moonspinner55

Emma Mackey is mesmerizing in this Greece-UK co-production via Deborah Levy's 2016 novel about a young British woman of half-Spanish descent quietly seething under the jaundiced eye of her invalid mother, whom she's been caring for most of her life. The girl's father divorced the mom years ago and now lives in Mexico with his new family. The mother, on the other hand, carries on with her litany of pains and complaints (and secrets and lies), most of them stemming from what she calls a rare bone density disorder. Writer-director Rebecca Lenkiewicz doesn't want to dislocate us, but she's inscrutable with her narrative (and occasionally too arty in her presentation), with events taking place without much discussion around them. The narcotizing effect is both puzzling and intriguing (and, once we get to the central issue--that devotion to one's family can over time become ruinous--quite devastating). The performances, particularly those by the leads, Mackey and Fiona Shaw, are terrific, leading us to a stunner of a finale. *** from ****

Beginning with a redubbed film clip from "Gone With the Wind" (the Confederate flag flying high over acres of wounded soldiers), and leading into a faux anti-black diatribe by a racist "doctor" (Alec Baldwin), one gets the initial impression this Spike Lee "joint" ("Based on some fo' real sh#t!") is going to be a one-note exercise in mining white history's repeated attempts to keep the black man down. However, this is partially deceiving, as Lee has much more on his agenda than just being preachy. Once his "BlackkKlansman" get cooking, the film becomes a disarming, scary, lively comedy of outrage. An educated black man in 1970s Colorado Springs is hired on at the local police department as "the Jackie Robinson" of the establishment, the only black officer on the force. He's unceremoniously dumped in the records office, but lets his superiors know he wants to do something more important, like undercover work. This incredible true story of a black man and his white Jewish co-worker infiltrating the Colorado Springs chapter of the Ku Klux Klan is so bold as to be jaw-dropping, yet director Lee, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Charlie Wachtel, David Rabinowitz and Kevin Willmott based on Ron Stallworth's memoir "Black Klansman", keeps it on-point. It's a hip, canny picture, very aware of itself as an important piece of material that must also be an entertainment. Six Oscar nominations with one win: Best Adapted Screenplay, which also netted the BAFTA out of five nominations. **1/2 from ****

Joaquin Phoenix as an unwashed, pot-smoking private investigator in a Southern California beach community circa 1970 whose ex-girlfriend needs his help in preventing her real estate developer boyfriend from being railroaded by his own wife and her lover who hope to commit him to "the loony bin". The case ties into the Black Guerrillas, the Aryan Brotherhood, as well as a Los Angeles police detective who arrests the private eye after finding him lying unconscious next to the dead body of one of the missing man's bodyguards. Half-cocked, perpetually enervated noir adapted from Thomas Pynchon's novel by writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson has a terrific and eclectic cast but doesn't utilize anyone to their best advantage (particularly Phoenix, who seems to be channeling Jeff Bridges). A complete and total self-indulgent folly by the filmmaker...every great director should be allowed one, anyway. Two Oscar nominations: for Anderson's script and Mark Bridges' costumes. Anderson won the National Board of Review Award for Best Adapted Screenplay and the film was named one of the Top 10 best of the year. * from ****