"BlacKkKlansman"

 ☆☆☆☆½ 

Surprisingly, Spike Lee's extraordinary new movie BlacKkKlansman isn't the first movie to use that title. The Black Klansman was released in 1966, six years before Lee's movie takes place, and it's the kind of low-budget exploitation film that has frequently inspired Lee's work, an aesthetic very much at the core of BlacKkKlansman.

The new "Spike Lee Joint" is as bold and vibrant, as meaningful and committed, as entertaining and insightful as anything Lee has made in his 30 years as one of the most prolific of American directors. (Those who think he's been quiet the last few years may be shocked to learn he has directed 13 movies, including shorts, since his last major mainstream hit, 2006's Inside Man.) It's a film that is shockingly, distressingly relevant and impossibly entertaining, a combination few American filmmakers try to achieve.

Of course it's a "message" movie, with a message that is almost unbearably strong, raw and painful, but it's infused with such a strong sense of storytelling, and with such strong technical prowess -- not to mention a cast that is almost faultless -- that it's disappointing to imagine some people staying away from BlacKkKlansman because they don't want to hear more about race relations in America. Those people will miss one of the best entertainments of the year, not to mention one of the best-made movies in recent memory.

And, as BlacKkKlansman tells us right at the start, it's all true. So when the movie breaks character in its final moments and moves into one of the most distressing codas in movie history, the reality of what we've seen fictionalized hits home with devastating impact.

For most of its running time, though, BlacKkKlansman is focused on a good story told well: Ron Stallworth (John David Washington) is hired by the police department in Colorado Springs to be its first black officer. He's relegated, though, to the records room, which he hates. When civil rights leader Stokely Carmichael comes to town, though, the police chief uses Stallworth as a way to learn more about "black power" groups and their alleged plans for violence.

Stallworth uses his new assignment against a different race-based group, though: He makes the jaw-dropping move of calling the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan ... and gets invited to meet in person. And there's the problem that drives the movie: Stallworth teams up with another investigator, Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver) to be the face to Stallworth's "white" voice. The ruse works shockingly well, as the pair work their way into and up the chain of the KKK, ending at David Duke (Topher Grace), who urges Stallworth to become a card-carrying KKK member.

While Stallworth and Zimmerman work their plan, Stallworth also meets and begins to fall for a young student activist (Laura Harrier), who begins to suspect that Stallworth might be hiding a lot more than he lets on, even though he's getting more and more involved in the black power movement.

The two parallel stories, and the two parallel "Ron Stallworths," allow Lee to work both his camera and his editor, Barry Alexander Brown, in rich, rewarding ways -- and what's most compelling and surprising (though, given Lee's history, maybe shouldn't be) is how technically overwhelming BlacKkKlansman turns out to be.

One sequence, involving a KKK member, his wife and a bomb, is destined to be a classic of suspense filmmaking; another, which features the parallel activities of a KKK meeting, a screening of D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation, and a riveting cameo by Harry Belafonte, is similarly strengthened by Lee's intense knowledge of filmmaking techniques.  Watching BlacKkKlansman on the level of pure cinema is as rewarding as being told its astonishing tale.

Never one to back away from challenging his audience, Lee infuses BlacKkKlansman with two of the most famous movies in film history: Gone With the Wind and Nation, which we're reminded was the first real Hollywood blockbuster. The way Lee uses them here is disturbing and eye-opening: He's using film to remind us of the unique power of film to influence and mold even the most hateful thinking. Lee, America's foremost black filmmaker, is aware that his own art form and even his own career have been shaped by visions of shocking racism, violence and hatred.

And after infusing BlacKkKlansman with sly references to "making America great again" and keeping "America first" throughout the movie, Lee digs right in to the shape of American race relations today, with an ending that leaves an audience entirely speechless. At least for now, BlacKkKlansman has the last word on such a sorrowful subject.

But it's also such a perfectly entertaining movie -- clever, funny, swift, engaging -- which is an accomplishment it's impossible to overlook. Its only weak spot is the performance of Driver, who never seems to match the enormous energy of the rest of the cast and of the filmmaker; he has a tendency to seem listless, even when the movie calls for him to be at his most passionate.

Even so, when he and Washington finally end up in the same room with David Duke and the KKK, it's a scene of crackling vibrancy. The two halves of Ron Stallworth finally join as one in a sequence that brings together everything -- story, technique, humor, tension, rage, pain -- that is at the heart of BlacKkKlansman.



Viewed August 25, 2018 -- ArcLight Sherman Oaks

2010

"Christopher Robin"

 ☆☆☆ 

In the view of Hollywood, having a job and being a grown-up seem to be about the worst sins any adult could commit, and the only thing that can save a responsible adult from his (or, to a lesser extent, her) callous ways is a magical creature.

Think of it: Poor Mr. Banks in Mary Poppins, such a mean old grown-up, completely devoid of childlike innocence.  Poor Peter Banning in Hook, so grumpy and embittered, and so unlike his childish self.  Dorothy in Return to Oz didn't even get to grow up: She was a lost case mere months after returning from her first visit to the land over the rainbow.

And now here's poor Christopher Robin, who has lost all ability to have a heart; according to his wife, he can't even laugh. Would you? Since going away to boarding school, he has not only left behind the Hundred Acre Wood, but gotten married, seen horrific violence in World War II, and come back to take a soul-sucking job at a luggage manufacturer.  Life couldn't be much worse for the grown-up Christopher Robin.

Meanwhile, the residents of the Hundred Acre Wood think of him -- and miss him -- every single day.  They kind of have a point, since the whole of the populace in the wood seems to be Winnie the Pooh, Piglet, Owl, Rabbit, Eeyore, Kanga and Roo. Even for them, life's gotta be a little dull.

The Hundred Acre Wood may or may not be a real place, but its residents certainly are real, according to the odd mythology of Disney's Christopher Robin. The Wood is accessible only through a magic doorway, and when Winnie the Pooh himself (the voice of Jim Cummings) walks the other way through the portal, he winds up in London, just outside the home of grown up Christopher (Ewan McGregor). A strange thing has happened: Pooh seems to have lost his friends, who have ominously gone missing on a gray, foggy day.

Pooh and Christopher Robin meet at the worst possible time for Christopher -- he's got extra work to do on a weekend, and is neglecting his wife and daughter for the sake of bringing home a salary. Gasp! What a selfish, ugly, grown-up thing to do! Pooh, meanwhile, remains a bear of very little brain, and spends an evening in Christopher Robin's home being clumsy and messy in a sweeter, more innocent version of Paddington Bear's first night in the home of the Browns in the original Paddington. Sometimes, Christopher Robin seems to be the movie for people who found Paddington a little too raucous and cheeky.

Christopher Robin is filled with simple delights, and its only real problem is how simple some of those delights are. Pooh is adorable and speaks in the wisdom of greeting cards.  He lives a life utterly devoid of complexity, and when Christopher Robin inevitably returns to the Hundred Acre Wood, he and his friends think they hear the dreaded Huffalumps and Woozles, leading to a simple and sweet explanation of how these storied creatures are not much more than manifestations of a child's fear of the unknown life of adults.

A sweet-natured and simple little mix-up happens when Christopher Robin returns to the Wood, one involving very important papers that Christopher Robin needs for a meeting in the ugly, awful real world. Pooh and his friends make a journey into London to return the papers to their human friend.  Once there, other people can see and hear them, which is one of the more unexpected but odd little touches in Christopher Robin: We're so used to stories in which the mystical critters can't be seen by "real people," but that's not the case here.

It's a shame, then, that it doesn't lead to a better, deeper story.  The long-in-gestation script for Christopher Robin is simplistic to a fault; Pooh and friends never really experience what London is like, they get no sense of the real world -- and the real world doesn't get to experience their simplicity. Everything is kept neatly confined to the story of Christopher Robin and how his childhood friends will teach him a lesson about what's really important in life. (Hint: It involves family, even at the expense of a job.)

Christopher Robin misses a bet in not exposing Pooh and Friends to the Real World, and having the Real World react not with cynicism and fear but instead with wonder and delight.  Christopher Robin could have brought some of the same sensibility of (yes, really) The Brady Bunch movie to the simplistic creations of A.A. Milne and E.H. Shepherd, but it wants to remain firmly in fairy-tale mode.

That lack of depth ultimately does harm Christopher Robin a bit, since the movie takes such pains to show us how young Master Christopher became slightly embittered Mr. Robin, and shows us some of the horrors of the world.  The Hundred Acre Wood could have served as a balm to the horrors of reality, but instead it is as it always was: an adorable place to spend 90 minutes.

There is nothing at all wrong with Christopher Robin.  It's a visual delight, a sweet and good-natured return to a simple place.  It's got a perfect voice cast, a wonderful human cast, and some astonishing visual effects, all working in service of a simple, delightful little story -- with emphasis on "little." It could have been a grand adventure, and instead it's a joyous little romp. Silly old bear.




Viewed Aug. 8, 2018 -- ArcLight Sherman Oaks

1900

"Mission: Impossible – Fallout"

 ☆☆☆☆½ 

The comedian John Mulaney has a great bit about the high cost of movies. Expressing astonishment about enormous, nine-figure budgets, Mulaney says he'd be willing to spend ten bucks just to see that amount of cash – it would be more impressive than the movie itself.

I'd like to introduce John Mulaney to Mission: Impossible – Fallout, one of the only movies I've ever seen that looks like it must have cost $150 million to make, and that puts just about every cent up there on the screen. It's a big, grand movie, filled with stunts like parachuting into the City of Lights through a thunderstorm, and flying a burning helicopter at dizzying speeds while chasing another helicopter onto a glacier.

We've all seen movies that wear their nine-figure price tags like flashy designer clothes that call attention to themselves through high-priced casting or visual effects that trick the eye but not the brain. Mission: Impossible – Fallout wears its budget like an expensive, finely tailored suit, looking perfect and defying you to find anything wrong with the tailoring. There's no doubt in my mind that the movie is filled with digital effects – more, even, than Tom Cruise's publicists would want you to believe – but I was too busy admiring everything about it to notice; it all flows together with such fine craftsmanship you wouldn't even know where to look to find the flaws if they exist.

That's not to say that Mission: Impossible – Fallout is anything more or less than mindless summertime entertainment. The movie touches on some lofty and even challenging themes, offering up some troubling observations about the hair-trigger state of the world and its seemingly never-ending suffering at the hands of terrorists.

But this is also a movie that achieves the impressive feat of taking place in two world capitals that have been profoundly affected by terrorist acts themselves, yet making us forget entirely about the real-life events that happened there, and I can hardly think of higher praise for an action-adventure movie than that it is able to make us forget about the things that really trouble us, even if just for a couple of hours.

Mission: Impossible – Fallout wastes literally no time at all in giving Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) his new mission, which may, in the moment, seem labyrinthine in its complexity, and in fact is, but here is all you need to know about it: He has to find the object and get it back from the bad guys. Hitchcock would have been proud to see his beloved MacGuffin used to such perfect effect. All throughout the movie, there are moments where you worry Mission: Impossible – Fallout has become too complex to follow.

One scene in particular takes place deep under the streets of London and contains what must be at least a double double-cross (maybe a triple?), which is exponentially more complex than a regular old double-cross, and it's easy to sigh and say, "I give up." Which is exactly what you should do, as the movie's script, by director Christopher McQuarrie, isn't going to let you fall -- you'll have it figured out in no time.

Or maybe not.

After seeing the movie, I listened to a group of friends try to sort it all out, until one finally said, "All I know is that (insert actor's name here) was the bad guy." In the end, that's kind of all you need to know: Cruise is the good guy, surrounded by familiar faces like Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames and, returning from Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, Rebecca Ferguson.  The others, well, they'll get sorted out in the end.

It was when Ferguson showed up that, I confess, I got a little worried. I had no idea what happened in the previous film, which I remembered liking, but could not recall in any detail. Not to worry, McQuarrie's got that covered, too, and deftly manages to further some of the backstory while filling in less-than-attentive viewers (like me) on exactly what they might need to recall from a movie they saw three years ago.

And none of it really matters, ultimately, because the most important thing is that you just keep your eye on whatever it is that the bad and good guys both want. As that thing bounces around (and even changes from moment to moment), it all builds off of a fantastic opening sequence in which Hunt has a very bad day by making a very bad decision – a decision no one can fault him for having made. Beginning there, the film dashes around Europe, hopping from Berlin to Paris to London to what is ostensibly the Indian state of Kashmir but is in fact the eye-popping terrain of Norway.

In the midst of it, Mission: Impossible – Fallout makes time for a very funny and unexpected sequence that will play right into the hands of "Fake News" believers, and ups the ante on the stakes at hand for Hunt and his Impossible Missions Force team. Mission: Impossible – Fallout ensures that what needs to be saved here is the fate of the entire globe, and that it's going to come down to those last few seconds to make it happen.

Whether it happens is hardly a question: Ethan Hunt hasn't been doing this for 20-plus years without reason. Neither has Cruise, who is, as ever, perfectly suited to the role. At this rate, it seems possible to expect him to be doing this for another couple of decades, well into his, ulp, 70s. That might seem unlikely, sure, but with Cruise and McQuarrie in charge, it doesn't seem like a mission that's at all impossible.



Viewed August 5, 2018 -- ArcLight Sherman Oaks

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