Posts Tagged ‘Mahershala Ali’

LEAVE THE WORLD BEHIND: 3 ½ STARS. “an elegant post-apocalyptic film.”

“Leave the World Behind,” a new end of the world drama starring Julia Roberts, Ethan Hawke, Mahershala Ali and Myha’la, now streaming on Netflix, is a strange tale of how people become friends in trying times and the power of the sitcom “Friends.”

Based on the 2020 novel by Rumaan Alam, the movie sees Julia Roberts and Ethan Hawke as A-type Amanda and go-with-the-flow Clay, New Yorkers and parents to teenagers Rose (Farrah Mackenzie) and Archie (Charlie Evans). On a whim Amanda rents a luxury weekend retreat in Long Island, to get away from the stresses of the city.

“I figured if I made the reservation and packed our bags,” Amanda says, “it would eliminate most of the reasons to say no.”

They arrive to find a beautiful modernist home waiting for them, complete with interesting art, a lavish gift basket and an inviting pool in the backyard. It’s a paradise, although Rose, who has been binging “Friends” online, is annoyed that the spotty wi fi is preventing her from watching the last episode of the series. But that’s nothing that some fresh air and a dip in the pool can’t fix.

“Oh, this is nice,” Clay says. “The kids look so happy.”

Later that night, after dinner with lots of wine and well after nightfall, the doorbell rings. “Get a bat,” says the edgy Amanda. At the door are strangers G.H. Scott (Ali) and his daughter Ruth (Myha’la), who apologize for stopping by so late. “We were driving back to the city,” G.H. says, “then something happened.”

G.H. owns the home, and wants to spend the night in safety with his daughter. Turns out there is a blackout, or something happening in the city. With no internet, radio or television service, there is no way to know for sure what is going on. Amanda is immediately suspicious.

“Something is happening,” she says. “I don’t trust them.”

But, as strange things begin to happen, trust becomes essential if they are to survive.

Despite its luxurious trappings, “Leave the World Behind” is as bleak as any movie we are likely to see this year. It’s a “Twilight Zonesque” story that comments not only on societal collapse, but our reaction to it, and, as usual, the human aspect is the monstrous part. The idea of a cyberattack is scary enough, but the aftermath, the ripple effect of how humanity deals with implosion, is truly terrifying. While there are some scenes that approach action—planes dropping from the sky, an oil tanker that runs aground, and aspects of nature gone wild—this is a psychological drama with very high stakes.

After a slow start, director Sam Esmail heaps on the tension, ensuring the audience and the characters are on an equal plane. We don’t know anything more than they do, so we speculate along with them. It’s a clever ploy to draw the viewer into the story, to personalize the situation, and make us wonder what we would do in a similar situation.

An edgy score by composer Mac Quayle adds to the feeling of unease, but it is the performances that drive it home. It’s a character study in how these audience proxies respond, whether it is with racism, violence, greed or down the rabbit hole of conspiracy theories.

Roberts plays against type, edgy and racist, a coiled spring ready to unwind at any moment. Amanda wears her biases on her sleeve, seemingly unaware of the power of her words. She’s oblivious to her micro and macro aggressions, a misanthrope who excuses her behaviour with a simple mantra: “I hate people.” Plus, the look on her face when G.H. calls the couple’s Brooklyn N.Y. neighborhood is “affordable” is a highlight.

The script offers more subtlety to Hawke. Ruth says he looks like the kind of guy things come easily to. But when he is faced with real crisis, he is forced to make an extraordinary confession: “I am a useless man.” In finely tuned work, Hawke calibrates the performance, allowing desperation to sink in bit by bit until there is nothing left but fear and helplessness.

The movie really finds its feet, however, when G.H. Scott and Ruth emerge. Their appearance sets the action in motion, and introduces the film’s two most interesting characters.

G.H. is a bit of a man of mystery. Suave and obviously very wealthy, he has a gravitas that makes him an oasis of calm, but as the story progresses, it’s clear he knows more than he is letting on. He’s the only character who seems to understand the big picture, and is the conduit by which the movie fully explores the issues of technology’s stranglehold on the world, trust, race, class and international intrigue. Ali pulls off a neat trick, giving G.H. warmth and empathy, while building tension with the character’s fundamental unknowability.

The two daughters, Ruth and Rose are polar opposites. As Ruth, Myha’la is spirited, unwilling to put up with Amanda’s passive aggressive prejudice, while Mackenzie is a wide-eyed innocent, more concerned with what happens to Rachel and Ross on her favorite show, than the collapse of society.

The film tackles many big subjects, but is most compelling when it zeroes in on the interpersonal interactions between the two families, set against the backdrop of a divided America.

“Leave the World Behind” is an elegant post-apocalyptic film that asks far more questions than it answers. It is thought provoking, but the ending (which I loved) may leave some viewers wishing for more.

ALITA: BATTLE ANGEL: 3 STARS. “like its main character, has a synthetic heart.”

“There ain’t nothin’ in the world like a big eyed girl to make Christoph Waltz act so funny. Five years ago he played Walter Keane, the wannabe artist who wrongly took credit for his wife Margaret’s phenomenally successful paintings of sad looking kids with enormous eyes. He returns to screens this weekend as a mentor to a cyborg heroine who looks like she stepped out of one of Keane’s paintings.

Set in 2563, three hundred years after “the fall,” a deadly war, the story takes place in the dangerous and dystopian Iron City. Overcrowded and violent, the city doesn’t even have police, just Hunter Warriors who track down criminals for cash.

The action kicks off when the kind-hearted cybersurgeon Dr. Dyson Ido (Waltz) finding the cast-off “core” of Alita (Rosa Salazar) an abandoned cyborg with amnesia, discarded in a scrapyard. “I guess I’m an insignificant girl,” she says later, “thrown out with the rest of the garbage.”

Recognizing that there is more to her than metal and wiring, he takes her in, and like a high tech Dr. Frankenstein pieces together a body for her abandoned head and shoulders. He cares for her as if she was his daughter, attempting to give her a normal life despite the fact that there is very little normal about her. Sure, she giggles like a teenage girl and develops a love-at-first-sight crush on Hugo (Keean Johnson), but strange flickers of memory keep popping into her head.

Fragments of her former life come back when she least expects it. When she rescues a dog from danger an old instinct kicks in and she shows remarkable agility and speed. Later, when Hugo teaches her to play Motorball—sort of parkour on rollerblades—she displays incredible skill.

Turns out triggers recollections of her warrior past, providing clues to who she once was. As her true identity emerges—turns out she is one of the most advanced cyborg weapons ever made—sinister forces in Iron City including Motorball impresario Vector (Mahershala Ali) and the world-weary Chiren (Jennifer Connelly), want her stopped. At stake is not just her survival but the survival of Iron City, and everyone in it. “I do not stand by in the presence of evil,” she says.

Loosely based on Yukito Kishiro’s original manga, with a focus on the first four books, “Alita: Battle Angel” provides director Robert Rodriguez with lots of material for world building. Perhaps too much. Each main character has a backstory, whether it is in Iron City or the Eden-like floating world of Zalem. There’s hundreds of years of history to establish, the rules to Motorball and, of course, the blending of Alita’s two lives, past and present. There’s a lot going on. Exposition abounds and with the frenzy of plot it is inevitable there will be shards of unanswered and unexplored left by the time the end credits roll. Add to that a cliffhanger ending that doesn’t feel like an ending, more like Rodriguez simply ran out of film, and you have a movie more concerned with its franchise possibilities than telling a complete story.

“Alita: Battle Angel” is a feast of imaginative CGI, driven by large scale spectacle but, like its main character, has a synthetic heart.

SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE: 4 STARS. “cortex-boiling superhero theatrics.”

Can’t get enough Spider-Man? Check out “Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse,” a mega-origin story that features not one, not two but at least seven iterations of the web slinging superhero.

Before a radioactive spider bit Miles Morales (voice of Shameik Moore) he was a half-Puerto Rican and half-African-American, Brooklyn born student with loving parents. Post bite, his world goes topsy-turvy. Unable to control his brand-new powers—he sticks to everyone and everything like glue—he needs help. Enter the real Spider-Man (Jake Johnson) who asks the younger Spider-Man to combat crime lord Kingpin (Liev Schreiber).

The evil genius doesn’t have superpowers but he does have a machine called a Collider with the power to tear the world apart. “It’s a hell of a freakin’ light show,” Kingpin cackles. “You’ll love this.” When Kingpin hits the Collider’s on switch the various portals between Spider-Verse open, sweeping alternate Spider-People including Peter B. Parker (Johnson again), a “junky, old, broke-down hobo Spider Man,” Spider-Ham (John Mulaney), an anthropomorphic animal parody of Spider-Man, Peni Parker (Kimiko Glenn), a Japanese-American middle school student, adopted by Aunt May and Uncle Ben and Spider-Man Noir (Nicolas Cage), a hard-bitten Raymond Chandler-esque type, into Miles’s world. The inter-dimensional Peter B. becomes a mentor of sorts to Miles—“Disinfect the mask,” he advises. “Use talcum powder. You don’t want chaffing.”—teaching his the tricks of the superhero trade. “You’re like the Spider-Man I don’t want to be,” Miles says to the frayed around the edges Peter. “I don’t think you have a choice kiddo,” Peter B. replies.

Before shutting off the Supercollider and saving the world Miles must sends the other Spider-types back to their realms or they will disintegrate.

“Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse” is a cortex-boiling hit of boffo superhero theatrics. Visually it’s a pop art explosion, paying tribute, in its more restrained moments, to the work of original Spider-Man artist Steve Ditko. In the climatic multiverse showdown, however, it’s as if M.C. Escher and Roy Lichtenstein did acid and conceived a psychedelic freak-out that mixes and matches op art, anime and everything in between. It doesn’t look like any other superhero film you’ve ever seen. It’s wild and woolly, a pastiche of styles formed into one seamless whole.

It’s fresh and funny, and yes, there is a Stan Lee cameo, but despite the eye-catching animation and the flippant time of the script, there is substance; the film has a point. “Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse” is a coming-of-age story for Miles who must tap into his inner strength to succeed. Uncle Ben’s quote, “With great power comes great responsibility,” comes up in the film’s multiple origin stories but is amended to reflect that great power also comes with an awareness of self. “Anyone can wear the mask,” Miles says. “If you didn’t know that before I hope you know it now.” It’s a message about finding the greatness within whether you can shoot webs from your wrists or not. In a tweet the day Stan Lee died Seth Rogen wrote, “Thank you Stan Lee for making people who feel different realize they are special.” Lee didn’t write “Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse” but his powerful, personal message of self worth is alive and well here.

GREEN BOOK: 4 STARS. “BUDDY PICTURE WITH A MESSAGE OF TOLERANCE.”

Based on the true story of an Italian-American bouncer from the Bronx and a gifted African-American musician, “Green Book” is a buddy picture with a message of tolerance.

Tony Vallelonga (Viggo Mortensen), a.k.a Tony Lip, is an out-of-work bouncer looking to make a few extra dollars to pay bills and buy Christmas gifts for his wife Dolores (Linda Cardellini) and kids. He lands a gig working for African-American pianist Dr. Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali). The musician hires Tony as his chauffeur for a concert tour that will take them from Manhattan to south of the Mason-Dixon line. “You won’t last a week with him,” says Dolores. “”For the right money I will,” he replies.

The deal is simple. If Shirley makes it to every concert on the two-month tour Tony will be paid in full. “You better be home for Christmas,” says Delores, “or don’t come home at all.”

To help them navigate the trip they bring along the “Green Book: For Vacation without Aggravation,” a motorist’s travel guide to safe havens for African-American people travelling in the Jim Crow South. Together this odd couple—the plainspoken driver and the erudite concert pianist—journey into the south looking for, and finding, common ground. “Anyone can sound like Beethoven,” says Tony, “but your music, what you do, only you can do that.”

“Green Book” is a crowd pleaser of a movie. Playing it safe the film is content to skim the surface of the racism that lay at the core of the story. Instead it relies on the characters and situations to illuminate the horror of Shirley’s experience in relation to the colour of his skin. It takes its subjects seriously but places them in a formulaic story that plays out in a relatively predictable way. That’s not to say it isn’t moving or enjoyable, it just hits all the beats you might expect.

At its heart are Mortensen and Ali. As Tony, Mortensen side-steps most Italian American caricatures. He plays Tony as a kind-hearted chatterbox, loyal and quick with his fists. He loves his wife and kids but what makes him interesting is his ability to learn. He learns from Shirley, how to write a proper love letter and (AND THIS IS NOT A SPOILER) how to put aside ingrained prejudices and judge people for who they are. The “Lord of the RIngs” actor embodies the character, making him a likable conglomeration of cuss words, backwards attitudes and temperament.

Mortensen has the showier role but Ali provides the heart. Imperious—he first meets Tony while sitting on a throne of sorts—brilliant and deeply wounded, Shirley is a complex character. Whether he’s rolling his eyes at Tony ignorance—“It’s Orpheus and those aren’t children, they are demons”—or smiling graciously at the racists in his audiences, Ali owns it. Shirley begins aloof, as though we’re observing the character from the concert stage but Ali gradually adds layers of vulnerability, grit and grace. “You never win with violence,” he says after Tony has slugged a man in a racially motivated incident. “Dignity always prevails.”

“Green Book” probably could have hit a little harder but its message of unity, of creating bridges rather than walls, is a welcome one in these politically divisive times.

GREEN BOOK: 4 STARS. “buddy picture with a message of tolerance.”

Based on the true story of an Italian-American bouncer from the Bronx and a gifted African-American musician, “Green Book” is a buddy picture with a message of tolerance.

Tony Vallelonga (Viggo Mortensen), a.k.a Tony Lip, is an out-of-work bouncer looking to make a few extra dollars to pay bills and buy Christmas gifts for his wife Dolores (Linda Cardellini) and kids. He lands a gig working for African-American pianist Dr. Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali). The musician hires Tony as his chauffeur for a concert tour that will take them from Manhattan to south of the Mason-Dixon line. “You won’t last a week with him,” says Dolores. “”For the right money I will,” he replies.

The deal is simple. If Shirley makes it to every concert on the two-month tour Tony will be paid in full. “You better be home for Christmas,” says Delores, “or don’t come home at all.”

To help them navigate the trip they bring along the “Green Book: For Vacation without Aggravation,” a motorist’s travel guide to safe havens for African-American people travelling in the Jim Crow South. Together this odd couple—the plainspoken driver and the erudite concert pianist—journey into the south looking for, and finding, common ground. “Anyone can sound like Beethoven,” says Tony, “but your music, what you do, only you can do that.”

“Green Book” is a crowd pleaser of a movie. Playing it safe the film is content to skim the surface of the racism that lay at the core of the story. Instead it relies on the characters and situations to illuminate the horror of Shirley’s experience in relation to the colour of his skin. It takes its subjects seriously but places them in a formulaic story that plays out in a relatively predictable way. That’s not to say it isn’t moving or enjoyable, it just hits all the beats you might expect.

At its heart are Mortensen and Ali. As Tony, Mortensen side-steps most Italian American caricatures. He plays Tony as a kind-hearted chatterbox, loyal and quick with his fists. He loves his wife and kids but what makes him interesting is his ability to learn. He learns from Shirley, how to write a proper love letter and (AND THIS IS NOT A SPOILER) how to put aside ingrained prejudices and judge people for who they are. The “Lord of the RIngs” actor embodies the character, making him a likable conglomeration of cuss words, backwards attitudes and temperament.

Mortensen has the showier role but Ali provides the heart. Imperious—he first meets Tony while sitting on a throne of sorts—brilliant and deeply wounded, Shirley is a complex character. Whether he’s rolling his eyes at Tony ignorance—“It’s Orpheus and those aren’t children, they are demons”—or smiling graciously at the racists in his audiences, Ali owns it. Shirley begins aloof, as though we’re observing the character from the concert stage but Ali gradually adds layers of vulnerability, grit and grace. “You never win with violence,” he says after Tony has slugged a man in a racially motivated incident. “Dignity always prevails.”

“Green Book” probably could have hit a little harder but its message of unity, of creating bridges rather than walls, is a welcome one in these politically divisive times.

MOONLIGHT: 4 STARS. “truthful and real, it’s one of the year’s best films.”

“Moonlight” is a film about a young man trying to find a place for himself in the world. “At some point you got to decide who you going to be,” says an early mentor. “Can’t let anybody make that decision for you.” Director Barry Jenkins splits the story into thirds, each examining a different time in the life of Chiron, a young, gay African-American man, as he comes to grips with who he is.

At the beginning of Part I Chiron (Alex Hibbert) is ten-years-old and on the run from schoolyard bullies. His small size and meek manner have made him a target. He finds refuge in an abandoned drug den where Juan (Mahershala Ali), an anything-but-stereotypical drug dealer with a heart of gold, discovers the boy cowering in a corner. The older man becomes a mentor and surrogate father, even as he sells crack to Chiron’s mother, nurse Paula (Naomie Harris).

Part II sees Chiron’s (now plyed by Ashton Sanders) high school years marred by homophobic slurs and the bullying that comes along with the name-calling. His mother has fallen deep into addiction but Juan’s girlfriend, Teresa (Janelle Monáe), picks up the slack, offering a kind face, a warm meal and a clean place to sleep. The introverted teen’s first sexual experience, with his childhood friend Kevin (Jharrel Jerome), does little to take the edge off the loneliness he feels even when he is with other people.

Part III focuses on Chiron (now played by Trevante Rhodes) as a gold-grill wearing drug dealing twenty-something, pumped up but still alone. A random phone call from Kevin (Andre Holland) gives the estranged friends a chance to catch up and confront the past.

“Moonlight” is a movie that beats with a very human heart while subverting expectations with almost every scene. Jenkins has placed obstacles in the way of the story telling—multiple actors playing the same characters, and a lead who is succinct almost to the point of being mute—but overcomes those hurdles with a combination of social conscience, fine acting and interesting characters who constantly defy pigeonholing.

Mahershala Ali, an actor best known as Remy Danton on “House of Cards,” is a standout as a drug dealer who allows the personal cost of his business to weigh on him. He’s a tough guy with a heart and his performance in Part I sets a high bar which is met by Harris and all three of the young men who play Chiron.

Each deliver performances characterized by deep inner work that reveals the truth behind the façade Chiron uses as a front. There’s a remarkable consistency in the trio of performances, so by the end of the film, when Chiron is asked, “Who is you man?” his answer, “I’m me. I don’t try to be nothing else,” rings true and real.

FREE STATE OF JONES: 1 STAR. “movie is done in by its own ambition.”

There is an interesting story to be told of the exploits of rebellious Mississippi farmer Newton Knight but “Free State of Jones” is not it.

The “action”—mostly raggedly bearded men sitting and speaking in lilting Podunk accents—takes place over the course of fourteen tumultuous years, from 1862 to ’76. When we first meet Knight (Matthew McConaughey) he’s a war nurse doing triage for Confederate soldiers blown apart by musket and canon fire. After a young relative is killed he goes AWOL, fed up with the brutality and the Confederate Army’s illegal pillaging of locals for supplies. Hiding out with runaway slaves he fights back, becoming a force for change and a champion of freedom for all men.

Intertwined in the narrative are the rise of the KKK, fixed elections, burned churches, surprise attacks and much more. Not content to tell the sprawling Civil War story “Free State of Jones” intermittently jumps forward 85 years to tell the story of a relative of Knight who was prosecuted in Mississippi for the crime of being 1/16 black and marrying a white women.

“Free State of Jones” aims to be an epic but in biting off more story than it can chew ends up a didactic mess, bereft of emotional content or revealing historical perspective. It feels as if it was shot as a mini-series and cleaved down to feature length. Parts seem to be missing, and by that I mean the interesting parts.

A surprise attack that is heavily featured in the film’s trailers should have been a rousing showstopper but instead comes and goes in the blink of an eye, barely raising the movie’s pulse rate. Better are the opening moments that effectively, if grimly, display the realities of face-to-face combat.

McConaughey has been on a remarkable career upswing of late but it feels like the McConaissance has hit a bump in the road. He’s less a character than a saviour, an empathic speechifying rebel with rotten teeth who embodies all that is righteous. He kills dogs and people and is a bigamist but he’s also apparently on the side of the angels and that is all we really get to know about him.

More interesting and human is Mahershala Ali as Moses, an emancipated slave who joins forces with Knight.

“Free State of Jones” has its rebellious heart mostly in the right place. In our time of continued racial unrest it is important to have a historical perspective but this movie can really only be described as problematic in some of the tone deaf ways it approaches its subject. For instance a speech that begins with, “Everybody is just somebody else’s n-word,” is meant to be rousing, a call to solidarity, but clumsily equates conscription with the plight of people taken from their homes, shipped to a new country and enslaved. Like the rest of the movie it means well but falls very flat. I gave it one star because it has aspirations to greatness and fails on all accounts. It’s done in by its own ambition.