Another foray into the punishing world of Gitmo

 

     The Mauritanian draws inspiration from a best-selling memoir by Mohamedou Ould Slahi, a man who spent 14 years imprisoned in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. 

     Slahi was arrested in Mauritania in 2001. He had just returned from Germany, a country identified as a hotbed of Islamic radicalism. Earlier, Slahi had visited Afghanistan.

     At the time of Slahi's Afghanistan foray,  mujahideen fighters -- with US support -- were battling a communist government. Slahi also had been involved in a financial transaction involving a cousin who was part of the al Qaeda web.

     The Mauritanian clearly stands on Slahi's side, taking a highly critical view of the interrogation methods adopted during the George W. Bush, post 9/11 administration. Slahi, by the way, never was charged with a crime.

      Although he's depicted as considering himself safe from prosecution at the movie's outset,  Slahi awakens in Gitmo where he endures a Kafkaesque 14 years that included good guy/bad guy interrogation and torture. 

     After  enduring numerous bouts of torture, Slahi confessed.

     Enter Albuquerque-based attorney Nancy Hollander (Jodie Foster) who takes on Slahi's case as part of her pro bono work. She's assisted by Teri Duncan (Shailene Woodley), a younger attorney.

    Benedict Cumberbatch plays a Louisiana-born marine, the attorney who opposes Hollander's efforts but seems a decent enough fellow. 

    Religious and committed to his job, Cumberbatch's Lt. Col. Stuart Couch lost a pal on United Flight 175. He's enthusiastic about his work, but he's also portrayed as a man who believes in fair play. He doesn't want to be part of what might amount to a conspiratorial lynching.

     Foster opts for a performance consisting of tight, highly controlled gestures. An underutilized Woodley doesn't make much of an impression. 

     Not surprisingly, the movie's most vivid performance is given by Tahar Rahim, as Slahi, a man who doesn't immediately tell his lawyers about his confession for fear that he'll be tortured again.

     Director Kevin Macdonald (The Last King of Scotland) plays the story straight, turning the film into a legal procedural with highly unsettling scenes of Slahi's torture.

    Thanks to Slahi's Guantanamo Diary, lots of news reports, and documentaries, the material in The Mauritanian, though predictably disturbing, hardly feels revelatory. 

    At this point, The Mauritanian feels less like a compelling expose than a dutiful reminder that Guantanamo has produced stories that the US won't want to paste in its book of proud memories. 

    

    

Nominees for the 2021 Critics Choice Awards

The year 2020 may have been ...

Oh well, pick your own adjective.

Despite a larger than usual amount of election- and Covid-induced  craziness, the Critics Choice Association (CCA) -- a group to which I belong -- has revealed its nominations for this year's film awards. Winners will be announced on March 7 at on an awards show to be broadcast on the CW network beginning at 7 p.m.

Mank, director David Fincher's look at the writing of the script for Citizen Kane, led the field with 12 nominations, including best director, best actor, best supporting actress, and best screenplay.

Minari, the story of a Korean family trying to establish a farm in Arkansas during the 1980s, came in second with 10 nominations.

For those prepping for the coming awards season, here's a complete list of this year's nominees:*

*Nominees for this year's Oscars, by the way,  will be announced on March 15. 

 BEST PICTURE  

Da 5 Bloods 

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom 

Mank 

Minari

News of the World 

Nomadland 

One Night in Miami 

Promising Young Woman  

Sound of Metal 

The Trial of the Chicago 7 

 

BEST ACTOR  

Ben Affleck – The Way Back  

Riz Ahmed – Sound of Metal 

Chadwick Boseman – Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom 

Tom Hanks – News of the World 

Anthony Hopkins – The Father  

Delroy Lindo – Da 5 Bloods 

Gary Oldman – Mank

Steven Yeun – Minari 

 

BEST ACTRESS  

Viola Davis – Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom 

Andra Day – The United States vs. Billie Holiday 

Sidney Flanigan – Never Rarely Sometimes Always

Vanessa Kirby – Pieces of a Woman 

Frances McDormand – Nomadland 

Carey Mulligan – Promising Young Woman

Zendaya – Malcolm & Marie 

 

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR  

Chadwick Boseman – Da 5 Bloods

Sacha Baron Cohen – The Trial of the Chicago 7 

Daniel Kaluuya – Judas and the Black Messiah  

Bill Murray – On the Rocks

Leslie Odom, Jr. – One Night in Miami 

Paul Raci – Sound of Metal  

 

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS  

Maria Bakalova – Borat Subsequent Moviefilm 

Ellen Burstyn – Pieces of a Woman 

Glenn Close – Hillbilly Elegy 

Olivia Colman – The Father)  

Amanda Seyfried – Mank

Yuh-Jung Youn – Minari 

 

BEST YOUNG ACTOR/ACTRESS  

Ryder Allen – Palmer 

Ibrahima Gueye – The Life Ahead 

Alan Kim – Minari  

Talia Ryder – Never Rarely Sometimes Always 

Caoilinn Springall – The Midnight Sky  

Helena Zengel – News of the World 

 

BEST ACTING ENSEMBLE  

Da 5 Bloods 

Judas and the Black Messiah 

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom 

Minari 

One Night in Miami 

The Trial of the Chicago 7

 

BEST DIRECTOR  

Lee Isaac Chung – Minari 

Emerald Fennell – Promising Young Woman 

David Fincher – Mank  

Spike Lee – Da 5 Bloods 

Regina King – One Night in Miami   

Aaron Sorkin – The Trial of the Chicago 7

Chloé Zhao – Nomadland  

 

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY  

Lee Isaac Chung – Minari 

Emerald Fennell – Promising Young Woman 

Jack Fincher – Mank 

Eliza Hittman – Never Rarely Sometimes Always 

Darius Marder & Abraham Marder – Sound of Metal  

Aaron Sorkin – The Trial of the Chicago 7

 

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY  

Paul Greengrass & Luke Davies – News of the World

Christopher Hampton and Florian Zeller – The Father 

Kemp Powers – One Night in Miami   

Jon Raymond & Kelly Reichardt – First Cow  

Ruben Santiago-Hudson – Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom )  

Chloé Zhao – Nomadland

 

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY  

Christopher Blauvelt – First Cow  

Erik Messerschmidt – Mank 

Lachlan Milne – Minari

Joshua James Richards – Nomadland  

Newton Thomas Sigel – Da 5 Bloods   

Hoyte Van Hoytema – Tenet 

Dariusz Wolski – News of the World   

 

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN  

Cristina Casali, Charlotte Dirickx – The Personal History of David Copperfield 

David Crank, Elizabeth Keenan – News of the World 

Nathan Crowley, Kathy Lucas – Tenet   

Donald Graham Burt, Jan Pascale – Mank  

Kave Quinn, Stella Fox – Emma 

Mark Ricker, Karen O’Hara & Diana Stoughton – Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom 

 

BEST EDITING  

Alan Baumgarten – The Trial of the Chicago 

Kirk Baxter – Mank   

Jennifer Lame – Tenet 

Yorgos Lamprinos – The Father 

Mikkel E. G. Nielsen – Sound of Metal   

Chloé Zhao – Nomadland 

 

BEST COSTUME DESIGN  

Alexandra Byrne – Emma

Bina Daigeler – Mulan 

Suzie Harman & Robert Worley – The Personal History of David Copperfield

Ann Roth – Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom

Nancy Steiner – Promising Young Woman  

Trish Summerville – Mank 

 

BEST HAIR AND MAKEUP  

Emma  

Hillbilly Elegy)  

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom  

Mank

Promising Young Woman 

The United States vs. Billie Holiday   

 

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS  

Greyhound  

The Invisible Man 

Mank 

The Midnight Sky  

Mulan 

Tenet 

Wonder Woman 1984   

 

BEST COMEDY  

Borat Subsequent Moviefilm 

The Forty-Year-Old Version

The King of Staten Island

On the Rocks

Palm Spring

The Prom 

 

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM  

Another Round 

Collective

La Llorona 

The Life Ahead 

Minari 

Two of Us 

 

BEST SONG  

Everybody Cries – The Outpost 

Fight for You – Judas and the Black Messiah  

Husavik (My Home Town) – Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga 

Io sì (Seen) – The Life Ahead 

Speak Now – One Night in Miami  

Tigress & Tweed – The United States vs. Billie Holiday

 

BEST SCORE  

Alexandre Desplat – The Midnight Sky

Ludwig Göransson – Tenet  

James Newton Howard – News of the World 

Emile Mosseri – Minari 

Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross – Mank 

Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross, and Jon Batiste – Soul 

A pandemic of lost memory

 Little Fish is the second movie I've seen this year that deals with a pandemic in which memory loss becomes rampant. Apples, a Greek movie that traveled the fall festival circuit, took place in Athens where many people were being struck by amnesia. Director Christos Nikou took a more complex view of memory loss than Little Fish director Chad Hartigan, who works in a more familiar key. Hartigan builds his story around a romance between newlyweds played by Olivia Cooke and Jack O'Connell. What begins as a conventional romance takes a strange turn when O'Connell's Jude begins to lose his memory. He's not the only one. What the movie calls Neuroinflammatory Affliction (NIA) has caused widespread memory loss. Much of the story involves efforts by Cooke's Emma to keep O'Connell's Jude from vanishing into a forgetful haze. A question arises: Is it possible to sustain a relationship when memory begins to vanish? The movie retreats from the question when it slips into romantic mode and a subplot involving a possible corrective program by a research outfit doesn't really go anywhere. Cooke and O'Connell make an appealing couple and we seldom feel deprived by the lack of an explanation for the disorder that's sweeping the globe. Obviously, the sense of disconnection from the familiar jibes well with the current Covid 19 environment. Although the movie can be a bit bland, I doubt whether many viewers will be disappointed that Little Fish plays more like romance than speculative sci-fi, flirting with larger questions as Emma and Jude try to hold onto each other and themselves.

Viggo Mortensen makes his directorial debut

    Falling, a serious, often disturbing film about a father/son relationship, marks the directorial debut of actor Viggo Mortensen.   

   Familiar to audiences for playing Aragorn in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy and for portraying a chauffeur who overcomes his racism in The Green Book, Mortensen drops us into rough terrain, showing what happens when an already difficult problem is made insoluble by dementia.

   The movie's son, played by Mortensen, is gay; the father, rendered in abrupt vitriolic strokes by Lance Henriksen, could serve as a poster boy for insensitivity. 

   Mortensen, who also wrote the screenplay, shifts between present and past to create a fuller picture of Willis's rueful life and its impact on his family.

   From the start, we know that Willis qualifies as a hard case: As a young father (played by Sverrir Gudnason), Willis looks at his infant son John and tells him that he's sorry he brought him into the world to die, hardly a feel-good welcome.

    The present-tense elements take place when the New York-based Willis visits California to be closer to his John and his sister, a late-appearing Laura Linney.  

    By this time, Henriksen's  Willis, a man in his 80s, has slipped into a demented fog. If Willis ever had any ability to censor his worsts impulses, they're long gone.

     John does his best to practice forbearance even as the visiting Willis crudely insults him and his husband Eric (Terry Chen). It doesn't take long to figure out why John and his sister wanted to put 2,400 miles between themselves and their father.

     Flashbacks flesh out the story of Willis's earlier days with  Hannah Gross appearing as Willis's wife. Fidelity isn't Willis's strong suit. Eventually, he leaves Gross's character for Jill (Bracken Burns), a woman he also abuses.

     To add shading, Mortensen includes scenes-- moments, really -- in which Willis shows genuine affection for his son. Both of these scenes involve hunting and provide much-needed nuance about the complexity of a bullying relationship.

     When a movie revolves around a character as caustic as Willis,  the other characters tend to be forced to the periphery. Mortensen's John, an Air Force veteran and late-blooming gay man, is raising a daughter (Gabby Velis) with his husband, but we don't learn a lot about that relationship.

       Perhaps in a bow to his work in David Cronenberg's A Dangerous Method, Eastern Promises and A History of Violence, Mortensen casts Cronenberg as a proctologist in one of Falling's lighter moments. Take it as a comment about the movie's tone that the comic relief takes place in a proctologist's office.

     Although I appreciated much about Falling, I can't say that I totally believed in Mortensen's highly concentrated approach, mostly because Willis is so out-sized in his repugnance that it's impossible to feel anything for him. Henriksen dominates the other performances, including Mortensen's fine portrayal of a man struggling not to engage in combat with a bullying father.

     I guess, then, it's possible to look at Falling as a kind of domestic war movie in which one side only can save itself by refusing to fight.

Bob's Cinema Diary: 2/5/20 -- 'Two of Us,' 'Bliss' and 'The Right One'

Two of Us

 Barbara Sukowa and Martine Chevallier  play aging lovers in Two of Us, director Filippo Meneghetti's look at a love that struggles to shed its secrecy. The two women live in adjoining apartments. Chevallier's Madeleine, called "Mado," resists uprooting her life and moving to Rome with Sukowa's Nina. Such a move would mean announcing her gayness and changing the emotional calculus that allows her to maintain her relationship with her grown children. They don't know she's gay. Early, on Madeline tells Nina that she's willing to sell her apartment and move to Rome. But she falters when it comes to informing her children. The movie's principal development involves Madeleine's health. After Madeline suffers a stroke, her daughter Anne (Lea Drucker) takes over her care. Madeline's son (Jerome Varanfrain) grows increasingly impatient with what appears to be Nina's intrusive efforts to remain in Madeline's life. The children think their late father was the love of Madeline's life. The arrival of a caregiver (Muriel Benazeraf)  prompts Nina's  to push Benazeraf's character aside so that she can fulfill a role that reflects the reality of a long, mostly satisfying relationship. We wonder whether Madeline, who has lost the ability to speak, will play a role in deciding the outcome. The movie has as much to do with Nina's ability to function in a climate of secrecy as with the love the two women share. That makes Two of Us a touching reminder of the toxic complexities that result when secrets are kept.

Bliss

Owen Wilson joins Salma Hayek in a story in which two  down-and-out Los Angelenos  enter an alternate reality that resembles the ultimate vacation destination. Or maybe that alternate reality is the real thing. Or maybe you won't care which is which. The story begins by introducing us to Wilson's befuddled Greg,  a man who messes up at work, accidentally kills his boss and then takes to the streets of Los Angeles. Divorced and at loose-ends, Greg seems unable to connect with his daughter (Nesta Cooper), a young woman who keeps trying to salvage her relationship with Dad. Initially, Hayek's Rita charges into the movie, telling Greg that she can free him from any suspicion that he may have murdered his boss. Rita's powers to tinker with reality apparently stem from crystals that she ingests and which she eventually shares with Wilson's Greg.  Rita explains the movie's various developments to Greg, but director Mike Cahill's movie never makes much sense and winds up as a ragged, lunging attempt to engage questions about the nature of reality and meaning that have been better addressed in other movies. Matrix enthusiasts can rest easy.

The Right One

If there's anything to be discovered by watching The Right One, it's that actress Cleopatra Coleman has the requisite humor and charm to hold a movie together. Of course, romcoms aren't solitary affairs: It takes two to tango. The second part of director Ken Mok's  ostentatiously quirky romcom revolves around Nick Thune, who's stuck playing Godfrey, a shape-shifting character who assumes various poses throughout the movie: a singing cowboy, an effete art critic, or a hard-rocking DJ. For reasons that aren't clear, Coleman's Sarah is attracted to Godfrey and pursues him without even knowing his real name. She's a writer and aren't all writers fascinated by oddballs? Godfrey reluctantly becomes involved with Sarah, allowing her to visit the many characters he plays. The plot strains to tell us why Godfrey can't simply be himself. All of this amounts to little, aside from providing each actor with an opportunity to showcase something: Thune, versatility; Coleman, snappy charm. But both are stranded by an implausible story that, rather than reaching a crescendo of love and acceptance,  sticks a flat ending. With Iliza Schlesinger as Sarah's obnoxiously self-absorbed editor.

A great house and a battling couple

 

   There's something so arty and insular about Malcolm & Marie that I found it nearly impossible to forget that I was watching a movie. 

   Director Sam Levinson has made a two-hander about a battling couple played by John David Washington and Zendaya. 

   The movie may remind you of other battling couples, notably Edward Albee's George and Martha in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, a movie that also was shot in black-and-white.

    I'll get to the couple -- a filmmaker and his muse -- in a moment. 

     First, though, a word about architecture. If a movie is to take place almost entirely within one house, the house better be interesting and evocative. Levinson has chosen the Caterpillar House in Carmel, Ca. 

     Set mostly at night, we're keenly aware of the vast glass walls of the living room, the sense of West Coast openness and the self-conscious modernity of a house that seems as much a statement as a home.

   Of course, I digress. So let me say that inside the house we find an uneven mixture of battling, rants and emotional exposure -- or, just another day in the life of a young couple.

   Washington plays Malcolm, a filmmaker who's returning to a home that has been provided by his production company. His new film has just had its premiere.

    Zendaya's Marie is the lover and partner Malcolm forgot to acknowledge in his thank-you speech after the movie, a bit of neglect sets off the fireworks. 

     A former drug addict, Marie also believes that Malcolm appropriated events from her life without bothering either to credit her or cast her in his movie.

   Initially, Malcolm rides an adrenalin-fueled wave of triumph as he dances through the living room. It seems as if his movie will give him career-making credibility. He's like a person who has learned he's just won the lottery -- only, in this case, his triumph has been earned.

     While Malcolm enthuses about himself or rants on other matters, Marie makes a bowl of mac and cheese -- from a box no-less. If this is an act of ego deflation, what to make of the fact that Malcolm eats it?

    Marie slowly pulls the rug out from under the joyous Malcolm and, in the process, raises questions about creativity, ethics, and self-image.

    Even when they're interesting or amusing, battling couples can get on your nerves. If you'd have been in the presence of Malcolm and Marie during their long evening of ire, it wouldn't take long before you began looking for the exits.

    This is not to fault the acting. Zendaya punches well in the emotional clinches. Washington finds a groove, at one point delivering a rapid-fire monologue about being pigeon-holed as a black filmmaker by a critic. Ironically, the same critic also called his film a "master work."

    The lengthy soliloquy is impressive if only for Washington's ability to sustain the energy and powers of elocution required to deliver it.

    Levinson inches the characters toward sexual intimacy and then retreats; he primes us for deep revelation but none seems to be forthcoming. Sometimes rant substitutes for dialogue. 

    The total effect is oddly unsettling. By the time the movie ended, I felt as I'd been watching a skillful simulation of an art movie rather than the real thing.

     Put another way, Malcolm & Marie requires too much effort for too little reward.

B-movie maneuvers with an A-list cast

    A thriller that evokes memories of other movies about cops and serial killers, The Little Things traffics in downbeat atmospherics with a thriller set in 1990s. 

   Denzel Washington, Rami Malek, and Jared Leto star in a story that has been vamped on and recycled so many times, it's difficult to see the movie as more than another genre exercise.

    Looking paunchy, exhausted and gray, Denzel Washington plays Joe "Deke" Deacon, a Northern California deputy sent to LA to retrieve a piece of evidence.  As it turns out, Joe once worked in LA, a city he couldn't escape without tarnishing his reputation.

    Once in LA, Joe teams with Jimmy Baxter (Rami Malek), an LA detective with a starched personality and a talent for getting himself on the news. Jimmy asks Joe to join him in trying to solve a string of murders, prostitutes who have been mutilated.

   Enter Albert Sparma (Jared Leto), an LA refrigerator repairman who lives on the margins, walks with a waddle and has enough smarts to make for a tough interview when the cops haul him in for questioning. 

     With long hair that looks as if it hasn't been washed for weeks and a taste for strip clubs, Albert has prime suspect written all over him.

     Washington has an uncanny ability to make us believe that any character he plays knows more than anyone else. He and Malek make a decent enough team, mismatched at first but increasingly on the same page.

     The screenplay creates a predictable thematic link between Joe and Jimmy, building a connection around each's capacity for moral compromise. Joe was suspended from the LA force because he became obsessed with a case that shattered his marriage and put him in the hospital for triple bypass surgery.

     Director John Lee Hancock (The Blind Side, Saving Mr. Banks) turns out a police procedural that peeks into the darkest corners of cop and criminal behavior -- not so much because it's curious but because the atmospherics demand it. 

     Even worse, the story falls short during the final act which finds Jimmy behaving  in ways that defy credibility. 

     The Little Things fulfills many of the requirements of a gritty genre piece, moving its characters through a world from which no one escapes uncorrupted, sort of a B-movie with an A-list cast and noir shading.

       But with three Oscar winners in the principal roles, it's not unfair to have expected something more.

      

Terror In a hotel without check-out

 

    The most frightening things often go unseen. Considering that, it always surprises me that most horror films focus on the visible impact of one form of mayhem or another.

   Night, a film about an Iranian couple living in Los Angeles, takes a different approach. Although we hear threatening sounds and see eerie sights, the movie relies heavily on the potent power of suggestion.

    Born and raised in Tehran and now living in Los Angeles, director Kourosh Ahari introduces us to several affluent Iranian couples living the good life in LA. 

     Initially, The Night looks as if it's going to be a well-observed movie in which the problems of these couples slowly emerge.

     But Ahari quickly switches gears. One couple (Shahab Hosseini and Niousha Noor) leave the party. He's had a bit too much to drink. She says they ought to return to the party and sleep at the host's house. He refuses but eventually agrees to suspend a wobbly drive so that they can spend the night at a hotel: husband, wife, and their infant daughter.

      It won't surprise you to learn that the hotel's receptionist (George Maguire) is creepy -- in a dry way that might not mean anything or might mean a lot. 

      The hotel seems to be empty of other guests. Strange noises begin to go ... you'll pardon the expression ... bump in the night.

     As it turns out, both Hosseini's Babak and Noor's Neda have kept secrets from each other. Gradually emerging secrets create a no-exit dynamic: The couple can't move on unless they accept truths about themselves. They can't leave the hotel.

    The Night is haunting, even if it  suffers a bit from a problem that's endemic to all such movies: The buildup isn't quite matched by the finale -- although, in this case, it's not for lack of trying.

     Still, Ahari proves himself a master of dread and threat and Night follows a Farsi-speaking couple into a night in which their  defenses begin to unravel.

A couple on a journey toward the end

    Recently, it seems as if I've been watching nothing but movies about death and dying. That impression probably isn't entirely true and may stem from reading daily news reports about the pandemic and its ghastly mortality rate.

   Supernova, which stars Stanley Tucci and Colin Firth as  long-time lovers is a death movie with a double whammy. Tucci's Tusker, a novelist by trade, has an increasingly encompassing case of dementia. 

   This means that he's destined to disappear before he actually dies. Firth's Sam decides that they should take one last trip before Tusker's memory completely disintegrates and he no longer even recognizes Sam.

   The two pile into a van and travel through the English north country with a stop at Sam's sister's home. 

    Tusker takes medication meant to slow his decline, but he leaves it at home, a clue that the journey has a different final destination than the one Sam, a pianist, anticipates.

    Tucci and Firth convincingly create a couple with behavior patterns, endearments, and gentle squabbles that have evolved  over many years. 

    I called them lovers earlier in this review. That may be the wrong term. They're lovers, of course, but they're also an old couple who have grown entirely accustomed to each other's ways.

   Sam says he's fully prepared to spend the rest of his life caring for Tusker -- even it means going beyond the point where Tusker knows who he is. Tusker has another idea: I won't say what it is, but you probably already know. 

   The performances aren't showy and director Harry Macqueen doesn't hurry toward the end of the road for a couple engulfed in deep sorrow while still clinging to many of the routine interactions that have defined their relationship.

   Macqueen tends to be more even-handed than gut-wrenching. Supernova isn't a tear-jerker. The chemistry between the actors and the filmmakers results in a movie that's admirably respectful of the intimacy and burden a couple faces when confronting the inevitable.