Interview with "I'm Your Woman" Cast and Director, Julia Hart

Director Julia Hart’s “I’m Your Woman” lives and breathes in the 1970s, and Rachel Brosnahan helps navigate this cinematic time machine to a seedy Pittsburgh crime world.  Jean (Brosnahan) finds herself on the run, crossing into the unknown without grasping the reasons.  Since she’s also managing a baby in tow, Jean is more vulnerable than Bambi on the first day of hunting season.  Her limited options are a microcosm of women’s rationed opportunities during that period, but co-stars Marsha Stephanie Blake and Arinze Kene play hopeful allies.  Jean’s journey towards possible independence – as well as far-out costumes and vibes - make “I’m Your Woman” a groovy and grimy 2-hour getaway. 

Julia, Rachel, and Marsha Stephanie graciously hosted a Zoom call with the Phoenix Film Festival and other media outlets for an informative and enjoyable chat.  The ladies spoke about 70s crime drama influences, Jean’s struggle with motherhood, and much more!   

“I’m Your Woman” is available to stream exclusively on Amazon Prime. 

Q:  Are there any particular examples of female characters from 1970s crime dramas that were perhaps overlooked in those stories but were inspirational in developing this movie? 

JH:  I have so many answers.  Tuesday Weld’s character Jessie in “Thief” (1981) was definitely the biggest influence.  I highly recommend that movie.  It’s Michael Mann’s first film, and it’s a masterpiece.  Diane Keaton’s Kay in “The Godfather” (1972), Theresa Russell in “Straight Time” (1978), (and) Ali MacGraw in “The Getaway” (1972).

MacGraw’s character is (a) rare (example) in 70s cinema where the female character is brought into the action.  (It’s) exciting to see how (director Sam) Peckinpah did that, but I think the coolest thing about all of those characters is they’re really interesting.  The men who wrote and directed those characters and the women who played them were able – even in a handful of scenes – to create these really complex, interesting women.  I was just bummed that they were only in a few scenes.  I want to see a whole movie of characters like that.  

Q:  Rachel, can you talk about the feedback that you’ve received about this movie?

RB:  The messages that have meant the most are from women who (were) surprised (by the movie).  “I’m Your Woman” does come with a lot of big set pieces, but it’s also deeply rooted in this character study of Jean.  (The film) recognizes quiet women who have struggled with motherhood.  

(Jean) is a woman who doesn’t immediately connect with (her) child, (but) so much of her journey towards recognizing her capability and her power is through (the) relationship with (him).  I’ve received a number of messages from women who felt really moved by seeing this woman’s journey and her internal life play out on-screen in a way that I think (makes) them feel more powerful.   

Q:  Marsha Stephanie and Rachel, what did you enjoy about playing Teri and Jean? 

MSB:  (Teri has a family), and they are living a very normal life.  (Teri and Cal (Kene)) are raising their son to be a good person.  They both have jobs.  No one’s on drugs.  No one’s in jail.  I love that.  For a lot of black characters and a lot of people (who) I’ve played, we don’t get to be normal.  We don’t get to imagine a life that is just living.  We don’t get to imagine the American dream in that way, in a way that’s just regular.  Even though we’re meeting (Teri and Cal) at a different time in their lives, we get that’s what they had.  And you have two black people in love.  Unless there’s heavy drama associated with (a relationship), you don’t get to see two people who are just simply in love.  

RB:  Ordinary women’s stories are worth telling and worth centering.  Most women are ordinary.  Most people don’t decide or desire to change.  Some (women) come out of the womb (and are) ready to change the world and break the glass ceiling.  Most people change because something extraordinary happened to them that forced them outside of themselves and outside of their lives.  So, I’m so grateful to filmmakers like Julia who recognize that and who recognize that not only are these stories valuable, but they are really important.  There are so many more people who deserve to have their stories told and to see themselves on-screen.   

Q:  Can you talk about the costumes that helped create the world of the 1970s?

RB:  (Costume designer) Natalie O’Brien is such a fantastic storyteller and had so beautifully thought out the evolution of Jean’s journey, through what she chose to look like versus what she had to look like, because (her) circumstances changed.  All of those clothes felt so different to wear, and (Natalie and I) talked about that a lot.  When we first meet (Jean), she’s cut out of a 1970s fashion magazine, but (her clothes aren’t) necessarily her.  She doesn’t really know who she is.  When she’s on the run, she has nothing but the clothes on her back, a bag full of money, and a baby.  Putting those clothes on really changed the way – as Jean – that I moved through space.   

MSB:  Natalie is very insightful.  She also understands that for actors, sometimes putting the clothes on really solidifies for you who your character is.  I had a lot of conversations with her about shoes, and she heard me.  She got what I wanted, and she figured out what I was trying to convey.  

Q:  How did you explore the options about Jean facing physical dangers while on the run?  

JH:  (I wanted) to up the stakes by having Jean be a mother.  I often joke that I end up writing my worst nightmares into my scripts as a form of therapy.  I used to have this terrible fear of home invasion, and then I wrote “The Keeping Room” (2014), and the whole thing is a home invasion.  I’m not afraid of that anymore.  It helps.

But there’s nothing more terrifying than when you’re in a dangerous situation, but on top of that, you have this completely helpless being, who can make a lot of noise at any moment, needs to eat, (and) needs their diaper changed.  The baby doesn’t know that it’s in a dangerous scenario.  It doesn’t know that there are men after him and his mother.  It’s scary enough being a new parent.  There’s enough uncertainty in new parenthood when you’re not on the run.  So, what would it be like setting Jean in that position, as she’s navigating this whole new world?

RB:  (Jean handling a gun for the first time) felt real on the page in a way that I haven’t seen before in a genre like this one.  In some films, someone gets a gun (placed) in their hand, and power surges through their veins.  Suddenly, they know how to use it.  I’m not super-comfortable with guns, and I think most people aren’t.  If you didn’t grow up (with them), it’s not something that a lot of people are comfortable with, and Jean is someone who’s never been around guns.  I appreciated (that Jean was) nervous (shooting a) gun for the first time.  It scared her.  

Q:  You had a really intense, high-speed car chase.  How much fun was that for you to be behind the wheel?

MSB:  It’s my fantasy come true; however, I’m a New Yorker, so I’m not a natural driver by any means and definitely not with cars this big or this unwieldy.  So, I was petrified, but once I got into it, (then) I was into it!   It’s extremely exciting, and I had the most gentle director to guide me.  

RB:  It was a crash course in stunt driving, Stunt Driving 101!  

Interview with "One Night in Miami" Cast and Screenwriter Kemp Powers

On Feb. 25, 1964, Cassius Clay (Eli Goree) knocks out Sonny Liston to become the heavyweight champion at age 22.  Afterward, Cassius, Malcolm X (Kingsley Ben-Adir), Jim Brown (Aldis Hodge), and Sam Cooke (Leslie Odom Jr.) get together at the Hampton House Hotel for an evening of conversation.  Believe it or not, these four icons truly did meet that night, and screenwriter Kemp Powers (based on his play) imagines their discourse in a mesmerizing, intricate feature that leaves you hanging on every word.  Most of director Regina King’s film transpires in a modest room, but grand viewpoints burst through the walls and off the screen as the men recognize the moment in American history and their positions in it.

Well, the four actors (Eli, Kingsley, Aldis, and Leslie), Kemp, and moderator “The Washington Post” film critic Ann Hornaday graciously hosted a Zoom call with the Phoenix Film Festival and other media outlets for an engaging, insightful discussion.  The men spoke about playing four icons, parallels between 1964 and 2021, and much more!    

“One Night in Miami” is playing in theatres and available to stream on Amazon Prime on Jan. 15.

Kemp Powers, Screenwriter “One Night In Miami”

Q:  Kemp, what were the known knowns that you started with, and how did you go about using your imagination to fill in the blanks?

KP:  The biggest known known for me is that this night actually happened.  On Feb. 25, 1964, after Cassius Clay knocked out Sonny Liston, he did spend the night with Malcolm X, Sam Cooke, and Jim Brown, and the next morning is when he announced, for the first time to the press, that he was a member of the Nation of Islam.  That’s what set it all off for me. 

The Civil Rights struggle was happening for quite a while, and we were ready to get into Black Power, and I think these guys represented very different forms of that Black Power, including Sam Cooke.  You think (of him as) a pop star, but if you really dig deep into his history, and his business regiment, and how he was empowering musicians and artists at the time, you realize that whole self-determination, Black Power mindset is very much in line with what Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X believed.  

Knowing that, and knowing everything that happened to these men leading up to this night - and everything that was going to happen within 12 months - 1964 was a crucible year for all four men.  I was trying to have this crucible moment to be something that happened during these interactions in (a believable way).  I wanted to create believable characterizations.  

Today, the most famous man of all is, of course, Muhammad Ali, but on that night, I saw the power dynamic as being every different, a situation where Cassius Clay at 22-years-old has three big brothers, all trying to exert influence over him.  So, Cassius Clay is the little brother at 22.  Jim Brown was 28 (and) his bigger brother.  Malcolm and Sam, both in their 30s, are their big brothers.  That’s a very, very different dynamic that calls for the characters to be positioned in a different way than your average person might naturally do it.

Aldis Hodge as Jim Brown

Q:  Aldis, in a way, Jim Brown may have been the most challenging character to play because he’s so self-contained.  Tell us about how you found your way into Jim Brown.  He also happens to be the only one who is still with us, so I was wondering if you got to meet him.  

AH:  I didn’t have a chance to meet him during the process of filming and preparation.  Oddly enough, I know a few people who actually have been tied to him.  Also, I (dug) into my research.  I see him as an entrepreneur and a businessman, so I wanted to understand his business acumen and understand his mentality.  So, I started studying that, because after this particular year – 1964 – he retires and makes a transition into film and television.  A few years later, he starts the Black Economic Union.  When we find him in this film, he’s in that transitional space of maintaining who he is and maintaining control of his power and value.  He’s been this megastar football player, but he still knows how people see him and treat him.  (His attitude was), “I’m not going to ask for your permission.  I’m going to do what I got to do for me, and I’m going to get out in front of it.  When I get there, I’m going to bring my people with me.”

Q:  Has Jim seen the film

AH:  (I had the) most nervous conversation.  I was talking to (Jim’s) daughter over the holidays.  

(She said), “So my dad saw the film, (and) he thought you did a great job.”  

I was like, “Whew, alright. I’m good.  As long as he’s happy, I’m happy.”   

How can you not be happy?  I think it’s really fantastic and a wonderful celebration of these four men, their friendship, and (their contributions) to us as a people, and to a greater extent, us as a country.  We all benefited from what they have given and what they have sacrificed.  

Q:  Leslie, I read somewhere that you, at first, were a little reluctant to play Sam Cooke.  Is that true?

Leslie Odom Jr. as Sam Cooke

LOJr:  That is very true.  Yea, I thought there must be somebody, somewhere that was more suited.  I passed on the audition.  It’s embarrassing to tell this story, but it’s the truth.  Every now and again, somebody sees something in you that you don’t see in yourself, and that was my experience with Regina, thank goodness.  

Q:  Eli, Cassius Clay is cocky and self-assured, but he’s still very young and not entirely fully-formed.  How did you find your way to him?

Eli Goree as Cassius Clay with Director, Regina King

EG:  It was a long journey and a dream to play him.  It’s something that I (have) wanted to do for years.  I had an opportunity to audition (to play him) for another project, and I didn’t get it.  So, I just continued to prepare, and I thought there would be another opportunity, and it didn’t come right away.  It took about a year and a half of preparing, and I still didn’t have anything, so I thought I’d start doing a play.  In preparing to do the play, the audition for this role came about, and it was one of those preparation-meets-opportunity things, and I was very blessed. 

KP:  (Here’s) something that doesn’t get talked about enough.  (These four actors) met on-set, and in many cases, their first rehearsal was 20 minutes before they had to shoot scenes.  To play friends in a way that you believe that these four guys have been friends for years - not having known each other or met each other and just showing up one day -  I mean, this was an acting feat that I’ve never seen before.

We cast Kingsley about two weeks before we started shooting.  

These performances really had me in awe.  When you say ensemble, I think back to movies I’ve seen and loved, like “The Big Chill”.  It was a dream for me, because I feel like I got to do a black “The Big Chill”. 

Kingsley Ben-Adir as Malcolm X

Q:  Kingsley, what was the one scene or set of dialogue that spoke to you about who Malcolm X was and, in particular, his relationship with the others?

KB-A:  I was trying to ingest the language and understand what Malcolm’s place was within this story structurally.  Then (I tried) my best to understand what was going on in Malcolm’s life and finding all and any information I could to give me the courage to really tap into his vulnerability.  He’s such a hero (on) so many levels, and he’s this fearless, incredible human being who put his life on the line for black people.  I understood quite early on - just from the brilliance of the writing - that the vulnerability of all of these men were really going to create the story arc.  Without that, we would’ve been wasting our time.

(Also,) there’s something scary about (playing) these guys as well.  We were constantly checking in with Regina.  Are we going too far?  Should we bring it back emotionally?  That’s where I’m in awe of Regina and what she did in terms of really piecing together the emotional journey.  She constructed the performances in a way that I couldn’t have guessed. 

Q:  Kemp, you had a long career in journalism.  How did those experiences help shape your screenwriting success?   

KP:  It’s a big part of it.  I’m not the first - and I won’t be the last - journalist who has transitioned into screenwriting or playwriting.  I used to tell other people’s stories for a living.  You interview a few thousand people, and you learn to listen to specific voices.  So much of screenwriting is recreating voices and imagining voices.  Novice screenwriters often have trouble.  That’s why when you go to a coffee shop in Los Angeles, and everybody is sitting around and listening to other people’s conversations and writing down dialogue because they can’t imagine their own.  Fortunately, I had a bit of a treasure chest of dialogue from having met people from all walks of life. 

Most importantly, (it’s) the research component of it.  I consider research the same as reporting.  I do lots and lots of digging before I write fiction.  It doesn’t matter what it’s about.  It could be about dragons.  My career as a journalist helped me develop a thick skin (too).  Hollywood is a pretty sensitive place.  We’re sensitive people, (but) I’m not that precious about things like my writing.  I think it behooves me when it comes to working with people.  It encourages you to collaborate a lot more and tackle things in a way that makes both people happy.  In lots of ways – big and small – I think that my journalism career contributed a lot to what I do now. 

LOJr.:  I can attest to that, that willingness to make those small changes and collaborate.  We got this brilliant roadmap from Kemp.  We arrived in New Orleans, and we’re just trying to internalize those twists and turns.  Less than a handful of times, but every now and again, I would have to call Kemp in L.A. and (say), “I don’t have what I need right here.”  

Malcolm has been coming at me for four pages, and tomorrow, I got to respond to him, and I don’t have what I need to really come back at him.  Kemp always came back with something better and richer.  To make good on your training as an actor, you got to have the words.  I didn’t know that as a young actor.  I thought that it didn’t matter what the material was.  You could dazzle them.  It’s just not true.  Lin-Manuel really showed me (and) a room full of people the depths of our talent and what we were capable of because of that writing.  Once again, I consider myself divinely blessed and very grateful.  With “One Night in Miami”, we got to come in that hotel room and were allowed to fly because of the words, because of what Kemp put down. 

Q:  Almost 60 years later, how are the themes and issues in this film still relevant today? 

AH:  Everything is relevant.  (The four men) are fighting to be seen.  They’re fighting to be acknowledged and respected.  They’re not asking.  These men from differing opinions on certain things (are) able to come together (and) figure out how to positively debate and reach the same goal in a progressive way, even when they disagree.  

That’s something so needed within our community right now.  For those not emotionally engaged or invested, they get to sit back and learn.  There are people who think that we don’t actually feel pain or that it’s imaginary.  Regardless of (the four men’s) accomplishments, regardless of what they’ve done for America, regardless of Muhammad Ali winning gold in the Olympics and bringing America a victory, you’re still a black man that we don’t care about.  

So, that still goes on today, and I believe this effective piece of art allows people to understand the conversation that’s being had.  This is not a conversation that has just sparked up.  We’ve been having it.  This is not something new.  

Some people these days say, “Oh, it’s crazy what’s happening.”  

No, it’s not.  We grew up with this. I don’t think racism has ever dissolved.  I think it’s only graduated to what people deem to be culturally appropriate.  So, they can ignore it sometimes, or they can dismiss it.  

They can say, “I’m not going to allow black people in the house,” and feel okay about that, but with this particular film, you get to watch what that experience is and realize it’s not okay.

Hopefully, you walk away from (the movie) with a new charge within yourself to understand and empathize a little bit more and realize there’s real work that needs to be done, that is being done, that can be done.  Hopefully, you want to be a part of that work and healing the issues seldom dealt with in the right way in this country.  I feel that this piece of art is a great asset to the progressive human that we need to see.  

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One Night in Miami - Movie Review

 You'll hold on to every minute of 'One Night in Miami'

Directed by:  Regina King

Written by:  Kemp Powers

Starring:  Kingsley Ben-Adir, Eli Goree, Aldis Hodge, and Leslie Odom Jr. 

On Feb. 25, 1964, Cassius Clay (Eli Goree) defeated Sonny Liston, a landmark event for boxing and the young, charismatic champion.  

Mr. Clay raised his record to 20 wins and 0 losses.  He also memorably raised shouts of “I am the greatest!” in concert with his victory.  Ah, could you imagine sitting in attendance at the Miami Beach Convention Hall that day?  

Well, Regina King (“If Beale Street Could Talk” (2018), “Watchman” (2019)) steps behind the camera to bring the fight to life on the big and small screens in her feature film “One Night in Miami”.  Although Cassius’ win is a key moment in her movie, the events shortly after the match are the setting for this story.  Cassius and three other icons - Malcolm X (Kingsley Ben-Adir), Jim Brown (Aldis Hodge), and Sam Cooke (Leslie Odom Jr.) - get together at the Hampton House Hotel for an evening of conversation.  On a first pass, this premise sounds like a too-good-to-be-true pitch that belongs as a live-action “What If…?” (2021) episode at Marvel Studios.  

Believe it or not, these four friends truly did meet that night in Miami.  Obviously, television networks didn’t broadcast that discreet evening after the fight, so writer Kemp Powers (“Soul” (2020)) – a journalist turned screenwriter – researched the history leading up to Feb. 25, an explosive time in the United States, to pen intricate, layered discourse in King’s mesmerizing film that leaves you hanging on every word.

The movie feels like a play, which makes perfect sense because it’s based on Powers’ 2013 theatre production of the same name.  Much of the film transpires in a modest room, but grand viewpoints burst through the walls as the men recognize the moment in America and their positions in it.  It’s a fictionalized account, but given the nature of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements – along with the gentlemen’s career trajectories - the exchanges feel like wholly accurate, dictated accounts. 

The four fellows are comrades and supporters of one another, but just like any group of friends (or family), disagreements will naturally evolve – slowly or suddenly – given the existing elements of close quarters and time.  How did your last living room card game or family get-together go, right?  Not every minute travels swimmingly, and this particular four-way tête-à-tête is no different.

Malcolm is the primary catalyst and pulls on threads that stretch social, financial, and religious fabric, but the others indeed hold strong stances, including Cassius.  Although his tender age of 22 leaves him open to more forming at this point.  Still, one could argue that he’s mastered performing down pat.  Instead, Malcolm and Sam carry much of the tension, as altruism for black causes versus monetary endeavors dominate their disagreements.  Like most charged disputes, however, there is not one singular path of righteousness here, and this particular nuance rises as the most engaging, at least to this critic.  Meanwhile, Jim is a reserved - but highly-principled - voice of reason and the silent glue that binds all four together.

They aren’t all from the music-world, such as The Rat Pack, or the sporting-world, like LeBron James upholding friendships across the NBA.  The guys reached superstardom across vast disciplines of social justice, sports, and music, which brings a special charge and anticipation of the film’s path, minute by minute, scene by scene.  

How did they meet, right?

I mean, Peter Boyle – you know, the guy who played Frankenstein’s monster in “Young Frankenstein” (1974) – was John Lennon’s best man.  Yes, that John Lennon, so how did that happen?  That thought undoubtedly triggers a mental double-take, and I would have loved to be a fly on that wall during that 1969 wedding.  

Here, King, Powers, Ben-Adir, Goree, Hodge, and Odom Jr. open a door and offer us a chair to sit down and listen to four marvels during pivotal times in their lives.  In addition to each man’s towering strength, the cast and crew also offer insight into their vulnerabilities.  The actors especially tap into them through their individual introductions, but also during their assembly at the hotel.

During a January Zoom group interview with the Phoenix Film Festival and other outlets, Ben-Adir said, “(I tried) my best to understand what was going on in Malcolm’s life and finding all and any information I could to give me the courage to really tap into his vulnerability.  I understood quite early on - just from the brilliance of the writing - that the (vulnerabilities) of all of these men were really going to create the story arc.  Without that, we would’ve been wasting our time.”

Speaking of time, King, casting director Kimberly Hardin, and the movie’s producers must have devoted countless weeks (or more) to find the right actors.  Leslie Odom Jr. is demonstrably a household name, but only recently.  Hodge has hit his stride too with plum roles in “Clemency” (2019), “The Invisible Man” (2020), and as the title character in “Brian Banks” (2018).  Ben-Adir and Goree are new, at least to this critic.  Not only do the guys resemble their famous on-screen counterparts, but they also effectively dive into their personas, but admittedly, my Sam Cooke knowledge is thin.  

Still, King didn’t rush out and recruit Denzel Washington and Will Smith to portray Malcolm X and Cassius Clay/Muhammad Ali again.  Due to her chosen actors’ relative – but not total – anonymity, there’s no real pondering over the thespians vs. the on-screen idols.  Through Ben-Adir’s, Odom Jr.’s, Hodge’s, and Goree’s dedication, they become Malcolm, Sam, Jim, and Cassius, with zero work needed from the audience.  What a gift, and so is this movie. 

(3.5/4 stars)     

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The Marksman - Movie Review

Dir: Robert Lorenz

Starring: Liam Neeson, Katheryn Winnick, Juan Pablo Raba, Teresa Ruiz, and Jacob Perez

Runtime: 1 hr 47 min

“The Marksman”, the newest thriller from action tough guy Liam Neeson, is more a road trip film than a shoot ‘em up action movie. Neeson, whose charming attitude and natural leading man swagger can’t be hidden by scraggly facial hair and a cowboy hat, leads this clichéd thriller around every familiar twist and turn.  

A lonesome old man named Jim (Liam Neeson), whose eyes tell the tale of a life lived with a few tragedies, stands in front of his home with an American flag draped across his shoulder. He pleads for more time with a bank executive while looking towards a hilltop where he spread the ashes of his late wife. With a Marine Corps tattoo on his forearm and a rifle slung across his shoulder, this world-weary loner must protect the life of a young undocumented immigrant named Miguel (Jacob Perez), who is fleeing Mexico with a bag of money stolen from a drug cartel.

With so many action stories about loners with a special set of violent skills, it’s beginning to get harder to craft stories from this breed in new and creative ways. Though part of the joy of watching these often bloody and violent films is the simplistic nature and rhythm of a film that wants, simply, to be a repetitive vessel for fight scenes and frequent explosions. 

“The Marksman”, from the outside, may look like it’s trying to be one of these actioners, but it’s only pretending. The story is more concerned with the moral choice that our lead character is making in regards to a promise he made to a mother and the responsibility of transporting a young boy to a safer life. Neeson is consistently good in these quieter, more muted roles; the performance here feels like a Clint Eastwood representation from the “one-final-mission” films that gave the iconic actor late-career depth in the 1990s and 2000s. Eastwood’s image even makes an appearance as a scene from “Hang ‘Em High” plays on the television in a hotel bedroom, Miguel takes a look back at Jim and then looks back at the television with a smile. 

Neeson is assisted by a committed performance from newcomer Jacob Perez, a young boy who looks on the verge of tears most of the film. In a great scene, young Miguel takes Jim’s dog for a walk in a small town. Miguel wanders the streets, over bridges, along busy sidewalks, and for a moment you can see a glimmer of a smile on his face, the reality of his situation comes back and the smile fades. It’s a great, natural moment.

“The Marksman” has its share of nice moments, especially when the film leans into the story of two different people, from different worlds, helping each other heal on a road trip to new destinations. For one of them, the destination is a new home, a new life, and for the other, it’s a goal, a good deed for someone in need. Unfortunately, there is another story taking time away from this good relationship drama and it comes in the form of a drug cartel chasing Miguel and Jim across the country. The motivation for this formulaic angle is completely one dimensional. The bad guys aren’t unique and many times they just wait in their cars for updates on where Miguel and Jim are going next. They are used simply for the action sequences, many of which lack excitement.

“The Marksman” falters when it goes hard into its want for action and suspense, but when the film takes time to build upon the relationship between two unlikely people, allowing an old man and young boy the opportunity to show how much they can learn from one another, the road trip film finds it drama and footing. 

Monte’s Rating

3.00 out of 5.00

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Monte Yazzie's Favorite Films of 2020

In January 2020 I was in Baltimore, Maryland taking crowded public transit to a packed outlet mall. I was there to sit inside a completely full 250 seat cinema ready to watch Kristen Stewart in the creature feature “Underwater”. The threat of a deadly virus was simply a cautioned whisper at this time, maybe a random tweet found while scrolling through the daily updates. 

A mere two months later would find the entire world changed, with closures, lockdowns, and curfews set in place to prevent the spread of the Coronavirus. The last film I watched before everything closed was Kelly Reichardt’s wonderful “First Cow” at a press screening with fellow movie critics. If I would have known this would have been the last time I went to the movies without social distancing protocols, mask ordinances, and sanitizing stations, I would have ordered more concession food and sat closer to someone to hear them express some kind of emotion while watching the film. 

It would be August 2020 before I found my way back into a movie theater, monitoring the attendance for the perfect scenario when 5 or less people were inside a big enough theater to feel safe sitting and watching the silver screen for 90 minutes. The opportunity came on a quiet Wednesday afternoon with the movie sequel “Train to Busan Presents: Peninsula”, I was more concerned about my safety than the zombie mayhem happening on screen. 

Overall in 2020 I have watched more film than any other year of my life, some 500+ movies…

Streaming has become commonplace in my home, looking for something new to come out while revisiting films from the past and rewatching entire seasons of television just waiting for the opportunity to return to the movie theater. If there is one truth found for me in 2020, it’s that cinema and the feeling of going to a theater with people will never be replaced. Movie theaters will forever be sacred meeting places for those that love moving pictures. 

Overall in 2020 I have watched more film than any other year of my life, some 500+ movies ranging from new films, every Jean-Claude Van Damme movie, a curated home film festival of Ingmar Bergman movies, one whole month of Gene Hackman and Elliot Gould, terrible B-horror movies, a wealth of westerns from the 1960s and 1970s, and more than few Jackie Chan films from his early career. I introduced my son to Godzilla movies, watched a ridiculous amount of 80’s action films with my wife, and can recite almost every minute of “The Nightmare Before Christmas” with my daughter. 

Even amidst a lack of films released, with many being rescheduled towards the end of the pandemic, 2020 was still an amazing year from new films.

Here are my favorite movies of 2020:

1. First Cow

Director Kelly Reichardt crafts minimalistic films centered around specific emotional relationships; the auteur has an undeniable ability to make the most simplistic stories feel overwhelmingly complex yet also richly textured. “First Cow” creates this same quality, one focused on the relationship between two unlikely friends. It’s a beautifully structured composition that is assisted by two actors, John Magaro and Orion Lee, who provide nuanced and natural performances. “First Cow” may serve as the perfect example of the kind of art Kelly Reichardt creates; emotional, historical, personal, and deliberate stories about relationships. It’s one of the director’s finest works.

2. I’m Thinking of Ending Things 

Charlie Kaufman’s horror film? Seems too easy of a definition for one of cinema’s most wildly original filmmakers. Still, there is an unconventional use of genre elements employed throughout this film; you can feel the unease of the unknown, the creepiness of coincidences, the fear of discovering hidden intentions within others and, specifically, yourself. It’s all there, shaped and molded in a way that is distinctly Charlie Kaufman.  “I’m Thinking of Ending Things” is a fascinating and complicated film. All the feelings produced throughout the film challenge one another: it’s interesting and infuriating, sometimes at the same time. But altogether it is simply pure cinema, another highlight in the career of Charlie Kaufman.

3. Nomadland

Writer/director Chloe Zhao crafts a melancholy tale of a woman who loses everything in the recession and makes the move into a van to explore the American West in “Nomadland”. The minimalistic approach to the film composes some affecting emotional moments of isolation, both beautiful and bleak, and a loneliness that echoes more pertinent in the midst of a pandemic. With the exception of Frances McDormand and David Strathrain, “Nomadland” is supported with a cast of nonprofessional actors. This adds an authenticity that allows the viewer to sink deeper into the meditative rhythm Zhao narrates with the meandering yet contemplative structure. It builds and unfolds beautifully, painting a portrait of independence and peace found in a solitary existence. 

4. Small Axe: Lovers Rock

There is a moment in Steve McQueen’s superb “Small Axe: Lovers Rock” when a group of house party attendees slow dance/grind to the song “Silly Games” by Janet May. The room of people, dripping hot with the sound of pattering footsteps finding its own unified rhythm, sway and glide around, next to, and into each other. The music slowly fades away and the entire room begins to sing the song, each of them dancing, singing, and fading into the ecstasy of the night. It’s one of my favorite movie moments of 2020. At a tight 68-minute run time, “Lovers Rock” is beautifully acted and incredibly photographed. It’s an ode to romantic reggae music, to a moment in time in London, and for the freedom found by Black youth at house parties from the discrimination waiting down the street. McQueen crafts an exhilarating story with a loving and soaring spirit.

5. Another Round

Oh the joys of day drinking! Director Thomas Vinterberg may relish in showing a group of middle-aged men drink and dance, all who are educators at the same school, but these men concoct a semi-scientific plan to drink during their school day to see if a low intoxication will make their work day habits and skill better. It’s silly, plain and simple, but it’s also completely committed to the joke. And, in occupying this premise, the film wanders into something more personal, both for the viewer and the director. It becomes a film about coming to some kind of terms with adulthood, understanding the unease and anxiousness of aging, and the joy that growing older allows you to find in simple pleasures like good music, great food, or drinks with friends. 

6.

Minari

It’s been said that a good story should feel universal. For director Lee Isaac Chung the story about a Korean American immigrant family who move to Arkansas to start a 50-acre farm is as familiar as it is unique. That’s the beauty of what Chung is doing with the film, displaying the theme of “the American Dream” but through a perspective of a family who comes from a different culture and looks different than those who practice the same craft. Steven Yuen and Yeri Han give exceptional performances as the married couple struggling to understand what they want out of life and how they will survive the many obstacles that persist through their life. It’s an intimate portrait of family dynamics but also a film that displays how hard it was, and still is, for non-white people to assimilate into America. 

7. The Relic

“Relic”, from first-time feature director Natalie Erika James, is a film that still lives in my mind nearly half a year after watching it. The haunting imagery, the beautiful performances, and the use of genre to tackle the devastating health condition of memory loss and dementia. “Relic” is a great conversation horror piece for adults, one that displays why the genre of horror can be so fluid in how it tackles subject matter both simple and difficult, using monsters and scares to portray an understanding of real-life trauma. 

8. The Forty-Year-Old Version

The discovery of 2020 was writer, director, actor Radha Blank. Playing a fictionalized version of herself in the film “The Forty-Year-Old Version”, Blank stuns from start to finish. Forming a narrative that doesn’t settle for an easy Hollywood structure but instead dissects the ups and downs of the creative process, showing how inspiration finds everyone a little different. For Radha, the opportunity to flex her creative style is found with a choice to become a rapper. Photographed in stark black and white, within the mysticism of New York City, “The Forty-Year-Old Version” is exceptional art from a shining star of an artist. 

9. Never Rarely Sometimes Always

At the heart of Eliza Hittman’s film “Never Rarely Sometimes Always” is a story about a pregnant 17-year-old girl who is thrown into the intolerant and controlling adult world, one made more complicated and difficult because of her gender. It’s also a heartwarming story of womanhood shown through two young women traveling across state lines to obtain a safe and legal abortion. Faced with difficulties at every turn, Hittman never forces the political discussion but rather uses character to show how the process is faced. It’s poignant, powerful filmmaking.   

10. Soul

There are two moments in Disney Pixar’s “Soul” that I can still see and hear so clearly. When Joe, our disenfranchised jazz music teacher, freely plays a piece on the piano to a group of young people, showing how inspired and individual music can be. The other moment, when Joe leaves a club after, what he thinks, was supposed to be the defining night of his life. The expression that Joe makes as he exits is so familiar, but it’s an expression that changes the older, wiser, and more experienced you get in life. That’s the power of what Pixar is doing with “Soul”, finding emotions and showing you familiar and different ways to understand all those complicated feelings. “Soul” is bold and ambitious and beautiful storytelling.

11. Bloody Nose Empty Pockets 

There is something interesting about familiarity. The fact that you could exist in a place, like a dive bar that sells mediocre beer but has a great jukebox, and confide in strangers you call friends in the confines of those scared spaces is a special kind of home away from home. And, for some regulars, it might be the only place they could call home for a few hours a night. “Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets” lives in one these sacred spaces with a group of regulars on the final night of operation. It’s fascinating and poignant watching people say goodbye, drink and smoke in hand, in their unique ways.

12. Bacurau

The building of dread in Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles film “Bacurau” is exceptional; it’s a blend of fantasy, horror, history, and culture focusing on themes of colonialism, human injustice, and sacrifice. It’s played similarly to a western in the violent vein of Sam Peckinpah blended within a world modeled after the atmosphere in a Terry Gilliam dystopian future. Add the amazing performances of cult icon Udo Kier to the mix, as murderous leader of a bloodthirsty gang, and “Bacurau” is one of the most unique films of 2020. 

Honorable Mention:

• A Sun

• The Assistant 

• A White White Day

• Beanpole

• Boys State

• The Climb

• Da 5 Bloods

• David Byrne’s American Utopia

• Gunda

• The Invisible Man

• Mank 

• The Nest 

• One Night in Miami

• Palm Springs 

• Possessor Uncut

• Small Axe: Mangrove

• The Sound of Metal

• Spontaneous

• Time 

• Tommaso 

• The Twentieth Century

• Underwater

• The Vast of Night

• The Wild Goose Lake
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

Jeff Mitchell's Top 20 of 2020

Well, I hope to forget about 10,000 moments in 2020, but here’s a big thank you to movie studios for delivering some needed escapism.  Like every 12-month window, I will fondly remember plenty of great flicks, so let’s briefly look back at 2020…while wearing some blinders to block out any dystopian distractions. 

Here are my top 20 films of the year:

20. Boys State

“You have no time to take it all in.  (On the) first day, they throw you into that arena, and it’s like a battle royale.  It’s crazy,” Steven Garza says.  Steven is a high school student, one of about 1,000 teens who descended on Austin, Texas for an annual American Legion-promoted tradition:  Texas Boys State, a week-long government-simulation event.  Yes, this is a thing!  Directors Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss somehow navigate a path through the festive, political-jockeying maze (and they needed a year to edit their footage).  Young men compete for votes in this sociological Petri dish, but the boys also forge some general friendships - and cope with some hurt feelings - along the way in a documentary that remarkably plays out like a Hollywood yarn.  

19. The Climb

Real-life pals Michael Angelo Covino and Kyle Marvin star in a “Sideways” (2004)-like comedy on an indie budget about two loveable losers who wrestle with life in Upstate New York.  Actually, Covino – who directed the picture – had enough cash to film in France as well.  His character – Mike – isn’t very amiable because he regularly sabotages his best buddy Kyle (Marvin), but hey, what are friends for?  “The Climb”, with an awfully witty script and a pitch-perfect supporting cast, proves that friendship is sometimes a rocky ride.  

18. I’m Your Woman

Director Julia Hart’s atmospheric noir lives and breathes in the 1970s, as Rachel Brosnahan helps navigate this cinematic time machine to a seedy Pittsburgh crime world.  Jean (Brosnahan) finds herself on the run, crossing into the unknown without grasping the reasons.  Since she’s managing a baby in tow, Jean is more vulnerable than Bambi on the first day of hunting season.  Her limited options are a microcosm of women’s rationed opportunities during that period, but co-stars Marsha Stephanie Blake and Arinze Kene play hopeful allies.  Jean’s journey towards possible independence – as well as far-out costumes and vibes - make “I’m Your Woman” a groovy and grimy 2-hour getaway. 

17. Minari

Director/writer Lee Isaac Chung helms an autobiographical feature of his childhood – or a small sliver of it – from the 1980s.  Jacob (Steven Yeun) leads his family to the middle of nowhere in Arkansas to start a farm and grow Korean vegetables.  Without much of an economic safety net, he realizes the slim chances of actually lassoing the American dream.  His wife Monica (Yeri Han), her mother, and their two kids feel the monetary friction in a frank, authentic struggle within the home.  “Minari” feels similar to Jim Sheridan’s immigrant tale “In America” (2002), and that’s a compliment!

16. Athlete A

Directors Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk’s explosive, distressing documentary clarifies a horror show:  the sexual abuse and its cover-up at USA Gymnastics.  Cohen and Shenk interview “The Indianapolis Star” reporters who broke the story in 2016, as well as the survivors – the former gymnasts – who speak out against their abuser.  Heartbreaking but also empowering, “Athlete A” is a thorough 103-minute record of tenacious investigative journalism and the brave women who found their voices.  

15. I’m Thinking of Ending Things

Anyone semi-coerced into meeting their boyfriend’s or girlfriend’s parents will painfully relate to Jessie Buckley’s character in director/writer Charlie Kaufman’s uncomfortable feature.  This 20-something (Buckley) is “thinking of ending things” with her relatively-new beau Jake (Jesse Plemons), but she agrees – for some reason - to have dinner with his mom (Toni Collette) and dad (David Thewlis) after a long, sketchy drive in the driving snow.  Jake and his folks don’t offer much comfort at their homestead, as Kaufman introduces idiosyncrasies, fears, and anxieties from across the human lifespan.  Think “The Twilight Zone” but without many clear answers in a challenging production that leaves a mark…long after it ends. 

14. Never Rarely Sometimes Always

Director/writer Eliza Hittman places Autumn (Sidney Flanigan) and Skylar (Talia Ryder) on an uneasy journey from rural Pennsylvania to New York City.  For these teenagers, they embark on this impromptu trip with no chaperones, and they attempt to navigate The Big Apple’s urban minefield of subway logistics, heavy foot traffic, and cold concrete so that Autumn can have an abortion.  Hittman explains during a March 2020 interview, “I was just thinking about a way to create an atmosphere of hostility towards these young women rather than having a conventional antagonist.”  Autumn, however, painfully reveals her feelings about a specific adversary from her recent past in one of the most emotional moments in 2020 cinema.

13. Sorry We Missed You

Winston Churchill said, “Never give in.  Never, never, never.”  For Abbie and Ricky Turner (Debbie Honeywood and Kris Hitchen), that’s easier said than done.  Abbie’s an at-home care worker who runs herself ragged all over Tyne and Wear, England, and Ricky works for a delivery company - with long hours and tricky stipulations - that treats him like an indentured servant.  With debt climbing higher than their eyeballs, no free time, but plenty of exhaustion, this family of four suffers the consequences of dire employment realities in director Ken Loach’s (“I, Daniel Blake”(2016)) disheartening feature about today’s economic squeeze on the working class.  Raw and relatable, this impactful movie will leave you as fatigued as the Turners. 

12. Sound of Metal

Riz Ahmed delivers an Oscar-worthy performance as a 30-something heavy metal drummer who reinvents himself, but not because of a new band.  Ruben (Ahmed) loses his hearing, as director/writer Darius Marder’s character study follows his lead’s journey to find acceptance and peace with his new reality.  Olivia Cooke and Mathieu Amalric play key supporting roles, and Ruben’s mentor Joe (Paul Raci) is a much-needed lifeline.  Ahmed wore auditory blockers on-set to simulate complete hearing loss, and Marder plays with sound that sometimes reproduces Ruben’s world-perspective.  Also, remind yourself of the film’s title during your viewing, including the very beginning and end.  You’ll be glad that you did. 

11. Promising Young Woman

Carey Mulligan deserves an Oscar nomination as a femme fatale striking fear in the hearts of men.  Cassie (Mulligan) is a vigilante of sorts, but rather than ride NYC subways like Paul Kersey (Charles Bronson) in “Death Wish” (1974), she pretends to be inebriated in local watering holes, dance clubs, and Irish bars.  She then terrifies her aggressors when they overstep their bounds.  Director/writer Emerald Fennell’s sobering - but also playful - screenplay takes dark turns and steers into some levity with Bo Burnham’s breezy, accessible arc.  Ryan (Burnham) could be the male outlier to melt Cassie’s heart, as Mulligan masterfully portrays a lady standing on a knife’s edge between potential bliss and endless cynicism. 

10. Shiva Baby

Danielle (Rachel Sennott), a struggling college student, isn’t keeping up with the Joneses these days, but she’ll need to stay one step ahead of her parents, her best pal Maya (Molly Gordon), distant aunts and uncles, five dozen other acquaintances, and her sugar daddy in a hilarious, nerve-racking comedy debut from director/writer Emma Seligman.  Sennott is flat-out marvelous, as Danielle attempts to find solace - and quite frankly trap doors - from sticky conversations, double-takes, and wide-spread embarrassment during a period of mourning, a shiva.  (Her Uncle Marty’s second wife’s sister died…I think.)  Shot primarily at one location, Danielle needs an escape, but chances are that you’ll walk away from Seligman’s movie with a big smile and a few (more) strands of gray hair.

9. Bad Education

The United States’ education system has rightfully taken its share of lumps over the years (and decades, right?), and director Cory Finley (“Thoroughbreds” (2017)) delivers pummeling blows on Roslyn High School.  Based on an infamous true story, more than a smidge of corruption has plagued this Long Island institution, although no one would know it from an initial look at the brick, mortar, and friendly teachers and staff.  Geraldine Viswanathan plays an upstart teenage reporter who digs into hidden spaces far from the busy hallways, as Finley’s flick carries a brooding sense of impending doom, like Alexander Payne’s “Election” (1999).  Hugh Jackman, Allison Janney, Ray Romano, and the rest of the cast and crew earn straight A’s!

8. One Night in Miami

On Feb. 25, 1964, Cassius Clay (Eli Goree) knocks out Sonny Liston to become the heavyweight champion at age 22.  Afterward, Cassius, Malcolm X (Kingsley Ben-Adir), Jim Brown (Aldis Hodge), and Sam Cooke (Leslie Odom Jr.) get together at the Hampton House Hotel for an evening of conversation.  Believe it or not, these four icons truly did meet that night, and screenwriter Kemp Powers (based on his play) imagines their discourse in a mesmerizing, intricate feature that leaves you hanging on every word.  Director Regina King’s film mostly transpires in a modest room, but grand viewpoints burst through the walls and off the screen as the men recognize the moment in American history and their positions in it.  Goree, Ben-Adir, Hodge, and Odom Jr. deliver convincing performances that will surely lead to more than one Best Actor or Supporting Actor Oscar nomination.  

7. Apples

Director/writer Christos Nikou began scribing his “Apples” script – about a worldwide pandemic - in 2012.  Little did he know that COVID-19 would shake up the planet, but thankfully his plague dramedy carries a lighter touch.  For unknown reasons, random adults suddenly develop amnesia, including our lead (Aris Servetalis) – otherwise known as # 14842 -  and a team of doctors and counselors help him form a new identity and start over.  Nikou’s first feature film pits an average guy against uncomfortable, awkward surroundings, and through comic absurdity, he helps the audience ironically latch onto some sense of normalcy.  A quirky, innovative gem! 

6. The Father

Anthony (Anthony Hopkins) and his daughter Anne (Olivia Colman) live together in a spacious, comfortable London flat, but she breaks some life-changing news to her dad.  She’s moving to Paris, and - because of Anthony’s dementia – he has to pick up his life and relocate to a nursing home.  Plenty of movies capture this unenviable topic, but director/co-writer Florian Zeller looks at the crisis from Anthony’s perspective, his world, which clouds our judgment about on-screen realities.  These two masterclass actors traverse through Zeller’s disconcerting puzzle and place long-lasting faces on a problem that impacts millions of families.  

5. David Byrne’s American Utopia

With a minimalist stage design of hundreds of slender, elegant metal chains hanging from the rafters, 68-years-young David Byrne and 11 talented musicians/singers perform a film version of their successful show at New York City’s Hudson Theatre.  Spike Lee’s clever camerawork captures Byrne and his harmonious compadres – who all don matching gray suits – as they strut, tap, and twirl barefoot to lively, bouncy tracks and ballads from the lead artist’s new album and some absolute classics from yesterdecade, including this critic’s favorite Talking Heads song.  It’s 36 years since “Stop Making Sense” (1984), and Byrne’s steps may be more tender, but he hasn’t lost any in his toe-tapping, sometimes politically-driven, and encouraging 100-minute look at our imperfect humanity. 

4. The Forty-Year-Old Version

A star is born!  Radha Blank writes, directs, produces, and plays the lead in a charming underdog tale of a middle-aged woman trying to jumpstart her playwriting career.  Blank pens memorable supporting players - including a group of sincere but unpolished high school students, her best friend who moonlights as her agent, and a younger love interest – who mark her journey to possible nirvana.  Still, Broadway-Eden is a ways off, as Radha grapples with the uncomfortable comforts of New York City, her professional shortcomings, and coming to terms with her age through relatable self-deprecating humor and honest reflection.  Here’s hoping for “The Forty-One-Year-Old Version” in 2021.

3. Palm Springs

Director Max Barbakow and screenwriter Andy Siara turn this rom-com – about two strangers meeting at a Palm Springs wedding – on its head with a wacky, fanciful premise that gifts more surprises, chuckles, and genuine smiles than a Times Square New Year’s Eve celebration filled with laughing gas.  Due to a pair of bizarre, out-of-this-world of mishaps, Nyles (Andy Samberg) and Made of Honor Sarah (Cristin Milioti) are stuck with one another and need a miracle to free themselves.  Sure, Siara’s script borrows an idea (which I won’t reveal) from a classic 1990s comedy, but Samberg and Milioti share boundless chemistry and comedic timing in a film that never loses momentum or authenticity.  A new classic!  

2. Gunda

Have you ever lived on a farm?  Have you ever spent a few hours on one?  Well, director Viktor Kosakovskiy – inspired by his childhood pet piglet - places his camera on a small Norwegian homestead and follows the stories of a mama pig named Gunda, her piglets, nearby cows, and a one-legged chicken in a 93-minute documentary sans dialogue.  Shot in dreamy black and white, Kosakovskiy frames his friendly subjects at exceptionally close range and watches them stroll through their days.  While some carefree moments trigger warm smiles and wonder, others crystalize – for us – their everyday struggles, including Gunda’s never-ending motherhood-grind.  Kosakovskiy and cinematographer Egil Haskjold Larsen bequeath a rich, transparent embrace of nature.  That’s not exactly right because our living, breathing thespians reside on a farm.   

1. Soul

Joe (Jamie Foxx), a piano player, misses his shot to perform on a big stage, and he – without warning - finds himself in the afterlife.  This passionate jazz musician now exists in The Great Beyond and The Great Before, and he mentors a soul-in-training (Tina Fey) while hoping to return to his first love: music...on Earth!  Directors Pete Docter and Kemp Powers strike hilarious and affecting notes, as their animated film magically offers tangible life lessons that our parents, teachers, and friends have told us a thousand times, but never like this.  Imaginative, whip-smart, and touching, “Soul” is the warm chicken soup and philosophical hug that we need right now.  Pixar, you’ve done it again!

Jeff – a member of the Phoenix Critics Circle – has penned film reviews since 2008, graduated from ASU’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism, and is a certified Rotten Tomatoes critic.  Follow Jeff and the Phoenix Film Festival on Twitter @MitchFilmCritic and @PhoenixFilmFest, respectively.

Jen Johans's 30 Best Films of 2020

The 30 Best Films of 2020

by Jen Johans

For me, it is a truth universally acknowledged that while I love reading lists, I hate making them. Coming up with a quick and dirty Top 5 in the company of friends can be a fun conversational tool to stir debate among film geeks but the prospect of actually sitting down to make a definitive ranking of titles is about as appealing as deep cleaning my refrigerator. 

No two lists are alike, just like no two “three-star” movies are alike. I'd much rather champion or critique films in longer pieces throughout the year to inspire greater thought than rely on the quick stars I slap on a film on my Letterboxd account for record-keeping. 

How do you define “the best”

It all boils down to taste and criteria, both of which differ wildly from one person to the next. Should you choose your favorite films or the ones you think of when you hear the word best? When asked to explain the difference between the two, the example I always give is Martin Scorsese, whose “Raging Bull” I consider to be his greatest masterpiece yet “Goodfellas” is the picture of his that I watch the most. But when it comes to best, is the technical side of filmmaking more important than the theme of a movie if its cinematography and editing aren't quite where they should be to match the film's script and performances? When should you let the shortcomings of a film slide and when should you more harshly judge another one?

As I began to look at the rather unscientific list I made in 2020 of my favorite new films, I thought about what I looked for in end-of-the-year lists back when I was just a casual fan signing onto “The New York Times” or Roger Ebert's site each December. I realized that while I knew that the more times I came across titles like “Yi Yi” or “In the Mood for Love” on the web, they moved higher up on my list of films to seek out, the thing I loved even more than anything was discovering something new that represented an individual critic's personality in a stance that broke away from the pack. 

Some films are, of course, objectively great, and that is the first criteria I used when compiling my list. Starting with the query to list the films that I consider the best of the year, I went with that “Raging Bull” vs. “Goodfellas” dynamic in listing unequivocally excellent films first but once those were out of the way, I started to play. I moved them to various locations in the rankings, by considering other questions as well. 

Namely, which films spoke to me the most on a personal level as a 39-year-old disabled woman with my particular worldview and set of experiences? Which ones perhaps meant more to me in 2020 than they would've just one year earlier? If I'd never seen any of the films from 2020, which ones would I want a friend to tell me to see first? 

I meant to make a Top 20 of '20 list but my first draft went well past 50 films so I arrived at 30 as a means of compromise. The last movie that I saw in a theater was nearly a year ago and while I miss that communal experience, even without the theater, some truly amazing films were released last year. There are a handful of titles on this list that I watched more than once, including the top film, which I loved so much that I watched it twice in one week. Similarly, there are others you will see here that I found so hard-hitting that I know it will be a long time before I'm able to revisit them. I'm limited to the works that I have access to and/or have seen so far so this list might be right for today but it will inevitably shift with time and greater access to more movies. And as my whims change, something I currently have in my Top 5 or 10 might drop to my Top 20, and vice versa, and others might fall off this list completely. 

Why just a list?

While working on this project, I quickly realized that I shouldn't write about each film on this list individually for two reasons: the first being that I'm so passionate about these movies that it would be several thousand words long, and the second is that I want you to have that same sense of discovery that I had when I finally sat down to watch, say, 2002's “City of God” for the first time. 

My advice to you is don't read too much about these films ahead of time before you push play. My friend, the veteran critic, and screenwriter Drew McWeeny argued on my podcast Watch With Jen that reading film criticism should be saved until after you've watched a movie and I wholeheartedly agree with him. I love and respect film writing and do my best not to spoil any plot points in my pieces but I know that as a consumer in my own right, I do the same thing as Drew. I save the reviews I want to read until after I've seen the movie and have sat with it for a while. 

It's incredibly valuable to bring other points of view into my relationship with a movie, whether I agree or disagree with their critique. Honestly, back in the "before times" when press screenings were safe to attend, I opted not to discuss new films very much with fellow critics and chose to instead think about it privately for at least twenty-four hours before I wrote my piece to avoid hyperbole or a rush to judgment. I didn't start out like this of course, because it took some time for me to learn that it's okay not to know what to think about a film right away. 

It's said that the legendary critic Gene Siskel would leave the theater rather than see the trailers for upcoming features back when he was writing for “The Chicago Tribune.” While I've never gone that far, I do find myself only watching thirty seconds or so of a YouTube trailer to get the feel of a movie I might agree to review without the disappointment of inevitable spoilers. I love going into a movie knowing little to nothing about it. 

Now that we're all home during the pandemic and so much great cinema is available with the push of a button, I encourage you to try something new. Check out films from genres you normally don't embrace and be sure to explore titles from other countries as well. View movie-watching as a new adventure. After all, it's a way to safely travel in the comfort of your own home in 2021. I know that having the ability to go to Greece and swim in the sea with Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon is a big part of the reason that I ranked their newest “Trip” film so highly on this list. Yet even though the rest of the movies I included aren't comedic travelogues, they do offer you the chance to escape reality for a while by going back in time or walking in the shoes of someone you'd never expect to meet in your everyday life. 

2020 Themes

Like seeing a “you are here” sticker on a map, a majority of the best movies of the year opted for a neorealistic approach to storytelling. They aim to drop you directly into the world of their protagonist and lose you for a while. From blue-collar workers going wherever they need to go for work as modern-day nomads to heavy metal drummers or farmers doing the same, most of these films use blisteringly compelling first-person or small ensemble narratives. Concentrating on individuals living their lives on the fringes, we encounter the uncelebrated souls of people just getting by, the un-Coogan and Brydons, if you will.  

When writing about what these movies have in common, some critics preferred to zero in on the Me Too aspect apparent in many of 2020's best features and it is definitely there. The popularity of this vital theme, along with the fact that over a dozen of the films in my unedited list of '20 favorites were made by women cannot be understated when evaluating the year's best works. However, I think the real story here is that in a largely (and thankfully) superhero-free year, filmmakers have argued that the real superheroes are the ones who are not “the best” genetic specimens but rather, the ones who get up and do the best they can, regardless of race, gender, or ability. 

Navigating wrongs as they're able while also knowing that they still need to put food on the table, in many of these movies, there's a recurring question of who has and what it means to have power. Many of our main characters are backed into a corner and forced to reconcile what it is that they need in this life with what they want. The desire to simplify, to make a connection, and to find meaning even in a world where things aren't fair is felt throughout all of these works, regardless of who the film's subjects are. We see this when we tag along with guests to a 1980s West London dance party, when we watch a Czech artist find a new friend and muse in the Norwegian thief who stole two of her paintings, and in a thinly veiled autobiographical portrait of a filmmaker in Italy trying to come to terms with his own demons and desires. 

A combination of “best” and “favorite” movies, including the ones I immediately recommended to others and the ones that kept me up nights, when given the impossible task of making a list, I took a cue from these films and found my own meaning as well. In the end, don't ask me to explain it. Just enjoy the movies because then it’s time for you to decide.  

The 30 Best Films of 2020 

#1 David Byrne’s American Utopia

#2 Sound of Metal

#3 Minari

#4 The Trip to Greece

#5 Small Axe: Lovers Rock

#6 The Nest

#7 I’m Your Woman

#8 Never Rarely Sometimes Always

#9 The Assistant

#10 A Sun

Top of 2020 # 11-30

11) “Nomadland” 

12) “Another Round” 

13) “Babyteeth”

14) “The Painter and the Thief” 

15) “A Good Woman is Hard to Find” 

16) “Black Bear” 

17) “One Night in Miami” 

18) “Saint Frances” 

19) “First Cow” 

20) “Herself” 

21) “News of the World” 

22) “The Burnt Orange Heresy” 

23) “Da 5 Bloods” 

24) “On the Rocks” 

25) “Time” 

26) "The Vast of Night" 

27) “Driveways” 

28) “Alone With Her Dreams” 

29) “Tommaso” 

30) “Corpus Christi” 

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A three-time national award-winning writer, when Jen Johans isn't reviewing movies at FilmIntuition.com or releasing new episodes of her podcast “Watch With Jen,” you can find her on Twitter @FilmIntuition.

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Zoom call with "Sound of Metal" Riz Ahmed and director Darius Marder by Jeff Mitchell

Riz Ahmed in “Sound of Metal”

“Sound of Metal”, a film about a heavy metal drummer who loses his hearing, is one of the most affecting movies of 2020, and Riz Ahmed delivers an Oscar-worthy performance.  Well, Riz and director/co-writer Darius Marder graciously hosted a Zoom call, and the Phoenix Film Festival, along with other media outlets, joined them for an engaging, insightful discussion.  These talented men spoke about their experiences with the deaf community, audiences’ positive feedback, the meaning behind the film’s title, and more.

“Sound of Metal” - starring Riz, Olivia Cooke, and Paul Raci - is available to stream on Amazon Prime.

Q:  What was your experience with the deaf community before you read this script?

RA:  It was very limited.  I think that’s true of most people in the hearing community.  One of the crazy things that struck me in the middle of shooting is how insanely segregated the deaf and hearing communities are.  The hearing (communities) have the privilege and power to change that but don’t.  It comes at a great cost to all the deaf people out there, but also to us because making this film connected me to some of the most profoundly insightful, communicative, present, and forceful performers (that) I’ve ever met. 

I think the deaf community taught me the meaning of the word, listening.  Listening isn’t something that you just do with your ears.  It’s about being present.

Director Darius Marder on the set of “Sound of Metal”

Q:  In gaining more insight into the deaf community, what experiences did you most appreciate?

DM:  I had so many of them.  There was one man who auditioned.  He had a very deep intensity about him and was raised by deaf and blind parents, so they had never seen or heard him.  He was deaf and also losing his sight, (and it was) so powerful to see the sensitivity of the deaf community around him. 

So many of us – and (I point to) my experience living in New York – are all moving in our directions.  We don’t look over here or over there, (but) everyone (on-set) was always looking.  (The deaf actors) would go up to this man and sign on his hand.  The nuance of just that - this incredibly intimate physicality and (their) awareness to move towards him - was so moving and so eye-opening because it’s something (we) just don’t do in the hearing culture. 

Q:  Riz, since you were so immersed in playing Ruben, did you ever dream that you were deaf during the shoot?

RA:  I can’t remember my dreams during that shoot, but I can remember having many sleepless nights.  During that first week, I hardly got any sleep at all.  In terms of simulating experiences of deafness, we did use auditory blockers.  We had hearing aids that were fit to a white noise setting and placed quite deep into my ear canal(s).  When they were in for the day’s shoot, Darius and I would communicate on pieces of paper. 

(The blockers) cut you off from other people’s voices but also (from) the sound of your own voice.  That can be very disorienting, (the) feeling of being in freefall and shouting into the void.  For the sections in the film when Ruben thinks of deafness as a loss, as a lack, we used those auditory blockers.  For the sections when Ruben realizes that deafness isn’t a disability, it’s a culture, it’s a way of being, we didn’t use those auditory blockers. 

Riz Ahmed in “Sound of Metal”

Q:  I’d like to learn more about Ruben’s tattoos.  What was the creative process behind the design and selection of them?  How involved were you in this process?

RA:  The tattoos (were) groomed from a number of different places, some of them from our imagination, some of them from the limitations placed on us due to time.  It wasn’t a case of, “Ok, let’s cover him with a load of tattoos, and they can be anything.”   (We) really picked out certain tattoos and put them in certain places for certain reasons, and (worked) out the story behind them as well.  That’s something that came from both Darius and (me). 

I was also inspired by Sean Powell.  Sean is a drummer from the band Surfbort, and he’s a spirit animal for Ruben.  Sean has a background with addiction.  He’s also a tremendous drummer and in a band with his girlfriend.  I met up with him a couple of times a week.  He shared stories behind his tattoos, and he’s covered in ink.  A couple of (Ruben’s tattoos) are homages to Sean.  Others are references to punk culture. 

(Ruben’s) relationship to his tattoos is interesting.  I think it’s (his) attempt to define and take ownership and control of his identity, as someone, perhaps, who doesn’t have a solid family background.  He has a deliberately ambiguous appearance (with) blonde hair but brown skin and a name that you can’t quite place and no solid place for himself.  His tattoos (say) “This is me.”  

Q:  Talk about the positive feedback that the movie’s received.

DM:  The most incredible thing is people (from the deaf community come up and say that the movie) has made them feel seen for the first time.  (It’s) truly surprising.  As much as you want your film to register like that, you never really know.  I have a hard time talking about it without feeling that I’m going to cry, because it’s so powerful.  It’s so powerful to hear that, and it makes me so proud (of) the people who poured their lifeblood into this movie. 

RA:  Yea, exactly the same.  I saw a video of a young girl on TikTok that a friend of a friend sent to me the other day, a young deaf girl talking about her experience.  She felt that her experience was being portrayed and validated and seen and understood, and she was coming into tears as she was speaking about it.  Seeing messages like that feels really gratifying.

Q:  Darius, why did you chose the title “Sound of Metal”?

DM:  This title has a lot of depth to it.  I like that the title is a misdirect.  I recognize that (the film) probably turns off some people because they think it’s about metal music.  I like that you come into this movie with a preconceived notion and that it defies that notion because it’s asking you to question identity right from the start.

What we hear in the very first part of this movie – before we see (anything) – is this sound.  That sound of metal - of the actual music - is the sound that Ruben is looking to get back to (during) the movie.  This concept of (reclaiming) something, something that we think we want to reclaim, something visceral that we experienced. 

Also, “Sound of Metal” was derived to be a caption.  That’s why it’s not called “The Sound of Metal”.  “Sound of Metal” is a caption…in and of itself.   

Jeff – a member of the Phoenix Critics Circle – has penned film reviews since 2008, graduated from ASU’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism, and is a certified Rotten Tomatoes critic. Follow Jeff and the Phoenix Film Festival on Twitter @MitchFilmCritic and @PhoenixFilmFest, respectively.

Soul - Movie Review by Monte Yazzie

Photo by Pixar/PIXAR - © 2020 Disney/Pixar. All Rights Reserved.

Dir: Pete Doctor and Kemp Powers

Starring: Jamie Foxx, Tina Fey, Graham Norton, Rachel House, Phylicia Rashad, Angela Bassett, Richard Ayoade, Alice Braga, Donnell Rawlings, and Questlove

Runtime: 1h 40m

The trumpet blast at the beginning of Miles Davis’ 1952 release “Enigma” caught the attention of a young, budding music fan in a record store sometime in the early 2000s. While this particular song may not define the stunning career of the legendary artist, it would define a moment for a young man trying to make sense of the world he was living in; a world filled with lofty questions like “what am I going to do with my life”, “when will I find love”, and “what happens if my plan doesn’t work out”.

It was a moment, you might call it a “spark”, that changed my feelings about jazz music, but even more, changed my ideas of what music can make you feel, how it can grab an emotion and define it completely through the simple selection of a variety of notes. When I hear the song I remember everything about that moment, how the store smelled, how the floor stuck to my shoes, and how the glow of the lights illuminated the shelves of music, but more strikingly I remember how the song brought a sense of comfort to my soul. Music, at this moment, wielded such power and emotion that I would name my first-born child after the auteur who composed this piece.

In the beginning minutes of Disney Pixar’s newest animated emotional vessel, “Soul”, a middle-aged elementary school band teacher in New York City named Joe (Jamie Foxx) shows a classroom full of brand-new musicians how music can transport and transform by playing an improvised piece on the piano. It’s but one beautiful moment in a film filled with beautiful moments. “Soul” is a film about questions, both simple and complicated, that occur throughout the many twists and turns during the story of a person’s life. It’s a film you will contemplate well after the stunning animation ends, one that you may feel after the delightfully arranged composition plays its final note, it’s a film that again proves Pixar’s power of storytelling for all ages.

The film centers on band teacher Joe, Pixar’s first Black lead character, a somewhat disenfranchised musician who longs for stardom in jazz clubs while continuously contemplating why he can’t catch a break. Joe’s mother Libba (Phylicia Rashad) only wants what’s best for her son, pushing him towards a full-time job with the school, but Joe dreams for a different life. The opportunity comes unexpectedly as a former student calls on Joe to fill an open position on piano for jazz artist Dorothea Williams (Angela Bassett) in her band. Joe is ecstatic, but during the exuberance, he falls into an open manhole. His body is transported to an escalator leading to the Great Beyond, but Joe isn’t ready to leave his life and scrambles to escape which leads him to the Great Before, a place where unborn souls are given their personality traits before entering the world.

“Soul” is a bold and inventive step in storytelling for a company that has already led the charge in bold and inventive steps in storytelling. From the beautiful life story of “Up”, to the dystopian cautionary tale of “Wall-E”, all the way to the emotional identification tale of youth in “Inside Out”, Disney Pixar animated stories have pushed the boundaries of how you can tell tales of deeper conversation for young people.

Pixar’s most recent stories have progressed to have grown-up conversations about death and dying told through the vessel of characters that have connections for all ages to understand and connect with. “Coco”, which centers on a young boy’s journey through culture and the land of the dead, and “Onward”, which concerns two brothers on a voyage to connect with their deceased father, tackle the tough reality of losing loved ones and dealing with a life changed by their absence. These films lean into an understanding that life is more than just a beginning and end, that even through immense tragedy one can still find the pieces of love, kindness, sacrifice, and responsibility that define a life lived between the start and finish.

Amidst its beautifully rendered New York City, with images that paint a photorealistic world that looks and feels like a fairy-tale land, that makes one remember the magic of big cities, and in the abstract world of the Great Before and Beyond that showcases floating gumball-like characters finding their “spark” before entering the world, “Soul” takes its animation to portray a tale greater than just death but instead about the questions that piece together a life. More than “Coco” and “Onward”, “Soul” searches the complicated questions not for meaning or answers, but rather for insight and understanding, for a way to propose the difficult topics while using characters and stories to travel the complicated pathways.

Joe’s journey from his earthly body into a floating blue figure working every angle to find a passage back to his life, accompanied by an unborn soul simply known as 22 (Tina Fey), renders familiar questions every person experiences on their movements through life. Joe becomes a Mentor in the Great Before, a recently deceased figure charged with helping an unborn soul find their “spark”, that unique quality that helps the soul find their appreciation for life. Joe later finds the opportunity to experience his life from another perspective (a twist that will not be spoiled here), he watches how his character interacts with people in the world he has left, how he’s ignored some great things that have always been around him, how he hasn’t taken the time to smell the roses in his life. It’s a simple sentiment, one found throughout all tales of life, love, and loss that sums up how one should approach their life. However simplistic it may sound, “Soul” somehow makes it feel and mean so much more than it is. That’s the beauty of this tale.

As young people will grow to understand, as middle-aged people are beginning to recognize, and as elder people are becoming accustomed to accept, life doesn’t have defined destinations, but it does have everything in between. A beautiful walk in a big city, the hardship of lost love, the feeling of joy when getting an unexpected hug, the struggle of being isolated from people you love, and the sound of beautiful music in a record store that changes how you think and feel about something. “Soul” is bold and ambitious and beautiful storytelling.

Monte’s Rating
4.00 out of 5.00

Promising Young Woman - Movie Review by Jeff Mitchell

Carey Mulligan in “Promising Young Woman”

'Promising Young Woman':  Mulligan deserves her second Oscar nomination

Written and directed by:  Emerald Fennell

Starring:  Carey Mulligan, Bo Burnham, Laverne Cox, Alfred Molina, Clancy Brown, and Jennifer Coolidge

“Promising Young Woman” – Cassie Thomas (Carey Mulligan) is on tour. 

No, Cassie doesn’t play in a band and trek across the country, although she could double as a punk rock act’s dismissive lead singer or perhaps, a local symphony’s cellist.  Ms. Thomas is attractive, thin, whip-smart, and she just turned 30.  She also turns most men’s heads, while working as a barista at Make Me Coffee or frequenting the clubs around town. 

Cassie’s on tour alright, but she’s embarked on a sneaky, seductive side-journey.  On a typical night, she’ll pretend to be inebriated, attract a potential one-night-stand suitor, and call out his unwanted sexual advances.  This femme fatale wants his clumsy fumblings to go just a bit too far, so she can confront the anonymous womanizer, a wolf in sheep’s clothing. 

Think of Paul Kersey (Charles Bronson) from “Death Wish” (1974), except Cassie purposely makes herself an easy target in Ohio watering holes, not a New York City subway car. 

Do CT’s encounters become violent?  Well, you’ll have to watch this 1-hour 47-minute mesmerizing dark comedy/crime drama to discover the answer, but please be assured, she’s quite effective at her job.  Well, spinning a web as a Black Widow of sorts isn’t a lucrative, healthy vocation, and that’s one of Cassie’s massive problems.  It turns out that she’s not currently a promising young woman, although she used to be.  Seven years ago, her world fell apart, and most unfortunately, she hasn’t shaken a singular, horrific event.  It’s emotionally ripping her to ribbons on the inside, but she overcompensates by presenting a cool-as-a-cucumber cover.

Well, writer/director Emerald Fennell rips a sensational feature film debut inside and out.  With a provocative, unpredictable script, striking and frequent straight-on framing of Cassie (and her parents’ home) from beginning to end, and Mulligan’s highly memorable, Oscar-worthy performance, this promising young director leaves her mark on the 2020 movie landscape.

From the get-go, Fennell presents an adversarial relationship between the sexes. 

Her opening sequence features doughy professional fellas strutting their stuff on the dance floor, as the camera mostly focuses on their beer bellies bursting inside their Ralph Lauren button-downs and hanging over their belts and khakis.  The old saying that “every woman wishes to be Barbie, but every guy thinks that he’s G.I. Joe” truly resonates here, as these eager boys are blowing off steam with drinks and tomfoolery.  So many average Joes laugh it up, but Cassie is the sexy, lone Barbie who lays a trap for tonight’s victim.

Most ladies – I imagine – will also appreciate our director’s perspective on the everyday disrespect or the lack of plain common decency that virtually all women have experienced.  This ever-present theme takes on a few essential forms and channels the frustration with laser focus through Cassie, a vigilante who fights this universal wrong that has existed for as long as men and women have walked the earth. 

Mulligan’s Cassie owns a stand-up-and-cheer, steely superhero superiority, as she frequently delivers verbal assaults that turn her adversaries from bravado bros to quivering quitters.  She’s in clear command but also reveals her vulnerabilities – from underneath her hardened outer shell – to the audience.  Not only has our flawed protagonist coped with individual male advances, but also with a society built on inherent inequities.  She promptly takes no prisoners on two separate threads:  the aforementioned never-ending John Doe spree and a distinct, well-planned revenge plot.

With a playful, comedic, and sobering screenplay that careens our hero through modern-day inconveniences, the story takes dark turns but offers hopeful levity with Bo Burnham’s breezy, accessible arc as a potential love interest for Cassie.  Perish the thought, right?  She doesn’t have openings on her schedule for romance, but perhaps Ryan (Burnham) is the male outlier to melt her heart. 

Anything is possible, and with Fennell and Mulligan steering this cinematic ship, I’ll buy anything that they’re selling.  Hey, can Cassie double as Blink 182’s frontwoman?

Actually, in a way, she does.

(3.5/4 stars)

Jeff – a member of the Phoenix Critics Circle – has penned film reviews since 2008, graduated from ASU’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism, and is a certified Rotten Tomatoes critic.  Follow Jeff and the Phoenix Film Festival on Twitter @MitchFilmCritic and @PhoenixFilmFest, respectively.

News of the World - Movie Review by Jeff Mitchell

Tom Hanks and Helena Zengel in “News of the World”

‘News of the World’:  Hanks and his young co-star deliver a soulful western

 

Directed by:  Paul Greengrass

Written by:  Paul Greengrass and Luke Davies, based on Paulette Jiles’ novel

Starring:  Tom Hanks and Helena Zengel

“News of the World” – Three years ago, Tom Hanks starred as a newsman, and one of the 20th century’s most prominent, “The Washington Post” Executive Editor Ben Bradlee in “The Post”, a film about the publication’s attempt to publish the Pentagon Papers. 

In “News of the World”, Hanks plays another character tied to the Fourth Estate, although he’s worlds – and a century - apart from Mr. Bradlee. 

As the movie opens, Civil War veteran Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd (Hanks) greets an eager Wichita Falls, Texas audience in 1870 by saying, “I’m here tonight to bring you all the news from this great world of ours.”

He travels all over the Lone Star State and reads from newspapers to enthusiastic crowds who are itching to listen to “all the news that’s fit to print.”   Since paperboys are not declaring “Extra!  Extra!  Read all about it!” on every other corner in Red River, Castroville, or Wichita Falls, our good captain delivers a vital service to these communities.  He also holds a talent for theatrical flair.  For instance, this storyteller will dramatically proclaim that a group of miners escaped a fire, a meningitis outbreak arrested several victims, or offer a moment of levity and explain that a man mistakenly-presumed dead comes back to life.  (Geez, that doesn’t actually sound funny, but trust me, Captain Kidd has the gift of gab.)

He’s a moral, respectable man, but his companion is loneliness, and they are well-acquainted.  The captain’s demons run deep, and director Paul Greengrass – who teamed up with Hanks in the compelling big-budget thriller “Captain Phillips” (2013) – asks his actor to reach into soulful, dark places. 

Hanks unquestionably answers the call, and the audience will repeatedly witness that Kidd is a better human being than his surrounding environment, one frequented by unhealthy, overwhelming doses of Darwinism.  Poverty, racism, gunplay, and off-screen slaughter between whites, blacks, and natives are the begrudgingly accepted norms.  The world is a cruel, hard place, and learning to survive in it becomes the first, second, and third instincts for everyone, even those with altruistic intentions.

Still, there’s room for good deeds.  

Through pure happenstance, Kidd – while traveling on his typical rural route - meets Johanna Leonberger (Helena Zengel).  This (roughly) 10-year-old German orphan lived with a Kiowa tribe for six years, but U.S. soldiers slaughtered her Native American family, and through a random bureaucratic judgment and some soul searching, this orator – without speaking as to why – chaperons Johanna to her aunt and uncle’s home in Castroville.

“News of the World” isn’t particularly tied to the newspaper biz.  It’s simply a vehicle to place Hanks in a road picture, but if there’s someone who can breathe genuine, gentle humanity into a 1-hour 59-minute on-screen isolated journey across desolate, barren terrain, he is your man.  (see also “Cast Away” (2000))

Since Johanna no longer recalls her German language, straightforward discourse is problematic between this former Texas Third Infantryman beaten down by life and a little girl ripped apart from not one but two families.  They both possess varying degrees of emotional toll, which broaden their already-massive pragmatic gulf, but the two also sit side-by-side for a weeks-long trek. 

Greengrass gives his characters the emotional space to hopefully connect. 

Due to the linguistic barrier, Jefferson Kyle Kidd does most of the talking because Johanna fortified a genuine stance on silence, one built on a rightful distrust towards Caucasian men.  She occasionally converses through some Kiowa vocab, as Zengel masterfully carries Johanna’s painful history and some encouraging steps towards trust.  It’s a heck of a convincing performance, and quite frankly, it’s difficult to say if the film would work without Hanks’ inclusion or Zengel’s shining turn.  The only other recognizable star is Bill Camp (who is great in everything, by the way) in a minor appearance.  Otherwise, Hanks and Zengel are on their own for long stretches of open, exceedingly brown Texas buttes and plains.

The crew filmed in New Mexico, but no matter the U.S. state, the terrain looks and feels like the bleak Eastern Oregon desert in “Meek’s Cutoff” (2010).  If you’ve experienced director Kelly Reichardt’s unsettling picture, you’re hoping that the good captain and new passenger keep moving forward and avoid harm’s way.  Of course, various southwestern dangers hunt them down, as the savage human condition matches the unforgiving great outdoors. 

Although anyone would be within their right to call “Road to Perdition” (2002) and “Catch Me If You Can” (2002) modern-day westerns, “News of the World” is Hanks’ first role in an actual one.  It suits him too, as this A-list Hollywood legend and child actress are awfully endearing in a timeless movie about a connection between a pair of semi-broken souls, and here’s some expected news:  bring some tissues.

(3/4 stars)

Jeff – a member of the Phoenix Critics Circle – has penned film reviews since 2008, graduated from ASU’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism, and is a certified Rotten Tomatoes critic.  Follow Jeff and the Phoenix Film Festival on Twitter @MitchFilmCritic and @PhoenixFilmFest, respectively.

Sylvie's Love - Movie Review by Jen Johans

Tessa Thompson and Nnamdi Asomugha in “Sylvie’s Love”

Writer-director: Eugene Ashe

Cast: Tessa Thompson, Nnamdi Asomugha, Aja Naomi King, Jemima Kirke, & Eva Longoria

Review by Jen Johans

Filled with shiny, almost luridly bright colors and a razor-sharp eye for startling subtext, when master filmmaker Douglas Sirk described one of his philosophies behind such grand '50s melodramas as “All That Heaven Allows,” “Magnificent Obsession,” “Imitation of Life,” and “Written on the Wind,” he said, “you have to think with the heart.”

It's this piece of advice as well as the stylistic choices made in those opulent films that we think of most when we watch the impressionistically Sirkian works produced by writer-directors Wong Kar-wai and Todd Haynes. Two of contemporary cinema's greatest filmmakers, in addition to Sirk's incredibly influential '50s output, both Wong's “In the Mood for Love” and Haynes' “Carol” feel like they were a major source of inspiration for writer-director Eugene Ashe's new, exquisitely lush period romance “Sylvie's Love,” which bows this week on Amazon Prime.

Set in the late 1950s through the early '60s, "Sylvie's Love" is a passionate celebration of jazz, art, fashion, and above all, swoon-worthy, damn the torpedoes romance. As such, it's a film that thinks with (and is dedicated to) the heart. A stunner for its aesthetic choices alone, "Sylvie's Love" feels like it was made with the same Haynes-like obsessive care that the auteur used to create "Far From Heaven" and "Carol." The result is a work that not only seems like it belongs in the period in which it is set but looks like a long-lost studio venture made in a bygone era as well.

The type of film which, to use a very 2020 meme-worthy phrase, could be aptly described as "a mood," this sweepingly romantic work centers on two young aspiring creatives who meet and fall in love but take years to get the timing right.

Tessa Thompson in “Sylvie’s Love”

Working in her father's record shop while dreaming of a future producing television, even at a time when such a pursuit seems impossible for a young Black woman, Tessa Thompson's elegant, ambitious Sylvie finds herself falling for her new coworker Robert (played by Nnamdi Asomugha). A gifted up-and-coming jazz tenor saxophonist who only took the job so he could get close to his crush, the chemistry shared by fiery leads Asomugha and Thompson is fiercely compelling.

Complicating matters, although she's engaged to a man from a wealthy, highly respected family who is currently overseas in the military, Sylvie can't help but respond to the pull she feels to this man who sees her for who she is and admires her dreams for the future, as opposed to merely respecting her family's status or what she represents to him as an acquisition.

Though influenced by '50s era melodramas, “Sylvie's Love” frequently calls up the sights and sounds of Wong Kar-wai's most famous films. We see this first in a shot of Sylvie looking at Robert with longing from the backseat of a cab (which is a motif used throughout Wong's oeuvre) and once again in Ashe’s usage of the song, “Quizas, Quizas, Quizas,” which Wong weaponized to intoxicating effect in “In the Mood for Love.” While the Nat King Cole version was played in Wong's film, here in “Sylvie's Love,” the number is performed by a singer played by Eva Longoria.

A passion project for Ashe, who set out to honor his family's memories and photographs from the period, while the film's narrative arc underwhelms and its resolution is not only rushed but anticlimactic, it's easy to forgive "Sylvie's Love" its missteps because it's such an overwhelmingly gorgeous picture all around.

Shot by Mira Nair's legendary "Monsoon Wedding" cinematographer Declan Quinn, "Sylvie's" buttery visuals put a high gloss sheen on Phoenix Mellow's vintage costumes (which include regal Chanel couture for brand ambassador Tessa Thompson), as well as production designer Mayne Berke's '50s studio backlot built sets of New York City.

Additionally boasting an enviably impressive score by Fabrice Lecomte, who both used strings similar to the way they work so well in Haynes' Sirkian pictures "Far From Heaven" and "Carol," and also composed all of the bebop numbers for Robert's fictional quartet, the film's handsome production specs will win over jazz fans and classic movie lovers alike.

Giving Black audiences a dizzying, long overdue '50s and '60s era romantic melodrama of their own (despite introducing but then quickly shying away from historical issues regarding race), "Sylvie's Love" is a sumptuously entertaining ode to Black love made by a skilled filmmaker who, much like Douglas Sirk, thinks with his heart.

(Bio: A three-time national award-winning writer, when Jen Johans isn't reviewing movies at FilmIntuition.com or releasing new episodes of her podcast “Watch With Jen,” you can find her on Twitter @FilmIntuition.)

Greenland - Movie Review by Jeff Mitchell

Gerald Butler in “Greenland”

In some ways, ‘Greenland’ is a surprising disaster flick, but it’s also a dull, predictable trip

Directed by:  Ric Roman Waugh

Written by:  Chris Sparling

Starring:  Gerald Butler and Morena Baccarin 

“Greenland” – After discovering “Greenland” on your Video On Demand Rolodex, you might assume that the 1-hour 59-minute film is a new Disneynature documentary about the planet’s largest island.  (Greenland is over 800,000 square miles and about nine times bigger than the United Kingdom.) 

Perhaps, this movie is a Werner Herzog doc, but that’s not right because it would’ve been named “Greenland: The Perils and Wonder of a Massive Ice Sheet and Rectifying any Confusion or Conflation with Iceland”. 

No, “Greenland” is a feature, and director Ric Roman Waugh’s picture is a disaster film.   No, the script doesn’t call for the country’s glaciers to melt into the nearby oceans, although that will likely happen in reality and probably sooner rather than later, but this Artic nation is a refuge for our heroes, the Garrity family.

John (Gerald Butler), Allison (Morena Baccarin), and their seven-year-old boy Nathan (Roger Dale Floyd) live in suburban Atlanta, and life used to be swell.  Unfortunately, John and Allison’s marriage is in trouble.  Divorce seems inevitable, although their mutual grace is winning the day.  Still, a cataclysmic event endangers civility on a global scale.  A comet – that someone harmlessly named Clarke – is speeding towards Earth, and with not one but thousands of individual space rocks in a close-knit and deadly collective that will pummel the world and billions of people along with it.  

Yikes!  How dangerous!  I don’t know about your planning skills, but I don’t have a basement, and my Trader Joe’s Panda Puffs cereal box only has enough for two more bowls.  Thank G*d, this is just a movie. 

Anyway, these type of popcorn flicks heavily rely on massive special effects, as individual protagonists and worldwide populations – under duress - desperately attempt to run, drive, and fly to safety.  Movie studios have recently served up plenty of cartoonish nightmare scenarios, including “Deep Impact” (1998), “Dante’s Peak” (1997), “The Quake” (2018), and “2012” (2009), and the latter film stressed out some moviegoers for three years until the clock reached January 1, 2013.  Little did we know that 2020 would be a horrific doozy, but let’s not dive into the pandemic film genre because “Contagion” (2011) is hitting a little too close to home at the moment.

Back to “Greenland”, the Garritys reside in suburban Atlanta.  As they watch (on television) a small portion of Clarke wiping out Tampa like a nuclear explosion, they discover that the government chooses them – like lottery winners - for asylum.  They are the fortunate ones because their friends and neighbors have to find their own shelters.  Yea, good luck with that. Hey, suburbia has its privileges, but when a boulder – the size of a football stadium slams into your city, the one-bedroom studio crowd and the 5,000 sq. foot estate gang are all – except the specifically chosen, like John, Allison, and Nathan – created equal. 

The government hands them VIP bracelets that get them backstage access to a faraway utopia, which we discover is Greenland, but this mom, dad, and son have to fend for themselves after some bad buck.  Actually, John makes a downright terrible decision that carries the most apparent stupidity of horror movie cliché like, “let’s split up to find a way out of this haunted house.”

This moment will provoke the most painstaking, sarcastic groans from the audience who can foresee the next stumbling chain of events.  The Garrity triad needs to somehow get from Georgia to Greenland, and Waugh – through movie “magic” – speeds up on-screen events, so our heroes travel hundreds of miles in a scene or two through occasional happenstance and makeshift transportation conduits.  It’s quite miraculous, and if you ever need travel advice, John Garrity is your agent!  He’s performing these nomadic wonders under extreme pressure too, because pieces of Clarke occasionally drop from the sky to cause out-of-this-world road hazards.  

That’s not exactly true, because - surprisingly - the first real encounter between John and Clarke occurs about 90 minutes into the 2-hour runtime, as Waugh’s film is thankfully void of sweeping and frequent special effects destruction.  Instead, Chris Sparling’s screenplay dives deeply into John’s relationship with Allison and their relationship with Nathan.  Sparling tugs on our heartstrings a bit, especially with dreamy flashbacks of loving embraces and birthday parties, and Butler draws down his action-hero bravado to become much more accessible to many fathers out there.

That doesn’t mean that their implausible journey to an icy Promised Land doesn’t take several telegraphed, predictable turns.  It does, which makes this disaster flick about as exciting as a one-person Main Street parade, and hey, I’d love to travel to Greenland someday, but I don’t need to see this movie again.

(2/4 stars)

Jeff – a member of the Phoenix Critics Circle – has penned film reviews since 2008, graduated from ASU’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism, and is a certified Rotten Tomatoes critic.  Follow Jeff and the Phoenix Film Festival on Twitter @MitchFilmCritic and @PhoenixFilmFest, respectively.

Wild Mountain Thyme - Movie Review by Jeff Mitchell

Emily Blunt and Jamie Dornan in “Wild Mountain Thyme”

'Wild Mountain Thyme': This beautiful-looking rom-com doesn't pass the smell test

Written and directed by:  John Patrick Shanley

Starring:  Emily Blunt, Jamie Dornan, Christopher Walken, and John Hamm

“Wild Mountain Thyme” – This tale of two families – the Reillys and the Muldoons – might be the most Irish film released in 2020 or any year in recent memory.  Gorgeous, sweeping shots of Kelly green prairies and rolling hills, crystal blue streams, winding country roads, a wandering sheep herd, and a horse or two grace the screen with proud bravado.  Accompanied by a lovely score – heavily influenced by the nation’s traditional music (The Chieftains, perhaps?) – this welcoming Emerald Isle setting needs a few random shots of Kerrygold butter, a nearby Guinness distributor, and a Riverdance number to feel complete. 

I’m teasing, but writer/director John Patrick Shanley’s picture certainly has an Irish fairy tale quality.  Filmed in Crossmolina, this enchanted, rustic town in County Mayo - about 250 kilometers from Dublin – is the perfect spot for the movie crew and cast to work their magic.

This light romantic comedy strikes the right tones, because it doesn’t take itself too seriously.  Unfortunately, the earnest attempts at humor repeatedly falter.  Worse yet, rich passion and chemistry must have left on a one-way Aer Lingus flight the day before shooting, which leaves the audience with a clumsy story that feels like an Irish movie parody.  That’s quite a feat, especially with a top-notch cast, including Emily Blunt, Jamie Dornan, Christopher Walken, and John Hamm. 

Anthony Reilly (Dornan) and Rosemary Muldoon (Blunt) are life-long neighbors.  They grew up on their adjacent farms that have been run by their respective families for generations.  In fact, the Reilly farm has blossomed for 121 years, and one might suspect that the Muldoon homestead has flourished for about the same lengthy stint.  The Reillys and Muldoons aren’t the Hatfields and McCoys, but Anthony and Rosemary carry some noted tension. 

Basically, Rosemary wishes that Anthony would court her. 

She’s had a thing for him for years, but Anthony’s too emotionally blind or distracted to recognize Rosemary’s amorous wishes.  In other words, the central plotline is boy-meets-girl, and then boy-stands-up girl for two-plus decades.  Well, as much as Shanley and Dornan attempt to portray Anthony as a clueless klutz, it’s awfully tough for Jamie to convince anyone of that.  Come on now, Dornan is one of the most sought after big-screen leading men, and hey, he was Christian Grey for crying out loud. 

Yes, despite the infamous “Fifty Shades” trilogy, Jamie is a capable actor, and see the WWII thriller “Anthropoid” (2016) for reference, but awkward fool shouldn’t be on this man’s resume.  Still, Shanley wrote that Anthony should frequently look for treasure via a metal detector, randomly trip and fall, practice conversing with Rosemary by speaking to a horse, and finally reveal his irrational internal hurdle in the third act.  Incidentally, Anthony’s mental block is so laughably absurd that any audience-empathy - built for the man over the previous 75 minutes - will quickly be dismissed.

To get from here to there, Anthony and his dad (Walken) argue over his inheritance.  Also, our lead repeatedly ignores and pushes away Rosemary and casually mentions that Ireland “is a terrible place for a decent person.”   With several clunky starts and stops, the film finally starts to run at a brisk, promising pace once Anthony’s American cousin Adam (Hamm) arrives.  Even though he rents a Rolls-Royce, Adam might as well have landed in a solid gold 757 draped in American flags.  Think back to Hamm’s hilarious turn in “Bridesmaids” (2011), but he dials it down here.  Still, Adam’s a direct threat to swoop Rosemary off her feet and fly her back to the U.S.   Sure, this potential love triangle bathes in clichés and standard rom-com formulas, but at least Adam gives the film some purpose for a short while.  Well, “Wild Mountain Thyme” does offer Blunt and Dornan a chance to sing, and their short but notable ballads are quite beautiful.  The locale is too, but this romance doesn’t pass the smell test.

(1.5/4 stars)

Jeff – a member of the Phoenix Critics Circle – has penned film reviews since 2008, graduated from ASU’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism, and is a certified Rotten Tomatoes critic.  Follow Jeff and the Phoenix Film Festival on Twitter @MitchFilmCritic and @PhoenixFilmFest, respectively.

I'm Your Woman - Movie Review by Jen Johans

Director: Julia Hart

Cast: Rachel Brosnahan, Arinzé Kene, & Marsha Stephanie Blake

Review by Jen Johans

Swanky, immaculate, and impractical, “I'm Your Woman” opens in the luxe '70s Pennsylvania home afforded to Jean (Rachel Brosnahan) by her husband's life of crime. Also given to Jean within the first five minutes of the movie is a new baby that her man Eddie (Bill Heck) delivers like a jumpsuit, string of pearls, or new stereo that might have fallen off the back of a truck in his vicinity over the years.

The only difference between this and the typical swag that the veteran thief brings home is that this property is not only hot but it's also a living and breathing thing and as such, it looks immediately out of place in this cold, catalog ready environment.

Sensing his wife's hesitation, Eddie promises Jean that it's all worked out. “He's our baby,” he explains but then changes his wording later on. He's "your baby,” Eddie says, correcting himself in a line of dialogue that's as much an important distinction as it is an eerie piece of foreshadowing for the film.

You see, mere moments after he says this, Eddie disappears from Jean's life. And no, that's not a spoiler, it's merely the set-up for this engaging piece of storytelling from “Miss Stevens” and “Fast Color” director Julia Hart, who wrote the film along with her husband, producer Jordan Horowitz.

A clever reinvention of '70s cinematic crime fiction, in “I'm Your Woman,” Jean gains a baby and loses a husband, the first when one arrives home unexpectedly and the second when the other does not. Thus, one man or – to be more precise – one “he” replaces the other in Jean's life and our leading lady goes from being the woman and the whole world for one to the woman and the whole world for another when Eddie fails to return home following a job gone disastrously wrong.

What went wrong on the job remains a mystery for the better part of the movie but it's only interesting from a tangential perspective because it happens offscreen. Serving not as the movie's climax the way that most heists are utilized in crime movies centered on male protagonists, “Woman” is instead concerned with how one man's actions and decisions affect the woman at its core and the baby she's left to protect.

“Something happened tonight,” one of Eddie's partners tells her and, handing her a bag with two hundred grand in it and instructions to take the kid and go with a man named Cal (Arinzé Kene), we discern that that is all we need to know. Rather than stay with the crooks and either go to the mattresses or Sicily with the men eluding capture as we did in “The Godfather,” Hart and Horowitz instead opt to follow Diane Keaton's Kay instead, or rather, their Kay in the form of Jean.

A light flutter of wind you initially ignore until it builds into a tornado that no one – not even the weatherman sees coming – Jean goes from a meek, decorative glass figurine living in her husband's dollhouse to a frazzled yet determined woman trying to find and hold onto any semblance of control she has in her new, now suddenly uncertain life. Who Jean is, as not Eddie's woman but her own (and now baby Harry's as well) is the crux of Hart's picture. And in a messy, initially submissive turn that's light-years away from her performance on “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” gifted producer-star Brosnahan is there, fully committed to exploring Jean's compelling evolution every step of the way, even when she occasionally but realistically goes backwards instead of forwards.

Thrillingly original and long overdue, particularly for women (like yours truly) who, long obsessed with '70s crime movies, didn't realize just how much they wanted and needed a film focused on the characters that far too often get left behind in traditional white-male-centric fare, one of the wisest decisions that Hart made was not to simply turn Michael into Missy Corleone. Avoiding the pitfalls of over-correction that we sometimes see in revisionist genre efforts where, rather than accurately reflect the true setting and history of the period of the film, filmmakers will just make the hero a woman instead of a man, Hart opts to embrace rather than escape femininity here.

Jean isn't a crackerjack thief or a hitman, she is a crime syndicate wife who's never been on her own before and has no idea how to begin to move on, even temporarily, without a man. In addition to Harry, who is bringing out a new protective side in her, she gets a second man for a time in another figure that would ordinarily be a supporting character as well in the form of scene-stealer Kene's enigmatic Cal.

A Black former associate of Eddie's who he'd entrusted to look after Jean and the baby until either he, Cal, or Jean can figure something out, as a new stranger turned friend, he's at once a calming influence on both Jean and Harry and an armed guard you don't want to cross to everyone else. Yet Cal doesn't only serve to save Jean, even if this is his initial function at the beginning. As the film progresses, Jean finds that he might need to be saved right back. To do that, she'll need to join forces with another woman – Cal's woman, Terry (a masterful Marsha Stephanie Blake) – and one who, if Jean is being honest, is exactly the kind of woman she's always wanted to be herself.

Sharp, unfussy, character-driven filmmaking that has much more in common with the methodical, building block-based storytelling we so often saw in the 1970s as opposed to most modern movies where people frequently speak in expositional monologues, this is a film that tells us only what we need to know at any given moment. Respecting not only our intelligence but also the talents of the actors bringing their characters to life, Hart knows that we will come to better understand the people who populate her film in time. Therefore, she has no interest in giving us a cinematic version of Cliff's Notes to tell us what to think and refreshingly asks us to sit back, get lost in her world, and figure it all out for ourselves instead.

Suspenseful and unpredictable in the way that it leads us down one path only to veer wildly down another moments later, "Woman" leads to a few truly exciting action set-pieces over the course of its running time. A unique hybrid of '70s and modern filmmaking with a lead character who feels like a descendant of Gena Rowlands in “Gloria,” “I'm Your Woman” is first and foremost a celebration of genre storytelling.

One of those mid-range adult thrillers that – as the old adage goes – they just don't make that much anymore since normally, it would be broken down into six half-stuffed episodes of lukewarm prestige television instead of a feature film, “I'm Your Woman” plays best to those who understand its cinematic lineage.

Wearing its influences like “The Friends of Eddie Coyle,” “The Getaway,” and other films from the era proudly in each frame, “I'm Your Woman” feels like a '70s movie released in 2020... if, you know, they actually made crime movies in the '70s that focused on what happens to the wives and girlfriends of a crook instead of just relegating them to the sidelines. The end result is a rousing film that plays like gangbusters. With first-rate production specs, including a dynamic soundtrack and crisp yet lived in cinematography from “Ingrid Goes West” DP Bryce Fortner, following this year's “Sound of Metal,” “Small Axe" releases, “Vast of Night,” and “Blow the Man Down,” “I'm Your Woman” is proof that some of cinema's strongest new films are found on Amazon Prime.

Immediately pulling us into Jean's orbit, we watch as she goes from being defined by one man to asking herself just what kind of woman she wants to be both for herself and her child now that she's been left out in the cold. Finding strength she didn't know she had, in a film about people left behind, we meet a woman who at long last, knows her worth.

(Bio: A three-time national award-winning writer, when Jen Johans isn't reviewing movies at FilmIntuition.com or releasing new episodes of her podcast “Watch With Jen,” you can find her on Twitter @FilmIntuition.)

Half Brothers - Movie Review by Jeff Mitchell

Luis Gerardo Mendez and Connor Del Rio in “Half Brothers”

‘Half Brothers’:  This road movie has fun sibling rivalry, but we’ve seen this cinematic vehicle before.

Directed by:  Luke Greenfield

Written by:  Jason Shuman and Eduardo Cisneros

Starring:  Luis Gerardo Mendez, Connor Del Rio, and Juan Pablo Espinosa

“Half Brothers” – Renato (Luis Gerardo Mendez) meets his half-brother Asher (Connor Del Rio) for the first time in Chicago, but most unexpectedly.  Renato flies to The Windy City from Mexico because his estranged father (Juan Pablo Espinosa) is nearing the end.  Flavio (Espinosa) wishes to see his son one last time before he passes.

You see, 26 years ago, Flavio left San Miguel de Allende, Mexico to look for work in the U.S.  He hasn’t seen his son during all this time, so naturally, Renato carries plenty of resentment, which unfortunately has spilled into other aspects of his life.  His fiancée Pamela (Pia Watson) points out that he doesn’t have any friends, and he still hasn’t hit it off with her young son Emilio (Mike A. Salazar).  This 30-something aviation CEO also has a visceral disdain for the United States, which – frankly in 2020 – isn’t out of line, but his contempt is pretty harsh. 

In short, Renato needs a hug.

Well, Asher is the man for the job.  This thoughtful, kindhearted soul would wrap his arms around the nearest tree or goat (yes, a goat).  Back in the Chicago hospital, Flavio reveals that Renato and Asher are his sons, much to the newly discovered half-brothers’ surprise!  This elder statesman asks the boys to travel together, become acquainted, and learn about his story and the reasons for never returning to Mexico.

“Half Brothers” is a road picture with a familiar formula, as two opposites crisscross the country (or a sizable portion of it), and hopefully will grow closer when reaching their destination.  In this critic’s mind, “Midnight Run” (1988) is the all-time best of the genre, but director Luke Greenfield’s and screenwriters Jason Shuman’s and Eduardo Cisneros’ premise best resembles “Due Date” (2010) – starring Robert Downey Jr. and Zach Galifianakis - for a couple reasons.  In the 2010 movie, Peter (Downey Jr.) is in a race against time to see the birth of his child.  Here, Renato needs to finish this excursion to attend his wedding, which is in three days and counting.  Also, Galifianakis made a career out of playing eccentrics, including Ethan from “Due Date”.  When watching Del Rio, one might wonder if he channeled his inner Galifianakis for six months straight before this movie.

A man-child doesn’t begin to describe Asher, as he’s one of the most oddball non-Zach Galifianakis-adults to grace the screen in recent memory.  He sports a 1977 Bjorn Borg-like headband and drives an orange Mercedes station wagon with several plastic containers of Ethanol in the cab (for some unknown reason).  He doesn’t carry cash or credit cards but has no problem ordering coffee at the nearest Starbucks and asking to borrow $2 from a random guy in line.   You couldn’t get two more differing personas, and since Renato holds so much animosity over his dad, the brothers continuously argue and even physically tussle on their trip.

Their trek from Chicago to the American Southwest is a scavenger hunt, and to fill on-screen spaces, the filmmakers include some middling, predictable sequences like a bar fight and a laughing gas attack.  Many of these mini-stops feel like figurative cul-de-sacs, while the fellas’ conversations – sans any Keystone Cops pomp and circumstance – in Asher’s oddball 4-wheeled carriage resonate much more.

Perhaps a “My Dinner with Andre” (1981) stripped-down construction would better serve the material.  Even though the film would sacrifice several on-screen larks, a deeper (and also witty) connection over 90 minutes would add noteworthy gravitas to these two brothers of other mothers.  Of course, that’s a different movie, but “Half Brothers” – as is – has some good stuff, including Mendez’s and Del Rio’s enjoyable performances and a sincere attempt at presenting the current immigration experience.  Ah well, I just would’ve preferred a different cinematic vehicle to get from here to there.

(2/4 stars)

Jeff – a member of the Phoenix Critics Circle – has penned film reviews since 2008, graduated from ASU’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism, and is a certified Rotten Tomatoes critic.  Follow Jeff and the Phoenix Film Festival on Twitter @MitchFilmCritic and @PhoenixFilmFest, respectively.

Sound of Metal - Movie Review by Jeff Mitchell

Riz Ahmed and Olivia Cooke in ‘Sound of Metal’

‘Sound of Metal’ resonates with Ahmed’s Oscar-worthy performance

Directed by:  Darius Marder

Written by:  Darius and Abraham Marder

Starring:  Riz Ahmed, Olivia Cooke, Paul Raci, and Matthew Amalric

“Sound of Metal” – Director/writer Darius Marder’s feature film debut lands like a gut punch, a barrage of them.  One particular body blow confronts us very early in the first act, and for the remainder of the emotional, 15-round/two-hour runtime - led by Riz Ahmed’s Oscar-worthy performance – the audience tries to recover.

Well, “Sound of Metal” doesn’t feature actual fisticuffs, but Ruben (Ahmed) fights through and for something that he lost.  

His hearing.

Marder offers an immediate introduction to Ruben and his girlfriend Lou (Olivia Cooke) from the film’s get-go.  They are in a two-person band and playing in a crowded, small club, where the audience - standing on a beer-stained concrete floor and just a few feet away from the aforementioned performers - is entranced with a torrent of crashes, booms, and shrieks.   

Ruben and Lou are an alt-metal collaboration.  While he pounds the drums like a WW III declaration, Lou screams into her microphone and strums distortions that lead them into a nuclear assault of the senses.  (For the record, Cooke is an utterly unrecognizable Courtney Love-lookalike who initially appears a decade older than her tender 26 years.)  Their performance is just one stop on a nationwide tour of modest venues, and their comfy silver camper is their rock-n-roll-dreams chariot.  They are in love with one another and their music.  Life is grand, even without 401(k)s, a white picket fence, and health insurance.

Well, this pair unexpectedly becomes desperate for a doctor’s advice because Ruben - without warning – goes nearly deaf during the middle of a show.  “Without warning” is not precisely accurate because Ruben’s naked eardrums have faced and battled thunderous, musical uproar for years.  It appears that his hearing has finally given way.   Like a dancer with amputated legs or a marksman deprived of sight, Ruben now feels disoriented without his chief instrument.  He’s momentarily directionless and has to find his way on uncharted roads.

Ahmed miraculously melds into this struggling musician portrayal, both physically and emotionally.  He looks like a triathlon competitor, and tattoos don’t completely cover his body, but he carries his fair share of ink, including a PLEASE KILL ME message dotting his chest.  His bleach-blonde hair doesn’t hide his dark roots, but hey, that gives him street cred.  He’s an impulsive but passionate 30-something musician, and crude language frequents his vocabulary.  Unfortunately, Ruben doesn’t have the skills to cope with such a drastic change, but honestly, who would in that moment? 

Ahmed also took some semi-drastic steps to step into this role.  In a Nov. 20 interview (with film critic Jeffrey K. Howard), Ahmed says, “When I met Darius, he said, ‘Everything is going to be for real.  When you’re playing the drums on the screen, you’re going to be playing the drums for real.’” 

Ahmed took drums lessons and learned sign language, and he adds that it “took most of a year to learn how to do both of those skills passably well.” 

Also, Ahmed wore hearing aids that fed white noise into his ear canals, so he couldn’t hear himself talk.  “It was very disorienting.  I guess I just felt like I wanted to understand just a glimpse - the tiniest, tiniest sliver - of what that feels like (and) to understand the shock that Ruben is going through and many people go through in that situation.” 

Ruben’s specific life-passages won’t be revealed in this review, but rest assured, our suffering protagonist needs to face his reality and find acceptance, solace, and value with it.  His new mentor, Joe (Paul Raci), has a Mr. Miyagi quality, but rather than offering lessons of “wax on, wax off” or “paint the fence”, his teachings are more cerebral, and due to Ruben’s new circumstances, considerably more challenging to embrace. 

The film also embraces sound as a lead character, as Marder frequently silences or muffles on-screen moments.  Sometimes, we hear from Lou’s or the cameraperson’s perspective, and during other stretches, our ears experience Ruben’s audio outlooks.  These interludes are purposely frustrating, unsettling, and madly successful at engendering deep empathy for Ruben’s new condition.  For moviegoers who have their hearing intact, you might end the film feeling eternally grateful to listen to leaves rustle, prairie grass sway, and birds sing….while also soothing your midsection after an outpouring of cinematic wallops.

(3.5/4 stars)

Jeff – a member of the Phoenix Critics Circle – has penned film reviews since 2008, graduated from ASU’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism, and is a certified Rotten Tomatoes critic. Follow Jeff and the Phoenix Film Festival on Twitter @MitchFilmCritic and @PhoenixFilmFest, respectively.

Billie - Movie Review by Jen Johans

Director: James Erskine

Cast: Billie Holiday, Tony Bennett, Count Basie, Sylvia Syms, & Charles Mingus.

The way that one interviewee in writer-director James Erskine's new documentary “Billie” tells it, when Ella Fitzgerald sings “My Man's Gone Now,” you think he's on a trip and is due back shortly, but when Billie Holiday does it, you know that man has packed his bags, he's already down the street, and he is never coming back.

Using her voice like a brass instrument to – with Holiday's singular, unorthodox lyrical phrasing, tell vivid, visceral, lived-in stories that cast a spell on her listeners – her friend and fellow jazz vocalist Sylvia Syms sums it up best. “Billie Holiday sang only truth, she knew nothing else.”

As both a word and an idea, “truth” is the quality that comes up most frequently in the film when people describe not just Holiday's voice but her life. And it's only fitting since just one spin of one Billie Holiday record leaves you with the impression that they are inexorably linked. Feeling the same way, in the late 1960s, feminist high school teacher turned freelance journalist Linda Lipnack Kuehl embarked on a quest to write the definitive biography on her favorite singer. From Holiday's cousin John Fagan, who recalled her feisty early years to the jazz greats who became her friends, colleagues, and lovers before her untimely death at the age of forty-four in 1959, Kuehl recorded hundreds of hours of interviews with the people who knew the singer born Eleanora Fagan the best.

In Erskine's documentary, these frequently jaw-dropping, often cited, but previously unheard original audio tapes bring Kuehl and her vital first-person sources back to life. They also give us the briefest of glimpses into what her biography of the artist might have looked like if she'd gotten the chance to finish it. Sadly, much like Holiday, whose career trajectory fascinated her just as much as her self-destructive streak, Kuehl's life was also cut short. Nearly a decade after she began working on the book, the young journalist was found dead on a Washington D.C. street in a mysterious event that her family believes was perhaps linked to this quest.

Wanting to accurately represent Billie Holiday as she was and not just pay tribute to her as a legend, while on the surface, a white, Jewish teacher from New York who wrote about women's issues for publications like “The Paris Review” seems like she would have little in common with Holiday, Kuehl's sister dispels this belief early on in the film. Telling viewers that Linda identified with the singer's pain and didn't like the way she'd been portrayed as a victim, Kuehl herself backs up this thesis later on in her manuscript, saying that although the sexually voracious Holiday was often in relationships with abusive men, in the end, it was she who chose these partners for one reason or another.

Keeping an objective approach, even when she interviews a pimp that Holiday tricked for when she was a young girl, much like Kuehl, Erskine's film and Holiday's friends paint a portrait of a woman who loved to live fast for all of its ups and downs. It seems perhaps that Holiday knew her time on Earth was short. Exploring all facets of her personality from her two favorite expletives to her bisexuality, even when friends tell horrific stories about the men who graduated her from pot to hard drugs or beat her senseless (and some openly question whether or not she was, in fact, a masochist), Erskine strives to follow in Kuehl's nonjudgmental footsteps.

Despite this, of course, some of these testimonies are absolutely devastating. Chronicling the way that Holiday and other Black artists were subjected to the shocking racism of America during the Jim Crow laws, interviewees describe Holiday's experiences ranging from club owners making her “darken” up her face to an actual brawl that broke out with a racist, white sheriff in the south. Using the truth of her voice and her ability to tell a story in song, Holiday's response to these injustices was with the powerful anthem “Strange Fruit,” which sadly remains just as timely and moving as ever, more than eighty years after it was recorded.

An eye-opening and engrossing overview of Holiday's life that will hopefully make you seek out, as I did, more information about the events and figures referenced in the film, while it's largely very successful from a narrative standpoint, occasionally, "Billie" struggles with its chronological presentation of facts. Hopscotching around to add new details about pivotal moments in Holiday's life that we wish we would've known earlier, this rings a particularly false note when, late into the movie, we jump awkwardly from one interviewee's analysis of her abusive relationships to the sudden revelation that she might've been raped as a child. While reflective of the way that Kuehl would've heard these confessions at various times throughout her decade-long research, I question the decision to save something so major for near the end of "Billie," particularly when it would've added a crucial counterpoint to the predominantly male recollections of her youth turning tricks, including an ex-pimp's testimony that his girls loved getting a black eye.

Still, knowing that Billie Holiday was Kuehl's raison d'être, particularly in her final years, Erskine’s film pays fine tribute to her beloved subject and Kuehl's journalistic legacy overall. Working in a few facts about Holiday's biographer here and there, Erskine is smart to keep Kuehl's private life off the table until very late into the documentary, when we hear that she had been divorced twice, was perhaps romantically linked to one legendary interviewee, and had started to receive threats regarding that relationship and her book.

Although we would like to know more about her life and work, in her relative anonymity, Erskine taps into the link that not only Kuehl and Holiday share but many women and men do with the singer as well. Instead of openly philosophizing, he lets Kuehl's interviewees try to articulate it aloud when they discuss what they respond to most in Holiday's life and music. And while obviously, their words add vivid color to the black and white photographs utilized throughout, the most unforgettable hue of all comes not from them but Billie Holiday herself. We hear it in the heartbreaking lyrics she sings, the words she means, and the way she uses her instrument inimitably, unreservedly, and unmistakably to tell the truth, even when it hurts.

(Bio: A three-time national award-winning writer, when Jen Johans isn't reviewing movies at FilmIntuition.com or releasing new episodes of her podcast “Watch With Jen,” you can find her on Twitter @FilmIntuition.)

The Croods: A New Age - Movie Review by Jeff Mitchell

Nicolas Cage, Catherine Keener, Emma Stone, Ryan Reynolds, Cloris Leachman, Peter Dinklage, and Leslie Mann in “The Croods: A New Age”

'The Croods: A New Age' has more yabba dabba doos than yabba dabba don'ts

Directed by:  Joel Crawford

Written by:  Kevin Hageman, Dan Hageman, Paul Fisher, and Bob Logan

Starring:  Nicolas Cage, Catherine Keener, Emma Stone, Ryan Reynolds, Cloris Leachman, Peter Dinklage, and Leslie Mann

“The Croods:  A New Age” – “Tomorrow!  Tomorrow!  I love ya, tomorrow!  You’re always a day away!”

Moms with adolescents running around their humble abodes have probably felt that their teenagers never follow the rules.  By comparison, Guy (Ryan Reynolds) is a model young man!

You see, while sinking in the tarpits to their apparent demise, Guy’s parents told their son to find Tomorrow, a paradise of sorts or their version of Eden, and he respects his folks’ wish.

Wait, tarpits?

This animated film - "The Croods: A New Age" - is not set in 2021, but during the Paleolithic Era.  Our cartoon friends, frenemies, and foes are cavemen, cavewomen, and all sorts of colorful creatures from this ancient time.  Director Joel Crawford’s lively flick is a sequel to 2013’s “The Croods”, but don’t worry if you’ve been living under a rock and haven’t seen the original because the film catches up any naive audience members – including this critic - within the first few minutes.

Yes, the world may have already provided prehistoric joys like “The Flintstones” (1961 – 1966), “Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels” (1977 – 1980), and Aardman Animations’ “Early Man” (2018), but make some room for the Crood clan’s comical misadventures too.

Now, Guy marches for many moons - in fact, over 200 - and eventually connects with the Croods, a close, nuclear family who joins Guy on his journey.  The Croods mostly click with Guy straight away, and especially Grug (Nicolas Cage) and Ugga’s (Catherine Keener) teenage daughter Eep (Emma Stone).  Eep and Guy fall in love, not unlike an intriguing boy who arrives at a new high school and draws the prom queen’s attention.  In this case, the girl in question has broad shoulders, climbs steep cliffs on all fours lickety-split, and sets aside the gathering and frequently hunts wild game herself.   She’s part-Renaissance young woman, part-ultimate tomboy and takes after her dear old dad, even though he’s not terribly fond of Guy, because Eep has eyes for him.

The point of this 95-minute big-screen adventure is to slap together some pretty effective slapstick.  This lovable family – complete with a doofus son, Thunk (Clark Duke), a tough-as-spears grandma (Cloris Leachman), a feral toddler, Sandy (Kailey Crawford), and a couple of trusty pets – bumble their way to Tomorrow and attempt to fit in.

If this premise sounds familiar, then yes, “The Croods: A New Age” is a “The Beverly Hillbillies” (1962-1971) yarn.  The said kin are bulls in a Hollywood-China shop, and the current, more refined Tomorrow residents are politely-aghast at the primal behavior.  An already all-star cast adds a couple more twinkles because Peter Dinklage and Leslie Mann play Tomorrow’s Phil and Hope Betterman, as the haves and have-nots disagree over proper, everyday decorum.  For instance, Grug has never seen a wall before and regularly walks through them, and when the "enlightened" couple offers separate rooms for their guests, Thunk asks, “What’s a room, and what’s a separate?”

Our friends have much to learn.

Crawford and four screenwriters (four???) pen inspiring comedic lessons during these culture clashes and also offer pure visual joy when the Croods throw massive boulders like baseballs and sleep in one pile every night.  Of course, the Croods and Bettermans – who have their differences – are eventually forced to work together.  Regrettably, their more congenial moments during the film’s third act meld with some wild, distracting absurdity involving wolf-spiders and a few thousand monkeys.  Even though the animators paint some darn-impressive sequences, the more personal, effectual discourse devolves (pardon the pun) into several busy, overblown action sequences that carry the disappointment of an overcooked Brontosaurus burger.

Still, the first two courses…err, I mean acts carry good feelings and hearty laughs, as “The Croods: A New Age” utters more yabba dabba doos than yabba dabba don’ts.

(2.5/4 stars)

Jeff – a member of the Phoenix Critics Circle – has penned film reviews since 2008, graduated from ASU’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism, and is a certified Rotten Tomatoes critic.  Follow Jeff and the Phoenix Film Festival on Twitter @MitchFilmCritic and @PhoenixFilmFest, respectively.

"Happiest Season" & "Uncle Frank" - Movie Reviews by Jen Johans

Victor Garber, Mary Steenburgen, Kristen Stewart, Asiyih N'Dobe, Anis N'Dobe, Burl Moseley, Alison Brie, Mary Holland, and Mackenzie Davis in “Happiest Season”

“Happiest Season” (2020)

Director: Clea DuVall

Cast: Kristen Stewart, Mackenzie Davis, Dan Levy, & Mary Steenburgen

Available on Hulu

“Uncle Frank” (2020)

Director: Alan Ball

Cast: Paul Bettany, Sophia Lillis, Peter Macdissi, & Margo Martindale

Available on Amazon Prime

Review by Jen Johans

'Tis the season of giving... and the season of needing a rest. The weeks between Thanksgiving all the way up through Hanukkah and/or Christmas and New Year's are often dubbed the happiest time of the year. But it's also undeniably the most stressful period of the calendar year as well. And this is particularly true for those of us returning to our childhood homes for the holidays as we come face-to-face with family, old friends, and all of the judgments and pressures that go along with sudden reunions with the people we were once closest to in life, the ones who know us the best, that is if they even know us at all.

Although there's a tendency to revert back to old patterns and behavior when surrounded by nostalgia, not too many of us are the same people today that we were in high school, and sometimes it's hard to make loved ones see you not for the child you were in the past but the adult you are today. And while this might be anything from annoying to awkward for a majority of heterosexuals, it can be absolutely terrifying and life-changing to LGBTQ adults who haven't come out to their family and/or friends as just the act of returning home to old wounds (and a place where you must push that part of you deep down), can be traumatic.

Fittingly, two brand new films releasing onto streaming platforms the day before Thanksgiving tackle the hopes and fears of coming out head-on, first in co-writer and director Clea DuVall's comedy “Happiest Season,” which takes place during Christmas week, and the second, which is primarily set at a funeral nearly fifty years ago in writer-director Alan Ball's drama “Uncle Frank.”

An earnest and affable lightweight comedy that – thanks to its dynamic cast of Kristen Stewart, Mackenzie Davis, Dan Levy, Mary Steenburgen, Aubrey Plaza, and Alison Brie – has quickly become one of the most anticipated holiday releases of 2020, “Happiest Season,” plays like an overlong, sweet yet slightly stale sitcom.

Impulsively inviting her beloved partner Abby (Stewart) home for the holidays during a romantic evening out, it's only once they're in the car heading towards Harper's (Davis) family home that she confesses that she's actually never told her parents and two sisters that she's gay. Although initially shocked, Abby agrees to play the orphan roommate with no place to go since the charade will only last five days. Predictably, however, things get out of hand almost as soon as they arrive when Harper's parents (Steenburgen and Victor Garber) try reuniting her with her high school boyfriend (Jake McDorman), only for the women to bump into Harper's first-ever girlfriend (Plaza) less than five minutes later as well.

Cliched and largely laughless, as novel and (incredibly) welcome as it is to watch a gay-themed movie jump through the same formulaic hoops that we so often see in made-for-cable-television holiday romances this time of year, sadly, “Happiest Season” is a work to admire and politely smile through more than it is one to wholeheartedly enjoy. From a scene that finds Stewart literally stuck in a closet to another one that features her best friend, “Schitt's Creek” co-creator and star Dan Levy calling to ask where he could buy a lookalike fish to replace the one that we gather the inexperienced pet sitter has accidentally killed, a majority of the movie's jokes feel as tired as they do uninspired.

Daring to make Harper a flawed and selfish protagonist whom we discover will lie to anyone to conceal her true sexual identity, “Happiest Season” gets points for working in a startlingly sad backstory surrounding her relationship with Plaza's Riley, although their characters are shortchanged a vital conversation where they can truly clear the air.

Wrapping things up in a neat bow, even if there are a few other scenes and discussions between our main ensemble cast of characters that might've strengthened the film as something more human and true than it is a largely cookie-cutter, small screen style comedy, the actors are all terrific. Unfortunately, DuVall and co-writer/co-star Mary Holland's script, which leaves much to be desired, doesn’t know how to use them properly. Nonetheless, a mildly pleasant holiday diversion that you can digest right along with your pumpkin pie, even if it isn't a new repeat-worthy holiday classic, hopefully, Hulu's "Happiest Season" will earn enough viewers that we'll see some stronger, funnier LGBTQ comedies in the years to come.

Less of a holiday-centric offering than it is an offering served up for viewers during the holidays on Amazon Prime, “Uncle Frank” is a heartfelt period drama from writer-director Alan Ball that, in addition to sharing the same theme of coming out to one's family that we saw in “Happiest Season,” rivals DuVall's film in terms of its enviable, first-rate cast.

Led by the versatile, acclaimed “Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World,” “The Da Vinci Code,” and “Margin Call” actor Paul Bettany as the titular Uncle Frank, Ball's film is a who's who of scene-stealing character actors, including audience favorites Steve Zahn, Margo Martindale, and Judy Greer.

The apple of the eye of his niece Beth ("It" franchise and "Sharp Objects" star Sophia Lillis), Frank Bledsoe (Bettany) has traded his conservative, small-town South Carolina roots for New York where he works as an English professor at NYU in the late 1960s/early '70s. Following in his footsteps by attending NYU, Beth soon learns that although her uncle puts on a great show with a lesbian friend posing as his live-in girlfriend, he's actually been in a relationship with his sweet, funny Middle Eastern boyfriend Walid aka Wally (played by Peter Macdissi) for the past ten years.

Paul Bettany and Peter Macdissi in “Uncle Frank”

Forced to return home for the funeral of his own disapproving father (Stephen Root), whom we deduce most likely knew the truth about his son's sexual orientation before anyone else, Frank drives Beth down to South Carolina. Determined to be there to support the love of his life because he knows just how much trauma will be waiting for him in the south, Wally trails behind the pair and soon joins them on the road trip, which becomes a journey into Frank's past.

A film that's as much about Frank's need to finally let the people he loves into that part of himself that he keeps hidden as it is about his need to forgive himself and make peace with a devastating turn of events in his past for which he still feels responsible, while “Happiest Season” addressed past transgressions too, this film is vastly more sincere overall. Though still bursting at the seams with cliches and contrivances that should be far beyond the otherwise amazingly talented Ball (whose explorations into human behavior made “Six Feet Under” one of HBO's best twenty-first-century shows), thanks to the conviction and pathos of its top-notch leads, “Uncle Frank” works much better than it should.

Hindered by a rushed final act that races through an emotional payoff that it doesn't fully earn, as wonderful as it always is to see Bettany in something new that pushes him beyond his work in the Marvel franchise, the real heart of “Uncle Frank” is in Peter Macdissi's performance as Wally. Elevating an otherwise stereotypical role as the tormented Frank's saintly boyfriend, Macdissi's magnetic, cheeky delivery of certain lines – such as when he lectures Beth that niceness is used by her family to hide things – immediately wins us over. Likewise, in just one scene where he calls his mother back in Saudi Arabia from a motel phone booth, which is contrasted by Frank's return back to the motel with Beth after a wake, we realize how much more interesting the film might've been if we'd been following not Frank but Wally all along.

Disappointingly, you can nearly set your watch to certain revelations that seem to hit at precisely the same intervals that most screenwriters well-versed in the Syd Field three-act structure will recognize. However, the film's tenderness and its message about the importance of acceptance and the way that we never fully get over the traumas that inadvertently shape us for better and/or worse still feels timely nearly fifty years after the film is set, as we watch this today in Trump's America.

Comparing the two films, which I watched back to back, “Uncle Frank” is a much more solid and substantive work than “Happiest Season,” even if it isn't nearly as light, airy, and easily digestible as Clea DuVall's comedy. While both films fail to push much past the bar of average overall, they still feel well-timed to their pre-holiday release, especially this year when we especially need entertainment during the pandemic. Perhaps more willing than ever to look past their shortcomings amid 2020's wrath, hopefully, these films will find an audience in viewers who either relate to their characters' struggles to let others see them as they really are or are eager to celebrate their willingness to do as the Christmas carol says and make the yuletide (a bit more) gay. 'Tis the season, after all.

(Bio: A three-time national award-winning writer, when Jen Johans isn't reviewing movies at FilmIntuition.com or releasing new episodes of her podcast “Watch With Jen,” you can find her on Twitter @FilmIntuition.)