Grade: B

Hidden Figures: Black Women Have the Bright Stuff

Jeremy BeckReviews
Janelle Monáe, Taraji P. Henson, and Octavia Spencer in "Hidden Figures"

In the opening scene of Rushmore, a math teacher asks Jason Schwartzman whether he might be able to come to the blackboard and solve an impossibly complex equation. Schwartzman’s character does so effortlessly and receives the adoring congratulations of his classmates, at which point Wes Anderson reveals that the sequence is a dream. Hidden Figures, Theodore Melfi’s sincere and sappy biopic of three black women who worked at NASA during the height of the Space Race, is essentially a feature-length version of this scene, minus the concluding fake-out. It fancies itself a hard-hitting historical drama, but it’s really a frothy, wish-fulfillment fantasy.

And what’s wrong with that? Hidden Figures may not trouble your mind or get under your skin, but it does provide a welcome, feel-good tonic for these troubled times. It insists, with disarming directness, that the evils of prejudice and entrenchment will always succumb to the virtues of hard work and human decency. Its period setting is one of extreme unease (as opposed to now?), but its tone is unabashedly wholesome and reassuring. Read More

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Fences: When the Walls Tumble Down, Resentments Bubble Up

Jeremy BeckReviews
Denzel Washington is a fearsome father in "Fences"

Denzel Washington is a rock. That’s true of both his body of work and his actual body. Physically, he’s built like a finely chiseled piece of granite, with broad shoulders, flinty eyes, and a handsome face that occasionally breaks into a broad, beaming smile. And commercially, few movie stars are so ruggedly reliable. (How many other actors could have carried The Equalizer to $100 million, much less inspired demand for a sequel?) Washington’s consistency is often mistaken for redundancy, given that he typically portrays heroic authority figures defined by their unwavering competence; even when he played against type in Training Day, he was supremely charismatic. But in some of his best roles (Courage Under Fire, Flight), he allows tendrils of doubt and weakness to creep through the façade of proficiency and strength. In Fences, Washington delivers a towering performance that represents the apex of this duality—never before has he seemed so indomitable and, at the same time, so broken.

Which is not to say that Fences is a great movie. In a sense, it is barely a movie at all. A faithful adaptation of August Wilson’s Pulitzer-winning play, Fences’ dogmatic fidelity to its source arguably renders it a better fit for the stage than the screen. The third feature directed by Washington, it consists of a series of dialogue-heavy scenes, the bulk of which could be neatly subdivided into a handful of acts. Action is limited, as is Marcelo Zarvos’ muted score. The majority of the chatter takes place in a single house’s kitchen and backyard, with a few additional locations mixed in for variety. The camera remains relatively passive; when it does move, it does so fluidly via the Steadicam, rather than the handheld style favored by many art-house filmmakers. Read More

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Passengers: Boy Meets Girl, Stranded Amid the Stars

Jeremy BeckReviews
Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt in "Passengers"

It is an unwritten rule that every movie set in space must feature a scene where a character suddenly begins to run out of oxygen. Passengers, the diverting, flawed, occasionally fantastic romantic thriller from Morten Tyldum, is no exception. But the scene in question, which is both exciting and exasperating, arms critics with an all-too-apt metaphor to describe the broader film. Here is a movie that begins with enormous promise, sustains that promise for well over an hour, and then slowly, steadily runs out of air. It gasps for breath, its limbs flail helplessly, and its brain, deprived of precious nutrients like logic and plausibility, shuts down.

But if I’m writing less of a review than an obituary, allow me to express the hope that Passengers—which has been unjustly savaged by critics—may rest in peace. Its ultimate demise should not invalidate the genuine delight and intrigue it provided while it was still alive. By which I mean, for its first two acts, Passengers is a whole lot of fun. Visually, it’s sleek, sharp, and sexy, with a slick, antiseptic production design, fetching costumes, and a pleasing color palette. And narratively, it tells an engaging story fraught with genuine moral conflict. A high-concept sci-fi think-piece, it will undoubtedly draw unflattering comparisons to 2001: A Space Odyssey, but it’s inspired less by Kubrick than Kieslowski, and if its answers to its philosophical quandaries are less than satisfactory, it at least has the courage to pose such dilemmas in the first place. Read More

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Rogue One: A Star Wars Story: Still Rebelling, Now with a Cost

Jeremy BeckReviews
Diego Luna, Felicity Jones, and Alan Tudyk in "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story"

Of the infinite memes that sprang out of the original Star Wars trilogy, one of the most random derives from a moment of startling quiet in The Return of the Jedi, when a rebel leader is delivering an expository info-dump. As she’s rambling about battle stations and deflector shields, she suddenly pauses, then drops her voice and solemnly murmurs, “Many Bothans died to bring us this information.” There are no Bothans in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, but there is quite a bit of death, and not just involving hundreds of haphazardly slaughtered stormtroopers. This counts as a surprise. The Star Wars franchise isn’t devoid of darkness, but it has generally prioritized fun and escapism; while Rogue One largely stays on brand, it isn’t especially concerned with joy. Instead, the predominant theme of this interesting and frustrating film—which was directed by Gareth Edwards from a script by Chris Weitz and Tony Gilroy—is sacrifice. It’s a genuine war movie, one about the soldiers who wade through the mud, risking their lives so that the rest of us may glimpse a better tomorrow.

If that sounds turgid, don’t worry—this is still a Star Wars movie, with all of the excitement and mythology that such an undertaking entails. Yet Rogue One occupies a curious place within Disney’s newest and most profitable cinematic universe. Whereas the official episodic saga resumed last year, after a decade-long layoff, with The Force Awakens, Rogue One is the first of the studio’s “anthology” series, films that both take place within the canonical realm and simultaneously stand apart from it. (Continuing this pattern, 2018 will see the release of a Han Solo movie, starring Hail, Caesar‘s Alden Ehrenreich, while a rumored Boba Fett film is tentatively slated for 2020.) In theory, this concept will allow filmmakers to expand the Star Wars mythos into uncharted space, using the series’ existing, minutely detailed template to tell bold and innovative stories. But because the franchise’s fan base is so entrenched and protective of its collective property—and because directors must satisfy their corporate overlord’s commercial imperative to please those fans—veering too far off course is a dicey proposition. Read More

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Loving: Found Guilty for Finding Love

Jeremy BeckReviews
Joel Edgerton and Ruth Negga as a real-life couple in "Loving"

Loving is a very pleasant American movie about a very unpleasant time in American history. It tells a story of adversity, perseverance, and ultimate triumph, and it proceeds in a rigorous straight line, with minimal eccentricity or embellishment. This is perhaps to be expected, given that Loving belongs to a specific subgenre: the earnest and well-meaning docudrama. But it is also something of a surprise, given that its writer and director is Jeff Nichols, whose previous films (Take Shelter, Mud, Midnight Special) were largely off-kilter and opaque. Nichols tends to focus on odd protagonists—a delusional laborer, a wandering gangster, an alien boy—but even more central to his filmmaking are his disdain for convention and his gift for unpredictability. Yet anyone with access to Wikipedia could comfortably predict how Loving will play out.

This does not make it bad. On the contrary, it can be satisfying to watch a familiar story unfold on screen, particularly when it is well-told and well-acted. And of course, the movie’s theme—that stoic decency can defeat senseless bigotry—is a worthy one, equally relevant now as when the events of the film took place. Still, the challenge for Nichols is to make Loving stimulating as a piece of cinema as well as a lesson in history. Given his meat-and-potatoes approach to this material, it’s a marvel that he even half-succeeds. Read More

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