The Weekly Gravy #133

A little off-topic, but I got a poem published in the online magazine JAKE, which is pretty damn cool. You can read it here.

A Thousand and One (2023) – ****

In his films Shoplifters and Broker, director Hirokazu Kore-eda depicts surrogate families, showing how the human need for love and connection, and the need to care for one another, brings together people on the fringes of society, even in defiance of those laws which attempt to regulate these needs – especially in regards to children, who cannot simply be taken in by those willing to care for them, even when their legal guardians are neglectful or absent.

I don’t know if A.V. Rockwell was influenced by Kore-eda’s work while making A Thousand and One, but it touches upon that same conflict of human needs – and the desires of the individual – versus the rules of society as a whole. The title at once refers to the apartment where our characters live for the majority of the film and to how they, but a few people in the great expanse of New York, try to find happiness in the face of all manner of pressure.

We begin in 1994, as Inez (Teyana Taylor) is released from jail and goes to Brooklyn to find her 6-year-old son Terry (Aaron Kingsley Adetola), who’s currently in foster care. After he gets badly hurt, probably because he was inadequately supervised, she decides to take him to her old neighborhood in Harlem, where she struggles to find a place for them to live and a way to support them both. That she doesn’t have legal custody of Terry is one problem; that her short temper and abrasive attitude tend to alienate those around her is another.

But eventually she finds work, finds a place where they can live in comfort, and reconnects with Lucky (Will Catlett) her lover and former partner-in-crime (literally). Despite tensions between them over his womanizing and her temper, they marry, and for some years the three of them live as a family. Terry, using phony documents, is enrolled in school and proves a capable student, even as the looming presence of the NYPD and the influence of his obnoxious friend Pea are causes for concern.

Eventually, as the 17-year-old Terry (Josiah Cross) is on the verge of graduating high school and has a real chance at getting into college, the house of cards Inez carefully built over so many years collapses, and we get a revelation which adds a whole new layer to all that has come before. But near the end, even as she and Terry face uncertain futures, she says “I still won” – because, thanks to her devotion, Terry will have a better life, will make something of himself…even though, because of her choices, he’ll face a lot of legal obstacles as well.

There are no easy answers to be found here; it’s fitting that the final beat of the film is literally an unanswered question. Rockwell isn’t afraid to embrace the messiness of her characters and their lives, and doesn’t force them into predictable arcs. We might think we know what kind of role Lucky will play in the film and in Inez and Terry’s lives, and we might think we know what kind of trouble Pea will lead Terry into – but we don’t. Rockwell’s script, a few self-conscious lines aside, is intelligent, insightful, humane, and socially aware, subtly critiquing the Giuliani and Bloomberg eras, the inadequacy of social services (which allowed Terry to fall through the cracks in the first place), and the toll of gentrification.

Her direction is comparably fine, especially in her handling of the actors (and especially of the child actors who play such a major role in the first half of the film); it’s well-shot by Eric K. Yue, well edited by Sabine Hoffman and Kristan Sprague, well-designed and made-up (the hairstyling is a subtle but important part of the film’s aesthetic). Though it’s not a short film (just under two hours) and not briskly paced as such, it never drags, because the characters and their struggles are so absorbing.

That, of course, is greatly owing to the performances, which are superb. Taylor reigns supreme, denying none of Inez’s prickliness – even when confronted by Terry with some damning truths, she remains defiant – but leaving no room to doubt her devotion to him, to Lucky, and to the better life she’s trying, against all odds, to build. Watching the film, I felt any number of scenes could be her Oscar clip, but that’s not to say the film feels like awards-bait, simply that she manages the turbulent emotions, the peaks and valleys of joy and despair, with magnificent dexterity.

But that’s not to overlook the very fine work by Catlett, who strikes a careful balance in showing the man Lucky has been, the man he’s trying to be, and the man he finally is when illness forces him to confront the whole scope of his life – which, again, this film allows to be so much more interesting than you might expect when he first appears. And all three of the young actors who play Terry are quite good; Adetola conveys the quiet shyness and awareness, the restless energy, and the stubborn streak which blossom in the performances of Aven Courtney (as Terry at 13 – he’s solid but has less screen time than the others) and Cross, who must play the widest range of emotions, culminating in a heartbreaking monologue as he and Inez prepare to say goodbye to their home, and possibly to each other.

Tying all of this together is the gorgeous score by Gary Gunn, full of lush strings, rumbling drums, and woozy winds which evoke the R&B of the period, giving a dreamy, elegiac feel to the story of these people, the ones amidst the thousands, who for a moment in time made a home and family together. It all makes for a fantastic film, one which took top honors at Sundance and, I should hope, is just getting started.

Score: 91

Bad Santa (2003) – ***

Is it stranger that it took me 20 years to actually see Bad Santa, or that I’ve never seen Elf in its entirety? There are ample possible reasons as to why – older parents, only child, A Christmas Story and Home Alone already having pride of place in our hearts, etc. – but I wanted to watch something relatively short and funny, and this fit the bill. For what it’s worth, I watched the theatrical cut, which is not director Terry Zwigoff’s preferred version; his director’s cut, from what I’ve read, is even darker and more cynical than the film already is, and there’s considerable debate as to which version is better.

Personally, I think the lighter moments here – the scenes where Willie T. Soke (Billy Bob Thornton) begins, in his drunken, crotchety way, to warm up to cheerfully oblivious little Thurman Merman (Brett Kelly) – help to balance the apocalyptic self-loathing, binge-drinking, and profane misanthropy that Willie indulges in for most of the film. Even when he’s “good,” he’s a fuck-up, but we can appreciate the effort.

In any case, it’s not a great film; whether the issue is with the editing/post-production tinkering or the original script, the film is a bit too scattered, too choppy, too lacking in real flow to be more than a collection of funny scenes. It’s not exactly a gimmick film, since Willie’s Santa status is simply a cover for the robberies he and his elf Marcus (Tony Cox) pull at the stores and malls which hire them, but it’s also not much more than that, because the characters, funny and vividly performed as they are, aren’t really so complex. The Coen brothers helped develop it (and apparently had a hand in the post-production changes), but it’s not on the level of their great works.

But it is very funny, and as hard as it is to get me to laugh out loud at movie, Bad Santa did the trick more than once, whether by having Willie scream “I’M ON MY FUCKING LUNCH BREAK, OKAY?!” at a mother and child, having Marcus rebuke him for his dissipation (“More booze, more bullshit, more buttfucking…” “Sure, the three B’s.”), having Thurman respond with his utterly oblivious good nature (“Want me to make you some sandwiches?”) or by allowing John Ritter to be so squirmingly repressed as the mall’s manager and Bernie Mac to be so coolly pompous as its chief of security, and giving them some truly hilarious exchanges as they consider the problem of Willie (“I’m not advocating celibacy.” “Hope not! Be the end of the fuckin’ human race!”)

Thornton was Globe-nominated for his performance, and it’s certainly hard to imagine anyone combining sleazy charm, sleazy despair, and comic timing as well as he does, but one shouldn’t overlook Cox’s delightful irascibility (“Why don’t you dust that thing off once in a while?!”), Kelly’s adorable deadpan (with his spaciness and curly blond hair, he’s like a little Harpo Marx), Ritter’s pathetic professionalism, or Mac’s implacable obnoxiousness – the scene where he demands half of Willie and Marcus’ take is a gem. And as the bartender with a Santa fetish, Lauren Graham fits comfortably alongside Thornton in their hilariously improbable romance. (And yes, that’s Cloris Leachman as Thurman’s desiccated grandmother, and Octavia Spencer as Opal!)

Well before Bad Santa came out, I’d put Home Alone and A Christmas Story at the center of my Christmas-movie canon. Maybe if I’d seen it when it came out, when I was an impressionable teenager, I might have the nostalgic affection necessary to push my score a little higher. Instead, it sits right at the top of the *** range, the story not being quite strong enough and the filmmaking not sharp enough to rise above that. But if I’m in the mood to laugh, I know it’ll do the trick.

Score: 76

Player-piano music turned abstract art in Pianissimo.

Maybe a few shorts to mark the start of Passover?

• The Further Adventures of Uncle Sam (1970) – Uncle Sam and the American Eagle live in the Southwest and run a gas station, until Uncle Sam is kidnapped by gangsters with moneybag heads (according to Wikipedia; it’s hard to tell watching the actual film), whose boss has an anarchist’s bomb for a head and who plan to kidnap Lady Liberty – but Sam and the Eagle save the day. So yeah, it’s kind of like an old-timey serial with a cast of American icons – an interesting idea, but the animation is too crude (a lot of the action takes place at a distance and the character animation isn’t very good), the pacing is too sluggish (it runs 13 minutes, long for this kind of material), and the satire is too scattered (it throws a lot of contemporary imagery at us, which might have landed better at the time but now seems merely shallow) to earn more than credit for the attempt. Oscar-nominated, probably for its topicality and repurposing of national iconography, but it’s just as well it didn’t win. Score: 63 – **½
• K-9000: A Space Oddity (1968) – Two years before Uncle Sam, co-director Robert Mitchell co-directed this riff on/spoof of 2001. A dog sits in the desert, listening to a phonograph, before aliens kidnap him and take on a surreal journey through the stars (including cameos from Sam and the Eagle, a floating cow, and menacing fountain pens). He’s dropped on a planet, tangles with alien cats, passes through something like the Star Gate, grows old, is reborn and put back on Earth, and the cycle begins again. Honestly, it’s a lot better than Uncle Sam, with much livelier and easier to follow animation, a sharper visual wit (it feels a good 15-20 years ahead of its time), and a more engaging story. Not faultless, but fun. Score: 77 – ***½
• Pianissimo (1963) – A player piano, its sheet music, a sculpture of a nude torso, and a phonograph are all caught up in a riot of syncopated coloration, accomplished through a mix of stop-motion and line animation and set to a frenzied blues piece by one Leonard Popkin. Another Oscar nominee, this one directed by Carmen D’Avino, it’s a fun little bit of semi-abstraction, using just about every color imaginable and perfectly coordinating its images with the music – which in this instance is a vital part of the overall effect. I do wish I could see a higher-quality print to fully appreciate D’Avino’s craftsmanship, though. Score: 78 – ***½
• Rhythm in Light (1935) – After a portentous introduction (“This film is a pioneer effort in a new art form – It is a modern artist’s impression of what goes on in the mind while listening to music”), we get a series of abstract forms moving across the screen to a movement from Grieg’s Peer Gynt suite. Sometimes the forms are clearly animated; other times it seems they simply moved various objects and/or moved the camera around them whilst fiddling with the focus to see what would happen. The music is quite nice, and some of the images are rather striking; others just look like, well, what happens you play around with a camera. Historically valuable – it was also Mary Ellen Bute’s first finished film, in collaboration with Ted Nemeth and Melville Webber, who co-directed Lot in Sodom. Score: 71 – ***

Air (2023) – ***

You don’t judge a film based simply on its subject, but on how it handles it. A worthy subject can be handled poorly, and an unlikely subject can be handled well – The Social Network, for example, made a compelling drama from the founding of Facebook. As such, I could try and dismiss Air as a movie about a shoe, but it’s not just about a shoe; it’s about the process of making deals in the world of sports, about relying on one’s gut feeling, and about the right an athlete has to the use of their very name. Therefore, the most apt criticism is to say that, while it does cast a wide thematic net in telling how the Air Jordan came to be, for me it doesn’t go deep enough to truly transcend that dismissal.

In 1984, Nike is known mainly for making running shoes, and their share of the basketball-shoe market is a distant third behind Adidas and Converse. Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon) is trying to identify the right NBA rookies to endorse Nike but is hampered by a tight budget and the reluctance of CEO Phil Knight (Ben Affleck) and Rob Strasser (Jason Bateman) to take chances. While studying footage, Vaccaro becomes convinced that Michael Jordan (who’s never fully seen except in archival footage) is their man, and a commercial featuring Arthur Ashe convinces him that they need to design a shoe to reflect Jordan’s skills and personality.

There are wrinkles, including Jordan’s own preferences, his superiors’ hesitancy, and the interference of Jordan’s agent David Falk (Chris Messina). But Vaccaro takes a chance by speaking to Jordan’s mother Deloris (Viola Davis) directly and letting her know what to expect from the competition. She agrees to a meeting, and Vaccaro recruits designer Peter Moore (Matthew Maher) to create the perfect basketball shoe. The meeting goes well, in no small part because of a passionate speech Vaccaro makes, but the key moment comes later, when Deloris makes one simple but unprecedented demand: that Jordan get a share of the Air Jordan revenues.

The rest is history; everyone involved made out handsomely, and Jordan even got to star in Space Jam – a movie I’d probably watch again before returning to Air, even if primarily out of nostalgia.

When Air really works, it’s because Alex Convery’s script does well with the corporate patter and a decent job with the rest of the story, and because the cast does good work all around. Damon, as the affably savvy Vaccaro, and Davis, as the quietly shrewd Deloris, are the MVPs, but Messina is quite fun as the fire-breathing agent, Maher is a reliably fascinating presence, Bateman plays quiet frustration as well as anyone, and Affleck aptly cast himself as the prickly but ultimately likable Knight. (It’s also always nice to see Chris Tucker, even if his rapid-fire quippery feels a bit too tailored to his established persona.)

The film also puts considerable work into reminding us that this is 1984, with clips from that year’s movies and TV shows (including the famous Apple commercial), that year’s songs on the soundtrack, and little touches of production and costume design (and hairstyling), like the car phone Vaccaro uses at one point, or the boxy handheld video games we see being played. It’s a nostalgia trip and a half for those who remember – but I wasn’t born until 1989, so I’m not sure if any real point was being made.

When it doesn’t work…maybe I was tired. Maybe I just don’t care enough about sneakers. Maybe I had the relatively muted responses from my friends, including this review by Abby Olcese that digs into the film’s attitudes towards capitalism, in my head. (Critics in general, however, have eaten the film up; it’s at 95% on Rotten Tomatoes as I write this.) But I found myself struggling to really care about whether or not Jordan would sign with Nike. Sure, we’re told that Vaccaro, Strasser, and others may lose their jobs if the deal falls through, but I was never on the edge of my seat.

Maybe the problem is Affleck’s direction, which is competent without ever being really inspired. Maybe it’s that Convery’s script doesn’t glory in the wheeling and dealing the way the best scenes in Moneyball (a film to which others have compared it) do. Maybe it’s that I wanted a little more time with Moore/Maher, seeing the work that went into designing the shoe itself. That’s a lot of “maybes,” but this is the kind of film that I just don’t have strong feelings about. I found it generally engaging and very well acted, but there’s not much here that’ll linger in my memory. Not even compared to Space Jam, objectively weaker though this may be.

(Side note: I’ve seen a few people using the release of this film to suggest that Live by Night was a seriously underappreciated film, which I find absurd; it was a damned boring movie and I really doubt it’s improved with time.)

Score: 74