ZOLA

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

Do yourself a favor, save yourself the time, trouble, and money and just click here to read the original Twitter thread on which this movie Zola is based. The original tweets, first posted in 2015, have since been deleted from Twitter, but we all know now we can rely on someone saving screenshots. Just be sure not to make the same mistake I did and click the “Next” button, which actually takes you to a different, unrelated post. Just scroll down and you’ll see every screenshot, all 148 tweets, which frankly make for a far better experience than watching the movie.

I mean, the movie is . . . fine, I guess. The first tweet is verbatim the first line in the movie: “Y’all wanna. hear a story about why me & this bitch here fell out???????? It’s kind of long but full of suspense.” The thing is, that is absolutely an accurate description of the twitter thread. The movie, on the other hand, is neither long (86 minutes) but still manages to drag, or even remotely suspenseful. On the contrary, it’s unlike possibly any other movie I have ever seen, in that it is packed . . . with filler.

Zola could have made a truly fantastic, thirty-minute episode of, say, an anthology TV series about people’s crazy stories. Maybe even with a focus on sex workers’ crazy stories. Every one of the jaw dropping twists and turns in the story, countless though they are, could have been tightened up into that time frame. Maybe director and co-writer Janicza Bravo thought that would be too overwhelming to viewers? Except the whole point of that story is how chaotic it is.

It’s true that sometimes I complain about too much happening in a movie, and how it never takes time to breathe. The difference is, for maybe three quarters of its run time Zola is nothing but the breathing. We get slow shots of Zola (Taylour Paige) and her new stripper friend Stefani (Riley Keough, playing the young woman who in real life was named Jessica) putting on makeup in the same mirror together, or a montage of these two with Jessica’s boyfriend Derrek (Nicholas Braun) and who will turn out to be Stefani’s pimp (Colman Domingo), on their 20-hour drive to what Zola has been told is a lucrative dancing gig. There’s a scene where colored lines suddenly appear over Zola’s forehead as it otherwise fades to black, as though she’s having an out of body experience. There’s also a scene in a gas station bathroom with a crane shot from directly above, showing Zola and Stefani peeing in neighboring toilet stalls, passing toilet paper to each other under the wall. When that particular scene, which was very short, ended, I thought to myself, Why the fuck did I need to see that? I thought at first that I should give the movie the benefit of the doubt, and maybe something in the plotting will reveal it to be more relevant than it appeared. Instead, I’m still wondering.

The pimp’s name in the movie is X, and for some reason he is portrayed in a far more villainous fashion than he ever was in Zola’s original Twitter thread—as in, repeatedly threatening to Zola directly, as she gets roped into tagging along on Stefanie’s nights of doing sex work. More than once you wonder if X is going to physically assault her; the man is very menacing, in a way he was never portrayed in the original Twitter thread. Ironically, the end of the Twitter thread reveals that man to have been a horrible man indeed, to extremes actually never made explicit in the film: kidnapping of underage girls and links to murder. This, after the tweets portray Zola as being a lot more complicit in the weekend shenanigans than she is as a character in the film.

To be fair, the film begins with title cards that say “most of this is true,” basically acknowledging the artistic license it takes, and the vast majority of the major beats of the story are indeed lifted directed from the original account. (I immediately went to find that Twitter thread when I got home, just so I could find out.) There are some fascinating directions the film goes when it comes to racial dynamics, as Zola is a Black woman and Stefani is a white woman who oozes Black cultural appropriation, particularly with her “black accent.”

It can’t be denied that there is plenty to unpack with this film, ripe for discussion. It’s just poorly edited. Honestly, they could have taken a whole lot more artistic license and just added more stuff to make the film compelling on a consistent basis from beginning to end, maybe then simply saying “loosely based on a true story.” What we got instead, it’s like they were too concerned with being as close to the real story as possible, except that those 148 tweets cover an entire weekend, and if you’re going to adapt a written account of something into a feature film, you really need the full text to be more than just roughly 4500 words (that amounts to, say, nine pages).

I am intrigued by both of these main characters, both as they existed in real life and as they exist fictionalized on film. The women who portray them are more than competent (although to be honest, Nicholas Braun as possibly mentally ill boyfriend Derrek gives arguably the best performance), and make me want to know more about them and their bananas situation. Even as Zola goes back and forth in her resentment versus support of Stefani: at one point she retakes her photos for her, and reposts ads so she makes $500 per client instead of $100. None of these characters are perfect or simple or incapable of being their own brand of a mess, although I suppose I do think it’s cool that real-life Zola was so involved in making the film she got Executive Producer credit. I just think she would have been better served in a different medium.

The story is incredible, the movie isn’t.

Overall: C+

LUCA

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

Someone I follow on Twitter called Luca “Call Me By Your Name meets The Shape of Water,” and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about that. This movie is indeed about sea monsters, after all, two of which turn into young boys who form a relationship that seems, from the right angle, at least romantic-adjacent.

This is a Disney-Pixar film, after all, and rest assured that, in sharp contrast to those other two movies, there’s no fucking in this one. I mean, you might as well say this movie is “Call Me By Your Name meets Elisa Fucks a Fish.” Side note: this has to be the first review I have ever written of a movie for children in which I reference fucking not once, but twice. Oh wait, that makes three. This review is not for children!

I mean, of course it isn’t. No children give a shit what some 45-year-old looking for queer subtext thinks about some Disney movie they’re sure to find perfectly entertaining. I do have a bit of a flip-side suspicion here, though. I’m not sure it’s an accident that Disney opted to release Luca straight to Disney+ without even a limited theatrical release. I have to admit, by Pixar standards, or at least by the bar they set themselves decades ago, this one is comparatively . . . let’s say, slight. The story has what we might have called twenty years ago a bit of a “straight to video” quality.

That is, I suppose, unless you’re looking for the aforementioned queer coding. Whether that was any part of director and co-writer Enrico Casarosa’s intention is anybody’s guess, although if you happen to have seen Call Me By Your Name, especially considering this film’s Italian setting, it’s hard not to see some similarities. And then there’s the pretty direct reference, near the end, to how some humans will accept him and some of him won’t, but “he seems to know how to find the good ones.” If nothing else, it has a pure and sweet message about friendship and finding your tribe even if something about you makes you different.

And Luca is an undeniably sweet, often adorable little movie. It just doesn’t have the depth, or the expansive world building, that typically sets Pixar apart. These are sea creatures after all, and we spend some time in their underwater world, but there doesn’t seem to be much to their ecosystem—their habitat it exceedingly simple and surprisingly lacking in aquatic diversity. Finding Nemo, this is not. Curiously, when Luca transforms into human form on land and befriends a local girl, she ignites in him an interest in astronomy, with a couple fantasy sequences in celestial space—which, again, pale in comparison to the Pixar masterpiece WALL-E (which I like now even more than I did upon its release; that film aged into a modern classic). Even the very conceit of sea monsters turning into human form on land brings to mind The Little Mermaid, giving the story an overall sense of being derivative.

I can say this much: I enjoyed Luca more than I did the latest offering from Disney Animation Studios, Raya and the Last Dragon. Objectively speaking, I would say that and Luca average out to about the same level of quality, just for different reasons. Raya has better plotting and better artistic design; Luca has better voice performances and overall better animation sequences.

Speaking of the voice talents, Luca’s title character is played by Jacob Tremblay, who was nine in Room and is fourteen now, but was likely thirteen when voice recording took place. Speaking of which, knowing that Luca was made at home during the COVID-19 pandemic does make one wonder how much more expansive its world-building might have been had they managed to produce the film in the studio. Putting it in that context does make the film seem a bit more impressive.

Not that any of the kids who are the target audience are going to be thinking about that—nor are they going to care all that much that, for instance, Luca’s parents are voiced by Maya Rudolph an Jim Gaffigan, or that Sacha Baron Cohen shows up in a brief but amusing scene as the anglerfish-like Uncle Ugo. They’ll merely be sufficiently entertained. I’m not sure what makes an animated feature completely addictive to young children, as in a phenomenon like Frozen or Finding Nemo. I just know that Luca doesn’t have it. It’s above above average by Disney standards and fairly middle-of-the-road by Pixar standards, but it looks great and has its charms in the moment, fleeing as they might seem once the movie ends.

Don’t get them wet! No, this isn’t Gremlins. Is no one going to talk about how he has a glass of water?

Overall: B

RITA MORENO: JUST A GIRL WHO DECIDED TO GO FOR IT

Directing: B+
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B+

When this documentary was being filmed, diretor Mariem Pérez Riera had camera access to Rita Moreno’s 87th birthday party. In the footage of the setup. Moreno says she’s been hosting costume parties for her birthday every year since she turned 77—that’s ten years, in what for most people would be twilight years but for Moreno seems to be as full of vitality as any other time in her life.

That was in 2018. Rita Moreno was born near the end of 1931, and as I write this, she would be 89. And if this film has anything to say about it, her life and career are extraordinary. Her first credited role was in 1950, when she was all of eighteen years old, and she soon had a contract with a film studio, her career owned and managed in the typical way of the time—her key difference being that she was Latina. In her present-day interviews in Just a Girl Who Decided to Go For It, Moreno reminisces about her naiveté at the start of her career, and the heinously forward way men in the industry spoke to her.

There’s a moment in this film when Moreno notes that fame is unpredictable: “It goes up and down,” she says. “Right now, it’s up.” She’s been around so long that someone like me can be middle-aged and still only have been alive for about two thirds of her career. Of course, anyone who knows anything about her knows about her Oscar-winning role as Anita in the 1961 movie musical West Side Story, easily the most iconic role of her career. What I didn’t know is that she had been working for eleven years by then, or that the role marked a seismic shift in her career trajectory, after years of being relegated to parts for countless nonwhite ethnicities that were not even Latina, let alone Puerto Rican.

She didn’t even have another major film role for most of the rest of the sixties, but it’s stated in this film that her career didn’t rise in the wake of that Oscar win, so much as expand. By 1977 she became only the third person to win an EGOT: an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony Award.

There’s a lot about Rita Moreno’s career I didn’t know about. For the most part, I knew her as Anita from West Side Story, and then as the grandmother Lydia on the Netflix reboot of One Day at a Time (2017-2020; highly recommend). I’ve never seen the HBO series Oz (1997-2003), but now that I know she played a nun on that show, I might finally have to check it out. Long before that, she had an on-again, off-again relationship with Marlon Brando for some seven years, and then costarred with him in the 1969 film The Night of the Following Day (which really doesn’t look that good). She costarred with Morgan Freeman through most of the seventies in the children’s series The Electric Company.

These few examples just scratch the surface of her seven-decade career, and with skilled editing this means there’s never a dull moment in the 90 minutes of Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It. It’s mostly contemporary interviews with her, but also features interviews with many of the people she’s worked with, and others who admire her. She’s amassed a large collection of awards, and at one she decides to get playful and make a T-shirt part of her outfit, which reads Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It, hence this film’s subtitle.

There’s always a predictable bias to films like this. Rita Moreno is a beloved figure, and Mariem Pérez Riera clearly has not interest in showing Moreno in anything but a flattering light. On the Sally Struthers episode of the WTF with Marc Maron podcast in April, when talking about working together in the 1985 gender-swapped stage production of The Odd Couple, Struthers described Moreno as “just a mean, difficult human being.” You’ll find no such sentiments here in this documentary—and it’s just as well. Bias or not, I only mention the Struthers criticism because it’s the only open resentment toward Moreno that I can find. Ironically, that actually reflects on Moreno pretty well.

And Moreno’s screen presence, even at 87, is straight up infectious. If only we could all have that much energy and be so full of life at that age. No one I have ever known to make it that age remained that mentally sharp. This woman has an incredible memory, an incredible life, and an incredible story. You don’t have to be any more intimately familiar with the whole arc of her career than I was to find it fascinating.

And the rest of you should just decide to go see this movie.

Advance: THE SPARKS BROTHERS

Directing: B+
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B+

How have I never heard of this band, or duo—or duo who fronts various iterations of a band—until now? These guys have been around for ages: formed in 1967, first of twenty-five albums in 1971, the current year, 2021, is the fiftieth anniversary of their debut release, Halfnelson. The Sparks Brothers of the title are Ron and Russel Mael, aged 22 and 19 when they first formed as a music act, aged 75 and 72 today. And, judging by this Edgar Wright-directed documentary, their just-below-the-radar relevance to rotating generations of fans has remained fairly consistent over five decades.

It’s strange to discover artists who clearly, wildly influential for the first time so late in their career. This film will clearly hit differently for people who know who these guys are than it will or people like me, who didn’t even know they existed. I only know about this movie because I received an invite to a virtual advanced screening. (It opens in theaters tomorrow.) But as the promotional material states, they are “your favorite band’s favorite band.” I guess they don’t necessarily expect us to know about them: this film introduces them. It also features countless singers, actors, comedians and other personalities who are very familiar and eager to talk about them.

One thing that really struck me was the clear similarity with one of my own favorite pop duos, the Pet Shop Boys: also consisting of a singer and a synth player. Pet Shop Boys broke out in 1986, when Sparks had already been around for two decades. Sparks even veered into synth-heavy pop with one of their many creative left turns in 1979 with an album called No. 1 in Heaven (incidentally, produced by legend Giorgio Moroder, reigniting Sparks’s career the same way he did with Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories in 2013, thirty-four years later). A brief story is told in this film of Pet Shop Boys’s Niel Tennant being approached backstage at a show and asked, “Why don’t you acknowledge Sparks?” According to this account, Tennant was rather dismissive, which I found deeply disappointing.

I can’t even decide if I am likely to find Sparks’s music all that appealing. It’s their overall story that is so fascinating, here in one of the better music documentaries in recent memory. The editing and many artistic flourishes make it almost impossible to look away from the moment it starts, even if you’ve never heard of these guys. Edgar Wright goes through their story chronologically, basically album by album, and with 25 albums to date that’s a lot to cover. The final run time is two hours and fifteen minutes, quite long by documentary standards—but believe me, the time goes by quickly. There are no lulls in this narrative, as Sparks’s musical directions take regular wild turns, never in service of great commercial success and alway in service of creative fulfillment.

As a singer, Russell’s vocals make me think of an odd blend of Freddie Mercury and Monty Python, often high-pitched and androgynous in sound. As a composer and lyricist, much is made of Ron’s often comic sensibility—one of the interview subjects in the film is Weird Al Yankovic—something that evidently made it difficult for many to take them seriously as artists early in their career. And if The Sparks Brothers the film is your introduction to them, diving into that massive back catalog can be daunting. But, there’s something else this film makes clear: their career moves so many wildly different musical directions, it’s nearly guaranteed you won’t possibly like all of their stuff. And yet, they have so much of it, you could probably cherry pick the stuff you do like and still have a good amount to explore.

It can be almost surreal, seeing clips from the vast archive of footage of these brothers performing, and the countless other artists they bring to mind. It’s easy to think about it backwards, as though they are the ones being influenced. But these guys are true originals, with every seemingly recognizable reference point pre-dating whatever you think it’s referencing by several years. I’m amazed the two evidently have gotten along working so closely together all this time. It makes you wonder if they’re even human. There’s not a hint of resentment or animosity between them; they respect each other and work well together, and are widely, deeply respected by countless others in their industry.

Early on in the film, one interview subject comments on how he almost doesn’t even want to watch this film, because the longstanding mystery of Sparks is a big part of their appeal. I would argue this film makes it worth dispelling at least some of the mystery. It’s all of 135 minutes out of fifty-four years, after all. These guys, and this film, are absolutely worth your attention, and when it’s done there’s still plenty of mystery to go around.

Russell and Ron, enduring weirdos.

Overall: B+

HOLLER

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

It would be easy to say Jessica Barden is to Holler as Jennifer Lawrence was to Winter’s Bone (2010). The comparisons are apt, and I wouldn’t mind seeing Barden ascend to great heights in the film industry. Previously seen in The End of the F***ing World, a British series available on Netflix, Barden’s performance as a young woman struggling to break out of industrial Ohio becomes much more impressive when you discover she’s British.

The industry is very different now, though, and there’s no telling where a young actor’s career will go. Holler has a lot in common with Winter’s Bone, both of them being about young women stoically doing what they have to do to scrape by in an environment complicated by poverty and a junkie parent. But, whereas Winter’s Bone took things to a bit more of an extreme, Holler is a more even-handed look at working class struggles in the Midwest. Specifically white working class struggles, it should be noted.

Ruth (Barden) is barely reaching her goal of graduating high school, living with her brother Blaze (Gus Halper), struggling to keep up with the rent in a house left behind by their mother, who has been given the choice of county jail for thirty days or a rehab clinic. Writer-director Nicole Riegel offers a strong debut feature film here, creating a nuanced portrait of a specific world. She seems to take the idea of “less is more” to heart, making it clear that the opioid crisis is a big part of what weighs on this community by only referencing it once: “That damn doctor” kept prescribing pills to Ruth and Blaze’s mom, after she injured herself at a factory job.

Much more is made of the disappearing manufacturing sector in this part of the country, with a sprinkling of pointed excerpts from Donald Trump speeches about bringing them jobs, heard on car radios. None of the characters here pay him much mind when his words can be heard; they neither celebrate nor demonize him. Perhaps the point is that they are simply trying to live their lives, preoccupied with things like eviction notices, utilities being turned off, or looking for another job when the factory closes.

Ruth and Blaze scrape up bits of cash scrapping metal and selling it. This is how they meet Hark (Austin Amelio), who lures them into far more lucrative but much more illegal scrapping, making their lives a lot more dangerous in the process. I watched a lot of Holler fearing something terrible will happen to one of these characters, although it’s possible this was never part of Riegel’s intentions. I’ve just been conditioned by years of movies teaching me to expect such things. And something terrible does happen, just not directly to either of them. We don’t have to see our protagonists endure deep trauma to understand the risks they’ve put themselves in. The tricky question is how much risk is worth giving Beth a chance to leave this town and go to college, in spite of the people at her school having no real faith in her future prospects.

Holler is the rare movie shot almost entirely with hand-held cameras where I found myself fairly impressed with the cinematography. The combination of the camera work and the editing contributes significantly to a uniquely downbeat tone. The performances are pretty deadpan across the board, which is slightly to the film’s detriment, as it denies the characters the chance to be fully realized. Still, the relative slow burn of the plotting is surprisingly effective in the end, as I found Holler to be increasingly compelling as it went along. Riegel offers us characters we can empathize with even when they make bad, or in some cases even sinister, decisions. This is a world I don’t exist in, but even if the characters don’t come across as fully realized, the world they inhabit does.

Ruth assesses her life circumstances.

Overall: B

IN THE HEIGHTS

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

It’s been a long while since we got a mainstream movie musical release that was so much fun. It’s arguably unfair to hold it to the standard of live theater—I always say movies should be judged by their own merits, after all—but I still found myself regularly thinking about how much more exciting In the Heights almost certainly would been to see live on Broadway; I never did see a stage production of it. That said, adapting a play for the screen in a way that makes the movie even close to equally worthy in its own right is notoriously difficult, and I can certainly say this much: In the Heights the movie stands on its own.

Is it an instant classic? Will it endure in audience before for decades to come, in the same vein as The Sound of Music or the original West Side Story? Not even close. It’s easy to see this movie being part of the 2021 Oscar conversation, which takes us into next year, but will people still be talking much about In the Heights even two years from now? I’d be very surprised. But, does a movie have to be an instant classic to be a hell of a great time? Certainly not. This is a movie that’s having a moment, and its time is now. I absolutely encourage everyone to revel in it.

And there is much to love about it. When it comes to the filming of song and dance numbers, cinematography and editing are key; far too often choreography gets shot and cut together in a way that makes it impossible to see the achievement in choreography. It’s exactly the same principle with action movies: if you can’t get a clear picture of the movement, then what’s the point? In In the Heights, although the editing even here is occasionally too rapid-fire for my taste, there are just enough wide shots to truly wow you with the intricacy of synchronized and intricately laid out choreography. Many of these shots are in the New York neighborhood streets of the title. One memorably electric sequence takes place at a public pool, the camera moving in and around crowded swimmers, at one point even going under the water, culminating in a richly charismatic rap by supporting actor Gregory Diaz IV, leading a group of waders in synchronized slaps of the water. The kind of planning and execution that goes into this is deeply impressive.

I do have to wonder how much of what we see onscreen in this movie is augmented by special effects. In another memorable shot, our lead character, Usnavi (a spectacularly well cast Anthony Ramos) is seen rapping through the window of his corner store, the crowd on the street dancing in the reflection. This is clearly an effects shot—otherwise you’d see cameras and crew in the reflection of the window—but it is a memorable and effective one.

In the Heights is based on the Tony-winning musical stage play by Lin-Manuel Miranda (who pops up a few times here as a fringe character, selling snow cones), originally produced some eight years prior to Hamilton. Here it is adapted by Quiara Alegría Hudes, the first feature film she has written, and directed by Jon M. Chu (Crazy Rich Asians). It examines love of community as well as heritage, here being the mostly Latino population of Washington Heights in Manhattan, and a pretty diverse array of ethnic backgrounds within South and Central America, and largely the Caribbean. It looks at gentrification and residents of a beloved neighborhood getting priced out, which means there is a fairly sad undercurrent to all the joyful celebrations seen onscreen.

The one non-Latino principal character is Benny, played by Corey Hawkins, previously seen as Dr. Dre in Straight Outta Compton and a bunch of other films that arguably make him the most recognizable actor in In the Heights. Well, except, for some, maybe Jimmy Smits, who plays frustrated father to Nina (Leslie Grace), who is quitting college at Stanford due to the isolation from her community. She also happens to be Benny’s love interest, their romance being the B plot which oddly never gets any definitive resolution by the end of the film.

For Usnavi’s part, he has eyes for aspiring fashion designer Vanessa (Melissa Barrera), who faces her own uphill battle facing stereotypes as she works on her ambitions. Between these two romances, familial tensions between Nina and her father, and “Abuela Claudia” (Olga Merediz) playing matriarch to the community as businesses get priced out of the neighborhood, there’s a whole lot going on in this movie. It’s a wonder they managed to cut it down to 143 minutes. The music is always great, but the level of narrative urgency varies a bit, what with all the layers of story that need to be conveyed. The public pool sequence is the best, but there are others in the film that might also qualify as showstoppers, and collectively make this movie worth seeing—particularly in a theater.

And, not to worry: the story here is one, ultimately, of triumph, of characters successfully adapting to a changing environment. A lot is made of how the neighborhood Usnavi knows and loves is “disappearing,” and if you think about it deeply enough, there won’t be anything he can do about that in the end. But for now at least, he and his family and friends and neighbors—and you—can feel pretty great about the world and their place in it, humming associated melodies all the way home.

If you must join a crowd, you could do worse than this one.

Overall: B+

RIDERS OF JUSTICE

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

Some people keep going back to the casino, because they win some kind of jackpot just often enough. In the aggregate, it could be argued, they spend far more money than they ever earn back. But, from the perspective of some gamblers (the ones who aren’t addicts, anyway; I don’t want to stretch this metaphor too far), there was value in the time spent even when they weren’t winning big. The process itself is fun, and therefore has value.

And so it goes with movies. A cinephile like myself can watch countless movies that are far from special, but still have a good time watching them, on a consistent basis. In spite of wildly varying levels of quality, the experience itself almost always has value. Still, it’s the movies that are special that are the reason I love movies to begin with.

Riders of Justice, the new Danish film available on demand for about seven bucks, is special. A movie doesn’t have to be a masterpiece to be special, mind you—and, in many cases, the ones considered “masterpieces” are stiff and uninviting. But a movie that practically reinvents a genre? It’s that kind of experience that creates a passionate interest in the form.

And Riders of Justice is an “action comedy,” I suppose. The difference is, in stark contrast to your average action-comedy from, say, Hollywood, the action here has emotional heft, and the comedy has a kind of dark wisdom.

I’m eager to share as little as possible about this movie. It’s almost certainly best experienced going in blind—hell, maybe even not knowing about the action or the comedy, but I guess we’ve crossed that bridge already. I learned about the inciting incident to the story in a brief synopsis on IMDb.com, and I really wish I hadn’t even known that. Because as the film begins, and you are introduced to the characters, you really have no sense of where the story is going, until about half an hour in.

There’s a teenage girl, Mathilde (Andrea Heick Gadeberg), taking the train to school because her mom’s car broke down. There’s Mathilde’s father, Markus (Mads Mikkelsen), calling to share the disappointing news that his army post is to last another three months. There are two math geeks, Otto (Nikolaj Lie Kaas) and Lennart (Lars Brygmann), obsessed with data and predictive probability algorithms. There’s the very large Lemmenthaler (Nicolas Bro), a hacker with a temper. There’s even a young, sex trafficked gay Ukrainian man, Boashka (Gustav Lindh), who winds up part of this group by happenstance.

How all of these people wind up crossing each other’s paths is the delight of this film, which is why I don’t want to spoil it here. And none of these people are even the “Riders of Justice” of the title, the name of a dangerous gang of criminals—but, also, a not-so-thinly veiled reference to this ensemble cast of characters working together to seek vengeance that may or may not be justified or even have a point to it.

Riders of Justice is maybe more of a quirky drama than it is either an action movie or a comedy. The “action” is more like well choreographed, comparatively understated violence, still exciting in its way when appropriate—but always with a certain thematic weight to it. The comedy comes and goes, weaving in and out of the narrative as the characters get exasperated with each other. When the time is right for it, though, the humor can come right out of left field, in a way that makes you laugh harder than you thought possible while watching a movie like this.

To call this a great ensemble cast would be an understatement. Mikkelsen here has a closely cropped haircut and a bushy beard, rendering him nearly unrecognizable, particularly in comparison to the other popular Danish film he was in last year, Another Round (I think this movie is better). His performance is very muted due to his character being so stoic and repressed, but it’s in keeping with the grief that is the undercurrent to everything happening in this story.

In any event, you’ll be hard pressed to find another film that is less predictable and simultaneously more fun, with real, human issues at play. Riders of Justice isn’t just a lark; it’s about real things, with characters who feel weird even in their uniquely oddball sensibilities. If this were made by an American, in all probability it would have been self-consciously “quirky.” There is no such sensibility here. It’s a deeply dark and comic, fundamentally human tale that is ultimately as moving as it is completely entertaining.

At no point is this what you expect, and it’s all the better for it.

Overall: A-

CHANGING THE GAME

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

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed a lot of things—including, evidently, my approach to which movies I am interested in reviewing. This may still be up for re-evaluation as we move forward, and more worthy films are available to see in theaters again. As it stands on this particular weekend, I’ve seen everything that appears to be worth seeing in theaters. And if this were any time prior to March 2020, a documentary feature released direct to Hulu could easily catch my attention, but I would never have considered reviewing it, simply because it had not been released in any movie theaters.

Well, Changing the Game may be the first feature film released on a streamer, and evidently always intended to be thus, that I made a fully conscious decision to review. Because: well, in the context of 2021, why not? This is a well-assembled documentary about transgender teens in sports, and it very much deserves attention; its release to Huly on June 1, the first day of Pride Month, was surely no accident. I want to do my part to get the word out about it, in a way that’s more than just a sentence or two in passing in a social media post.

Besides, this film was made in 2019, and did have its original screenings in movie theaters, however limited: it screened at the Tribeca Film Festival in April of that year. Whew, a technicality I can still fall back on anyway! I did show in a movie theater at some point, somewhere.

As with increasing numbers of documentaries, though, Changing the Game no doubt finds itself a far wider audience on a streaming service than it ever would have in a national theater release anyway. This is a good thing. It’s difficult to gauge the degree to which this film is just “preaching to the choir.” as how many open bigots are going to have their minds changed by this?

And trans inclusion in high school sports can be a complicated issue, depending on how you look at it. It can also be quite simple: as Andraya, one of the three trans teen athletes highlighted in the film, asks: instead of asking if it’s fair to allow trans girls to compete in girls sports competitions, you should be asking if it’s fair to exclude girls from competing in girls sports.

One of the most fascinating aspects of Changing the Game is the diversity of perspectives among the family members and schools support systems surrounding these trans kids, just among those who actually support them. The three trans teens featured here are each from three different states: a trans girl skier in New Hampshire; a Black trans girl in Connecticut; and a white trans boy in Texas. The boy is the one most likely to be recognized right off the bat, as he made many headlines winning multiple Texas State Wrestling championships while being forced by the state to compete in the girls’ division.

And when it comes to trans issues, there’s no effective stereotyping when it comes to geography. In Texas, young Mack Beggs has been adopted by his “hardcore Republican” grandparents who accept him for who he is, who continue to stumble on pronouns but clearly make a continued effort. In one scene, his grandmother, a Texas sheriff, finally takes down the last photo of Mack she still has on the wall from young childhood in which he’s dressed as a girl. I did find myself wondering to what degree that was performative for the documentary cameras, but how much does that matter, really? Conversely, the two shots we see of irate “Karens” (white women), yammering about how the inclusion of trans girls in girls sports somehow sets back feminist gains, are in Connecticut. In one case, well within earshot of the teen they were complaining about, Andraya Yearwood. And that’s just what got recorded.

And that brings us to a key point here: for the most part, these trans athletes’ peers truly don’t give a shit. It’s the adults who go ballistic, and bully them—they are adults bullying children. Mack’s girlfriend tells the cameras, “The people that are hating on him are adults, and he’s a teenager.” It’s sad that it takes being an open-minded parent to really broaden horizons. As Andraya’s mother says, “It’s very important to share this story, even if it helps only one person.” Later, we discover Andraya has inspired another trans student, Terry, to join the girls track team as well.

Meanwhile, up in New Hampshire, young Sarah Rose Huckman, herself the daughter of self-described “pretty conservative” parents, works to help change a state law requiring that trans students undergo sexual reassignment surgery before they can compete with the gender batching that of their identity. How many minors in high school have the means or the opportunity to get sexual reassignment surgery? (Or even the desire, necessarily, which is a whole separate conversation.) It’s absurd, and we see footage of Sarah testifying before her state legislature, after others stand up against it with the same dopey arguments about making girls “vulnerable” in restrooms.

In a time when a majority of state legislatures are continuing to push anti-trans legislation like this, it’s never been more important that people take in something like this documentary, which takes a very nuanced look at what these kids deal with, and literally who they are. It’s true that they happen to be hand-selected here for the purposes of a film, but it’s even nice to see the attitudes among their coaches. Mack’s coach is an especially interesting case, as director and co-writer Michael Barnett doesn’t give us any clear answers regarding the man’s moral view of trans people. The guy is coaching Mack, respecting his pronouns, in a girls division in Texas, and he says “I won’t leave any athlete behind.” I have to respect him for that much, at least.

Far too many people moan about supposed “unfair advantages” for trans girls competing with girls, and yet they force Mack to compete with boys and then complain about his “unfair advantage” as he wins state championships. By many Texans’ standards, he should simply not be allowed to compete in any sports at all. The coach who works with Andraya in Connecticut clarifies that sports is not just about winning or losing, but about teaching kids to be better people. This perspective gets a little thorny when you’re talking about getting a college scholarship as the prize for winning a state championship—which, incidentally, Mack was denied, as was the cisgender woman who placed second and would have won the division had Mack been allowed to compete with other boys from the start. (Also, props to Chelsea Sanchez, who only ever speaks about Mack with respect while also speaking out about the unfairness of the Texas policy.)

It should be noted also that the message “this movie should be seen” does not only apply to cisgender straight people. It very much applies to many queer people as well, especially considering the queer community’s long history of trans exclusion, which has only recently even begun to change. I don’t even like sports—and find wrestling to be among the least appealing of them—and still I found this to be a very compelling film. Trans people may even benefit from a film like this, if for no other reason than to feel seen. It really doesn’t matter who you are, you’d benefit from watching this movie, and others like it.

Mack does his best with the hand he’s dealt.

Overall: B+

RAYA AND THE LAST DRAGON

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

There’s a lot to like about Raya and the Last Dragon, which is finally available at no extra cost to Disney+ members as of today. It features two princesses, one the protagonist and one the antagonist; neither of them are given a love interest in a story about learning and earning trust; it features representation and influences heretofore not seen in Disney animated features (in this case, Southeast Asian). It also has some impressively rendered CG animation which, I’m sure, must have looked quite nice on a big screen, for the people that went ahead and saw it in movie theaters.

I just really wanted to like it more. All of the above features are great and all, but they could have been helped a lot further along by better writing. Granted, this is an animated feature and thus aimed at children first and foremost, but there’s still no reason to patronize them. As Raya (Kelly Marie Tran), our heroine, moves about her journey, the coming beats of her story are telegraphed to us well before they occur, as is the lesson she is meant to learn. In the end, this film just serves as an example of how the animation may be on par, but the storytelling over at Disney Animation Studios remains almost pointedly inferior to that over at Pixar.

Also, I’m not the biggest fan of the dragon design. Much of the animation in this film is great—particularly the symmetrical patterns throughout the prologue sequence offering an overview of the history in this fantasy world—but the dragons look like the love child of a unicorn and a ferret. Or, imagine the luckdragon from The NeverEnding Story with a horn, eyeliner and a blowout.

There are ten credited writers on this film—two for screenwriting and a whopping eight for story. You’d think they’d be able to brainstorm a bit more wit than actually winds up in the dialogue here, although it’s not for lack of trying. There are plenty of attempts at gags and punchlines in Raya, but most of them are surprisingly limp, particularly by usual Disney standards. To be fair, I did get a few good chuckles out of two or three visual gags. Awkwafina voices Sisu, the “last dragon” of the title, and there are shades of Robin Williams in Aladdin in the spirit of her performance. Yet, she’s far more charismatic than she is funny, and her raspy voice feels somewhat incongruous with the polished visual sheen of the dragon character.

I don’t want you to think I actively disliked this movie, which most of this review thus far no doubt sounds like. I’m a big fan of the under-seen representation at play here, and of the multiple new directions given to princesses: it can’t be denied that young women have never been depicted so independent and self-sufficient in past Disney features, not to mention there being more than one of them, even existing on both sides of conflict. That alone makes it a great movie for impressionable young girls to see—and boys as well, of course. If nothing else, it passes the Bechdel Test early and often. Between that and the often beautiful animation, Raya and the Last Dragon undeniably has a lot to offer. And I haven’t even mentioned the several pretty exciting action sequences—more than one of them, again, featuring martial arts battles between two women.

I just wish it weren’t all at the expense of sharp writing. This team of writers was so busy broadening their horizons—and, to their credit, doing it well—that they neglected the narrative polish needed to make this the great movie it could have been. As it is, it merely hovers somewhere in the space between fine and good.

Maybe she’s born with it . . .

Overall: B

HATING PETER TATCHELL

Directing: B+
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B
Editing: B

How have I never heard of Peter Tatchell? This guy has been a notorious international queer rights activist for fifty-three years. Sadly, from the point of view of an American like myself, the answer is almost certainly just that: the American exceptionalism that pervades domestic media, to the exclusion of most international news. I never heard of him because he’s not an American. Maybe also because he’s 69 years old, and much of his most notorious protest stunts occurred before I was born or when I was a child.

All that said, Tachtell is a divisive person, even amongst those whose rights he fights for. By that measure alone, though, the documentary Hating Peter Tatchell, now streaming on Netflix, justifies itself. This guy may not be American, but he’s still an English speaker and a white man, originally from Melbourne Australia, and thus came into the world with a key type of privilege. I would argue that he has weaponized that privilege for the greater good, but I would not necessarily fault anyone for disputing such a claim.

For instance: is there a “white savior” element to Peter Tatchell’s antics? This is a guy who twice attempted a citizen’s arrest on Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe for human rights abuses and torture, the first incidence of which turned the tide of public opinion in the UK over to his side. Mugabe is far from Tatchell’s only target, however, and it seems clear that, in Tatchell’s mind, his activism is purely egalitarian. He has engaged in civil disobedience on multiple continents, including a stand-in in solidarity with the gay community in Russia during the World Cup in Moscow in 2018, the video documents of which basically serve as the climactic sequence of this film. After footage of him being beaten multiple times in multiple places at other protests around the world beforehand, it actually winds up slightly anticlimactic. Not that I wanted him to get further beaten or anything.

The thing is, sure, you could say that Peter Tachell eager for attention. But that’s precisely what his brand of confrontational activism is designed to do, and his effectiveness at shining light on human rights abuses the world over cannot be denied. If the very bishop whose nationally televised sermon he disrupted twenty years ago can now be seen skirting stunningly close to comparing Tatchell’s conviction and work to that of Jesus, the guy must be doing something right. People for decades accused Tatchell of being counterproductive to the cause, but it’s literally because of people like him that progress has ever leapt forward.

There’s no question, the man is a complicated figure, and the bias in Hating Peter Tatchell is pretty transparent: the intent is only to paint a flattering picture, even as writer-director Christopher Amos includes interviews with people who criticize Tatchell’s tactics.

I fairly easily found myself on Tatchell’s side for the bulk of this film. This is a guy whose worldview much more closely matches that of the original Stonewall rioters than many young queer people today; I found myself thinking about the ridiculous recent discourse regarding whether people should be allowed to wear fetish gear at Pride Parades because it’s “not family friendly.” (They should.) Pride is about freedom of self-expression, and if anyone embodies that notion, it’s Peter Tatchell—even though he’s disarmingly unassuming, the antithesis of flamboyant, usually wearing a button-down shirt and a tie. But, he’s also always a part of disruptive protest, never taking credit but always taking part and often a key organizer.

But . . . well, there’s aways a but, I suppose. I was struck by the language Tatchell uses in his interview for this film, always always saying “LGBT+” when some years ago he might have just said “gay.” He’s clearly conscious of the evolving nature of identity politics, but a small detail during the end credits didn’t sit that well with me. Some might consider this nitpicky, and that’s fine: a slideshow of still photos of Tatchell at various protests runs alongside the credits, two of which feature either Mugabe or the Pope in drag queen-like makeup. They read ROBERTA MUGABE: QUEEN OF TYRANNY, and POPE “BETTY” BENEDICT XVI. This is clearly intended as humiliation by feminizing them, and . . . is that not transphobic?

Google “Peter Tatchell” and “transphobic” and you won’t get a lot of relevant hits, but you’ll find a few, including a letter Tatchell once signed along many others defending the right of trans-exclusionary feminists to speak on college campuses. It should be noted that he did not defend their views, but their right to express them, and that’s where things get sticky. That doesn’t mean they aren’t relevant, however, and although I hesitate to say this issue warrants direct examination in the film, the inclusion of the photos with those signs at the very least seems ill-advised.

But then, this all gets right back to the central question about Tatchell as an activist figure, and his many tactics people have disagreed with. You might not like everything he does or says, but if this film is any indication, it’s hard to deny that by and large he’s been wildly successful at meeting his goals. This is his life’s work, and I would argue he should be celebrated, warts and all. It also doesn’t mean he’s above criticism.

The person interviewing Tatchell in this film is none other than Sir Ian McKellen, and another one of the interviewees is Stephen Fry. Many other well-known UK activists are included as well, and Hating Peter Tatchell paints a very compelling, if maybe a little rosy picture of his life and achievements. It would be hard to see this film and not want to shift right into your own debates, which is maybe a good thing. As long as it’s in good faith, these are things we should always be discussing, and Tatchell is one of the guys keeping those discussions going.

I mean . . . nobody’s perfect.

Overall: B+