The Piano Lesson

Posted on November 19, 2024 at 1:47 pm

B +

Lowest Recommended Age:	High School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for strong language, violent content, some suggestive references and smoking
Profanity:	Strong language including many uses of the n-word
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Alcohol
Violence/ Scariness:	Tense emotional confrontations, recollections of enslavement and abuse, supernatural horror
Diversity Issues:	A theme of the movie, disabled character
Date Released to Theaters:	November 22, 2024

August Wilson wrote a play for each of the decades of the 20th century, all set in Pittsburgh and all exploring themes of race, family, and generational trauma. Denzel Washington, who starred in “Fences” on Broadway and directed and starred in the 2106 film that featured Viola Davis in her Oscar-winning role and produced “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” also starring Davis, who nominated for an Oscar, along with her co-star, Chadwick Boseman. This third in the series is a family story on screen and behind the camera, produced by Washington, directed by his son Malcolm Washington (who adapted the screenplay with Virgil Williams), starring his other son, John David Washington (“BlackkKlansman”), and his wife Pauletta and daughter Olivia in small roles.

The lesson here is not about someone learning how to play the piano. It is the struggle between Charles family siblings who represent two polar opposite views on history, heritage, and obligation. John David Washington and Danielle Deadwyler give sizzling performances as Boy Willie and Berniece (her name possibly a reference to a character in The Member of the Wedding).

Boy Willie, described by Wilson as “brash and impulsive, talkative and somewhat crude in speech and manner,” arrives at the Pittsburgh home shared by Berniece, her young daughter, and their Uncle Doaker (Samuel L. Jackson). He is uninvited, unannounced, unexpected, and unwanted. He and his friend Lymon (Ray Fisher) have driven a truck filled with watermelons from their rural community in Mississippi. Boy Willie’s plan is to sell the watermelons to get the money to buy property. It is more than a chance to be his own boss. The property was once owned by the Sutter family that enslaved his ancestors. The Sutter patriarch has just died by falling into his well.

The Sutter family also once owned a piano they got in exchange for slaves, separating a mother and child of the Charles family from the husband and father, a gifted carpenter, who was considered too valuable to sell. He carved his family’s history into the piano, and a later generation stole it from the Sutters. Now it is in the living room of Berniece’s home. The conflict in the play is between Berniece, who does not play the piano but refuses to sell it because of what it represents about the pain, skill, courage of her family. Boy Willie is determined to sell it so he can build a future which in his mind also honors the family history. If stealing the piano was a triumph over enslavement and abuse, owning the Sutter property is even more so.

Washington is a mesmerizing performer and his Boy Willie is electric, charismatic, and dangerous. Deadwyler has a quieter role, especially in the first half of the film, but gets a chance to show Berniece’s fiery determination. Wilson, always a master of creating arresting, complex characters, has two of his best in the two siblings. A conventional story would have the widowed Berniece find a happy ending with the preacher who loves her (Cory Hawkins, excellent as always). But Wilson’s plays grab onto big, existential issues and he did not hesitate to go to extremes to demonstrate the intensity of his characters’ struggles. When does your family history support you? When does it weigh you down? What do you do when the answer is both?

Parents should know that this film has strong language, including many uses of the n-word. Characters drink and smoke. There are references to the sad death of a husband and father and to the abuses and deprivations of enslavement and bigotry. The story also includes some supernatural/horror events with disturbing images.

Family discussion: Who is right, Berniece or Boy Willie? What could they have said to better explain why they felt so strongly? Does your family have a cherished heirloom and who cares the most about it?

If you like this, try: “Fences” and “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”

The Creator

Posted on September 28, 2023 at 5:39 pm

B-

Lowest Recommended Age:	High School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for violence, some bloody images and strong language
Profanity:	Strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	Extended action, peril, and violence, some involving a child and a pregnant woman, disturbing and grisly images, very sad death of a major character
Diversity Issues:	Some concerns about racial stereotypes
Date Released to Theaters:	September 29, 2023

“The Creator” is an apocalyptic sci-fi story about a war with AI that looks great but has a storyline that is an overlong (2 1/4 hour) mash-up of better, more thought-provoking films with more skillfully constructed world-building. I wonder how many reviews will suggest that if this is the kind of project we can expect from bot screenwriters, humans don’t have much to worry about.

Science fiction often extrapolates current conflicts by imagining the worst-case scenario of current technological developments or mirroring historical conflicts. “The Creator” does both, drawing from classics like “Terminator,” “Blade Runner,” “Her,” “Captain Marvel,” and “Apocalypse Now,” maybe a bit of “Dances with Wolves,” but just highlighting how much better those films are than this one.

The best moments are the film’s opening, with what appear to be archival black and white newsreels from the 1950s and 60s, chirpily introducing wonderful new thinking machines that will take over our most tedious tasks, make life easier, and free up our time for people and activities we love. They amusingly capture the upbeat tone and aesthetics of the post-WWII era.

But then we learn that (as in “Terminator”), the artificial intelligence humans created began thinking for itself, and what it thought was that it did not want to be the servants of humans anymore. And so, we are told, the AI dropped an atomic bomb on Los Angeles, wiping out the city. The AI robots are now so advanced that some, called simulants (think “Blade Runner’s” replicants) have faces and skin like humans, though no back of the head, and big, whirring, empty metal circles behind their ears. The humans and the AI are at war.

Humans have recently gained an edge when the story picks up in 2065. A military installation in the sky called NOMAD is powerful enough to track and destroy AI bases. Joshua (John David Washington), a former soldier with robotic arm and leg prosthetics, is living peacefully with his pregnant wife, Maya (Gemma Chan) in a house on an isolated beach. Around them is a community of friendly simulants.

They are discovered by NOMAD. Joshua, who turns out to have been undercover, trying to locate the mysterious person known as Nirmata, considered the creator and leader of the AI, tries to save Maya, but she appears to bekilled with the blown-up and shot simulents. Joshua is devastated. When military officers approach him to help them find a new weapon, reportedly the most powerful ever developed, he refuses, until Colonel Howell (Allison Janney) shows him evidence that Maya is still alive.

Joshua agrees to guide the mission to what was Maya’s community, and there he finds that the “weapon” is a highly advanced stimulant in the form of a little girl with a shaved head. She looks like she is about six years old. She can control power circuits and absorb information at an exponential rate. And so, like “The Last of Us,” a man and a young girl go on a journey. In this case, they are being chased by both the AI entities and the humans.

The action set-pieces are ably staged and the settings are striking. But the story is weak and superficial. Basically, the white people with cities and fancy weapons are the bad guys and the AIs, who mostly look Asian and live gently on the land, just want liberty and peace. A simulant says that it was human error that led to the bombing of LA. But one could just as easily say that it was human error that lead to artificial intelligence that violate Asimov’s laws of robotics, with no harm to humans an essential rule. Why do simulants eat and sleep? If they are so smart, why haven’t they learned from history that building the most powerful weapon has never led to peace? If they are so smart, why don’t they develop some proposal for peaceful co-existence?

More important, what does the movie want us to feel about all of this? Its politics are as muddled as the inconsistent world it invites us to consider.

Parents should know that this film has extended peril and violence, some involving a child (or an entity that looks like a child) and a pregnant woman. Many characters are injured and killed, including sad deaths of major characters, and there are onscreen deaths and some graphic, bloody images. Characters use strong language. There are unfortunate racial stereotypes, even with non-human AI.

Family discussion: Why make an AI in the form of a child? What kinds of rules should we impose on the corporations who develop and sell AI?

If you like this, try: “Blade Runner,” “The Tomorrow War,” and “Terminator”

Amsterdam

Posted on October 6, 2022 at 5:20 pm

B-

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for brief violence and bloody images
Profanity:	Brief strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Alcohol and drug use
Violence/ Scariness:	Very graphic bloody images, wartime violence
Diversity Issues:	A theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters:	October 7, 2022
Date Released to DVD:	December 5, 2022

David O. Russell’s film, “Amsterdam” has a powerhouse cast, a wisp of a true story and a wildly uneven and overly complicated script. The results are, therefore, messy and mixed. As a fellow movie-goer told me, watching the movie was like bobbing for apples. Much of the time we felt like we were under water and then all of a sudden something good would pop up.

Amsterdam (the city) appears in the film only in a brief happy moment in the lives of the three main characters, who have sworn to be best friends and protect each other. They are two WWI veterans, Harold Woodman (John David Washington), who would become a lawyer, Burt Berendsen (Christian Bale), already a doctor, and Valerie (Margot Robbie), a nurse who cared for them in a French hospital for wounded soldiers. Harold is Black and Burt is half Jewish and lower class than his high society wife, and bigotry is evident throughout the story. Indeed, as we see in a flashback, they met when Black US soldiers in France objected to their racist white officers — they were not even allowed to wear the uniform of their country — and Burt was assigned by the kind, honorable General Meekins (Ed Begley Jr.) to treat the Black soldiers with honor and dignity.

In the movie’s present setting of 1933 New York, both Burt and Harold are devoting their lives to helping other wounded veterans. They themselves bear the scars of combat and Burt has a glass eye due to his injuries (second movie with Bale losing a glass eye after “The Big Short”). He is also experimenting with pain medication for his patients and taking a lot of it himself. The men are working on a gala dinner honoring their fellow veterans that will become of increasing importance.

Every role, even the smallest, is superbly cast, with Robbie as the high-spirited, dada-esque artist, Zoe Saldana as a sympathetic nurse passing for “Portuguese,” Beth Grant as a bouillabaisse-making devoted wife, Matthias Schoenaerts and Alessandro Nivola as police detectives, significantly one also a wounded vet and one who did not serve, Timothy Olyphant, almost unrecognizable in a role I won’t spoil, and Michael Shannon and Mike Myers — yes, that Mike Myers) as bird-loving “benefactors” who may not be completely forthcoming about their real interests. Every performance is outstanding, but so much so that they begin to throw the storyline out of whack. In films like “Silver Linings Playbook,” “American Hustle,” and “Flirting with Disaster,” Russell made the mixture of bittersweet situations and some leavening humor work to reveal the characters and move the story. Here it just gets distracting.

The daughter of General Meekins (Taylor Swift, yes, that Taylor Swift), asks Harold and Burt for help. Her father died on a ship returning from Europe, and she suspects that he may have been murdered. The efforts to investigate result in another murder, with Burt and Harold as the prime suspects. This leads to a series of encounters, revelations, and twists that I will not spoil. Also, I’m not sure I understood all of them.

I did understand the last 20 minutes. Everyone understood the last 20 minutes, thoug. I’m pretty sure you didn’t even have to watch the movie to understand the point. Russell bangs on his message with a sledgehammer, and then, just in case he wasn’t banging hard enough, he shows us archival footage of the person who inspired the character played by Robert De Niro. Even those sympathetic to the points he is trying to make about the parallels between the political conflicts of the pre-WWII era and today will find it overly didactic. Too much water, not enough apples.

Parents should know that this film includes bloody, graphic images of an autopsy and wartime violence, bigotry, alcohol and drug use (portrayed as comic in some instances), and brief strong language.

Family discussion: What parallels is Russell drawing to the politics of 2022? Why is the movie called “Amsterdam?” Read up on General Smedley Butler and the “Business Plot.”

If you like this, try: “Keeper of the Flame” and “State of the Union,” both starring Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy

Malcolm and Marie

Posted on February 4, 2021 at 5:14 pm

B +

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for pervasive language and sexual content
Profanity:	Very strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Alcohol
Violence/ Scariness:	Struggles, arguments
Diversity Issues:	A theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters:	February 5, 2021

When I interviewed John David Washington about “BlackKklansman,” he told me his dream was a film of “The Taming of the Shrew.” His new film, “Malcolm and Marie” could be an audition for that project and based on the results, someone should cast him and his co-star Zendaya right this minute and start filming it tomorrow.

There’s a lot wrong or maybe it is more accurate to say missing in “Malcolm and Marie,” but given the way it was made, it is remarkable how much is right and it is never less than watchable thanks to the palpable magnetism and chemistry of its two stars, who make up the entire cast. This was a pandemic project, made by writer/director Sam Levinson, as he and Zendaya were on hiatus from their “Euphoria” series due to COVID-19 restrictions. So, this film preserves the classical unities of time and space and action, not as a tribute to Aristotle’s Poetics but as a way to keep everyone safe. The cast and crew quarantined together and the entire film takes place in real time during one late evening in one beautiful beach house. It is filmed in gorgeous black and white by Marcell Rév. And it has a script that could have used a couple more drafts.

Malcolm (Washington) and Marie (Zendaya) come home from a big, glittery event in very different moods, so different that they do not at first notice what is happening with each other. Malcolm is proud, happy, relieved, and excited. He pours himself a drink, cranks up the music, starts to dance, and asks Marie to make some mac and cheese.

Marie boils the water and cuts the butter, but she is quiet, reflective, possibly seething underneath.

Malcolm is an up-and-coming film director and they have just come from the premiere of his latest, the story of a young woman struggling with drug addiction. The premiere was a triumph, the kind that may have moved him from up-and-coming to arrived. Following the screening, he was complimented by everyone, even “the white lady critic from the LA Times.” He is delighted with the reaction, but it stings that her compliment compared him to directors like Spike Lee and Barry Jenkins, all Black filmmakers, and not to, say, William Wyler, a white director from the 1940s and 50s. Marie is feeling left out, partly for reasons we will discover, but initially because in his speech at the reception, he thanked a lot of people, including the star of the film, but did not thank her. He apologized in the car on the way home, but it still bothers her.

The rest of the film is up and down and back and forth as they argue, make up, argue, make up, argue, and possibly make up again. There are elements of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” as their arguments strip away the boundaries enduring couples are careful to protect, but in this case there is no bewildered, meek, and tipsy other couple to perform for; there is just us. Washington and Zendaya are never less than utterly present, utterly vulnerable, and utterly in control of the constantly shifting moods, challenging and matching each other in every beat as characters and as performers. It is a wonder to watch.

And it is impossible not to be sympathetic to the movie’s failures because they are the faults of daring too much, when too many movies fail for the opposite reason. “Malcolm and Marie” tries to bring a lot into the world of these two people in two hours, with issues of race and culture and the relationship of the critic to the artist and who gets credit for what and when and probably also what art is for in the first place. A lot a lot a lot, all from two people talking. It is unlikely that it would have been made this way without the restrictions of a pandemic, including the claustrophobia of the entire crew quarantining together. What other conditions could create this work? How else could we explore these issues in this way? Think of other movies about two people talking. “My Dinner with Andre” was constructed, with everyone going home after a day of shooting, and “Before Sunrise” and “Columbus” had whole cities to explore.

“Malcolm and Marie” may end up as a footnote in what are sure to be long and rich careers for the filmmakers. But it is well worth seeing as an example of what can be done when it seems like nothing is possible, indeed what can be inspired by a moment that seems stuck. I came away hoping the characters go on together and looking forward to whatever Washington and Zendaya do next.

Parents should know that this movie includes very strong language, explicit sexual references and situations, tense confrontations, and discussions of drug addiction.

Family questions: Do your sympathies shift back and forth over the course of the movie? When? Why?

If you like this, try: “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” and “My Dinner with Andre” as well as other films from Washington and Zendaya and the works of William Wyler

Behind the Scenes: Tenet

Posted on August 28, 2020 at 8:00 am

“Tenet,” probably the most highly anticipated film of the summer, is a trippy time-travel crime drama written and directed by Christopher Nolan and stars John David Washington, Robert Pattison, Elizabeth Debicki, and Kenneth Branagh.

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