Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is destined to be remembered as the final screen appearance of the immensely talented, gone-way-too-soon Chadwick Boseman. The actor, who died in August of 2020 at the age of 43, from colon cancer, is absolutely electric in the roll of Levee Green, a trumpet player in the titular character’s band. Boseman’s performance is a testament to his formidable acting abilities and a stinging reminder of what we’ve all lost.
Aside from Boseman’s performance, there are numerous other pieces of the puzzle that make Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom a superb, taut, devastating film. The formidable presence of Viola Davis, as Ma Rainey, is one. The assured direction of George C. Wolfe is another. The powerful words and ideas of playwright August Wilson is one more.
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Within the first ten minutes or so of Jeff Orlowski’s new docudrama The Social Dilemma, the director poses a (seemingly) simple question to his interview subjects. Most of them held, at one time, a top position at one or more tech giant companies: Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, etc. He asks, why is social media – and the internet more broadly – responsible for so many of our current society’s ills? Every single person hesitates before coming up with a response. No one provides the simple, one-word answer: Money. To be more accurate, no one says it that bluntly. In truth, almost the whole of The Social Dilemma is structured around exploring how the ruthless ways these companies monetize people’s attention has caused immeasurable harm to civil society and our mental health.
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Not since Darren Aronofsky’s mother! in 2017 has a movie so successfully and hauntingly evoked an oneiric state as Charlie Kaufman’s fever dream vision I’m Thinking of Ending Things. If I were a more clever writer, I might invent a Kaufmanesque conversation between the two filmmakers, in which Aronofsky calls to praise Kaufman’s idiosyncratic and disturbing new work of art. Since I’m not that clever, you’ll have to settle for a more standard review in which I praise Kaufman’s unique vision while also wrestling with a few of the picture’s shortcomings.
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Both Paul and Gilligan do justice to the character and to Breaking Bad with El Camino. My only gripe with the film is that it doesn’t look particularly cinematic (which really stood out since I saw it in a theatrical exhibition setting). It looks – and mostly plays – like an extended episode of Breaking Bad, but when you’re talking about one of the best shows ever created, that’s hardly a complaint.
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They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead is as fascinating as it is frustrating. This is the second documentary from director Morgan Neville, whose other 2018 film, Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, was one of the best documentaries of the year.
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Director Alfonso Cuarón has synthesized the best elements of his career to date for his latest film Roma, a touching, ethereal masterpiece. The subject matter is semi-autobiographical, like elements from his breakout hit Y Tu Mamá También. Just like his visually stunning work in Children of Men and Gravity, Cuarón’s absolute mastery of the cinematic techniques of camera movement and framing are also on display in this film. What sets Roma apart, though, is its lyrical, contemplative mode of storytelling. Those elements are present even in Cuarón’s most anxiety-inducing picture, Gravity, but the director is exploring them more fully here. Roma is emotionally complex and mature; it’s a beautiful film, both visually and thematically.
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The title says it all. The grand finale for the Netflix original series Sense8 is called Amor Vincit Omnia, the famous Latin phrase that translates to Love Conquers All. If you know anything about the series, you know how well that phrase describes the show as a whole. It’s a fitting title for the last adventure in a series about extraordinary human connection, empathy, and above all, love.
For the purposes of this review, I’m treating Amor Vincit Omnia as a standalone movie, instead of an episode of television, because that’s really what it is. The series, while critically acclaimed, didn’t garner enough viewers for Netflix. The scope of the show required a larger-than-usual budget for the streaming service. The huge costs and small audience caused Netflix to cancel Sense8 after two seasons, consisting of 23 episodes.
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