Here Are The 2019 Nominations of the Music City Film Critics Association!


The Music City Film Critics Association announced their nominees for the best of 2019 on Monday and here they are….

What?  You’ve never heard of the Music City Film Critics Association?  They are a group of film critics in the Nashville, Tennessee area.  Make sense now?

Anyway, here are their nominees:

Jim Ridley Award, named after the late Nashville Scene editor/writer, honoring the film that best embodies the Nashville’s spirit:

– Bluebird
– The Dead Center
– The Peanut Butter Falcon
– Saint Cloud Hill
– Wild Rose

Best Picture:

– 1917
– Apollo 11
– Jojo Rabbit
– Joker
-Knives Out
-Little Women
-Marriage Story
-Once Upon a Time…In Hollywood
-Parasite
-The Irishman

Best Director:

– Sam Mendes, 1917
– Greta Gerwig, Little Women
– Quentin Tarantino, Once Upon a Time…In Hollywood
– Bong Joon-ho, Parasite
– Martin Scorsese, The Irishman

Best Actor:

– Eddie Murphy, Dolemite is My Name
– Joaquin Phoenix, Joker
– Adam Driver, Marriage Story
– Taron Egerton, Rocketman
– Adam Sandler,  Uncut Gems

Best Actress:

– Charlize Theron, Bombshell
– Awkwafina, The Farewell
– Renee Zellweger, Judy
– Scarlett Johansson, Marriage Story
– Lupita Nyong’o, Us

Best Supporting Actress:

– Zhao Shuzhen, The Farewell
– Jennifer Lopez, Hustlers
– Scarlett Johansson, Jojo Rabbit
– Florence Pugh, Little Women
– Laura Dern, Marriage Story

Best Supporting Actor:

– Shia LeBeouf, Honey Boy
– Al Pacino, The Irishman
– Joe Pesci, The Irishman
– Jonathan Majors, The Last Black Man in San Francisco
– Brad Pitt, Once Upon a Time…In Hollywood

Best Animated Feature:

– Abominable
– Frozen II
– I Lost My Body
– Klaus
– Toy Story 4

Best Documentary:

– Amazing Grace
– American Factory
– Apollo 11
– One Child Nation
– Tell Me Who I Am

Best Screenplay:

– Taika Waititi, Jojo Rabbit
– Rian Johnson, Knives Out
– Noah Baumbach, Marriage Story
– Quentin Tarantino, Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood
– Bong Joon-ho & Han Jin-won (story by Joon-ho), Parasite

Best Acting Ensemble:

– Avengers: Endgame
– Knives Out
– Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood
– Parasite
– The Irishman

Best Foreign Film:

– Atlantics (dir. Mati Diop)
– Pain and Glory (dir. Pedro Almodóvar)
– Portrait of a Lady on Fire (dir. Céline Sciamma)
– Parasite (dir. Bong Joon-ho)

Best Young Actress:

– Kyliegh Curran, Doctor Sleep
– Lucy Gallina, The Irishman
– Sophia Lillis, IT: Chapter 2
– Thomasin McKenzie, Jojo Rabbit
– Julia Butters, Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood
– Shahadi Wright Joseph, Us

Best Young Actor:

– Jacob Tremblay, Good Boys
– Noah Jupe, Honey Boy
– Archie Yates, Jojo Rabbit
– Roman Griffin Davis, Jojo Rabbit
– Evan Alex, Us

Best Action Film:

– Avengers: Endgame
– John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum
– Spider-Man: Far from Home
– Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

Best Horror Film:

– Doctor Sleep
– It: Chapter 2
– Midsommar
– Ready or Not
– Us

Best Comedy:

– Booksmart
– Dolemite is my Name
– Jojo Rabbit
– Knives Out
– Long Shot

Best Score:

– Thomas Newman, 1917
– Hildur Guðnadóttir, Joker
– Randy Newman, Marriage Story
– John Williams, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
– Michael Abels, Us

Best Song:

– “Into the Unknown,” Frozen 2
– “Stand Up,” Harriet
– “(I’m Gonna) Love Me Again,” Rocketman
– “I Can’t Let You Throw Yourself Away,” Toy Story 4
– “Glasgow (No Place Like Home),” Wild Rose

Best Sound:

– 1917
– Apollo 11
– Ford v. Ferrari
– Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

Production Design:

– 1917
– Knives Out
– Little Women
– Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood
– Parasite

Best Cinematography:

– Roger Deakins, 1917
– Lawrence Sher, Joker
– Robert Richardson, Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood
– Hong Kyung-pyo, Parasite
– Jarin Blaschke, The Lighthouse

Best Editing:

– Lee Smith, 1917
– Fred Raskin, Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood
– Yang Jin-mo, Parasite
– Thelma Schoonmaker, The Irishman

Best Music Film:

– Amazing Grace
– Blinded by the Light
– Rocketman
– Wild Rose
– Yesterday

 

The Black Film Critic Circle Select Dolemite Is My Name As The Best of 2019!


On Sunday, the Black Film Critics Circle announced their picks for the best of 2019!

And here they are:

Best Film: Dolemite Is My Name
Best Director: Martin Scorsese (The Irishman) and Kasi Lemmons (Harriet)
Best Actor: Eddie Murphy (Dolemite Is My Name)
Best Actress: Lupita Nyong’o (Us)
Best Supporting Actor: Brad Pitt (Once Upon a Time In Hollywood)
Best Supporting Actress: Da’Vine Joy Randolph (Dolemite Is My Name)
Best Original Screenplay: Lena Waithe (Queen & Slim)
Best Adapted Screenplay: Steven Zaillian (The Irishman)
Best Cinematography: Roger Deakins (1917)
Best Foreign Film: Parasite
Best Documentary: Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am
Best Animated Film: I Lost My Body
Best Ensemble: Dolemite Is My Name
Pioneer Award: Ruth E Carter
Rising Star: Kelvin J. Harrison
Special Mention: Lloyd ‘Kam’ Williams

The Nevada Film Critics Society Name Marriage Story As The Best of 2019!


Here’s a full list of the winners in Nevada:

Best Film: Marriage Story

Best Director: Noah Baumbach – Marriage Story

Best Actor: Adam Driver – Marriage Story
Best Actress (tie): Scarlett Johansson – Marriage Story & Charlize Theron – Bombshell
Best Supporting Actor: Joe Pesci – The Irishman
Best Supporting Actress: Jennifer Lopez – Hustlers

Best Original Screenplay: Quentin Tarantino – Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
Best Adapted Screenplay: Taika Waititi – Jojo Rabbit

Best Animated Movie: Toy Story 4
Best Documentary: Apollo 11

Best Production Design: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
Best Cinematography: 1917
Best Visual Effects: Avengers: Endgame

 

The Utah Film Critics Association honors Parasite and 1917!


On Sunday, the Utah Film Critics Association announced their picks for the best of 2019 and it was another good showing for Parasite!  The film picked up awards for best picture, best screenplay, and best non-English language film.  Meanwhile, 1917 took awards for direction and cinematography while Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson took home the acting awards for Rise of Skywalker and Avengers: Endgame …. just kidding!  They both won for Marriage Story.

Here are the winners!

Best Picture: Parasite. Runner-up: Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood.

Best Achievement in Directing: Sam Mendes, 1917. Runner-up: Quentin Tarantino, Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood.

Best Lead Performance, Male: Adam Driver, Marriage Story. Runner-up: Joaquin Phoenix, Joker.

Best Lead Performance, Female: Scarlett Johansson, Marriage Story. Runner-up: Lupita Nyong’o, Us.

Best Supporting Performance, Female: Florence Pugh, Little Women. Runner-up: Rebecca Ferguson, Doctor Sleep.

Best Supporting Performance, Male: Joe Pesci, The Irishman. Runner-up: Willem Dafoe, The Lighthouse.

Vice/Martin Award for Performance in a Science-Fiction, Fantasy or Horror Film: Robert Downey, Jr., Avengers: Endgame. Runner-up: Lupita Nyong’o, Us.

Best Original Screenplay: Bong Joon-ho and Jin Won Han, Parasite. Runner-up: Rian Johnson, Knives Out.

Best Adapted Screenplay: Greta Gerwig, Little Women. Runner-up: Taika Waititi, Jojo Rabbit.

Best Cinematography: Roger Deakins, 1917. Runner-up: Jarin Blaschke, The Lighthouse.

Best Original Score: Matt Morton, Apollo 11. Runner-up: Dan Levy, I Lost My Body.

Best Film Editing: Todd Douglas Miller, Apollo 11. Runner-up: Andrew Buckland, Michael McCusker and Dirk Westervelt, Ford v Ferrari.

Best Documentary Feature: Apollo 11. Runner-up: Hail Satan?

Best Animated Feature: I Lost My Body. Runners-up: How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World and Toy Story 4.

Best Non-English Language Feature: Parasite. Runner-up: Portrait of a Lady on Fire.

 

The Online Association of Female Film Critics Name Parasite The Best of 2019!


On Monday, the Online Association of Female Film Critics announced their picks for the best of 2019!

And here they are:

Best Film

Jojo Rabbit
Marriage Story
Once Upon A Time in Hollywood
Parasite – WINNER
The Farewell

Best Director

Alma Har’el
Honey Boy

Bong Joon-Ho – WINNER
Parasite

Martin Scorsese
The Irishman

Quentin Tarantino
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

Lulu Wang
The Farewell

Best Male Lead

Leonardo DiCaprio
Once Upon A Time In Hollywood

Adam Driver – WINNER
Marriage Story

Taron Egerton
Rocketman

Joaquin Phoenix
Joker

Adam Sandler
Uncut Gems

Best Female Lead

Awkwafina
The Farewell

Jessie Buckley
Wild Rose

Scarlett Johansson – WINNER (tie)
Marriage Story

Lupita Nyong’o – WINNER (tie)
Us

Renée Zellweger
Judy

Best Supporting Male

Sterling K. Brown
Waves

Willem Dafoe
The Lighthouse

Shia LaBeouf – WINNER
Honey Boy

Joe Pesci
The Irishman

Brad Pitt
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

Best Supporting Female

Ana De Armas
Knives Out

Laura Dern
Marriage Story

Jennifer Lopez – WINNER
Hustlers

Margot Robbie
Bombshell

Zhao Shuzhen
The Farewell

Best Acting Ensemble

Knives Out – WINNER
Little Women
Once Upon A Time In Hollywood
Parasite
The Irishman

Best Original Screenplay

Noah Baumbach – WINNER
Marriage Story

Rian Johnson
Knives Out

Bong Joon-ho, Han Jin-won
Parasite

Quentin Tarantino
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

Lulu Wang
The Farewell

Best Adapted Screenplay

Greta Gerwig
Little Women

Anthony McCarten
The Two Popes

Lorene Scafaria
Hustlers

Taika Waititi – WINNER
Jojo Rabbit

Steven Zaillian
The Irishman

Best Documentary

American Factory
Apollo 11 – WINNER
Hail Satan
Maiden
One Child Nation

Best Animated Feature

Frozen II
How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World
I Lost My Body
Missing Link
Toy Story 4 – WINNER

Best Cinematography

Jarin Blaschke
The Lighthouse

Roger Deakins – WINNER
1917

Claire Mathon
Portrait of a Lady on Fire

Robert Richardson
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

Hoyte Van Hoytema
Ad Astra

Breakthrough Filmmaker

Alma Har’el
Honey Boy

Melina Matsoukas
Queen & Slim

Joe Talbot
The Last Black Man in San Francisco

Lulu Wang – WINNER
The Farewell

Olivia Wilde
Booksmart

Breakthrough Performance

Roman Griffin Davis
Jojo Rabbit

Zack Gottsagen
The Peanut Butter Falcon

Kelvin Harrison Jr.
Waves

Noah Jupe
Honey Boy

Florence Pugh – WINNER
Midsommar

The Rosie
This OAFFC-specific award “celebrates the film that best promotes women, their voices, and the female experience through cinema.”

Booksmart
Hustlers
Little Women
Portrait of a Lady on Fire – WINNER
The Nightingale

The Florida Film Critics Circle Names Portrait Of A Lady On Fire The Best of 2019!


On Monday, the Florida Film Critics Circle announced their picks for the best of 2019!  For best picture, they selected the French-language film, Portrait of a Lady on Fire!  Portrait of a Lady on Fire has, as of late, emerged as a bit of an Oscar dark horse.  While it would be surprising (and history making) to see two international films nominated for best picture in the same year, strangers things have happened.  After all, just three years ago, I was proudly declaring that there was no way that Academy would ever nominate a Netflix film for any of the big prizes.

Here are the winners and nominees from Florida:

BEST PICTURE
1917 – Runner-up
Ad Astra
Marriage Story
Portrait of a Lady on Fire – WINNER
The Irishman

BEST ACTOR
Adam Driver, Marriage Story – WINNER
Adam Sandler, Uncut Gems
Antonio Banderas, Pain and Glory – Runner-up
Franz Rogowski, Transit
Joaquin Phoenix, Joker
Taron Egerton, Rocketman

BEST ACTRESS
Charlize Theron, Bombshell
Elisabeth Moss, Her Smell
Florence Pugh, Midsommar – Runner-up
Renée Zellweger, Judy
Scarlett Johansson, Marriage Story – WINNER

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Anthony Hopkins, The Two Popes
Brad Pitt, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
Joe Pesci, The Irishman – WINNER
John Lithgow, Bombshell – Runner-up
Tom Hanks, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Annette Bening, The Report
Isla Fisher, The Beach Bum – Runner-up (tie)
Jennifer Lopez, Hustlers
Laura Dern, Marriage Story – WINNER
Margot Robbie, Bombshell – Runner-up (tie)
Scarlett Johansson, Jojo Rabbit
Zhao Shuzhen, The Farewell

BEST ENSEMBLE
Little Women – WINNER
Marriage Story
Parasite
The Farewell – Runner-up
The Irishman

BEST DIRECTOR
Céline Sciamma, Portrait of a Lady on Fire – WINNER
Greta Gerwig, Little Women
Sam Mendes, 1917 – Runner-up

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Bong Joon-Ho and Han Jin-Won, Parasite
Céline Sciamma, Portrait of a Lady on Fire
Lulu Wang, The Farewell – Runner-up
Noah Baumbach, Marriage Story
Quentin Tarantino, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
Ronald Bronstein, Benny Safdie and Josh Safdie, Uncut Gems – WINNER

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
Anthony McCarten, The Two Popes
Greta Gerwig, Little Women – WINNER
Micah Fitzerman-Blue and Noah Harpster, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
Steven Zaillian, The Irishman – Runner-up
Taika Waititi, Jojo Rabbit
Terrence Malick, A Hidden Life

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
Claire Mathon, Portrait of a Lady on Fire – Runner-up
Hoyte Van Hoytema, Ad Astra
Jorg Widmer, A Hidden Life
Roger Deakins, 1917 – WINNER

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS
Ad Astra – Runner-up (tie)
Avengers: Endgame – Runner-up (tie)
Alita: Battle Angel – WINNER

BEST ART DIRECTION/PRODUCTION
Barbara Ling, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood – WINNER
Kevin Constant, Christa Munro, Alison Sadler, David Scott and Gary Warsaw, Ad Astra – Runner-up
Simon Elsley, Elaine Kusmishko, Rod McLean, Niall Moroney, Stephen Swain and Robert Voyset, 1917

BEST SCORE
Daniel Lopatin, Uncut Gems – WINNER
Hildur Guðnadóttir, Joker
Max Richter, Ad Astra
Randy Newman, Marriage Story
Thomas Newman, 1917

BEST DOCUMENTARY
American Factory
Apollo 11 – WINNER
Honeyland – Runner-up
The Biggest Little Farm

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
Long Day’s Journey Into Night
Pain and Glory
Parasite – Runner-up
Portrait of a Lady on Fire – WINNER
The Farewell

BEST ANIMATED FILM
Frozen 2
How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World
I Lost My Body – WINNER
Toy Story 4 – Runner-up
Weathering With You

BEST FIRST FILM
Booksmart
Honeyland – Runner-up
Queen & Slim – WINNER
The Last Black Man in San Francisco

PAULINE KAEL BREAKOUT AWARD
Florence Pugh, Midsommar, Fighting With My Family and Little Women – WINNER
Honor Swinton Byrne, The Souvenir
Lulu Wang, The Farewell – Runner-up
Roman Griffin Davis, Jojo Rabbit

Here Are The 2019 Nominations of the Online Film Critics Society!


On Monday, the Online Film Critics Society (OFCS) announced their nominations for the best of 2019 and here they are!  The Irishman has the most nomination, with 8.  Meanwhile, Once Upon A Time In Hollywood received seven while Parasite and Marriage Story received six each.

The winners will be announced on January 6th!

Best Picture

The Irishman
Jojo Rabbit
Knives Out
Marriage Story
1917
Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood
Parasite
Portrait of a Lady on Fire
Uncut Gems
Us

Best Animated Feature

Frozen II
How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World
I Lost My Body
Missing Link
Toy Story 4

Best Director

Bong Joon-ho – Parasite
Sam Mendes – 1917
Celine Sciamma – Portrait of a Lady on Fire
Martin Scorsese – The Irishman
Quentin Tarantino – Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood

Best Actor

Antonio Banderas – Pain and Glory
Robert De Niro – The Irishman
Adam Driver – Marriage Story
Joaquin Phoenix – Joker
Adam Sandler – Uncut Gems

Best Actress

Awkwafina – The Farewell
Scarlett Johansson – Marriage Story
Lupita Nyong’o – Us
Florence Pugh – Midsommar
Renée Zellweger – Judy

Best Supporting Actor

Willem Dafoe – The Lighthouse
Al Pacino – The Irishman
Joe Pesci – The Irishman
Brad Pitt – Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood
Song Kang-ho – Parasite

Best Supporting Actress

Laura Dern – Marriage Story
Jennifer Lopez – Hustlers
Florence Pugh – Little Women
Margot Robbie – Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood
Shuzhen Zhao – The Farewell

Best Original Screenplay

Knives Out – Rian Johnson
Marriage Story – Noah Baumbach
Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood – Quentin Tarantino
Parasite – Bong Joon-ho, Han Jin-won
Us – Jordan Peele

Best Adapted Screenplay

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood – Micah Fitzerman-Blue, Noah Harpster
Hustlers – Lorene Scafaria
The Irishman – Steven Zaillian
Jojo Rabbit – Taika Waititi
Little Women – Greta Gerwig

Best Editing

Ford v Ferrari – Andrew Buckland, Michael McCusker
The Irishman – Thelma Schoonmaker
1917 – Lee Smith
Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood – Fred Raskin
Parasite – Jinmo Yang

Best Cinematography

The Irishman – Rodrigo Prieto
The Lighthouse – Jarin Blaschke
1917 – Roger Deakins
Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood – Robert Richardson
Portrait of a Lady on Fire – Claire Mathon

Best Original Score

Joker – Hildur Guðnadóttir
Little Women – Alexandre Desplat
Marriage Story – Randy Newman
1917 – Thomas Newman
Us – Michael Abels

Best Debut Feature

Mati Diop – Atlantics
Melina Matsoukas – Queen & Slim
Tyler Nilson, Michael Schwartz – The Peanut Butter Falcon
Joe Talbot – The Last Black Man in San Francisco
Olivia Wilde – Booksmart

Best Film Not in the English Language

Atlantics
Monos
Pain and Glory
Parasite
Portrait of a Lady on Fire

Best Documentary

American Factory
Apollo 11
For Sama
Honeyland
One Child Nation

Playing Catch-Up With The Films Of 2019: The Dead Don’t Die (by Jim Jarmusch)


Uh-oh, the dead are rising again.

Seriously, I’ve lost track of how many zombie films I’ve seen over the past ten years.  This last decade was the decade when zombies went mainstream and I have to admit that I have mixed feelings about it.  Zombies have become so overexposed that they’re no longer as scary as they once were.  I mean, there’s even PG-rated zombie movies now!  How the Hell did that happen?  Everyone’s getting in on the act.

There were a brief flurry of excitement when Jim Jarmusch announced that his next film would be a zombie film.  Myself, I was a bit skeptical and the release of a terrible trailer didn’t really help matters.  The fact that the film was full of recognizable names also made me uneasy.  Would this be an actual zombie film or would it just be a bunch of actors slumming in the genre?  The film opened the Cannes Film Festival and received mixed reviews.  By the time it opened in the United States, it seemed as if everyone had forgotten about The Dead Don’t Die.  It was widely chalked up as being one of Jim Jarmusch’s rare misfires, like The Limits of Control.

Last month, I finally watched The Dead Don’t Die and you know what?  It’s a flawed film and yes, there are times when it even becomes an annoying film.  That said, I still kind of liked it.

In The Dead Don’t Die, the Earth’s rotation has been altered, the result of polar fracking.  No one seems to be particularly concerned about it.  Instead, they’re just kind of annoyed by the fact that the sun is now staying up in the sky a bit longer than usual.  Cell phones and watches stop working.  House pets abandon and occasionally attack their owners.  In the rural town of Centerville, the dead rise from their graves and start to eat people.  Whether or not that’s connected to the Earth’s rotation is anyone’s guess.  (I like to think that the whole thing about the Earth’s rotation being altered was Jarmusch’s homage to Night of the Living Dead‘s suggestion that the zombies were the result of space radiation.)

We meet the inhabitant of Centerville.  Zelda (Tilda Swinton) is the enigmatic mortician.  Bobby (Caleb Landry Jones) is the horror movie expert.  Farmer Miller (Steve Buscemi) is the red-hatted farmer who hates everyone.  Zoe (Selena Gomez) is the traveler who is staying at the run-down motel with two friends.  Cliff Robertson (Bill Murray) is the police chief who wants to save everyone but Farmer Miller.  Ronnie (Adam Driver) and Mindy (Chloe Sevigny) are police officers.  They’re all in the middle of a zombie apocalypse but very few of them seem to really be that surprised by any of it.

Throughout the film, we hear Sturgill Simpson singing a wonderful song called The Dead Don’t Die.  Cliff demands to know why the song is always one the radio.  Ronnie replies that it’s the “theme song.”  Ronnie, we discover, has an answer for almost everything.  He explains that he knows what’s going to happen because he’s the only one that “Jim” allowed to read the entire script.  Cliff isn’t happy about that.

That’s the type of film that The Dead Don’t Die is.  It’s an elaborate in-joke, a zombie movie about people who know that they’re in a zombie movie but who are too detached to actually use that information to their advantage.  The script has been written so they have no choice but to do what the script says regardless of whether it makes them happy or not.  It’s a clever conceit, though a bit of a thin one to build a 103-minute movie around.

As I said, the film can occasionally be an endurance test.  Everyone is so deadpan that you actually find yourself getting angry at them.  But, whenever you’re on the verge of giving up, there will be a clever line that will draw you back in or the theme song will start playing again.  Bill Murray and Adam Driver are fun to watch and Driver reminds us that he’s actually a good comedic actor.  (In the year of Marriage Story and Rise of Skywalker, that can be easy to forget.)

It’s a flawed film and definitely not one of Jim Jarmusch’s best.  At the same time, though, The Dead Don’t Die is not as bad as you may have heard.

Playing Catch-Up With The Films of 2019: Ma (dir by Tate Taylor)


Oh, Ma!  I had such high hopes for you!

When I first saw the trailer, I assumed that Ma would be kind of a silly horror film where Octavia Spencer plays a woman who buys beer for a bunch of teenagers and then develops an unhealthy obsession with them and then freaks out when all the teenagers are like, “We don’t want to spend all of our time hanging out with a 50 year-old.”  I thought it would be a nicely simple little film and I was looking forward to it because Octavia Spencer is a great actress who, far too often, gets typecast as everyone’s surrogate maternal figure.  I really wanted a chance to see her just go crazy on film.

And, make no mistake about it, Spencer does get to go crazy in Ma and that’s fun to watch but the film itself gets weighed down by a plot that’s a hundred times more complicated than it needs to be.  It turns out that Ma isn’t just someone who is a little bit too clingy for her own good.  No, instead, Ma has got an elaborate scheme going so that she can get revenge on the children of the people who humiliated her in high school and …. well, who cares?  I mean, this is a good example of a film that could have been a lot of fun except for the fact that someone decided to try to make a statement.

(Tate Taylor previously directed Spencer in The Help and if you think that there’s little in The Help that would suggest that the future director of Ma had an affinity for or understanding of the horror genre, you’re right.)

Octavia Spencer is obviously having a lot of fun with the role of Ma but the film, for some reason, spends a lot of time following a host of other characters, none of whom are as interesting.  It all come down to yet another Saw-style torture chamber and that sort of thing really hasn’t been interesting for a while.  In the end, Ma is a missed opportunity.

Oh well.

Playing Catch-Up With The Films of 2019: Yesterday (dir by Danny Boyle)


It’s a bit of an odd film, Yesterday is.

Himesh Patel plays Jack Malik, a singer-songwriter who has struggled to find much success.  The only person who believes in him is his manager, a school teacher named Ellie Appleton (Lily James).  (Given the film’s subject matter, Ellie’s last name is a significant one.)  One night, the entire world is hit by a brief blackout.  Jack misses most of the excitement because he’s in a coma, having been hit by a bus.

When Jack wakes up from his coma, he’s shocked to discover that he’s lost several teeth and now looks kind of silly whenever he speaks, sings, or even smiles.  However, he also eventually discovers that he is now apparently the only person in the world who remembers The Beatles!

Somehow (it’s never explained how), that global blackout changed history.  It’s not that the Beatles ceased to exist as individuals.  In one of the film’s more affecting scenes, Jack drives out to the country and meets John Lennon (Robert Carlyle), who never became a superstar and who, as a result, was never assassinated.  However, in this new world, the Beatles never came together as a group and, as a result, some of the most beloved songs in history were never written.  Only Jack knows the lyrics and music for Eleanor Rigby, Yesterday, The Long and Riding Road, Let It Be, Back in the USSR, and …. well, everything!

(Oddly enough, the Beatles no longer existing has also led to several other things no longer existing.  It’s impossible not to laugh when Jack discovers that, without the Beatles, there was never an Oasis.  At the same time, there’s also no Coke or Harry Potter books.  I guess the Beatles weren’t around to inspire J.K. Rowling but why Coke would vanish is a bit more confusing.  Since Coke predates the Beatles by a century, perhaps the the film is less about how strange the world is without Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and instead about how we owe everything good in the world to John Pemberton.)

Needless to say, this leads to Jack becoming a huge star.  He’s soon touring with Ed Sheeran and recording his debut album.  And yet, through it all, Jack is haunted by the fact that the music isn’t truly his.  Will Jack continue to plagiarize his way to stardom?  And will Jack and Ellie ever realize that they’re in love and totally meant to be together?  Watch to find out, I suppose!

As I said at the start of this review, Yesterday is a bit of an odd film.  Directed by Danny Boyle and written by Richard Curtis, it’s a meeting of two talents that you wouldn’t necessarily expect to compliment each other.  Surprisingly enough, though, the mix of Curtis’s sentimentality and Boyle’s more subversive instincts works well.  This is to especially be found in the scene where Jack meets John Lennon.  On paper, the scene shouldn’t work but it does work because Boyle is enough of a contrarian to direct his actors to play the scene with a wistful sadness.  The script may have intended the scene to prove that Lennon would have found happiness no matter what but Boyle directs it as if to say, “It probably would have been better for John if the Beatles has never existed….”  Stylistically, Boyle is too much of a cheerful anarchist to fully embrace Curtis’s romcom-style love of the Beatles.  At the same time, Curtis’s more earnest dialogue often undercuts Boyle’s more excessive instincts.  The end result is a sweet-natured movie with an edge.

Making his feature film debut, Himsh Patel is likable as Jack, even if he doesn’t quite have rock star charisma.  (Then again, that’s also a part of the film’s humor.  On his own, Jack is destined to forever be the opening act, the acceptable performer who is forgotten as soon as the headliners show up.  It’s only after the Beatles are wiped from everyone’s memory that Jack is able to become a star.)  Lily James does her best with an underwritten role and Ed Sheeran plays a hilariously vapid version of himself.

Yesterday is a good-natured tribute to the power of music and one band in particular.