Hello Readers,
I realize most of my reviews are for classic or older movies, so Here is a list of films released in 2020 or 2021 that I have seen and reviewed. Happy viewing everyone!
In The Heights (released 2021) Ryan's Rating: ✯✯✯ (out of four)
"Carnaval del Barrio" lifts the spirits. credit IMDB
Is it good? Yes. Is it great? No. Is it entertaining? Yes. The long awaited film version of Lin-Manuel Miranda's and Quiara AlegrÃa Hudes's hit Broadway musical has arrived in select theaters and on HBOMax. I watched it on my TV but it is clearly designed for the big screen and I'm certain if you see this film in a theater it will increase your enjoyment and affection. Completed in 2019, but delayed due to the pandemic, the film tells the story of a community in the largely Dominican area of Washington Heights, New York. All of the characters have dreams and hopes but the world and the wealthy keep making these goals harder and harder to achieve. The main story takes place over three days during a record heatwave; our heroes are Usnavi (a bodega owner played by Anthony Ramos), Vanessa (a hair dresser who wants to be a fashion designer, Melissa Barrera), Nina (a local girl just back after her first year at Stanford, Leslie Grace), and Benny (a taxicab dispatcher, Corey Hawkins) among many others all of whom are at a crossroads in one way or another. The screenplay, also by Hudes, has been updated with new sequences to reflect changes since the play first appeared fifteen years ago. The elements from the play and the elements added for the film do not always fit together which sometimes makes the story move in fits and starts. There is an added framing device of Usnavi telling the story to his daughter that provides some great scenes but feels extraneous. The "Piragua Song" in the play served as a fun interlude that helped to build the world and also had a reprise that gave it a punch line, in the film (with the reprise cut) the song seems merely an excuse to give Miranda a part in the movie. On the upside director Jon M. Chu has a long history with musical and dance (he made Step Up 2 and 3, two Justin Bieber concert documentaries, as well as the musically influenced Crazy Rich Asians) and he uses that background to give us numbers that range from music videos to Busby Berkeley crowd sequences, and to the MGM musicals of yesteryear. The song "96,000" is filmed at a public swimming pool where the neighborhood goes to beat the heat and the sequence brings to mind the water dancing of Esther Williams films. All this is to say the musical numbers had me smiling, the cast is good and engaging, and despite some of the clunky pacing I was entertained.
Those Who Wish Me Dead (released 2021) Ryan's Rating: ✯✯1/2 
Angelina Jolie looking for wildfires. Credit: IMDB
In the Montana wilderness a former smoke jumper (Angelina Jolie), haunted by a deadly mistake during a fire, is posted in a secluded watch tower when she finds a young boy fleeing from two ruthless assassins. Visceral and entertaining though sometimes feels like an assemblage of good parts and not a full unit. Jolie is perfectly cast, it is great to see her back in this type of role and her presence fills the screen, but the narrative switches points of view which leaves Jolie largely absent from the first half of the movie. Director/Co-writer Taylor Sheridan (writer of a number of hit films and co-creator of the series Yellowstone) is widely praised for his detailed characters in action/thriller situations and here is no exception but for me this film seemed overstuffed with plot and backstory. The opening sequence (an exciting parachute jump into a fire) seems out of place, while it is a grabbing opening it turns out to be an abrupt backstory explanation that gets repeated throughout the film. The run time is short, the story is only an hour and a half, causing the multiple plots at times to seem geared for a mini-series as opposed to a single film. This could also be the result of the film being adapted from a novel where there is more space to explore subplots. I wanted the story to stay with Jolie and the boy battling the elements to escape the killers (which does happen but more in the second half). At the same time there is an excellent side character played by Medina Senghore, a pregnant woman who runs a wilderness survival camp. She could have had a whole movie to herself. I am a great fan of Sheridan's 2017 film Wind River which has a similar story, but that film pulled everything together in a solid whole and I wanted this film to be more like that one. Overall Those Who Wish Me Dead is exciting and fast paced (some of the violence is brutal so be warned) but at the end I felt it was just okay when it could have been great.
United States Vs. Billie Holiday (released 2020) Ryan's Rating ✯1/2
Andra Day as Lady Day. credit IMDB
Andra Day (in her film debut no less) is excellent as Billie Holiday and it is a shame the film is not as good as her performance. The plot concerns the FBI's (at the request of the big wigs in Washington D.C.) pursuit of Holiday, due to her popular song "Strange Fruit" (about lynchings in the United States) which the government feared would stir up the population. The film covers about twenty years of Holiday's life (as well as some flashbacks to childhood) but it is so disjointed and confusing, we as the audience are often left wondering where we are in the story. There is a framing device (Holiday being interviewed on a radio station) which could have added some focus or clarity to the events but it is not used well. To top it off there are few scenes that explain why Holiday was such a success and her ability with music. A brief scene early in the film where she is rehearsing and is telling her band how to play this line and what would work in the club gives one of the few glimpses of Holiday's musical abilities and that she was more than an excellent voice. The moment is then lost in a sea of the ways Holiday was abused (both by herself and by many others). To top it all off the two hour running time feels like five hours. Billie Holiday is an important figure in history and the story of her unjust pursuit by the FBI is an important story. Surely there is a better film to be made from these powerful stories.
Pieces of a Woman (released 2020) Ryan's Rating ✯✯1/2
Vanessa Kirby and Ellen Burstyn. credit: IMDB
As many reviewers have noted the first nearly thirty minutes of the movie is a recreation of a home birth and ends with the baby turning blue and dying. This agonizing sequence is followed by the film title appearing on the screen which hits the viewer like a hammer. Vanessa Kirby (best known as Princess Margaret on the first two seasons of The Crown) plays the woman who lost her child and her performance, with all its nuance, is excellent though the film often moves away from her character which is where it falters. About half the story involves her construction worker husband (played by Shia LaBeouf) and the way he deals with the loss of the baby. LaBeouf gives a strong forceful performance but his character is the less intriguing of the couple which made me wish for more of Kirby on the screen. Also on board is Ellen Burstyn, as Kirby's high society mom (and Holocaust survivor), who fully embodies the character in all her love and vindictiveness. It is a great showcase for the actress. The best sequence is a dinner party that turns into a mother daughter argument performed with shattering power by Burstyn and Kirby. Written and directed by a husband wife team who based it on their experiences of losing their own child, and first done as a stage production. With this backstory it makes sense why the film follows both LaBeouf's and Kirby's characters, but I thought it would have been a stronger film if it focused more on Kirby and Burstyn. There are some symbolic moments that seem a little on the nose (a literal bridge being built, the growing of apple seeds) but that is nitpicking. The movie is well filmed (though clearly in Canada not in Boston where the story is set) sometimes in long unbroken takes where the camera drifts around the characters. The acting is uniformly strong and while the dialog is well done the story structure seems to drift away from the main character a little too often.
Tenet (released 2020). Ryan's Rating: ✯✯
John David Washington on a mission. credit: IMDB
I have to come right out and say it I am not a lover of Christopher Nolan's films. He knows how to stage scenes but I often find his story pacing/timing to be problematic which makes many of his films fall flat for me. (There are two of his films that I greatly enjoy Inception and Batman Begins, I haven't seen Dunkirk or Following or Memento, I have seen all the others). Tenet tells the story of a spy (a commanding John David Washington) who gets involved in a mission to find a group of wealthy European terrorists (led by Kenneth Branagh) who are using a time travel device to do bad things (as with Nolan movies it is never truly clear when you think about it). The catch is that when you travel through time everything is reversed (inverted), the characters walk backward, cars drive in reverse, marks on walls appear and disappear. There is the typical dialogue that is made to sound important but is really just elaborate and read by very good actors while not really saying much. This is all the more evident here because the basic plot is the same as any time travel movie (Bill & Ted, Timecop, etc.). As expected the action scenes are well filmed and at times very imaginative since many of them take place in a form of reverse movement. Alas, I had the same feeling blah feeling as I do after watching many of Nolan's movies. One part of the movie I found most interesting is the wonderful actress, Elizabeth Debicki, plays almost the exact same role as she does in the great 2016 limited series The Night Manager. I wonder if she was 'Teneting' and going back in time.
Belushi (released 2020) Ryan's Rating: ✯✯✯
Theatrical poster. credit: IMDB
A documentary on the life of the late John Belushi told through many years worth of audio recordings as opposed to the normal way of interviewing the surviving members on screen. The audio is paired with archival photos/videos as well as animated sequences and the outcome is similar to the way a Ken Burns documentary is put together. I never knew much about John Belushi's life except he died very young of a drug overdose, the most detail I read is in the excellent Roger Ebert collection of essays and interviews A Kiss is Still a Kiss. I found this documentary very interesting as I am a fan of Belushi's work (Animal House, Blues Brothers, Continental Divide, SNL) but it is sadly an overly familiar story, talented comic becomes famous and gets addicted to drugs. The audio recordings (some of the speakers have also passed away like Harold Ramis, Penny Marshall, Carrie Fisher) are fascinating to listen to for fans of 1970s SNL/Second City and the late 70s early 1980s films in which Belushi starred. Those who were alive when John Belushi was creating his famed comic moments may find some of the sequences overly familiar (critic Peter Sobczynski mentions this in his review) and works such as Continental Divide and Goin' South are barely mentioned. The film serves as a good archive for those of us who were not around but have come to know Belushi through his films.
