The man with a plan for his daughters

   Any movie about the rise of sports icons faces a multitude of problems — not the least of which is the temptation to yield to the demands of formula. You know the drill. Hardship and toil inevitably are followed by a hard-earned victory, preferably for an underdog.

 Thumbs are raised. Cheers abound. And then we all return to lives in which victories can be scarce.

 King Richard, the story of Richard Williams, father of Venus and Serena Williams, can’t avoid every genre trap but the rise of the Williams’ sisters has plenty of appeal. We know from the outset that the sisters will hit it big, but we still root for them.

  In some ways, the movie becomes a showcase for Will Smith, who plays a father who drives his daughters hard. Williams authored a 78-page plan for them and insisted that they fulfill it in the world of tennis.

  Steeped in discipline and perseverance, Williams ignores obstacles and keeps pushing. His slightly stooped posture makes it seem as if he's leaning into his mission. 

   Venus and Serena are played by Saniyya Sidney and Demi Singleton, young actresses who give the movie its heart. Scenes of the Williams’ family of five daughters unfold with winning ease. The movie could have used more of them.

   Richard Williams may be obsessed with his plan, but Sidney and Singleton show that Venus and Sabrina never stopped being kids — albeit extremely talented kids. 

   Of all the adult actors, Aunjanue Ellis hits one of the strongest notes. In  a powerhouse scene, Ellis's Oracene confronts her husband, pushing back against his ego.

   When Venus' career begins to rise,  Mom takes over Sabrina's training. She's not going to allow Sabrina to be slighted.

   Early on, the girls practice on a local Compton tennis court, a site that’s plagued by gang activity. Williams presses on until the girls can play on better courts as they navigate the predominantly white world of tennis.

   Eventually, Venus finds a coach. Jon Bernthal’s Rick Macci has ideas about how to guide Venus’s career, which sparks conflict with  the obstinate Williams. It's sometimes difficult to distinguish between Williams' desire to protect his daughters and his desire to control their burgeoning careers.

   Director Reinaldo Marcus Green moves the story toward Venus's professional debut. She was 14 in 1994 when she faced off against established pro, Arantxa Sanchez Vicario.

   Venus and Serena are credited as producers, so it’s not surprising that the movie has an “authorized” air about it, and at 146 minutes, King Richard may have you checking your watch toward the end. An incident in which Richard, carrying a pistol from his job as a security guard, faces off against a neighborhood tough is shocking but under-explored.

    I'm no expert on the life of Richard Williams, but I've read that some folks think the movie goes too easy on him. That may be true but the movie focuses on Richard as a father to Venus and Serena. It's not trying to be a fully developed biography of Williams.

    Williams may have been King, but his daughters ended up as royalty. They not only conquered the tennis world, they transcended it.

  

A single mom fights for her son's education

I can think of only one compelling reason to see Miss Virginia, a predictable advocacy movie that makes the case for supporting poor minority kids in private schools. That reason has nothing to do with the movie's political orientation. The reason: Uzo Aduba. Fans of Orange Is the New Black know Aduba as Suzanne "Crazy Eyes" Warren, one of the most disturbed but unforgettable residents of the series' fictional Litchfield Penitentiary. Miss Virginia affords Aduba a chance to break from her portrayal of Suzanne. Here, she plays Virginia Ford, a single mother who helped lobby for the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, which offered scholarships that enabled low-income students to attend private schools. We meet Virginia in 2003 when she's trying to keep her 15-year-old son James (Niles Fitch) on track. James is being bullied at a public school where no one appreciates his artistic talent. Virginia bravely enrolls her son in an expensive private school, knowing full well that she'll have difficulty paying the tuition. She then lands a job working for a congresswoman (Aunjanue Ellis) who Virginia believes appreciates her problems. Turns out that Virginia's hope in her boss has been misplaced. Eventually, Virginia asks another member of congress (Matthew Modine) to help. The screenplay presents Virginia with any number of obstacles as she battles to save her talented son from the lure of the streets. Director R.J. Daniel Hanna has made a by-the-numbers drama that aims for inspiration. Aduba's performance reflects bone-deep, undeniable conviction, but I wouldn't look to Miss Virginia for a definitive solution to the always-troubling problem of failing schools.

Love in the time of racism

In If Beale Street Could Talk, director Barry Jenkins adapts a James Baldwin novel that pits the innocence of lovers against soul-crushing racism.

If you stop to think about it, you might be hard-pressed to come up with a long list of movies that portray love with tenderness, soul-deep commitment, and true devotion.

Among other things, a tender depiction of such a love is precisely what distinguishes If Beale Street Could Talk from normal Hollywood fare. director Barry Jenkins' follow-up to his Oscar-winning Moonlight, has moments that are illuminated by the characters love for each other and by Jenkins' love for them.

But if Beale Street -- set in New York during the '70s -- only dealt with love, it would not be doing justice to the 1974 James Baldwin novel of the same name. If Beale Street Could Talk also assays the impact of racism on the innocence of two lovers who have known they should be together since childhood.

Tender feelings collide with harsh realities that test the devotion of a young man and woman who want little more than to live, raise a family and continue loving each other.

The casting of the couple obviously becomes crucial in a movie such as Beale Street and Jenkins' has done well. Stephan James portrays Alonzo, a.k.a. "Fonny," a 22-year-old with ambitions to make sculptures from wood. KiKi Layne portrays Tish, Fonny's 19-year-old fiancee and also the story's narrator.

Jenkins invites us to fall in love with this sweet couple and we do, but he also plans to break our hearts. Tish is pregnant and it's entirely possible that Fonny will be in jail when his child is born.

Set up by a racist cop (Ed Skrein), Fonny faces a false rape charge. Tish fights to clear his name. She knows that the Puerto Rican woman who identified Fonny in a line-up did so in a confused panic. Fonny wasn't even in the vicinity of the crime.

The movie contextualizes the relationship between Fonny and Tish by bringing their respective families into focus as it shifts between the present with Fonny awaiting trial in jail and the past in which Fonny and Tish developed their relationship.

Fonny's mother (Regina King) supports her pregnant daughter; her father (Colman Domingo) also makes his love for Tish clear; he understands that he's going to have to get involved with some hustling to raise money for Fonny's defense.

In an early scene, the two families meet and sparks fly. Fonny's religious mother (Aunjanue Ellis,) disdains Tish and treats her as a wanton woman who's ruining her son's life. Fonny's father (Michael Beach) takes a different view. He hauls off and belts his wife in the kisser, a slap that turns a comic scene into something harsh and harrowing.

Perhaps Baldwin was trying to highlight poles of belief within the black community: staunchly religious conservatism vs. love-infused tolerance, the latter born of an understanding about what's needed to carry on.

Brian Tyree Henry turns up as an old friend of Fonny's who has just been released from jail and who can't shake the emotional damage of incarceration. He didn't belong in jail any more than Fonny will.

Jenkins respectfully extends scenes to allow the actors to live within them, but some of them go on too long and you begin to feel the movie's length.

Maybe it doesn't matter because If Beale Street Could Talk doesn't feel rooted in a specific time and place as much as it feels like an extension of imagination lodged in an essential moment -- one built around a deep understanding of harsh American realities and an unconquerable capacity for hope and survival.

If Beale Street Could Talk poses a heartfelt and heartbreaking question: Why must two lovers pit their happiness against a world that doesn't want to give them a chance? That sounds like the trailer for a romance novel, but -- in this case -- it's an indictment of racism that tries to crush the sweetness out of everyday life.