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.
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