Judas and the Black Messiah (2021)

Tags

Drama, History

Let history judge me for what I have done.
Let God alone bless or condemn.
Was I one who lived by the plow or the gun?
Was I part of us or of them?

Don’t ask me my politics, views, or beliefs.
Don’t paint me in black or in white.
Don’t ask if I’m proud for another man’s griefs.
Don’t classify me wrong or right.

I did what I did, though I still question how.
Was I more a tool or a sinner?
Perhaps I indeed am less holy than thou,
But no one can claim to be winner.
_______________________

MPA rating:  R (for some gun violence and frequent profanity)

While everyone else is focusing on this year’s fast-approaching Oscar ceremony, I’m a bit embarrassed that I haven’t reviewed a single one of last year’s Best Picture nominees. While I’ve liked all of the ones I’ve seen, the one that most surprised me was Judas and the Black Messiah, a hard-hitting biopic of both Black Panther leader Fred Hampton and the man who betrayed him to the FBI.

The Black Panthers are a group that is hard to label definitively, but owing to my schooling, I always viewed them as little more than a terrorist group, born of the same righteous indignation at prejudice as Martin Luther King, Jr., but choosing the path of violence instead.  FBI Special Agent Roy Mitchell (Jesse Plemons) voices a similar rationale, comparing the Panthers to the KKK as he tries to convince undercover informant Bill O’Neal (Lakeith Stanfield) to continue his infiltration of the Black Panthers, led in Chicago by the fiery Fred Hampton (Oscar winner Daniel Kaluuya). Even after the film, I still think Mitchell had a point, but that doesn’t mean the government opposing the Panthers was any more in the right. It’s so easy to paint the conflicts of history in broad strokes of simple heroics and villainy when the truth is much more complex.

While Judas and the Black Messiah does its job in exploring a piece of American history I never knew, it goes above and beyond in presenting this tragic, difficult story with impressive nuance. In his impassioned speeches, Kaluuya’s Hampton extols action and revolution with persuasive zeal but loses me when he gets to killing “pigs.” Based on that, it’s no wonder he was labeled a threat, yet he later balks when O’Neal presents a plan to blow up city hall, trying to catch Hampton in the act of violence. The FBI’s narrative of Hampton as a danger couldn’t reconcile facts like how the Black Panthers fed daily breakfast to the black children of Chicago or how his Rainbow Coalition united disparate gangs and organizations in cooperation, even one sporting a Confederate flag. These were just lumped into his reputation of subversion, with no consideration of their positive impacts. My political opinions are a far cry from Hampton’s anti-capitalist philosophy, but I can certainly recognize that the government’s response to such revolutionaries only served to justify their grievances.

And the film doesn’t shy away from this dichotomy of good and evil actions. In a series of back-and-forth acts of violence, one Panthers member is shown killing a cop in cold blood before being killed himself. Yet soon after, Hampton speaks with the killer’s mother, who bemoans that her dear son, a well-behaved seven-year-old in her memory, will only be remembered by society as a murderer. “He did that. He did that,” she says, “but that ain’t all he did.” Paired with that violent scene is one of my new favorite scenes of poetry in film, wherein Hampton’s pregnant girlfriend Deborah Johnson (Dominique Fishback, who deserved an Oscar nom herself) reads her own verses to him, expressing the apprehension of bringing a new life into such a dangerous, conflicted world.

With such a nuanced screenplay, the acting had to be on point, and indeed it is. Kaluuya and Stanfield especially act the heck out of their respective roles, bringing to life Hampton’s intensity and O’Neal’s desperate uncertainty. I can understand Kaluuya winning out, since they were both nominated for Best Supporting Actor, but I probably would have preferred Stanfield, even if he is the “bad guy” of the story.

As he helps and gets to know Hampton and the Panthers, O’Neal clearly sympathizes at times but is too easily manipulated by self-interest to take the stand others around him do, preferring to do as he’s told rather than figure out what’s right for himself. The Biblical title is actually quite fitting, with the FBI standing in for the Pharisees wanting a concerning upstart out of the picture and using a weak-willed follower to make it happen, complete with further parallels.

As with so many Oscar-caliber films with that overly common R rating, the frequent profanity is the worst part of the movie for me. It might add authenticity and no one else may share this peeve of mine, but I still insist that the film would be better and more watchable without all the obscenities flying. Yet by the end, I was able to look past the language and the apparent political and racial divide between me and the film’s subject and recognize that Judas and the Black Messiah is a great film, with outstanding actors bringing to light a historical tragedy through a personal lens, with themes of action vs passivity and how people are remembered. Nuance is sorely lacking in the world these days, just as it was back then, but it’s certainly welcome when looking back at the past.

Best line:
(Deborah, reading her poem to Fred)
“We scream and we shout and we live by this anthem…
But is power to the people really worth the ransom?
Because that’s what a mother does –
Gives the world the most precious things she loves,
And I love you and I love our baby too,
And there’s nothing more radical than seeing that through,
Born pure to the blood, with the heart of a panther.
No regrets… I know my answer.”

Rank:  List-Worthy

© 2022 S.G. Liput
758 Followers and Counting

2022 Blindspot Pick #1: National Velvet (1944)

Tags

Classics, Drama, Family, Sports

A girl once loved a rebel horse,
As girls so often do.
She saw its gentle side within,
And by her gentleness, it grew.

She watched and loved its every move
And praised its every feat.
What others feared and labeled wild
She kissed, caressed, and called it sweet.

She never bore a single doubt
Of what her horse could do.
If she imagined it could fly,
The horse and she would make it true.

The doubts of others held no sway,
As mountains scoff at breeze,
For love’s conviction can make real
The smallest chance no other sees.
________________________

MPA rating:  Passed (easily G)

I may be a month late for my first Blindspot, but I’m still better off than the last couple years when I didn’t get started till April. For no particular reason, I decided to start with the oldest film on my 2022 Blindspot list, 1944’s National Velvet. This is a film my mom convinced me to see, and I wasn’t expecting much since I’m not a big fan of horses. So it was an utterly pleasant surprise to find it an absolute gem deserving of its classic status.

Set in England and based on a 1935 Enid Bagnold novel, National Velvet stars a twelve-year-old Elizabeth Taylor (in her first major role) as Velvet Brown, a country girl obsessed with horses who is thrilled to win a brown beauty she calls The Pie. Befriending Velvet is Mi Taylor (Mickey Rooney, not even attempting a British accent), a former jockey whose self-serving instincts are won over by Velvet’s earnestness until he agrees to train The Pie for the illustrious Grand National race.

Older films like this can easily suffer from dated or exaggerated acting, but National Velvet is outstanding in every regard. While Velvet’s oddball little brother (Jackie “Butch” Jenkins) is an exception, I loved the warm portrayal of her family, from Angela Lansbury’s boy-crazy sister to Donald Crisp’s gregarious father. However, the standout and the winner of a Best Supporting Actress Oscar is Anne Revere as the family matriarch, seemingly stern and stoic but with a warm-hearted affection just below the surface as she verbally spars with her husband and encourages her daughter to chase her dreams. The family could be compared with the Morgan clan of How Green Was My Valley, which also starred Crisp as a father among lovely British countryside a few years earlier, but the Browns won me over even more than the Morgans.

I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I don’t think I’d ever seen an Elizabeth Taylor film before, unless you count her brief introduction in That’s Entertainment! I’ll have to see more, but it’s clear from this first major role that she was a star in the making, her guileless determination making Velvet a perfect cheer-worthy underdog. Likewise, Rooney shows dramatic grit beyond his lighthearted musicals, and I enjoyed his character’s moral transformation over the course of the film. The commitment of both leads makes the final race a nail-biting climax; even if you may assume what the result will be, it still bucks predictability. (It also features some surprisingly realistic horse falls, making me think films like this led to more stringent protections for animals on film sets.)

I’ve known girls like Velvet who are obsessed with horses, including my own mother who loved books like Misty of Chincoteague. I’ve never been enamored of them like that, so I wasn’t expecting much from National Velvet. As I so often quote from La La Land, “people love what other people are passionate about,” and the devoted enthusiasm of Velvet Brown made me root for The Pie just like her. I love when expectations are blasted away, and National Velvet is a pure, eloquent family classic that left me smiling for much of its runtime. Now that’s the way to start a Blindspot series.

Best line: (Mrs. Brown, to Velvet) “We’re alike. I, too, believe that everyone should have a chance at a breathtaking piece of folly once in his life. I was twenty when they said a woman couldn’t swim the Channel. You’re twelve; you think a horse of yours can win the Grand National. Your dream has come early, but remember, Velvet, it will have to last you all the rest of your life.”

Rank:  List-Worthy

© 2022 S.G. Liput
756 Followers and Counting

The Matrix Resurrections (2021)

Tags

Action, Sci-fi, Thriller

When the world is opaque,
Every day within walls,
With nothing worthwhile behind or ahead,
There’s just the dull ache
In your heart’s empty halls
To prove to your mind you’re not already dead.

In times such as these,
We require a pillar,
An anchoring star we can navigate by.
One person, one dream
Can make life more than filler
And topple the walls that obstructed the sky.
_______________________

MPA rating:  R (mainly for a couple scenes that seemed more violent than the previous films)

It wasn’t that long ago that the idea of a fourth Matrix film seemed utterly unlikely and rumors of a new entry going into production were the stuff of excited gossip among my friends. It’s certainly a case of hype overshadowing the final product, since I have yet to meet anyone who has embraced The Matrix Resurrections without heavy reservations. Disdain is the more common reaction (including among my friends), but I’ve found myself defending the film’s good aspects among the waves of contempt. It almost goes without saying that a Matrix sequel will end up flawed, but one’s personal mindset can heighten those flaws to make them worse than they are.

This may be a spoiler (no one should watch this who hasn’t seen the original trilogy), but the original Matrix trilogy ended on a rather downbeat note, with both Neo and Trinity giving their lives to bring peace to both the Matrix and the real world. So how could returning director/co-writer Lana Wachowski, going solo this time, resurrect both of them, fulfilling Neo’s Christological parallels even further, for a new entry of the cyber-dystopian series? That mystery fuels the first half, as Neo (Keanu Reeves) is now famous game developer Thomas Anderson, who achieved acclaim for his hit video game series called… The Matrix. While Neo is clearly blue-pilled into believing this illusory life, thanks to his smarmy therapist (Neil Patrick Harris), the film has great meta fun referencing its own franchise, poking fun at what The Matrix is as a series amid plenty of Easter eggs and callbacks to the previous films. After being freed by young captain Bugs (Jessica Henwick) and some version of Morpheus (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), Neo learns that much has changed since his climactic sacrifice, and he might need to make another to save Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss).

Early on in the film’s meta phase, an alternate version of Smith (now played by Jonathan Groff) tells game developer Neo that Warner Brothers wants to develop another sequel to The Matrix with or without him, and it’s hard to fight the feeling that this film is the result of the same kind of ultimatum aimed at the Wachowskis. With only one of them deciding it was worth revisiting the franchise, we can only wonder whether that was the right move or if some other director/writer might have added a bit more freshness to a fourth entry. Yet I think there’s something to be said for the original director having a say in where their story goes, even if not every fan is pleased, and I can’t help but feel like much of the negativity surrounding The Matrix Resurrections is the result of overly high or predetermined expectations from uber-fans, not unlike the flurry of opinion surrounding every Star Wars sequel.

It’s true that Resurrections is downright messy in a lot of what it attempts, shoehorning in new versions of characters that probably would have been better off left out. I liked the self-awareness, but others have found it smug or overdone while also complaining that Neo’s superpowers have laughably devolved into a mere force field. The convoluted plot often adheres too closely to that of the first film, and a climactic heist strangely skates by on the fact that the machines apparently don’t have any cameras guarding their hostage.

So yes, it’s messy as all get-out, but there are still entertaining action and good, if underdeveloped, ideas to enjoy. For one, the humans after the end of the Machine War have developed a new society with surprising cooperation from some programs, allies against the control of the Matrix, and I found the method for these programs to manifest in the real world very cool. And, even as the philosophizing about choice and control remains constant, this new version of the Matrix has some intriguingly different rules, such as dispensing with Agents in favor of mobs of undercover programs posing as humans that can be activated at any moment, which leads to one of the franchise’s nastier action set pieces. Plus, it was nice seeing familiar faces again, with Reeves and Moss easily stepping into their old roles despite the nearly twenty-year gap and turning their love story into the driving force of the movie (a decision one of my friends didn’t like either, but I think still works well). While the absence of Laurence Fishburne and Hugo Weaving is unmistakable, the new players like Bugs are solid additions, and some other character cameos were quite welcome, as were visits to the hall of doors from Reloaded and whole scenes from the first film.

I can understand dissatisfaction with The Matrix Resurrections, especially if you’ve spent the last eighteen years fantasizing about what a new Matrix story could be, since it is almost certainly not what you might have hoped. But I can’t bring myself to outright hate it like others have, though that’s true of most films; indifference or a desire to look for the good among the bad is far more common for me than hate. I just remember being dissatisfied with the ending of Revolutions, and the ending of Resurrections is a far happier conclusion than the original trilogy. Like the other sequels, it still can’t hope to compare with the game-changing original, but it’s a film that seems fine with basking in the strength of what came before and having a bit of fun with it. That may not be enough for some fans, but it was for me.

Best line: (Smith) “I know you said the story was over for you, but that’s the thing about stories… they never really end, do they? We’re still telling the same stories we’ve always told, just with different names… faces… and… I have to say I’m kind of excited.”

Rank: List Runner-Up (like the other sequels)

© 2022 S.G. Liput
752 Followers and Counting

Violet Evergarden: The Movie (2020)

Tags

Animation, Anime, Drama, Romance

I wear a weak smile
With weights on each end.
I faithfully labor
And greet every neighbor
To be a bulwark
On which all can depend.

Yet what I have lost
Haunts that which I’ve found.
Like one stubborn ember,
Your face I remember,
A past that burned bright
Upon life’s battleground.

They say what I know,
That I have to move on.
I still love the trace
That remains of your face.
I doubt it will ever
Be totally gone.
_________________________

MPA rating:  Not Rated (should be PG-13 for some violent flashbacks and heavy emotional themes)

Although I love anime, I’m often not sure how to review films based on anime series. For example, Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Movie: Mugen Train was literally the highest grossing movie of 2020 worldwide, smashing records and becoming the first non-Hollywood film to top the global box office. Yet I don’t really know what to say about it. Because it’s a feature-length middle chapter for the Demon Slayer series, it’s hard to recommend it to those unfamiliar with the show, since a full appreciation of the film depends on some familiarity. It was exciting, eye-popping, a good continuation, and apparently a real tearjerker for some (not me), but its attachment to an ongoing TV series limits its appeal in my view. I feel the same for other anime films based on series, from the Steins;Gate sequel to the growing number of My Hero Academia features, which typically end up feeling decent but unnecessary.

Obviously, that’s not always the case. I’ve sung the praises of The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya, which built beautifully on its original show, and Cowboy Bebop: The Movie, which stands on its own just as well. I suppose it’s easier when a film comes after a show ends, rather than in the middle of its run. Anyway, it should indicate my high regard for Violet Evergarden: The Movie that I’m reviewing it at all, beyond making it List-Worthy.

For those unfamiliar with Violet Evergarden, it’s a show from Kyoto Animation based on a popular light novel series about a girl in a fictional semi-Victorian country where gas lamps exist alongside advanced prosthetic limbs. Utilized as a lethal child warrior during a horrific war, the girl is taken in by a Major Gilbert, who gives her the name Violet and hates using her on the battlefield, despite her effectiveness. In the midst of a major victory, both of them are severely injured, and the Major is lost and presumed dead. With the war over, Violet is sent to a friend of the Major’s who runs a post office, and she gradually eases into the more peaceful life of typing letters for others, a job called an Auto Memory Doll (basically a transcriptionist with a typewriter). While struggling to understand simple concepts like love and pining for the Major, she meets an array of customers who help her grow as a person.

The short 13-episode series itself is quite good, with strong characters and emotions, but its greatest strengths are the glorious, Oscar-caliber score and drop-dead gorgeous animation. It’s honestly some of the finest, most detailed animation out there, and almost any single frame could be hung on a wall as a work of art. I will say that the script can be weak at times, often ascribing great profundity to the letters Violet writes even when they’re more earnest than deep. But the film’s poignant themes grow more affecting with time, and the largely stand-alone tenth episode remains one of the most tear-jerking episodes of television imaginable. Even the thought of it makes me want to cry. The studio could have left the show alone or stopped after the spin-off film called Eternity and the Auto Memory Doll, which falls under that “decent but unnecessary” status that I mentioned before. But the studio decided to cap off the series with a finale film, despite delays from the infamous arson attack and COVID, and I’m glad they did because it’s everything I could have wanted in a conclusion (hello, 100% Rotten Tomatoes score).

It was a canny choice to frame the story as a retrospective investigation, with a young woman from decades in the future looking back on the tale of Violet Evergarden, and the woman’s connection to that moving tenth episode had me close to sobbing right from the start. The film soon jumps back to Violet’s time, after she has grown into the most popular Doll in the city, though her thoughts remain with her long-lost Major Gilbert. After accepting a job from a sick boy in the hospital who wants her help to write letters to his family once he is gone, Violet and her boss learn of evidence that Gilbert might be alive on a distant island, and they go in search of her beloved.

There were many ways that the film could have gone wrong. Would they pull a fake-out and say it wasn’t Gilbert? Would it be a tired amnesia scenario? But the way it plays out is both touching and makes sense for the characters, highlighting Gilbert’s guilt from the war and how much Violet has grown apart from him. The eventual climax is a massive tug to the heartstrings, and I felt like the film was effective in encapsulating the overarching story and its emotions, even for those who may not have watched the series. (Even so, I certainly recommend watching the show first for the full context and emotional punch.)

I’ve always thought that the concept of an Auto Memory Doll seemed odd and quaint, like something that would be unrealistic in the real world, though that view is likely shaped by the prevalence of modern literacy and easy communication methods. The film actually addresses that head-on, with the advent of the telephone threatening the entire Doll profession. One shot of a lamplighter gazing up at a newfangled electric streetlight perfectly captured the theme of technological progress. I suppose the job of writing letters for others could be compared to something like the Pony Express, short-lived but memorable, and while the story could have been antagonistic toward such progress, it manages to show the positive aspects of both the telephone and letter-writing in, of course, the most poignant way possible.

I can see how someone cynical could easily view Violet Evergarden with detachment and scoff at its overly melodramatic qualities. It can lay on the tragedy pretty thick at times and certainly falls under that category of anime that intentionally aim to bring the audience to tears, like Angel Beats, To Your Eternity, or anything from Mari Okada. But if you can truly connect with Violet’s journey to understand love, it’s well worth tears, and I like the fact that I’m not too jaded to be moved by it. I liked the series on its own, but Violet Evergarden: The Movie took the series’ strengths and elevated them with a near-perfect culmination of all that came before and left me with a precious lump in my throat. I feel sorry for those who don’t give anime a chance, because stories like this transcend the medium to be great films, period.

Best line:  (Daisy, the woman learning about Violet) “If there’s something I can’t tell them in words, maybe I could tell them in a letter. I want to finally tell them my true feelings. We don’t know how long we have, so I need to tell them while I still have time.”

Rank:  List-Worthy

© 2022 S.G. Liput
752 Followers and Counting