I watched two films that I had been looking forward to, but that I found disappointing. The first one was a star-studded political thriller called 88, about a Black candidate for president * SPOILER ALERT* whose entire career has secretly been funded by a small group of German Nazis who fled to the U.S. in 1947. It's trying to be like the Odessa File, I guess, but as if such a group had enormous secret financial power inside the U.S. and were secretly behind every bad policy ever passed by US lawmakers, including those leading to mass incarceration. It's already bad that the film displaces already bad US racial capitalism with fictional Nazi conspirators from Germany. The worst part of this is that, while being anti-anti-Semitic, and seeming to want to educate audiences about economic and political power, including that Black people in political power can still reproduce white supremacy, the various explanatory lectures about capitalism dip into right-wing conspiracy theories about the Federal Reserve, and shady cabals of "global financial elites." Really unfortunate.
The next disappointing film was Good Girl Jane - which just won the Tribeca jury prizes for best U.S. narrative feature and best actress. Clearly, the Jury and I were not on the same page. I did like parts of this film, and agree that the lead actress, Rain Spencer gave an impressive performance. The film does capture how easily a naive young woman can be beguiled by an exploitative and charming young man, - showing him as glamorous and kind in her eyes. However, in contrast with the other addiction movie entered in the US narrative competition, God's Time, this was much more cliched and exploitative. It was sort of like the TV series Euphoria (which I do like) - but grittier, less imaginative, and with less clear psychological motivations. It was like a mash-up of Kids and Go Ask Alice.
I hope I do a better job choosing films this weekend.
In honor of the classic, bad-boy - good-girl story, here's some music from DMX
Once again, I decided to get a streaming pass for the Tribeca at Home streaming section of the Tribeca Film Festival. This year's entries look good, though they have been slower to make films available than they were last year.
I watched quite a few short films on the first day, and of the first bunch I saw, the most memorable were Sparring Partners which I hadn't expected much from, but I thought was very effective and moving, Five-O, which started off as a kind of charming, feel-good story before it took a sharp turn, and Triggered which seemed to me to a very bleak sign of the point we have reached in the US.
I also watched Erica Rhodes' stand-up from the Tribeca Drive-In La Vie En Rhodes which I'm guessing happened live a year ago at the Rose Bowl. It's also available on Amazon Prime now. I hadn't heard of her before, but the show was funny and her delivery is good. I saw a negative review in Paste about her not having such great material, but I thought that her comments on dating and what it's like to be in your thirties were genuinely funny. She didn't go out of her way to be edgy or controversial, so I can both see why she'd be on something like a Prairie Home Companion, and why she might not be seen as an especially challenging comedian in the current moment.
On Friday, I wound up watching the Belgian comedy, Employee of the Month. This is a very dark comedy that reminded me of Nine-To-Five or Thelma & Louise, but more slapstick and more violent, as in kind of slapstick violence that made you laugh and also made you feel guilty for laughing. This does seem like the perfect comedy for #metoo, though I can imagine it getting a lot of angry responses in the same way that Thelma and Louise initially did, for being too vengeful towards men. After spending too much time on Twitter last week, I really needed it. It was cathartic.
Saturday night, I watched Rounding, a dramatic thriller about a medical resident that was intriguiing and had some great performances, but still didn't quite work. I kind of agree with the comments of the reviewer I linked above; the different aspects of the film were all interesting, but they just didn't hang together that well.
On Sunday, I saw The Lost Weekend, a documentary about John Lennon in the mid-1970s as narrated by May Pang. I've been a Lennon fan for a long time, and have never participated in the hatred of Yoko Ono, but Pang's representation of Lennon's and Ono's relationship is understandably negative. Probably the thing that supports Pang's side of the story most is Pang's close relationship with John's son from his first marriage, Julian. Pang helped John rebuild his relationship with Julian, and also maintained her own relationship with both Julian and his mother for many years. It's a very different version of John's life than what comes through the last interviews with him and Yoko. Regardless of Yoko's or Pang's role in John's life, it is striking that he was so productive musically during this period. After watching the Peter Jackson Get Back series last year, I had attributed that productivity to his needing to get free of the Beatles to try new things, and it's interesting to learn more about that time period as not entirely negative. Pang does address Lennon's violence - including that he had thrown her against a wall, and this is something that most representations of him as more saintly have tried to avoid. Here's #9 Dream, on which May Pang sings backing vocals.
Also on Sunday, I saw Daniel Antebi's comedy-drama, God's Time. I really enjoyed this movie and hope that it gets a distributor. Despite depicting wild situations and using non-realistic narrative strategies, the representation of human beings feels very real in the movie. Two examples of that "realness" are the way it depicts the Covid pandemic and 12-step programs. People in the movie wear masks and use hand-sanitzer without ever commenting on why they're doing that. They wear the masks the way people really do - taking them off when outside, having them under their chins, hanging on a cord, or hanging off one ear. They take them off to share at meetings - and that doesn't make sense, but OK. The way it deals with addiction and recovery is more central to the story. The entire film is based on interpersonal drama within a 12-step group, and includes multiple scenes of meetings and talk about recovery outside the meetings among the friends in the group. In the typical movie about addiction, you see the addicted person being increasingly self-destructive and finally getting to their first meeting as the conclusion of the arc. This story presents a much messier and more human, less linear understanding of recovery. There is talk of relapsing, lying, betrayal, and all kinds of other complexities under the surface of the lives of the people in the group - and despite all this it is often very funny. Definitely worth seeing.
