number of real, historical events that are genuinely amazing. For that reason, you could make the argument that Harriet commands attention. I can see this being a useful tool in near-future American school classrooms.

I just wish a better movie had been made about her. A woman as towering a figure as Harriet Tubman deserves representation in a film that is better than “not bad.”

Which brings me to the genuinely weird bits. Harriet has been subject to some debate as to whether she is depicted as “psychic.” And it is true, she has several premonitions throughout the film, which seem to guide her path as she moves back and forth from north to south and back, leading increasing numbers of slaves to safety. In my view, this isn’t a suggestion of psychic ability so much as Kasi Lemmons, who co-wrote the script with Gregory Allen Howard, infusing into her an element of the divine. This begins relatively early, in a scene in which Harriet leads a group of fugitive slaves safely across a river, apparently thanks to the power of prayer. It doesn’t quite make Harriet Tubman Christ-like, but it does bring her within a stone’s throw of it.

Now, it’s well known that Harriet Tubman was a deeply religious woman, who indeed believed she was guided by God. And I don’t even have issue with her being depicted thus in film. It’s just that Harriet takes it one small step further, taking that notion rather seriously. It seems to say: she was right. Is it so wrong to want a depiction of this woman in which she becomes extraordinary on her own merits?

No human being is without flaws, and Harriet falls into the trap of rendering its hero an unassailable saint. Even when she talks of being “humbled,” it is just more evidence of her sainthood. By the end, Harriet devolves momentarily into sappy dreck, with the requisite “inspirational speech” met by a rapt audience offering her appreciative applause, like countless other movies over the past countless decades. I saw that and could only think: Really?

Such scenes of misguided corniness are augmented by an intermittently obtrusive musical score by Terence Blanchard. And I don’t often note the music in movies, except in Harriet the score often gives way to beautiful spirituals, sung by the slave characters. Harriet is peppered with these interludes, and they possess a powerful, haunting beauty. Lemmons wisely makes use of the incredible voice possessed by Cynthia Erivo, whose vocal talent has already been showcased in last year’s Bad Times at the El Royale. As such, Harriet would have benefited from less of its cheesy score, and a lot more of those acapella spirituals.

Erivo is well supported by others in the very large cast, most notably by the almost ethereal Janelle Monáe as a proprietor friend of Harriet’s in Philadelphia. And, in spite of its moderately fluid tone, Harriet does pack an impressive amount of detail into its storytelling without ever making it feel rushed—a true rarity in biopics. There is much to debate about Harriet, not about the woman but about how this particular movie depicts her. At least Cynthia Erivo carries the weight of an often odd and sometimes contrived script with a dignity all her own. Setting aside the supposed premonitions, it might just still teach us something about the weight and importance of our own history.

Harriet as superhero: she means business.

Overall: B

JOJO RABBIT

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

You’d think a movie marketed as an “anti-hate satire” would be more . . . satirical. What JoJo Rabbit is, rather, is—adorable. And it’s kind of hard to retain any satirical bite when you’re adorable.

Don’t get me wrong, though; adorable has a lot going for it. That’s why, even though this movie has divided critics, it also made the rounds of film festivals as a huge audience favorite, winning the audience award at the Toronto Film Festival. That’s an award that usually goes to an eventual Best Picture Oscar nominee, and has predicted the Best Picture winner half of the past ten years. Critical ambivalence combined with delighted audiences is often a recipe for Academy success.

Would JoJo Rabbit deserve any Oscars? I’d certainly hesitate to go that far. But then, I’d surely have said the same of Green Book, and I absolutely did say the same of The Shape of Water. I won’t deny that I was entertained my this movie, but I also feel a lot of the aforementioned ambivalence.

Maybe you won’t, though. Especially if you are interested in this film, and have little interest in the “wokeness” of the criticism—criticism I would argue is largely justified. JoJo Rabbit is part of an uncomfortable history of “feel-good” films about the Holocaust, which also somehow manage to dilute the truly grave realities of the Holocaust. And it’s a neat trick, allowing viewers to pat themselves on the back for empathizing with victims without ever truly considering the horrors they faced. with antisemitism (among other forms of bigotry) actually on the rise, is now the best time for a movie like this?

I honestly don’t know the answer to that question. I’m much more comfortable merely judging whether JoJo Rabbit works as a movie, and it does . . . kind of. As directed by tTaika Waititi (What We Do in the Shadows, Thor: Ragnarok), the tone is occasionally not quite well tuned. Curiously, the comic conceit of Hitler (played by Waititi himself) as the imaginary friend of 10-year-old JoJo is rarely as funny as intended. And yet, the more dramatic, human elements, this story of an indoctrinated boy’s mind being opened by the teenage Jewish girl being protected by his mother, generally work remarkably well.

And great performances go a long way. I’m tempted to say young Roman Griffin Davis as JoJo is worth seeing the movie all on his own. He’s not just almost unbearably adorable, but his performance is astonishing. His screen presence is the light that fuels everything that actually works in this movie. Scarlett Johansson is also wonderful as his politically subversive mother; Sam Rockwell is a bit of a hoot as a boozy soldier not especially passionate about Nazi ideals; even Rebel Wilson is fun Fraulein Rahm. Alfie Allen is a bit wasted as Sam Rockwell’s soldier sidekick, and young Archie Yates is a bit wooden as JoJo’s friend Yorki. This is Yates’s only credit on IMDb, though, and wooden or not, he’s still plenty adorable too. So, don’t tell him I said he was wooden. He’s got plenty of time to practice on other movies.

The thing is, a movie like JoJo Rabbit would retain far more power if released much sooner after World War II. One particular problem with it being released nearly eighty years later is how abstract that war now is to many viewers, and how this movie in many ways just turns it into a cartoon. I’m all for disarming with humor, but it’s hard to take power away from something so few people still have any active memory of to begin with. The end result is a film that doesn’t really take history seriously. JoJo Rabbit would have a lot more edge to it if it were set closer to now, replacing Adolph as JoJo’s imaginary friend with, say, Osama bin Laden. The point is, Waititi is totally playing it safe.

To be fair, and to give it some credit, JoJo Rabbit does go to some dark places. These moments are almost uniformly fleeting, however, lest the viewer be genuinely challenged in any way. And that’s what satire is supposed to be—it’s a type of challenge. This movie is not that at all. What it is, though, is fun. And adorable. And, more than anything, incredibly sweet. Its sweetness is truly irresistible, even when some of its oddball humor doesn’t quite land. Do we want to contemplate whether it should be sweet? Most critics seem to, while most audiences absolutely do not, and that’s their prerogative in either case.

Guess Who’s Not Really At Dinner

Overall: B

TERMINATOR: DARK FATE

Directing: B
Acting: B
Writing: C+
Cinematography: B
Editing: B+
Special Effects: B

And here we have yet another franchise, which once represented a leap forward in movie making, “wiping the slate clean” of later installments of the film series and just pretending they didn’t exist, relegating them to “alternate timelines.” This has already been done several times over the past decade, from Star Trek to Superman to Halloween. At this point, the practice is so common it practically qualifies as a bandwagon.

So now Terminator has jumped on it, with Terminator: Dark Fate presenting itself as a direct, 28-years-latere sequel to Terminator 2: Judgment Day. It ignores the events of Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (which was . . . fine), released in 2003; Terminator Salvation (2009); and Terminator Genisys (2015), which was the first of these films I never bothered watching thanks to its diminishing returns. I would have skipped Terminator: Dark Fate as well, but for its hook: the direct sequel to what was by far the best and most successful film in the series, and the return of badass heroine Sarah Connor, as played by Linda Hamilton.

The future those original Terminator movies never envisioned, however, was one ruled by comic book movies. When not even Star Wars has the cultural caché it once had—ironically, thanks to flooding the market with five movies in five years, Marvel-style—what chance does a sixth Terminator movie have?

Not much, unsurprisingly: box office returns are already disappointing. This would mean more if the movie were actually great, but it’s not. It’s fine—honestly, about as good as the long-forgotten Rise of the Machines (remember all the chatter about Arnold Schwarzenegger reviving the role as a transparent means of re-entering the cultural consciousness in the early days of his bid for Governor of California?)—but it needs to be better than that to make any meaningful, lasting impact. The days of massive success for a movie like T2: Judgment Day are long gone.

It’s easy to compare Rise of the Machines from 2003 to Dark Fate, because Dark Fate essentially replaces it as an alternate “part 3.” The only edge Dark Fate has over it, though, is that Linda Hamilton returns, she’s even more of a badass than she was in Judgment Day, and now she’s 63 years old. Her presence, and Hamilton’s deadpan delivery as a no-nonsense maternal figure who also happens to be ruthless, makes Dark Fate far more fun than it ever would be otherwise.

And that’s the thing about it: Dark Fate is undeniably entertaining, if by turns also cheesy and fundamentally lacking in logic. I have two particular points of contention with the logic, the first of which is how Arnold Schwarzenegger’s presence is played out and explained. He plays yet another Terminator, somehow aged thirty years even though he’s a robot, whose motivations here run completely antithetical to the canonical rules of the universe of this franchise, and it makes no sense. He’s not even a “protector” Terminator here, so the idea that he would develop some sense of independence without outside intervention (as happens in Judgment Day) simply doesn’t hold up. I suppose you could argue that Skynet—who no longer exists in this installment, not even in the future—became self aware, so why not a Terminator? Except that all Terminators are Skynet, even those stuck in a past whose future has been changed so Skynet no longer exists. Now it’s “Legion.” Are you following this?

Anyway! That brings me to my second point of contention: the “protector” sent to keep the young heroine out of harm’s way this time around is Grace (Mackenzie Davis), an “augmented human.” Grace not being a robot herself—albeit with robotic elements grafted under her skin—may seem like a fresh take on the role, except practically speaking, it sure seems like a step backward from what once amounted to near-indestructible Terminator vs. near-indestructible Terminator. Maybe in this new alternative future Sarah Connor created, they never actually got around to making “protector” Terminators. We can rationalize anything if we try hard enough!

By the way, spoiler alert! John Connor is dead now. He is dispatched early on in the narrative of this film, a flashback to the late nineties, in a matter of minutes negating everything done in Judgment Day to stop it. I guess that’s one way to explain the continued absence of Edward Furlong. There is a new young person fated to be the leader of the future, Dani Ramos (Natalia Reyes), a young woman from Mexico City. Side note: one of the few uniquely compelling elements of Dark Fate is how downtrodden Latinos and illegal border crossings are woven into the plot. Another is that the future “savior” is now a woman, as opposed to some woman’s son.

It’s often said that movies are only as good as their villains, and on that point Dark Fate stands on questionable ground. Gabriel Luna presents as a similar villain to Judgment Day’s Robert Patrick, but nowhere near as sinister, with a much more wholesome look about him. Also, again this Terminator can appear as any human it touches, which means it appears as other characters so often, Luna’s cumulative screen time is not all that long.

There’s also the legacy of James Cameron movies representing huge leaps forward in special effects technology, of which Judgment Day was a prime example (followed by the likes of Titanic and Avatar). Not one subsequent Terminator sequel has come even close on this front. In fact, in sharp contrast to when Robert Patrick melted into mercury-like metal and wowed viewers, we watch Diego Luna morph into a slicked black substance reminiscent of oil and we think, I’ve seen better. In Cameron’s defense, he did not direct this one (Deadpool’s Tim Miller did), but he did return for the first time as producer, and also gets a story credit. Frankly, writing was never one of James Cameron’s strengths.

In spite of these many criticisms, though, it all comes back to Linda Hamilton. Without her, I would happily dismiss Terminator: Dark Fate outright. If you were a huge fan of the first couple of Terminator movies, Dark Fate will provide some closure and some satisfaction the other subsequent sequels couldn’t. It’s the fifth time Arnold Schwarzenegger has appeared in these movies (the one exception being Terminator Salvation), and his very presence feels shoehorned in just as an excuse to reunite him with Hamilton (who comes in second by appearing in three of them). It can’t be denied, though: it is fun to see them together onscreen again. Dark Fate is dark and preposterous and sometimes dumb and cheesy, but I won’t lie: it’s never not fun.

Uneasy allies bast away at a common enemy: logic in action movies.

Overall: B