Many friends raved about The Prom as just the kind of light fluff with content that we all crave, but – forgive me – I found it annoying. All the glitter and jazz hands failed to camouflage the apologetic born-that-way vibe that straight people adore.
The story: Four failed actors (Meryl Streep, James Corden, Nicole Kidman, Andrew Rannells) decide to take up a cause in order to make themselves seem sympathetic. They pick Emma (a constantly smiling Jo Ellen Pellman) from Indiana, who isn’t allowed to take her girlfriend to the prom and who is abused by both the high school kids and the head of the PTA (Kerry Washington). Her school principal (Keegan-Michael Key) supports her; he is the film’s only consistently warm-hearted and charming character.
The critic Jennifer Heaton nailed it when she wrote: “This adaptation of the Broadway show is like a supermarket celebrating Pride with a rainbow cake or your straight work colleague throwing around drag slang they don't understand.” Moreover, it is obvious that the film was directed by one man and written by two, because they understand little to nothing about lesbians, who are minor plot devices anyway. For example, the (cliched) gay Corden character decides he will make baby-butch Emma into a dazzling woman for the prom – and puts her into a pastel tulle dress, high heels (which she has never worn), makeup and flowers in her hair, and then they all crow about how gorgeous she is. She looks exactly like all the straight girls. It is a brutal case of debutchification which every poor dyke has experienced to their distress.
Each song sounds exactly the same as the next; the dancing is choreographed by someone who missed hip-hop altogether; and it feels like a homogenization of every musical from 1964. At an extremely long 2h 11m it’s about 2h 11m too long. Complete with evil mothers instantly forgiven via a hug, it is banal and boring.
A perfect Pandemic film, Uncle Frank propels us away from our present stress and drops us into 1973. Innocent Beth goes north to attend NYU where her Uncle Frank teaches. She discovers that he lives with his life-partner Wally. Via a road trip, they all end up back in the South for the funeral of Frank’s nasty-assed father (Beth’s grandfather) and the site of Frank’s devastatingly traumatic first teenage love. It is sometimes tough to watch, especially if you grew up with a vicious parent, and the joyful ending is excessive. The acting is superb, the film is often funny, and I highly recommend its bittersweet portrayal of loving support.
We all want diverting movies that are not unintelligent. I enjoyed “Belle,” the 2013 mainstream film based on the 18th Century life of the mixed-race daughter of the Royal Navy Captain whose family resided at Kenwood on Hampstead Heath. Heiress Dido Elizabeth Belle (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) is raised to know her limited place at the table of aristocrats. “Belle” features an impressive cast, thoughtful performances, and lush period settings. The tumultuous romances of both Dido and her sister/cousin are impacted by the clash between class and race. In the end, we witness the first judicial victory of the slavery abolition movement.
How do you make a profound film? Take one of our greatest playwrights, August Wilson (Pulitzer Prize); add the tortured, nuanced final performance of the late Chadwick Boseman as ambitious cornet player Levee; and anchor it with Viola Davis’ uncompromising seething portrait of the “Mother of the Blues” Ma Rainey. Let Levee seduce Ma Rainey’s pretty girlfriend (Taylour Paige) downstairs, while Ma is upstairs demanding her due from the white music men who want to exploit her prodigious talents. Highlight the scars of unendurable racism and how the different coping strategies divide the band members, and you have the elements of passionate truth-telling. Play-like in its staging, this is a film that must be seen and felt.
If you love you some Jane Austen and you love you some Bollywood, and if you need a joyous film with a happy ending, then rent this film from Amazon Prime for $3.99 and settle back. Filmmaker Gurinder Chadha (“Bend it Like Beckham”) sure knows her Pride & Prejudice. With an impressive respect for Austen’s words and wit, she creatively transports the Bennet/Bakshi family to India where a technicolor cast of thousands celebrates love. My main criticism is that William Darcy is played by an actor so bland and charmless that it is hard to believe he wins over Lalita/Elizabeth, the most outstanding of the four unmarried daughters. Loved it!
I know that "The Queen's Gambit" is all the rage, and, yes, it is one of the few series that I watched all the way through in perhaps three sittings. But as riveting as it is, I have some problems with it. This is a show about a woman, based on a book written by a man, with three male series writers, and a male director. In the right hands, that would not necessarily have been an issue, but I was bothered by how drenched it was in the male point of view. For me it wasn’t so much the male gaze as the male leer. (What was the point of view of centering the camera on her ass as she danced alone in her underwear in her own home?) And I wasn’t surprised to hear that most critics believe the main character had a great deal in common with the life of Bobby Fischer, a misogynist prick. ("They're terrible chess players... I guess they're just not so smart... I don't think they should mess into intellectual affairs, they should keep strictly to the home"—CBC)
Beth Harmon is a brilliant child prodigy and adult champion in chess. She has big eyes, a great sense of 60s fashion, and takes to leaning her chin in her palm in a fetching manner. She somehow attracts women and men who want to save her, serve her, and adore her, although she seems totally incapable of returning the favor. Beth is all about Beth, given to either dreamy or drunk or stoned monologues, and on the few occasions where she actually responds to another person, she is likely to be rude and brief.
I found it hard to stomach that she never cuts her chess teacher Mr. Shaibel into her success, although she mentions him. The first gesture of gratitude to this custodian at the orphanage where she lived, comes after his death.
The series packs a visual wallop. Every shot is carefully and skillfully framed, so much so that sometimes I felt it was a period-perfect series of stills. The episodes gallop along, clutching your attention all the time, until the 6th and 7th final episodes which were so repetitive and drawn out that my viewing partner wondered if they had changed it from a 5- to a 7-part series last minute and had to stretch out the narrative. For example, in the final chess battle, in Moscow, we see her exit the hall the first day to several women wanting her autograph. The next day, a dozen. The next day, fifty. The next day, a crowd. The next day, a mob. We got the point.
Sexually, she is an object of lust to all the men she beats in chess. Even a gay journalist wants her for a minute. She herself floats through life without sexual passion in her stylized outfits and big eyes, when she isn’t hiding in her home drinking and drugging herself into isolated oblivion, always to be saved by one of her admirers. She sleeps with one woman, but I don’t count it because it was only after getting stupid drunk on the night before the finals of a tournament.
I know they purport to examine mental health and substance misuse, but really the camera obsesses over her oversized eyes and caresses her increasingly stylish outfits. Beth Harmon is not a character I could believe, let alone love.
I found "The Queen's Gambit" suitably diverting, quirky, and just long enough to fit into pauses from following the Covid and breaking news. But I was also annoyed by the lack of authenticity around the inner life of this character.
The Crip Camp provided teens with disabilities a chance to join the “Woodstock generation” in an inspired summer camp environment that eliminated the barriers that had limited their lives: protective parents, separate schools, social ostracization. After meeting each other, they formed life-long bonds around courageous and witty activism. We watch the community go from the isolation of the 50s, through the struggle for the 504 legislation, and on to the famous 1990 crawl up the steps of the Capitol to win the ADA. This exhilarating film is the first documentary from Barack and Michelle Obama’s Higher Ground Productions. Enthusiastically recommended.
Circus of Books is a genuinely interesting film that engages us in its unique story, while leaving too many contradictions unexplored. In 1982, a religious woman and her genius husband, Karen and Barry Mason, “accidentally” become the owners of a West Hollywood gay porn store that served as the gay male hub from the flowering of the liberation movement through the AIDS pandemic. They closed it and retired after 35 years.
Directed by the couple’s daughter, Rachel Mason, the film fails to challenge Karen on her pretense to holiness as she not only sells but also produces this porn (with a surprisingly charming Jeff Stryker, no less); on her claim never to look at the wall of dildos that are their bestsellers; and on her alliance with Larry Flynt, portrayed here as a pure freedom fighter. Karen frames the whole of her career as a small business venture, in a way that privileges the structure over the content. We’d like to know how Barry’s genius (he invented dialysis equipment to help his dad) evaporated into an ever-smiling sidekick to Karen’s big personality. And what about the secrets and lies underpinning their ostensibly standard nuclear family. How the hell did they keep their ownership of this well-known store from their children? When one son, who appears to be rather numb, comes out, Karen freaks out in a spasm of hypocrisy. In the end, she redeems herself by becoming a major player in PFLAG – the parental support and education group.
I certainly recommend this film for it describes, as they say, ordinary people doing something that, in their own terms, is quite extraordinary. But I moderate my praise with a sense that the narrative skips too lightly over deep and convoluted realities.
Harry Belafonte chose to produce this captivating, potent film (1970) of Bernard Malamud’s story The Angel Levine as his come-back after a decade-long absence from movies. He stars alongside the excellent Zero Mostel (as the elderly impoverished Morris Mishkin) and the magnificent Yiddish stage actress Ida Kamińska (as Mishkin’s dying wife.) Belafonte plays the Jewish Angel Levine, or rather an apprentice angel who, in order to earn his wings, needs to convince the exhausted tailor Mishkin to believe in him. The two men grapple with issues of race, love, ethics, and friendship as the Angel tries to overcome Mishkin’s skepticism.
Take one of the greatest writers in English (Jane Austen); select her feistiest and most complex heroine (Emma); emphasize the comedy and the emotional transformation; film in really ornate grandiose estates; add in a scintillating cast that includes Bill Nighy and Miranda Hart and voila! – you’ve got a captivating film.
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