The Day the Lights Went Out in Florida
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) if they’re supportive or the OCCU (Often Cranky Critics Universe) when they go negative. However, due to COVID concerns I’m mostly addressing streaming options with limited visits to theaters, where I don’t think I’ve missed much anyway, but better options are on the horizon. (Note: Anything in bold blue below [some may look near purple] is a link to something more in the review.)
My reviews’ premise: “You can’t please everyone, so you got to please yourself.”
(from "Garden Party" by Rick Nelson and the Stone Canyon Band, 1972 album of the song’s name)
As per usual, my Top 10 of last year’s feature releases comes considerably later than most other critics (with the advantage of belonging to critics’ societies so they get access to everything by December; I applied several times, no takers for admitting me into a such a group yet) while in the past I’ve had to wait for a few possible contenders to finally play in a nearby theater; now, even with COVID on the wane in my San Francisco area the flu has entered a raging stage so I’m still avoiding public venues with steaming taking even longer to allow some potential contenders into my options (for the Oscars that’s The Brutalist [Bran Corbet], A Complete Unknown [James Mangold], I’m Still Here [Walter Salles]; for the Producers Guild of America that’s September 5 [Tim Fehlbaum]), so I’ve decided I can’t wait any longer to make a Top 10 list and here it is (including links to my previous reviews), with some of the lower inclusions likely to drop off once I see this missing work. I’m also deviating this year by picking what’s essentially two #1s with Conclave just a bit ahead for the power of its overall story and acting (made even more overall-relevant now with Pope Francis' current hospitalization), Nickel Boys is more an interesting cinema-challenge, given its unexpected structure.
Also, much farther down in SHORT TAKES I’m following up on my extremely-short commentary on Kinda Pregnant (Tyler Spindel) from last week by doing the same here with the latest Bridget Jones episode, a tactic I might continue when I’ve seen a couple of shows but find 1 of them to be just pleasant enough to mention, without going into a lot of detail even as I'll refer you to helpful sources.
(Tentative) Top 10 of 2024 Theatrical Releases
1a. Conclave (Edward Berger)
1b. Nickel Boys (RaMell Ross) (see review just below)
2. Emilia Pérez (Jacques Audiard)
3. The Last Stop in Yuma County (Francis Galluppi)
4. The Substance (Coralie Fargeat)
5. A Real Pain (Jesse Eisenberg)
6. The Piano Lesson (Malcolm Washington)
7 Hold Your Breath (Karrie Crouse, Will Jones)
8. Love Lies Bleeding (Rose Glass)
9. Wicked: Part I (John M. Chu)
Now, on to the reviews:
Here’s the trailer:
(Use the full screen button in the image’s lower right to enlarge its size;
activate the same button or use “esc” keyboard key to return to normal.)
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 $ (as well as recognizing those readers like me who just aren’t that tech-savvy). To help any of you who want to learn more details yet avoid these all-important plot-reveals I’ll identify any give-away sentences/sentence-clusters with colors plus arrows:
⇒The first and last words will be noted with arrows and red.⇐ OK, now continue on if you prefer.
WHAT HAPPENS: In 1962 in the Tallahassee, FL area Black teenager Elwood Curtis (Ethan Herisse) lives with his grandmother Hattie/Nana (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor), shows strong academic promise so his teacher, Mr. Hill (Jimmie Fails), manages to get him enrolled in a tuition-free situation in a nearby Historically Black College. Sadly, though, as he’s walking toward the place he gets an offer for a ride from a young Black man who’s soon stopped by the cops because he’d stolen the car, with Elwood mistakenly arrested along with him as a supposed accomplice. Instead of college for Elwood, he’s sent off to a reform school, the Nickel Academy (named for the founder of this horrid place), where there are White boys also, but they get much better treatment from the local staff, better accommodations as well. Over time, Elwood makes friends with Turner (Brandon Wilson) who counters Elwood’s hope for social improvement through the Civil Rights Movement (some old footage of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. shows up on TV screens at times) by being cynical about society’s dictates, never expecting a change in the unfair, racist world they’ve been forced to inhabit.
As an example of this, one day another boy starts a fight with Elwood, but instead of only the attacker being punished both of them are savagely beaten. Further, when Nana tries to visit she’s turned away, yet she chances upon Turner who agrees to take her message to Elwood (director Ross describes this scene in a link in the next section below). Another atrocity occurs when corrupt administrator Spencer (Hamish Linklater) tells a Black boy to take a dive in a boxing match against a White boy; however, the Black kid wins the bout, then is killed by Spencer. Sickened by all the abuse he witnesses, Elwood keeps a journal of the atrocities, gives it to Turner to pass on to a visiting government inspector, but nothing comes of it except more punishment to Elwood, with his death next on the agenda so Turner convinces him to try an escape at night on stolen bicycles. ⇒This goes awry too as their jailor-pursuers in a car are hot on their trail the next day, with Turner managing to get away (goes to briefly see Nana, then heads north) as Elwood is shot and killed. The narrative then takes us a couple of decades into the future (we’ve had a few flashforwards to it before) with Elwood in NYC, yet it’s actually Turner (now played by Daveed Diggs) using Elwood’s identity. We find he marries Denise (Tanyell Waivers), sees news reports of the government finally investigating the horrors of Nickel Academy so he decides he'll testify about the terrible life there.⇐
SO WHAT? Without having read the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel (Colson Whitehead, 2019) this film’s based on (no surprise there), I don’t know how the book may have presented the story as we see it on screen, although any novel that uses first-person character dialogue would essentially feel the same as what we rarely see in films, that is the camera seems to be in a character’s eyes so all we see is what he/she sees, with no visual evidence of this character, unless he/she looks in a mirror or, as used briefly here, we get to see old photos of Elwood with a high-school girlfriend (this tactic reminds me of the different characters’ perspectives in the various chapters of William Faulkner’s novel, The Sound and the Fury [1929]). Roughly the first half of this film gives us this first-person perspective as seen by Elwood, but there are scenes where it’s Turner as the camera (including his encounter with Nana noted above as explored by Ross in this short [6:12] video); plus, there are a few other scenes shot in a conventional manner where we see both boys on camera, as we normally expect to watch events unfold on screen, so we have to pay attention to these events as they occur.
Another unconventional aspect of Nickel Boys, relative to our contemporary assumptions about everything being in a wide-screen format, is that here it’s all in the old 4x3 ratio which defined classic Hollywood movies and early decades of TV, seemingly to remind us the bulk of this story takes place in an earlier day (although the anti-DEI attitudes of the time still ring true, as we constantly witness in our negative news). Then, there are the occasional quick montages of images which either delve a bit into the actions of the story at that point or provide useful background references to the larger culture in which Nickel Boys takes place (such as a Christmas montage set to a soulful version of “White Christmas”), as do clips from The Defiant Ones (Stanley Kramer, 1958) where 2 escaped convicts (Sidney Poitier, Tony Curtis) are handcuffed together. These innovative approaches can easily be somewhat confusing to viewers (especially the first-person device until we figure out through dialogue references that we’re basically in Elwood’s head seeing the situations as he does), but overall they contribute to fascinating explorations of the trauma these boys encounter, balanced well by superb acting throughout, especially by Herisse, Wilson, and Ellis-Taylor. I have no qualms at all about putting it in the upper rankings of my 2024 Top Ten, cannot recommend it more highly.
BOTTOM LINE FINAL COMMENTS: Nickel Boys has won or been nominated for many awards (including from the New York Film Critics Circle, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, the National Society of Film Critics, the Golden Globe Awards, the African-American Film Critics Association, the Black Reel Awards) with Oscar noms for Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay (Ross and Joslyn Barnes). The CCAL’s extremely strong on it too with the Rotten Tomatoes positive reviews at 90%, the Metacritic average score at a rare, even higher level, of 91%. After debuting domestically (U.S.-Canada) on December 13, 2024 it’s now still in 155 theaters (just went to 540 at its height) but only made (so far, I hope that changes) $2.4 million ($2.6 million worldwide), but it’s easily available on streaming where you can buy it for $19.99 from Amazon Prime Video and Apple TV+ (well worth the investment, as it can easily sustain multiple viewings). I could go on gushing about how marvelously this film is conceived/executed, but I hope I’ve made my point by now, so I’ll close with my usual tactic of a Musical Metaphor, this time Neil Young’s “Southern Man” (1970 After the Gold Rush album) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNiGa 7Qyl6c, a 1988 performance at (then called) the Oakland (CA) Coliseum Arena with his occasional collaborators David Crosby, Stephen Stills, and Graham Nash, this version especially because I (along with my equally-embracing Young fan, my marvelous wife, Nina Kindblad) was there to witness it. I’m sure Elwood and Turner would have also embraced lyrics such as: “Southern change gonna come at last / Now your crosses are burning fast […] Southern man, when will you pay them back?” As we learn at Nickel Boys’ end, set in 1988, the payback concerning Nickel “Academy” is starting to “come at last,” even if it’s far too late for those unjustly buried at the ill-named prison’s site.
SHORT TAKES
Here’s the trailer:
This is the 4th installment in the saga of Bridget Jones (2001 [Sharon Maguire], 2004 [Beeban Kidron], 2016 [Maguire]; summaries of the lot [I'm trying to sound British, ya know?] can be found here)—played by Renée Zellweger—with me not sure I even saw #3 (seems I would have reviewed it here if I did), so I wandered into this one more out of curiosity than glee to see her again. Apparently in #3 she finally married long-time romantic attraction Mark Darcy (Colin Firth), but now we find her 4 years after his death during the Sudan War, barely getting by as a single Mom raising 2 small kids, not bothering to change out of her pajamas on many a day no matter where she has to be, even as her friends keep encouraging her to get laid. Eventually, this she does with 29-year-old park ranger Roxster McDuff (Leo Woodall)—she’s in her 50s—along with returning to her old job as a successful TV producer. Beyond that, including the bait-and-switch plot device which takes us in a different direction from what the movie’s publicity prepares us for, you can get a detailed summary here (you’ll also find Chiwetel Ejiofor, Hugh Grant, Emma Thompson, Jim Broadbent, Isla Fisher, and—briefly—Firth among the cast). While I found this movie amusing but no great shakes (except for a touching subplot where young Billy Darcy [Casper Knopf] gets useful advice about handling his grief over dead Dad), the CCAL’s quite supportive with RT positives at 88%, MC average score at 72%. While you can find it in a theater outside of North America’s domestic realm (made $32.5 million abroad so far), here in the U.S. you'll need streaming for Peacock ($7.99 monthly if you’re not already a subscriber); for the Musical Metaphor I’ll get a bit into Spoiler territory by noting the progression of the Bridget-Roxster affair with this ditty from the old TV comedy series Hee Haw (CBS 1969-’93, TNN 1996-’97), “Where, Oh Where Are You Tonight,” sung by Archie Campbell and various others. You can get the basic tune (:35) at this site or really dive into it with this compilation (8:54; ad interrupts at 5:08). Be careful if you think you’ve found true love; maybe not!
Related Links Which You Might Find Interesting:
Options: (1) Variety's predictions for 2025 Oscar winners (you have to scroll down a bit to get to the actual predictions); and (2) IMDb's 5 Things to Watch during the week of February 17, 2025.
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