Nomadland (2020)

This Oscar bait movie about a woman living in her van and moving from job to job is every bit as good as Jack and I anticipated. Frances McDormand may earn a third statue as Fern in this understated masterpiece. David Strathairn, as Dave, is one of only five actors not playing themselves. Notable among the real nomads are Linda May, Swankie, and Bob Wells. Tay Strathairn makes a cameo playing his father's son James.

Chloé Zhao directs and adapted the screenplay from Jessica Bruder's 2017 book which was in turn fleshed out from her Harper's Magazine 2014 article, The End of Retirement, which you can read here. Bruder began her study with real occurrences and real people and Zhao added Fern and Dave and their families.

The lovely soundtrack, "featuring music of" Ludovico Einaudi, can be streamed on Apple Music and Spotify.

Director of photography Joshua James Richards gives us glorious vistas, huge warehouses, and the cramped quarters of Fern and her comrades, shot in Arizona, California, Nebraska, Nevada, and South Dakota. Be sure to watch the movie in a room that is properly darkened, so as to appreciate the night scenes.

To take a deeper dive, as I did, into the lives of these folks, read this article from Esquire magazine.

McDormand was last blogged for Isle of Dogs and Einaudi for The Intouchables. After I wrote about Strathairn for Temple Grandin, I saw him in the ensemble cast of Lincoln and eight episodes of Billions, among his many credits. This is the third feature for Zhao and Richards (working together on all).

Rotten Tomatoes' critics are settled in their seats, averaging 95%, while its audiences are a bit restless, coming in at 78. The critics' acclaim is backed by lots of nominations and awards, some of which I've listed on my awards page, sorted by title. I keep this list to decide what to watch next in awards season.

We watched it last week on Hulu and loved it.

News of the World (2020)

Jack and I really liked this story of a Civil War veteran who makes his living in 1870 traveling the West and reading news stories to townspeople. When he comes upon a white girl, raised by Native Americans, alone in the woods, he takes on the task of transporting her to her biological family on the other side of Texas. The plot is interesting and the telling is gripping.

Tom Hanks, his usual avuncular self, would command every scene as Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd, were it not for the scene stealing of German-born Helena Zengel, now 12. Her character is 10. Ray McKinnon, Mare Winningham, Elizabeth Marvel, and Bill Camp have small but pivotal parts.

Paul Greengrass directs and co-wrote the screenplay with Luke Davies, adapted from Paulette Jiles' 2016 novel. There might be too much violence for some viewers, especially the scenes which earned the SAG nomination for stunt ensemble.

James Newton Howard gives us good Western music which I am currently streaming on Apple Music. It's also on Spotify.

The glorious photography, shot entirely in New Mexico, is thanks to Darius Wolski.

Hanks was last blogged for It's a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood before making a cameo as himself in Borat Subsequent Moviefilm. McKinnon was last in these pages for Ford v Ferrari, Marvel for The Meyerowitz Stories,  Greengrass for Captain Phillips, Davies for Beautiful Boy, Howard for Roman J. Israel, Esq., and Wolski for All the Money in the World.

Zengel, even at her tender age, has eight other credits in Germany. My favorite role of Winningham's earned her an Oscar nomination for Supporting Actress in Georgia (1996) and I also liked her in St. Elmo's Fire (1985), Miracle Mile (1988), all six episodes of Mildred Pierce, and Philomena. Camp may be best known, recently, as the janitor in five episodes of The Queen's Gambit, but before that, some of his work I have liked includes parts in 12 Years a Slave, Love & Mercy, Loving, Joker, and playing Gerald Ford in Vice.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics' and audiences' averages of 88 and 89% lend journalistic integrity to the nominations and awards accrued by the movie, listed in my post on nominations and wins sorted by title.

It's rentable on all the major platforms for $19.99 and we did so on iTunes yesterday.

The Forty-Year-Old Version (2020)

We loved Radha Blank's snappy script, honest acting, and creative directing that had us laughing out loud at her semi-autobiographical telling of the humiliations and insights of a smart Black woman (named Radha Blank) struggling to make it as a New York playwright and considering becoming a rapper. She's backed by Peter Kim as her best friend and agent Archie, Oswin Benjamin as hip-hop producer D, and more. The cast also includes her class of Harlem high school students, self-important theatre producers––one white, one Black––and a pair of female theatre-goers who bring to mind the old men in the balcony at The Muppet Show.

Shot partly in her own apartment, with her own brother in a cameo, it's in black and white 35mm, save for a few still photos. Blank's late mother Carol Blank's art is featured.

There's no composer, but Spotify has an "official playlist." That playlist doesn't include the two songs listed on imdb as being co-written by Blank's father, jazz drummer Roger Blank, for his group Melodic Art-tet. I found his web page with three tracks. One song that Radha raps is on Apple Music. She wrote all of the lyrics to her raps.

Blank credits producer Lena Waithe for helping her make this breakthrough movie. Waithe was last blogged for writing Queen & Slim. 

Before this, her feature directorial and screenwriting debut, Blank directed and wrote a TV movie that I didn't see, wrote three episodes of the series She's Gotta Have It, produced nine, and co-produced ten. She has won the Sundance Directing Award for this movie and has lots of nominations and wins as well. Kim has a couple dozen credits on screens big and small, as well as Broadway and off-Broadway roles. This is Benjamin's debut.

Don't turn off the TV when the credits begin. You will be rewarded.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics are hopping with us, averaging 98%, which its audiences, not so much. Jack and I urge you to try this version, which we streamed on Netflix on Tuesday.

Sound of Metal (2019)

Jack and I really liked this deeply moving story of a heavy metal drummer who suddenly begins to lose his hearing. Riz Ahmed, leading the cast as Ruben, has lots of nominations and a few wins already, as does Paul Raci as Joe. Olivia Cooke is also good as Ruben's girlfriend Lou and Mathieu Amalric makes a cameo at the end as her father.

Director/co-writer Darius Marder keeps us on the edge of our seats with the script co-written by his brother Abraham Marder and based on a story by Darius Marder and Derek Cianfrance. This fascinating article about the genesis and production of the movie has no spoilers. Two days ago the writers were nominated by their peers for The Writers Guild Award for Best Original Screenplay. Here's my running list.

The score, attributed to Nicolas Becker and Abraham Marder, is not available online, save for one song on Apple Music and Spotify. We did laugh out loud at the beginning at the screaming heavy metal concert. It's not supposed to be funny.

The sound design, going from the annoying (to us) metal to the representation of what Ruben can make out, is very interesting, and will probably win some awards on its own for Becker as the supervising sound editor. We watch everything with closed captions. But the American Sign Language (ASL) was not captioned until the character Ruben could understand it. Artistic choice.

Ahmed was last blogged for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Cooke for Thoroughbreds, Amalric for A Secret, and Darius Marder and Cianfrance for writing and directing, respectively, The Place Beyond the Pines, before which Marder wrote and directed one documentary.

Raci is new to me despite a number of credits. Abraham Marder contributed music to his brother's 2008 documentary. Becker worked in the sound department of hundreds of projects and scored over twenty.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics and audiences are hearing the good news, averaging 96 and 91%. Listen to them and us, and watch it on Amazon Prime, as we did last week. 

Judas and the Black Messiah (2021)

We really liked this movie about the FBI informant who abetted the 1969 assassination of Chicago Black Panther Party Chairman Fred Hampton. As Hampton, Daniel Kaluuya has rightfully earned much love from critics, but Lakeith Stanfield deserves it too, as conflicted snitch Bill O'Neal. Kudos for Judas! It's a big cast, including Jesse Plemons as O'Neal's FBI mentor, Dominique Fishback as Hampton's love interest, and Martin Sheen with a prosthetic nose as J. Edgar Hoover.

I was a little confused, though, because Kaluuya and Stanfield look their ages of 31 and 29, respectively, while their characters are supposed to be 21 and 17. Suspend your disbelief on that score.

With consultation from Hampton's fianceé, who now goes by the name Akua Njeri, and Fred Hampton Jr., director Shaka King co-wrote the script with Will Berson, adapting an earlier screenplay by Kenneth Lucas & Keith Lucas. Apparently Hoover once referred to Hampton as a "Black messiah."

The exciting score by Craig Harris and Mark Isham can be streamed on Apple Music or on Spotify, and there is a playlist of songs "inspired by" the movie on Apple Music.

Kaluuya was last blogged for Queen & Slim, Stanfield for Uncut Gems, and Isham for The Accountant. After I wrote about Plemons in Game Night I failed to mention him in The Irishman. Fishback's roles include The Hate U Give and 18 episodes of The Deuce (2017-2019) . After I wrote about Sheen in Seeking a Friend for the End of the World he was in Rules Don't Apply, Joe Papp in Five Acts, and 79 episodes of Grace and Frankie, to name a few.

This is King's second feature and the first screenplay for Berson and the Lucas brothers.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics and audiences, tied at 96%, are worshipping along with us. It was made for HBO and that's how we watched it last week.

Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets (2020)

Jack and I really enjoyed what we thought was a documentary about the final night of The Roaring 20s, a Las Vegas dive bar in late 2016. It looks like a documentary. The nominations and wins piling up call it a documentary. We disagree, though we like it no less. That said, the characters do get drunk during the shoot. The more I read about it, the stranger it gets. 

According to the site founded by the late Roger Ebert, directors/cinematographers/editors Bill Ross IV and Turner Ross assembled a group of barflies (recruited from various locations) at The Roaring 20s bar––in New Orleans––and then shot some exteriors in Vegas. The televisions in the bar show election news stories and Jeopardy, among others, but we didn't notice any local news to tip us off to the artifice of the project. The LA Times says that the programmers at Sundance "petitioned" them to include the movie in the nonfiction section.

Michael Martin (arguably the lead character), Peter Elwell, and Shay Walker are the only professional actors listed on imdb, playing themselves. We also appreciated the antics of the bearded bartender (New Orleans musician Marc Paradis), Lowell Landes (with the longest gray hair), and the Black Vietnam vet Bruce Hadnot. It took a little work to find their names.

It's great fun to be the fly on the wall with these folks, not having to smell their cigarettes and who knows what else.

None of the players has appeared in my blog before, though Landes played a role in Beasts of the Southern Wild and the Ross brothers have several actual documentaries under their belts.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics are, like us, not put off by the conceit, averaging 93%, but its audiences, at 72, are leaving their hands in their pockets.

You can rent it on Amazon Prime for 99¢.

Da 5 Bloods (2020)

Another great movie, not only for Black History Month, this is a fictional story of four Black Vietnam vets returning for the remains of their comrade. Delroy Lindo is terrific and scary as Paul, who suffers from PTSD and wears a MAGA hat. Ably supporting are Isiah Whitlock Jr. as Melvin, Clarke Peters as Otis, Norm Lewis as Eddie, and the late Chadwick Boseman as the late Norman. Jonathan Majors turns up at the end of the first act as David.

Spike Lee directs and co-wrote, along with Danny Bilson, Paul De Meo (AKA Demeo), and Kevin Willmott. Apparently Bilson and De Meo wrote a script called The Last Tour, originally with Oliver Stone attached to direct. When it was shelved, one of the producers learned that Lee is a big fan of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) and sent it to him. Lee and Willmott rewrote it to be about Black soldiers.

Terence Blanchard, one of Lee's favorite composers, does the honors here, and you can stream Blanchard's instrumental score on Apple Music or Spotify. There are also six songs from Marvin Gaye's 1971 album What's Going On. You can stream What's Going On on Apple Music or on Spotify.

Interesting trivia: the original Temptations vocal group was comprised of men named Paul, Melvin, Otis, and Eddie, and their producer was Norman. However, there are no Temptations songs on the imdb soundtrack list nor any other lists I've found relating to this movie.

Director of photography Newton Thomas Sigel, who shot it mostly in Thailand and Vietnam, has one nomination so far. You will notice the sides of the screen sliding in for the flashbacks, so they look like they're shot in the older format of 16mm. You'll also notice that the older actors play the same characters in the flashbacks, and I liked that particular conceit, showing that it takes place in their memories.

Easter eggs are hidden messages or images in film and video games (here's a detailed explanation). I caught three references to Apocalypse Now (1979) and if you've seen it you will get them too. There's a "stinking badges" line that is originally from Treasure of Sierra Madre, a mention of "Jethro Bodine" from The Beverly Hillbillies, and several other classic movie references that went over my head. Here's imdb's connection list but I think this has a spoiler in the first line so click through at your own risk (they did leave out an Apocalypse Now reference which is a big spoiler). Write me (babetteflix at gmail) if you want me to tell you.

I've got a running list of this year's nominations (Writers Guild is tomorrow). Though snubbed by the Golden Globes, this has three from the Screen Actors Guild and six from the Critics Choice so far. SAG winners traditionally do well at the Oscars.

After I wrote about Whitlock in Cedar Rapids, he made an appearance in BlacKkKlansman as well as most of the Showtime series Your Honor. Majors was last blogged for The Last Black Man in San Francisco, Lee and Willmott for BlacKkKlansman, Blanchard for One Night in Miami, and Boseman for Ma Rainey's Black Bottom which was released six months after this one. Boseman was in treatment for cancer when shooting both.

Some of my favorites of Lindo's work are Malcolm X (1992), Get Shorty (1995), The Cider House Rules (1999), and the series The Good Fight (2017-20). Despite his long resumé, Peters is not familiar to me––I didn't watch The Wire, which featured him and Whitlock. Lewis has many credits, too, and I do remember him from the series Scandal. Bilson and De Meo have worked together on a lot of projects, including TV and video games, but nothing I've seen.

Rotten Tomatoes' audiences are bleeding hate, with an average of 53%, while its critics are enthusiastically unscathed at 92. Jack and I are with the critics. We watched it on Netflix on February 3. It was Lee's first Netflix movie and was to be the network's first entry at the Cannes Film Festival before the festival was cancelled early in 2020. Allow time for bathroom breaks because it's two and a half hours long.

One Night in Miami (2020)

So good! This movie "chronicles" a fictitious meeting between football star Jim Brown, boxer Cassius Clay (before he changed his name to Muhammed Ali), singer Sam Cooke, and civil rights activist Malcolm X. The four icons talk about civil rights and cultural upheaval on the night Clay defeated Sonny Liston––February 25, 1964. Many true facts and occurrences are woven into this script by Kemp Powers, based on his 2013 play of the same name.

The cast is terrific, with Kingsley Ben-Adir as Malcolm X (1925-1965), Eli Goree as Clay (1942-2016), Aldis Hodge as Brown (born 1936), and Leslie Odom Jr. as Cooke (1931-1964) (Cooke was shot to death months after the match and Malcolm was assassinated the following year). Cooke's wife Barbara is played by Odom's actual wife Nicolette Robinson, and Beau Bridges' (in a cameo) character's daughter is played by his daughter Emily Bridges.

Actress Regina King makes her much-heralded directorial debut. This is the first movie directed by a Black woman to be selected by the Venice Film Festival and I predict many more accolades. See below. The creamy cinematography is thanks to director of photography Tami Reiker.

The score by Terence Blanchard and others is available on Apple Music. There's a playlist on Spotify and here's a list of songs. I almost forgot to mention Odom's singing as Cooke. We expected as much but he was surprised they didn't want him to lip-sync. He's so good! His original song is over the credits and has a couple of nominations so far.

 

Hodge was last blogged for Straight Outta Compton, Odom for Hamilton, and Blanchard for Harriet. Ben-Adir, who is British, played the boyfriend in the High Fidelity series. Goree was in Race as track star Dave Albritton, and Reiker shot High Art (1998), Pieces of April (2003), and Beyond the Lights, among others.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics, averaging 98%, are in agreement with Jack and me. Its audiences, at 83, are a little farther behind. We saw it three weeks ago. If you have a subscription to Amazon Prime you should watch this one, which is on my growing list of 2021 nominees and winners.

Pieces of a Woman (2020)

Very good, though every bit as sad as we expected. Vanessa Kirby is brilliant as Martha, whose home birth goes awry. Shia LaBeouf is terrific as her tightly wound husband Sean, as is Ellen Burstyn as her stiff mother.

Director Kornél Mundruczó and screenwriter Kata Wéber are Hungarian. They had a similar experience as a couple and writing the screenplay helped Wéber heal.

The lovely classical score by Howard Shore can be streamed on Apple Music and Spotify, to name a few. There are some songs as well.

LaBeouf was last blogged for Honey Boy, Burstyn for Lovely, Still, and Shore for Denial.

Kirby is best known for playing the youngest Princess Margaret in 17 episodes of The Crown. Mundruczó and Wéber are new to me.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics are fragmented, averaging 76%, while its audiences are more wholly in favor at 88. The movie was made for Netflix and we streamed it a week and a half ago.

Hamilton (2020)

Of course we loved this filmed version of the original Broadway cast performing the ground-breaking musical. We streamed it on Disney+ when it dropped in July but I'm moved to write about it now that it's nominated for Golden Globes for Best Musical or Comedy and Best Actor.

We saw the second or third cast once on Broadway in 2015 and the touring company later, but this version is spectacular. Although one misses the full stage experience, the close-ups are great fun and the closed captions quite useful. That said, before we saw it live the first time, we studied––listening to the soundtrack while reading the lyrics.

Creator/writer/composer Lin-Manuel Miranda stars as Alexander Hamilton. Miranda had performed a rough solo version of it for then-President Obama, leading one comedian to quip that he workshopped it at the White House. Leslie Odom, Jr. is Aaron Burr, Phillipa Soo is Eliza, Renée Elise Goldsberry is Angelica, Christopher Jackson is George Washington, and Jonathan Groff is King George, who sings my favorite song, You'll Be Back. In dual roles we have Daveed Diggs as Marquis de Lafayette and Thomas Jefferson, Jasmine Cephas Jones as Peggy Schuyler and Maria Reynolds, Okierete Onaodowan as Hercules Mulligan and James Madison, Anthony Ramos as John Laurens and Philip Hamilton, and Efraim Sykes as George Eacker and a member of the ensemble. Most have gone on to continue their careers, however possible in the time of corona. More on that in a moment.

Thomas Kail, Tony winner for directing the stage version, directs this one as well, with Declan Quinn as director of photography. Miranda was inspired by Ron Chernow's 2004 biography Alexander Hamilton. For those of you living under rocks, one of the ground-breaking aspects of the musical is that the cast consists of mostly Black and brown people. A controversy emerged later, however, pointing to the fact that, though Hamilton is portrayed as an abolitionist, he actually did own slaves. Here's one article about it.

The original cast recording is available by subscription on Apple Music and free on Spotify, among others.

Miranda was last blogged for Mary Poppins Returns, Odom for Harriet, Groff for Taking Woodstock (plus he voiced Kristoff in both Frozen movies plus plenty of TV), Diggs for Soul, Jones for Blindspotting, Ramos for A Star Is Born, Sykes for Detroit and he starred on Broadway as David Ruffin of the Temptations in Ain't Too Proud. Soo has had other work in theatre and TV, including five episodes of Smash, Goldsberry a few solo albums and various TV roles, Jackson a bunch of TV roles and musical compositions for film and TV, and Onaodowan has been in 49 episodes of the Grey's Anatomy spinoff Station 19 (and hasn't sung once). Besides Kail's Tony, he's won two Emmys for Grease: Live, and is nominated for a Grammy for co-producing the documentary soundtrack We Are Freestyle Love Supreme, which is about Miranda's hip-hop group's 2019 reunion. Maybe he'll win that plus an Oscar to attain the coveted EGOT status. Quinn has shot dozens of projects, many of which I've seen, including Leaving Las Vegas (1995), Flawless (1999), Monsoon Wedding (2001), In America (2002), Rachel Getting Married, Admission, and Ricki and the Flash.

You can't watch this without signing up for the Disney+ streaming service but it's definitely worth $6.99 (one month contract) to see this one. Rotten Tomatoes' critics and audiences agree, averaging 98 and 90%, respectively.

For those of you who have read this far, I'm compiling a list of movie nominees and winners sorted by title. I use it to see whose paragraph is the longest and this helps me decide what to watch next. If the movie's title is highlighted, it's linked to my blog post on that feature. It's a work in progress and available here.

Nine Days (2020)

This weird movie, starting to get festival nominations and wins, is about a reclusive man who interviews human souls for a chance to be born. Kind of like a charmless Soul, it is one of the rare ones that left us cold.

Winston Duke is the decider, Zazie Beetz the main soul, Benedict Wong is the decider's sidekick (de-side-kick?), and the director/writer is Edson Oda.

The soundtrack, not available for streaming, is by Antonio Pinto, and, without hearing it again after two weeks, I can't remember it.

Beetz was last blogged for Joker, Wong for The Personal History of David Copperfield, and Pinto for McFarland, USA. Duke played M'Baku in Black Panther, though I didn't write about him, and Oda has directed nine shorts, eight of which he wrote. This is his feature debut.

As a voting member of the Independent Feature Project, I'm getting ten emails a day with suggestions "For Your Consideration" and/or links to stream movies that aren't yet available to the public. This was one of them that looked intriguing, especially since I like Beetz. I even watched the interview afterwards (her name is pronounced ZAH-see). But it didn't change Jack's or my mind.

That said, Rotten Tomatoes' critics' average is 86%, calling it "ethereal and evocative." To each his/her own.