Movie review by Greg Carlson

Cousins and co-writers Jessica Barr (who also plays the lead) and Jessie Barr (who also directs) build a thoughtful and sensitive coming of age drama in “Sophie Jones,” which made its world premiere this past autumn as part of the 2020 Festival du Cinéma Américain de Deauville. The movie is now available to rent from the major streaming services and should not be missed by fans of personal, low-budget, indie storytelling. Braiding together themes of grief and sexual experimentation, the Barrs confidently operate with enough self-awareness to offset any tendency toward overplaying the heavy melodrama that comes with a story about a teenager figuring out how to move forward following the death of a parent.

Jessica Barr’s Sophie is smart and sympathetic, despite the snark, sarcasm, and cruelty she sometimes directs toward her dad Aaron (Dave Roberts), sister Lucy (Charlie Jackson), and best friend Claire (Claire Manning). We have to guess how salty she might have been before she lost her mom, but the filmmakers make clear that some of Sophie’s behavior is a coping mechanism. Jessie Barr favors intimate handheld photography — beautifully realized by Scott Miller — that brings the viewer in close to the action without necessarily climbing completely into Sophie’s head. The young director has a sophisticated command of how much to make explicit and how much to withhold.

The ambiguity, confusion, and self-doubt of the protagonist contrast with the quotidian routines surrounding mealtimes, drama rehearsals, and homework. Sophie seeks out opportunities for intimacy with a small number of boys. Her choices, not always wise from the perspective of an older viewer, feel completely authentic to the character. Sophie’s grief exists in proximity to the things she does in response to her pain. Only in rare instances does she allow herself to be unguarded and vulnerable to others. When those moments take place, the Barrs approach an almost transcendent expression of the line marking the public/private self.

Faced with the unthinkable, Sophie uses trial and error like anyone in her situation. In some instances, desperation creeps past her well-polished armor. She longs to more easily integrate into a certain clique, fights with Claire, and breaks protocol by asking to sit with Lucy and friends at lunch. Yet one of the most carefully examined dimensions of the story is the way Sophie doesn’t care, or pretends not to care, about social constructions like her “reputation.” Both of the Barrs refrain from passing judgment on Sophie, and their expression of grace and forgiveness invites the viewer to offer the same courtesy.

Those who have faced tremendous or even overwhelming emotional hurricanes following the death of a close friend or family member will appreciate the movement of time in “Sophie Jones.” Even though many scenes at first appear to be communicated as self-contained vignettes, the Barrs have a deliberate strategy. They opt out of flashbacks and play with the passing days, weeks, and months, expanding and contracting Sophie’s experiences without constantly orienting the viewer to a traditional progression of what might be schematically called “stages” of grieving. The film eventually offers some kind of closure, but in many ways, Sophie’s future remains acutely uncertain.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Writer-director Siân Heder steers “CODA” through the treacherous shoals of cinematic cliche, drawing on a deeply talented cast and a strong command of world-building verisimilitude. Since the film’s debut at the virtual 2021 Sundance Film Festival, where it received a quartet of awards, critics and early viewers have sustained a steady level of buzz ahead of wider release. Scooped up by Apple for a Sundance record 25 million dollars, “CODA” — which doubles in meaning as an acronym for a child of deaf adults and the musical designation for a concluding passage — is crowd-pleasing, tear-jerking, and feel-good in the best senses of those often suspect descriptions.

Heder reworks Éric Lartigau’s 2014 film “La Famille Bélier,” swapping a rural farm operation for a working-class Massachusetts fishing vessel. In both the original and the remake — which owe some debt to the 1996 German film “Beyond Silence,” directed by Caroline Link — a teenager interested in studying music faces a difficult decision between personal dreams and the obligations and responsibilities of providing continued support to the family livelihood. And even if you think you’ve seen this basic conundrum a hundred times before, Heder puts her movie together with enough attention to detail and specificity to stand out from the crowd.

The English actor Emilia Jones, best known for her work in the Netflix series “Locke & Key,” plays Ruby Rossi, daughter of deaf parents Jackie (Marlee Matlin) and Frank (Troy Kotsur) and sister of deaf sibling Leo (Daniel Durant). Heder, who relied on the input of collaborators Alexandra Wailes and Anne Tomasetti as her self-described “ASL masters,” exhibits a desire to avoid essentializing or exoticizing the non-hearing characters in the story. And her work pays off. Even though the comic juxtapositions — more often than not of a sexual nature — can be as broad as the side of a barn, the familial conflicts on the flip side of the coin resonate with hard truths.

“La Famille Bélier” received some pointed criticism for casting actors who could hear as the deaf parents of the protagonist. And Matlin threatened to leave “CODA” when producers considered casting non-deaf performers as deaf characters (a disappointing but unsurprising example of the film business’s shortsighted adherence to the bottom line). I believe that one could mount a successful argument that “CODA” is less audist than a film like Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy’s “The Tribe,” even if both works are made and sound-designed principally for hearing audiences (by hearing filmmakers).

Obviously, “The Tribe” and “CODA” are worlds apart in terms of genre. But despite the acclaim, there is something to ponder in the argument posited by Rebecca Atkinson in her original review of “La Famille Bélier” that questions why “Deaf people’s culture and experiences have long been appropriated for the fascination and entertainment of others” even as few films have been made by deaf directors. Additionally, Atkinson points to the potentially misplaced fascination hearing people exhibit toward stories exploring the “relationship between music and deafness.”

Despite these legitimate questions that could and should invite additional dialogue, “CODA” is a profoundly moving and highly recommended film.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Fans and readers as well as the uninitiated will appreciate veteran filmmaker Vivian Kleiman’s “No Straight Lines: The Rise of Queer Comics.” Drawing from richly detailed and insightful interviews with a quintet of masters, Kleiman elects to cover as much territory and history as possible without taking on the burden of comprehensiveness. Even so, the director’s scope is broad and illuminating. Viewers without any background in mainstream or independent comics should be inspired by the deeply personal — often confessional — descriptions of the art life.

The principal interview subjects are Alison Bechdel, Jennifer Camper, Howard Cruse, Rupert Kinnard, and Mary Wings, but Kleiman also periodically cuts to comments from younger creators who acknowledge specific relationships — and debts of gratitude — to the work of the trailblazers. Additionally, these representatives appearing under the label “Next Gen Comics” articulate with acuity the importance of representation. For example, Ajuan Mance says, “The idea of creating comics that aren’t really about making people heroic is one of the things that I think queer comics have done the best.”

Maia Kobabe adds, “When you are drawing yourself, you can draw yourself however you want. And that is another reason why I think that comics is a media that is so friendly to a queer author.” Kleiman is particularly skillful in grabbing hold of and communicating the universal and the precise. “No Straight Lines” never once feels like homework, even when covering the historical emergence of LGBTQ+ comics or how the impact of the HIV/AIDS crisis motivated raw and haunting expressions of rage, grief, and pain in achievements like David Wojnarowicz’s “Seven Miles a Second.”

For the general audience, Bechdel might be the best known of the featured artists (especially today), but few followers would disagree with Camper’s widely-repeated assertion that Howard Cruse deserves to be known as the “Godfather of Queer Comics.” A monumental figure and mentor to many, Cruse’s death at the age of 75 in November of 2019 casts both a celebratory and elegiac glow over his featured scenes. From his emergence in the 70s underground to his role as founding editor of “Gay Comix” to the publication of the “Wendel” strip in “The Advocate” and the wider reach of “Stuck Rubber Baby,” Cruse’s biography could easily sustain a feature documentary by itself.

Impressively, Kleiman manages to spread the wealth. One could argue that “No Straight Lines” might have benefited from a little more Wings, even though the film does make time to recall the birth of “Come Out Comix” as a direct response to Trina Robbins’s “Sandy Comes Out.” Kinnard explains his motivation for bringing to life characters like Superbad and Brown Bomber. The influence of Bechdel’s “Dykes to Watch Out For” and the multiple successes of “Fun Home” are finely rendered, and the often hilarious and always razor-sharp perspectives of Camper, the founding director of the Queers and Comics conference, may constitute the film’s most valuable set of observations.

One of the most enjoyable aspects of “No Straight Lines” is evident again and again in the close-knit support shared among the “elder statespeople.” The element of game recognizing game in the broadest sense, the mutual admiration of top-flight talent, and expressions of love fill in the spaces between looks at specific titles and publishing milestones. In one example, Kinnard shows a special gift organized by Bechdel, and the placement of the moment within the larger context illustrates Kleiman’s sense of perfect timing.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Of the many offspring of “The Graduate,” few films approach the original’s perfect blend of eager but anxious anticipation regarding the future and post-adolescent tendencies toward solipsistic self-pity. Or, for that matter, the quality of the comedy and the level of craftsmanship. Mike Nichols directed the 1967 masterpiece with such skill, filmmakers still drink from the well more than half a century on, seeking to replicate some of that bottled lightning. “Shiva Baby,” Emma Seligman’s feature debut as writer and director, doesn’t have a budget equivalent to “The Graduate.” Nearly all of it takes place in a single location and close to real time. But the new filmmaker works wonders within these limitations.

As spiritual heir to Benjamin Braddock and his soul-crushing indecisiveness and lack of direction and purpose, Rachel Sennott’s Danielle is a roiling cauldron of contradictions. And although Sennott is neither Jewish nor bisexual, her commitment to the character results in what deserves to be a star-making performance. Danielle shares many other traits with Dustin Hoffman’s Ben. Both are smart, charismatic, horny, insecure, funny, cruel, petty, and self-centered. And both navigate difficult and potentially explosive sexual minefields with older, married partners.

The double application of the movie’s title refers to Danielle and to the child of her “sugar daddy” Max (Danny Deferrari), who unexpectedly shows up at the post-funeral gathering of the mutual acquaintance Danielle never manages to identify. Max’s baby, along with wife Kim (Dianna Agron), will provide plenty of tension as the story unfolds. But before all that awkwardness, we learn in the opening scene that the adulterous Max offers Danielle cash (and a lovely bracelet that will work as a mini MacGuffin) in exchange for sex. Danielle’s parents, who still cover her living expenses, believe that she earns money babysitting.

“Shiva Baby” is most certainly not a movie for those who get clammy and start to sweat at secondhand embarrassment. Seligman brilliantly modulates the rhythms of the social gathering, placing viewers in position to vicariously share one humiliation after another as Danielle is continuously infantilized by her mom and dad (Polly Draper and Fred Melamed). The original short version of “Shiva Baby” was Seligman’s NYU thesis film. A comparison of the two demonstrates several strong choices made by the writer-director to expand the narrative world. “Sugar,” a 30-minute comedy series based on the “Shiva Baby” universe, is being developed by Seligman for HBO.

The short, which can be found online, showcases Seligman’s already sharp staging and timing chops. It stands on its own as a self-contained gem of the form. The feature adds a rewarding subplot involving longtime close friend/one-time girlfriend Maya (Molly Gordon). Maya’s bullshit detector is finely calibrated. She knows something weird is up with Danielle and aims to figure it out, stacking another layer of stress on the increasingly harried protagonist. Seligman nails the multiple ways in which we perform identities tailored to the specific requirements of any given audience — especially the ones made up of our closest relatives. Which facet of the protean Danielle represents the “real” or “authentic” person?

Movie review by Greg Carlson

The prerequisites for continued Marvel Cinematic Universe domination are met: a script balancing eye-popping action and emotionally-charged character development; a narrative that functions as a standalone entertainment but also plugs directly into the massive, always-expanding mainframe; an expert ensemble capable of playing both tongue-in-cheek metanarrative and earnest pathos as required from scene to scene. And as an added bonus for those who keep their scorecards up to date, we finally learn what happened in Budapest.

For fans, the lengthy wait for “Black Widow” was worth it. Despite the very real potential for franchise fatigue — the amount of so-called Phase Four content, which includes the already available Disney+ “WandaVision,” “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier,” and “Loki,” with another ten small screen titles and ten more theatrical features on the way, is… a lot. But one look at director Cate Shortland’s solid entry confirms that Scarlett Johansson most certainly merits her own standalone victory lap following Natasha Romanoff’s fate in “Avengers: Endgame.”

Shortland brings her keen feature filmmaking chops to “Black Widow” as a welcome addition to the talented pool of storytellers who can match the Kevin Feige house style without any significant artistic compromise. For my money, James Gunn remains the most recognizable and distinctive directorial voice in the stable, but Shortland’s previous features — “Somersault” (2004), “Lore” (2012), and “Berlin Syndrome” (2017) — form an engrossing and intense cinematic hat trick that rivals the filmography of any director on the Marvel team.

“Black Widow” runs 134 minutes to the 145 minutes of meme-generator “F9,” but it can teach the Fast and Furious gang a thing or two about family. The ties that bind kickstart a white-knuckle, running-on-empty, opening action sequence set in 1995 Ohio that serves as a prelude for a closer look at the gender-based costs of the mysterious Red Room and its unethical programs. As General Dreykov, Ray Winstone makes a menacing adversary to our hero. Screenwriter Eric Pearson ups the ante in his use of Taskmaster, playing with the themes of patriarchy and doubling/mirroring Natasha’s emphasis on and interest in lineage.

Several critics have compared “Black Widow” to the Bourne series of political thrillers based on the adventures of Robert Ludlum’s gifted assassin. The resemblance most certainly extends to the specialized training of the lead characters and the stylistic focus on intense stunt work and kinetic hand-to-hand combat. But Shortland, who includes a clip of “Moonraker” along with evidence that Nat can recite Christopher Wood’s James Bond dialogue by heart, resists taking things too seriously, despite the tragic shadows that darken Romanoff’s origin story.

“Black Widow” is closer to the Christopher McQuarrie “Mission: Impossible” films than to Bourne, bending toward elements of the fantastic and liberal doses of visual and verbal wit (not to mention a shared affinity for a great motorcycle chase). David Harbour’s bearish Alexei “Red Guardian” Shostakov struggles to squeeze into the old uniform and Florence Pugh’s Yelena Belova mocks the signature Marvel landing pose. Rachel Weisz’s Melina Vostokoff is funny, too. She just isn’t given as much to do. If indeed the torch has been passed from Johansson to Pugh, who has looked every bit the star since her stunning breakout performance in “Lady Macbeth,” the Black Widow legacy is in fine and capable hands.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Janicza Bravo’s “Zola” — titled onscreen as “@Zola” or “@zola” depending on your favorite style guide — is the curious story by Aziah “Zola” Wells candidly recounting a partly truthful and partly embellished autobiographical sex trafficking road trip odyssey she unloaded as a series of 148 tweets in the fall of 2015. The thread, which Wells took down twice before getting the desired traction, became a Twitterverse cause célèbre. Movie adaptation plans quickly followed. By early 2016, James Franco was identified as the director before sexual misconduct allegations torpedoed that potential iteration of the project.

Franco’s exit and Bravo’s entrance turned out to be the greatest gift Wells could have imagined, as “Zola” took shape as an audacious and original feat of personal storytelling and directorial bravado almost unimaginable from any studio. Crafting a script with Jeremy O. Harris, Bravo draws in part from David Kushner’s “Rolling Stone” summary titled “Zola Tells All: The Real Story Behind the Greatest Stripper Saga Ever Tweeted.” The result is a whiplash catalog of increasingly wild situations and dizzy but calculated shifts in tone. Comedy, tragedy, horror, and parody take turns at the wheel.

Despite its outward appearances and its stylistic kinship to the Florida trash culture milieu of Harmony Korine’s “Spring Breakers” and “The Beach Bum,” “Zola” communicates a series of sophisticated ideas through its use of voiceover narration, nonverbal reactions, and spoken dialogue of restaurant server and part-time exotic dancer Zola (Taylour Paige, fantastic). With one notable exception, the narrative is filtered through the watchful, skeptical consciousness of a unique voice we are invited to respect and trust.

After a friendly if sketchy customer named Stefani (Riley Keough) invites Zola to join her on the Detroit to Tampa adventure that allows Bravo to play with the tropes of first the road trip and then the mala noche, Zola navigates a treacherous series of in-over-her-head episodes when the group’s two male travel companions are exposed for their truer selves: “roommate” X (Colman Domingo) is Stefani’s malevolent pimp and boyfriend Derrek (Nicholas Braun) is an incompetent danger-magnet apparently incapable of making a sound decision.

With Bravo’s guidance, Keough navigates the minefield of grotesque stereotype and cultural appropriation suggested by the African American Vernacular English spoken by “white bitch” Stefani. But “Zola” is a star-making opportunity that Paige owns with every raised eyebrow and skeptical look. Zola is confident and self-assured, but Paige also expresses her fear, nervousness, and vulnerability. The heavy-duty misogyny of coercion, abuse, and assault is amplified by Bravo’s unsettling comic gloss. And the presence of casual, everyday racism, as glimpsed through vehicle windows and hovering at the edge of the frame, creeps close in a grim display of thematic anamorphosis.

At one point, composer Mica Levi’s harp glissandos nod directly to Bernard Herrmann’s “Taxi Driver” score, and the homage is just one of many surprises that propel the film to multiple-view territory. Bravo’s many tasty touches, including the protean speaking voice of X, a slideshow montage of the genitalia of Stefani’s clientele, a heaven-sent strip club prayer circle, the bouncing basketball beat outside the hotel room, and the conspiratorial social media dispatches (“Y’all wanna hear a story about…”) accompanied by those familiar chirps and whooshes, identify the filmmaker as a genuine talent.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

If the accolades bestowed on Ahmir Khalib “Questlove” Thompson’s directorial debut as feature documentary filmmaker are any indication, we are on the cusp of a fresh “Summer of Soul” in the hot months of 2021. Claiming both Grand Jury and Audience Award prizes following its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, Questlove’s beautifully constructed movie is a history lesson and a celebration. Something akin to the unearthing of a time capsule, the film presents the sights, sounds, and memories of the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, a series of concerts staged over a six-week period at Marcus Garvey Park (then called Mount Morris Park) in New York.

Featuring thrilling live sets by a to-die-for lineup including Nina Simone, Sly and the Family Stone, Stevie Wonder, B.B. King, Gladys Knight & the Pips, Max Roach, the Staple Singers, Mahalia Jackson, the 5th Dimension, David Ruffin, and many others, the concerts have been called the Black Woodstock for their emphasis on African American pride and popular culture. Despite capturing the shows, producer Hal Tulchin never transformed the material into a theatrically-released concert film or films (WNEW Channel 5 did air a series of specials at the time). Incredibly, the treasure trove sat in a basement until Questlove made it his mission.

Questlove assembles the wide range of elements with the skill of a seasoned scholar and practitioner, blending songs with memories in a master mix made especially challenging given the staggering amount of talent and the desire to tell the accompanying story. Several interviews and articles have addressed the Roots co-founder’s bona fides as musicologist, DJ, percussionist, historian, record producer, songwriter, and superfan. The full title of the movie, “Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised),” alludes to the messages of pride and power sparking and crackling through the music.

Many of the interview subjects contextualize 1969 as an inflection point in Black history, citing the recent changes and upheavals of the American civil rights movement as catalyst and prologue. The Black Power movement — still in its ascendance at the time of the Harlem Cultural Festival — informs the attitudes of the performers on the stage and the citizens in the audience. Fifty years have elapsed in a blink. And yet, “Summer of Soul” is one of those instantly recognizable artifacts armored in timelessness. True, the “creamsicle” getups of the 5th Dimension all but shout their date and time stamp, but plenty of other togs would be fashion-forward today.

Musa Jackson, who attended as a boy, describes the general atmosphere, recalling the beautiful women and beautiful men (“It was like seeing royalty”). He paints a vivid picture of a scene familiar to all who love the adrenaline rush of outdoor concerts: “It was the ultimate Black barbecue. And then you start to hear music and someone speaking. And you knew it was something bigger.” “Summer of Soul” is indeed something bigger. Fans of rock, R&B, soul, funk, pop, gospel, and jazz will now be able to comb through the songs to study highlights and locate new favorites.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

On the heels of criticism for defending Lin-Manuel Miranda and “In the Heights” against accusations of erasure and colorism, legendary stage and screen talent Rita Moreno made an apology of her own just this week. In part, her statement read “…celebration for some is lament for others.” That sentiment also readily applies as one of the guiding themes of filmmaker Mariem Perez Riera’s “Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It.” Following a world premiere as part of the 2021 Sundance Film Festival, the documentary makes a stop in theaters before a broadcast date in the thirty-fifth season of “American Masters” on PBS.

Moreno, an indefatigable 89 years old, is a worthy subject for a full-length entertainment industry/performing artist biography. Joining similar retrospectives like Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady’s “Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You” and Laurent Bouzereau’s “Natalie Wood: What Remains Behind,” Perez Riera’s film draws from a seven-decade archive of material, new interviews, and the presence and full participation of Moreno — outspoken, candid, and direct, even if the veteran celebrity is always “on” when the cameras are around.

Longtime appreciators of Moreno already know that she is a member of the elite company who can claim status as an EGOT winner. Perez Riera enlists fellow Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony recipient Whoopi Goldberg as one of several on-camera interview subjects attesting to Moreno’s achievement, but Goldberg’s introspection communicates the wisdom of humility: she notes simply that Moreno just put in the work, grinding away in a tough business. Perez Riera is acutely aware that Moreno’s status as a Puerto Rican made that journey even more challenging — one of the film’s most eye-opening sections shows Moreno in thankless part after thankless part, like the “exotic” indigenous “island girl” of indeterminate accent in dated fare like “Pagan Love Song” and “Seven Cities of Gold.”

The objectification of Moreno would not be limited to the roles she played in the movies. Perez Riera addresses the grim realities of a sexist and racist system controlled by white men accustomed to massive reserves of power and getting their way all the time. Moreno, whose early public devotion to civil rights and social activism indicated yet another arena in which she operated in the vanguard, doesn’t blink speaking truth to power. She calls out the disgusting behavior of people like Harry Cohn. She speaks about being raped by her own agent. She had an abortion after becoming pregnant by Marlon Brando.

With the exception of Rita Hayworth, whose ethnicity was essentially hidden as her star persona was cultivated by studio handlers, Moreno had virtually no women of color as screen role models at the time she began working in Hollywood. Her unforgettable, Academy Award-winning performance as Anita in “West Side Story” marked a significant milestone, but high-profile offers did not follow. Moreno confirms that she received plenty of scripts involving street gangs and little else. “Just a Girl…” effectively handles the complexity of “West Side Story,” confronting with eloquence the way a text can be simultaneously empowering and problematic.

Perez Riera strikes the right balance of “then-and-now” throughout the fast-moving 90-minute running time. In a career that covers “Singin’ in the Rain” to “The Electric Company” and “The King and I” to “The Muppet Show” and “Oz,” Moreno could be the subject of a multipart series (the way in which Moreno digs into her tumultuous relationship with Brando is catnip; the anecdote she provides about a key scene in “The Night of the Following Day,” like all good stories, leaves you wanting more). There is no question that popular media still has miles to go toward inclusiveness and representation, but thanks to Perez Riera’s strong storytelling, we can appreciate Rita Moreno’s skill, determination, and perseverance. She is a gift.