The numbers are in for 2023. People have been resturning to the movie theaters. Still not as many as before COVID kept them out but the numbers are going up. Mind you a trio of big titles did much of the work. You know the names: Barbie, Oppenheimer and Mission Impossible.
Two of those lead the nominations at the Golden Globes Sunday.
Deadpool, Dune and Gladiator 2 might be the big ones for 2024 and while we're waiting, in theaters or streaming, we've got these:
All of Us Strangers: 4 ½ stars
Good Grief: 2 ½
American Fiction: 4
Time Bomb Y2K: 4
Foe: 2 ½
ALL OF US STRANGERS: I'm hardly in the target audience for gay romance films but this one I found very moving. That's partly because it feels authentic. As written and directed by Andrew Haigh, who has made festival favorites and award winners before, it is alive, not at all artificial. In economical dialogue, it succinctly describes the problems gays live with. Asked if it is a “lonely type of life”, the central character played by Andrew Scott replies “Everything is different now.” It's his answer for other questions too and that shapes this as a very contemporary and realistic depiction. That's even though much of the storyline is pure fantasy which also adds to make it moving.
Scott's character links up with another man (Paul Mescal) who lives in the same high-rise building and invites himself into his apartment. They kiss, rub knees, strip and have very sensual sex. Scott reveals he's a scriptwriter who always works alone and that he still grieves the loss of his parents in a car accident. That's where the fantasy comes in. He visits them, as if they were still alive, talks to them, finds mom (Claire Foy) accepting and dad (Jamie Bell) not so much. It's a common wish: to go back and talk about things you never had a chance to. Superb writing and acting makes it work. Scott got a Golden Globe nomination for his acting.. (In theaters) 4 ½ out of 5
GOOD GRIEF: Daniel Levy's gay romance is far different. It's not realistic. It's more like a gay soap opera, very light, almost inconsequential, like a rom-com you'd expect from Hollywood. He won accolades for the gay story line in Schitt's Creek and that may have motivated him to go for more. A car accident also figures here: Levy's character, Marc, lost his husband--a children's book author for whom he drew illustrations--in a taxi crash. After a year of mourning he opens an old Christmas card from him and finds he had found a new lover and shared an apartment with him in Paris.
So off goes Marc, plus two friends (Ruth Negga and Himesh Patel) to find who is Luca and what has been going on. Is it maybe the tall man he meets at the airport? That's a worry because it would make a very predictable story. As it is, there's enough of that and not enough about what the movie is supposed to be about: dealing with grief. Observations on that are pretty mild. Marc expounds on what he calls "muscle memory" with which your brain continues to feel for a person you've lost. Sincere but fleeting thoughts. Crowded out by the easy-to-take comedy around them. It's harmless stuff, undemanding but fitting in perfectly at Netflix where it's playing. 2 ½ out of 5
AMERICAN FICTION: Here's a droll comedy with bite, enough that it was the People's Choice at the Toronto Film Festival, has two nominations at the Golden Globes, including best picture (comedy) and is bound to be nominated at the Oscars. Had it arrived earlier I would have included it in my "best" list.
Without screaming or shouting it blasts racial stereotyping. It does that with deft satire as a writer who is annoyed by the conventional depiction of blacks in America decides to make a point. Thelonious 'Monk' Ellison he's called and played brilliantly by Jeffrey Wright. If literature regularly shows blacks as poor, living in crime-riddled neighborhoods, with deadbeat dads and gang-banger sons, he'll show them up and under a pseudonym write the same. The point is to burst their attitudes, but the scheme backfires. His book becomes a hit. It's what liberal America wants to read about Blacks. Ellison also deals with family issues on the side (with Leslie Uggams as his mother, Sterling K. Brown as his brother and Tracee Ellis Ross as his sister). That not only shows his non-ghetto life but keeps the film from turning into a diatribe. It's a funny entertainment directed by Cord Jefferson who made his name writing for TV. (It's been playing in Toronto for a couple of weeks and now expands to Vancouver, Montreal, Calgary and Edmonton). 4 out of 5
TIME BOMB Y2K: Crave quietly added this HBO documentary the day before New Year's Eve and that's fitting because it culminates on that same night 23 years ago. You get the joy of the celebration and the delight in recalling what came before. Remember the warnings that our computers would fail as soon as the year 2000 started? They wouldn't recognize that date. A cost-cutting measure by the industry programmed them all to read only two numbers, not 2000, but only 00. Power plants would shut down. Transit would stop. Air traffic control would be paralyzed. Defense and the banking system would collapse.
So warned the experts, including a Canadian, Peter de Jager of Brampton, Ontario who is seen several times in this documentary. He's been praised for publicizing the issue. Washington appointed a “Y2K Czar” to deal with it and apparently millions were spent on re-programming computer systems to head it off. We know it didn't happen but the film by Brian Becker and Marley McDonald is still great fun to watch. The tense build up to the clock turning to 12 that night, for one thing. The hundreds of archival clips we see (the whole film is made up of them, lots from newscasts, even from two Canadian sources, the CBC and the NFB). And the extreme reactions of people at the time. Gun sales soared. Militias got ready. Religious leaders pontificated (“how fragile do we we now find ourselves before the juggernaut of our own invention.”) It was a revelation at the time how connected we are. (Streaming on CRAVE) 4 out of 5
FOE: Y2K or not, in the movies we regularly get to see an apocalyptic future before us. This one is from a novel by Ian Reid and is co-written by him and the director Garth Davis. Life on earth has turned bad. Cities are overcrowded and some people have managed to move to a simpler rural life. Saoirse Ronan and Paul Mescal are a married couple who have done so; we don't know when or how. Or what brings them money for food or electricity. Just go with it, especially when a man (Aaron Pierre) drives up, says he's from the government and makes an offer. The world is dying he says; colonies on another planet are the solution (no mention of Elon Musk, but he may be familiar with the 2018 novel this is from).Mescal's character, named Junior, has been chosen to go on such a colonizing trip because of some unspecified special characteristic he possesses.
To make it possible, a “substitute” would be left behind to be with his wife. It would be an exact copy of him, his personality, his memories and psyche. Don't commit just yet, the agent says. He'll move in and watch the couple for a year to make sure they're suitable. An intriguing sci fi concept for sure but the story veers off it into a sort of love story. Would a “substitute” be a better husband? Would she be free of male control and be herself? It gets confusing and eventually there are two of him. She tells one “I saw you in him.” She warns against him staying “like this” and both of them taking each other for granted. It has turned into an analysis of a marriage. Not what we came in for. Though there is a twist ending. (Streaming at Prime Video) 2 ½ out of 5
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