Movie review by Greg Carlson

Damien Chazelle’s fourth feature follows the trajectory common to the careers of many ambitious and talented filmmakers honored with Academy Awards: the dissipation of rawness and experimentation as budgets, expectations, and stakes increase. “First Man,” a deeply self-serious adaptation of James R. Hansen’s Neil Armstrong biography of the same name, is the first of Chazelle’s features written by someone other than the director (the screenplay is the work of “Spotlight” Oscar-winner Josh Singer). The movie stars “La La Land” collaborator Ryan Gosling, and boasts meticulous attention to detail in the period reconstructions of America’s 1960s space program. Linus Sandgren’s photography alternates between frame-perfect stagings of familiar NASA footage and swooning flight porn eager to find new ways to dramatize the high-stakes endeavors.

A number of commentators have already wondered why Chazelle would choose this particular material at this particular time — a kind of anti-“Hidden Figures.” Not only does the story focus entirely on a heroic white man whose colleagues are all white men, the relegation of Claire Foy’s Janet Armstrong to the grim and thankless part of the eternally supportive wife saddles the tremendous performer with too many scenes depicting her barely concealed bitterness as she carries on with Sisyphean domestic tasks — folding laundry, disciplining children — compounded by the absence of her mate and the physical and emotional distance between them.

Just as troubling is the way in which “First Man” expresses no interest in probing the complexities of space race mythologizing, content instead to follow the bullet points of historical moments along the path from JFK’s exploratory ambitions to the world-famous “giant leap for mankind.” Richard Brody’s emphatic critique, in which he refers to “First Man” as a “right-wing fetish object,” blasts what he reads as the movie’s regressive shortsightedness. Brody argues that Chazelle has made “a film of deluded, cultish longing for an earlier era of American life…,” and the irony of political jabs at the movie from the likes of Marco Rubio and Donald Trump (who both attacked the film for not depicting the planting of the American flag on the lunar surface) is not lost on “The New Yorker” writer.    

When Leon Bridges appears as Gil Scott-Heron in a protest montage performing “Whitey on the Moon,” the movie briefly comes alive in a way that is almost entirely missing from the hermetically sealed history lessons depicting the efforts overseen by Kyle Chandler’s Deke Slayton and Ciaran Hinds’ Robert Gilruth. I couldn’t exactly be sure what Chazelle intended by using a clip of Kurt Vonnegut advocating for social/domestic spending over the steep costs of the space program, but that line of inquiry disappeared as quickly and unexpectedly as it arrived, returning us to the immediate concerns of the inscrutable and stoic Armstrong.

At 138 minutes, “First Man” is longer than it needs to be. I kept imagining an alternate, 84-minute version of the movie made by Chazelle in his early 20s for 60,000 dollars, and decided it would almost certainly be more interesting and entertaining than the 2018 number that cost more than 60 million bucks.   

Movie review by Greg Carlson

WARNING: The following review reveals plot information. Read only if you have seen “A Star Is Born”

Bradley Cooper directs himself and Lady Gaga in the fourth version of the show business perennial “A Star Is Born.” Despite looking, at least on the surface, like a calculated shot at Oscar recognition and glory, Cooper’s own history with substance abuse and suicidal ideation marks the familiar story with a deep personal connection. The chemistry between the leads and the full-bodied musical numbers will certainly generate some serious box office receipts if not near universal critical appreciation. With its rags-to-riches elements and behind-the-curtain peek into celebrity life, “A Star Is Born” is the kind of movie that will be remade for generations to come.   

Cinephiles argue that George Cukor’s 1932 “What Price Hollywood?” bears enough similarity to the subsequent versions of “A Star Is Born” to merit a spot as the unofficial debut of the irresistible recipe: take one aging male star, add a meeting with a young and talented female aspirant, and combine into a tumultuous marriage that ends in tragedy. Cooper’s take is closest in milieu to Frank Pierson’s 1976 version with Kris Kristofferson and Barbra Streisand, following most of the key plot pegs but consciously limiting the motif of professional jealousy and skipping the betrayal of adultery.  

Cooper plays Jackson (not Norman) Maine as the booze and pill-addicted singer/guitarist invigorated by Gaga’s working class Ally (not Esther). A terrific early sequence in which the two spend the wee hours of the morning together, just talking in a supermarket parking lot, establishes the dynamics of their instant attraction and portends the future when Ally busts out an original composition that sobers up the part of Jack that recognizes a natural songwriter. Vulnerability on display by both participants, the scene pulses with a sense of fates being sealed.

Neko Case, not buying the fairy tale, has been perhaps the highest profile recording artist to troll the film before its wide release, attacking Cooper as a “beige demon who makes sure very standard white dudes get to be in everything.” Case’s extended commentary assailed what she read as the inauthenticity of musician behavior during live performance. I am not sure whether anyone mentioned that movies are inherently constructed objects dependent on the suspension of disbelief, but most viewers won’t notice the “fakery.” A more legitimate character-based concern is the extent to which Cooper’s Maine is, as Anthony Lane notes, a victim whose tough background guarantees “our pity and love,” as opposed to the “nastier” and more “dangerous” takes by Fredric March and James Mason.       

Cooper’s filmmaking skills behind the camera are recognizably better than many performers-turned-directors (notwithstanding the staggering number of close-ups and the proliferation of the F-word). But on one account, his instincts are unimpeachable. The decision to cast Lady Gaga in the part previously played by Janet Gaynor, Judy Garland, and Streisand is a masterstroke. Gaga’s mere presence allows Cooper a wide berth to go big with scenes and moments that play with and embrace camp. Ally slays Maine with a killer “La vie en rose” at a drag bar in her first big scene. Later, in a moment fans of the previous iterations will anxiously anticipate, Jackson will ruin Ally’s Best New Artist Grammy speech, this time passing out while standing up and pissing his pants on national television. The memes are already strong.    

Movie review by Greg Carlson

“Love, Gilda,” Lisa D’Apolito’s biography of founding “Saturday Night Live” member Gilda Radner, treats comedy fans to an earnest assessment of the brilliant performer’s life and career, which was cut far too short at age 42 as a result of ovarian cancer. As one of the trailblazing Not Ready for Prime Time Players, Radner originated a healthy share of some of the show’s most memorable characters during her five seasons on SNL. Competing for space and time against the likes of John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Chevy Chase, and Bill Murray in the male-dominated boys club, Radner not only held her own, she contributed some of the most iconic moments.   

D’Apolito follows a conventional chronological presentation of Radner’s path to stardom, drawing on a well-curated trove of personal and professional still photographs, family home movies, behind-the-scenes footage, and clips both obscure and well-known. This content is supplemented by new interviews with friends and associates (including Chase, Martin Short, Lorne Michaels, Paul Shaffer, Laraine Newman, Anne Beatts, Alan Zweibel, and Rosie Shuster) and a key selection of fans and admirers like Amy Poehler, Melissa McCarthy, Maya Rudolph, and Bill Hader. Unfortunately, a handful of figures are missing, perhaps most notably — but not surprisingly — former Radner boyfriend Murray, who is included in the vintage material.  

The documentary effectively addresses the entire arc of Radner’s remarkable life, from her childhood challenges with self-image (Radner’s mother made her take diet pills as a kid) to the diagnosis and treatment of the malignancy that interrupted her at a time of personal fulfillment with second husband Gene Wilder. Those bookends are both accompanied by the intimacy of private films and videos. In between, D’Apolito draws on the more familiar stuff that made Radner a legend: commentator Roseanne Roseannadanna, nerd Lisa Loopner, precocious child Judy Miller, confused editorialist Emily Litella, and the hybrid impersonations of celebrities like Baba Wawa and Candy Slice, among others.

Radner’s Peter Pan-like refusal to abandon the happiest aspects of childhood and adolescence helps D’Apolito move beyond the banality that transforms so many personality documentaries into hagiographic tributes. Obviously, movies that celebrate artists and performers (especially those who have died) overwhelmingly bend toward the laudatory. But the selected notes from Radner’s journals, writings, and letters peel off the masks of tragedy and comedy in equal measure, like the laughter and tears woven into “Honey (Touch Me with My Clothes On).” In one, Radner describes the “heavy chains” that attach her rising star to the hard ground. In another, she relates a hilariously mortifying anecdote of a fan’s medical ethics breach.

The latter story is read by another, but “Love, Gilda” is narrated principally by Radner’s own voice, and D’Apolito locates much vulnerability, as well as the dark self-doubt that Radner was able to hold at bay when she experienced the ebullience and joy of being on stage. Those candid and direct admissions don’t cover everything with the same degree of detail. But D’Apolito has thoughtfully and carefully applied an evenhandedness to the whole. The last section of the film, focused on the Radner-Wilder partnership, skips past most of their disappointing movie collaborations to concentrate on the mutual love and respect that transcended show-must-go-on cliches to make a case for life and how to live it.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Slipping and sliding through its blood-soaked climax, “Assassination Nation” attempts to reconcile the lurid and exploitative embrace of its milieu with an in-your-face polemic on the modern hellscape of rape culture and toxic masculinity. As channeled through the hypersexualized noise of social media (where everyone can be a “star” or cultivate a personal “brand”) as well as the private-until-they’re-not exchanges of person-to-person text messages, writer-director Sam Levinson’s provocative, profanity-laced roller coaster is an acquired taste.

Writing in “The New York Times,” Bruce Fretts described the trailer for “Nation” as “the demon spawn of ‘Heathers’ and ‘The Purge,’” a perfect logline nailing the film’s penchant for quasi-teenspeak among its central quartet of high school hipsters and the allegorical but blunted home invasion bullet festival that dominates the late stages. Odessa Young is Lily Colson, the central protagonist among a wolfpack of frustratingly underdeveloped characters deserving of much more than what’s provided by Levinson to play (more Hari Nef, please). 

Coincidentally, the fellow Sundance premiere “Eighth Grade” shares several core thematic concerns questioning the effects of the less savory aspects of internet culture on young people (particularly young women). Even though the two movies could not be more dissimilar in terms of tone and genre, their shared moment in time points toward the inevitability of even more stories utilizing the subject of the digital realm to ask questions about the ways in which we have been, and are being, transformed by living online. Familiar subjects, from cyberbullying to identity construction, are here. Levinson’s use of doxxing as a plot vehicle is also not new, but turns out to be the filmmaker’s most effective device.   

Can a movie that literally wears its male gaze on its sleeve (along with a number of other trigger warnings boldly stated in Godardian titles of red, white, and blue) offer a convincing message of empowerment? Are feminism and screen exploitation mutually exclusive, particularly if filtered through a masculinist lens? Katie Walsh’s “Los Angeles Times” review takes the position that “Nation” fails, citing red flags like the way the cinematography establishes a “leering gaze directed at the girls’ nubile bods, [that takes] much delight in wringing every sexy moment out of attacking young women, shooting scenes of violence that are gratuitously pornographic.” Unsparingly, Walsh also rips Levinson (“Dude really tried to mansplain the virgin/whore paradigm”) and blasts the film’s attempt to decry sexual objectification while objectifying.

It might be a stretch to imagine that “Assassination Nation” will enjoy the same kind of cult longevity as the smarter, funnier, and more subversive “Heathers” a quarter century or more down the road. But Sarah Kurchak wisely reminds readers in her honest, mixed “Consequence of Sound” review that different generations and demographics naturally view texts through the standpoints of unique levels of age and experience. She cites, for example, how the forgettable and critically dismissed “Jawbreaker” “was embraced by a younger audience… hungry for something sloppy, weird, and improper that we could grapple with on our own messy and increasingly complex terms.” Maybe the kids catching “Assassination Nation” today will experience a similar reaction.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Director Craig William Macneill speculates on the infamous legend surrounding Massachusetts murder suspect Lizzie Borden in “Lizzie,” a long-germinating labor of love for star Chloe Sevigny. Working from a screenplay by Bryce Kass, Macneill’s stylish direction will satisfy a good cross-section of true crime fans as well as admirers of Sevigny and Kristen Stewart, who plays live-in Irish housemaid Bridget Sullivan. The continuing cultural fascination with the gruesome deaths of Lizzie’s father Andrew and her stepmother Abby have inspired a number of other dramatizations, including the 2014 Lifetime movie “Lizzie Borden Took an Ax” and the accompanying 2015 eight-episode series “The Lizzie Borden Chronicles,” both starring Christina Ricci.

Because Borden was acquitted of the crime, all of the literary treatments of the events surrounding the August 4, 1892 killings rely to a significant degree on purely imaginative constructions of character personalities, suspects, motivations, and conversations. Macneill’s version leverages several theories, including the speculation of Ed McBain and others that Lizzie and Bridget were involved romantically with each other. Kass’ script also taps markers from the historical record, including the absence of blood on Lizzie’s clothing, details of the hatchet handle in the murder house basement, the role of Lizzie’s maternal uncle John Morse (played to perfection by the great Denis O’Hare), and possible reasons for the presumed gap in time between the death of Abby (Fiona Shaw) and Andrew (Jamey Sheridan).

The movie combines aspects of the procedural with horror notes, burnished by Noah Greenberg’s superb cinematography and Jeff Russo’s unsettling score. “Lizzie” sides most sympathetically with its title character, casting the domineering and miserly Andrew as a monstrous sexual predator whose frequent nocturnal visits to Bridget’s bedroom are known to the other inhabitants of the household (disturbingly conveyed in one of many instances of the film’s tremendous handling of sound design). Andrew’s unforgivable actions as a rapist motivate and justify Lizzie’s hatred of her father, leading to an intense set-piece showcasing the axe-bludgeoning with definitive, all-in fervor.

Several critics have been strangely dismissive of the way in which “Lizzie” happens to align with the ongoing interest in rape culture, especially as referenced in the contemporary exposure of men abusing their power to manipulate, control, and assault women. Others, like Leslie Felperin in “The Hollywood Reporter,” argue that the movie “carves out of the raw material a suitably 2018 version, befitting of the #MeToo generation.” While I enjoyed the Lizzie/Bridget take on the mythology, parallel disagreements over the effectiveness of Sevigny and Stewart indicate another source of the decidedly mixed reactions to the film.   

Certainly, the challenge of presenting the Lizzie Borden story as historical fiction rests outside the margins of the most solid of corroborated facts. What did Lizzie’s older sister Emma (Kim Dickens) know, if anything? Andrew’s refusal to electrify his house or install indoor plumbing have often marked him as an eccentric tightwad, given the man’s personal wealth. But some Borden historians, like Michael Martins, would argue that Andrew’s frugality was “no different than the other men of his age.” To this day, the crime remains officially unsolved, and “Lizzie” will not be the last movie to fantasize about the possibilities.  

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Filmmaker Reed Morano’s “I Think We’re Alone Now” doesn’t match the levels of heat surrounding the tireless veteran cinematographer’s other recent successes on “The Handmaid’s Tale.” Working from an original script by Mike Makowsky, Morano cannot be faulted for the film’s exquisite visual design, but the story — another post-apocalyptic, last-person-on-earth dystopia winding up to some kind of bombshell — stumbles following a riveting set-up.

Peter Dinklage is Del, a librarian left behind in New York’s Hudson Valley following what appears to be the complete cessation of all other human life in his community. Del spends his waking hours recovering, cataloguing, and burying the seemingly endless supply of dead bodies. Without the need for any explanatory dialogue/monologue, Morano wordlessly conveys the contours of Del’s routine. To our surprise and delight, given the morbid circumstances, Del thrives in what would surely be a hellscape for so many others. He is at peace until the unwelcome arrival of Elle Fanning’s Grace, a young woman who may know more than she lets on.

Dinklage and Fanning are, it should go without saying, highly skilled and thoroughly watchable performers who have both contributed to memorable projects over the years. Unfortunately, Del and Grace are never afforded the opportunity to engage one another in the kind of complex and thoughtful conversation that should accompany a tale with a premise ripe for contemplations of our place in the world, our capacity to welcome the stranger, and our need for love and some kind of companionship — even if we prefer being solitary. Del’s skepticism is not the problem, but the late revelation of a suspect plot twist sets fire to the much more intriguing possibilities of a rich character study.

The three principal sections of the film are so contradistinctive, each could be a self-contained short film. It does not help that these pieces diminish in quality as the movie unfolds. Despite the inherent potential for drama accompanied by the introduction of Grace as a second survivor, “I Think We’re Alone Now” is easily at its more comfortable and confident when Del undertakes his grim but important role entirely by himself during the first and most expository sequence. Many movies, from “28 Days Later” to “WALL-E,” have relished the presentation of eerie emptiness and isolation, along with the thrill of that solitude. The contradictory personality of Del — expressed by the assertion that he ironically felt more alone before the event that killed everyone in his town — is an avenue Makowsky’s script never fully grasps.    

Morano, who also serves as her own director of photography, lights and shoots the action with a sustained degree of gorgeous composition and bold contrast that deserves better than the frustrating beats of a narrative uncertain, or unwilling, to fully commit to an exploration of existential questions. Is Del better off solo? Are Del and Grace obligated to consider repopulation versus extinction and oblivion (never mind that Dinklage is currently 49 and Fanning is 20)? The movie starts to tangle with a few of these knots until the final shift realigns the entire operation, turning “I Think We’re Alone Now” into a far less satisfying experience than the one belonging exclusively to our two main characters.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

With first-time feature director Carlos Lopez Estrada at the helm, friends/screenwriters/producers/stars Daveed Diggs and Rafael Casal collaborate on “Blindspotting,” one of the year’s most innovative and thought-provoking movies. Just as given to imaginative flights of fantasy as Boots Riley’s “Sorry to Bother You” — another Sundance premiere examining the twined Romulus and Remus of race and Oakland, California — “Blindspotting” skips Riley’s wild swerve into science fiction, opting instead for an equally creative technique and style. Bursting with poetry, the film covers a huge amount of ground, from gentrification to cultural appropriation to privilege to police brutality and more, all expressed through the dynamic relationship of childhood friends adjusting to the rapid changes in their lifelong domain.

“Hamilton” Tony-winner Diggs plays Collin, wrapping up his final three days on probation, under curfew, and at a halfway house. Casal is Miles, the hot-headed but loyal partner whose hair-trigger volatility and questionable decisions are a constant source of stress for the calmer Collin. The two men work for Commander Moving, a real company playing a version of itself among production designer Thomas Hammock’s many brilliant touches of anti-tourist civic presentation. That particular occupational assignment is a savvy one, as Collin and Miles witness firsthand the clash between the neighborhoods they knew and the encroachment of the new Oakland’s turn toward expensive condos and upscale shops.

Neither Diggs nor Casal had a background in screenwriting prior to tackling the story of “Blindspotting,” but producer Jess Calder — who saw Casal’s spoken word videos on YouTube — encouraged the men to build a script incorporating the rhythms and cadences of verse. The result, which boldly embraces the Shakespeare-meets-hip-hop presentation of core ideas via unexpected linguistic bursts in sequences reminiscent of numbers in a musical, makes room for some artistic subjectivity that never tramples on the grim realities of tough moments, like the scene in which Miles’ young child finds his father’s gun.

The movie balances the heaviest melodrama with consistently successful humor. The interactions between Collin and Miles bounce from the mundane to the perilous, and the familiarity stemming from the longtime friendship of Diggs and Casal treats the viewer to an easygoing, intimate rapport that echoes the deeply social bonding of Cassavetes and Poitier in Martin Ritt’s “Edge of the City,” minus the degree of that film’s coded homoeroticism. Clearly, Collin and Miles love each other, and “Blindspotting” articulates the depths to which the dual protagonists are willing to protect one another as well as the costs of that allegiance.

Several critics have argued that the bluntness with which “Blindspotting” communicates, coupled with the earnestness of the climax, diminishes the movie’s impact (Emily Yoshida, for example, dislikes the application of the onscreen freestyle, claiming that its use “…starts off fun and ends up feeling like homework” and Alissa Wilkinson reads the conflict as “a tad ham-fisted”). I thought the choices made in the final scenes were perfect, and worked precisely because the outcome of events defied the likely or “realistic” conclusion. Ethan Embry, who plays Officer Molina, shares a tremendous performance, but to reveal more would spoil the experience of those viewers open to the film’s peculiar satisfactions.    

Movie review by Greg Carlson

The borders of the real and imagined assume a prominent place in Josephine Decker’s “Madeline’s Madeline,” the new feature from the talented filmmaker of “Butter on the Latch” and “Thou Wast Mild and Lovely.” As a richly layered metanarrative that utilizes the vehicles of acting, performance, and improvisation as the means to probe a complex emotional triangle involving a troubled young woman, her mother, and her theater teacher, Decker’s movie is a visual and auditory odyssey. Newcomer Helena Howard is explosive as the titular teenager, an intense explorer and deeply committed student who channels her demons into a series of stage exercises overseen by Molly Parker’s out-there coach Evangeline.

In what many admirers will see as a shrewd piece of cross-casting opposite Parker, Miranda July is Madeline’s concerned mom Regina. As the events unfold, audience allegiance to the parent and the role model shifts alongside the confused and frustrated Madeline. Decisions made by each person escalate the drama, and Decker handles the works — manipulations, humiliations, and aggressions both micro and macro — with supreme skill. While many of the cruel actions elicit gasps, none read as false.  

The unidentified mental health issues faced by Madeline and the character’s subjective interactions with her world guide the presentation of the content. Decker, working again with cinematographer Ashley Connor, plays with textures so convincingly that “Madeline’s Madeline” quickly transcends the simplistic formula in which a person’s fraying perception is expressed via filmmaking technique (like “Repulsion” or “Black Swan” or dozens and dozens of other examples). Connor, operating a custom rig that allows for close physical proximity to the actors, transforms her roving lens into a character.  

Chris O’Falt notes that Connor’s camerawork has a “liquid-like aspect to the focus, and the image is often slightly doubled or warped, while out-of-focus translucent objects come into the edges of frame to cause pockets of soft, sometimes colorful blurring.” Some viewers will be put off by Decker’s level of comfort with abstraction and shifting depth of field, but for those willing to embrace Madeline’s perilous journey, with all its highs and lows, the style is integral to the story. In this sense, “Madeline’s Madeline” demands repeat viewings to unpack the dazzling manner in which Decker uses the cinema to probe the nature of the creative process itself.           

In one of the movie’s most electric scenes, Evangeline invites Madeline to a dinner party at her home in a potentially inappropriate violation of teacher-student boundaries. Decker’s acute awareness of Madeline’s age and vulnerabilities shapes the film into a potent bildungsroman, despite — or perhaps due to — the outsize talent possessed by both Madeline and Howard. The growing pains dramatized here can make you squirm, and the threat of violence is clear from the beginning of the movie. Howard is given a perfect canvas on which to paint a masterpiece of a screen debut, as Evangeline’s questionable if not unethical decision to use Madeline’s personal experiences as the basis for her theatrical piece simultaneously flatters Madeline with attention and pushes her to the very edge of destruction.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Spike Lee’s stated desire to comment on current events through the colorful prism of a 1970s-set period piece reaps tremendous rewards in Cannes Grand Prix winner “BlacKkKlansman,” a startling and brilliant addition to the veteran filmmaker’s top tier. Loosely based on Ron Stallworth’s autobiographical memoir, Lee’s film dramatizes the utterly unbelievable story of the first African-American officer and detective on the force of the Colorado Springs Police Department. Stallworth, using the telephone, established a relationship with members of a local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan, sending a white proxy for face-to-face meetings as he infiltrated the organization.

In the movie, Stallworth is portrayed by John David Washington. Adam Driver plays Flip Zimmerman, Stallworth’s counterpart and fellow undercover operative. Together, the two men create a complex composite, and Lee balances the unique pressures and dangers of the dual subterfuge. Like “Sorry to Bother You,” another 2018 release that addresses code-switching via the presumption of a “Black voice” and a “white voice” ideal for telephone communication, “BlacKkKlansman” captures the nuances of identity construction as modified for particular audiences and situations. While Stallworth keeps the secret of his occupation hidden from Colorado College Black Student Union president Patrice Dumas (Laura Harrier), so too must Zimmerman hide his Jewish heritage from the racists with whom he is now spending significant time.

At one point, Zimmerman confides to Stallworth that because he was not raised in the Jewish faith, he has not previously contemplated that dimension of his culture. Hanging out with violent practitioners of antisemitism, however, now causes Zimmerman to think about it every day. Lee has always demonstrated expertise and clarity when presenting conflict between polarities (from the gender-based double standards faced by Nola in feature debut “She’s Gotta Have It,” to the divisions of colorism in “School Daze,” to Radio Raheem’s homage to the iconic love/hate speech from “The Night of the Hunter” in “Do the Right Thing”), and “BlacKkKlansman” spits fire in this regard.

In what might be the movie’s most riveting sequence, Lee crosscuts between a KKK initiation presided over by David Duke (played to perfection by Topher Grace in one of the film’s many terrific supporting turns) and a student gathering in which the horrific details of the 1916 lynching of Jesse Washington in Waco, Texas are recounted by Harry Belafonte’s civil rights activist Jerome Turner. Toggling between the locations, Lee and longtime editor Barry Alexander Brown present unsettling footage of the white-robed bigots cheering their favorite scenes in a celebratory screening of D. W. Griffith’s “The Birth of a Nation” and the gruesome, professionally shot photographs of Washington’s charred and brutalized corpse, which would be sold as souvenir postcards.

That scene concludes with parallel chants of “White Power!” and “Black Power!” in what one imagines would be the film’s peak example of Lee’s facility with diametric binaries. The filmmaker’s fiercest masterstroke, however, arrives in a late-amended coda showing images from the events and aftermath of the 2017 “Unite the Right” demonstration in Charlottesville, Virginia. Donald Trump’s inexcusable, indefensible, David Duke-endorsed “many sides” response and the killing of Heather Heyer are included. We realize instantly that despite the presence and plentitude of the preceding tale’s humor, tragedy eclipses comedy. And past and present are close siblings.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Elsie Fisher’s Kayla Day is the lonely but indefatigable middle-school protagonist of first-time feature filmmaker Bo Burnham’s “Eighth Grade,” a winning addition to the pantheon of the adolescent cinematic bildungsroman. What details and nuances other performers might have brought to the role we wouldn’t dare to imagine, so perfect is Fisher’s take. She constructs a brilliant characterization utterly unselfconscious in its self-consciousness. There are millions like Kayla, permanently chained to the glowing screens of cellphone, tablet, and laptop — but Fisher is essential. Without her, the movie would be difficult to imagine.   

While the hopes and dreams, as well as the challenges and embarrassments, of “Eighth Grade” are universal experiences, the technological containers in which they manifest make Burnham’s film an instant time capsule. Kayla follows a long line of young movie characters who find opportunities to create distance between themselves and their parents, but her methods involve nonstop scrolling through Instagram, earbud volume loud enough to ignore the attention of father Mark (Josh Hamilton). And as it has been for some time, the World Wide Web is a simulacrum offering intensified, accelerated fantasies and horrors from self-constructed projections of the curated “best life” to candid tutorials on oral sex.   

The ambitious host of a YouTube channel bereft of viewers and subscribers, Kayla commits to “really putting herself out there” via the diary-like doses of solid advice she shares to the internet. Burnham uses Kayla’s clips to structure the film, and the nuggets of wisdom imparted in the interstitials as direct camera address never fail to find their mark. Innocent and earnest, the lessons are so obviously the remedies and prescriptions that Kayla can’t bring herself to swallow. Signing off each installment with a cheerful “Gucci!,” Kayla — like so many kids who express themselves in similar fashion — interestingly projects a more confident persona via the mediated world than she dares attempt face-to-face with her peers.

In the real spaces of the hallways and classrooms at her school, Kayla navigates the minefield of potential humiliations by remaining quiet and observant. Curiously, she does not enjoy the companionship of a close friend and confidante with whom she can commiserate, a circumstance intensified when she and some fellow soon-to-be-freshmen shadow high schoolers. Kayla’s partner is Olivia (Emily Robinson), who invites Kayla to hang out at the mall. Nearly unable to contain herself, Kayla soaks up the conversation of Olivia and friends at the food court. The hilarious scene is one of several in which Burnham reiterates a cyclical, generational motif of the similarities and differences that exist with just a few years of distance.

At the age of 27, Burnham has a tremendous ear for contemporary culture, and his own background as a YouTuber is vividly reflected in the details of “Eighth Grade.” The plot is resolutely low-key. Kayla’s world is distinct from the ones inhabited by Dawn Wiener in “Welcome to the Dollhouse” (as noted by Leslie Felperin) and Nadine Franklin in “The Edge of Seventeen” (with which “Eighth Grade” shares a number of depictions of deeply awkward teen rites of passage). Burnham nails audience identification with his heroine, however, and sequences like the pool party — a “squirmy tour de force embellished with a punctuating zoom and a plangent sense of dread” according to Manohla Dargis — demonstrate the work of a talented newcomer.