Posts Tagged ‘Tracee Ellis Ross’

AMERICAN FICTION: 4 ½ STARS. “insightful and never forgets to entertain.”

The smart, funny and insightful, “American Fiction,” winner of this year’s Toronto Film Festival People’s Choice Award, is a satire that sees Jeffrey Wright as an exasperated novelist who confronts racial stereotypes by writing a book that forces him to balance hypocrisy with selling out.

An adaptation of Percival Everett’s 2001 novel “Erasure,” the film stars Wright as Thelonious “Monk” Ellison, an author and English Lit professor frustrated that his publisher rejects his latest work as not being “Black enough,” while another book, “We Lives in da Ghetto” by Sintara Golden (Issa Rae), is heralded by critics as a modern masterpiece.

As Monk struggles personally—his brother Cliff (an excellent Sterling K. Brown) is experiencing a massive life shift while his mother Agnes (Leslie Uggams) is in decline, and will soon need a care home, which the family cannot afford—his professional life turns upside down.

“Monk,” says his agent Arthur (John Ortiz), “your books are good, but they’re not popular. Editors want a Black book.”

“They have a Black book,” says Monk. “I’m Black and it’s my book.”

Angry, on a whim he bangs out “My Pafology,” a satire of Golden’s book under the pseudonym Stagg R. Leigh. Filled with tired and reductive stereotypes of gang violence and broken homes, his gag novel becomes a publishing sensation, receiving an offer of a $750,000 advance and huge marketing campaign.

Monk is the only person, it seems, who gets the joke. “It’s the most lucrative joke you’ve ever told,” says Arthur.

It may have started as a joke, but Monk needs the money. If he accepts the offer, however, does that mean he’s perpetuating tropes that play into what he regards as “Black trauma porn”?

“American Fiction” finds sharp humor in identity politics, perception and culture wars. Serious in its message but playful in tone, it can cut to the quick. In one scene, Monk and Golden, the only two Black jurors on a literary panel, are castigated to by the white judges to “hear Black voices.” It is one of the film’s funniest scenes, but the performative nature of the sentiment is all too realistic.

As Monk, we see Wright in a different sort of role. Given the chance to flex his rarely-used comedy muscles, he excels, playing up his curmudgeonly character’s conundrum to maximum effect. It’s bittersweet. As he watches the fictious Stagg R. Leigh’s book become successful. It confirms his feelings about the biases of the publishing industry. He reacts with a mix of outrage and humor. It’s a bravura work that hopefully means it won’t take thirty years to give Wright another leading role in a theatrical release.

Giving Wright a run for his money is Brown who steals every scene he’s in. His character Cliff is a mess, pushing personal boundaries as a man coming out of the closet and building a new life. Like Wright, Sterling creates a character that gets laughs, but the laughs aren’t shallow, they come from a deep well of pain and Cliff’s lived experience.

Director Cord Jefferson’s “American Fiction” asks why stereotypes of Black trauma are so prevalent in entertainment by not so subtly satirizing the process and the people who create the limited view of Black life in books and on screens. It is insightful but never forgets to entertain.

THE HIGH NOTE: 2 ½ STARS. “ambition, empowerment and music geekery.”

“The High Note,” coming out this week digitally via video on demand, mixes ambition, romance and music in a movie that tries to hit a high C but actually works better when it plays the minor chords.

Set against a backdrop of the Los Angeles music industry, the new film from Nisha Ganatra, now on VOD, sees Dakota Johnson play Maggie, a music obsessed wannabe producer, currently working as a personal assistant to superstar singer Grace Davis (Tracee Ellis Ross). Between running errands and running Grace’s life, Maggie finds time to oversee production on a live album of her boss singing the old hits and discover a new talent, singer-songwriter David Cliff (Kelvin Harrison Jr.). Passing herself off as an experienced producer with loads of industry hook-ups, she inspires him to write great new songs that could launch him into the big leagues. When a plan to position David as the opening act for Grace’s upcoming tour backfires, it threatens to torpedo all of Maggie’s hopes and dreams.

Following up on Ganatra’s last film “Late Night,” which starred Emma Thompson a late-night talk show host whose career is revamped by the influence of a younger, ambitious woman (Mindy Kaling), comes a story that sounds like an echo of the first. There’s more flash here and fewer laughs, but the essential story of a showbiz icon given a new lease on popularity by a newcomer with fresh ideas has a sense of déjà vu to it.

Originally scheduled for a big screen release “The High Note” moved to a digital release in the wake of the pandemic, which may have been a good thing. Its movie-of-the-week plotting and familiar premise feels suited, in a good way, to the smaller screen.

It’s a story about ambition, empowerment and music geekery given charm by Johnson and Ross. Johnson brings her trademarked steely-yet-vulnerable charm to the role of Maggie, while Ross—the daughter of iconic superstar Diana Ross—is a diva with flamboyant clothes and a temperament to match.

Despite the charismatic performers, both characters feel like caricatures. Maggie is a “High Fidelity” reject, a music junkie who speaks as though she’s reciting the liner notes of her favorite album. Ross does some powerful singing but plays Grace in broad diva-esque notes.

“The High Note” is a pleasant enough diversion as a story of empowerment but doesn’t have enough range to make it memorable.