THE BOOK OF CLARENCE Review

An ambitious (audacious?) yet disjointed film that seems to attempt more than it intends leaving little to latch onto, but much to consider. A conundrum of both a film and experience. Coming out of writer/director/composer Jeymes Samuel's 2021 feature debut, The Harder They Fall, it was more than evident the multi-hyphenate had a distinct mission, but almost more importantly: a distinct style to match it. With as much noted it was easy to walk into Samuel's follow-up, The Book of Clarence, with a certain expectation of what it might be. As The Harder They Fall made it clear white people were not alone in the westward expansion following the Civil War, The Book of Clarence would seem to run with the fact they were essentially non-existent in Nazareth in the time of Jesus (or the Messiah, as he was probably more often referred to during his life). The correcting of the consistent portrayal of Jesus as a white, European man throughout history would then seem to be the anchor of Samuel's religious satire especially given this depiction has come under scrutiny as of late with the legacy of racism in society being more critically discussed. While this is certainly on the itinerary though, so are about twenty other items that seem to have sprung from Samuel's original intent through the process of putting this initial idea to paper. We can see the bones of Samuel's original idea in renovating the Biblical epic, but as our titular Clarence (LaKeith Stanfield) becomes swept up in and ultimately accepts the idea that Jesus may in fact be the real Messiah so too does the movie in becoming an actual Biblical epic. 

At just over two hours it doesn't quite go all the way to fit that bill, but though there are moments of biting irreverence these are always directed more toward how the familiar events of the Bible have come to be perceived rather than toward the events themselves or so seems to be the case, I could certainly have misinterpreted. The cause for such uncertainty comes with how reverential Samuel ends up treating the cornerstones of his protagonist's journey. These tonal transformations make it difficult to identify a genuine response to the material, but the film doesn't leave you with nothing. In fact, more than anything The Book of Clarence will leave many confused as to what meaning we're meant to take from this double-edged parable which - I guess - could be seen as appropriate given the conflicting nature of faith for those who question it. There is a line in the film that states, "Any man who follows rules blindly is easily overcome," which is a direct challenge to one of if not the mainstays of what "faith" is meant to illustrate. This point of view is further emphasized when, in the final act of the film, Stanfield's false Messiah calls for enlightenment over punishment. Both sentiments would seem to move the thematic needle towards the challenging of ideas and the broadening of intelligence for the sake of insight and progress as favorable and more sensical than divine knowledge and irrational acceptance, yet the film still concludes with a message that remains largely pro-faith. Hence, the confusion and conflict.

JUDAS AND THE BLACK MESSIAH Review

As we get older, we become more conscious of our time and the legacy we might leave. The long game no longer feels as long and therefore the implications of our actions become just as important as the ramifications. On the day of January 15th, 1990 William O'Neal was a forty-year-old man who'd been drinking with his uncle into the early-morning hours of Martin Luther King Day before running into westbound traffic on an expressway and jumping in front of a car that killed him. His death was ruled a suicide. Later that night, on PBS, the second part of the fourteen-part documentary series, Eyes on the Prize, would debut. The second part of the series chronicled the time period between the national emergence of Malcolm X in 1964 up through to the 1983 election of Harold Washington as the first African American mayor of Chicago. Included in this span of time is the year 1969 and in 1969 William O'Neal would turn twenty years-old. 1969 is also the year a twenty-one-year-old Fred Hampton, the chairman of the Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party, would be assassinated. Judas and the Black Messiah tells the story of how these two men were connected to one another in a tale as old as scripture as indicated by its biblical title. 

The second part of the Eyes on the Prize documentary contains the only on-camera interview O'Neal ever gave. The interview itself was conducted on April 13, 1989 and in that interview O'Neal discussed his involvement with the Black Panther Party, how he was exploited by the powers that be and a puppet for the FBI who blackmailed him into infiltrating the Panthers and eventually laying out the floor plan of Hampton's apartment that would lead to the raid where law enforcement fired a total of ninety-nine shots, executing Hampton at point-blank range. The Gospel of Matthew 26:15 states that Judas committed his betrayal of Jesus in exchange for thirty pieces of silver, but as there's undoubtedly more to Judas' story and motivation than money the relationship between O'Neal and Hampton seems to have been equally as complicated. In that 1989 interview, O'Neal stated "I didn't feel like I had done anything. I didn't walk in there with guns. I didn't shoot him. FBI didn't do it. I felt somewhat like I was betrayed...I felt like, like perhaps I was on the wrong side. Yeah, yeah, I had my misgivings. I'm not going to sit here now and take the responsibility for the raid, you know, I'm not going to do that. I didn't pull the trigger. I didn't issue the warrant. I didn't put the guns in the apartment. So, I'm not going to take the responsibility for that, but I do feel like I was betrayed." O'Neal was clearly a tortured individual who was also very much in denial. According to Matthew 27:1–10, after learning that Jesus was to be crucified, Judas attempted to return the money he had been paid for his betrayal and committed suicide by hanging. Do we really blame Judas for Jesus' death though? No, of course not, just as O'Neal is only responsible for Hampton's death so far as being a young Black man in the midst of a race war who was targeted by J. Edgar Hoover's "America" as an "informant". 

UNCUT GEMS Review

What is maybe the best aspect of the exceptional Uncut Gems is the fact that yes, this is very much Adam Sandler doing something outside of his standard routine, but this isn't Sandler playing serious simply for the sake of proving he can in fact act when the material calls for it. No, this isn't sad or depressed Sandler simply for the sake of being taken seriously, but instead the Safdie Brothers (Good Time) have somehow lured the Sandman into giving both a layered, physical performance while also remaining one that plays off the inherent charm and charisma Sandler naturally possesses. Moreover, he's used perfectly here. So perfect in fact, it's hard to imagine anyone else in this role besides Sandler.

In Gems, Sandler is a jeweler in the diamond district in Manhattan. He’s ingrained in the Jewish community there and he's also a gambling addict. He has a wife (Idina Menzel) and several children, but he also has a girlfriend (Julia Fox) who works with him in his shop during the day and hustles for The Weeknd at night. Sandler's Howard Ratner pawns jewelry from his store to pay off bookies and accumulated debt some of the time, but most of the time he’s using that money to place bigger bets in something of a small scale Ponzi scheme. Context clues aside, the focus of plot comes into view when a giant opal that has been mined from the caves of Ethiopia comes into Ratner's possession. Ratner has plans to auction the rock off as he believes it to be worth untold amounts of money, but he first brings it to the attention of Kevin Garnett (via Lakeith Stanfield's character who will vouch for Howard's product to potential high dollar clientele such as Garnett). The NBA star can't seem to pass up the opportunity to own the stone as he believes it to bring him some type of luck (the film is set in 2013 when the Celtics were facing the Sixers in the Eastern Conference finals) with Ratner making one bad choice after another; deepening his debt rather than his pockets.

KNIVES OUT Review

"The exception that proves the rule."

The movies are nothing alike in terms of what they're about, how they're directed, tone, nothing. There's nothing similar about these movies at all really except for that, from the moment they begin, there is a sense of supreme assuredness in where they're going and how they're meant to get there. This feeling arises at the beginning of a fair amount of movies because there are so many that begin with such promise yet so many of them tend to lose themselves along the way or lose momentum or more often than not encounter the issue of knowing where they want to go without being sure of the best, most effective way to get there. Nearly three years ago now, when Jordan Peele's Get Out began to play in front of me for the first time on that cold Thursday in late February, I was granted the sense of this supreme assuredness that continued throughout the entirety of the runtime and through to that perfect conclusion. It wasn't difficult to see every aspect had been labored over and planned to a to T; as if not only the script, but the way in which each shot was constructed and how each line was delivered held a certain weight and intention. Every element had seemingly been executed with precise detail so as to convey this strong, specific point of view. In short, Get Out was a movie where every piece held a purpose all of which led to a culmination that fully displayed the power of the narrative, the charisma of the characters and the masterful way in which the filmmaker used the genre he was operating in to make his complex ideas accessible. This is all said not in an attempt to remind readers of how satisfying Get Out is, but to say all of this is very much true of Rian Johnson’s Knives Out as well.