Summer of Soul is the one to see, but I liked The Green Knight and Free Guy too
I’m going to be posting my reviews of the 2021 movies I saw in the order I saw them in the coming days- for this batch I’d have to say see Oscar nominee Summer of Soul, which is an incredible can’t miss documentary.
PLAN B * * 1/2 (Dir. Natalie Morales)
Teen movies are hit and miss, but this one has its charms
This predictable, road trip buddy movie is the comedic companion piece to last year’s Never, Rarely, Sometimes, Always- a journey about two teenage girls in a red state on a quest for reproductive care (in this case, the morning after pill). What makes this one memorable are the two girls themselves, winningly played by Kuhoo Verma and Victoria Moroles, and directed with a surefooted, light touch by actress Natalie Morales, gifted in turning out raucous set pieces that go in unexpected directions. It actually might have more common with Booksmart in terms of plot, the other recent, raunchy comedy about the friendship between two teen girls, but the difference here is that girls of color get the spotlight for a change. While that’s refreshing, it unfortunately does not negate the movie’s beat for beat predictability, as anyone who’s ever seen a teen movie or a buddy movie or a road trip movie will see every turn of phrase and action coming. You may still get a good chuckle or two out of it, but you’ll have to decide if it’s worth it for that alone.
SUMMER OF SOUL * * * 1/2 (Dir. Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson)
A moment in time, rediscovered
Questlove’s documentary about the Harlem Cultural Festival of 1969 is something of a revelation, because the incredible archival footage unearthed by the filmmakers has been sitting in a basement for the last 50 years undiscovered until now. The three day festival took place during the summer of the moon landing and Woodstock, and was of course overshadowed by the latter as “the” outdoor concert of the year, but this film works as a time capsule that does as much for that era as Woodstock did in encapsulating what the mood of the the country was at that time. What this concert did was encompass all those vibes that happened to be percolating in the national mood as much in Harlem as upstate. The movie gives us these unseen performances by people like Stevie Wonder, Nina Simone and Sly and the Family Stone at their best, but it also shows the black festival goers and the politicians who worked with organizers to stage this communal event at a time when revolution really felt like it was in the air, and the movie coveys the essence of that better than any documentary since perhaps the original Woodstock.
PIG * * 1/2 (Dir. Michael Sarnoski)
We tend to forget what a good actor Nic Cage is, until he reminds us
At first glance Pig feels a lot like a John Wick premise- a retired five star chef has turned into a recluse with only his truffle hunting pig as company out in the woods, when his pig his kidnapped and he’s forced back into the world of competitive (and apparently threatening) high class restaurants in Portland to track down his beloved. It sounds fairly ridiculous but unlike John Wick, this is played for high drama and serious emotional stakes. Nicolas Cage gives one of his best performances as the broken, talented genius, so much so that you almost buy into this story if only for his utterly nihilistic worldview. Almost. But not quite, as the world this movie creates involving underground fighting rings and mob bosses doesn’t go far enough in the camp direction to be entertaining, and taking it on a deadly serious level just feels…odd. It’s an unusual, overly ambitious movie that doesn’t quite work in its attempts to play around with genres.
THE GREEN KNIGHT * * * 1/2 (Dir. David Lowery)
A new take on an Arthurian legend
David Lowery’s medieval epic is a strange, visually mesmerizing fantasy that challenges the audience to adapt itself to its tone, a slow moving yet never dull experience that has a hypnotizing effect, carried by Dev Patel in the lead as Gawain, King Arthur’s nephew who is challenged by the Green Knight to a potentially fatal confrontation. The film is filled with haunting imagery and episodes that force you to wonder whether anything happening is real or perhaps all imagined. Alicia Vikander plays a dual role as Gawain’s peasant mistress and married lover, while Joel Edgerton, Sarita Choudhury and Sean Harris play roles in support of the troubled young knight of the roundtable. The cinematography is some of the most striking of the year, and the visuals of giant, walking stone figures, a headless maiden ghost, and the Green Knight himself (an amazingly and unusually effective CGI creation) all provide the dreamlike quality of a movie that is best experienced on the big screen, if you can manage it. The meditative quality of the film proves to have a lingering effect- if you allow yourself to be taken in by it, the rewards are plenty.
THE SUICIDE SQUAD * 1/2 (Dir. James Gunn)
Getting tired of the James Gunn schtick
As someone who, along with most of the world, was not a fan of the original Suicide Squad, it’s difficult for me to say the James Gunn helmed sequel is not a better movie. It undoubtedly is- it’s better shot, better acted, it’s actually edited, and it has most of the little factors that make a James Gunn joint. But for me, those factors are at the point of being heavily played out, recycled and overdone. Which doesn’t make this movie good. In fact, it’s an R-rated Guardians of the Galaxy, which will thrill most superhero fans, but the humor and characters fall flat, and victim to the inevitable third act overblown CGI mess- even if that mess is a gigantic starfish spraying glop out of its armpit. Do we really need to watch that gag for twenty minutes straight? To Gunn’s credit, and our collective relief, he basically dismisses the entirety of the first movie, even if some characters return, like Viola Davis’s stern and humorless Amanda Waller, Joel Kinnaman’s Rick Flag (really? he’s back?) and of course…sigh. Margot Robbie’s obnoxious, irritating and useless Harley Quinn. You may be thinking that my rage at the sight of this character is biasing me against anything going on in the rest of this movie, and hey, maybe you’re right. Or, maybe the Gunn formula of mismatched unlikable characters, violent throwaway gags, contemporary music montages and just a splash of heart in the right place for the team bonding moment is showing him to be a very one trick pony whose original trick I wasn’t that impressed with in the first place.
FREE GUY * * * (Dir. Shawn Levy)
A surprisingly delightful comedy about gaming
Video game movies have a long history of tanking, both critically and with audiences, but perhaps movies about video games and gaming in general (in this case, online gaming) have a brighter future? Ryan Reynolds’s latest puts a stake to that claim, as it turns out to be a partially charming romantic comedy action movie that’s much smarter and more detailed about the world of online gaming than you’d expect. Reynolds stars as Guy, an NPC in a popular online role playing game called Free City, who develops sentient capabilities and starts taking over the game because he wants to change his life. The movie takes place both within and outside of the game, as we follow Guy on his quest and then in the real world two programmers who created the game (Jodie Comer and Joe Keery) fight to preserve it from destruction by the CEO who stole their code (Taika Waititi in a way over the top performance). There are a lot of familiar elements to this plot- we have stuff from The Truman Show, along with Tron and The Matrix, but the character Reynolds plays is charming and innocent enough for us to want to root for him, especially as he turns out to be a legitimate AI, which ups the stakes quite a bit in both worlds we’re seeing. The action scenes are nothing new though, with the usual uninspired CGI taking over (though since it actually is supposed to be a video game, this time I’m more forgiving of it), but the slight romantic plot twist at the end gives the movie a heartwarming finale that leaves you feeling satisfied, even if this ostensibly original idea is likely the start of yet another franchise to be. We can’t get away from it even when we do, can we?
