This year, I’ve themed things, kind of. I couldn’t really complete 10 themes, since I decided on this after I was already a good distance along in having movies to post. So, with the idea in mind that these themes are general and some have only three movies in them, here’s what you can expect in the next 10 days.
I like horror movies. I’ve liked horror movies for a long time, and I’m fascinated not just by the movies themselves but by the stories behind them. For a long time, my favorite horror documentary has been Nightmares in Red, White and Blue about the American horror movie industry; I recommend it without reservation. So when I heard that there was a documentary about the relationship between Black audiences and actors and horror films, I was very much intrigued. Well, thanks to my wife’s love of the show Dexter, we have the AMC add-on for Amazon, and this means I finally got a chance to watch Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror.
What makes this topic so interesting is that this relationship has for a long time been one-sided. Black audiences have often loved horror but have not been loved in return (a sentiment expressed almost immediately when the film begins). There are many tropes relating to the Black experience in horror movies. Black characters are the first to die, or will sacrifice themselves for white characters, for instance. Black characters are also often fonts of ancient wisdom and are similarly the source of danger. In many older movies, Black characters are comic relief, and in horror movies without Black characters, the monsters themselves are often coded to be at least non-white (just as many movie villains in general are queer-coded). In that respect, the relationship between Black audiences and their representations on screen has been almost abusive.
The newest edition of the 1001 Movies list is out. I can’t tell you what has been removed, but there are 10 new movies added. The collection is much more indie-focused this time, and with the exception of Tenet, none of the new additions is longer than two hours. I’ve reviewed three already: (Tenet, Soul, and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom) and will be completing the rest of the list hopefully by the end of the year. The first of these is The Vast of Night, an odd little science fiction movie that at first blush doesn’t seem to belong.
The plot is one that borders on high concept. One late ‘50s night, in the sleepy little New Mexico town of Cayuga, a series of strange events happen. Teenage disc jockey Everett (Jake Horowitz) meets up with his friend Fay (Sierra McCormick). Fay, who clearly has a bit of a crush on Everett, has just gotten a new tape recorder, and the two of them test it out as they walk to their respective jobs. They also appear to be just about the only two people in town not at the high school’s basketball game. While Everett heads off to the radio station, Fay settles in for her shift as a phone operator.
The politics of Oscars is very strange indeed. It’s not often that you can legitimately fill a category of nominations from a single film, but One Night in Miami comes very close. While Leslie Odom Jr. was nominated in a supporting role in this film, I think a strong case can be made that all four of the lead actors could have been nominated. At the very least, we should be talking about a nomination for Kingsley Ben-Adir.
One Night in Miami is a filmed version of the play of the same name by Kemp Powers. It is a far more interesting version of the internet meme of Stalin, Freud, Hitler, Tito, and Trotsky all lived in Vienna in 1913 and could have conceivably met at the same bar. In this case, on the night Cassius Clay (Eli Goree) still pre-Muhammad Ali won the heavyweight title over Sonny Liston, he, Jim Brown (Aldis Hodge), Sam Cooke (Leslie Odom Jr.), and Malcom X (Kingsley Ben-Adir) met up post-fight in a hotel room to talk about life, reality, and the state of Black lives in America in 1964.
Say what you will about NetFlix, but they have started going more and more out of their way to bring in shows and movies that aren’t from a Western perspective. The White Tiger, which was ultimately nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay, is such a film. While the film is at least partially in English, this is very much a film that is thoroughly enmeshed in Indian culture. In fact, the use of language is a big part of that. The characters shift between Hindi and English naturally and constantly, and it becomes something akin to its own language, a sort of Delhi pidgin.
The White Tiger is the dark shadow of Slumdog Millionaire. Like the film that won Best Picture more than a decade ago, this one is about a young man who began in terrible poverty and ends as a success. Don’t worry—that’s not a spoiler. We start knowing that our main character is a man of means when the film begins.
I don’t tend to predict Oscar films, although I do every now and then look to get ahead. I think a Best Animated Feature nomination for Raya and the Last Dragon is very likely, although it will also probably lose to Luca. Regardless, I’d put some good money down on this being nominated. So, when I saw it at one of the libraries I use, I figured I’d give it a watch. Sure, I could have watched this on Disney Plus, but I like to support my libraries when I can, and this helps their numbers.
I went into this completely cold, expecting that there might be a bit of a feel of How to Train Your Dragon. I did not expect that this movie wanted nothing less than to be seen as Disney’s version of Avatar: The Last Airbender (the Nick show, not the terrible, terrible movie). It seriously might as well have started by telling us that everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked.
Let’s talk for a second about one of the serious problems that Oscar has. Since this blog is still at least tangentially attached to Oscar films, I feel as if it’s in my wheelhouse. We’re going to take as our text the film First Cow, which managed to be completely ignored in 2019 despite having a lot of what Oscar appears to look for. Was it the woman director crafting a film with essentially no women characters (Alia Shawkat in the beginning notwithstanding)? Was it the fact that much of the cast is lesser known? That the plot of the movie isn’t controversial? A combination of these things? Something else?
First Cow really is a very simple movie. It’s also one of those rare movies that gives us a sense of the way things are going to end and then the rest of the movie is going to get there. That beginning is an unknown woman (Shawkat) discovering two human skeletons laying side-by-side in the present day. From here, we jump back in time to 1820 and meet Otis “Cookie” Figowitz (John Magaro), who is travelling through Oregon Country as the cook for a group of trappers. One evening, he encounters King-Lu (Orion Lee) who is on the run for killing a Russian man. Otis lets King sleep in his tent for the night and then sees him off in the morning.
