review Archives - Page 25 of 64 - Ramblin' with Roger

Movie review: Blow The Man Down

Greek chorus

The movie Blow The Man Down begins with David Coffin and other men singing the title song. You may know the tune from Popeye cartoons. The singers are a Greek chorus of sorts, I suppose. I enjoyed them quite a lot.

The story proper begins with the funeral of Mary Margaret Connolly in Easter, Cove, Maine. She had two adult daughters, Priscilla (Sophie Lowe) and Mary Beth (Morgan Saylor). The mom had three good friends Susie (June Squibb), Doreen (Marceline Hugot), and Gail (Annette O’Toole) who say they’ll be there for the daughters.

Part of the trio’s mission is to change the profile of the local, er, B and B, run by their former colleague, Enid Nora Devlin (Margo Martindale). The proprietor seems disinclined.

Meanwhile, a murdered body washes up on the shore. Officer Coletti (Skipp Sudduth) and his younger, more eager colleague, Officer Justin Brennan (Will Brittain) are investigating the homicide.

That’s all I’ll say about the plot. The story was written and directed by Bridget Savage Cole and Danielle Krudy.

Satisfaction

Leonard Maltin’s observations seem applicable. “Blow the Man Down hasn’t great ambitions but fulfills its modest goals nicely. It’s well worth streaming, especially if you have a cup of chowder handy.” In fact, 98% of the critics gave the film a thumbs up, ranking #29 on the Rotten Tomatoes list for 2020.

General audiences were a bit more critical, with 75% liking it. Some found it too slow, or too much like Fargo. A few complained about the resolution; I thought it was one of the best elements. Others didn’t like the singing fishermen, for which I say, FIE!

Maybe it is that I am particularly fascinated with family secrets, many of which do not come to light until after someone dies. This narrative felt emotionally true for me.

I’ve liked June Squibb ever since I saw her in the movie Nebraska back in 2014. But the scene-stealer in this film is Margo Martindale, who is the focus of every scene she’s in.

I watched Blow the Man Down on Amazon Prime.

Graphic novel: Michael Jackson in Comics

as talented as he was eccentric

A friend of mine provided me with a digital version of Michael Jackson in Comics, a 190-page item from NBM Graphic Novels, officially released on February 12. Conceptually, I liked the idea of a narrative, broken up by various artists showing bits of the story.

It’s interesting to me that I actually knew a fair amount of the Michael Jackson story beforehand. I was familiar with his abusively controlling father, Joe trying to whip the Jackson 5 into shape. Like millions, I watched the 25th anniversary of Motown, when he debuted the moonwalk. But I had forgotten about his friendship with young Ryan White, who had become the face of HIV/AIDS in America.

Specifically, I wrote a paper in library school about how MTV didn’t allow black artists on the channel until the Columbia/Epic label threatened to pull ALL of their artists. Now, it’s hard to think of MTV without the videos from the Thriller album.

But the writer gingerly deals with the more “wacko” elements, such as his surgeries, his children, and the allegations of abusing young boys. Clearly, he believes Michael’s versions of the stories or thinks we just don’t know the facts.

The graphic pieces, done in the many styles, I enjoyed, for the most part. I preferred the pieces that actually expressed a point of view, rather than merely restating what was in the text. In particular, I thought Vox’s The Man With the White Socks, about a goofy fan, was a bit humorous.

Prolific

I take it that someone named Céka wrote both the text and scripted biography. He’s noted on Amazon as “also the author of the Rolling Stones in Comics. Formerly a copywriter in advertising, he has scripted over 30 graphic novels.”

The narrative is much better with the art. While some of the text was necessary, especially in the beginning and the very end, the story got very repetitive. If those text sections were edited down by about 50%, it would be a much better collection.

Moreover, he tended to use a lot of exclamation marks unnecessarily! And whoever did the layout would put hyphens to break up words in a most bizarre way! Mon-ths, for instance!

MJ was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Twice in five years. As the introduction to Michael Jackson in Comics notes, well beyond his passing in 2009, he “remains one of the most adulated and mysterious stars in the world.” I expect that is still true.

“Incredible singer, brilliant musician, amazing performer, he was just as talented as he was eccentric, adored as well as reviled with sordid accusations, sadly caught between a stolen childhood and a suffocating star system.”

Movie review: Small Axe – Mangrove

Steve McQueen

Is Small Axe a movie, a series, or what?. It is a British anthology film series, according to Wikipedia. But IMDB refers to it as a TV miniseries.

Regardless, it was created and directed by Steve McQueen. Not the dead American actor, but the black British director. “The anthology consists of five films that tell distinct stories about the lives of West Indian immigrants in London from the 1960s to the 1980s.”

It’s been showing on BBC One in the UK and on Amazon Prime Video in the US. “The title references a proverb – ‘If you are the big tree, we are the small axe’ – that was popularized by Bob Marley in his 1973 song ‘Small Axe.'”

Mangrove, the first Small Axe film refers to “the Mangrove restaurant… and the 1971 trial of the Mangrove Nine.” The eatery was located in Notting Hill, but Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts are nowhere in sight. It was a “lively community base for locals, intellectuals and activists.”

“In a reign of racist terror, the local police raid Mangrove time after time, making Frank (Shaun Parkes) and the local community take to the streets in a peaceful protest in 1970. When nine men and women, including Frank and leader of the British Black Panther Movement Altheia Jones-LeCointe (Letitia Wright), and activist Darcus Howe (Malachi Kirby), are wrongly arrested and charged with incitement to riot, a highly publicized trial ensues…”

Mangrove also stars Rochenda Sandall, Alex Jennings, and Jack Lowden. You may recognize Wright, who portrayed Shuri in Black Panther and the last two Avengers movies.

Yes, it does

If you didn’t know about how rampant racism works, you’d find the police blowback over a guy who just wanted to start a Caribbean restaurant unbelievable. Indeed, in one of only two unfavorable reviews on Rotten Tomatoes out of 122, John Anderson of the Wall Street Journal wrote: “The brutality visited upon the Black characters is so extreme that you may find it hard to enter the story. This is not to say that what’s depicted didn’t happen. But as drama, it amounts to overkill.”

It’s difficult for some to believe that a place where people gathered and felt accepted could be a threat to the established order. Unfortunately, the events here do parallel incidents that have happened in the United States, some a few decades ago, others more recently.

Mangrove is a very fine film. I would be surprised if Wright and maybe others will be nominated for awards. McQueen’s real problem, based on what I’ve been reading, is that he may be in competition with his other Small Axe films. Episodes. Whatever they are.

Movie review: One Night In Miami

Jim Brown, Malcolm X, Sam Cooke, Cassius Clay

The movie One Night In Miami is about February 25, 1964. Boxer Cassius Clay (Eli Goree) fought Sonny Liston for the heavyweight crown. Malcolm X (Kingsley Ben-Adir) of the Nation of Islam and singer/songwriter Sam Cooke (Leslie Odom Jr.) were in attendance. The great football running back Jim Brown (Aldis Hodge) was doing commentary for a media outlet.

Then they got together afterward. The film was based on a stage play by Kemp Powers. While we don’t know precisely what the guys really talked about that night, the fascinating dialogue was a most credible representation of what they might have discussed. Conversations about expectations and capitalism and race and music, among other elements, as each professional was in the midst of a significant change in his life.

This was the directorial debut of Regina King, although you wouldn’t think so. She won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar and Golden Globe for the fine 2018 film If Beale Street Could Talk.

From stage to screen

As I look back on it, I recognize that King and Powers added on to the beginning of the film some scenes from prior to that night. Clay’s fight with Henry Cooper in June of 1963. Cooke’s opening night at a particular nightclub. A seemingly pleasant get together with Brown and a mentor. Malcolm musing about his future with his wife Betty (Joaquina Kalukango).

I think frontloading the film with these scenes somewhat hid the fact that most of the rest of the film was essentially in and around Malcolm’s motel room. Some films suffer from being too “stagey”, but I thought that the intimate dialogue made us feel as though we were in the room, not just observers.

The 299 critics on Rotten Tomatoes gave One Night in Miami a 98% approval rate. The acting was tremendous, not just the four leads, but minor characters such as Malcolm’s bodyguards, Kareem X (Lance Reddick), and Jamaal (Christian Magby). See this film.

Movie- All In: The Fight for Democracy

Stacey Abrams

The documentary All In: The Fight for Democracy is very good. And quite infuriating. As the New York Times subtitle of the review notes, “with snapshots and stories of voter suppression yesterday and today, [it] carries an urgent message: Vote!”

But they don’t make it easy. “The broad strokes of the history in the film are likely to be familiar to viewers, but some of the details may not be… The recurring theme is that every major advancement for voting rights in the United States has been met with a counterreaction that hollows out those rights.”

Yet the Constitution points to a broadening of the right. Read amendments 14, 15, 19, 23, 24, and 26, and arguably others.

The movie describes the Florida debacle., where the citizens voted to allow ex-felons to vote, but the state essentially reneged. I wrote about that here.

Stacey Abrams

The Stacey Abrams experience is mentioned early. She was the Democratic candidate for governor of Georgia in 2018, running against Republican Brian Kemp. Tens of thousands of voters were disenfranchised by the state Secretary of State, who was Brian Kemp. It was like playing tennis with the chair umpire.

“Abrams’s sections of the film are also a memoir: She remembers her grandmother telling her about casting her first vote, after the Voting Rights Act passed, and how she still felt terrified to exercise her franchise. At another point, Abrams notes that chronic voter suppression has had a ‘pernicious’ effect: ‘It convinces you that maybe it’s not worth trying again,’ she says.

“In its shifting of topics and breadth of material, “All In” gives the impression of being a movie that the directors, Liz Garbus and Lisa Cortés, rushed to complete to meet the moment. (There is footage of Wisconsinites voting during the pandemic in April.) In a sense, it’s less a documentary for posterity than an urgent broadcast.”

Voter Suppression

The Times article refers to Carol Anderson, “a professor of African American studies at Emory, as “one of the most engaging interviewees.” She “relates the story of Maceo Snipes, a World War II veteran in Georgia who was the only African-American to vote in his area in 1946.” He was shot and killed for his effort.

She and “journalist Ari Berman…discuss… Chief Justice John G. Roberts, who wrote the majority opinion in [the evil] Shelby County v. Holder” case. That’s the “2013 decision that struck down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act,” from which a lot of new disenfranchisement stemmed. Roberts “had been a foe of the act as a young lawyer.”

Oh, check out this related website to find out how to register and vote.

Thumbs way up

The 62 critics who reviewed All In at Rotten Tomatoes were unanimous in their praise of the film. It addresses “barriers to voting that most people don’t even know is a threat to their basic rights as citizens.” “A thorough but accessible guide to the history of voting in the US and what that history means for the electorate today.”

This definitely rings true: “The dismaying ebb and flow of justice is a major point in the film, with multiple pundits noting that periods of swift progress are often followed by equally if not more stringent rollbacks.” And it “makes a very convincing argument that the right to vote needs to be protected, and that democracy itself is under siege.”

More yin and yang: Stacey Abrams, a producer of the film, has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts to expand access to the right to vote. And Republicans have ALREADY introduced over 100 voter suppression bills in 2021.