Film Reviews from Two Guys in the Dark: January 2021

Thursday, January 28, 2021

The White Tiger plus Short Takes on Promising Young Woman, suggestions for TCM cable offerings, and some other cinematic topics

Freezing-Cold Dishes of Revenge

Reviews and Comments by Ken Burke

I invite you to join me on a regular basis to see how my responses to current cinematic offerings compare to the critical establishment, which I’ll refer to as either the CCAL (Collective Critics at Large) when they’re supportive or the OCCU (Often Cranky Critics Universe) when they go negative.

The White Tiger (Ramin Bahrani) rated R 125 min.

Opening Chatter (no spoilers): I keep trying to honor my New Year’s resolution for keeping the verbiage in these postings to less than I’m prone to do given my natural rambling inclinations. So far this month I’m reasonably OK in my intended direction but keep facing challenges to my “Keep It Short!”-dictum because I’m finally able to see some of 2020’s best releases which easily get my thoughts flowing; still, I’ll attempt to hold back my full spew of praise where these 4-stars (or better) winners are concerned. However, one thing adding a bit more to the total length this time (and for the next few months) is the return of my referral to Metacritic links summarizing 2020 (some still debuting in 2021) Awards/Nominations and Top 10 listings from noted critics (not me, of course), so you’ll find that way down in the Short Takes subsection of Related Links. For my reviews this week, though, the featured one is The White Tiger, set in India but mostly delivered in English (some Hindi with subtitles, though), about a young man born into poverty determined to better himself by becoming a driver for a powerful family who controls his local village; his plan begins to succeed, then a tragic event leads to trouble in this well-done exploration of the caste/class system having so much impact on this vast society, in the process presenting some ethical challenges for the audience in terms of indefensible actions by various characters. Also, in the Short Takes section is a review of another winner, Promising Young Woman, starring Carey Mulligan as an ex-med student still grieving over the rape and death of her close friend some years ago so she goes to bars, acts fall-down-drunk, then when a “helpful” guy takes her home for sex she sobers up, confronts him, until one day a former classmate, now a doctor, re-enters her life causing her to question her future direction (the former’s on Netflix streaming, latter’s on several platforms for $19.99 rental). That section also contains suggestions for some choices on the Turner Classic Movies channel (but too much extra text for line-justified-layout like you see here [Related Links stuff at each posting’s end is similarly-ragged], at least to be done by this burned-out-BlogSpot-drone—oh, tedious software!) along with my usual useful (?) dose of industry-related-trivia.

Here’s the trailer for The White Tiger:

(Use the full screen button in the image’s lower right to enlarge it; activate

that same button or use the “esc” keyboard key to return to normal size.)

If you can abide plot spoilers read on, but this blog’s intended for those who’ve seen the film or want to save some $. To help any of you who want to learn more details yet avoid those important plot-reveals I’ll identify any give-away sentences/sentence-clusters like this:

⇒The first and last words will be noted with arrows and red.⇐ OK, now continue on if you prefer.

What Happens: We begin with a cluster of scenes that may take us a bit of patience to fully make sense of but they’re spiced with humor: in 2007 Delhi (the National Capital Territory containing the city of New Delhi) we see a car speeding through the streets at night; this is interrupted by our narrator/protagonist in 2010, a young entrepreneur recently on the financial upswing (sporting a dapper waxed mustache), Balram Halwai (Adarsh Gourav), who tells us that a story set in India (much of the dialogue’s in English, although what’s in Hindi is translated in subtitles) should begin with a prayer, an easy task for Hindus as they have thousands of gods to choose from. Next, he’s writing an e-mail to Chinese Premiere Wen Jiabao in anticipation of this powerful man’s upcoming visit to India, offering to merge their talents and resources because, as Balram sees it, the Whites of the West are on their way out while the Browns and Yellows of Asia are the future of the planet (also he wants to liberate lower-caste/class Indians from their indoctrinated servant mentality, living like caged roosters aware they’re next on the chopping block yet offering no resistance, assuming that's their fate); Balram does mention, though, the slight wrinkle he’s wanted for murder, so to give Wen a better context of this man he could be working with, Balram will tell him (and us) the story of his life.

Therefore, we shift to a major flashback in the rural town of Laxmangarh where Balram as a poor child shows intellectual potential (a teacher tells him he’s like a white tiger, a rare animal who comes along only once in a generation), but when he’s offered a scholarship to a school in Delhi he’s forced by his demanding grandmother (Kamlesh Gill)—because of his sick father’s debts (Dad dies later of TB)—to stay home and work for the local landlord known as The Stork (Mahesh Manjrekar), aided by his cruel enforcer son, The Mongoose (Vijay Maurya). As he gets a bit older, Balram convinces Granny to finance his training as a chauffeur (to get money for the family) so he can become a driver for The Stork’s younger son, Ashok (Rajkummar Rao), back in India with his upscale-desiring/NYC-raised/daughter-of-immigrants wife, Pinky (Priyanka Chopra Jonas). Balram gets the job (with an underhanded-trick on Ashok’s current #1 driver), becomes surprisingly-friendly with Ashok and Pinky (although they clearly still consider him a servant, much to Balram’s chagrin after he’s cut contact with his family due to a visit back home where Granny tried to force him into an arranged marriage).

Now we’re back to 2007 where we realize it’s these 3 younger characters careening through the streets of Delhi on the night of Pinky’s birthday where she insists on driving, despite being drunk, tragically hits/kills a child in the street. Balram does what he can to keep any suspicion from falling on his employer-“family,” only to find Stork and Mongoose demanding he sign a statement taking responsibility for the homicide which they hold as blackmail against him if ever needed (this becomes unnecessary as no investigation follows about the kid’s death, yet Balram remains faithful to his employers, still hoping to rise in society with these thugs). Pinky’s appalled (wants a better life for Balram), leaves Ashok to return to the U.S.; he’s heartbroken even as Balram tries to comfort him, yet Balram’s begun taking advantage of his “master” with fake repair bills, etc. while Ashok’s now treating him more like a traditional servant. ⇒Meanwhile, Stork and Mongoose are providing bribes to hide their illegal coal business, then there’s a shift to Ashok delivering huge amounts of cash to a woman we’ve seen throughout the story, The Great Socialist (Swaroop Sampat), newly elected to a high government post. Balram’s now also got custody of a nephew sent by Granny to learn the driving trade, takes the kid to a zoo where he finds inspiration from an actual white tiger. While driving Ashok and his red money bag around one night, Balram fakes a problem with a tire to catch his boss off-guard, kills him with a broken whiskey bottle, then flees to Bangalore with the nephew (there are visual implications his entire family back home is slaughtered by The Stork’s goons) where he uses some of the stolen money to pay off the local police, the rest to establish a private taxi service (with well-compensated-employees) for call-center-workers, signing off his letter to Wen Jiabao with assurances he’ll never be caught because the drawing on his wanted poster looks like millions of other young Indian men, he’s altered his facial appearance anyway, plus he’s changed his name to Ashok Sharma so he’s flown the rooster coop, now fully becoming the tiger.⇐*

*If you’d prefer a plot summary (but also with spoilers, like mine just above) accompanied by visuals from the film here’s a useful video (12:07), though it’s interrupted by ads at roughly 1:15 and 10:20.

So What? I suppose if you’re well aware of the society, culture, and traditions of India this film would have even deeper meanings for you—especially if you have any position/heritage akin to Balram’s situation (or know anyone who does)—but you certainly don’t need such background knowledge to appreciate these dismal life-expectations that this determined-to-not-live-as-a-servant-young-man must find a way to overcome in order to not be a compliant “rooster,” as well as understand the hostile attitude he has toward not only the power-holders who’ve held his family and neighbors in thrall for the benefit of personal greed but also some of his kin, such as Granny, who share this greed (but at a considerably lower level of accomplishment, accepting the assumed reality of how much she could expect to gain given the situational limitations she’s not willing to challenge in a manner done by her grandson). Do Balram’s resentments, frustrations, specific sense of justice justify his crime? No, I can’t say they do—despite my overall support for him—which just adds to the complexity of what we’re presented with so successfully in … Tiger. This guy’s not a hero in any traditional sense,* but we can see how his situation stands for an entire planet’s socioeconomic-imbalance as the well-to-do continue to do ever-more-well while the have-nots sink farther below the poverty line, the sort of ongoing-reality leading crowds of the dispossessed to embrace populist/ nationalist/dictatorial leaders (I think you know who I mean, in the U.S., around the world) in hopes of better economic pursuits for the downtrodden, even when it’s all really b.s. just to aid the strongmen.

*Although John Ford gave us a somewhat-similar-conceptual-situation in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence (1962) when, for the betterment of his frontier community, lawyer Rance Stoddard (James Stewart) allows everyone to think he killed local outlaw Valence (Lee Marvin) in a duel, setting himself up for a successful career in politics, statehood for his territory, even though the actual killer, Tom Doniphon (John Wayne), shot Liberty from the shadows in cold blood, for the larger good of his society although he then shrank into obscurity. Hey, I never said I wouldn’t divulge spoilers about older classics, did I? Anyway, even with knowing the outcome of The Man … you can still appreciate how successfully this early-deconstruction of western genre myths have been elaborated on-screen.

Certainly the younger characters in ... White Tiger have intentions toward a more-equitable-society but fall short of aspects of that ideal as they become “Caught between the longing for love And the struggle for the legal tender […] Who started out so young and strong Only to surrender” (Jackson Browne, from "The Pretender" [1976 album of the same name; video with Crosby, Stills & Nash]) so that even though Balram finds material success, while being willing to share his social advancement, he’s clearly set for more deadly-bargains-of-choice as his future unfolds in India, maybe in China too.

Bottom Line Final Comments: Regarding those Metacritic lists of Awards/Nominations and Critics’ Top 10 lists noted in Opening Chatter above, you won’t find The White Tiger in either group (yet?) like you will Promising Young Woman (reviewed below)—although the CCAL writers are supportive, with those at Rotten Tomatoes offering 91% positive reviews while the ones at Metacritic are predictably lower (almost always, except in much lower percentiles) but still encouraging with a 76% average score—so it may end up being a film where good things are said about it although it doesn’t connect strongly enough either with critics, industry insiders, or audiences watching aspects of an unfamiliar-culture for any of them to remember it too long after its debut; nevertheless, I like it, feel it needs to be explored in enough detail to be the feature review this week, and encourage your curiosity toward it if you’re a Netflix streaming subscriber (even if not, for a $14 monthly fee [which you can cancel at any time] you’ll also get access to a host of other marvelous offerings, including Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom [George C. Wolfe, 2020; review in our December 31, 2020 posting] and I’m Thinking of Ending Things [Charlie Kaufman, 2020; review in our September 10, 2020 posting]).

The acting here is marvelous, there’s much to be learned about troubling aspects of modern India (a struggling democracy now encountering its own concerns with many social issues), and the conflicting-ethical-dilemmas facing the major characters make for compelling, thought-provoking drama, although you may think I’m trivializing it with my choice for the standard-review-concluding-Musical Metaphor by choosing Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger” (1982 album of the same name) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERT_7u5L0dc, given its use in the soundtrack of Rocky III (Sylvester Stallone, 1982), but consider how these lyrics are relevant to The White Tiger too: “Face to face, out in the heat Hanging tough, staying hungry They stack the odds ‘til we take to the street For the kill with the will to survive It’s the eye of the tiger It’s the thrill of the fight Rising up to the challenge of our rival.” Different contexts, certainly, but not all that removed from each other in terms of the full Rocky concept of a social nobody becoming a winner yet still struggling to keep focus dealing with the pressures of continuing such a triumphant performance. Balram accomplishes his dreams, but given how cutthroat that his culture can be, will he find himself someday facing his own version of a hungry “Clubber” Lang (see the footnote just below if needed), ready to knock him off?*

*This video pairs the song with scenes from that movie, the last one where original characters Adrian (Talia Shire), Paulie (Burt Young), Mickey (Burgess Meredith), and Apollo (Carl Weathers) are all alive, as most drop off in the sequels, Mickey dies in this one. In contrast, Balram seemly looses all 17 members of his family in one-fell-Stork-swoop in retaliation for his murder of Ashok. "Clubber" Lang's (Mr. T) Rocky's up-from-the-trenches-opponent, who takes the top boxing title away for a bit.

SHORT TAKES (spoilers also appear here)

Promising Young Woman (Emerald Fennell)

rated R 113 min.

A former med student, still devastated by the rape, then death, of her classmate several years ago takes a form of revenge by acting passed-out drunk in bars so when a man takes her to his place for easy sex she sobers up, puts him on the spot with fierce confrontation; a doctor she was in school with shows up, tries to start a relationship with her, however she enhances her tactics for vengeance.

Here’s the trailer:

Before reading further, please refer to the plot spoilers warning detailed far above.

Cassandra (also name of a Greek-mythology-figure doomed to not have her accurate prophecies believed by anyone) Thomas (Carey Mulligan), 30, med-school-dropout, works in a coffee shop, still lives with her parents (in what seems to be a museum of kitschy décor) where Mom Susan (Jennifer Coolidge) constantly pushes Daughter to do more with her life, even gives her a suitcase to move out on her birthday although Cassie can’t afford to live elsewhere (Dad Stanley’s [Clancy Brown] more sympathetic), but Cassie has only one ambition: to avenge her lifelong-friend, Nina Fisher, like Cassie seemingly a wonderful-future-doctor, whose life was destroyed when she was raped one night while unconscious by their classmate, Al Monroe (Chris Lowell), whose crime was witnessed, cheering on by drunken friends, yet Nina suffered from the reputation of being a promiscuous, too-frequent-blackout-boozer so (fictional) Forrest U. Dean Elizabeth Walker (Connie Britton) was more concerned with protecting Al’s reputation while his fierce lawyer, Jordan Green (Alfred Molina, in a marvelous cameo), put so much pressure on Nina she dropped her charges, then quit school (Carrie quit as well, to help comfort her friend), seemingly killed herself some 7 years ago. Since then, Carrie’s been on a mission to scare some decency into the kind of men who’d approach a drunken woman in a bar, make an offer of help, but inevitably take her back to his place where he’d rape her, so Cassie regularly goes to local hot spots in provocative outfits, plays near-passed-out-drunk, lets the “but I’m a nice guy” potential offenders get her into their bedrooms where she suddenly confronts them, stone-sober, in an attempt to shock them enough to stop participating in this abuse (with warnings some women are more deadly than her in their actions to halt such misogynistic behavior).

One day former classmate (now pediatric surgeon) Ryan Cooper (Bo Burnham) wanders into the coffee shop, talks with Cassie, tries to get a date but is turned down, gets another chance later with romance suddenly blossoming, but he notes Al’s back after having been in London for years. With Al around again Carrie ups her game, meets with old friend (now married) Madison McPhee (Alison Brie) for lunch at a hotel only to berate her for not being more concerned about Nina, gets her quite drunk, pays a guy to take her to a room, leaving the impression she’s been raped. Then Cassie picks up Dean Walker’s daughter, Amber (Francisca Estevez), after school one day, leaves the kid at a diner where her favorite boy band’s supposed to show up, terrifies the dean by telling her the girl’s now in Nina’s old room with a bunch of drunk male students. Next is lawyer Green; however, he’s so remorseful over helping men like Al Cassie takes no revenge on him. With encouragement from Nina’s Mom (Molly Shannon), Cassie’s finally ready to dispel her anger, focus on a future with Ryan.

⇒She gets a dose of her own medicine, though, when Madison gives her a phone-video of Nina’s rape, where she sees Ryan there that night so she breaks it off with him after demanding to know the remote location of Al’s bachelor party. She shows up, dressed as a stripper nurse, knocks out all the guests with spiked booze, gets Al upstairs where she handcuffs him to the bed, then reveals herself with the intention to carve Nina’s name on his stomach. However, he breaks one hand free, manages to suffocate her with a pillow. Next morning his buddy, Joe (Max Greenfield)—who shot the Nina video—helps him burn Cassie’s body in the woods; Ryan lies to the cops on knowing anything about her whereabouts; but, suddenly at Al’s wedding, police show up to arrest him because she’s sent the video to the lawyer, info about it all to her boss, Gail (Laverne Cox), along with Nina’s half of a necklace to match the half Cassie always wore, found in her ashes, leaving Al pre-recorded, later-assigned-delivery texts so he'll know she’s responsible for his earned demise.⇐*

*There’s a visualized-summary (8:02), like White Tiger's, plus extensive commentary (13:58) about the ending (Spoilers!) with Mulligan noting she did her own stunt work in that climactic scene.

This is an immensely-powerful, mixing the gruesomeness of the Al-Nina plotline with the breezy romantic interlude of Cassie and Ryan, using a lot of colorful art direction to contrast the darkness of Cassie’s soul, the dark-underbelly of “nice guys” with socially-sanctioned careers like Al and Ryan. Young Woman’s making a solid impact, scoring high on those Top 10 lists, getting attention for the picture overall, Mulligan, Fennell for both directing and scriptwriting, with the CCAL supportive: RT, 91% positive reviews; more-stingy MC, 72% average score. If domestic theaters (U.S.-Canada) in your area are still open you might find it there (out about a month, still in 1,333 such venues), taking in $5.8 million globally so far ($4 million of that domestically), but you’d probably find it more easily on several streaming platforms for $19.99 rental (I chose Amazon Prime). For my Musical Metaphor I’ll use Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight” (from his 1981 Face Value album) at https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=WFkIKd6md6g due to lyrics (just below the YouTube screen on the video) such as: “I can feel it coming in the air of night, oh Lord And I’ve been waiting for this moment for all my life, oh Lord […] if you told me you were drowning I would not lend a hand […] I was there and I saw what you did […] So you can wipe off that grin, I know where you’ve been It’s all been a pack of lies.” I’ve used this song before (a good number of miserable tales await us in cinemaland), but it’s just too appropriate not to bring it front and center again. However, given Collins’ song was inspired by anger about his divorce and considering the context of .. Young Woman, it seems appropriate to also give you a version of the song in a female singer's performance so here’s one I like from Lorde.

Suggestions for TCM cablecasts

At least until the pandemic subsides Two Guys also want to encourage you to consider movies you might be interested in that don’t require subscriptions to Netflix, Amazon Prime, similar Internet platforms (we may well be stuck inside for longer than those 30-day-free-initial-offers), or premium-tier-cable-TV-fees. While there are a good number of video networks offering movies of various sorts (mostly broken up by commercials), one dependable source of fine cinematic programming is Turner Classic Movies (available in lots of basic-cable-packages) so I’ll be offering suggestions of possible choices for you running from Thursday afternoon of the current week (I usually get this blog posted by early Thursday mornings) on through Thursday morning of the following week. All times are U.S. Pacific Daylight so if you see something of interest please verify actual show time in your area for the day listed. These recommendations are my particular favorites (no matter when they’re on, although some of those early-day-ones might need to be recorded, watched later), but there’s considerably more to pick from you might like even better; feel free to explore their entire schedule here. You can also click the down arrow at the right of each listing for additional, useful info.

I’ll bet if you checked that entire schedule link just above you’d find other options of interest, but these are the only ones grabbing my attention at present; please feel free to dig in further for other possibilities. I will note, though, this particular group is all Oscar-winners of some type except for The Battleship Potemkin (no Oscars in 1925, not until 1929), although it has many other accolades.

Friday January 29, 2021

5:00 PM Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941) Still my All-Time #1 (even though Sight and Sound’s poll dethroned it in 2012 in favor of Hitchcock’s Vertigo [1958] after 50 years on top); a triumph of script, acting, cinematography, editing, sound design, art direction, special effects, score, with Welles as director, star actor portraying Charles Foster Kane, an enormously wealthy (by chance as a kid) newspaperman (patterned on William Randolph Hearst) whose early progressive ideals succumb to pragmatics destroying marriages to 2 wives (Ruth Warrick, Dorothy Comingore) and a long-time-friend (Joseph Cotton), retaining loyalty only from his business manager (Everett Sloane). Except for the eye-of-God beginning and end it’s told in flashbacks with 5 narrators imparting their subjective accounts of his life (hard for us to know what’s true). Won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay (Welles and Herman J. Mankiewicz [grandfather of noted TCM host Ben Mankiewicz]), no others.

Saturday January 30, 2021

12:45 PM On the Waterfront (Elia Kazan, 1954) Deserving winner of 8 Oscars including Best Picture, Director, Actor (Marlon Brando), Supporting Actress (Eva Marie Saint). A mob/union boss (Lee J. Cobb) runs the waterfront but a sub-honcho’s (Rod Steiger) in trouble because his brother’s (Brando) witnessed a killing, is being pressured to testify by a priest (Karl Malden). Contains the famous “I coulda been a contenda” scene between Brando and Steiger during a testy cab ride.

Sunday January 31, 2021

9:00 PM The Battleship Potemkin (Sergei Eisenstein, 1925) Considered among the best ever

(#5 on my All-Time list), the content here is a Soviet Union propaganda piece showing continuity

of rebellious action against the Tsar (culminating in the 1917 Russian Revolution) by focusing on events during the abortive 1905 revolution aboard this ship and the port city of Odessa, showing brutality against sailors and civilians. It’s focus on repression doesn’t bring up concerns about Communist politics as such, so I think you can watch this without objecting to ideological aspects. Today it’s praised for its fantastic use of the montage editing style where most shots run less than 30 sec., delivering an active cinematic experience akin to Picasso’s Cubism, especially the scene of townspeople massacred on a grand staircase. TCM’s info lists this as running only 70 min. (roughly the length of the original release) but the schedule calls for 2 hrs., so maybe there’s considerable additional info and analysis. This is a silent film but uses intertitle dialogue cards between shots.

Monday February 1, 2021

1:00 AM All About My Mother (Pedro Almodóvar, 1999) Praised as one of this acclaimed Spanish director’s best works (beware: subtitles), about a nurse whose teenage son’s killed in a car accident so she takes his heart to a man in another city, then seeks to find the transvestite father in Barcelona who never knew he/she had a son; considerable complications follow which get too entangled to summarize here. Oscar, Golden Globe, BAFTA winner for Best Foreign Language Film, many others.

Wednesday February 3, 2021

11:30 PM In the Heat of the Night (Norman Jewison, 1967) A rich industrialist builds a factory in Mississippi but is murdered; Virgil Tibbs (Sidney Poitier), visiting the area, is arrested for being Black with a fat wallet until he’s identified as a top Philly cop so local chief Bill Gillespie (Rod Steiger) asks him to stay, help with the investigation despite the racism Tibbs constantly faces. Oscars for Best Picture and Best Actor (Steiger), Adapted Screenplay, Film Editing, Sound (nominated for 2 others).

If you’d like your own PDF of ratings/summaries of this week's reviews, suggestions for TCM cablecasts, links to Two Guys info click this link to access then save, print, or whatever you need.

Other Cinema-Related Stuff: Here are some extra items you might be interested in; I know it’s late, but I just became aware of this info, although these offerings will likely be available for quite awhile: (1) New to Netflix in January 2021: (2) New to Amazon Prime Video in January 2021; (3) New to Hulu in January 2021; (4) New to Disney+ in January 2021; (5) New to HBO Max in January 2021. As usual for now I’ll close out this section with Joni Mitchell’s "Big Yellow Taxi" (from her 1970 Ladies of the Canyon album)—because “You don’t know what you’ve got ‘till it’s gone”—and a reminder that you can search streaming/rental/purchase movie options at JustWatch.

Related Links Which You Might Find Interesting:

We encourage you to visit the Summary of Two Guys Reviews for our past posts.* Overall notations for this blog—including Internet formatting craziness beyond our control—may be found at our Two Guys in the Dark homepage. If you’d like to Like us on Facebook please visit our Facebook page. We appreciate your support whenever and however you can offer it!

*Please ignore previous warnings about a “dead link” to our Summary page because the problems’ been manually fixed so that all postings since July 11, 2013 now have the proper functioning link.

AND … at least until the Oscars for 2020’s releases have been awarded on Sunday, April 25, 2021 we’re also going to include reminders in each posting of very informative links where you can get updated tallies of which films have been nominated for and/or received various awards and which ones made various individual critic’s Top 10 lists. You may find the diversity among the various awards competitions and the various critics hard to reconcile at times—not to mention the often-significant-gap between critics’ choices and competitive-award-winners (which pales when they're compared to the even-more-noticeable-gap between specific award winners and big box-office-grosses you might want to monitor here as well as here due to many 2020 releases being tracked on the 2021 list, although the income situation for 2020’s skewed due to so many award-contenders getting limited or no theatrical releases)—but as that less-than-enthusiastic-patron-of-the-arts, Plato, noted in The Symposium (385-380 BC)—roughly translated, depending on how accurate you wish the actual quote to be—“Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder,” so your choices for success are as valid as any of these others, especially if you offer some rationale for your decisions (unlike many of the awards voters who simply fill out ballots, sometimes—damn it!—for films they’ve never seen).

Here’s more information about The White Tiger:

https://www.netflix.com/title/80202877

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eV1JTKMx-5M (14:50 interview with director/screenwriter [Aravind Adiga wrote the original book] Ramin Bahrani, producer Mukul Deora, and actors

Priyanka Chopra Jonas [also an executive producer], Rajkummar Rao, Adarsh Gourav)

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_white_tiger_2020

https://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-white-tiger

Here’s more information about Promising Young Woman:

https://www.focusfeatures.com/promising-young-woman/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wu371Z4URpw (34:18 interview with director-screenwriter Emerald Fennell [you may need to boost the audio during her segments; it’s quite low compared to the others] and actor Carey Mulligan [strange interruption at about 15:00 from some baby monitor])

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/promising_young_woman

https://www.metacritic.com/movie/promising-young-woman

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If you’d rather contact Ken directly rather than leaving a comment here please use my email address of kenburke409@gmail.com—type it directly if the link doesn’t work. (But if you truly have too much time on your hands you might want to explore some even-longer-and-more-obtuse-than-my-film-reviews-academic-articles about various cinematic topics at my website, https://kenburke.academia.edu, which could really give you something to talk to me about.)

If we did talk, though, you’d easily see how my early-70s-age informs my references, Musical Metaphors, etc. in these reviews because I’m clearly a guy of the later 20^th century, not so much the contemporary world. I’ve come to accept my ongoing situation, though, realizing we all (if fate allows) keep getting older, we just have to embrace it, as Joni Mitchell did so well in "The Circle Game," offering sage advice even when she was quite young herself.

By the way, if you’re ever at The Hotel California knock on my door—but you know what the check-out policy is so be prepared to stay for awhile (quite an eternal while, in fact). Ken

P.S. Just to show that I haven’t fully flushed Texas out of my system here’s an alternative destination for you, Home in a Texas Bar, with Gary P. Nunn and Jerry Jeff Walker. But wherever the rest of my body may be my heart’s always with my longtime-companion, lover, and wife, Nina Kindblad, so here’s our favorite shared song—Neil Young’s "Harvest Moon"

—from the performance we saw at the Desert Trip concerts in Indio, CA on October 15, 2016 (as a full moon was rising over the stadium) because “I’m still in love with you,” my dearest, a never-changing-reality even as the moon waxes and wanes over the months/years to come.

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Finally, for the data-oriented among you, Google stats say over the past month the total unique hits at this site were 5,908 (as always, we thank all of you for your ongoing support with our hopes you’ll continue to be regular readers); below is a snapshot of where those responses have come from within the previous week (with appreciation for the unspecified “Others” also visiting Two Guy’s site):

Thursday, January 21, 2021

One Night in Miami plus Short Takes on News of the World, suggestions for TCM cable offerings, and one other cinematic topic

“I know there’s an answer

I know now but I have to find it by myself”

(This title comes from a Beach Boys song of the same name [on their 1966 Pet Sounds album] about a guy trying to find his way in a very challenging world, dealing with fear, confusion, and other people caught up in their own self-centeredness; in fact, the song was originally called "Hang On To Your Ego," but was changed so as to not make it seem confrontational, due to disagreements between Mike Love and Brian Wilson. Either way I think the lyrics relate to what I'm reviewing here.)

Reviews and Comments by Ken Burke

One Night in Miami (Regina King, 2020)

rated R 114 min.

Opening Chatter (no spoilers): Since making my hopeful New Year’s resolution to shorten these postings (except for the one containing that goal, December 31, 2020, itself long because I covered 5 films) I’ve done pretty well this January but I slip a bit here because both films I’m addressing are among my best of last year (just now getting to me on streaming), deserving a bit more commentary. For the extended-weekend of the Martin L. King Jr. holiday Nina and I finished off on Monday, 1/18/2021, with an excellent documentary about King’s troubles with J. Edgar Hoover in MLK/FBI (Sam Pollard, 2020)—available for $6.99 rental (see JustWatch for platform options; we used Vudu), but we began with an admittedly-fictionalized-version of a real event involving 4 other prominent African-Americans in early 1964, One Night in Miami, in the hours following Cassius Clay’s (soon to be renamed Muhammad Ali) win of the heavyweight boxing title, joined in serious conversations rather than partying by other famous Black men: singer Sam Cooke, football star Jim Brown, political activist Malcolm X; this is absolutely one of the best of the year with several Oscar nominations as solid possibilities, 4½ stars as a rare level of praise from me. In the Short Takes section is a review of a film also well worth your time, a western, News of the World, with Tom Hanks as a itinerant ex-Confederate officer traveling around Texas in 1870, making a living by reading newspaper items to illiterate audiences at a dime a head when he’s faced with the challenge of journeying a long way to return a young girl raised by Kiowa Indians to her German relatives despite her opposition to this lifestyle change. One Night …’s on Amazon Prime streaming, News … is on several platforms for $19.99 rental (again, JustWatch has options; we used Amazon Prime). Further, in that section you’ll find my suggestions for some choices on the Turner Classic Movies channel (but too much extra text for line-justified-layout like you see here [Related Links stuff at each posting’s end is similarly-ragged], at least to be done by this burned-out-BlogSpot-drone—oh, tedious software!) plus my standard dose of industry-related-trivia, though that's quite short this time.

Here’s the trailer for One Night in Miami:

(Use the full screen button in the image’s lower right to enlarge it; activate

that same button or use the “esc” keyboard key to return to normal size.)

⇒The first and last words will be noted with arrows and red.⇐ OK, now continue on if you prefer.

What Happens: Heavily fictionalized from an actual evening's events back then spent by the 4 famous protagonists of this film, we see imagined verbal interchanges among young, brash Cassius Clay (Eli Goree) who won the World Heavyweight Boxing Title on February 25, 1964 (by TKO in the 7^th round when former-champ Sonny Liston [Aaron D. Alexander] failed to answer the bell) then celebrated that night not with a boisterous party but instead in the scaled-down-room (Hampton House Motel) of racial-reformer Malcolm X (Kingsley Ben-Adir) where they were joined by popular singer Sam Cooke (Leslie Odom Jr.) and football star Jim Brown (Aldis Hodge)—many victories with the Cleveland Browns, 1975-’65—even as the latter 2 had to leave their luxurious accommodations at Miami’s Fontainebleau Hotel (I’ve stayed there myself for a couple of academic conventions, although my rooms weren’t of their caliber but the warm south Florida weather certainly was nice in November 2003, April 1977) to venture over to Malcolm’s Nation of Islam-guarded dwelling (although he doesn’t care for his appointed-caretakers to hear his conversation with wife Betty [Barbara Cooke], so he calls from a pay phone in the parking lot instead). However, before we get into the main events of One Night in Miami, we see each of these famous men at a low point: Clay, in a 1963 fight in England against Henry Cooper (Sean Monaghan), almost loses when his cocky tactics allow him to let down his guard, get knocked down, saved by the bell in that round; Cooke in his debut at NYC’s swank Copacabana nightclub, despite his solid fame, is disrespected by the manager, largely ignored by the upscale White audience; Brown, stopping off in home-state Georgia to visit an old family friend, Mr. Carlton (Beau Bridges), hears great praise out on the porch but when he offers to help the old man move some furniture he’s told we “don’t allow n…..s in the house” (sadly, one of my grandmothers [in West Texas] once said the same thing [whereas the other one, in Austin, welcomed a Black friend of mine into her home]); Malcolm nervously discusses with Betty his fear of retaliation when he makes his announcement about leaving the Nation of Islam for a more-tolerant-approach to the Muslim faith. After Clay wins his bout, though, they all gather at Malcolm’s room where he wants them to talk about addressing American racism rather than partying (although Cooke and Brown do sneak a few gulps of whiskey when Malcolm’s briefly left the room).

Tensions arise between Cooke and Malcolm when the latter berates the former for focusing on his success with Whites (X plays Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” record for him, says it’s shameful a White kid can find success with protest songs but Sam won’t do it) while Sam counters with how he’s taking command of his career, adding further royalties by writing songs White singers copy, inspiring other Black singers to do the same. Brown’s concerned about how his hopes of pursuing acting (recently finished shooting Rio Conchos [Gordon Douglas, 1964]) will conflict with his football fame; Cooke and Brown are shocked at Clay’s decision to join the Nation of Islam (yet he’s getting a bit hesitant about it); Malcolm’s irritated with his protégée for clowning around with The Beatles rather than addressing pressing Black causes; Clay’s dismayed by Malcolm’s decision to leave the Nation, refuses to join X’s new movement (based on Sunni Islam). ⇒Nothing’s resolved that night, but they finally do go to a crowded bar to celebrate Cassius’ title victory. As the film closes we see Sam on The Tonight Show lauded by Johnny Carson (Christopher Gorham), debuting his (soon-to-be-Civil-Rights-anthem) “A Change Is Gonna Come” (song actually already released just before the events of … Miami; performance with Carson was also earlier, Feb. 7, 1964) as we see vignettes of Clay becoming Muhammad Ali, Brown retiring from football for acting (1966, was in various movies until 2014, most famous is The Dirty Dozen [Robert Aldrich, 1967]), Malcolm enduring firebombing of his home (family not there at the time), then his death (more details on those actualities in this link as these scenes leading up to the credits imply most of this happened not long after the supposed events of One Night in Miami, which doesn’t claim to be too historical with its details nor timeline).⇐

So What? This film’s based on a play of the same name, written by Kemp Powers who also adapted his earlier work to the screenplay, so, yes, it’s dialogue-heavy with little action not involving at least 2 of the primary actors in discussion, most of it 4-way-exchanges in a Miami motel room that still manage to be compelling for their entire running time. Possibly, though, the tougher challenge than making a talk-driven-experience stay alive on screen rather than in a live theatre, the audience in proximity with actors in real time, was the “problem” Ben-Adir and Goree faced in making their characters properly come alive when both of these icons had already been so successfully portrayed by Denzel Washington in Malcolm X (Spike Lee, 1992) and Will Smith in Ali (Michael Mann, 2001), both nominated for Oscar’s Best Actor (but winless in those races). Nevertheless, they all provide impeccable performances in … Miami, especially in showing aspects of their historically-based-characters not so well known to the public, especially Malcolm’s vulnerability, his at-times-emotional-fragility knowing his public rhetoric was putting not only himself but his wife and children in physical danger (rightfully so, given his assassination about a year later) not only from Whites rejecting any aspects of Black Power at the time but also from likely-vengeful Black members of the Nation of Islam when he will soon challenge their leader, Elijah Muhammad, by breaking away from the Nation to preach a more-inclusive-brand of Islam (another reasonable fear, given that his assassins seem likely to have come from the Nation, although nothing conclusive has ever been proven about them).

Clay, soon to announce his own radical (in the minds of many) changes through his allegiance with the Nation of Islam, his name becoming Muhammad Ali, would find himself at odds for a time with Malcolm, whom he felt betrayed by given all the effort X put into recruiting Clay into the Nation just as Malcolm would face great disappointment his new movement wouldn’t have the positive-PR-spin that could have come with Cassius joining him. As for Brown, given the accolades for his gridiron triumphs it's a shock to see how a supposed old friend would be so bluntly racist toward him in that introductory scene, horrifying reminding us being famous, rich, and publically-loved (even today) may only go so far with certain people when you add “Black” to those other characteristics; in the same way, given this story’s set so long ago (yet if, like me, you’re in your early 70s, the mid-‘60s may not seem like ancient history, especially if that was a time of teenage bravado—and frequent comeuppance—so it’s still vitally alive in your [or my] memory) and Sam Cooke is remembered so fondly for his many hits that sold huge amounts of inventory to White buyers, it’s also sobering to be reminded, as with that opening Copacabana scene, how successful radio play didn’t always translate into in-person-acceptance from audiences who’d rather accept entertainment from Debbie Reynolds.

All of these notable African-American men may be icons today, but in 1964 (Is it really much better now?) even fame—or notoriety in Malcolm X’s case—in a White-dominated-culture so easily could fail to provide a true sense of accomplishment both on an individual and society-wide basis when legalized segregation was powerfully in effect, although set to be eroded over the coming decades through legal actions, increasing rejection of the old order. However, 2 of these men wouldn’t live long enough to even begin to see some initial effects of such monumental attempts at a more-inclusive, less-bigoted society through such attempted challenges to institutional racism as the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, because Cooke was shot, killed on December 11, 1964 by an L.A. motel manager under dubious circumstances while Malcolm was gunned down on February 21, 1965 (there’s another marvelous [fully] fictional story about him, originally broadcast on PBS’s American Playhouse series in 1989, The Meeting, shot from a 1987 play [65 min.] by Jeff Stetson, where Malcolm secretly [yet under FBI surveillance] meets Martin Luther King Jr. the night before X’s fatal 1965 speech at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem). Ali, though, lived until 2016 so he got to witness whatever limited progress had been made up to that time (fortunately, in his weakened physical condition, he did not have to endure the legacy of Donald Trump nor the aftermath of the George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery deaths) so Brown’s the only one left from ... Miami, although he doesn’t comment much about it, except for spots like this short video (4:46).

Bottom Line Final Comments: Director King is fast building a legacy in Hollywood with her TV Emmy wins for Supporting Actress in ABC’s American Crime (2015, 2016), Lead Actress in a Limited Series or Movie for Netflix’s Seven Seconds (2018) and HBO’s Watchmen (2019), along with her Best Supporting Actress Oscar for If Beale Street Could Talk (Barry Jenkins, 2018; review in our January 2, 2019 posting), even as her directing of One Night in Miami’s getting serious Oscar buzz (along with a possible Best Picture nomination, an Adapted Screenplay nom for Powers, and who knows what else). In honor of King turning 50 on Friday, January 21, 2021, my marvelous wife, Nina, and I watched this latest triumph that night (streaming on Amazon Prime) with hopes she’ll be a strong contender in many awards contests as we move into spring of this cautious (so far) year. While I have no idea how her rendition mirrors/extends the original play, I’ll certainly give her and screenwriter Powers support for focusing on both societal (1964 White investors in Cassius Clay’s career were getting increasingly concerned in their negative worries about his association with the anti-White-posture of Malcolm X) and intra-racial problems facing Blacks at the time (Cooke notes darker-skinned-African-Americans found just as much prejudice from their lighter-skinner-brethren as from White bigots; he also recounts [we see it all in flashback] a Boston concert [fictionalized too, apparently] where featured-performer Jackie Wilson was so jealous of Cooke’s intro set he cut off the sound system, forcing Sam to perform "Chain Gang" a cappella which the crowd embraced, sang along with), so this is no “whitewashed” denunciation of racial troubles of the times but a more compete picture of how pressures from outside as well as inside the U.S. Black community made life difficult, even for people with the social presence of the 4 chief characters well-portrayed in this film.

The CCAL couldn’t be more supportive, with an astounding 98% set of positive reviews from over 250 Rotten Tomatoes critics, an extremely supportive 83% average score from Metacritic (high for them; they rarely venture into the 80^th percentile, at least for work both they and I review). This is a marvelous film which I hope to see remembered when the latest Oscar awards are finally given on April 25, 2021 although this fine cluster of actors—hard to say which one might be considered in the leading role, possibly Ben-Adir given Malcolm X’s powerful presence in this story—may repeat the situation of The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972) which garnered 3 of the 5 Supporting Actor noms only to (possibly cancel each other out) have all of then lose to Joel Grey for Cabaret (Bob Fosse, 1972)—not a bad choice but when compared to Al Pacino as Michael Corleone … damn! (Although he finally won as Best Actor, not even for The Godfather Part II [Coppola, 1974] where he lost to Art Carney [!] for Harry and Tonto [Paul Mazursky, 1974]—double damn!!—but succeeded for Scent of a Woman [Martin Brest, 1992], denying a better presentation from Denzel Washington for Malcolm X [Oscar politics, just like D.C. politics]). So, we’ll just have to see on March 15, 2021 who’s in the final rounds of Academy Awards competitions, but I’ll be shocked if One Night in Miami doesn’t have a significant presence in this year’s races. As for my usual tactic of a Musical Metaphor to round out the explorations of a given review, it's Cooke’s “A Change Is Gonna Come” (from his 1964 album Ain’t That Good News) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEBlaMOmKV4 where even though “I go to my brother […] But he winds up Knockin’ me Back down on my knees […] It’s been a long A long time comin’, but I know A change gon’ come” even though that change is still in progress today, won’t be resolved (if ever) until there’s a time when Blacks Lives Matter demonstrations/ lawsuits aren’t needed anymore—we can only fervently hope for such a future to finally resolve itself as this 1964-set-story actively reminds us how far we still have to go as a society yearning for the kinds of equality demanded by the images in this video accompanying Cooke’s compassionate plea.

(relatively speaking) SHORT TAKES (spoilers also appear here)

News of the World (Paul Greengrass, 2020)

rated PG-13 118 min.

In 1870 Texas a former Confederate officer now makes his living riding from town to town reading news of the world to illiterate crowds who pay a dime apiece until his life’s upending by coming upon a young German girl who’s been raised by Kiowa Indians but now needs to be taken to relatives hundreds of miles away, problems erupting throughout their journey due to some self-centered foes.

Here’s the trailer:

Before reading further, please refer to the plot spoilers warning detailed far above.

In 1870 we’re in Wichita Falls, TX (north of Dallas, near the Red River border with Oklahoma) where former-Confederate Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd (Tom Hanks)—he served in my old home town, Galveston, when the Civil War ended in 1865 (no, I wasn’t there then, no matter how old I might seem)—now makes a living traveling around the state, reading articles from newspapers for illiterate populations at 10 cents a head, although anything to do with Indians, Blacks, or Union soldiers (serving as the law while Texas resists ratifying the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution as a requirement for re-joining the U.S.) easily riles up the locals (when I was there, from the late 1940s-mid-‘80s, I can’t say it was much different). One day on a trail Kidd comes across a damaged wagon, a lynched Black man, and young Johanna Leonberger (Helena Zengel), whose paperwork shows the Kiowa raised her after they killed her family so the man was in the process of taking her to relatives in Castroville (close to San Antonio) when attacked. Kidd attempts to give her to the next Union soldiers he comes across, but (after verifying he’s signed a Loyalty Oath to the U.S.) they tell him the Bureau of Indian Affairs guy won’t be back for 3 months so Kidd can either wait, deal with her himself, or she’ll just be abandoned. Irritated but responsible, Kidd first attempts to leave her with nearby friends Simon (Ray McKinnon) and Doris (Mere Winningham) Boudlin, but the kid runs away so they seek, then find her in rain and darkness despite her obstinacy.

Without options, Kidd takes Johanna to Dallas (hard to communicate: he doesn’t speak Kiowa, she doesn’t speak English, but they teach each other a few words) where he spends the night with old friend Ella Garrett (Elizabeth Marvel) whose husband left her to go to California—she speaks Kiowa, learns the kid prefers to be called Cicada—who asks if he’ll try to reconnect with his wife (hasn’t seen her since the Civil War started; I’m not sure why he hasn’t tried); before they leave Kidd’s approached by 3 yahoos who want to buy the girl for prostitution so he gets the Union forces to intervene. However, on the road these guys catch up, demand the girl, Kidd has to defend her (she helps), kills all 3. Next, they enter Erath County (near Dallas) where local honcho Merritt Farley (Thomas Francis Murphy) and his men “cleanse” the area of outsiders but allow Kidd to hold a reading for the crowd because Farley wants them to hear about him; instead, Kidd tells of a mining disaster where locals rise up against the owner over the terrible working conditions, encouraging these locals to resist Farley, but when he turns his wrath on Kidd, Johanna shoots him, they flee. ⇒Further on, Kidd’s wagon breaks down; they have to walk until some passing Kiowa give them a horse. Kidd finally gets to Castroville, leaves Johanna with her relatives, though Uncle Wilheim (Neil Sandilands) isn’t thrilled about it, says she’ll work hard on the farm. Kidd continues to San Antonio, finds his wife died of cholera in 1865, visits her grave at a mission, returns to Castroville to reclaim Johanna who joins him on the road, collecting those dimes, adding sound effects to his readings.⇐

Neither Greengrass nor Hanks had made a western before so this was a new venture for both, successfully telling the often-grim-tale of a man just trying to survive following the collapse of the world he staked his future in, accepting challenges that kept arriving, taking responsibility when those around him refused such or tried to personally benefit from it. Relative to Greengrass’ past movies (especially Bloody Sunday [2002] about British soldiers shooting Irish activists, 3 of the Jason Bourne tales [2004, 2007, 2016], United 93 [2006] about the crashed 9/11/2001 hijacked airliner reclaimed from terrorists by passengers, and Captain Phillips [2013] with Hanks as a skipper hijacked by Somali pirates), News … moves slowly (except during the gunfight on the prairie between Kidd and the 3 hoodlums, where Johanna saves the day by having him dump the birdshot from his shotgun, load up the shells with metal dimes instead), but this better allows us to appreciate the quiet determination/desperation of Kidd, the difficulty Johanna faces in being forced into one lifestyle, then pushed back into another, as well as—like other more-contemporary-westerns—showing us the various hostilities often dominating the west after the Civil War where even a former Rebel officer meets local distain if he’s not willing to embrace the various prejudices he encounters. As always for Hanks from mid-career on, he provides an embodiment of dignity under duress that makes this frequently-sad-film compelling to watch, even as the few “victories” are hard to come by.

I’m reminded in News of the World of the racist implications, the relatively-unique-presence of someone who can read and write in those frontier locales, even some of the harsh or dark cinematography in what, for me, is the greatest western of all, Unforgiven (Clint Eastwood, 1992), as well as thematic connections in The Searchers (John Ford, 1956)* to another child, Debbie Edwards (Natalie Wood), raised by Indians after her family’s killed, then forcibly taken back home by her ex-Confederate uncle, Ethan Edwards (John Wayne), whose grim, overall sense of hostility to most everything around him leads to his walking away from the remaining family, alone into the desert. While News … doesn’t rate with either of these classics it has its own presence, is well worth watching which you might be able to do in 1 of the 1,953 domestic (U.S.-Canada) theaters where it’s still playing since its Christmas Day 2020 debut (earning $8.7 million so far), but for those of us confined to streaming at this point in 2021 it’s on several platforms) for $19.99 rental (Amazon Prime has 4K: sharp imagery!). The CCAL is also actively promoting it: 87% RT positive reviews, 74% average MC score, but I can understand if the price is a little intimidating. Onward: to finish with my Musical Metaphor I’ve gone a bit sideways by using The Band’s “The Weight” (on their 1968 Music from Big Pink album) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-w9OclUnns (clip from The Last Waltz [Martin Scorsese, 1978], joined by The Staples Singers), but when I watch Kidd trying to get Union soldiers to return Johanna to her family all I can think of is “I pulled into Nazareth, I was feelin’ about half past dead I just need some place where I can lay my head ‘Hey, mister, can you tell me where a man might find a bed?’ He just grinned and shook my hand and ‘No!’ was all he said,” then continues on (in metaphorical-attitude, at least) to the end with “Miss Annie [… because, like Ella Garrett] she’s the only one Who sent me here with her regards for everyone.” News of the World's not the most dynamic of 2020 releases but certainly gives you plenty to quietly contemplate.

*The Searchers is set in West Texas but may flow into Eastern New Mexico by the time the final battle with Comanche Chief Scar (Henry Brandon [yes, I know: racist casting; deal with it please]) occurs, although it’s predominantly shot in Monument Valley, Arizona/Utah; at least that terrain looks appropriate to far West Texas whereas News of the World (shot around Santa Fe, NM) looks like it should be out in Searchers territory because I can tell you from years of traveling the area from Dallas to San Antonio you won’t—even in 1870—find such rugged geography. That’s my only complaint about News … though (along with there being no Stuckey's roadside stops along the way, a consistent presence during my often-childhood-Texas-travels [don’t believe that bunk about beinning in the 1930s; many of the ones I visited looked like they’d easily been around since 1870]).

Suggestions for TCM cablecasts

I’ll bet if you checked that entire schedule link just above you’d find other options of interest, but these are the only ones grabbing my attention at present. Please dig in further for other possibilities.

Friday January 22, 2021

7:15 PM Kramer vs. Kramer (Robert Benton, 1979) Drama about a troubled wife/mother (Meryl Streep) needing to find herself, in conflict with a workaholic husband (Dustin Hoffman), so she leaves him to raise their young son (Justin Henry) by himself which he learns to do with help from a neighbor (Jane Alexander); Mom returns, sparking a fierce custody battle. Big Oscar winner: Best Picture, Director, Actor (Hoffman), Supporting Actress (Streep), noms for Henry and Alexander

Saturday January 23, 2021

7:00 PM The Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton, 1955) Largely dismissed on initial release

(Laughton’s only directorial effort) but now highly praised for its Expressionist style, effective thriller-tension-building, set in the 1930s about a self-styled preacher/serial killer (Robert Mitchum) who learns during a prison term of $10,000 hidden where only a couple of kids know its location; they go on the lam, take refuge with a tough old lady (Lillian Gish—of silent film fame), the killer closing in.

Sunday January 24, 2021

3:00 AM Grand Hotel (Edmund Goulding, 1932) Adapted from a Broadway play, early Sound Era spectacular, set in Berlin with many MGM stars: Greta Garbo, John Barrymore, Joan Crawford, Wallace Beery, Lionel Barrymore, Lewis Stone, Jean Hersholt. Chief among the plot lines is the romance between Garbo, a fading ballerina, and J. Barrymore, a suave jewel thief with ambitious plans, tragic results. Won Best Picture Oscar, only film to do so without getting another nomination.

12:30 PM West Side Story (Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins, 1961) One of the best musicals ever, adapted from a successful 1957 Broadway play, itself adapted from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, the rival families now being rival NYC street gangs as Jets Tony (Richard Beymer) falls for Sharks’ relative Maria (Natalie Wood) but the entrenched rivalries (Whites vs. Puerto Ricans) lead

to tragedy. Huge Oscar winner: Best Picture, Director(s), Supporting Actor (George Chakiris), Supporting Actress (Rita Moreno), Film Editing, Scoring for a Musical, Sound, Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume Design (last 3 all for color films), Honorary Award to Robbins for his marvelous choreography, also highest grosser of ’61 (Pauline Kael hated it; she’s one of the few).

3:15 PM What’s Up Doc? (Peter Bogdanovich, 1972) Somewhat inspired by Bringing Up Baby (Howard Hawks, 1938) but this time with misidentified suitcases rather than leopards, where bumbling musicologist Howard Bannister (Ryan O’Neal) and his uptight fiancée Eunice Burns (Madeline Kahn) become involved with wandering Judy Maxwell (Barbra Streisand), always in trouble but enamored with Howard. Constant complications ensue; it’s hilarious throughout.

Tuesday January 26, 2021

8:30 AM Dracula (Tod Browning, 1931) The technology employed here looks a bit primitive by contemporary standards, the action’s not graphic at all compared to later tellings of the tale of this legendary, ageless vampire, but Bela Lugosi as the Count will always make this version worth a look (at 85 minutes it also doesn’t take too much of your time); somewhat follows Bram Stoker’s novel but considerably streamlined. Begins Universal Studio’s decades-run of memorable monster movies

If you’d like your own PDF of ratings/summaries of this week's reviews, suggestions for TCM cablecasts, links to Two Guys info click this link to access then save, print, or whatever you need.

Other Cinema-Related Stuff: Here's an extra item you might be interested in: Netflix huge success in 2020. As usual for now I’ll close out this section with Joni Mitchell’s "Big Yellow Taxi" (from her 1970 Ladies of the Canyon album)—because “You don’t know what you’ve got ‘till it’s gone”—and my reminder you can search for streaming/rental/purchase movie options at JustWatch.

Related Links Which You Might Find Interesting:

Here’s more information about One Night in Miami:

https://www.onenightinmiami.film

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2VxBaf5_yQ (23:40 interview with director Regina King, actors Eli Goree, Kingsley Ben-Adir, Aldis Hodge, Leslie Odom Jr., and screenwriter Kemp Powers)

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/one_night_in_miami

https://www.metacritic.com/movie/one-night-in-miami

Here’s more information about News of the World:

https://www.newsoftheworldfilm.com (click bars in upper left for more details)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVgeFF8-bQM (16:38 interview with actors Tom Hanks, Helena Zengel, director Paul Greengrass, and producers Greg Goodman, Gary Geotzman, Gail Mutrux [be prepared for irritating interruptions by ads at about 3:00, 5:00, 7:00, 10:00, 12:00,

16:00, and one that finishes the link at about 16:30—if there was ever a good argument for

paying for ad-free YouTube, this video is it])

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/news_of_the_world

https://www.metacritic.com/movie/news-of-the-world

with us at that site in order to do it (most FB procedures are still a bit of a mystery to us old farts).

If we did talk, though, you’d easily see how my early-70s-age informs my references, Musical Metaphors, etc. in these reviews because I’m clearly a guy of the later 20^th century, not so much the contemporary world. I’ve come to accept my ongoing situation, though, realizing we all (if fate allows) keep getting older, we just have to embrace it, as Joni Mitchell did so well in "The Circle Game" offering sage advice even when she was quite young herself.

By the way, if you’re ever at The Hotel California knock on my door—but you know what the check-out policy is so be prepared to stay for awhile (quite an eternal while, in fact). Ken