Movie Review: I'm Your Man (2021)

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A tall, kind, supportive, handsome, dark-haired man with a British accent who looks at the woman that he's with with puppy dog levels of adoration, if Tom (Dan Stevens) seems like the perfect man, that's because he is…for the most part. Unfortunately, however, what he isn't is a man.

A humanoid robot designed to be one hundred percent compatible with Alma (Maren Eggert), a Pergamon Museum academic who has agreed to evaluate Tom for a three week period in order to fund and further her own research into ancient cuneiform writing, although their prospective relationship seems like a joke to the deeply uncomfortable Alma, Tom takes his romantic mission deadly seriously.

From being startled when she gives him his own bedroom instead of sharing a bed with him to being hurt when she's too busy to indulge in a romantic brunch he whipped up for her the next morning, just like we all learn and adapt to our own partners over the years, Tom does as well. Not allowed to tell others that he's a robot, an embarrassed Alma deposits him in a cafe by her work the next day and, just like the metaphorical puppy dog he resembles following his “master” around, Tom happily stands outside in the rain once the business closes and waits for her to return.



Humanistic and true, despite the fact that it deals in the artificiality of technology, acclaimed actress turned director Maria Schrader's German film “I'm Your Man” – which she co-wrote with Jan Schomburg, based on a short story by Emma Braslavsky – begins as a gentle comedy of manners and errors. But, aided immensely by the chemistry of our leads and the fact that the delightful Stevens never once slips and plays Tom with a wink instead of absolutely straight, the film soon modulates into a melancholic, timely meditation of the importance of human affection and connection and a study of loneliness in contemporary society.

Embodied extraordinarily well by Eggert (in a difficult balance of vulnerability and strength throughout), the more we learn about Alma, including the source of her pain and the reason why she's put up so many walls, the more we understand how hard it is for her to knock them down for someone – anyone – let alone a robot programmed to be her dream beau.

Choosing, as we all do, which people we're willing to let into our weird little worlds, Alma is a woman who's been burned in the past. Furthermore, the screenwriters' decision for the film's tech firm to bring to life a mate who, through no fault of “his” own, calls up the mental picture of someone Alma loved when her life was much simpler and everything was in front of her both professionally and personally, makes “I'm Your Man” resonate on a deeper, more universal level than one would assume going in.

While on the lighter side of philosophical, it nonetheless raises valid questions about how relationships build or disintegrate over time as our needs change and how we all walk around with different levels of trauma. Yet Schrader's movie has far less in common with other films about romantic robot surrogates like Steven Spielberg's Kubrickian “A.I. Artificial Intelligence,” than it does with either mythology or George Bernard Shaw's “Pygmalion” (and its musical counterpart “My Fair Lady”).

A critical hit overseas, especially in its native Germany where lead actress Maren Eggert won the first-ever gender-neutral Silver Bear acting prize at the Berlin International Film Festival, although the ending of “I'm Your Man” comes off as abrupt and a bit tonally dissonant with respect to the rest of the film's harmony, it's still a wholly impressive foreign import overall.

Befitting of the phrase “and now for something completely different,” while the tendency would be in America to play the whole thing for laughs, there's something far more refreshing and earnest about Schrader's approach. Following Tom's lead, as you view “I'm Your Man,” it gazes right back at you with interest, hoping that – if you look closely enough – you'll catch not only a flicker of recognition but your whole self reflected back at you as you watch.


Text ©2021, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. https://www.filmintuition.com  Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  Also, as an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases made off my site through ad links. FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique. Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.

Movie Review: I'm Your Woman (2020)

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Swanky, immaculate, and impractical, "I'm Your Woman" opens in the luxe '70s Pennsylvania home afforded to Jean (Rachel Brosnahan) by her husband's life of crime. Also given to Jean within the first five minutes of the movie is a new baby that her man Eddie (Bill Heck) delivers like a jumpsuit, string of pearls, or new stereo that might have fallen off the back of a truck in his vicinity over the years.

The only difference between this and the typical swag that the veteran thief brings home is that this property is not only hot but it's also a living and breathing thing and as such, it looks immediately out of place in this cold, catalog ready environment.

Sensing his wife's hesitation, Eddie promises Jean that it's all worked out. "He's our baby," he explains but then changes his wording later on. He's "your baby," Eddie says, correcting himself in a line of dialogue that's as much an important distinction as it is an eerie piece of foreshadowing for the film.

You see, mere moments after he says this, Eddie disappears from Jean's life. And no, that's not a spoiler, it's merely the set-up for this engaging piece of storytelling from "Miss Stevens" and "Fast Color" director Julia Hart, who wrote the film along with her husband, producer Jordan Horowitz. 

A clever reinvention of '70s cinematic crime fiction, in "I'm Your Woman," Jean gains a baby and loses a husband, the first when one arrives home unexpectedly and the second when the other does not. Thus, one man or – to be more precise – one "he" replaces the other in Jean's life and our leading lady goes from being the woman and the whole world for one to the woman and the whole world for another when Eddie fails to return home following a job gone disastrously wrong.

What went wrong on the job remains a mystery for the better part of the movie but it's only interesting from a tangential perspective because it happens offscreen. Serving not as the movie's climax the way that most heists are utilized in crime movies centered on male protagonists, "Woman" is instead concerned with how one man's actions and decisions affect the woman at its core and the baby she's left to protect.

"Something happened tonight," one of Eddie's partners tells her and, handing her a bag with two hundred grand in it and instructions to take the kid and go with a man named Cal (Arinzé Kene), we discern that that is all we need to know. Rather than stay with the crooks and either go to the mattresses or Sicily with the men eluding capture as we did in "The Godfather," Hart and Horowitz instead opt to follow Diane Keaton's Kay instead, or rather, their Kay in the form of Jean.

A light flutter of wind you initially ignore until it builds into a tornado that no one – not even the weatherman sees coming – Jean goes from a meek, decorative glass figurine living in her husband's dollhouse to a frazzled yet determined woman trying to find and hold onto any semblance of control she has in her new, now suddenly uncertain life. Who Jean is, as not Eddie's woman but her own (and now baby Harry's as well) is the crux of Hart's picture. And in a messy, initially submissive turn that's light-years away from her performance on "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel," gifted producer-star Brosnahan is there, fully committed to exploring Jean's compelling evolution every step of the way, even when she occasionally but realistically goes backwards instead of forwards. 

Thrillingly original and long overdue, particularly for women (like yours truly) who, long obsessed with '70s crime movies, didn't realize just how much they wanted and needed a film focused on the characters that far too often get left behind in traditional white-male-centric fare, one of the wisest decisions that Hart made was not to simply turn Michael into Missy Corleone. Avoiding the pitfalls of over-correction that we sometimes see in revisionist genre efforts where, rather than accurately reflect the true setting and history of the period of the movie, filmmakers will just make the hero a woman instead of a man, Hart opts to embrace rather than escape femininity here. 

Jean isn't a crackerjack thief or a hitman, she is a crime syndicate wife who's never been on her own before and has no idea how to begin to move on, even temporarily, without a man. In addition to Harry, who is bringing out a new protective side in her, she gets a second man for a time in another figure that would ordinarily be a supporting character as well in the form of scene-stealer Kene's enigmatic Cal.

A Black former associate of Eddie's who he'd entrusted to look after Jean and the baby until either he, Cal, or Jean can figure something out, as a new stranger turned friend, he's at once a calming influence on both Jean and Harry and an armed guard you don't want to cross to everyone else. Yet Cal doesn't only serve to save Jean, even if this is his initial function at the beginning. As the film progresses, Jean finds that he might need to be saved right back. To do that, she'll need to join forces with another woman – Cal's woman, Terry (a masterful Marsha Stephanie Blake) – and one who, if Jean is being honest, is exactly the kind of woman she's always wanted to be herself.

Sharp, unfussy, character-driven filmmaking that has much more in common with the methodical, building block-based storytelling we so often saw in the 1970s as opposed to most modern movies where people frequently speak in expositional monologues, this is a film that tells us only what we need to know at any given moment. Respecting not only our intelligence but also the talents of the actors bringing their characters to life, Hart knows that we will come to better understand the people who populate her film in time. Therefore, she has no interest in giving us a cinematic version of Cliff's Notes to tell us what to think and refreshingly asks us to sit back, get lost in her world, and figure it all out for ourselves instead. 

Suspenseful and unpredictable in the way that it leads us down one path only to veer wildly down another moments later, "Woman" leads to a few truly exciting action set-pieces over the course of its running time. A unique hybrid of '70s and modern filmmaking with a lead character who feels like a descendant of Gena Rowlands in "Gloria," "I'm Your Woman" is first and foremost a celebration of genre storytelling.

One of those mid-range adult thrillers that – as the old adage goes – they just don't make that much anymore since normally, it would be broken down into six half-stuffed episodes of lukewarm prestige television instead of a feature film, "I'm Your Woman" plays best to those who understand its cinematic lineage. 

Wearing its influences like "The Friends of Eddie Coyle," "The Getaway," and other films from the era proudly in each frame, "I'm Your Woman" feels like a '70s movie released in 2020... if, you know, they actually made crime movies in the '70s that focused on what happens to the wives and girlfriends of a crook instead of just relegating them to the sidelines. The end result is a rousing film that plays like gangbusters. With first-rate production specs, including a dynamic soundtrack and crisp yet lived in cinematography from "Ingrid Goes West" DP Bryce Fortner, following this year's "Sound of Metal," "Small Axe" releases, "Vast of Night," and "Blow the Man Down," "I'm Your Woman" is proof that some of cinema's strongest new films are found on Amazon Prime. 

Immediately pulling us into Jean's orbit, we watch as she goes from being defined by one man to asking herself just what kind of woman she wants to be both for herself and her child now that she's been left out in the cold. Finding strength she didn't know she had, in a film about people left behind, we meet a woman who at long last, knows her worth. 

Text ©2020, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. https://www.filmintuition.com  Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  Also, as an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases made off my site through ad links. FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique. Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.

Blu-ray Review: Grace of My Heart (1996)

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Leveling with his former employee and protege, the singer-songwriter Edna Buxton (Illeana Douglas) whom he'd professionally renamed Denise Waverly years earlier, Joel Millner (John Turturro) swoops in after a devastating heartbreak to give her a dose of tough love. Dissecting the way that he's watched from the sidelines as she's fallen into one impulsive, often misguided romantic relationship after another, he says, “Well, I know one thing, the only sense any of these jerks you've allowed to sidetrack you have had in common is a belief in your talent, I know that.” 

Of course, by this point in Grace of My Heart, we realize that belief in Denise's extraordinary talent to turn the emotional truth of everyday life into musical poetry is something that Joel has in common with her lovers as well.

Having left behind her dream of becoming a singer when she was told that girls were no longer in vogue, Denise finds her calling as a hit-maker in the early 1960s, writing pop music chart-toppers that frequently address the issues faced by women and minorities in the real world. Yet her true gift is in the way that she's able to subtly weave her powerful message into an irresistibly melodic soundscape, a skill that eludes her first partner Howard (Eric Stoltz) who – as is often the case with men – prefers to spell out everything literally. Quickly, we deduce that confrontation and controversy seem to be Howard's favorite two words, because both allow him to get on his PR soapbox so that he becomes, in his own mind at least, as big as the song. 

Thus, it's only when Denise writes alone or teams up with Joel's other talented female songwriter Cheryl (Patsy Kensit) that she embraces her knack for subtext once again, deliriously and fittingly writing a love ballad called “My Secret Love” for a secretly gay Lesley Gore-like ingenue played by Bridget Fonda. 

So then why, you might ask, does she first tie her creative and romantic fate to a suitor who prefers the end result of a Denise Waverly song but doesn't truly see the magic in what she does?

The first of three men to be seduced by her gift but are unable to fully understand who she is and where her craft comes from, it's only later in her hard-hitting confrontation with the mentor who knows her best that Denise's romantic Achilles heel suddenly makes sense. Following up his summation about her past lovers, Joel argues that Denise's talent is meaningful to the men but not herself. Or perhaps, sidetracked by love, life, and an upbringing as an heiress where she's repeatedly told she doesn't fit in, Joel posits that Denise hasn't treated her gift the same way.

Brought ferociously to life by an extraordinary Turturro and Douglas who match each other fiery outburst for fiery outburst, it's a mind-blowing scene and one that unexpectedly hit me much harder when I watched this – my favorite Allison Anders movie – for the first time in years, thanks to Kino Lorber's fantastic new release of the film on Blu-ray.

Able to at once hear Joel's words and understand Denise's feelings, it's a staggering sequence that Anders captures in one shot as her cinematographer Jean-Yves Escoffier slowly pushes in from an overhead crane until we are right in their personal space. It's here we realize that just like there is a difference between an opinion and a fact, understanding and respecting one's talent are two decidedly different concepts, especially when you need to figure out how to prioritize one's craft amid all of the demands that society places on women in both the 1960s and today. 

Executive produced by Martin Scorsese, and written and directed by the enormously talented filmmaker of Gas Food Lodging and Things Behind the Sun, 1996's Grace of My Heart is a film that speaks one way to men and one way to women, and another still to female creatives everywhere.

A historian of the era who sought inspiration in the artists of the '50s and '60s, including Carole King, Lesley Gore, Joni Mitchell, Brian Wilson, Dennis Wilson, and others, from the songwriters of the famed Brill Building to the symphonic surf rock of California and beyond, Anders' film is a love letter to one of my favorite periods in American music.

Featuring instantly memorable songs like the wondrous “God Give Me Strength,” which was written by Burt Bacharach and Elvis Costello, although it can be treated as just a compelling overview of the time, Grace of My Heart is an unmistakably personal film for Anders and the affection she has for the people at its center spills over and makes us feel the same.

Breaking down something true and universal about the way we evolve from the role of daughter to friend, girlfriend, wife, and mother, while also trying to reconcile that with our work as an artist, as we watch Denise be drawn into one new love after another, we start to see that there is more than just a basic belief in her talent connecting how she relates to these men.

Each one of them – and this includes her platonic relationship with Joel – appreciates something different about her and sees a side of herself that she tries her best to hide. Howard can be somewhat excluded from this list since above all, we feel that the connective tissue between the two might just be lust, plus his hope to use her as a professional stepping stone (even if he'll never admit it to himself). Still, all of the other men in her life –  all three with names that start with the letter “J” –  play a vital part in Denise's journey to better understanding herself, her place, and her art.

Throughout the film, she becomes involved with a married man (Bruce Davison) who connects to her on an intellectual level, a virtuoso yet unstable musician (Matt Dillon) who sees the raw emotion behind her music and immediately relates to her soul, and of course, Joel, who knows she's cut out for bigger and better things altogether. 

Is she attracted to these men because they're able to articulate her talent in a way that society frowns upon when it's a woman doing the same for herself? Do they allow her to “try on” new sides of herself the way that Jane Fonda has admitted that from the '60s to the '90s, for example, she became an entirely different woman with each new partner? Is Denise drawn to them because they're the first cheerleaders she's ever had, and if so, do they really see her for who she is or who they want her to be?

Not blessed with that inherently male trait of solipsistic confidence – even without the goods to back it up – Grace of My Heart understands how many mixed messages women receive from men both romantically and in our art, even when they're our allies, lovers, or are otherwise unaware that they're sending them.

Through the film, Anders uses Denise to illustrate just how vital it is to make mistakes, to go through all of the love and pain that comes from living your life because that's the only way you have anything of value to offer anyone else. Knowing that you can't get everything from one person – man or woman – we see Denise's goodness starting out as a Philadelphia steel heiress who gives the expensive dress her mother ordered Denise for a music contest to a Black contestant (Jennifer Leigh Warren) whose vocal talent is unparalleled. 

The start of a friendship that lasts throughout the course of the movie, even though Denise has been taught to be fearful of other women trying to take her place in the professional world, when women have the courage to let down these walls and support one another, they make beautiful music together. We know this because – especially in the 5.1 Dolby soundtrack included on the Blu-ray – we can so clearly hear their harmony in Douglas' scenes with Kensit, Fonda, Warren, and scene-stealer Tracy Vilar.

The towering achievement of her career as an actress, Illeana Douglas is incredible here. Struggling to come into her own, first as a singer-songwriter before love, marriage, and children enter the picture, Denise's authentic vulnerability in the way she tries not to let the equally tender Matt Dillon see just how badly she's been hurt when she performs “God Give Me Strength” is a scene that immediately rings true. Lip-syncing the number, it's in both her nervous energy – acutely aware of being observed – and the way she struggles to reign in her emotions that makes it one of the most exquisitely compelling moments in the entire film and also one of the hardest ones to watch.

Knowing that her talent has gotten her to where she is today but trying hard to figure out just what that means in the scheme of things or where she really wants to go, her journey from song-to-song and “J” to “J” never fails to move me each time I press play on Grace of My Heart. Filled with passionate performances, historical touchstones, and autobiographical details that are the result of cathartic artistic sublimation by Anders, this film is more than just the story of a creative woman learning to both believe in herself and find her way in the world. In the end, it's about all of us, and through Denise, Allison Anders lets us know that as long as we have the strength, we'll get where we're going in time. 

Text ©2020, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. https://www.filmintuition.com  Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  Also, as an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases made off my site through ad links. FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique. Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.

Movie Reviews: Happiest Season (2020) & Uncle Frank (2020)

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'Tis the season of giving... and the season of needing a rest. The weeks between Thanksgiving all the way up through Hanukkah and/or Christmas and New Year's are often dubbed the happiest time of the year. But it's also undeniably the most stressful period of the calendar year as well. And this is particularly true for those of us returning to our childhood homes for the holidays as we come face-to-face with family, old friends, and all of the judgments and pressures that go along with sudden reunions with the people we were once closest to in life, the ones who know us the best, that is if they even know us at all.

Although there's a tendency to revert back to old patterns and behavior when surrounded by nostalgia, not too many of us are the same people today that we were in high school, and sometimes it's hard to make loved ones see you not for the child you were in the past but the adult you are today. And while this might be anything from annoying to awkward for a majority of heterosexuals, it can be absolutely terrifying and life-changing to LGBTQ adults who haven't come out to their family and/or friends as just the act of returning home to old wounds (and a place where you must push that part of you deep down), can be traumatic.

Fittingly, two brand new films releasing onto streaming platforms the day before Thanksgiving tackle the hopes and fears of coming out head-on, first in co-writer and director Clea DuVall's comedy "Happiest Season," which takes place during Christmas week, and the second, which is primarily set at a funeral nearly fifty years ago in writer-director Alan Ball's drama "Uncle Frank." 

An earnest and affable lightweight comedy that – thanks to its dynamic cast of Kristen Stewart, Mackenzie Davis, Dan Levy, Mary Steenburgen, Aubrey Plaza, and Alison Brie – has quickly become one of the most anticipated holiday releases of 2020, "Happiest Season," plays like an overlong, sweet yet slightly stale sitcom.

Impulsively inviting her beloved partner Abby (Stewart) home for the holidays during a romantic evening out, it's only once they're in the car heading towards Harper's (Davis) family home that she confesses that she's actually never told her parents and two sisters that she's gay. Although initially shocked, Abby agrees to play the orphan roommate with no place to go since the charade will only last five days. Predictably, however, things get out of hand almost as soon as they arrive when Harper's parents (Steenburgen and Victor Garber) try reuniting her with her high school boyfriend (Jake McDorman), only for the women to bump into Harper's first-ever girlfriend (Plaza) less than five minutes later as well.

Cliched and largely laughless, as novel and (incredibly) welcome as it is to watch a gay-themed movie jump through the same formulaic hoops that we so often see in made-for-cable-television holiday romances this time of year, sadly, "Happiest Season" is a work to admire and politely smile through more than it is one to wholeheartedly enjoy. From a scene that finds Stewart literally stuck in a closet to another one that features her best friend, "Schitt's Creek" co-creator and star Dan Levy calling to ask where he could buy a lookalike fish to replace the one that we gather the inexperienced pet sitter has accidentally killed, a majority of the movie's jokes feel as tired as they do uninspired. 

Daring to make Harper a flawed and selfish protagonist whom we discover will lie to anyone to conceal her true sexual identity, "Happiest Season" gets points for working in a startlingly sad backstory surrounding her relationship with Plaza's Riley, although their characters are shortchanged a vital conversation where they can truly clear the air.

Wrapping things up in a neat bow, even if there are a few other scenes and discussions between our main ensemble cast of characters that might've strengthened the film as something more human and true than it is a largely cookie-cutter, small screen style comedy, the actors are all terrific. Unfortunately, DuVall and co-writer/co-star Mary Holland's script, which leaves much to be desired, doesn't know how to use them properly. Nonetheless, a mildly pleasant holiday diversion that you can digest right along with your pumpkin pie, even if it isn't a new repeat-worthy holiday classic, hopefully, Hulu's "Happiest Season" will earn enough viewers that we'll see some stronger, funnier LGBTQ comedies in the years to come.

Less of a holiday-centric offering than it is an offering served up for viewers during the holidays on Amazon Prime, "Uncle Frank" is a heartfelt period drama from writer-director Alan Ball that, in addition to sharing the same theme of coming out to one's family that we saw in "Happiest Season," rivals DuVall's film in terms of its enviable, first-rate cast. 

Led by the versatile, acclaimed "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World," "The Da Vinci Code," and "Margin Call" actor Paul Bettany as the titular Uncle Frank, Ball's film is a who's who of scene-stealing character actors, including audience favorites Steve Zahn, Margo Martindale, and Judy Greer.

The apple of the eye of his niece Beth ("It" franchise and "Sharp Objects" star Sophia Lillis), Frank Bledsoe (Bettany) has traded his conservative, small-town South Carolina roots for New York where he works as an English professor at NYU in the late 1960s/early '70s. Following in his footsteps by attending NYU, Beth soon learns that although her uncle puts on a great show with a lesbian friend posing as his live-in girlfriend, he's actually been in a relationship with his sweet, funny Middle Eastern boyfriend Walid aka Wally (played by Peter Macdissi) for the past ten years.

Forced to return home for the funeral of his own disapproving father (Stephen Root), whom we deduce most likely knew the truth about his son's sexual orientation before anyone else, Frank drives Beth down to South Carolina. Determined to be there to support the love of his life because he knows just how much trauma will be waiting for him in the south, Wally trails behind the pair and soon joins them on the road trip, which becomes a journey into Frank's past. 

A film that's as much about Frank's need to finally let the people he loves into that part of himself that he keeps hidden as it is about his need to forgive himself and make peace with a devastating turn of events in his past for which he still feels responsible, while "Happiest Season" addressed past transgressions too, this film is vastly more sincere overall. Though still bursting at the seams with cliches and contrivances that should be far beyond the otherwise amazingly talented Ball (whose explorations into human behavior made "Six Feet Under" one of HBO's best twenty-first-century shows), thanks to the conviction and pathos of its top-notch leads, "Uncle Frank" works much better than it should.

Hindered by a rushed final act that races through an emotional payoff that it doesn't fully earn, as wonderful as it always is to see Bettany in something new that pushes him beyond his work in the Marvel franchise, the real heart of "Uncle Frank" is in Peter Macdissi's performance as Wally. Elevating an otherwise stereotypical role as the tormented Frank's saintly boyfriend, Macdissi's magnetic, cheeky delivery of certain lines – such as when he lectures Beth that niceness is used by her family to hide things – immediately wins us over. Likewise, in just one scene where he calls his mother back in Saudi Arabia from a motel phone booth, which is contrasted by Frank's return back to the motel with Beth after a wake, we realize how much more interesting the film might've been if we'd been following not Frank but Wally all along.

Disappointingly, you can nearly set your watch to certain revelations that seem to hit at precisely the same intervals that most screenwriters well-versed in the Syd Field three-act structure will recognize. However, the film's tenderness and its message about the importance of acceptance and the way that we never fully get over the traumas that inadvertently shape us for better and/or worse still feels timely nearly fifty years after the film is set, as we watch this today in Trump's America. 

Comparing the two films, which I watched back to back, "Uncle Frank" is a much more solid and substantive work than "Happiest Season," even if it isn't nearly as light, airy, and easily digestible as Clea DuVall's comedy. While both films fail to push much past the bar of average overall, they still feel well-timed to their pre-holiday release, especially this year when we especially need entertainment during the pandemic. Perhaps more willing than ever to look past their shortcomings amid 2020's wrath, hopefully, these films will find an audience in viewers who either relate to their characters' struggles to let others see them as they really are or are eager to celebrate their willingness to do as the Christmas carol says and make the yuletide (a bit more) gay. 'Tis the season, after all.

Text ©2020, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. https://www.filmintuition.com  Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  Also, as an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases made off my site through ad links. FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique. Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.

Film Movement Movie Review: White Riot (2019)

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Once upon a time, Eric Clapton lost his mind. Stopping a show in Birmingham to ask any "foreigners" in the audience to raise their hands, he told them he wanted them gone, not just from the concert but his country altogether. "I don't want you here," he shouted. "I think we should send them all back...We need to make clear to them they are not welcome. England is for white people, man … This is Great Britain, a white country!"

The year was 1976. As shocking as these words were back then and remain to this day, when it came to views like these, Eric Clapton was far from alone. Joined in supporting the new rise of fascism in the UK, David Bowie argued that Britain was ready for a fascist leader and called Adolf Hitler the first rock star in an interview with "Playboy." Following Clapton's lead, Rod Stewart went even further, giving a full-throated endorsement for racist National Front political party member Enoch Powell, saying that he too thought it was time for foreigners to leave. But this position wasn't just coming from those in rock. With punk taking over the music scene in Britain, The Sex Pistols, Adam Ant, and Siouxsie and the Banshees were just three punk groups who openly embraced Nazi symbolism and swastikas in their costumes and performances.

What the hell was going on, you might ask? The short answer is that in the mid to late '70s, England was rampant with anger and hate. Inundated with job loss and scapegoating the problems of the country on immigrant "invaders" with "black, brown, and yellow faces," as the National Front ranted in their rallies, Britain's tide was turning in a horrific direction. Watching this happen in real-time, rock photographer Red Saunders vowed to do whatever he could to stop the impending flood of xenophobia before it was too late.

Writing an open letter to Clapton, whose music, he rightfully charged, was cribbed directly from Black blues artists, Saunders sounded the alarm and offered a solution. "We want to organise a rank-and-file movement against the racist poison in rock music," he wrote. Leaving his contact information in the letter for interested parties, after his missive was printed in music publications across the UK, Saunders was overwhelmed by the response.

Joining forces with gifted graphic designers, writers, photographers, musicians, and artists, they formed the group Rock Against Racism to reach the youths of England in an attempt to educate the younger generation against propagandist hate. Hosting events where they purposely had Black and white bands playing back-to-back, the organization put on more than two hundred shows in its first year and created a fanzine called "Temporary Hoarding," which addressed the real-world problems of racist policing, the Catholic side of the North Ireland conflict, sexual violence, immigration, LGBT issues, and other topics which were ignored by the mainstream press.

Chronicling the legacy of the group while bringing issues of "Temporary Hoarding" bursting to life through vibrant animation (which filmmaker Rubika Shah acknowledges was inspired by the films of Brett Morgan, including "Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck"), "White Riot" is a lively time capsule of a fraught period in England made eerily prescient due to recent events.

Watching the arguments made by the National Front in the wake of MAGA, Trump, the murderous Nazi march on Charlottesville, police brutality and the Black Lives Matter protests, as well as the advent of increasing fascism around the globe, "White Riot" plays like one of the scariest horror films you'll see ahead of Halloween. From bullets in the mailbox to assaults against musicians and concertgoers to the open police support for the National Front and their policies, it's a harrowing document of a fraught era in British history and the brave artists, organizations, and youths who dared to join forces to put hate in its place.

Interviewing not only Red Saunders and his colleagues but also some of the musicians who played Rock Against Racism (or RAR) gigs, including The Tom Robinson Band and Alien Kulture, while Shah's film admittedly suffers from a lack of focus as it seems to adjust and expand its thesis every time a vital new issue is introduced, it's an urgent eye-opener, nonetheless. Releasing to virtual cinemas from Film Movement ahead of the U.S. election, it's sure to inspire viewers to get involved, stay involved, and – here in the states, at least – vote.

Featuring amazing archival interviews, photos, and concert footage with bands including The Clash, Sham 69, Matumbi, Steel Pulse, X-Ray Spex, and more, "White Riot," which gets its name from a widely misunderstood Clash song off their first album, is of particular interest to UK music fans. Celebrating the grassroots movement that started in an east London print shop and exploded into a legendary carnival so important that The Clash swallowed their egos and played second to last before event headliner Tom Robinson (who'd been with RAR from the very beginning), the debut feature from Shah promises great filmmaking from the documentarian to come.

Clocking in at a mere eighty minutes, "White Riot," is the film equivalent of a punk song. Frenetically edited, it hits its thematic chords hard to drive home the message, ensuring that, unlike Clapton's "I Shot the Sheriff," this is one refrain you'll be glad to get stuck in your head long after it’s done.

Text ©2020, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. https://www.filmintuition.com  Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  Also, as an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases made off my site through ad links. FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique. Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.

Blu-ray Review: Focus Features - 10 Movie Spotlight Collection: Lost in Translation, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Pride & Prejudice (2005), Brokeback Mountain, Atonement, Burn After Reading, Moonrise Kingdom, The Theory of Everything, On the Basis of Sex, & Harriet (2019)

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After merging Gramercy Pictures and October Films together to form USA Films in 2000 (the same year the studio released Steven Soderbergh's Academy Award winning Traffic), NBC Universal realized that they weren't quite done making changes with their new label. 

Hoping to live up to the reputation of the acclaimed releases produced by their prestigious acquisitions (which also included Good Machine and Polygram Filmed Entertainment), this new amalgamation of USA Films and Universal Focus became Focus Features in 2002. A serious rival of Miramax first, followed by The Weinstein Company, over the past eighteen years, Focus has produced some of the world's most popular art-house fare, from big moneymakers like Brokeback Mountain to early aught cult favorites like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind to Oscar winners like Atonement. 

Known for their particular – or, for lack of a better word – “focus” on matters of the heart, this spotlight collection serves up ten of the studio's most acclaimed and/or original titles released over a sixteen-year period from 2003 to 2019. Packaging together ten Blu-ray discs along with a digital code to give consumers access to the collection in portable high definition format as well, the box set includes the following films (in chronological order): Lost in Translation, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Pride & Prejudice, Brokeback Mountain, Atonement, Burn After Reading, Moonrise Kingdom, The Theory of Everything, On the Basis of Sex, and Harriet. 

Newly available in time for holiday gift-giving, as I began watching the movies contained in the Focus Features Spotlight Collection, I realized that it's best to appreciate the set as a whole as opposed to ten disparate parts. Not wanting to write ten in-depth, old-school reviews and bore you senseless, I've opted to take my cue from the company behind the films instead. Focusing on recurring themes, techniques, and/or personnel utilized throughout the collection, I'll work my way through the library of titles by heart, rather than weave my way through each one chronologically from one year to the next.

Note: Some of these films I have much more to say about than others, and in talking about the things that fascinate me most, you will find a few minor Spoilers Ahead. 

There's something about the hands of a man filled with desire that – to pay homage to an oft-quoted (and somewhat controversial) line from his 2005 Jane Austen adaptation Pride & Prejudice – has bewitched filmmaker Joe Wright body and soul. We see it first in Pride as Matthew Macfadyen's Mr. Darcy helps Elizabeth Bennet (Keira Knightley) into a carriage. Still ablaze from the electricity that exists between the two, after their hands touch, Darcy involuntarily flexes his own when he lets go. Revisiting this motif later, once Darcy proposes to Elizabeth in the field and she accepts, it's his hand she first kisses and embraces as if to let him know that she had felt it too. 

With chipped paint, slightly greasy hair, and dresses that look like they've been worn many times before, of all of the film adaptations of Pride & Prejudice, this is the most lived-in version of Jane Austen's novel we've seen so far. While not as all-encompassing as the 1995 BBC miniseries, which is my personal favorite incarnation of Pride, Wright's adaptation deftly illustrates both the realism of the period and the difference between the classes right from the start and again when we contrast the cozy, messy Bennet home, which has fallen into disrepair with the ornate, museum-like quality of Darcy's ostentatious estate of Pemberley.

Spending more time with the men of Austen's novel than we traditionally do onscreen, in Macfadyen's tender portrayal we see the longing, anger, and frustration of Darcy as he wages an internal battle of what he should say to his love and when. In fact, in this adaptation penned by Deborah Moggach (with additional dialogue by an uncredited Emma Thompson), there's a very funny sequence where Darcy and his best friend Bingley (Simon Woods) retreat from the Bennets' home after a short, intensely awkward visit, only to return less than ten minutes later, and finally follow through with one of their proposals.

A gorgeous first feature from the veteran television director, Joe Wright took the lushest elements of Pride, including its instantly classic score by composer Dario Marianelli as well as lead actress Keira Knightley, among others, and with them, crafted another masterpiece just two years later in 2007's Atonement. 

Adapted from Ian McEwan's heartbreaking novel by Les Liaisons Dangereuses playwright Christopher Hampton, Atonement tells the story of two would-be lovers – again of different classes – whose burgeoning romance is ripped apart by the overactive imagination of Knightley's young, confused sister, played by Saoirse Ronan.

Once again emphasizing subtle tactile eroticism, which goes a long way in proving to filmmakers that there's more than one way to film a love scene (including scenes that don't even include overt sex), in one swoon-worthy sequence, Knightley's character impulsively strips down to her slip. Diving into a fountain, she retrieves a piece of a priceless pitcher that had been broken in a playful struggle with the college-aged son of her housekeeper (James McAvoy).

Dripping with water, she emerges victoriously, suddenly self-conscious about her behavior, which undoubtedly would've been harmless as a child but is now loaded with sexual tension since the two are adults. Blushing, she dresses in a hurry. And as McAvoy turns respectfully, Wright has his gifted cinematographer Seamus McGarvey film a close-up of the actor's hand. We watch as his thumb slowly, involuntarily strokes the handle of the broken pitcher, the way we gather he wants to do with the woman he loves, who is in the background of the shot.

Establishing a water motif early on, which returns in a haunting climax in the film's final act, there are no accidents in Wright's exquisitely crafted work. Paying off on everything that has come before it in largely unexpected ways, Atonement plays like an entirely different movie in subsequent viewings. A devastatingly beautiful tragedy of miscommunication and missed connection, from Dario Marianelli's inventive score, which uses a typewriter as a vital musical instrument to a bravura, over five-minute long shot where McAvoy and other WWII soldiers wander through a crowded beach at Dunkirk, Atonement is Wright's finest achievement thus far.

But the delicate desire of a man’s hand in a Joe Wright movie takes on a rougher, tougher, but no-less romantically tortured meaning in Ang Lee's 2005 stunner Brokeback Mountain, which screenwriters Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana adapted from the Annie Proulx short story. 

Chronicling the decades-long romance between two closeted cowboys played by Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal, whereas Gyllenhaal's Jack Twist is the more open and optimistic of the pair in his wish that both leave their faux straight lives as married men and instead live together on a ranch, Ledger plays his lead Ennis Del Mar like, as he famously stated, a “clenched fist.”

Closed-off, withdrawn, alert for any sign of danger in being found out, and quick to anger, Ennis speaks with clenched teeth and sits in a crumpled posture. Averting his eyes, he swings that ready fist without warning. Unfortunately, his need to keep it clenched destroys his own chances at happiness in the film as we discover that the person he really wants to hit is himself.

Much like Wright's period pieces, Brokeback Mountain plays up the subtle heat between the two with little sneaked looks out of the periphery. In fact, early on in their relationship, Lee uses the side and rearview mirrors on either of the men's trucks to convey their interest, or the reflection of a knife as Jack peels potatoes and sees a naked Ennis change into his clothes out of the corner of his eye. Much like McAvoy did with the pitcher in Atonement, Gyllenhaal's Jack struggles to keep his hands busy before he can touch his love.

Eventually able to let down his guard enough to let Jack Twist in, in one of the film's most poignant moments, Ennis opens his fist long enough to clench his hand around an old shirt he finds at Jack's later on. Feeling like we're witnessing something incredibly intimate and private, we can hardly bear to look at this affecting sequence head-on. Taking a cue from Lee and the cowboys at the heart of the tale, Brokeback Mountain is a film that you feel like you almost need to watch in little peeks out at the periphery, while trying, of course, not to clench your first in the hope that they get the happily ever after you know deep down isn't coming. 

Equal parts Wong Kar-wai, Michelangelo Antonioni, and that distinctly, intrinsically, indefinable quality that is Sofia Coppola, the dreamlike romanticism of her 2003 art-house favorite Lost in Translation is all about that subtle, unexpected pull you feel towards someone else.

Setting her somewhat autobiographical film in Tokyo in order for both of her lonely, insomniac leads to feel not only adrift in their marriages but also lost at sea without a beacon, once early twenty-something Yale graduate Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson) meets movie star in a mid-life crisis Bob Harris (Bill Murray), they find the compass they've been looking for in each other.

Developing a fast friendship – and it has to be accelerated because when you're an outsider in a new land, you're going to connect faster than you would back home – in the film's most exquisite sequence, the two go out for a wild night on the town. Winding up in a karaoke bar (as one does in Japan), under the guise of old pop songs, they're at last able to tell each other exactly what they're thinking and feeling. Using the lyrics that someone else wrote as cover, they sing and emote, sharing sideways glances so intense that multiple times, Charlotte not only blushes but finds herself needing to look away.

Yet Coppola knows that her sophisticated characters wouldn't just embark on some impulsive sexual affair. Hitting a rough patch after Bob's impetuous one-night stand with a lounge singer, our writer-director wisely intuits that sex with someone you care so much about is a far scarier, potentially life-altering, and combustible enough prospect and that, if they were to go there, it could blow up in their faces.

Understanding that we've all felt this way about someone before – since love is all about timing after all – Coppola's movie points out that sometimes when we're pulled with a magnetic force to someone new, there are things in our life that just don't sync up. Yet through Bob and Charlotte, she argues that it's better to have this connection than anything else. And as we follow along on the duo's journey from cinematographer Lance Acord's dizzying, disorienting camera angles at the beginning of the film when they're on their own to the more assured and settled frames when they're together, we quickly realize that we couldn't agree more.

Brought to life by the wildly charismatic Murray and the charming, sweetly mischievous Johansson, the couple's adventures play out against a soundscape of ethereal, romantic alternative songs from bands like The Jesus & Mary Chain and My Bloody Valentine. And through the combination of their chemistry, the music, and the lyrical imagery of Coppola's film, the incandescent lights of Tokyo burn not only hot but exceptionally, unforgettably bright. 

Unforgettable is the watchword when it comes to Michel Gondry's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, a thrillingly imaginative endeavor based on an original screenplay by Charlie Kaufman. A freewheeling journey through a relationship that's ended, the film finds a desperate man (Jim Carrey) attempting to free himself from heartache by undergoing a drastic medical procedure to wipe his ex-girlfriend (Kate Winslet) from his brain.

Realizing after the fact that with the pain, he'll soon lose the love and all of the memories of happiness that went with it, as the professionals (including Tom Wilkinson, Mark Ruffalo, Elijah Wood, and Kirsten Dunst) get to work, Carrey fights to save his relationship with Winslet's Clementine from the garbage bin one last time. Trying to access the deepest recesses of his brain, he leads Winslet's veritable manic pixie dream girl on a long crazy love chase through his subconscious, unsure whether they're destined to repeat past mistakes, get trapped in old baggage and biases, or if there might actually be a positive outcome in sight.

An incredibly personal film that no two people will ever see the same way (which is par for the course of not just every film, but doubly so for those written by Kaufman), it's also one that I feel you should first watch alone. Weirdly cemented in my brain as the official film of my parents' divorce, when I ventured to the theater to see Eternal Sunshine with my mom back in 2004, we stopped to check the mail, only to receive the official confirmation that her marriage to my father was no more. And while this was a very positive development in all of our lives as my parents are both so much happier today, taking my mom to see a film that was advertised like a quirky romantic comedy but – especially with this news fresh in our mind – played more like a kick to the solar plexus with a steel-toed boot was easily one of the dumbest movie-going decisions of my life.

Watching it a second time with a film studies class I attended as a visitor in '05, even though I was able to disassociate enough to focus on the framing, themes, motifs, and other techniques sure to be discussed after the film, it still felt like watching years of intense Freudian analysis suddenly reach a breaking point all at once. Bound to call up things that, much like Carrey's lead ascertains, you either might not want to look at again or thought you forgot, regardless of your romantic background, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind will put you through the wringer.

As gorgeously moving as it is excruciatingly haunting, just when you think its spiraled way too far out of control, the cast and crew tether us to the film's humanity in the strangest of scenes and the oddest of times. Although it focuses overtly on memory, Sunshine makes the case that even if you sever someone's romantic attachment to another, one thing that does not change is our nature or that Mr. Darcy-like flicker of attraction that ignites when we're presented with the same human stimuli. In the end, Carrey discovers that you can try to fight love but you can't fight science. As embedded together as they are, the film proves that as much as we'd like to clear something from our mind, on the most molecular or chemical of levels, love, it seems, is as impossible to deny as it is to forget.

Love as a driving force has been a throughline in writer-director Wes Anderson’s filmography from the very beginning, and nowhere does he celebrate that with more innocence, audacity, and verve than in Moonrise Kingdom.



Set on the fictional New England island of New Penzance at the end of the summer of 1965, this sweet and sour ode to young love focuses on a twelve-year-old girl (Kara Hayward) with anger management and impulse control problems who runs away with her orphan pen-pal (Jared Gilman) to live free together on a beach.

Co-written by Anderson's The Darjeeling Limited collaborator Roman Coppola, the film is not only filled with autobiographical details but Anderson's trademark literary and cinematic allusions as well. Drawing a great deal of inspiration from films like Melody, Black Jack, A Little Romance, and – as is often the case throughout Anderson's oeuvre – the work of François Truffaut (most notably The 400 Blows and Small Change), Moonrise Kingdom employs Anderson's favorite visual techniques. Yet while once again, it emphasizes color, symmetry, and actors who are placed dead-center in the frame, this one inherently feels like a product of the period in which it takes place.

Much like Rushmore, although it is ultimately focused on the youth at the center of the storyline, on a second viewing, I found myself particularly entranced by just how much the relationship between the adults serves as a mirrored, somewhat refracted, reflection of Sam (Gilman) and Suzy's (Hayward) romance. And nowhere is this truer than in the film's subplot revolving around a love triangle that's centered on Suzy's mother, Frances McDormand.

Playing the unhappily married wife of fellow lawyer Bill Murray, 2012's Moonrise Kingdom marked the first of three films that the Oscar-winning actress would make with writer-director Wes Anderson, co-starring Murray. And while her role in this one is small, it is undoubtedly significant. For although Anderson immediately endears us to the children right from the start, cleverly, it's McDormand's character's extramarital affair with Bruce Willis' Captain Sharp that not only propels Moonrise's action forward but also gives the romance at the heart of the film more emotional heft in the end.

Regardless of the film, of course, she's always strong. But one thing I admire about McDormand's turn here is that, because of the way it is structured, you don't fully realize just how much is going on under the surface – or the bittersweet way the young lovers' storyline will pay off and bring her own romantic entanglements to a head – until Moonrise Kingdom reaches its conclusion.

The loves and woes of Frances McDormand serve a similar purpose in the 2008 film Burn After Reading. As Linda Litzke, a dizzy yet optimistic Washington D.C. gym employee with a wicked case of body dysmorphic disorder, McDormand's romantic entanglements help connect the A plot to the B plot in the 2008 Coen brothers spy comedy.



Tired of sleeping with the parade of mostly married losers she meets on an online dating site, and convinced that a new physical appearance would change things, Linda is determined to undergo several plastic surgery procedures to fix all of the problems she sees (and largely imagines) when she looks in the mirror. 

Unable to get her insurance to pay for elective surgery, when she and her favorite co-worker – in the form of Brad Pitt's even more dimwitted Chad – are informed that someone accidentally dropped a disc full of “highly classified shit” in the locker room, they take it upon themselves to track down the source. Though Chad is sure that they'll be given a reward for being good samaritans, Linda figures that if he declines, they'll just blackmail the man for all he's got.

Finding themselves at the center of a convoluted web, they discover that the memoirs and data included belongs to a recently fired, alcoholic CIA agent (played by John Malkovich), whose adulterous wife (Tilda Swinton) is having an affair with an even more unfaithful married federal marshal (George Clooney), who unbeknownst to all, is also sleeping with Linda Litzke. Needless to say, things get seriously twisted seriously fast.

An uneven Coen brothers movie that was written at the exact same time they were also working on adapting Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men, aside from a terrific McDormand and a hilariously scene-stealing Brad Pitt, I found myself largely underwhelmed by Burn back in 2008. Still, as a filmmaking team, the Coens are often a good ten years ahead of the game in terms of both content and technique. And as was the case with some of their experimental '90s endeavors, when I revisited this comedic poison pen letter to the amoral ineptitude of shady agents and wheeler-dealers today in the Trump era, it clicked into place with more success.

Centered on characters that are completely driven by id and self-preservation, while I still feel like the last half of the film disappoints the viewer by telling us things (particularly in the last ten minutes) that would've been far more entertaining if they'd been shown, Burn After Reading is funnier in 2020 than it was a dozen years ago. Although the gift of hindsight makes me wish that they would've followed through with a Russian embassy subplot, the committed cast salvages and uplifts this one past its clunky hurdles.

A recurring theme when it comes to the three handsomely crafted yet structurally flawed biopics included in the box set, it's ultimately the cast as well as the inspiration of the trio's real-life subjects that holds our interest in The Theory of Everything, On the Basis of Sex, and Harriet from 2014, '18, and '19 respectively.

Anchored by actress Felicity Jones, who stars in not only the Stephen Hawking biopic Theory but also Basis, about the early career of recently departed Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, one of the most troubling aspects of these two films is that, as written in each screenplay, the women she embodies are routinely upstaged by her male counterparts. 

Obviously, one might expect that to be the case when it comes to the Hawking film. Yet, given that the movie is based on the memoir of the theoretical physicist's first wife Jane (played by Jones onscreen), it's a bit strange that screenwriter Anthony McCarten opted to make Hawking (Eddie Redmayne) far more of an innocent teddy bear (and one that's far less compelling to boot) than every account of the brilliant man suggests.

Toying with the chronology of their relationship and life together so that first Jane and then Elaine Mason (Maxine Peake as his controversial nurse turned second wife) become the film's biggest instigators of drama whereas he's just painted as mischievous, it's disappointingly sexist and shortsighted regarding not only the women's roles but Hawking's ability to think for himself all the same.

Although undoubtedly made with love by director James Marsh and played with warmth and sensitivity by both Jones and Redmayne, despite a standout, arresting score by Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson and regal cinematography by Benoît Delhomme, there's not enough here to fully recommend Theory as anything other than a cursory yet flawed overview of the physicist's life.

Still, although The Theory of Everything pales in comparison to other documentaries made about Hawking – most notably A Brief History of Time by Errol Morris – at least that landmark work was made more than two decades before James Marsh first shouted, “Action.” The same cannot be said for Julie Cohen and Betsy West's fascinating documentary RBG, which debuted in theaters just seven months before Mimi Leder's On the Basis of Sex opened in 2018. 

At the beginning of Basis, we watch as Ruth Bader Ginsberg fights against the sexism she encountered as one of only nine women admitted to Harvard Law School in the 1950s, before she must step up to do double the work at school and home following the cancer diagnosis of her beloved husband Martin (Armie Hammer).

Going on to battle the same gender bias in the workplace until she tackles one big case of sexual discrimination (against a man) all the way to the supreme court, while we are plainly on her side from the very beginning, all too often, screenwriter Daniel Stiepleman makes his lovable uncle Martin Ginsberg the hero of what is purportedly Ruth's story.

Largely painted as cold – especially in relation to anyone but Martin – and increasingly single-minded, frequently in the film, it plays as if both Martin and also Justin Theroux's ACLU lawyer Mel Wulf must give Ruth permission or advice to do what she needs to do. And while no law states that every female character in a movie needs to be one hundred percent likable as it's always thrilling to see women get to embrace their dark side, this movie clearly isn't intending to do that with RBG. Of course, we root for her because of the great work she is doing and revere the strides she made for all of us, but in On the Basis of Sex, we don't feel like we truly get to know her on a human level as well as we do Martin, which is understandably a letdown.

And this idea of treating female protagonists more on the strength of their historical myth is one of the biggest reasons why the woefully uneven Harriet disappoints viewers as much as it does. Though artfully made by Kasi Lemmons – who directed one of the most underrated films of the 1990s in Eve's Bayou – this largely episodic film, written by Lemmons and Gregory Allen Howard, sets up its villains and conflicts early on and then predictably knocks them down one by one like dominoes. 

Featuring a dynamic turn by Cynthia Erivo (who, in this as well as HBO's The Outsider is quickly becoming an actress to watch) as Harriet Tubman and great supporting work by Janelle Monáe as one of many intriguing figures Tubman encounters throughout, despite some outstanding sequences, which have been exquisitely captured by cinematographer John Toll, this film is all over the place.

Although engaging and inspiring on a human level and as a vital historical account of this country's shameful practice of slavery, in terms of the meandering yet dramatically protracted script, there's something that feels both haphazard and rushed about Harriet overall.

Another lackluster biopic, sadly, Harriet makes the set three for three in titles that – although filled with Oscar-worthy performances and production specs – don't live up to their subjects' lives. Still, in these ten odes to love and courage in its many forms, we discover that what this studio lacks in their fictionalized factual accounts, Focus Features more than makes up for in seven creative tales, which tell us the truth of life on this planet, not with facts, but honest, humanistic fiction instead. And for that, I say we make like Darcy and give them a hand.

Text ©2020, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. https://www.filmintuition.com  Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  Also, as an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases made off my site through ad links. FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique. Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.