2023

dir: Matteo Garrone

2023

Ahem. Usually, when I title reviews, I have the title in English, since I write my reviews in English, and not my preferred language, which would be Ukrainian (Slava Ukraini! Geroiam Slava!), but at the top of the page I tend to have the title as written in whatever language the film was made in, or by, or for.

That would be a confusing thing to do in this instance. So this is a film made by an Italian director, but it’s about the plight of two Senegalese boys trying to emigrate to Europe, and they speak, mostly, Wolof, French, a bit of English and an even tinier bit of Italian.

So I have no idea what language is the “right” one for this flick to be titled in. I’m sticking with the title as written, as this was Italy’s submission to the Academy for Best International Feature Film for 2023 as Io Capitano, and thus it must stay.

I’m not entirely sure if that translates to “I, Captain" or "I am a captain”, or “I am the captain”, or if it’s a reference to the Tom Hanks nauseating thriller Captain Phillips, but I’m pretty sure it’s at least one of those options.

Its relevance only becomes apparent at the very end of the two stressful hours we spend with our protagonists.

And who are our protagonists? Two Senegalese boys called Seydou (Seydou Sarr) and Moussa (Moustapha Fall), who are convinced that their fortunes will be made if only they can get themselves to Europe. It doesn’t matter where in Europe, just Europe. They will make big fat wads of money and send it back to their families and also maybe get somewhere with their rapping and musical skills, to the point where white people will fight for their autographs!

dir: Cord Jefferson

2023

American Fiction is a lot of film. I guess it’s lots of two lots; a lot of a family drama, and a lot of a satirical take on the state of, you guessed it, American literary fiction.

But really, what it is, is funny. It’s a pretty funny film. I got genuine laughs out of this flick, and it’s not billed as a comedy. I got more laughs out of this than No Hard Feelings, the recent Mean Girls update or even Ridley Scott’s Napoleon, which had to have been a comedy, because otherwise…

In terms of its satirical components, its target is mainly well-meaning “white” liberals who through a mixture of condescension and egotistical imagined empathy end up being more racist towards African-Americans than even the dumbest red-hatted Trump voter. Right from the start as our main character is shown in class at the university where he lectures, Thelonious “Monk” Ellison is being castigated by a student because of the presence of a certain word on the whiteboard.

They’re analysing the short stories of Flannery O’Connor. One of those short stories happens to be The Artificial N-----. Now, I don’t particularly love the word either, but it is the short story’s name. Thelonious is African-American, and a writer, and lecturer, and the student complaining, saying that even seeing the word causes her distress, is, for lack of a better descriptor, white. When she persists in her complaints, Thelonious tells her that he got over whatever trauma the word represents, so she could too.

Naturally, she wants to have a word with his manager, being the Karen-in-training that she is, and complains to the university hierarchy. She - let’s not gloss over this, took offence on behalf of African-Americans, including the ones in her class, including her lecturer - when they themselves in that context weren’t offended.

dir: Andrew Haigh

2023

A boy loses his parents when he is too young. It arrests his emotional development in shocking ways, gives him a wound he never recovers from.

He may grow up eternally aching for their approval, which he can never get, because they’re dead, so he punishes himself (by keeping himself isolated), punishes others (by pushing them away) in order to somehow make up for that profound lack in his life. It’s a self-made, self-sustaining hook that he cannot let himself get off from.

But enough about every version of Batman that’s ever been made.

All of Us Strangers follows the story of a man called Adam (Andrew Scott) navigating (or not) his way through life, hoping for benediction or a blessing where none is forthcoming. He lives alone in an apartment in a sparsely occupied tower. It might be a new construction, because there’s only one other chap living there on a different floor, apparently.

That guy, Harry (Paul Mescal), tries to connect with Adam, but he’s drunk, and Adam’s not taking visitors. Adam is shy and retiring, and retreats at all times.

He retreats so much that he travels back to the place where he grew up, somewhere south of London. He wanders around old haunts, even to an area that kinda looks like a beat, have to say. And a certain distance away, he spies a smiling, mustachioed man, who seems to know him, or at least like him.

Adam follows him and ends up at his childhood home. It looks exactly the same as the photo he carries of the place. Even has the family car in the same spot, and his little bike.

Mum and Dad are home, looking younger than ever (Claire Foy and Jamie Bell), and welcome him in for a chat. He is astounded to see them, as one would expect, since his parents died in a car crash when Adam was 12, and he’s in his late forties now. He’s older than his parents, somehow.

Given a gift like this by the universe, why would you question it. He takes the opportunity to speak to his parents a little bit about the present, but mostly about the past, the long ago past, the past before he lost them.

dir: George C Wolfe

2023

I’m all for biopics about relatively obscure but important figures in history. When they’re really obscure then we don’t have a pre-conceived idea of what they should be like.

I guess that’s the main difference between doing a biopic about Bob Marley, as in the recent flick One Love, which seems to be universally hated by film critics, versus something like this flick, being Rustin, which has, at best, been tepidly received, is familiarity.

I go in with no preconceptions, having never heard of the man outside of the context of this flick and the Oscar nomination for the chap who plays the main character. Colman Domingo plays Bayard Rustin like he’s got nothing to lose and like he doesn’t care if we like him or the character or not.

And that’s a good thing. At the start we see that Mr Rustin is close to the prominent people in the civil rights movement, including a certain Reverend, but that for some of the old guard, the power players, like the head of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Roy Wilkins (Chris Rock) or Congressman Powell (Jeffrey Wright), don’t like him at all.

And why is that? Is it because he isn’t performing in his job? Is it because he’s not passionate about fighting for the betterment of society through improving the lot of African-Americans? Is it the hairstyle?

Nah. It’s because he’s gay.