Tag: film festivals

Review: ‘Riotsville, USA,’ an archival documentary about the U.S. government’s reactions to civil unrest in the 1960s

October 16, 2022

by Carla Hay

A scene from “Riotsville, USA” (Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures)

“Riotsville, USA”

Directed by Sierra Pettengill

Culture Representation: The documentary film “Riotsville, USA” features archival footage of white and African American people discussing how the U.S. government reacted to civil unrest in the 1960s, including the creation of mock cities on military bases to do riot drills.

Culture Clash: Many people believe that these government initiatives were created specifically to oppress civil rights activists, especially African Americans speaking out against systemic racism.

Culture Audience: “Riotsville, USA” will appeal mainly to people who are interested in civil rights history from the 1960s, but the movie has a tendency to give preference to politically left-wing viewpoints instead of having a more balanced variety of political perspectives.

A scene from “Riotsville, USA” (Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures)

The archival documentary “Riotsville, USA” presents fascinating footage (the movie’s best asset), but the movie’s narration tends to be politically biased and preachy. Viewers can make up their own minds without being told what to think about the footage. At the very least, “Riotsville, USA” succeeds in its purpose to take a closer look at why the U.S. government reacted to the civil rights movement of the 1960s by building mock cities on military bases so that military and law enforcement could be trained on how to handle riots. A common nickname for such a mock city was Riotsville.

Directed by Sierra Pettengill, “Riotsville, USA” starts out strong in the first half of the movie, and then it becomes somewhat of a rambling compilation in the second half that presents a lot of left-wing talking points. The documentary has constant voiceover narration by Charlene Modeste from a screenplay written by Tobi Haslett. And although an archival documentary’s narration can be beneficial to put a lot of the footage in historical context, the narration of “Riotsville, USA” becomes a detriment when it forces a political bias (progressive liberal) perspective into the narration. It comes across as looking like the “Riotsville USA” filmmakers expected all viewers to automatically agree with this perspective just by watching this movie.

“Riotsville, USA” has no exclusive and new interviews with anyone giving “hindsight” perspectives, and yet the movie attempts to draw a throughline from the archival 1960s footage to 21st century civil unrest in the United States. The voiceover narration is the only “contemporary voice” heard in the movie, and that voice offers just one point of view. Therefore, “Riotsville, USA” (which had its world premiere at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival) looks exactly like what it is: a documentary that has a lot of meaningful archival footage but not enough contemporary perspectives.

“Riotsville, USA” opens with this background information on a title card: “This film consists of archival material from the late 1960s. All of the footage was created for broadcast television by the U.S. military.” In other words, because it was footage made by the U.S. government, the public has the right to access it under the Freedom of Information Act.

In the begnning of “Riotsville, USA,” the voiceover narration has this to say about the U.S. civil rights movement: “A door sprung open in the late 1960s and someone, something sprang up, and slammed it shut. Nothing that big, that bright, had ever happened. And in so many American cities, nothing so fierce or hard to grasp. The riots blew the roof off daily life.”

The movie then goes on to cite, as examples, the “riots” or “citizen uprisings” (depending on how you want to describe these events) in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Watts in 1965; Chicago in 1966; and Newark, New Jersey, in 1967. Detroit and many other cities had this type of society unrest in the mid-to-late 1960s. What all of these violent events had in common were discontent over racial inequalities and white supremacist oppression in America.

In July 1967, then-U.S. president Lyndon B. Johnson (a moderate Democrat) announced the formation of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, also known as the Kerner Commission, whose members (all prominent politicians or other civic leaders) were appointed by Johnson. Otto Kerner Jr., who was governor of Illinois at the time, was named the commission chairman. The 11-member commission consisted of nine white men, one African American man and one white woman.

The commission’s purpose was to investigate why many civil rights protests in the U.S. were devolving into racial violence, even though a prominent civils-rights leader such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. preached non-violence. The narration in “Riotsville, USA” offers this explanation: “The people took revenge on the cities that confined them—retribution for a history of containment and contempt.” The narration then goes on to say, “Johnson wanted the Kerner Commission to substantiate his belief that many of the riots were incited by outside agitators.”

“Riotsville, USA” has news footage of a group of unidentified men and women (white and black) being interviewed about this commission to get the “ordinary citizen” perspective. The white men who are interviewed seem to be the most supportive of the commission, while the women (of both races) and the black men are a little more hesitant or skeptical. When asked what he thinks about the commission, a middle-aged African American man pauses, as if he’s knows that he has to be careful of what he’s going to say on camera, and replies (not very convincingly) that he thinks it’s a good idea. An African American woman, who appears to be his wife or companion, is more forthright with her opinion: “My greatest concern is, “Have we asked the people who are in need of the program what their needs might be?'”

Around the same time that this commission was doing its investigation, the U.S. military had been setting up mock Riotsville cities on military bases. “Riotsville, USA” shows some 1967 footage from one of these riot drills at Fort Belvoir in Virginia. Other parts of the movie shows footage from other riot drills at other military bases. The audiences attending these drills were usually members of the military and officials from other members of the government, who watched the drills like they were watching a spectator sport.

These drills, with members of the military playing different roles, usually had the same predictability: Protestors (all men) shouting protest clichés, being rowdy, pretending to loot stores, and committing other crimes—and then being defeated and arrested by those in the roles of the military or the police. There weren’t enough black people involved in this role playing, so many of the white “actors” were cast as black people. A few even showed up in “black face” in order to pretend to be black, which would be considered a lot more racially offensive today than it was back in 1967.

In February 1968, the commission’s study was published in “Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders,” also known as the Kerner Report, which went on sale to the public and became a bestseller. The report came to this conclusion, as quoted in the documentary: “The U.S. is moving into two societies—one white, one black—separate but unequal.” The year 1968 was also pivotal and tragic in U.S. civil rights history because it was the year that civil rights leader King and Robert F. Kennedy (who was a U.S. presidential candidate at the time) were assassinated.

“Riotsville USA” then turns to a lot of footage from “Public Broadcast Laboratory,” a public-affairs news/talk show on National Education Television, which was the U.S. TV network that was the predecessor to PBS (Public Broadcasting Service). One of the archival interviews shows a lively “Public Broadcast Laboratory” interview with civil rights activists Dr. Kenneth Clark, Bayard Rustin and Charles Hamilton. There’s also some footage from the show of Jimmy Collier and Frederick Douglass Kirkpatrick performing their 1969 song “Burn, Baby, Burn.”

The documentary also mentions that Republican lawmakers often complained that “Public Broadcast Laboratory” had too much of a liberal bias, but the documentary fails to mention what “Public Broadcast Laboratory’s” response was to this criticism. The show’s footage that was chosen focuses strictly on African American civil rights leaders talking about race relations in America. It’s mentioned in the documentary that “Public Broadcast Laboratory” was cancelled in 1969, after the Ford Foundation withdrew funding for the show.

The “Riotsville, USA” narration points out: “At the end of the Kerner Commission’s report, there was an addendum titled ‘Supplement on the Control of Disorder.’ Its recommendations were the only parts of the report that Congress would ever implement … In 1968, Congress created the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration.”

In April 1968, the Civil Rights Act of 1968 was signed. It includes the Anti-Riot Act, which makes “travel in interstate commerce … with the intent to incite, promote, encourage, participate in and carry on a riot.” The April 1968 assassination of King resulted in protests and riots in many big U.S. cities, including Chicago. “Riotsville, USA” has a brief TV interview clip of then-Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley saying that the Riotsville simulations were helpful in training Chicago law enforcement on how to deal with the riots.

The civil unrest during the 1968 Republican National Convention in Miami also stemmed from racial issues. Much of the unrest was in Miami’s mostly black neighborhood of Liberty City, where protests by mostly young black people were happening at the same time as the Republican National Convention. According to “Riotsville, USA” NBC News incorrectly reported that the reason for the protests were that the protesters were unhappy about there being a small number of black delegates at the convention.

However, archival footage shows that the main reason for the protests were that demands weren’t being met for Liberty City to controlled by more black people. These demands included better programs for poor people, a guaranteed income (in other words, a higher minimum wage), and more black police officers and more black firefighters in Liberty City.

Miami officials had promised to meet with Liberty City leaders but failed to show up for the meeting. And so, the riots began. Reverend Theodore Gibson, a civil rights leader, is seen in archival footage commenting on this political snub: “You can’t lie to people forever and get away with it.”

The documentary also includes unsettling footage of the chaos in the Liberty City streets, where violence and fires were breaking out. An unidentified white man who was driving on one of the streets had a car with a George Wallace (conservative Republican politician) bumper sticker on the car. The car was vandalized, and the man was almost brutally attacked until he helped to safety by some compassionate black people. Police and the National Guard later responded to the riots with tear gas and brutality.

Bob Reed, an African American TV journalist who was on the scene for Channel 4 News in Miami, is shown being interviewed by a Channel 4 colleague about why Reed thinks the riots happened. He replies, “Pent-up anger, frustration, the idea of being trapped in society. It’s a bursting out, a breaking free. It’s just a way of saying, ‘I will accept the abuse no longer.'”

“Riotsville USA” would have been a better documentary if its editing had better storytelling. Much of the documentary is just archival footage strung together with a one-note narration of how the U.S. government came up with tactics to crack down on violent protests. And frankly, none of it is shocking, although “Riotsville USA” wants to act like it’s more shocking than it really is.

And without diverse political viewpoints, “Riotsville, USA” seems like a very one-sided exercise in trying to stir up political outrage over facts that are decades old. There isn’t a lot of information given about the Riotsville simulations that inspired the title of this documentary, other than to show the footage of these simulations. However, there’s enough overall archival information in “Riotsville, USA” to serve as a valuable history lesson and a reminder that many of the problems that resulted in protests in America in the late 1960s are problems that still result in protests today.

Magnolia Pictures released “Riotsville, USA” in select U.S. cinemas, on digital and VOD on September 16, 2022.

Review: ‘Decision to Leave,’ starring Park Hae-il and Tang Wei

October 14, 2022

by Carla Hay

Tang Wei and Park Hae-il in “Decision to Leave” (Photo courtesy of MUBI)

“Decision to Leave”

Directed by Park Chan-wook

Korean and Chinese with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place in 2020 and 2021 in the South Korean cities of Busan and Ipo, the dramatic film “Decision to Leave” features an all-Asian cast of characters representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: A police detective becomes emotionally involved with a widow whom he investigates in the suspicious death of her wealthy husband.

Culture Audience: “Decision to Leave” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of filmmaker Park Chan-wook and well-made psychological dramas that keep viewers guessing about what will happen in the story.

Park Hae-il and Tang Wei in “Decision to Leave” (Photo courtesy of MUBI)

“Decision to Leave” plays with any viewer’s preconceived notions on how the story is going to end. The pacing sometimes becomes too slow, but this well-made movie skillfully blends noir, romance and mystery with talented acting. It’s a cinematic rollercoaster ride that offers food for thought about how people handle power, wealth, loyalty and love on individual levels and in society at large.

Directed by Park Chan-wook (who co-wrote the “Decision to Leave” screenplay with Jeong Seo-kyeong), “Decision to Leave” is does not take sex and violence to explicit levels in ways that can be seen in two of Park’s most well-known previous psychological thriller films: 2003’s “Oldboy” and 2016’s “The Handmaiden.” Much of what is going on with the “Decision to Leave” characters isn’t “in your face” obvious, but rather is lurking underneath the surface and can be intelligently observed through facial expressions, body language and unspoken thoughts that are later revealed in certain characters’ actions. It’s why the movie’s principal cast members deserve a lot of credit for bringing complexities to these characters that look authentic.

With a total running time of 138 minutes, “Decision to Leave” is the type of movie that requires patience and perhaps more than one viewing in order to fully appreciate many of the subtleties in this drama. “Decision to Leave” had its world premiere at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival in France, where the Park won the prize for Best Director. The movie has since made the rounds at several other film festivals, including the Toronto International Film Festival; Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas; and the New York Film Festival in New York City. “Decision to Leave” is South Korea’s selection to be a contender for Best International Feature at the 2023 Academy Awards.

“Decision to Leave” begins iin 2020, in Busan, South Korea, where a police detective in his 40s named Hae-jun (played by Park Hae-il) is shown at work asking for a transfer to the smaller city of Ipo. Viewers later find out that Hae-jun has made this request mostly because his wife Jung-an (played by Lee Jung-hyun) thinks being a big-city cop has taken a toll on their 16-year marriage.

Jung-an wants to Hae-jun to work in a smaller city, where she thinks his work will be less stressful. She tells him half-jokingly that “55% of all sexless marriages end in divorce. It’s the first indication that the sex life of Hae-jun and Jung-an has dwindled. Later, this apathy is shown when she tries to be sexually intimate with Jung-an, and he shows a lack of interest. Jung-an feels insulted by this rejection, but she also seems to not be surprised by it.

What becomes obvious after a while is that Hae-jun is a workaholic, so moving to a smaller city won’t automatically end his addiction to police work, nor will it automatically fix the problems in his marriage. Before his transfer officially takes place, Hae-jun and some of his colleagues are called to the scene of a mysterious death. The deceased body of man in his 50s named Ki Do-soo (played by Yoo Seung-mok) has been found at the bottom of the cliff. Was this death caused by suicide, murder or an accident?

Investigators find out that Ki Do-soo was a part-time interviewer at a South Korean immigration office, but he was also wealthy. His widow is a Chinese immigrant named Seo-rai (played by Tang Wei), who doesn’t seem shocked when the police arrive at her home to tell her that her husband is dead and to interview her. In real life, Tang is much older than the Seo-rai character whom she portrays in the movie. Seo-rai is supposed to be in her 30s and is presented as a “trophy wife.”

Hae-jun (who is leading the investigation) is both puzzled and intrigued by Seo-rai’s calm, cool and collected demeanor during the police interviews. Hae-yun’s younger hothead cop partner Soo-wan (played by Go Kyung-pyo) immediately believes the theory that Ki Do-soo was murdered, and he zeroes in on Seo-rai as the prime suspect. Hae-jun doesn’t want to jump to any conclusions until he gets all the facts and evidence that he can.

Seo-rai, who is a hospital nurse, tells the investigators that she had nothing to do with Ki Do-soo’s death. She says she doesn’t speak Korean very well, but viewers later see that doesn’t mean Seo-rai isn’t highly intelligent and manipulative. She reveals to investigators that not only did her husband Ki Do-soo physically abused her and that she also had self-inflicted injuries. Seo-rai has recent bruises and medical records to prove it, as well as photos of past injuries that she said were made by herself and Ki So-Doo.

Seo-rai also tells the investigators that she and her husband argued because she didn’t like him to take these mountain hiking trips because she thought they were too dangerous. They also argued about her self-harming activities and would get into physical fights over it. (Their volatile marriage is shown in some flashbacks.)

Seo-rai is told by the cops that another person’s DNA was found underneath Ki Do-soo’s fingernails. And so, Seo-rai explains that if her DNA is found underneath his fingernails, it was probably because of one of the physical fights that they had before he went on the hiking trip that resulted in his death. Throughout much of “Decision to Leave,” viewers are kept wondering if Seo-rai is really a victim, a villain or both.

More suspicion falls on Seo-rai when the investigators find out that she is the only heir to her dead husband’s fortune. Until the cause of death can be determined, Seo-rai because the most likely person of interest if the medical examiner rules that Ki Do-soo’s death was by murder. In the meantime, Hae-jun decides to put Seo-rai under surveillance, and he’s the main person doing the stakeouts outside of her house.

As time goes on, Hae-jun becomes more obsessed with Seo-rai, who sensed from ther first meeting that he was romantically attracted to her. And Seo-rai, who seems to be starved for compassion, seems to be feeling the same way. Meanwhile, Hae-jun’s wife Jung-an become increasingly agitated that he’s spending so much time working on this case. Hae-jun won’t tell Jung-an many details about the case, but she begins to suspect that Hae-jung is having an affair.

Seo-rai has seemed to stirred up some long-dormant feelings of romance in Hae-jun, who goes to great lengths to show her that he is a gentleman and doesn’t want to betray the ethics of his job and his marriage. Another change has come over Hae-jun as he gets to know Seo-rai better: Before Hae-hun met Seo-rai, he seemed to be an incurable insomniac. After he met her, he began to sleep better.

What happens in the rest of “Decision to Leave” revolves around how Seo-rai and Hae-jun affect each other, as the story continues into 2021. It’s enough to say that even after Hae-jun transfers to Ipo, Seo-rai is still a part of his life. And his experiences with Seo-rai in Ipo cause even more confusion and angst.

“Decision to Leave” is a very stylish film to look at, thanks to stellar cinematography from Kim Ji-yong. The movie, which uses water in some pivotal scenes, is often awash in various shades of blue. Depending on the scene, these blue palettes contribute to feelings of melancholy or hope.

Even with a possible romance brewing between Seo-rai and Hae-jun, “Decision to Leave” never lets viewers forget that this relationship could be dangerous for either or both Seo-rai and Hae-jun. Whose motives are really pure and genuine? Through the immersive storytelling in “Decision to Leave,” that question hovers throughout as a reminder to viewers that in this movie, just like in real life, not everything is what it might first appear to be, and people can be taken to unexpected places.

MUBI released “Decision to Leave” in select U.S. cinemas on October 14, 2022. The movie was released in South Korea and France on June 29, 2022.

Review: ‘She Said,’ starring Carey Mulligan, Zoe Kazan, Patricia Clarkson, Andre Braugher, Jennifer Ehle, Samantha Morton and Ashley Judd

October 13, 2022

by Carla Hay

Zoe Kazan and Carey Mulligan in “She Said” (Photo by JoJo Whilden/Universal Pictures)

“She Said”

Directed by Maria Schrader

Culture Representation: Taking place mostly in 2016 and 2017, primarily in New York City (and briefly in California, the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Italy), the dramatic film “She Said” (based on real events) features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few African Americans and Asians) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: New York Times reporters Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey investigate sexual abuse allegations against entertainment mogul Harvey Weinstein and help usher in a new era in the #MeToo movement.

Culture Audience: “She Said” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in watching well-acted historical dramas about investigative journalism and seeking justice for crimes.

Wesley Holloway, Jennifer Ehle and Justine Colan in “She Said” (Photo by JoJo Whilden/Universal Pictures)

With the tone and pace of a procedural crime drama, “She Said” uncovers nothing new about The New York Times’ 2017 report that helped spur the downfall of Harvey Weinstein, who went from being a powerful mogul in the entertainment industry to becoming an imprisoned, convicted rapist. However, the movie’s top-notch cast members (including a terrific Samantha Morton in a standout supporting role) deliver better-than-average performances in this important story that needs to be told. It’s a very female-driven movie that puts the narrative where it belongs: on Weinstein’s abuse survivors who had the courage to speak to The New York Times for this groundbreaking report, as well as the two women who investigated and wrote this report.

Directed by Maria Schrader and written by Rebecca Lenkiewicz, “She Said” is adapted from the 2019 non-fiction book “She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement,” written by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, the two New York Times reporters who investigated and wrote the report that exposed accusations against Weinstein for crimes and misdeeds against women, spanning several decades as far back as the 1980s. The report, which was published in October 2017, included detailed accounts of sexual harassment and/or sexual assault alleged by a variety of women, including some of Weinstein’s former employees, famous actresses (such as Gwyneth Paltrow and Ashley Judd) and various other colleagues. “She Said” had its world premiere at the 2022 New York Film Festival in New York City.

“She Said” opens with a flashback to 1992. In this scene, a 21-year-old female production assistant is on a film set in Ireland. She comes across as an eager and friendly employee who’s happy to be at her job and enjoys being around her co-workers. The movie then abruptly shifts to showing her running in fear on a city street, as if she’s just experienced something terrifying.

It’s at this point you know that this woman has become one of Weinstein’s sexual abuse victims. In 1992, Weinstein (who co-founded Miramax Films and later The Weinstein Company) was on the rise in the industry as a movie producer and studio chief. He would eventually win an Academy Award for Best Picture, for 1998’s “Shakespeare in Love.”

Later on in “She Said,” which takes place mostly in 2016 and 2017, viewers find out that this frightened young woman’s name is Zelda Perkins. And 25 years after her horrifying experience with Weinstein left her with deep trauma and disillusionment about the entertainment industry, Zelda (played by Morton) is ready to tell her story to The New York Times. It’s by far the best scene in the movie. She declares, “This is bigger than Weinstein. This is about the system protecting abusers.”

“She Said” goes step-by-step in showing how Jodi Kantor (played by Zoe Kazan) and Megan Twohey (played by Carey Mulligan) ended up working together on this landmark investigation which helped bring a surge to the #MeToo movement and garnered a Pulitzer Prize for Kantor and Twohey. (For the purpose of this review, the movie characters will be referred to by their first names, while the real-life people will be referred to by their last names.) Someone who is briefly mentioned (but never shown) in the movie is investigative journalist Ronan Farrow, who also won a Pultizer Prize for his own Weinstein exposé that The New Yorker published a day after The New York Times’ report. “She Said” portrays Farrow’s report as something that Jodi and Megan were aware was happening simultaneously, but Farrow’s competing report did not distract Jodi and Megan from their own investigation.

Jodi’s and Megan’s respective personal lives are shown tangentially for context reasons, in order to give viewers an idea of how this investigation affected their lives outside of their jobs. Jodi and Megan both have loving, supportive husbands (Jodi’s journalist husband Ron Lieber is played by Adam Shapiro; Megan’s literary-agent husband Vadim “Jim” Rutman is played by Tom Pelphrey), but the women are at different stages in their lives when it comes to motherhood.

At the beginning of the investigation, Jodi had two daughters under the age of 12, while Megan was a mother of a newborn child. (Elle Graham has the role of Jodi and Ron’s older daughter Gracie, while Maren Heary has the role of younger daughter Nell.) Their struggles with post-partum depression are mentioned in the movie when Megan confides in Jodi about having post-partum depression, and Jodi reveals that she had this type of depression too.

“She Said” also shows that while Jodi was enthusiastic about pursuing the investigation from the beginning, Megan was more skeptical and reluctant, because many of their sources refused to go on the record, usually because they signed non-disclosure agreements with Weinstein in exchange for a monetary settlement, and/or the accusers feared retaliation. The movie takes on sinister qualities when it shows that Megan and Jodi (and some of their sources) were stalked and threatened by unidentified men who were believed to have been hired by Weinstein.

Slowly but surely, through in-person visits to interview many of the survivors in person, Jodi and Megan begin to get a growing number of women who were willing to go on the record. Judd portrays herself in the scenes where she interacts with Megan and Jodi. In real life and in the movie, Judd tells her story about how Weinstein had her blackballed from getting jobs after she rejected his sexual advances.

Two other key witnesses come forward to help with the investigation: former Weinstein employees Rowena Chiu (played by Angela Yeoh) and Laura Madden (played by Jennifer Ehle), a mother of two underage children, who was also dealing with the recent news that she would have to get a mastectomy due to her breast cancer. (Justine Colan has the role of Laura’s daughter Iris, while Wesley Holloway has the role of Laura’s son Hywel.) Yeoh and Ehle both make an impact with their admirable performances.

Jodi, the more emotionally sensitive reporter of the duo, is described by Megan at one point in the movie as “less intimidating” than Megan because Jodi is shorter and looks more approachable. There’s a well-performed scene where Jodi makes a big mistake in revealing some information to Rowena’s husband that could derail a possible interview with Rowena. Jodi is distraught by this mistake, in a powerful scene that shows the human fallibility that can happen in investigative journalism.

Megan considers herself to be a more seasoned and more jaded reporter than Jodi. Megan doesn’t like to show emotional vulnerability, but she goes through more of an emotional rollercoaster due to her post-partum depression, which she tries to hide from her colleagues, in order not to be perceived as “weak” or “incompetent.” It’s an issue that many mothers in the workforce go through in real life, and it’s handled with tasteful respect in “She Said,” with Mulligan giving a nuanced performance.

The movie also depicts some of the rejections that Jodi and Megan received from potential sources who ultimately were too afraid or uninterested in going on the record with The New York Times. And the movie also depicts some of Weinstein’s enablers, including attorney Lisa Bloom (played by Anastasia Barzee), who tarnished her feminist image when she was hired to be a paid consultant to do damage control for Weinstein. Bloom also had a book deal with Weinstein. John Schmidt (played John Mazurek), who worked for Weinstein as a chief financial officer, and attorney Lanny Davis (played by Peter Friedman), who used to be one of Weinstein’s consultants, are shown having guilt-ridden reckonings when they are confronted by Megan and Jodi about their active participation in covering up Weinstein’s abuses.

The New York Times is portrayed as approaching this story meticulously, with supportive editors who demanded a high level of accountability and evidence before publishing the report. Patricia Clarkson has a generic role as New York Times assistant managing editor Rebecca Corbett. Andre Braugher has the flashier supervisor role as New York Times managing editor Dean Baquet, who has some of the best scenes in the movie in showing how he’s not intimidated by a bully like Weinstein.

As for any portrayal of Weinstein, “She Said” wisely relegates him to just being mostly a voice, with a brief glimpses of an actor (Mike Houston) portraying Weinstein on screen, such as when he walks in a public area with members of his team. There’s a scene where Weinstein threatens Dean with legal action against The New York Times because of the investigation that he knows will expose dark secrets. In response, Dean tells Weinstein that if he wants to make any statements on the record, Weinstein needs to talk directly to Jodi and Megan.

“She Said” also includes the 2015 real-life audio recording of Weinstein trying and failing to coerce actress/model Ambra Battilana Gutierrez into his hotel suite, a day after she says he sexually groped her without her consent. She reported this crime to the New York Police Department, which investigated Weinstein for that incident at the time, but no charges were filed against him. It’s an example of how not all of Weinstein’s accusers waited years to come forward to report Weinstein’s alleged sexual misconduct against them. The movie shows in no uncertain terms that those who did go public before 2017 were silenced or ignored.

Also getting a “voice only” depiction in “She Said” is actress/activist Rose McGowan (voiced by Keilly McQuail), who is shown declining to be interviewed by The New York Times about her accusation that Weinstein raped her, because she says she felt mistreated by The New York Times in the past. In real life, McGowan would go on the record with Farrow for his coverage for The New Yorker. “She Said” also has a scene of Megan and Jodi going to Paltrow’s California home to interview this Oscar-winning “Shakespeare in Love” actress, but Paltrow is also just a phone voice in the movie. (Near the beginning of the movie, there’s also voice cameo from an actor portraying Donald Trump, who calls Megan in 2016, during his presidential campaign, to tell her that she’s a “disgusting human being” for reporting sexual harassment allegations against Trump.)

Early on in “She Said,” the movie acknlowedges that Weinstein’s downfall happened after the April 2017 downfall of former Fox News talk show host Bill O’Reilly over sexual harassment allegations. Sarah Anne Masse, who is one of Weinstein’s real-life accusers (she claims he sexually harassed her in a job interview), has a cameo role as New York Times reporter Emily Steel, who helped break the story about O’Reilly’s alleged sexual misconduct. Steel and Michael S. Schmidt co-wrote the New York Times report that exposed how News Corp. (the parent company of Fox News) paid at least $13 million to settle sexual-harassment complaints made against O’Reilly, who was eventually fired from Fox News when advertisers boycotted his show. (That settlement total is now estimated to be at least $32 million.)

“She Said” might get some comparisons to the Oscar-winning 2015 drama “Spotlight,” which was about the Boston Globe’s 2001-2002 investigation of the Catholic Church covering up priests’ sexual abuse for decades. In real life, that Boston Globe report also won a Pulitzer Prize, but “Spotlight” was very much about a male-majority team of journalists (with one token woman) doing the investigating. “She Said” is much more streamlined, because there is only one main sexual abuser being investigated, although the movie does hammer home the point many times that Weinstein was aided by a system that allowed him to get away with his crimes for years.

None of this information is surprising to anyone who followed the Weinstein scandal and the aftermath of what was reported in The New York Times and The New Yorker. There have been countless news reports and some documentaries of the same subject matter. What will resonate with viewers the most in “She Said” is exactly what the title of the movie promises: Instead of making the villain the center of the story (which true-crime movies tend to do), “She Said” is all about celebrating the bravery and fortitude of the women survivors who came forward to tell their truths, and the people who helped bring some measure of justice to stop Weinstein’s reign of terror.

Universal Pictures will release “She Said” in U.S. cinemas on November 18, 2022.

Review: ‘Personality Crisis: One Night Only,’ starring David Johansen

October 12, 2022

by Carla Hay

David Johansen in “Personality Crisis: One Night Only” (Photo courtesy of Showtime)

“Personality Crisis: One Night Only”

Directed by Martin Scorsese and David Tedeschi

Culture Representation: Taking place primarily in New York City, the documentary film “Personality Crisis: One Night Only” features an all-white group of people discussing the life and career of former New York Dolls singer David Johansen (also known as Buster Poindexter), intertwined with footage of Johansen performing at a January 2020 show at Cafe Carlyle in New York City.

Culture Clash: As a member of the androgynous-looking New York Dolls, Johansen pushed against society norms of what male rock stars should look like, and he later upended expectations by reinventing himself as a vaudevillian performer named Buster Poindexter. 

Culture Audience: “Personality Crisis” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of Joahnsen, the New York Dolls, and influential rock music that emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

David Johansen in “Personality Crisis: One Night Only” (Photo courtesy of Showtime)

“Personality Crisis: One Night Only” sometimes stumbles with rambling repetition, but this documentary is a true reflection of its unique subject, David Johansen: full of fascinating stories and compelling to watch. The on-stage performances enliven this otherwise mostly predictable movie. Fans of Johansen probably won’t learn anything new, but it’s a capable biographical film that demonstrates why Johansen is a charismatic and often-underrated showbiz survivor. “Personality Crisis: One Night Only” had its world premiere at the 2022 New York Film Festival in New York City.

Directed by Martin Scorsese and David Tedeschi, “Personality Crisis: One Night Only” looks like a movie that isn’t intent on winning ant major awards but was made as sort of a gift for Johanen’s family members, close friends and fans. If you have absolutely no interest in the music that influenced punk rock and New Wave artists in the 1970s and 1980s, or if you have no interest in the New York rock music scene from that area, then you might be very bored by this movie, which is heavy on nostalgia for this culture. Johansen is an appealing but often unfocused raconteur, who sometimes goes off on tangents that might or might not hold the interest of viewers.

“Personality Crisis: One Night Only” is a mixture of footage from a January 2020 performance that Johansen did at the Carlyle Club (which is designed like a cabaret/supper club) in New York City; archival footage, mostly from the 1970s and 1980s; and exclusive interviews that he did for the documentary. In the Carlyle Club footage, Johansen performs various New York Dolls and solo artist songs as his alter ego, Buster Poindexter, a pompadour-styled, suit-wearing artist who brings a vaudevillian flair to his stage act.

The Carlyle Club footage includes Johansen performing songs such as “Funky But Chic,” “Melody” and (of course) “Personality Crisis.” The archival footage includes interviews and performance clips from shows such as “Late Night” (hosted by Conan O’Brien), “Later…With Jools Holland,” “Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert” and “Musik Laden.” The contrast is striking between Johansen’s fiery stage persona as lead singer of the New York Dolls and the grizzled cabaret performer he is in the Carlyle Club footage. You get the feeling that these images are never a complete façade. Johansen is just presenting his personality and state of mind that he had at the time.

Born in New York City in 1950, Johansen briefly mentions his childhood and his early love of music, but most of his commentary is about his life as an adult music artist. Johansen’s daughter Leah Hennessey conducted the exclusive interviews that Johansen did for “Personality Crisis: One Night Only.” It’s probably why the interviews don’t go deep into revelations that could be embarrassing or painful for Johansen and his family.

For example, during the Carlyle Club footage, Johansen lovingly points out his third wife, Mara Hennessey (they’ve been married since 2013), who watches his adoringly from the audience. Johansen says a heartfelt, “I love you to Mara,” and he comments on their courtship: “It was a scandal, but it was worth it.” This is where a better documentary would’ve gone into more details, but it just leaves that information to dangle, without answering any questions that viewers might have.

Mostly, Johansen reminisces fondly about his days on the New York music scene in the 1970s. Most people watching this film already know that the New York Dolls were a short-lived band of five musicians who wore makeup and feminine-looking clothes during a time when men could be arrested for wearing women’s clothes in public. The band played and lived fast and hard.

The first incarnation of the New York Dolls lasted from 1971 to 1976 and released just two albums, but influenced countless people. Although they were respected by many of their peers, the New York Dolls never quite became the American version of the Rolling Stones, as some people had predicted. (The Rolling Stones comparison had a lot to do with how Johansen physically resembled Rolling Stones lead singer Mick Jagger in those days and was known for his flamboyant stage presence.)

The New York Dolls were part of a movement of rock artists who played with ideas of defying society norms, including what is “masculine” and what is “feminine.” The band also straddled the line between hardcore punk and commercial pop. They wanted to be unconventionally edgy, but they also wanted to be played on mainstream radio and be famous enough to. (An archival New York Dolls concert clip shows Johansen proudly telling the audience that the band’s song “Trash” was getting played on AM radio.) I

In the documentary’s current interview footage, Johansen says of his attitude at the time: “I just wanted to be welcoming. I just wanted to bring those walls down and have a party.” He also says, “Ridiculousness, especially if it’s intelligent, is appealing to me.”

Even though the New York Dolls’ lineup had many iterations, Johansen was one of the constant members. Several former New York Dolls members are now deceased. Billy Murcia (drums) died in 1972. Johnny Thunders (guitar), who was Johansen’s main songwriting partner in the New York Dolls, passed away in 1991. Jerry Nolan (drums) died in 1992. Arthur Kane (bass guitar) died in 1991. (Kane was the subject of the 2005 documentary “New York Doll,” which gave more insight into the band than “Personality Crisis: One Night Only.”) Rick Rivets (guitar) passed away in 2019. Sylvain Sylvain (multi-instrumentalist) died in 2021. In “Personality Crisis: One Night Only,” the deaths of Murcia and Thunders get brief mentions.

If anyone is expecting wild tales of sex, drugs and rock and roll in this documentary, forget it. Decadence is only fleetingly referred to but never detailed in the movie. Johansen says in an archival interview that when he used to visit his visual artist friend Harry Smith (who died in 1991, at the age of 68), Smith’s Chelsea home was a “like a speed [amphetamine] den.” In the Carlyle Club footage, Johansen briefly describes working with music producer Todd Rundgren at Rundgren’s Hawaii home studio, which Johansen said looked like “a Colombian drug lord’s bagoda.”

Later on stage in the Carlyle Club footage, Johansen alludes to but never elaborates on his health problems. He mentions that because of the New York Dolls’ 2004 to 2011 reunion, his liver went “ba-boom,” and “that’s probably why you didn’t see me for a while.” At times, Johansen (who holds a drink in his hand while performing) tends to lose his train of thought. After performing “Melody,” Johansen says half-jokingly: “Where am I? Who am I?” Later, when starts to tell a meandering story about one of his experiences with friend at the legendary Max’s Kansas City nightclub in the 1970s, his longtime friend Penny Arcade, who’s in the audience, helps Johansen remember who else was with them and their mutual friend Ingrid Sylvester on that night.

In “Personality Crisis: One Night Only,” Morrissey (former lead singer of the Smiths) is briefly featured in new and archival footage as a New York Dolls superfan. Morrissey says that the New York Dolls should be more widely known, but drugs and the band’s controversial image probably prevented them from having more commercial success. He describes the New York Dolls as a “blighted band” and a “cursed band.” Morrissey (who was the New York Dolls’ U.K. fan club president when Morrissey was a teenager) comments that one of the main reasons why the New York Dolls appealed to him was because they weren’t just a loud and rude band, as their image suggested, but they were also “intelligent and witty.”

Viewers might be curious to watch this documentary because Scorsese is one of the directors. Make no mistake: As entertaining as “Personality Crisis: One Night Only” can be, it’s not on the same level as classic Scorsese music documentaries, such as 1978’s “The Last Waltz” (about the last performance of The Band’s original lineup) or 2011’s “George Harrison: Living in the Material World.” Some of the editing in “Personality Crisis: One Night Only” is very choppy and needed better fine tuning. For example, the Morrissey interview segment segues to archival concert footage of the Smiths, and this Smiths footage goes on for much longer than necessary. Other parts of the documentary have better editing, such as cuts between the New York Dolls performing the same song at different performances.

However, a documentary about David Johansen shouldn’t be too slick and polished, because that’s not the type of artist he is. On stage, Johansen exudes both cockiness and self-deprecation, which is part of the Buster Poindexter image, but it’s very much Johansen’s personality too. After all of his years in showbiz, Johansen still has a hard-to-describe star quality (even when he’s standing still on stage) that comes across as authentic. It’s why “Personality Crisis: One Night Only” shows how artists who were meant to last are the ones who aren’t manufactured.

Showtime will premiere “Personality Crisis: One Night Only” on April 14, 2023.

Review: ‘TÁR,’ starring Cate Blanchett

October 9, 2022

by Carla Hay

Cate Blanchett in “TÁR” (Photo courtesy of Focus Features)

“TÁR”

Directed by Todd Field

Some language in German with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place primarily in Berlin and New York City, the dramatic film “TÁR” features a cast of predominantly white characters (with some Asians) representing the middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: An internationally famous classical music conductor finds her life spiraling out of control when her past actions come back to haunt her. 

Culture Audience: “TÁR” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of star Cate Blanchett, writer/director Todd Field and well-acted movies about powerful people who experience a scandalous fall from grace..

Cate Blanchett and Nina Hoss in “TÁR” (Photo courtesy of Focus Features)

Cate Blanchett’s riveting performance in writer/director Todd Field’s “TÁR” makes it a psychological minefield of a drama. It’s an absorbing portrait of someone intoxicated by her own power and facing a reckoning that’s as unwelcome to her as a nasty hangover. Blanchett’s Lydia Tár character is a classical music conductor who has reached the top of her field, which makes her public downfall such a disastrous mess. Viewers can decide for themselves if this downfall could have been diminished based on how it was handled by the movie’s central character.

“TÁR” is Field’s first movie as a writer/director/producer since his Oscar-nominated 2006 drama “Little Children,” another movie about how a woman is affected by a sex-related scandal. Whereas “Little Children” told the story of a private citizen in a suburban U.S. neighborhood, “TÁR” is about a public figure who is an internationally famous entertainer. “TÁR” had its world premiere at the 2022 Venice International Film Festival in Italy and subsequently had premieres at the 2022 Telluride Film Festival in Colorado, and the 2022 New York Film Festival in New York City.

In “TÁR,” Lydia fits every definition of a type-A personality who’s an overachiever. The movie’s opening scene takes place at The New Yorker Festival, where writer Adam Gopnik (playing a version of himself) is interviewing Lydia in a one-on-one Q&A in front of the audience. It’s a laudatory interview, where her accomplishments are listed like badges of honor: She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard University. Lydia is also a piano performance graduate of the Curtis Institute, and she has a Ph.D. in musicology from the University of Vienna, specializing in music from the Ucayali Valley in Eastern Peru.

At one time or another, she has been a conductor for all of the “Big Five” American orchestras: New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra and Cleveland Orchestra. Lydia is a rare entertainer who is an EGOT winner: someone who has won an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony. She considers herself to be a New Yorker, and has a home in New York City, where she still visits on a regular basis. However, for the past seven years, Lydia has been living in Berlin, because she has been a conductor for an unnamed German orchestra.

Lydia, who describes herself as a “U-Haul lesbian,” lives with her German domestic partner Sharon Goodnow (played by Nina Hoss) and their adopted Syrian daughter Petra (played by Mila Bogojevic), who is about 6 or 7 years old. Sharon is a violinist in the German orchestra that Lydia conducts. It’s the first sign in the movie that Lydia has a tendency to blur the lines between her job and her personal life.

Lydia is a loner who doesn’t have a close circle of friends, so Sharon is Lydia’s closest confidante. Sharon knows a lot of Lydia’s secrets. However, Sharon eventually finds out that she doesn’t really know everything about Lydia. Two American men also have an influence on Lydia, and they give her advice, whether she wants to hear it or not.

Eliot Kaplan (played by Mark Strong) is an investment banker and amateur conductor, who has financed a non-profit program called the Accordion Conducting Fellowship, which is led by Lydia. The fellowship gives apprenticeships and job opportunities to aspiring female classical music conductors in this very male-dominated field. Near the beginning of the movie, Lydia tells Eliot during a lunch meeting that she’s thinking that the program recipients shouldn’t just be one gender.

The other man who plays an influential role in Lydia’s life is her mentor Andris Davis (played by Julian Glover), who was her predecessor at the German orchestra that Lydia currently conducts. Andris was the one who recommended her for the job, although it’s made clear throughout the movie that Lydia’s talent is so highly respected and sought-after, she probably didn’t need to a recommendation to get the job. What started out as a temporary job for Lydia to be the guest conductor position at this German orchestra turned out to be a long-term, permanent position.

If viewers believe the narrative that Lydia tells people, one of the reasons why she and Sharon decided to settle in Berlin was to be closer to Sharon’s family members who live in the area. But as the story unfolds, it becomes pretty obvious that Lydia might have had a reason to avoid living in New York full-time. It turns out that Lydia has a “stalker” who lives in New York City.

Lydia’s French assistant Francesca Lentini (played by Noémie Merlant) knows who this “stalker” is, because this person has been sending obsessive and threatening email messages to Lydia. Francesca has permission to access these messages, because Francesca screens Lydia’s mail. Francesca is an aspiring conductor who greatly admires Lydia and considers Lydia to be her mentor.

Over time, based on the way that Francesca acts and what she says, Francesca seems to assume that she will be Lydia’s first choice if any big job opportunity comes along that Lydia can help Francesca get. Lydia expects unwavering loyalty from Francesca, but Francesca expects the same loyalty in return. There’s some sexual tension between Lydia and Francesca that will make viewers speculate if or when the relationship between Lydia and Francesca ever became sexually intimate.

Just like a lot of hard-driving, ambitious and accomplished people, Lydia is a perfectionist who is just as hard on herself as she is on other people. A very telling scene is when she is a guest teacher in a classical music class at the prestigious Juilliard School in New York City. The students seem very intimidated by Lydia’s reputation for being merciless in her criticism, but she’s also full of praise for anyone who meets or exceeds her high standards.

During this class session, Lydia singles out a student named Max (played by Zethphan Smith-Gneist) and asks him, “What are you actually conducting?” Max is so nervous in her presence, one of Max’s legs is literally shaking as Max talks to her. However, Max isn’t so afraid of Lydia that Max won’t challenge some of the things that she lectures to the students.

For example, Lydia tells the students any great conductor or musician can find something to relate to in the music of classical icons Johann Sebastian Bach or Ludwig van Beethoven. Max disagrees and tells Lydia and the rest of the people in the room: “As a BIPOC [black, indigenous, or person of color], pan-gender person, it’s impossible to take Bach seriously.”

Lydia tells Max that she doesn’t know what BIPOC and pan-gender means, and her attitude is that she doesn’t care to know. She treats Max dismissively, like an ignorant young person whose opinions matter very little to her, because she’s the more experienced, older person. Finally, a fed-up Max gets tired of feeling belittled by Lydia, and Max walks out of the class. Before leaving the room, Max tells Lydia, “You’re a fucking bitch.”

In response, a stone-faced Lydia calls Max a “robot.” Throughout the movie, Lydia mentions that she dislikes it when people act like robots. During her lunch with Eliot, she says, “There’s no glory for a robot. Do your own thing.” Ironically, when Lydia’s world starts to come crashing down on her, she represses her emotions and turns to rigid routines (such as rigorous jogging and boxing) to cope, and thereby acts very much like a “robot,” in an attempt to tune out her troubles.

Lydia is under enormous career pressure when things start to fall apart for her. The German orchestra is preparing for a Deutsche Grammophon live recording date of Mahler’s Symphony No. 5, which will be a major accomplishment in her career. In addition, Lydia is working on writing an original classical piece. However, she seems to be having writer’s block, and she doesn’t really want to admit this problem to anyone.

While in Berlin, Lydia meets a Russian cellist Olga Metkina (played by Sophie Kauer), who is 18 or 19 years old. Olga acts like a star-struck fan with Lydia, who is flattered. Lydia also seems to be sexually attracted to Olga. Meanwhile, Olga seems to be aware of this attraction and makes it clear that she’s eager for any opportunity to work with Lydia.

“TÁR” is fascinating to watch for how it unpeels the layers of Lydia’s contradictory character that is capable of hiding a web of lies and secrets. Lydia can be charismatic and funny, but she can also be ruthless and cruel. She is a workaholic who doesn’t spend a lot of quality time with her daughter Petra, but Lydia quietly threatens the girl at Petra’s school who has been bullying Petra.

Lydia claims to be open to collaboration and hearing different ideas, but when anyone dares to question her ideas or decisions, she gets revenge in passive-aggressive ways. An elderly orchestra member named Sebastian Brix (played by Allan Corduner) finds out the hard way how vindictive Lydia can be. What happens to Sebastian sets off a certain chain events that will accelerate the scandal that could lead to Lydia’s downfall.

In telling the story of this complex person, Field also uses haunting flashback techniques that resemble a fever dream, where Lydia remembers things related to the scandal that threatens to end her career. Lydia also sometimes wakes up in the middle of the night to random sounds, such as a metronome that seems to have started on its own. It further fuels the sense that Lydia is being haunted. How much of it is her own doing? As the tension builds and things get worse for Lydia, the movie’s cinematography (played by Florian Hoffmeister) and the music (by Hildur Guðnadóttir) become more foreboding, creating a sense that the proverbial walls are closing in on her.

The character of Lydia is so well-written and embodied with such realism by Blanchett, people who don’t know anything about the world of classical music might mistake “TÁR” for being a biopic based on a real person. All of the other cast members play their parts well, but the movie would not be as effective without Blanchett’s masterful performance. (Field has said in interviews that he wrote the “TÁR” role only for Blanchett.) It’s the type of virtuoso, top-notch performance that would make Lydia Tár very proud.

Focus Features released “TÁR” in select U.S. cinemas on October 7, 2022, with an expansion to more U.S. cinemas on October 28, 2022.

Review: ‘Triangle of Sadness,’ starring Charlbi Dean, Harris Dickinson and Woody Harrelson

October 8, 2022

by Carla Hay

Charlbi Dean and Harris Dickinson in “Triangle of Sadness” (Photo by Fredrik Wenzel/Neon)

“Triangle of Sadness”

Directed by Ruben Östlund

Some language in German and Russian with no subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place mostly somewhere off the coast of Greece, the comedy/drama film “Triangle of Sadness” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with one black person and one Filipina) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: A dating couple, who are both young fashion models, must navigate conflicts over gender roles in their relationship, which is put to the test when they end up stranded on an island with other people from a luxury cruise yacht. 

Culture Audience: “Triangle of Sadness” will appeal primarily to people interested in a story that lampoons how youth, good looks, gender and wealth are used in social climbing and perceived power.

Arvin Kananian and Woody Harrelson in “Triangle of Sadness” (Photo by Fredrik Wenzel/Neon)

The darkly comedic “Triangle of Sadness” is an incisive satire of social class prejudices and gender-based power dynamics. The cast members’ skillful performances outweigh the movie’s flaws, such as a story that sometimes rambles and has a vague ending. “Triangle of Sadness” tells a memorable if uneven story about how constructs of power are frequently built around superficial qualities such as physical looks, youth and wealth, and how those constructs can radically change in life-or-death situations.

Written and directed by Ruben Östlund, “Triangle of Sadness” is a movie that is meant to make audiences laugh at uncomfortable truths and near-parodies of how people conduct themselves when they are in the presence of wealth and power—and what people are willing to do to have wealth and power. “Triangle of Sadness” had its world premiere at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival in France, where it won the Palme d’Or, the festival’s top prize. The movie also made the rounds at other film festivals, including the Toronto International Film Festival, Fantastic Fest and the New York Film Festival.

“Triangle of Sadness” is told in three separate parts. “Part One: Carl and Yaya,” “Part Two: The Yacht” and “Part Three: The Island.” The first two parts of the movie are really just introductions to the various people who end up stranded on an island off of the coast of Greece, after a yachting disaster. The last part of the movie is the most intriguing part, but it’s also the part of the movie that will be the most frustrating to viewers.

“Part One: Carl and Yaya” shows the relationship of the London-based couple at the center of the story: Carl (played by Harris Dickinson) is British, in his mid-20s and is a former mechanic who now works as a fashion model. Yaya (played by Charlbi Dean) is originally from South Africa, in her early 30s, and is also a fashion model. Carl and Yaya have been dating each other for less than a year. (Tragically, Dean died on August 29, 2022, of septicemia, the medical term for blood poisoning, which came from an untreated lung infection. She was 32.)

Carl is first seen during a casting call audition for a runway show. He and other male models, who are all shirtless, are being interviewed by a flamboyant social media personality named Lewis (played by Tobias Thorwid), who openly flirts with the models. Lewis asks Carl and the other models to show the different facial expressions that they use for haute couture modeling (a serious face) and commercial mass merchant modeling (a smiling face).

When Lewis yells out “Balenciaga,” Carl and the other models put on their serious faces. When Lewis yells out “H&M,” Carl and the other models put on their smiling faces. Lewis keeps repeating “Balenciaga” and “H&M,” and the models keep changing their facial expressions, like they’re robots being ordered to do someone’s bidding. It’s the movie’s way of showing how models are often treated like robots.

When it’s Carl’s turn to go in front of the judging panel, a snooty male casting agent comments to Carl about the middle of Carl’s forehead: “Can you relax your triangle of sadness?” In the production notes for “Triangle of Sadness,” writer/director Östlund comments on why he chose this phrase as the title of the movie.

“It’s a term used in the beauty industry,” Östlund says. “A friend sat next to a plastic surgeon at a party and, after a quick look at her face, he said, ‘Oh, you have a quite deep triangle of sadness… but I can fix that with Botox in 15 minutes.’ He was referring to a wrinkle between her eyebrows. In Swedish, it’s called ‘trouble wrinkle,’ and it suggests you’ve had a lot of struggles in your life. I thought it said something about our era’s obsession with looks and that inner well-being is, in some respects, secondary.”

It’s no coincidence that the central couple in this movie are models in the fashion industry, which places a high value on youth and outer beauty. Modeling is one of the few jobs where women make more money than men. And because Yaya’s income is much higher than Carl’s income, this disparity has caused some problems in their relationship.

The problems become evident when Carl and Yaya have what is supposed to be a romantic dinner at a restaurant, but this date devolves into an argument over who is going to pay for the dinner. Carl has flown out to visit Yaya, who’s on a modeling assignment. And he’s been consistently paying for their meals during this trip.

But at this particular dinner, Yaya had offered to pay, and Carl accepted the offer. When the bill is placed on the table, Yaya pretends that she doesn’t see it and silently puts the responsibility on Carl to pay the bill. When he reminds her that she offered to pay for the dinner, it leads to a disagreement that isn’t really about the bill about it’s about power and control in the relationship.

Carl says that if women want equality, they should be willing to pay for dates on occasion if they offer to do so. Yaya agrees to pay for dinner. Carl concedes that he didn’t mean to raise his voice with Yaya and tells her, “Now, I feel bad.” However, Yaya gives a passive-aggresssive insult to Carl when she tells him, “It’s okay. I make more money than you.”

And then, it’s Yaya’s turn to be embarrassed. The credit card that she uses to pay for the dinner is declined. And so, Carl ends up paying for the dinner in cash. On the cab drive back to their hotel, Carl wants to talk about this money issue, but Yaya doesn’t. She tells Carl: “It’s not sexy to talk about money.”

Carl replies, “We shouldn’t slip into the same gender-based roles everyone else seems to be doing. I want us to be equal.” Carl won’t let the issue go, and he confronts Yaya about something that he saw her do at the restaurant: She took a €50 bill that was meant for the dinner payment, and she kept it for herself.

It leads to an even bigger verbal blow-up between the couple, who end up shouting at each other in the hotel elevator. Eventually, Carl and Yaya call a truce, but they both know that the argument isn’t about the money for that dinner. Yaya admits that she’s materialistic and says that one of the reasons why she became a model was to become “someone’s trophy wife.”

Yaya also confesses that she purposely ignored the restaurant bill when it was placed on the table because she really wanted Carl to offer to pay for dinner. Yaya tells Carl, “I need to know that if I fall pregnant that the person I’m with will take care of me.” All of these comments are Yaya’s obvious ways of telling Carl that if he eventually doesn’t make more money than she does, she’s going to lose interest in him.

In the “Triangle of Sadness” production notes, Östlund says that this argument over who would pay for dinner happened in real life with him and his fashion photographer wife, Sina, before they were married. Ruben and Sina Östlund might have had a happy ending after this argument, but things are much rockier for Carl and Yaya. The first part of the movie is focused on this argument as a foreshadowing of some turmoil to come.

In “Part Two: The Yacht,” Carl and Yaya have been invited by one of Yaya’s fashion connections to go on a luxury cruise on a yacht. Yaya is a social media influencer, who makes money by endorsing products and services on her social media accounts. During this trip, she fulfills these sponsor obligations by posing for photos on the yacht, with Carl as her photographer.

This part of the movie introduces several other people on the yacht and puts further emphasis on the social class divisions that separate the yacht’s subservient workers and the yacht’s privileged passengers. Carl and Yaya eventually meet several of these other passengers, some of whom are quirkier than others. Carl comes from a working-class background, and he often feels like he doesn’t quit fit in with these people who are accustomed to being rich.

Not long after their yacht trip begins, Carl and Yaya meet Dimitry (played by Zlatko Burić), a Russian agriculture mogul who made his fortune from selling fertilizer. Dimitry is on this yacht with his snobby and demanding wife Vera (played by Sunnyi Melles) and his mistress Ludmilla (played by Carolina Gynning), who is young enough to be his daughter. Dimitry and Vera seem to have an open marriage, because Vera and Ludmilla know about each other and hang out together with Dimitry on the yacht. Dimitry likes to brag to other people about how he became wealthy in a “rags to riches” story, but there’s a nouveau-riche crudeness in the way that Dimitry talks and acts.

An elderly British married couple named Winston (played by Oliver Ford Davies) and Clementine (played by Amanda Walker) are very polite and proper, but viewers might perceive these seemingly harmless senior citizens differently when it’s revealed why these spouses are rich. Another couple on the yacht are German spouses Uli (played by Ralph Schicha) and Therese (played by Iris Berben), who uses a wheelchair because she had a stroke. Uli is very attentive and devoted to Therese, who is mostly mute, except for when she utters the only words that she seems capable of saying: “in de wolken,” which is German for “in the clouds.”

Later in the movie, Yaya and Ludmilla meet a lonely, rich bachelor named Jarmo (played by Henrik Dorsin) at the yacht’s main bar. Jarmo invited a woman to be his companion on this trip, but she stood him up for this date. Jarmo wants to show this woman that he’s having a good time without her, so he asks Yaya to take a photo of him at the bar, because he wants to send the photo to the woman who snubbed him.

When Yaya and Ludmilla hear Jarmo’s story about the woman who rejected him, they both offer to take a selfie photo with Jarmo, so that Jarmo can send a picture looking like he’s having fun with two beautiful women on this yacht. Jarmo is so grateful, he immediately tells Yaya and Ludmilla, “I’m very rich,” and he offers to buy Rolex watches for Yaya and Ludmilla as thank you gifts. They both decline the offer, but it’s an example of Jarmo’s insecurity in thinking that he has to tell people that he’s rich, in order to impress people and buy friendships.

The yacht’s workers include a perky yet no-nonsense staff director named Paula (played by Vicki Berlin), who is a combination of a task master and a cheerleader for the employees. Paula is fanatical about the ship remaining tidy and orderly, and she tells the staffers to say yes to anything that the passengers ask them to do. Paula also leads the employees in pep talks and group chants to build team solidarity and loyalty.

Two other yacht staffers are a maid named Abigail (played by Dolly de Leon) and a repairman named Nelson (played by Jean-Christophe Folly), who are mostly in the background during “Part Two: The Yacht,” but their personalities emerge during “Part Three: The Island.” Abigail and Nelson are two of the few people of color who work on the ship, and they are both given jobs where they don’t interact much with the passengers. Observant viewers will notice that on this yacht, only white employees have the jobs that require the most interaction with the passengers.

The movie shows an example of how far Paula wants her employees to go to please the wealthy passengers on the yacht. A young and relatively new employee named Alicia (played by Alicia Ericksson) is asked by Vera to go for a dip in a jacuzzi with her, while Alicia is on duty. Alicia is reluctant to do so, but she also remembers that Paula ordered the staff to always say yes to a passenger’s request, no matter how unusual or difficult the request is.

Alicia doesn’t have a swimsuit with her at that moment, but Vera says that Alicia can strip down to her underwear. Vera can see that Alicia is uncomfortable, but Vera doesn’t seem to care. Eventually, Alicia obliges this request. But when Paula hears how reluctant Alicia was to say yes to this request, Paula overcompensates by ordering the entire staff to go on the water slides with the passengers.

The yacht’s leader is Captain Thomas Smith (played by Woody Harrelson), who is a drunken mess. In the “Triangle of Sadness” production notes, Östlund describes the captain as “an idealist, an alcoholic and a Marxist.” Paula and the ship’s first mate Darius (played by Arvin Kananian) spend considerable effort trying to get the intoxicated Captain Smith out of his room in time for the captain’s dinner with the yacht’s most influential and richest passengers.

It’s at this dinner when all hell breaks loose. Something causes the passengers to get sick and violently vomit. Things get worse when the yacht explodes and not everyone makes it out alive. It’s enough to say that the people who do survive end up stranded on a remote island. (This isn’t spoiler information because it’s in the movie’s trailer.)

Being stranded on this island strips away a lot of the social hierarchies and perceptions of power that existed on the yacht. This third and final part of the movie has some twists and turns that make “Triangle of Sadness” worth watching. However, because this major shift in the story comes so late in the movie, much of it feels crammed-in and rushed.

With a total running time 149 minutes, “Triangle of Sadness” could have used tighter film editing. The movie took a little too much time with “Part Two: The Yacht,” which is a bit repetitive in showing how these vacationers take their privilege and social status for granted. “Part Three: The Island” also has some scenes that wander, although the scenes in the last third of the movie have more of an overall purpose. Despite these imperfections in the movie’s film editing, the dialogue in “Triangle of Sadness” remains sharp and engaging.

Dickinson and de Leon give the movie’s standout performances as Carl and Abigail. On the surface, Carl and Abigail both seem to have very little in common. But beneath the surface, they both have something big in common: They feel like underappreciated outsiders in their own worlds. And they both show some rebellion and resentment as a result of feeling like they have been denied access to things that they think they deserve.

The very last image in “Triangle of Sadness” can be interpreted in many different ways—and that open-endedness at the movie’s conclusion will either frustrate some viewers, or it will invite viewers to come up with theories about what really happened at the end of this story. Despite this ambiguous ending, “Triangle of Sadness” has a lot of interesting commentary and observations about why society’s divisions between the “haves” and “have nots” can affect how people treat each other—and how these divisions are often based on shallow criteria that do not truly reflect someone’s inner character.

Neon released “Triangle of Sadness” in select U.S. cinemas on October 7, 2022.

Review: ‘All That Breathes,’ starring Nadeem Shehzad, Mohammad Saud and Salik Rehman

Salik Rehman in “All That Breathes” (Photo courtesy of Sideshow and Submarine Deluxe)

“All That Breathes”

Directed by Shaunak Sen

Hindi with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place in Delhi, India, the documentary film “All That Breathes” features a group of working-class Indian men involved in rescuing pollution-affected and injured birds, especially black kites.

Culture Clash: The members of this rescue group face obstacles such as civil unrest in India, a shortage of funds, and some disagreements about the direction of the group, when one of the members wants to relocate to the United States.

Culture Audience: “All That Breathes” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in unconventional documentaries about animal rescue groups and the environment.

A scene from “All That Breathes” (Photo courtesy of Sideshow and Submarine Deluxe)

With immersive cinematography, “All That Breathes” offers contemplative moments that tell more than just a documentary story about rescuing birds. Viewers can look at the bigger picture of how people’s decisions on what to save can affect our ecosystem. Rather than preaching what people should think, “All That Breathes” lets the story unfold so that viewers can make up their own minds by watching this moving and effective story about humanity and nature.

Directed by Shaunak Sen, “All That Breathes” focuses on a specific group of people in a specific place, but the themes in the movie are universal. The movie centers on three men involved in the grassroots group Wildlife Rescue, which was founded in 2010 by two brothers who live in Delhi, India. Older brother Nadeem Shehzad is the group’s intellectual leader, who plans to temporarily relocate to the United States to get more training on animal rescuing. Younger brother Mohammad Saud (who prefers to be called Saud) is the most extroverted member of the group featured in the documentary.

Nadeem (who gives voiceover narration) and Saud have had a specialty in rescuing birds, particularly black kites. As Needem says in a voiceover, they were teenage bodybuilders when they first noticed an injured bird. They took the bird to a veterinary clinic, which refused to give the bird medical treatment because it wasn’t a “vegetarian bird.”

The brothers’ bodybuilding experience gave them some knowledge of bandaging muscles and treating injuries, so they rescued the bird and gave it medical treatment on their own. It led to the formation of Wildlife Rescue, a makeshift animal sanctuary/clinic, which they operate out of their home with a great deal of compassion and care. The brothers have since rescued thousands of birds that have been sick or injured. Because of Delhi’s rampant air pollution, there’s been a crisis of black kites and other birds being afflicted with pollution-related diseases and injuries.

A third person who’s part of the Wildlife Rescue is Salik Rehman, who started volunteering for the group in 2010, and he officially became a staffer in 2017. The documentary shows that Nadeem has taken on most of the administrative duties, while Saud and Salik do most of the “leg work” in going out and rescuing birds that need help. Salik is not as confident as Saud, who often trains Salik or gives him encouragement when Salik wants to do something where he feels he doesn’t have enough experience.

Of the three men, Salik is the most tech-savvy, almost to a fault. Nadeem says in a voiceover, “Salik belongs to the digital age. He doesn’t understand mercury monitors.” Salik is also the one who’s the most caught up in social media. He has an easygoing, sometimes goofy personality that can lighten the mood when things get grim. And things do get very grim.

During their rescue efforts, the members of this tight-knit group of Muslims grow uneasy about the increasing civil unrest in India, where Muslims are being targeted over citizenship issues. Just as the black kites and other birds are at risk of being displaced from the sky because of air pollution, so to do the Wildlife Rescue team start to feel that toxic elements are making them uncomfortable about where they live. It shouldn’t be lost on viewers of this documentary why the members of this Wildlife Rescue Group can relate to the animals that are under siege from life-threatening factors.

If “All That Breathes” were a conventional nature documentary, it would go into much more detail about the technical aspects of these rescue efforts. And there would probably be at least one bird who would get its own story and possibly even a pet name. Although some information is given about black kites (for example, they use cigarette butts as repellents to attacking insects), and there are some scenes of birds getting medical treatment, this isn’t a documentary where viewers will learn a lot of about ornithology. After all, Wildlife Rescue is not a group of scientists.

“All That Breathes” has made the rounds at several film festivals, including the 2022 Sundance Film Festival (where the movie won the jury prize for World Cinema Documentary), the 2022 Cannes Film Festival (where the movie won the GoldenEye Award, the festival’s top documentary prize) and the 2022 New York Film Festival. The movie doesn’t have a lot of dialogue and gives a lot of screen time to showing visually striking scenes of the beauty and the grime of a crowded big city such as Delhi. If the point of “All That Breathes” isn’t made clear enough, Nadeem sums it up when he says in a voiceover, “Life is a kinship. We are a community of air.”

Sideshow and Submarine Deluxe in association with HBO Documentary Films will release “All That Breathes” in select U.S. cinemas on October 21, 2022. HBO and HBO Max will premiere the movie on February 7, 2023.

Review: ‘A Couple’ (2022), starring Nathalie Boutefeu

October 2, 2022

by Carla Hay

Nathalie Boutefeu in “A Couple” (Photo courtesy of Zipporah Films)

“A Couple” (2022)

Directed by Frederick Wiseman

French with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place sometime between 1910 and 1919, on Belle-Île, off the coast of Brittany, France, the dramatic film “A Couple” has only one person in the movie’s cast, in a portrayal of Russian writer Sophia Tolstaya, widow of Russian writer Leo Tolstoy.

Culture Clash: In the movie, Tolstaya reads out loud portions of letters and diary entries that she and Tolstoy wrote that detail their volatile and depressing marriage.

Culture Audience: “A Couple” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of filmmaker Frederick Wiseman and Tolstoy, as well people who are interested in the private life of a famous writer, but everyone else might be very bored by this movie.

Nathalie Boutefeu in “A Couple” (Photo courtesy of Zipporah Films)

“A Couple” is really about one-half of a couple. It’s a series of monologues where Nathalie Boutefeu portrays widow Sophia Tolstaya griping about how her marriage to Leo Tolstoy was unhappy. Boutefeu’s compelling performance saves this very repetitive film. Even though this writer couple was Russian, “A Couple” is a French-language film, probably because Boutefeu is French. The movie was also filmed on Belle-Île, off the coast of Brittany, France.

“A Couple” director Frederick Wiseman is mostly known for making documentary films, so “A Couple” is a departure for him, because it is a narrative feature, based on the personal writings of Tolstaya and Tolstoy. (Nominated several times for Nobel prizes, Tolstoy is best-known for his novels “War and Peace” and “Anna Karenina.”) Wiseman and Boutefeu co-wrote the adapted screenplay of “A Couple.” The movie had its world premiere at the 2022 Venice International Film Festival in Italy and its North American premiere at the 2022 New York Film Festival in New York City.

Boutefeu (in the role of Sophia) is the only person who appears on screen for the entire movie. She gives monologues where she reads letters and diary entries written by Tolstaya and Tolstoy that detail the couple’s troubled marriage. (For the purposes of this review, the movie character is referred to as Sophia, while the real-life Tolstaya is referred to as Tolstaya.) Tolstaya’s writings are read more in the movie than Tolstoy’s writings.

What emerges is a portrait of a cold and domineering husband who frequently cheated on his wife and inflicted various forms of emotional abuse on her. He mistreated her and acted like he wasn’t in love with her, but he also didn’t want her to leave him. In other words, “A Couple” isn’t a feel-good movie.

What the movie doesn’t give is any background information on the two people in this miserable marriage. In real life, Countess Sophia Behrs married Leo Tolstoy in 1852, when she was 18, and he was 34. They were married for 48 years, until his death in 1910, at the age of 82. Tolstaya died in 1919, at the age of 75. The couple had 13 children together, but Tolstoy fathered at least one other child through his chronic extramarital infidelity, according to this movie.

“A Couple” begins and ends with the widowed Sophia in a dimly lit room holding the letters that she will end up reading out loud during the course of this 64-minute movie. The rest of the film takes place entirely outdoors with lovely scenic views of the terrain where the monologues were filmed in grassy areas and on rocks near a beach. There are also some close-ups of some of the small outdoor insects (such as butterflies) that live in the grassy areas.

In these monologues, Sophia talks about her husband’s cruelty and how he often seemed like he regretted marrying her. “It took me years to understand your moods, your demons,” she says. She also seems to struggle with her love/hate feelings about her husband.

“I am still in love,” she says. “You illuminate my life.” But she also says, “For you, I am nothing but a mangy dog.” She continues, “I feel abandoned. I don’t have a husband/friend.” She later says, “I envy the couples who enjoy a spiritual bond with a physical relationship.”

Sophia details this loneliness in the marriage when she talks about how her husband preferred to spend time playing piano for four to six hours a day, or taking long walks by himself, instead of spending that time with her and their children. He was also disinterested in putting up a happy front to people about this marriage. “Remember the modest party for our 10th anniversary?” she asks aloud in a superficial manner, as if the size of an anniversary party is supposed to reflect how much spouses love each other.

To add insult to injury, her husband’s mistress lived nearby with the son allegedly born from this extramarital affair. And so, Sophia has to endure the humiliation and having this reminder of his infidelity near her and the children. “Disenchantment has invaded our life,” she says mournfully. If the marriage had any happiness, it’s not depicted in this movie.

Sophia also expresses bitterness about how in 30 years of marriage, her husband never spent time showing concern when any of their children got sick. She talks about feeling like the only one in the marriage who took on the responsibility of being a nurturing parent to their children. And it goes without saying that Sophia’s writing career wasn’t allowed to flourish in the way that her husband’s writing career thrived.

The movie’s scenes also include descriptions of the husband’s vicious temper. According to the movie, he would throw breakable things when he got angry. And when Sophia tried to leave him, he dragged her while she was “half-naked” back their house. The abuse in the marriage got so bad for her, Sophia exclaims in a diary entry: “Take me to the police or to the madhouse!”

Boutefeu infuses these monologues with all the visceral emotions of a spouse desperately trapped in a bad marriage but conflicted enough that she holds out hope that things might improve and her husband will show that he might still love her. Sophia mentions that their children are her main sources of joy and the biggest reason why she’s staying in the marriage. It’s a story that unfortunately is not unique to any particular time period or culture, because these toxic relationships can happen to anyone at any time.

Boutefeu’s acting is the main thing that “A Couple” has to offer that gives some emotional context to the words that are being recited on the screen, because there’s nothing particularly special about the movie’s cinematography or editing. After a while, it gets redundant to hear the same marital complaints being said out loud. Don’t expect “A Couple” to give any major insight into how these literary couple worked on any of their writings that weren’t these diary entries or personal letters.

If the total running time of “A Couple” had stretched to 90 minutes or more, the movie definitely would have overstayed its welcome. Clocking at a little over one hour is just about the length time before “A Couple” would start to slide into irredeemable monotony. This movie would have been even better if it had been a short film. As it stands, “A Couple” can be recommended only for those curious to take an uncomfortable peek inside the grim marriage of Tolstoy and Tolstaya, giving some insight into why their writing was about so much angst, suffering and betrayal.

Zipporah Films will release “A Couple” in select U.S. cinemas on November 11, 2022.

Review: ‘Till,’ starring Danielle Deadwyler, Jalyn Hall, Frankie Faison, Haley Bennett and Whoopi Goldberg

October 2, 2022

by Carla Hay

Jalyn Hall and Danielle Deadwyler in “Till” (Photo by Lynsey Weatherspoon/Orion Pictures)

“Till”

Directed by Chinonye Chukwu

Culture Representation: Taking place in 1955 in Illinois and Mississippi, the dramatic film “Till” features a predominantly African American cast of characters (with some white people) representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: After her 14-year-old son (and only child) Emmett Till is murdered in a racist hate crime, Mamie Till-Mobley fights for justice in a system where white supremacy is enabled and enforced. 

Culture Audience: “Till” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of stars Danielle Deadwyler and Whoopi Goldberg, as well as to people who are interested in well-acted biographical stories about the civil rights movement in the United States.

Danielle Deadwyler and Whoopi Goldberg in “Till” (Photo by Lynsey Weatherspoon/Orion Pictures)

The heartbreaking and inspiring drama “Till” admirably tells the true story of Mamie Till-Mobley and how she not only fought for justice for her murdered son, Emmett Till, but also how she became an often-overlooked pioneer in the U.S. civil rights movement. Even though the events in “Till” take place in the 1955, everything about the movie remains relevant, as long as people are getting murdered, abused or harassed simply because of race or other parts of their identities. Danielle Deadwyler gives a stunning and emotionally stirring performance as a humble woman who channeled her grief over her murdered son (who was beaten, shot and lynched) into positive activism that has far-reaching effects that can be felt for years to come.

Directed by Chinonye Chukwu, “Till” could have easily been yet another civil rights movie about a crusading lawyer, a law-making politician, a famous activist with a large following, or a hate-crime victim. And although these characters are definitely in “Till,” all of these characters in this history-based movie are male. It’s rare that a movie about the U.S. civil rights movement focuses on an African American woman, even though African American women have been the backbone of many important social movements in the United States.

“Till” had its world premiere at the 2022 New York Film Festival in New York City. At the New York Film Festival’s “Till” press conference, which took place on the morning of the gala premiere, filmmaker Chukwu said that she didn’t want to direct the movie unless it centered on Till-Mobley. The movie’s producers agreed, and Chukwu presented her vision of the story, which included a rewrite of the screenplay to focus on Till-Mobley’s perspective. (Chukwu co-wrote the “Till” screenplay with Keith Beauchamp and Michael Reilly, two of the movie’s producers.)

It turned out to be the correct decision. One of Chukwu’s strengths as a director is in making great casting choices. Deadwyler, in the role of Till-Mobley, anchors the movie in a way that is the epitome of portraying inner strength and an ordinary person who becomes an extraordinary catalyst for social change. The movie also shows in subtle and not-so-subtle ways how grief and pain can be turned into something positive that becomes much bigger than being about just one person.

Many people watching “Till” might already be familiar with the name Emmett “Bo” Till and might already be aware of how the racist torture and murder of this innocent 14-year-old boy in 1955 was a turning point in the U.S. civil rights movement. The movie “Till” brings him to life in the performance of Jalyn Hall, who depicts Emmett as an outgoing and fun-loving teenager who liked to hang out with his friends and occasionally flirted with girls who caught his attention. People who know Emmett very well usually call him by his nickname Bo.

Born in 1941 in Chicago, Emmett was raised in Chicago, where his mother Mamie worked as an educator. Emmett was Mamie’s only child. In 1945, Emmett’s military father, Louis Till, died at the age of 23 in combat during World War II. Mamie then had a short-lived marriage (lasting from 1951 to 1952) to Pink Bradley, with the marriage ending in divorce. Mamie grew up in her home state of Mississippi but had relocated to Chicago in search of better work opportunities and a less oppressive racial environment.

That doesn’t mean racially integrated Chicago or anywhere is immune to racism. An early scene in “Till” shows Mamie shopping in a Chicago department store and asking a white store clerk about an item. The store clerk suggests to her that she shop in the basement, which was his way of saying that he didn’t want black customers to be shopping in the store’s main area.

With her head held high, Mamie looks him in the eye and calmly asks him, “Do the other customers know that too?” In other words, “Are you telling the white customers the same thing? Probably not.” It’s the first sign in the movie that Mamie is not going to play the role of a head-bowing, foot-shuffling servant, and that she can stand up for herself with intelligence and class.

In 1955, Mamie was in a happy and supportive relationship with Gene Mobley (played by Sean Patrick Thomas), who would eventually become her husband. Gene would become one of strongest sources of support during the family’s ordeal. Mamie and Gene didn’t legally marry until 1957 (two years after Emmett’s death), but they referred to each other as spouses, in a common-law way.

In August 1955, Mamie allowed Emmett to visit some of her relatives near Money, Mississippi, as part of his summer vacation. In the movie, perhaps out of a maternal instinct and concern, Mamie is apprehensive about sending Emmett to Mississippi by train on his own. At a time when racial segregation was legal and enforced in the South, she warns him that that “there are a different set of rules” for people who aren’t white in the South.

Emmett thinks that Mamie is being overprotective and maybe paranoid. Mamie’s mother Alma Carthan (played by Whoopi Goldberg) thinks so too. Alma tells Mamie that it’s time that Emmett be more independent since he’s close to being an adult and has to learn how to do things on his own. While Mamie says goodbye to Emmett the train station and he boards the train, she has a sudden look of fear on her face, which could be interpreted as a premonition that something terrible might happen to Emmett.

In Mississippi, Emmett stays with the Wright family, who are relatives on his mother’s side of the family. They include Emmett’s great-uncle Moses Wright (played by John Douglas Thompson); Moses’ wife Elizabeth (played by Keisha Tillis); and their son Maurice (played by Diallo Thompson). Moses makes money as a seller of cotton, and he oversees other African American men who pick cotton in the fields.

Emmett is expected to help out with this field work while he’s in Mississippi, but a city boy like Emmett immediately dislikes this type of physical labor. In the cotton fields, Emmett complains that picking cotton is a “square thing to do” (in other words, it’s too “country” for him), and he doesn’t take the work seriously. Instead, he sometimes goofs off on the job, such as pretending to pass out and getting a laugh when he reveals that nothing is wrong with him. It’s an example of Emmett’s impish sense of humor but also his naïveté at how different the lifestyle is for his working-class relatives in rural Mississippi, compared to the middle-class lifestyle he has in a big city like Chicago.

Maurice, who is in his late teens or early 20s, is a stern taskmaster who constantly warns Emmett not to be so cavalier about work and being an African American in an area where African Americans are targeted for lynchings and other hate crimes by white racists. During his stay in Mississippi, Emmett hangs out with Maurice and two of Maurice’s teenage pals who also work in the cotton fields: Wheeler Parker (played by Gem Marc Collins, also known as Marc Collins) and Simmy (played by Tyrik Johnson). Maurice is the unofficial leader of this group of friends.

When Emmett playfully flirts with some white teenage girls nearby, Maurice tells Emmett that he better not act that way with any white people, or else he could be killed. Emmett doesn’t take this warning seriously, because in his young life, he has personally never known anyone who was killed because of racist hate. And in Chicago, it’s not taboo for black people and white people to interact with each other.

One day, when Emmett, Maurice, Wheeler and Simmy have some time off from work, they hang out in front of a small grocery store. Emmett goes inside to buy a bottle of soda. The cashier behind the counter is Mrs. Carolyn Bryant (played by Haley Bennett), a white woman in her late 20s or early 30s. Emmett is friendly and open with everyone he meets, so he greets Carolyn with a smile and looks directly in her eyes.

In this racist area, where a black person is expected to act fearful and deferential toward white people, Emmett’s friendly confidence immediately makes Carolyn fill uneasy. She glares at him suspiciously has he pays for his soda. Emmett then tells her as a compliment, “You look like a movie star.”

Carolyn stares at him as if she can’t believe a black person is talking to her in this way. Emmett is oblivious to her silent hostility and takes his wallet and shows her a photo of actress Hedy Lamarr that he keeps in his wallet. “See?” Emmett says to Carolyn, as a way to point her physical resemblance. Carolyn looks even angrier, but Emmett doesn’t seem to notice.

Instead, Emmett cheerfully waves goodbye. And as if to make it clear that he thinks that Carolyn is pretty, she looks back at her and gives a flirtatious whistle. Carolyn is so incensed at this point, she leaves the counter to get a shotgun, which she plans to aim at Emmett. When Emmett sees that he could get shot but this angry racist, he suddenly understands the enormity of the situation.

Emmett runs outside while Carolyn follows him with the shotgun in aimed at him. Emmett and his pals quickly get in their truck and drive away before the situation escalates. Maurice is furious when he finds out what Emmett said and did. Maurice immediately wants to tell his father what happened, but Wheeler and Simmy convince Maurice to keep it a secret between the four of them.

However, this incident isn’t kept a secret by Carolyn. A few days later, her husband Roy Bryant (played by Sean Michael Weber) and his half-brother JW Milam (played by Eric Whitten) force their way with guns into the Wright family home, kidnap Emmett, and take him in their truck, where Carolyn and a few other men have come along for the ride. After Carolyn identifies Emmett as the teenager who flirted with her, Emmett is taken to an isolated farm area.

“Till” does not show on screen what happened to Emmett after he was kidnapped, but the movie does have some disturbing sound effects that don’t leave any doubt that he was tortured and beaten. At the New York Film Festival press conference for “Till,” Chukwu said she made a conscious decision for the movie not to show any physical violence against “black bodies.” It was the correct choice, because showing this type of violence could be thought of as exploitation and gives too much agency to the murderers.

Mamie finds out that Emmett has been kidnapped. Friends, family—including Mamie’s father, John Carthan (played by Frankie Faison), who is divorced from Alma and has remarried—as well as other people in the African American community join Mamie in their frantic search for Emmet. And then, they get the devastating news three days after his abduction that Emmett was found murdered (he was beaten and shot to death) in the Tallahatchie River. These scenes are heart-wrenching to watch.

Overwhelmed by grief, Mamie’s first priority was to get Emmett’s body returned to her so that he could be buried in Chicago. She wasn’t thinking about becoming an activist. But after seeing his disfigured and bloated body (which is replicated on screen), Mamie makes a crucial decision to let Emmett’s body be photographed and published by the media.

Mamie also decides that his funeral would be an open-casket funeral, where the thousands of attendees could see for themselves what the horrors and evils of racism look like up close. As Mamie says later in the movie when she tells reporters how she felt when she saw Emmett’s dead body: “My son came home to me reeking of racial hatred.”

The rest of “Till” takes viewers on an emotional journey as Mamie uses her inner strength to get justice for Emmett, which was also really a battle for anyone else wronged by a racist American society. Along the way, she meets some influential people who help her and teach her how to navigate being a civil rights activist with the agendas of politicians, lawyers and the media. Mamie also became more involved with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) as a result of her political awakening.

Rayfield Mooty (played by Kevin Carroll), a Chicago labor who also happened to be Mamie’s second cousin, was instrumental in putting Mamie in with the NAACP. In the movie, Rayfield is the first person to bluntly tell Mamie that she has to think strategically. “It would be a good opportunity for a politician to take on Emmett’s cause in an election year,” he advises her.

Her other allies include NAACP attorney William Huff (played by Keith Arthur Bolden), who was recommended to Mamie by Rayfield; civil rights activists William Medger Evers (played by Tosin Cole) and Myrlie Evers (played by Jayme Lawson), Medger’s wife. “Till” shows how the murder of Emmett was just the beginning of the trauma, since murder trial was a continual barrage of racial inequalities that gave preference to the white defendants. Although it is widely believed that several people were involved in Emmett’s murder, only Bryant and Milam went on trial for the murder.

The murder trial in September 1955 (a quick turnaround, considering the murder happened just a month before) is an example of how there are often two types of justice, based on the races of the people involved. Although many “Till” viewers will already know the outcome of the trial before seeing the movie, it doesn’t make the outcome any less impactful. “Till” has a lot of riveting scenes that are meant to upset and enlighten people.

“Till” also shows that sexism against women also played a role in how Mamie was mistreated and misjudged by bigoted members of society during the media coverage of the trial. (Her morality was attacked because she had been divorced, which is criticism that would have been less likely to be inflicted on a divorced man.) She was also advised to not look angry in public, even though she had every right to be angry about what happened to her only child.

And that’s why it’s important for this movie to be shown from a female perspective. In 1955 American society, Mamie didn’t have the privilege of being a church leader or a chapter president of the NAACP, since those leadership positions were almost always were held by men. Even in the early civil rights movement, women were rarely allowed to give long and passionate speeches in public. It’s why what Mamie accomplishes goes beyond racism but also speaks to how she dealt with gender inequalities within the civil rights movement.

“Till” also shows in effective ways the burden of guilt that the women in Emmett’s family feel because they made the decision to let him take that fateful trip to Mississippi. One of Goldberg’s best scenes in the movie is showing through her body language the heavy heart that Alma must have felt in knowing that she was the one to convince Mamie that Emmett needed to go to Mississippi on his own. When Alma breaks down in tears and expresses an outpouring of guilt to Mamie, it’s an example of how trauma often makes loved ones feel responsible for what happened, or feel like they didn’t do enough to protect their loved one, even though it wasn’t their fault.

The movie also accurately depicts that Mamie did not become an activist overnight. It was a gradual process as she began to understand that no one else could be a better advocate for Emmett than she was. Mamie did not ask to become a public figure who was thrust into the spotlight. It was a calling that she answered, out of love and necessity.

Chukwu brings solid direction to “Till,” with many artistic choices in sound, production design, film editing, music, costume design and cinematography. It would be tempting for any filmmaker to make “Till” look like a sweeping epic melodrama. But thankfully, Chukwu and the other “Till” filmmakers refrained from making “Till” look like a social justice soap opera. An over-the-top tone would ruin the whole point of the movie, which is to make the story relatable.

“Till” shows in many ways that the horrific crime that happened to Emmett and his family can, has and does happen to ordinary, law-abiding people through no fault of their own. And, just as importantly, the movie helps people understand that you don’t have to come from a rich or privileged background to make a difference in society. “Till” arrives in theaters in the same year that the Emmett Till Antilynching Act was signed into law by U.S. President Joe Biden on March 29, 2022. The law now makes lynching a federal hate crime in the United States.

The technical aspects of “Till” work very well for the movie, but the story unquestionably has a particular resonance because of how Deadwyler and the rest of the cast members fully embody their characters with authenticity. Even when experiencing so many indignities, Deadwyler shows through her nuanced and outstanding performance how Mamie remained dignified and steadfast in her search for justice. “Till” is a necessary reminder that the work of Till-Mobley and other civil rights advocates is far from over, because racism is everyone’s problem, not just the problem of the people who are targets of this hate.

Orion Pictures will release “Till” in select U.S. cinemas on October 14, 2022, with an expansion to more U.S. cinemas on October 28, 2022.

Review: ‘Enys Men,’ starring Mary Woodvine

October 1, 2022

by Carla Hay

Mary Woodvine in “Enys Men” (Photo courtesy of Neon)

“Enys Men”

Directed by Mark Jenkin

Culture Representation: Taking place in 1973, off the coast of Cornwall, England, the horror movie “Enys Men” features an all-white cast of characters representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: A volunteer researcher goes through mysterious rituals while studying a group of wildflowers, as nightmarish visions from the past seem to haunt her.

Culture Audience: “Enys Men” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in watching artsy and enigmatic horror movies where the movie’s plot is a mystery for viewers to solve.

Mary Woodvine in “Enys Men” (Photo courtesy of Neon)

Steeped in 1970s cinema nostalgia, “Enys Men” is a unique horror movie that’s presented as a puzzle for viewers to figure out on their own. People who want a straightforward horror story will be disappointed. Viewers who like mysteries will be challenged. It’s a movie that looks deceptively disjointed, but it actually requires complete attention from viewers, in order for the clues to tie everything together as the story goes along.

Written and directed by Mark Jenkin, “Enys Men’ reunites Jenkin with Mary Woodvine and Edward Rowe, who also co-starred in Jenkin’s BAFTA-winning 2019 drama “Bait.” In “Bait,” Rowe played the role of the movie’s protagonist. In “Enys Men,” Woodvine is the movie’s central character. “Enys Men” had its world premiere at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival in France and its North American premiere at the 2022 New York Film Festival in New York City.

Jenkin is also the cinematographer and editor of “Enys Men.” He used 16mm film to make the movie look like it was actually filmed in 1973. In this strange story, where all of the characters do not have names, Woodvine plays a character listed in the end credits as The Volunteer. She is woman in her 50s, living by herself in a remote cottage located off of the coast of Cornwall, England.

The movie, which takes place from April to May 1973, shows that The Volunteer has a journal, where she’s been keeping a daily record of what she is there to observe. In each journal entry, she notes the outdoor temperature, which ranges from 14.2 to 14.5 degrees Celsius, which is about 57 degrees Fahrenheit. However, what she’s really observing is a group of wildflowers growing on a cliffside near the cottage.

Up until a certain point in the movie, her journal entries note “No change in temperature” next to each listed temperature, even though the temperature does slightly change during the course of the month. The Volunteer also wears the same clothes every day: a red wind jacket, a beige sweater, blue jeans and hiking shoes. She usually walks on the same path every day to get to the flowers on the cliffs.

Every day, she also goes through a ritual of dropping a rock into a nearby well. The water in the well can be heard when the rock splashes into it. The Volunteer has a CB radio, which she uses to communicate with unnamed people and where she also receives messages. early on in the movie, The Volunteer gets a message from a man on the radio. He tells her that he’ll be there before the end of the week. She gives a small smile in response.

Throughout “Enys Men,” there are visions of other people who disrupt The Volunteer’s daily routine. The movie plays guessing games with viewers over whether not these people are ghosts or are hallucinations from The Volunteer. Look beneath the surface, and the story can eventually be pieced together.

A teenage girl (played by Flo Crowe), who’s listed in the movie’s end credits as The Girl, keeps appearing. The Volunteer sometimes sees this girl, who does not speak. A major clue about who this girl is revealed later in the story. Hint: It has to do with a diagonal scar across her abdomen and how she got the scar.

Meanwhile, The Volunteer tells The Girl: “Please don’t climb up there. I don’t want to keep telling you, but I have to.” The Girl seems to have psychic abilities because she knows in advance what The Volunteer is saying and ends up repeating the same words simultaneously.

The Volunteer also encounters a character listed in the end credits as The Boatman (played by Rowe), who visits The Volunteer and seems to have a romantic interest in her. (There’s a brief scene of The Volunteer and The Boatman having sex up against a wall.) At one point, The Boatman sees a wildflower in a drinking glass of water on a table in the cottage. The Boatman tells The Volunteer, “I thought you weren’t supposed to pick them.” She answers, “I’m not. I’m not here on my own.”

In a nearby chapel, The Volunteer sees a dedication plaque listing the names of the seven men who were lost at sea on a lifeboat in May 1897. And when seven men in identical hooded fisherman’s outfits suddenly appear on the cliffs, it’s easy to deduce who they are. But what exactly are they doing there?

“Enys Men” has several references to lichen, a plant-like organism that has symbiotic association with algae or cyanobacteria. It’s another big clue that makes sense when certain visuals are presented in the movie. A scene with a preacher (played by John Woodvine, Mary Woodvine’s real-life father) in the chapel is a pivotal moment.

“Enys Men” is not supposed to be a showcase for memorable conversations, since most of the movie shows The Volunteer by herself, and the movie intentionally wants viewers to feel a sense of foreboding isolation in a remote area that The Volunteer eventually feels. Because there isn’t a lot of dialogue in “Enys Men,” viewers have to carefully observe the actions of the movie’s characters. It’s also a slow-paced movie that doesn’t have a lot of jump scares but is more of a psychological mystery.

“Enys Men” has some haunting images that will either intrigue or frustrate viewers (or maybe do both), because this movie does not present easy answers about the story’s narrative and what it all means. It might seem chaotic and confusing, but there’s a method to the madness. The purpose of “Enys Men” becomes clear to viewers who have the patience to pay attention and deduce what this movie is trying to say about human beings’ connection to nature.

UPDATE: Neon will release “Enys Men” in select U.S. cinemas on March 31, 2023. The movie was released in the United Kingdom on January 13, 2023.

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