Movie Critic, TT Stern-Enzi, weighs in on his predictions for the 90th Academy Awards and tips audiences to the lack of surprises this awards season.
Posted by terrencetodd | Filed under Gigs
02 Friday Mar 2018
Movie Critic, TT Stern-Enzi, weighs in on his predictions for the 90th Academy Awards and tips audiences to the lack of surprises this awards season.
Posted by terrencetodd | Filed under Gigs
23 Tuesday Jan 2018
Tags
Academy Awards, FOX19, Get Out, Lady Bird, Mudbound, The Shape of Water, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri
TT Stern-Enzi of CityBeat breaks down the Best Picture category from this year’s Oscar Nominations.
Source: Oscar Nominations
Posted by terrencetodd | Filed under Gigs
26 Sunday Nov 2017
Tags
Frances McDormand, Martin McDonagh, Sam Rockwell, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri, Woody Harrelson
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, the new release from British writer-director Martin McDonagh (In Bruges, Seven Psychopaths), perfectly captures the mood of our current cultural reality. It does so by dropping us into a highly charged situation right as the flames start to heat things up.
Mildred (Frances McDormand), a steely mother grieving the loss of her daughter (an unsolved murder), has completely lost patience and faith in the local authorities. But she’s far from surrendering to hopelessness. She seizes upon a plan to force Sheriff Willoughby (Woody Harrelson) and his ragtag team of deputies, led by the dim-witted but obstinate Dixon (Sam Rockwell), into action.
Mildred purchases three billboards on the road into town and displays a scathing and quite personal message, a raw plea for justice for her girl.
It matters little to her that the town is so small that everyone will have an immediate and conflicted response to her bold verbal assault. She and everyone in the community knows that Willoughby has done the best he could with the resources available to him. Willoughby is also dealing with his own personal crisis, which renders him decidedly sympathetic, even next to Mildred’s unimaginable loss.
The cultural and political landscape of our world dwarfs the small-town insularity of Ebbing, but social media and the ravenous 24-hour news-cycle create the same kind of fevered immediacy nationally whenever a crime or outrage occurs. So we can relate to what we’re seeing.
Mildred, if asked, would definitely forego talk of mere justice; she’s hell-bent on revenge of the Old Testament sort and it is plain that she would have no qualms at all if she had to dispense it herself. She’s myopic to the point that she fails to see how her quest might have an impact on Robbie (Lucas Hedges), her surviving teenage son, who has to go to school every day in a town reminded constantly of his family’s loss.
During the screening of this film that I caught at the Toronto International Film Festival, I found myself wondering what justice looks like. At the time, in mid-September, I was still focused on police shootings of unarmed black men and white nationalist rallies. Festival entries like this were directly questioning the evolving state of justice without offering easy answers. There was also Black Cop, from writer-director Cory Bowles, about an unsettled black police officer who begins to take out his frustrations on the privileged community he’s sworn to protect, and Dee Rees’ Mudbound, about two families — one black, one white — locked in the eternal quagmire of race in America.
In the end, I could only return to the idea that there is nothing black and white about this complex issue. That is what gives Three Billboards such a necessary role in this ongoing discussion. McDonagh, as is his style, sprinkles in darkly comic flourishes that feel like he’s jabbing our sensitive spots. This makes for recognizable but quite painful truths.
And McDormand is just the right performer to bring this world of hurt to life. She is immersed in Mildred’s own bottomless grief, yet she is also able to imply a glimmer of humor in the infinite sadness that has descended upon her character.
This film faces up to the harsh reality of Mildred’s predicament. McDonagh digs deeper and deeper with the assistance of a talented and fearless cast, who work like canaries in a coalmine to explore the tough ideas of his original screenplay.
Rockwell is another key standout in the cast. As the deputy stuck in a dangerous state of arrested development that allows him to wield his badge and power indiscriminately, Rockwell never allows his character to become simply an object for us to hate or pity, which would have been so easy.
His Dixon hits rock bottom right before our eyes and honestly acknowledges his many faults. The next step, the truly hard work, belongs not to this character, but to us. We must decide how we feel about him and his transformation. It is a performance that U-turns from the typically oddball to a place of humanist redemption.
The film presents justice as a moving target and dares us to actively pursue it en route to a greater good.
(Opens Wednesday at area theaters.) (R) Grade: A
Posted by terrencetodd | Filed under Black Eye, CityBeat Archives
20 Wednesday Sep 2017
Tags
Academy Awards, Mudbound, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri, Toronto International Film Festival
At the just-concluded Toronto International Film Festival, which presents many movies destined to be factors in the end-of-year awards, every major title jockeys for attention. Film journalists converge from around the world to start critical conversations about their worth that will last until the Academy Awards presentation in early March 2018.
However that plays out, I certainly saw some notable films screening at Toronto this year. There was The Square, from Ruben Östlund, which earned the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, as well as the Cincinnati-filmed The Killing of a Sacred Deer, which snagged Best Screenplay at Cannes. The Shape of Water, from Guillermo del Toro, took the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival mere days before its unveiling at Toronto, which meant it rocketed to the top of quite a few must-see lists.
PHOTO: COURTESY OF THE TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
Heading into this year’s event, I had the sense that there would be several female filmmakers on my must-see list. Writer-director Dee Rees definitely held a spot near the top, as I had seen her powerful debut feature Pariah at Toronto in 2011. The new Mudbound heralds a monumental step forward for Rees, who proves to be an adept translator of narrative period fiction — the film is based on an award-winning novel by Hillary Jordan — while also illuminating tragic contemporary reflections that can so easily trip up other celebrated and well-intended filmmakers (see Kathryn Bigelow’s Detroit). Her film captures the two sides of America — black and white — forever stuck in a racial mudslide, yet offers up an ending far happier than we deserve.
• Back in 2012, I agreed to a phone interview offered with actress Greta Gerwig in support of Lola Versus, an indie comedy about a young woman’s misadventures in love and life on the cusp of turning 30. I was intrigued because I wanted to see if there was more to Gerwig than this typecast persona. I sensed she was on the verge of discovering another layer, dormant and waiting inside. Five years later, it is a truly marvelous surprise to watch Lady Bird, Gerwig’s solo directorial debut, and appreciate how she has tapped into her own story of growing up in Northern California. She captures the longing of Christine “Lady Bird” McPherson (Saoirse Ronan) to break free from a stifling family and community with an assurance that recalls the lived-in reality of a year of Richard Linklater’s Boyhood.
• Every Guillermo del Toro fan has a film that stands as the absolute representation of what they love about his complete and utter surrendering to the fantastic and surreal. The comic book crowd can’t get enough of the graphic pulp found in Blade II and the Hellboy movies. Some love the mythic reimaginings and gothic stylings of Cronos and Crimson Peak, while others appreciate the dark fairy tale allure of Pan’s Labyrinth. With The Shape of Water, del Toro has — like a magus of the first order — concocted a strange and steaming brew that combines all of these elements into a romantic fairy tale for adults.PHOTO: COURTESY OF THE TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
• There has always been a comic black hole at the center of Martin McDonagh’s work. As a writer-director, he’s given us In Bruges (which earned a nomination for Best Original Screenplay at the 2009 Academy Awards) and Seven Psychopaths, but I’m not sure those films came close to preparing us for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. Rather than focusing on a collection of daft and dank career criminals, here he centers on a mother (Frances McDormand) going to extraordinary lengths to get justice for her murdered daughter. Notions of right and wrong take a cruel beating at every turn, but somehow McDonagh never loses sight of the redemptive power of forgiveness.
• Outside his dual turn as the Winklevoss brothers in The Social Network, I’ve never understood the appeal of Armie Hammer beyond his hulking blond presence. But Luca Guadagnino (A Bigger Splash) expertly employs Hammer’s all-American physicality to great effect in Call Me by Your Name, contrasting it with the precociousness of an American-Italian teen (Timothée Chalamet) as the two characters gradually discover and begin to act upon their mutual attraction during the summer of 1983 in northern Italy. This film is a sensual case study of how moments can define a life.
• It will be a shame if the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences somehow overlooks the wonderfully human and humane work of Willem Dafoe in Sean Baker’s The Florida Project. The film revolves around the giddy and mischievous adventures of 6-year-old Moonee (Brooklynn Prince), who lives with her mother among a community of outcasts in the shadows of Disney World. Baker, following the edgy and experimental vision of his previous Tangerine, continues to set his gaze on forgotten and invisible people on the margins, but Dafoe reminds us that real kindness exists everywhere.PHOTO: COURTESY OF THE TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
• How did Louis C.K. keep I Love You, Daddy a secret during its filming? When you’re shooting a 35mm film in black and white all around New York, you assume word is going to get out, since social media is all- seeing, right? Well, he did it and he distilled all of his neuroses about fame, success, parenthood and scandal into a lethally addictive cocktail about a famous writer (C.K.) trying to raise his daughter (Chloë Grace Moretz) and protect her from the trappings of his celebrity. As a parent, I found I Love You, Daddy tough to sit through because, despite the very real class and social distinctions, it is still an all-too relatable experience.PHOTO: COURTESY OF THE TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
• Samuel D. Pollard’s documentary Sammy Davis, Jr.: I’ve Gotta Be Me is a sad reminder that certain social and cultural realities will never die. Sammy Davis Jr. was a legendary talent, a one-of-a-kind entertainer who literally did it all. He played a variety of instruments, sang, danced, acted and performed stand-up comedy like a virtuoso. Unfortunately, he also served in the military for a country that didn’t recognize his humanity, loved women deemed inappropriate for him because of his race and attempted to stand with an oppressed community by whom he never truly felt accepted. Pollard’s film shows us that no one, other than Sammy Davis Jr., could have been him.
Posted by terrencetodd | Filed under Black Eye, CityBeat Archives
18 Monday Sep 2017
Tags
Dee Rees, Martin McDonagh, Mudbound, Sean Baker, The Florida Project, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri
The Saturday afternoon when the Charlottesville situation was exploding on television and social media, I retreated to my back porch, seething with anger and frustration, after the pathetic response from the White House. I didn’t know what more I could do, and I honestly just couldn’t watch the same old-some old fiasco.
My Twitter feed was full of similarly-minded folks, raging at this broken machine that somehow continued to putter along, as it always has. I was annoyed, with everything, even these critical comrades. So I fired off a quick message to a select few, demanding that we get together at TIFF, watch some films, and reflect on what it all means. It’s a small thing, but its all I know how to do. And slowly, the responses came in.
Now I’m not much of an organizer, so there hasn’t been some unified gathering that’s taken place during the festival. But we’ve gotten together, like we always seem to, in lines at screenings, letting one another cut in, hugging and talking. We blocked pathways for others as we debated the good intentions of George Clooney’s Suburbicon and its sadly bungled racial politics. We spoke of the epic mismanagement of Katheryn Bigelow’s Detroit.
During the press screening of Roman J. Israel Esq, a Toronto writer in my critical fold, hipped me to Black Cop from writer-director Cory Bowles, a film about a black police officer (Ronnie Rowe) dealing with the dual personae of being black and blue while confronting modern social injustice. It is labeled satire, which it certainly is, but its reality is so brutal and biting that it hurts to laugh, as much as it might to cry out. I heard people in the audience react, cheering in support of the flipping of roles as white folks get a taste of what its like to be black in the face of white authority. Somewhere in the heavenly universe, Dick Gregory is watching and laughing his ass off.
Black Cop capped off my eighth day at the festival, which began with the Dee Rees film Mudbound, a film I moved the heavens to include in my schedule and was so richly rewarded for my efforts. I caught Pariah at TIFF during its festival run, and marveled at the intimacy of her vision, how she took such politically charged issues and removed the polemics, the stridency of it all.
With Mudbound, she has advanced at such an astonishing pace, it is difficult to imagine. She’s adapting a novel by Hillary Jordan about two families living in the Mississippi Delta, one white, one black around the time of World War II. Each sends a young man (Garrett Hedlund and Jason Mitchell) off to fight. Each man survives the horrors of war, and comes home to the same nightmares of life that you can never escape. They come back to America. Enough said.
But Rees creates an alternative novel, written in moving images combined with fleeting narration from the book, a representation of the relevant voices of characters stuck in the mud of what it means to be American. It’s weedy roots choke off the potential life and sustenance promised in the soil of the dream.
I’ve been waiting for the film that would define the festival for me, and I found it in Mudbound. This one reminded me of that Saturday, weeks ago, watching America still stuck in the mud.
The funny thing about America and these discussions though is how quick we are to look for obvious reflections that meet familiar and comforting stereotypes. Narrowing the focus to that degree removes intersectionality, the collision of a disparate communities, all struggling for peace of their own.
Earlier in my festival run, I was intrigued The Florida Project due to its insistent gaze at a downtrodden underworld of characters, held together by little Moonee (Brooklynn Prince), a six-year old girl living largely by her considerable wits in a Floridian enclave of motels turned into housing for the disenfranchised lurking in the shadow of Disney World. Moonee’s mother (Bria Vinaite), a child-like figure in her own right, has little time or sense to think about anything beyond the next concern that presents itself. The film, from Tangerine director Sean Baker, wanders through this desolate land, finding fleeting moments of authentic wonder in the midst of careless despair.
Discussions of this film will lead to pronouncements that Baker, in his presentation of Moonee and her mother, has captured examples of the Trump supporters who dared to vote against their own self-interests, but I would argue that this estimation fails to realize that Moonee’s mother resides several levels in a large subterranean hovel beneath Trump’s hungry mob. None of the characters on the margins of The Florida Project have the time or inclination to even bother with voting. We should be amazed that a filmmaker like Baker has even taken it upon himself to turn our gaze to this community, which has been all but lost in the mud.
The 2017 edition of TIFF ended, for me, with a public screening of writer-director Martin McDonagh’s Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, which played like gangbusters for the crowd. McDonagh operates in that sleazy Coen brothers land of noir steeped in black lung humor. He borrows a little extra from the Coins for Three Billboards, adding Frances McDormand to the mix, as Mildred Hayes, the mother of a teenage girl found dead in a field, after having suffered through rape and torture. The police in this small town, led by Sheriff Bill Willoughby (Woody Harrelson), have been unable to unearth a significant lead, which forces Mildred to add pressure to the dying investigation by renting out three massive billboards and leaving messages challenging the sheriff’s competency.
The narrative kicks up a storm of issues, from racism and police brutality to LGBTQ bullying all while illustrating the unadulterated allure and power of retribution. Everyone in this story, and McDonagh has populated it with an assortment of quirky types, bashes up against everyone else, leaving blood and bone and raw nerves exposed.
Yet, it transforms into a tale of redemption by means of hard-earned forgiveness, in most cases without clear resolutions. Few of the narrative plot lines get neatly tied up, but audiences will be more than satisfied by the end, if TIFF crowds are to be trusted. The film took the top audience prize to go along with the best screenplay prize it seized at the Venice Film Festival. In a year without a clear front-runner heading into the awards season, these honors might end up providing the necessary traction for Three Billboards to pull ahead of the pack.
I like the fact that the end of TIFF stubbornly refused to answer any questions about the awards season, because this year, maybe the focus shouldn’t have been on prizes at all. Maybe we will look back at 2017 as a year where film merely served to re-engage us in critical dialogue.
Posted by terrencetodd | Filed under Musings