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.
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