Natural selection

Annihiliation

Crit

Who doesn't love a goofy-science pic? Meteorite strikes the base of a lighthouse and excavates a gigantic uterus, whence emerge . . . well, let's call 'em mash-up spores: they produce a huge alligator with sharkish dentition, an adorable little deer with willow-branch antlers, and a film with the scrambled DNA of a score or more sci-fi, war, and romance pics.

It's all very silly, but really good looking--less smart than it imagines itself (and less thought-provoking than writer-director Alex Garland's previous film, Ex Machina), but a Grade A popcorn-muncher.

Homo ludens

Game Night

Crit

Some films require not just a willing suspension of disbelief but an expulsion thereof, but if you can check your skepticism at the door, as I did, mostly (though it's tough when a guy gets shot clean through the arm and a couple of hours later is still losing enough blood to defile a poodle, but seems none the weaker for it), this is some good, cynical criminal fun.

It's also the first of two films I saw on the weekend in which a bereaved spouse begins to refer to "our bedroom," then stops and corrects him/herself. Zeitgeist note.

What a waste of space

Oscar-nominated animated shorts

Balancing the live-action and documentary shorts, which I found to be the best since the nominees were first shown together in theaters, this program is the meh-est I've ever seen.

Crit

• Dear Basketball--Seriously? An undistinguished love letter from Kobe Bryant to his sport, with undistinguished animation, gets an Oscar nomination? This is the meh-est of the meh.
• Negative Space--If I had to choose, this might be my choice: a melancholy meditation on a psychic legacy passed from father to son. With a punchline you see coming from a mile away.
• Lou--Playground bully redeemed. This isn't how Disney and Pixar became Disney and Pixar.
• Garden Party--Amphibian exploitation of the aftermath of a gangland hit. One of the more interesting and visually arresting of the group.
• Revolting Rhymes, part one--Half of a film based on Roald Dahl's twisted Red Riding Hood and Snow White mashup, it ends just as things are promising to get interesting. 

As always, some unnominated shorts are added to fill out the program--more than usual, as the cumulative running time of the nominees is just 54 minutes. I don't have my notes with me, and none was memorable, so never mind.

Interregnum

Black Panther

Crit

So I'm guessing that more people are going to see Chadwick Boseman as King T'Challa of Wakanda this weekend than have seen him portray Thurgood Marshall, Jackie Robinson, and James Brown combined. Which, OK, this is a fine superhero flick, and an excellent Black Lives Matter document, but you know, proportion?

Having enjoyed myself thoroughly, I have two bits of contrarianism:

1. The white guy. Look, I like Martin Freeman, dating back to The (original) Office through Shaun of the Dead and all the Hobbit thingies to (not original) Fargo, but (a) wouldn't it have been a lot more interesting if the CIA guy were black and shared a broader wavelength with the Wakandans and especially with Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan; damn, wanna bingewatch the first season of The Wire and the later seasons of Friday Night Lights)? and (b) if he has to be white, could he at least be played by an actual American? There are a few talented white actors who could play the role without doing an unconvincing accent.
2. This whole technocracy thing. Wakanda has secretly been technologically advanced for centuries, far beyond the Western colonizers who thought of (I won't use present tense, the express scatological opinions of certain national leaders notwithstanding) Africa as the Dark Continent. (T'Challa has his very own Bondian Q in the family, in fact: his sister Shuri [Letitia Wright].) And OK, that's cool and empowering, but aren't we supposed to be past worshiping technology? Aren't we supposed to recognize that African culture is no less than ours because of culture, not because a meteorite gave them an infinite cache of the strongest material in the solar system, which also has curative powers and the ability to transfer energy and to let you stream Netflix with no buffering even in a waterfall?

But I quibble.

Trailer of note

• Solo--At last, the biopic about the troubled former goalkeeper of the U.S. women's soccer team. Oh, wait, no: this one bears the subtitle A Star Wars Story. Does not look promising, but open mind.

Suicidal times ago

Oscar-nominated documentary shorts

I was impressed yesterday by the live-action nominees; today I've been blown away by the docs.

Crit

Program A

• Traffic Stop--An interesting portrayal of undeniably excessive use of force by a large white police officer against a 114-pound African-American woman, interesting in part because, though we seem to be invited to share the perspective of Breaion King--an upstanding citizen, an outstanding elementary school math teacher (with a class small enough to elicit the envy of 99.99% of American teachers)--that she was innocent of anything but a minor traffic violation, the video from the police cruiser and the audio from the arresting officer's body mic make it clear that, if not initially resisting arrest, she certainly refused to cooperate with the traffic stop.
  
  Now, yes, white officers have given African-American motorists abundant terrifying reason to doubt fair treatment even in a routine stop, but surely it's a better strategy at least to feign respect for the cop. King did not, did not comply readily with routine and reasonable requests (that she return to her car, that she pull her feet inside and allow the door to be closed), and escalated the emotional level of the confrontation as rapidly as did the cop.
  
  That said, once she gave the cop any excuse, he escalated the physical level readily, and, one senses from his later comments to other officers, with a certain relish, or at least satisfaction at having been able to subdue a feisty woman barely half his size.
  
  She admits to having speeded and says, "Fine, give me a ticket and let's move on," but that post facto attitude contrasts with her behavior on the scene. Was she really stopped for driving while black? Only the cop knows; it's a plausible guess, but no more than that. Did he react much more harshly than circumstances demanded, more harshly than could be justified for any danger he could reasonably have believed himself to be in? Absolutely. But the film is both a reminder that wrongs rarely arise from a single source and, more important, a testimonial to the need for automatic sound and video recording equipment on every police vehicle and officer in the country.
  
• Edith & Eddie--This is genuinely a one-sided story, though it's hard to imagine that we'd feel much differently about the titular nonagenarian couple being pulled apart--against their will and that of Edith's daughter who had cared for her for years, because another daughter has succeeded in getting a legal caregiver (who had never met Edith) appointed by a court--if we had extensive interviews with the 2nd daughter and the court appointee.
  
  Hard to imagine, but still: those interviews need to be in there. There is one hint, as the "good" daughter goes through her mother's mail, unable legally to open it since being removed as her caregiver (and why was that?), that there are problems with the couple's ability to maintain Edith's house--which daughter 1 claims daughter 2 just wants to sell in order to pocket the proceeds.
  
  A sad story for sure--and an engaging old interracial couple--but I would like to be trusted to weigh all (or at least more of) the facts.
  
• Heaven Is a Traffic Jam on the 405--An absolutely stunning portrait of one Mindy Alper, a 50-something woman with serious mental issues, born of or more probably exacerbated by fraught relationships with a loving father who touched her only to keep her at a distance and a loving mother who, as a postpartum consequence of giving birth to a son, developed revulsion toward her daughter.
  
  So Mindy is a mess, but Mindy somehow, with the help of a pair of remarkable teachers and the support of a profoundly supportive therapist, has become a thrillingly proficient artist, a creator of exhilaratingly disturbing drawings and paintings, and most recently papier-mâché sculptures.
  
  She is also an accidental poet, her fractured syntax and mispronunciations opening language in a way that those who write poetry on purpose must envy. This is one of the most chilling and rewarding 40 minutes I've ever spent with a stranger, and if the Academy doesn't reward this film, I'm not sure what its purpose is.
  

Program B

• Heroin(e)--Golly! West Virginia may be even whiter than it was when I was there in the early '80s. Whiter, and way more dependent on drugs. That's no news, of course, but this film, its cutesy title accurate save for being singular rather than plural, brings both a range of human (though yeah, almost exclusively white) faces and a milligram of hope to the tragedy of coal country.
  
  Jan Rader, deputy chief of the Huntington Fire Department, for whom saving a life doesn't end when the Narcan kicks in; Necia Freeman, who on behalf of the Brown Bag Ministry, drives the streets at night giving meals and tracts to prostitutes, but not stinting on giving of herself as well; and Patricia Keller, judge of Cabell County Drug Court, whose motherly love for her charges would simply look ridiculous if you tried to portray it in fiction--heroine is no exaggeration for these women, and maybe an understatement. A feel-good twist on a feel-horrible story.
  
• Knife Skills--And another: ex-con is saved by the kitchen, and he has a crazy idea: hire a French chef and a sous chef, and then bring in 80 or so men and women with criminal records, train them to greet, seat, wait on, and cook for diners, and make them the rest of your staff for an ambitious French restaurant, Edwins, in Cleveland.
  
  It's not a straight line--the 80 shrinks to 60, and then to 30-something by graduation day, but some of the prodigals return for the 2nd class, and more to the point, the 30-some who have a job represent a statistical triumph, not to mention an emotional and moral one, when compared with the percentage of convicts with meaningful jobs six months out of prison.

On the trigger of a gun

Oscar-nominated live-action shorts

After the first 3 films in the program, I was ready to write that the weakest nominee was better than the best in this category some years. The quality fell off a bit in the last two films, but I'll still say that top to bottom, this is easily the best set of live-action nominees I've seen. I'm hard-pressed to pick a favorite, and I have no idea about a winner, except to say that I wouldn't be surprised if it's one of the two I consider weakest.

Crit

• DeKalb Elementary--Bare-bones filmmaking produces excruciating tension as a disturbed young man brings an automatic rifle into a school. Reed Van Dyk wrote and directed the film, based on an actual 911 call, and Bo Mitchell as the shooter and Shinelle Azoroh as the receptionist, on an emergency call the shooter has instructed her to make, bring the story agonized humanity.
• The Silent Child--Young deaf daughter introduced to a teacher who might be capable of overcoming the worst parenting ever. Sounds like a soupy Miracle Worker, but again, smart writing and direction (Rachel Shenton and Chris Overton, respectively) and committed performances by Shenton and young Maisie Sly make us believe and care.
• My Nephew Emmett--The primary power in this one comes from the realization, when the title sets the place and time as Money, Mississippi, 1955, of who, exactly, this Emmett is. After that, there's no tension, just the queasy knowledge of how the story is going to play out. The cast is solid, and Laura Valladao's cinematography stands out.
• The Eleven O'clock--This is essentially an O. Henry joke whose surprise ending isn't surprising. Made worthwhile by the rhetorical tennis match between Josh Lawson and Damon Herriman as two men, one a psychiatrist, the other a patient with delusions of . . . being a psychiatrist. It's all good silly fun, but from early on you can't help thinking, Why doesn't the real one simply walk to the wall and point to his name on the diplomas?
• Watu Wote/All of Us--Another film based on a remarkable true story: of Muslim passengers protecting Christians when a Kenyan bus is waylaid by a band of Al Shabaab thugs. The 4th- or 5th-best film of the bunch, but don't be surprised if its message of hope and humanity amid terror nabs the statue.

Kiss by th' book

Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool

Crit

This would have been worth seeing if only for the views from Gloria Grahame's bicoastal homes. But in fact, it's pretty good apart from that, Annette Bening, whom I never would have thought to cast in this role, convincing me that she is indeed the tough noir broad in decline--some way of crinkling her eyes sparked a flashback to Violet Biggs trying to seduce George Bailey.

A narrative trick that's meant to be sophisticated comes across as manipulative, and less surprising than intended by half, as does the weepy climax, but Bening and Jamie Bell carry it off nicely, with help from Julie Walters and one nicely overacted scene from Vanessa Redgrave. And letting an actual Liverpudlian contribute an original song for the end titles is a nice touch.

Trailer

• Ocean's 8--'Member when I resolved to stop wasting time on trailers for movies I have no feelings about? That's why this one--the Ocean franchise, sans Soderbergh, getting the Ghostbusters gender flip--is my first mention of the new year. Bullock is Ocean; Blanchett, Hathaway, Rihanna, Kaling, and Bonham Carter are among the 8. Please, don't screw it up, screenwriter Milch (that's Olivia, daughter of David [and a Yalie]) and director/cowriter Ross (Gary, who has a fine CV).