Malcolm & Marie

"It's not just about you forgetting to thank me, Malcolm. It's about how you see me. And how you view my contribution; not just to this relationship, but to your work. Specifically, in a movie you made about my life." Marie (Zendaya) If you've ever wondered why a film or play has been called a "two hander," here's a fine example: writer-director Sam Levinson's Malcolm & Marie. No other actors are needed, thank you. These two, John David Washington as Malcolm and Zendaya as Marie, eat up the lines without eating up the scenery without other actors. Living together, they wait at their lavish beach home for the reviews of his new film, whose premiere from which they have just returned. Fueled by passion, narcissism, and plain old intelligence, they argue about the authenticity of his directing and the elements of the film based on her life as a recovering addict (See quote above). Think of just Taylor and Burton in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? without the two younger characters (in fact, the name of the unseen actress in his new film is "Taylor").

Through cycles of bitterness and love, the two characters in Malcolm define many of the important elements of art, most about the honesty of character and point of view or perspective of the artists. But underneath is the nagging is our suspicion that their solipsistic obsession with their craft keeps them from fully loving each other.

This romantic depiction of the conjunction of life and art is to be sipped like a fine Cognac, perhaps revisited to savor the brilliant script and watch two fine actors update the histrionics of Burton and Taylor into modern minimalism. Thanks, Netflix.

This film contains 100 minutes of constant bickering. I find it unbearable.

Nobody talks like this in the middle of a heated argument, especially with alcohol involved. The passion was there in the physical acting, but the verbose lines felt entirely too premeditated and rehearsed to be delivered organically as they would be in a spontaneous lover's spat. They just take turns spouting off eloquently composed diatribe. Cinematography is the one redeeming quality. Beyond that, I couldn't get past the toxicity of their psychological jabs to find the takeaway of this abusive character study with no resolution. In summation: TLDR; Relationships are messy and Sam Levinson's grudge for Katie Walsh runs deep.

Let me just sate the obvious first

BRILLIANT ACTING

I love Zendaya she's absolutely outstanding in this film and in general, but if you watch this film for Zendaya only and literally nothing else, you have absolutely no substance and no appreciation for ones art and are clearly ignoring an equally brilliant performance by John David Washington.

Anyone who has a problem with seeing the story of another couple or human emotion either has an unusually stable relationship or has never been in a relationship at all.

I'm seeing so many mixed reviews and the more negative reviews tend to say the same thing with absolutely NO originality. "it's pretentious" "not engaging" "it's just about a couple fighting". You don't have to like the film but at the very least be original in your criticism.

It's clear to me people are losing their sense of realism with being glued to the enormous trend of superhero sci-fi films and unnecessary sequels. Cinema is also about intriguing dialogue with realistic earthly circumstances. Sometimes you need to appreciate a more realistic emotional story.

This film is simple yet at the same time complex as what most relationships are. Human emotion and romance isn't sappy or cheesy one liners you see in sitcoms. It's deep, its raw, its cruel, and it crosses boundaries.

I give it a 7/10 overall it's a good film with excellent acting however the only critique I have with the film is that it remains the same with no unexpected twists or turns revealed.

Probably would have been better as a short film, because it really started to drag and feel a little repetitive in the second half.

It's a decent effort to do one of those one-location, limited cast kind of movies, but it is let down in the writing, with some dialogue that feels very overwritten at points, and a lot of scenes that feel like they hammer home the same point again and again. You could argue it's intentional, but I'm sure there would be ways to have that repetition as a theme without making the film feel like a bit of a chore to sit through after about the 50-minute mark.

That being said: even though the black and white cinematography doesn't seem to serve a concrete purpose, it does look fairly nice. And the film is saved by its two performances, who do surprisingly good work with a screenplay packed with lines (and whole scenes) that would be difficult to act convincingly.

Overall, it's far from terrible, and I did get a fair bit of enjoyment out of the first half and small parts here and there in the second, but it doesn't quite sustain itself well enough to justify the feature-length runtime, in my opinion.