SAINT MAUD Review

Hedge your bets. That's the approach everyone, myself included, seems to take when waging eternal salvation versus eternal damnation. In writer/director Rose Glass's feature debut, Saint Maud, the titular Maud isn't simply hedging her bet though, she's gone all in. As Jennifer Ehle's Amanda discovers early in the film, Maud's conversion is a recent one leading the audience to naturally wonder not only what it was that brought Maud to this new set of revelations, of faith, or of sheer belief, but also why she jumped head-first into the "God-fearing" pool. What is the long, complicated road Morfydd Clark's Maud traveled to reach this destination? While Glass keeps the details scarce and supplies enough so that only the most attentive of viewers might parse together pieces of backstory, what hits and remains the most haunting aspect of this horror film/psychological drama is Maud's belief that putting her well-being in the hands of God is the best choice - especially given the final destination at which she arrives. It should be a safe bet. Everything she's been told about God would lead her to believe she's walking toward the light, but guilt is a powerful drug and it's one the church and religion wield with mighty influence. 

Belief systems flourish because they facilitate the interest of those involved - a broad example being a large majority of the population wants to believe in something more after death and therefore latches onto the idea of a God or Gods responsible for everyone and everything - but then comes the question of retention. How do these systems keep believers on the line and continuing to practice the beliefs they share - or more immediately, how do they keep their financial support in check? More often than not it isn't enough to simply go forth and live the lessons of a certain faith or denomination and so the fear of that aforementioned eternal damnation is put in place to keep one in a position of fear, of feeling threatened, or most ironically of all: feeling judged. There is this thing so many believe is the absolute truth, but it's difficult to reconcile why such divine truth would be filled with so many threats and riddled with such tactics of guilt. Maud has seemingly felt judged her entire life, but she has turned to an extreme faith in God in hopes of repenting and being "born again" as the evangelicals like to say. To be clear, there is absolutely nothing wrong with finding comfort or solace in a system of beliefs or an unbound deity. The point of Saint Maud is not to discourage, mock, or ridicule such things, but more to target this idea of how guilt and shame are intrinsically linked to repentance and redemption while acknowledging the distortion that can be drawn by a tormented individual; how easily, in other words, what one believes to be a journey towards a truly spiritual life can quickly become a solitary journey into darkness. 

Official Trailer for ZACK SNYDER'S JUSTICE LEAGUE

I've had little stake in the "Release the Snyder Cut" movement, but as someone who has always appreciated Zack Snyder's dark, almost sinister take on how super heroes might be received and/or implement themselves into modern society his films have always proved daring if not necessarily successful each time out. Man of Steel was one of my favorite films of 2013 and I absolutely adored the myth-building, Ben Affleck's approach to Bruce Wayne, and the sheer scope of Batman V. Superman: Dawn of Justice three years later which was only made better by the ultimate edition released later that year. Of course, all of this momentum - despite being stifled by a fair majority of critics - came to a screeching halt in late 2017 when Joss Whedon's re-configured Justice League hit theaters on November 17th. Snyder was already shooting his planned two-part Justice League when Batman V. Superman was released in March of 2016 and I can recall reading about set visits that June, many of which were attempting to course correct the BvS narrative and assure those that weren't fans of Snyder's vision for the DC Universe thus far that Snyder was listening and taking note. Of course, by May of 2017 Snyder - dealing with a family tragedy - decided to take a break from the project despite having completed principal photography and already screened a cut of the film for friends and fellow filmmakers. The story was Whedon was only being brought in to assist in some additional photography and to assist the remainder of the post-production process. A story in The Hollywood Reporter published in May of 2017 even stated, “The directing is minimal and it has to adhere to the style and tone and the template that Zack set,” said Warner Bros. Pictures president Toby Emmerich. “We’re not introducing any new characters. It’s the same characters in some new scenes. He’s handing the baton to Joss, but the course has really been set by Zack. I still believe that despite this tragedy, we’ll still end up with a great movie.” Needless to say, by the time Whedon's version of the film was released in November it was clear this wasn't the film Snyder intended it to be and large portions of the film had been re-shot and re-configured in order for Warner Bros. to get out from under the weight of Snyder's ambitious vision allowing them to move forward with more single-shot, director-driven films that Wonder Woman had proved could be just as successful earlier that summer. Five years later though, we're finally (somehow) getting a proper Justice League film and sequel to Batman v. Superman that Snyder always intended. As someone who was completely on board for Snyder's vision from the get-go I can't wait to see what this film holds and if/how it will change the course of DC films moving forward. In addition, this official trailer for the project does not disappoint and seems to hint that Snyder has delivered everything he promised his epic to be. Zack Snyder's Justice League premieres on HBO Max March 18th.       

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". 

MALCOLM & MARIE Review

Charisma gets you a long way and it is this inexplicable attribute, this inherent talent and undeniable magnetism that John David Washington possesses that carries writer/director Sam Levinson's latest endeavor so much further than it would have gone without the actor. Though unfamiliar with Levinson's HBO series, Euphoria, which also stars Zendaya it is evident from experiencing his 2018 film Assassination Nation along with this dissection of perspective in relationships and the constant battle for higher ground - principle or enviable - that Levinson is a writer who likes to put it all on the table. His previous feature was a garbage disposal of ideas that only succeeded part of the time, but Malcolm & Marie is very distinctly the opposite of that; at least from the outside looking in. 

Filmed last summer with a limited crew at the admittedly gorgeous Caterpillar House in Carmel, California Levinson's "two people talking in a room" movie was bound to become mercilessly harsh at one point or another and would need to make its way through countless topics in order to sustain a feature running time, but while Levinson has plenty of different things for our titular couple to discuss he doesn't have as many varying avenues through which to drive these conversations. In addition, Levinson has imbued his film with a sense of divine knowing when it comes to how critics - specifically the white guy from Variety, the white guy from IndieWire, and especially the white woman from the LA Times - will respond to and quantify his "art" into a handful of paragraphs that seek to interpret his film and his script for more than what it is. Such disdain is in reference to a film our protagonist has written and directed in the context of the film, but Levinson takes few pains to mask his intent as he takes said stance within the first five minutes only to go further into detail and reinforce his point some forty-two minutes later. For someone seemingly so caught up in the function of a film critic though - someone who seeks to better understand a piece of art - it would seem Levinson should understand he's only doing the same with his own thoughts by writing a script as a critic might do with his film by writing a review. Both are taking something born from the unconscious, spawned from nature and ideas that are completely subjective and attempting to unite them with an objective point of view, with reason, and with the intent to craft them into something conscious; something that can be defined. 

THE LITTLE THINGS Review

In a genre where advancements in technology have alleviated many of the difficulties in getting answers to tough questions in criminal cases such progress has also forced writers to be doubly creative in their efforts to outwit the viewer when it comes to a good mystery and/or crime thriller. This may not wholly be the reason writer/director John Lee Hancock (The Blind Side, Saving Mr. Banks) turned to his twenty-eight year-old script for a film set some thirty years ago when looking for his next project, but as the film unfolds it begins to feel like one of the only reasons to justify re-visiting this story. It’s not that The Little Things is a bad movie. In fact, it’s quite an interesting one in terms of objective, but what it means to do and how successful it is at executing said intent are two entirely different things. There is real promise, real ambition in Hancock’s “too smart for its own good” approach to the screenplay that sees the filmmaker playing with the conventions of the B-movie crime drama and hoping to bring a real insight into the vastness of the world detectives inhabit rather than a single, insulated tale of good cops chasing down promising leads that inevitably lead to a successful capture. It wants to be about the lasting effects these cases have on detectives, the torture being unsuccessful can cause, but the idea becomes overshadowed by a million others as Hancock tries to convey his rather straightforward story of struggle through an overly complex guise; layers are needed sure, but to emphasize the point - not cloak it completely. Furthermore, this introspection as it were is executed in such plodding fashion that by the time interesting aspects concerning the core case do begin to introduce themselves the viewer is hardly invested in what’s happening...much less anticipating who might be the big bad wolf hiding under the covers. The Little Things is a film desperate to dissect obsession, guilt, and the aforementioned torture spurned by as much. It means to tackle these generationally as the symptoms go hand in hand no matter the changing times: when it's your responsibility to prevent people from becoming victims, from becoming less than what their shells present what is it that can heal your soul and your self-esteem should you fail? These are interesting questions albeit ones that have naturally been explored before in plenty of genre flicks from the time in which this is set, but again - despite the good intent - the meaning can't help but get lost in the sluggish translation of the narrative. The Little Things is never not intriguing, this much is true, but given the depths it seeks to explore it shouldn't be nearly as forgettable as it is.