Edge of the City - A Film Review

At the Moving Image museum, I watched Edge of the City, a 1957 movie starring John Cassavetes, Sidney Poitier, Jack Warden, and Ruby Dee. It was a gritty movie dealing with issues of race, as Cassavetes plays a dock worker running away from his tortured past, befriending his gregarious boss (Poitier), and dealing with threats of blackmail from his racist other boss (Warden).

The film was really well-acted, and I always like seeing small details in how life was different decades ago (phone operators speak live on collect calls and listen to conversations; the $1.70/hr dockworker wages and a bet where the loser owes 40 cents). I liked that the film felt more like an independent film than a Hollywood movie, though the music score could get way too over dramatic at times (like getting louder during a scene with the villain or during any kind of pathos).

Poitier was very charming and likable in his role, and was a total scene-stealer from Cassavetes. He would be nominated from an Academy Award the next year for The Defiant Ones. He was so compelling to watch that it felt like a shame that more POC actors during that time didn't get as much fame as he and Harry Belafonte did. Rita Moreno is one of likely three Latino actors to win an Academy Award for acting, and I believe there has been only two Asian actors who won Oscars for acting (Ben Kingsley, and a supporting actor from The Killing Fields).

The film's director, Martin Ritt, also directed Hud and Norma Rae, and seemed to excel in making films about working class people fighting for a better life.

I was also really impressed with Ruby Dee, particularly in a heavy dramatic scene that exemplified her pain and the cowardice of Cassavetes' character. She was really excellent. And Jack Warden, though he played an awful racist, excelled in his role, too. I only knew of him as an old man from Problem Child and While You Were Sleeping, so it was nice to see him in a much earlier role.

Obvious Child - A Film Review

I really adored the movie Obvious Child, written and directed by Gillian Robespierre. I saw the original 2009 short film on Vimeo several years ago, and enjoyed seeing a feminist film about a woman who gets an abortion with no regrets. It starred Jenny Slate, and I knew of her from ten years ago from being on VH1 pop culture shows and briefly on SNL. I liked that she was really good in a dramatic role while still being charming and funny and relatable.

The full-length movie came out in 2014, and I love how it is a romantic comedy with a sympathetic heroine (Slate) named Donna, who is funny, vulnerable, and is coming of age at nearly 30, learning to be more confident and less insecure. She still gets an abortion (product of a one-night-stand after getting dumped by her boyfriend for her friend), but it isn't the point of the movie, nor is it her romance with her hookup. It is about her growing up and learning to love and accept herself.

While the movie can feel very insular in its depiction of Brooklyn hipster-ness (it is a very white cast, scenes are set in trendy parts of Williamsburg and Bushwick), I still found the movie touching, and I connected to it emotionally. I really liked the performances of Gaby Hoffmann and Gabe Liedman as Donna's best friends, who represent different aspects of her personality (the serious side and the party side) and while they contrast when giving her advice, Donna needs them both to be whole. Jake Lacy was endearing and boyishly sweet as the hookup, and I liked him in How to Be Single as well.

I hope to see more work from Gillian Robespierre, as she is very smart and talented and clearly feminist. and I like seeing Jenny Slate pop up in web series, TV shows, and voice work in cartoons, she is a gem.

Rush - A Film Review

I have a weird guilty pleasure movie. I really like the 1991 movie Rush, starring Jason Patric and Jennifer Jason Leigh as undercover narcotics cops in 1975 Texas trying to bust drug dealers, mainly a local drug kingpin (Gregg Allman). The cops have to do hard drugs as part of their cover, and they get in too deep in their addictions, as well as falling in love with one another.

It is a really bleak movie about drug addiction and police corruption, yet I find it compelling. The relationship between the cops is intimate and complex, as they form a deep bond and fight through their addictions while trying to get their cases done, as the kingpin is too smart and elusive for them. Leigh's character Kristen starts out as a rookie cop whose only previous drug experience was smoking two joints in college, and she is determined to prove herself worthy of the force (especially in a time when female rookie cops were purposely put in dangerous situations in order to scare them off of the force), and quickly gets into a heroin addiction, getting into way more that she can handle. Patric's character Jim is a more experienced cop who is blunt about liking drugs too much, while thinking he can kick a habit after "a few days of sweaty sheets,' and his addiction becomes much more debilitating, as he falls apart much more than Kristen did.

Patric brought a lot of dark mystery to Jim, as he seemed like someone who was a natural addict and chose being a narcotics officer as a cover for access to drugs, while Leigh delivered a great performance in tracking the journey of Kristen from rookie to addict to survivor.

I also enjoyed the performances of Sam Elliott as a seasoned detective who survived his addictions and is worried about his younger officers; Max Perlich as a frightened young man who is pressured to snitch on his dealer friends for a lighter conviction; and William Sadler as a seedy drug dealer cooking meth in a dirty lab and looking sketchy with homemade tattoos.

Gregg Allman as Gaines has very few lines, but his quiet intensity often makes him intimidating, and he easily looked like his 1970s self in 1991, carrying a rock 'n roll swagger with him. The movie opens with a fantastic one-take panning shot that follows Gaines through his bar as everyone greets him with fear and respect, a la the Goodfellas scene of Henry Hill being greeted by everyone in a Mafia-run club.

Eric Clapton did the original score, and it is so 1970s blues rock that I forget it isn't original music from that era. It sets the tone for the seediness of the drug culture of the Texan town, like its own world in a bubble. But I don't like that "Tears in Heaven" plays in one scene, because even though it is a song about death that plays after a major character's death scene, I found it to be too contemporary, and too much of a reminder of Clapton's son's death in the early 90's, taking me out of the 1975 era.

The film was written by Pete Dexter and directed by Lili Fini Zanuck, and was based on a true story about two 1970s narcotics officers who planted evidence on dealers because they snorted or shot up the original evidence, and were convicted of their police corruption.

The cinematography often has a muted or brownish look to it, and the set designers and costumes paid close detail to the era, likely using a lot of vintage clothes and props. It really looked of the era, and made the story much more believable.

I really like this film, mostly for Leigh's performance, the seedy drug underbelly it depicts, and how the cops aren't any different than the addicts and dealers they are trying to bust. It is a compelling movie, and a personal guilty pleasure of mine despite its dark story.

Thoughts on The Witch

I enjoyed seeing The Witch last month. It is a slow burn of a movie, and is about an isolated 1630s English family falling victim to their own religious hysteria and being tormented by a shape shifting witch. I liked that the movie felt really uncomfortable to watch, with a lot of tension, still moments, growing sense of dread, and horror without jump scares, showing more horror with the family turning on each other than the witch being overexposed.

The acting was fantastic, and I liked seeing a story that combined folklore and witchcraft with a story of a family going insane in a faraway time, it felt like a story that could really happen, of a family destroying themselves due to religious delusions and fear of the supernatural. The witch only made sporadic appearances, in human and animal forms, and was genuinely disturbing.

I was impressed by how well the actors spoke the Old English dialogue, but sometimes I had trouble following what was being said, especially with all the "thou, thee, thy, dost" talk. Some conversations were difficult to understand (as well with the characters' thicker regional accents), and I had to read a plot summary afterwards to catch up on parts I missed or didn't understand.

Also, while I liked the slow pace of the film, the story felt like it was a lot of buildup, as things just kept getting worse for the family. It did have a major climatic moment (which a little boy really acted the hell out of), but it still felt like the story was just adding more creepy moments rather than having a powerful third act. I saw the movie more as telling a folk tale with horror elements rather than being a straight horror film, and liked the feeling of being taken far in time to a story that seemed terrifying in its depiction of religious hysteria and family abuse. I highly recommend the film.

Thoughts on Danny DeVito

I really enjoyed reading this NY Times article about Danny DeVito's Twitter presence. I think he is an underrated dramatic actor, and thought of as too comic because of his shortness, his brash Italian-American Jersey accent, and being widely known as the Penguin or Frank Reynolds or other over-the-top comic characters. I was amazed by how great he was in Living Out Loud, a wonderful movie in which he plays a lonely yet optimistic doorman grieving the death of his daughter and the los...s of his marriage, and trying to find his way in life. I found him extremely endearing and relatable, and it is one of my favorite roles of his.

I also thought he was great in Jack the Bear (another dramatic role in which he played a widower father struggling with grief and keeping his family together), and I like that he has a very dark sense of humor, illustrated by the films he has directed (Matilda, Throw Momma From the Train, The War of the Roses, Death to Smoochy, Duplex). He is just a great actor and personality.

Thoughts on 10 Cloverfield Lane

I really enjoyed seeing 10 Cloverfield Lane, a film directed by Dan Tratchenburg. I found it to be very intense and riveting. I went to see it because I saw that it was about a woman trying to escape from being held captive in a bomb shelter by a conspiracy theorist paranoid about a nuclear or alien attack above, and it starred two actors I really respect: John Goodman and Mary Elizabeth Winstead.

The film was very tight and captivating to watch, as most of it takes place in... the bomb shelter, with three players, and there are a lot of mental gymnastics to play as to whether or not there is an attack, as well as the motivations of Goodman's character Howard. He can be a paranoid control freak with good intentions, trying to protect the younger people from danger. In other scenes, he is a calculating monster, intimidating his captives into showing him "respect" after the "kindness" that he has shown them after saving their lives. Goodman is a well-respected and versatile actor, but sometimes he gets taken for granted as a supporting actor, seen as just consistently good. He hasn't had an Oscar nomination, and though the Oscars don't honor horror films much for acting performances, I think Goodman deserves special recognition for this study in character acting, not just as a villain in a thriller. He was just great in this in a chilling performance.

I don't want to say a lot about it, because I don't want to spoil the film, but I liked how the film kept the audience guessing, and were in the head of Winstead's character Michelle, a woman who wakes up after a car accident chained up in the bomb shelter with an injured leg. She is immediately skeptical about Howard's claims about saving her life before the attack, and keeps trying for a way out, trying to read the scene and play calmly while using her wits and senses to plot an escape. Winstead is someone who is really talented at finding the humanity and realism in a character, and losing herself in a character to find its nuances (much like how Goodman does here to great effect). I liked that she just kept fighting and didn't give up, but one could still see her mental anguish and frustration, she wasn't infallible. I just related to her character a lot, and it was due to Winstead's stellar performance.

John Gallagher, Jr. played Emmet, the other captive in the house, and I liked trying to figure out his background and motivation, like to catch a tell or a twist. Though I ended up being wrong about my predictions, I still liked trying to figure him out, as he seemed too innocent and nice on the outside to be believed at first (not acting-wise, more his motivations).

I liked that the film was uncomfortable to watch. It is more of a thriller and less horror in the boo-scare sense, but I prefer horror movies that are psychological and have monsters that aren't who you expect, it is more interesting.

Thoughts on No Más Bebés

I highly recommend the documentary No Más Bebés, directed by Renee Tajima-Peña. It is streaming on PBS' website, and is about Mexican immigrant mothers in L.A. who were sterilized without their consent or knowledge after their childbirths in the 1960s and 1970s (due to eugenics about controlling the population of poor people) and a young Chicana feminist lawyer in the 1970s, who empowered the women to sue the hospitals & government and gain reproductive rights for all women.

The women, many of whom were Mexican immigrants who understood little English, were manipulated and coerced into signing documents in English (which they couldn't read or write), often times being told they were signing for a C-section or that it was for a critical surgical procedure post-birth that they would die from if they didn't sign the release. The women didn't know about the sterilizations until years later, and it had devastating effects on them and their marriages and families. The feminists who fought for their rights, as well as the women who made their stories public, were really brave and courageous to do this.

It is a really fascinating documentary, and I learned more about Chicana life, reproductive rights, feminism, and human rights.