Movie review by Greg Carlson

Spike Lee’s second documentary on one of the most unforgettable, electrifying, and controversial superstars of the 20^th century doesn’t compare to the filmmaker’s finest nonfiction features. But the cumbersomely titled “Michael Jackson’s Journey from Motown to Off the Wall” celebrates an exciting transitional period in the performer’s life with plenty of visual and auditory fireworks. Co-produced with the endorsement and cooperation of MJ estate co-executors John Branca and John McClain, Lee’s film, which plays on Showtime Friday, February 5, 2016, keeps its eyes and ears on the music.

Lee refocuses our attention on Jackson’s recording legacy, reminding viewers that race-based discrimination was a de facto reality of the era in which “Off the Wall” emerged. And while the presentation of information is essentially a straightforward compendium alternating between new interviews with an eclectic roster of talking heads (from Jackson family members to David Byrne to Rosie Perez to Questlove and a bunch of key album contributors) and some tasty and eye-popping archival footage of Jackson from the estate’s vault, Lee recognizes the importance of Jackson as a black artist making a huge commitment to achieving mainstream acceptance and success.

Leading up to the creation of the “Off the Wall” album, Lee explains Jackson’s desire to emerge as a solo artist and distance himself from the groups associated with his siblings. The movie’s amazing stories of Studio 54, the unexpected popularity of “Ben,” and clips of the Jacksons on stage during the 1979 Destiny tour keep company with accounts of Michael’s role as the Scarecrow in Sidney Lumet’s film of “The Wiz,” responsible for placing Quincy Jones in the path of an ascendant Jackson desperate to shake off doubts that he was a has-been child star with no future. It seems farfetched now, but Jackson’s lone “Off the Wall” Grammy didn’t even make the broadcast. It was presented during a commercial break.

Once the film reaches the section focused on a track-by-track analysis of “Off the Wall,” the most devoted will be wishing we arrived at that point earlier. Expectedly and deservedly, tunes like “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough,” “Rock with You,” and “She’s Out of My Life” receive solid workouts, but Lee glosses over others – even if it is a “throwaway,” Paul McCartney’s “Girlfriend” is dispatched quickly and the title song certainly merits an even weightier examination. Followers of the Nick de Grunwald and Martin Smith “Classic Albums” rock documentaries hoping for super-nerd dissections of mixes and multitracks won’t find that series’ level of nirvana, but Lee digs deep enough to whet appetites.

The post-screening Q & A at the Sundance world premiere almost immediately turned to the possibility that Mr. Lee would complete a Jackson trilogy with a future installment focused on “Thriller” – a pretty safe bet. “Thriller” was unprecedented, but so was “Off the Wall,” a multiplatinum game changer for the twenty-year-old phenomenon and his growing army of listeners. After the sights and sounds of Jackson himself, the best parts of Lee’s film capture what it means to be a fan. Over the end credits, Lemon Andersen delivers his poem from Lee’s first “Brooklyn Loves MJ” birthday tribute in 2009, reciting in part:

Go find your spot in the park
Swing, slide, see-saw
You were our shot in the dark
You gave us a better night life
51 years of victory
Now enjoy yourself, enjoy yourself
Enjoy yourself for me…

Movie review by Greg Carlson

WARNING: The following review reveals key plot information. Read only if you have seen “Anomalisa.”

Like so many of the curious, distinctive places imagined and created for his films, the universe of Charlie Kaufman’s “Anomalisa” is simultaneously familiar and strange, recognizable and alien, inviting and terrifying. Based on Kaufman’s 2005 play, the film adaptation is codirected by Kaufman and stop-motion practitioner Duke Johnson, and has the distinction of being the first R-rated movie to receive an Academy Award nomination for Best Animated Feature. Even at a tidy 90 minutes, “Anomalisa” is on several levels as thought-provoking as Kaufman’s “Synecdoche, New York,” the polarizing cult film that also grapples with questions of desire, self-worth, cognition, and identity.

“Anomalisa” follows speaker and customer service author of “How May I Help You Help Them?” Michael Stone (David Thewlis) during a one-night engagement in Cincinnati. In a series of scenes that unfold mostly in real time, Michael arrives at a hotel called the Fregoli, another of Kaufman’s frequently deployed linguistic/terminological Easter eggs, this one a reference to the psychiatric delusion that multiple individuals are actually just one person who can change appearance. Francis Fregoli was also Kaufman’s nom de plume on the original play script.

At the hotel, every banal encounter unfolds with a sense that there is something else as uncanny as the head and facial designs of the fascinating 3D printed puppets. But the intricately fabricated sets and armatures are only one facet of a central auditory conceit that informs any reading of the cinematic text. Some critics have opted to refrain from discussing what Richard Brody describes as a “coup de theatre too clever to divulge,” but the “technical gimmick” of using Tom Noonan as the voice of every character Michael encounters until he hears the unique and euphonious Lisa (Jennifer Jason Leigh) is the aspect of “Anomalisa” that will have you reflecting for days.

Michael’s excitement at hearing Lisa distinctly from all others, including his wife and his child, leads to some of the movie’s most discussed touches, including a lovely moment in which Lisa sings an intimate rendition of “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” that makes Michael’s eyes sparkle (an absolute blessing in disguise when the filmmakers were not able to license “My Heart Will Go On,” which was used in the play). But the more time we spend, the greater our discomfort at Michael’s “condition.” An unsettling late callback to a scene in which Michael spots an unusual mechanical sex doll while looking for a gift to bring home to his son is pure Kaufman – a hall of mirrors in which we watch an inanimate object regard an automaton and start to wonder whether we are all Michaels.

Kaufman deliberately resists the kind of homogeneity and polish that would more smoothly align the sympathies of the audience with Michael. Instead, the character’s selfishness, uncertainty, and privilege are displayed in such a way to allow for a wide range of readings and interpretations of authorial intent. Is Michael a bad person? Are we all bad people? Thewlis, Noonan, and Leigh, reprising their roles from the Theater of the New Ear production, are all so good that once you see “Anomalisa” you might believe the members of the Academy nominated Ms. Leigh for the wrong movie.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Leading all Oscar challengers with a total of twelve nominations, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s “The Revenant” has to overcome a few daunting statistics reported by prognosticator Scott Feinberg in order to win Best Picture. Feinberg notes that only one movie in the last fifty years (“Titanic,” which, coincidentally starred Leonardo DiCaprio) snagged the top prize without a screenplay nomination. Additionally, “Braveheart” was the last film to collect Best Picture sans a best ensemble SAG Award nod, and that was twenty years ago. It’s a pretty safe bet, however, that “The Revenant” won’t go home empty handed, as star DiCaprio is widely seen as the frontrunner in the Best Actor category.

Inarritu’s radical reimagining of the Hugh Glass story veers so wildly from anything like historical fidelity that the movie should have just cut the tag “Inspired by true events.” Even so, the narrative retains several key components from the adventurer’s biography – most notably the 1823 grizzly bear attack in present-day South Dakota and Glass’ remarkable odyssey of survival. Opinions on the rendering of the former run the gamut, but compared to the story’s treatment of women and Native Americans – and especially Native American women – it is clearly better to be a bear. Following the mauling, Glass is not expected to live, and two expedition members, the surly John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy) and the young Jim Bridger (Will Poulter) are assigned to stand watch over Glass until he expires.

What follows is not exactly the roaring rampage of revenge promised in the film’s advertisements, but rather a protracted fever dream of human-versus-nature challenges. The fabrication/addition of Hawk (Forrest Goodluck), the teenage Pawnee son of Hugh Glass, registers only as a plot gambit to intensify Glass’ thirst for reprisal, but many viewers will wonder why Inarritu and co-screenwriter Mark L. Smith withhold scenes that would establish a stronger bond between parent and child.

“The Revenant” has divided cinephiles who alternately marvel at the natural light accomplishments of superhero cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki and criticize the award season campaigning on behalf of the movie by its makers. Back in July of 2015, Kim Masters wrote a feature for “The Hollywood Reporter” chronicling the brutal physical conditions under which the movie’s principal photography took place. Masters’ piece set the stage for a making-movies-is-hard narrative that served the production until a backlash from writers like Devin Faraci started calling bullshit on the looping PR repetition of DiCaprio being cold and wet and gnawing on a real bison liver.

Inarritu haters have been taking shots at the filmmaker long before “Birdman” scored the picture, director, screenplay, and cinematography Oscars, and “The Revenant” will do nothing to quiet the din. Jaime N. Christley’s “Slant” takedown, for example, is worth reading for the volley of zingers like this one: “Inarritu doubles down on his rudimentary grasp of visual metaphors with a straight-faced update of the birthing gag from Steve Oedekerk’s ‘Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls.’” Even so, Inarritu is capable of commanding screen space with a sense of grandeur that owes much to the influence of Terrence Malick.

Christley’s snark aside, Inarritu’s biggest mistake may be failing to honor the grim resolution of Glass’ quest for satisfaction as it stands in the historical record. The climactic mortal combat confrontation between Glass and Fitzgerald – a predictable cinematic inevitability given the film’s considerable budget – is nowhere near as existentially bleak as Michael Punke’s rendition or the reality in which Glass recovers his rifle but cannot, or does not, mete out any physical retribution against his enemy.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Mark Hartley’s “Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films” sprays viewers with an Uzi-like barrage of film clips, trailers, promo reels, and talking heads to spin the tale of 1980s powerhouse schlock heavyweights – and cousins – Manahem Golan and Yoram Globus. A competitor and companion to Hila Medalia’s “The Go-Go Boys,” which, Hartley notes with some glee, beat “Electric Boogaloo” to market by three months, the feature documentary captures the high-stakes, low-taste atmosphere of Cannon’s anything goes approach to cinematic glory. Admirers of the company seal won’t need any coaxing to revisit the tripped-out visions of “Ninja III: The Domination,” “Invasion U.S.A.” and “Lifeforce,” but Hartley’s efforts are sure to mint new fans for one of exploitation cinema’s most prolific standard bearers.

Emerging as a filmmaker in his native Israel after an adolescence spent obsessively attending the cinema several times a week, Golan produced Boaz Davidson’s wildly successful and influential “Lemon Popsicle,” the 1978 comedy-drama later remade as “The Last American Virgin” in the United States. Even though “Virgin” wasn’t a complete smash, in many ways it set the tone for Cannon’s more-is-more model, and Hartley makes an effort to touch on several subsequent productions that came to define the fast, cheap, and out of control ethos of Golan/Globus. The substantial return-on-investment hit “Breakin’” and its sequel “Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo” were released within eight months of each other.

With a few notable exceptions, it’s difficult to keep the interview subjects straight, since most of them pepper their recollections with impressions of Golan’s thick accent and bull-in-china-shop demeanor (one aspect of “Electric Boogaloo” that gets old). The resulting descriptions paint a Jekyll/Hyde mix of admiration and revulsion in the portrait of the garrulous Golan, whose outsize personality overshadows the more reserved and business-oriented Globus. Many attempt but few succeed in satisfactorily accounting for Golan’s wild miscalculations – obviously the man was not stupid, even if he had a tin ear for quality. Former MGM chief executive Frank Yablans might come the closest, shaking his head at Golan’s you-gotta-be-kidding-me Oscar hopes for the disastrous flop “Sahara.”

Despite the occasional stab at respectability – via unlikely partnerships with Jean-Luc Godard, John Cassavetes, and Franco Zeffirelli – Cannon’s bread was buttered by the twin obsessions of exploitation cinema: sex and violence. Hartley does not skimp on either, exploring the softcore sensations of Sylvia Kristel in “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” and “Mata Hari” and Bo Derek in “Bolero.” Several Cannon collaborators, including Derek, puzzle over Golan’s inexplicable, two-faced attitude with regard to films featuring significant sexuality and nudity, but that specific subject is never resolved in any detail. Neither is the period’s grim and casual predilection toward onscreen rape, a staple of Cannon director Michael Winner’s repugnant worldview as seen in the “Death Wish” sequels.

Hartley deserves credit for organizing what could so easily be a chaotic mess (several Cannon movies could sustain feature-length documentaries of their own) and for coherently communicating the hubris and overreach that led to the downfall of the company and the Golan/Globus split. The latter is summarized in a section that delivers the one-two punch of costly – for Cannon – movies that looked cheap: “Superman IV: The Quest for Peace” and “Masters of the Universe.” But even those failures have found a strange place in the pantheon of bad movies (some) people love, a category to which Cannon contributed an impressive share.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

The meticulous Todd Haynes shares another engrossing 1950s tale of forbidden romance with “Carol,” a thematic sibling to the director’s career high point “Far from Heaven.” Adapted by Phyllis Nagy from Patricia Highsmith’s bracing novel “The Price of Salt,” “Carol” is every bit as feverish as the legendary anecdote describing the book’s origin. In the title role, Cate Blanchett is a well-to-do woman who might possibly be pursuing the distractions of Therese, Rooney Mara’s young salesgirl, just as much as the custody of her daughter during a difficult divorce. Filled with the loaded communication of the glance and the gaze, “Carol” is a lush and aching love story.

The movie may be called “Carol,” but the point of view belongs equally to Therese. Blanchett and Mara are good enough to expect more award nominations headed their way, and Haynes deftly balances the performances, constructing with the actors a careful pas de deux that accesses the hearts of both characters. Whether or not Carol uses her power, experience, and social status to seduce Therese, the drama clearly carves out room to examine how women in post-World War II America found themselves, regardless of sexual orientation, confined to customs determined by repressive norms.

Admirers of Haynes will find an embarrassment of riches in the lines of Carol’s stunning gray 1949 Packard Super Deluxe 8, the exterior of the Spare-Time diner, and the sight and sound of the Teddy Wilson/Billie Holiday microgroove long player featuring “Easy Living.” Anthony Lane writes of the necessity of retaining the novel’s period setting: “If Haynes had updated ‘The Price of Salt’ to the present, our response would have been: big deal. Trade your straight marriage for a same-sex relationship, these days, and you will be hailed for your emotional honesty, whereas Highsmith, steeped in crime fiction, needed the creak of danger and the hiss of social disdain.” Lane’s assertion is worth considering, even though “Carol,” with its sumptuous costumes and production design, centralizes and fetishizes the cool of the mid-twentieth century.

Over time, the novel’s open-ended and hopeful conclusion has remained one of its most frequently cited talking points. Because Highsmith resisted prevailing attitudes and expectations about the ways in which homosexual characters could or should be portrayed in fiction, interest in the book has continued (even though it was for a time out of print). Just as astonishing is the novel’s influence on Nabokov. As Terry Castle has long maintained, the tingly road trip centerpiece – a throbbing fantasy of anticipation – “must have [been] stolen” for “Lolita.”

“Carol” has already emerged, deservedly so, as a critical darling, but the film is not without its minor shortcomings. In significant ways, Highsmith depicted nervous confusion and sexual heat with an edge that Haynes blunts in favor of a more tasteful and highbrow rendering of Carol and Therese’s affair. Additionally, the age and class difference between the two women merits only scant notice within the film narrative, despite providing a potentially rich vein for deeper exploration. Minor quibbles aside, however, “Carol” is an absolutely ravishing feast for the senses. Lovers of classic Hollywood glamour will swear Mr. Haynes and his crew found a functional time machine.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

With “The Look of Silence,” filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer and his dedicated collaborators have constructed a harrowing companion piece to the unforgettable chronicle of genocide in Indonesia depicted in “The Act of Killing.” In one sense answering critics who wondered why the prior film concentrated on the perpetrators of murder and not on the victims, “The Look of Silence” follows the stygian odyssey of Adi Rukun, whose brother was brutally dispatched by locals so completely deaf to their crimes they enthusiastically recount the grisly details on camera without any sense of guilt or remorse.

The 44-year-old Adi is an optometrist by profession, and several of the movie’s interactions unfold during eye examinations performed on the anti-communist constituents of the movement that eventually replaced the Sukarno presidency with the Suharto regime. Both of Oppenheimer’s projects feature the surreal, dispassionate spectacle of men willing to share the grotesque nuts and bolts of their personal experiences as vigilante participants, and some of the most painful and moving scenes in “The Look of Silence” show Adi as he impassively processes firsthand accounts of disembowelment, genital mutilation, and even the ingestion of the blood of the condemned.

Several of the discussions on the ethical responsibilities of documentarians begun when “The Act of Killing” was released are being revisited by cinephiles eager to process the extremely difficult intellectual terrain explored by Oppenheimer. Unflinching and unapologetic as ever, Oppenheimer’s practice of getting close to the guilty can result in some queasy confrontations when Adi shines light on his brother’s murder in the presence of the complicit. Additionally, Oppenheimer uses Adi’s century old, skeletal father – mostly blind and deaf – as a kind of emblem of vulnerability. In one scene, the terrified, disoriented elder crawls around his room, convinced he has somehow ended up in a stranger’s house.

Like “The Act of Killing,” this film raises questions about the safety of its participants, and one almost immediately begins to worry for Adi as he and Oppenheimer record conversations with people who have, in a stranger-than-fiction set of circumstances, benefited and profited from their roles as executioners. Adi’s willingness to face these butchers could be many things – brave, dangerous, possibly foolish – but to him it is clearly necessary. The various responses we hear are the stuff of nightmare, and yet another film could be made from the extent to which the United States directly and indirectly supported the death squads.

The most rewarding dimension of “The Look of Silence” can be discovered in Adi’s quiet patience and external placidity. One would expect that Adi would on some level be seeking a measure of revenge or retribution for the evil perpetrated against his family, but Oppenheimer makes clear the monumental denial that places something resembling justice far out of the reach of the Indonesians persecuted by their own fellow citizens. The 1965-1966 timeframe of the massacres is not that long ago, and by far the most frightening realization embedded in both “The Act of Killing” and “The Look of Silence” is the possibility that something like this could so easily happen again, and happen anywhere.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Fans and admirers of Marlon Brando won’t require any coaxing to see Stevan Riley’s hugely entertaining documentary “Listen to Me Marlon,” but the film is compelling enough to transcend its status as “mere” Hollywood biography. A visual and aural odyssey that explores the actor’s well-known career highlights as well as intimacies selected from hundreds of hours of previously private personal recordings narrated by Brando, the movie delights in showcasing a wealth of photographs, television appearances, and movie clips. Almost entirely narrated by Brando himself, “Listen to Me Marlon” covers all the expected bases – the emotionally complex relationship to his parents, the New York years with Stella Adler, the love affair with Tahiti, the social and civil rights activism – without the use of interviews with friends, collaborators, and experts.

Instead, it’s all Brando, including an eerie, illuminated 3D floating head. A few critics have dismissed the glowing avatar that Riley uses to initiate the film, but the effect, built from work Brando commissioned in the 1980s, implies a great deal about the actor’s depth of curiosity regarding the future of film and the lengths to which we may go to achieve some kind of life after death. Brando’s original intention for digitizing as much of himself as was possible via the now antiquated Cyberware purportedly involved some kind of obviously incomplete multimedia project, but the man was nothing if not forward thinking.

The least effective narrative strands in the film concern the 1990 death of Dag Drollet at the hands of Brando’s son Christian and the 1995 suicide of Brando’s daughter Cheyenne, who had been Drollet’s partner. Riley periodically returns to the media circus that set up tents in the aftermath of the Drollet shooting, but the lurid frenzy accompanying the trial isn’t given enough context to pursue the question of whether Brando’s responses on the stand and for the cameras were carefully calibrated “performances” or heartfelt expressions of genuine emotion. They could have been both.

As Brando speaks for himself, the viewer comes to understand how an individual so gifted could lose his religion, transforming the freedom, joy, and exhilaration that once accompanied his acting into the misery and contempt that clouded and shadowed the most unsavory aspects of studio filmmaking and its accompanying public relations game. Riley doesn’t hold back, peppering the viewer with scenes from several of Brando’s most embarrassing paydays (sometimes accompanied by the use of cue cards). But he also reminds us that Brando was as committed to Don Vito Corleone, Paul, and Colonel Walter E. Kurtz in maturity as he was to Lt. Ken, Stanley Kowalski, and Terry Malloy at the beginning.

Riley masterfully indulges the many unresolvable contradictions that “made” Marlon Brando without compromising viewer patience. And while his greatest onscreen achievements tend toward pretty heavy drama, Brando’s expansive and mischievous sense of humor unlocks an indispensable part of his persona (in one hysterical moment, Brando dismisses Connie Chung’s flattery with a perfectly timed explanation of his dog’s superiority as an actor). Brando shares some genuine insight into the acting process, and his bracing, practical input is one of the best things about “Listen to Me Marlon” – a reminder that we can sometimes discover the truth by telling lies.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Global treasure Guy Maddin detonates a cinematic depth charge in “The Forbidden Room,” a stunning cascade of images so gorgeous you might think you’ve stumbled upon some long lost Yma Sumac record sleeve photo shoot leftovers as lensed by Willy Hameister. Bearing all the filmmaker’s signature stylistic fetishes and then some, “The Forbidden Room” was co-directed by Evan Johnson, who also co-scripted along with Maddin and Robert Kotyk. Additional, hilarious “How to Take a Bath” material was provided by legendary surrealist poet John Ashbery. Multiple critics have already compared the movie’s interlocking chain of wild tales to a set of matryoshka nesting dolls, but the effect is most akin to the ways we experience dreams, vaulting from one inexplicable set of circumstances to the next.

Design aficionados will drool at the film’s meticulously crafted intertitles and production design by Evan’s brother Galen Johnson. Johnson’s stunning cards are routinely inserted to introduce character names/cast members, helpfully supplying informational updates because so many actors inhabit multiple roles. In one delightful example, Caroline Dhavernas’ Gong is introduced with “Young & beautiful – like many of her kind, thirsty for more than her share of the world’s breathing gas – out gulping some down now!” Also quoting poetry and providing emotional interjections (Bones! Bones! Bones!), the titles and their dazzling typography are every bit as essential as the humans who appear in “The Forbidden Room.”

Following the less successful “Keyhole,” “The Forbidden Room” makes use of several Maddin regulars, including Louis Negin and Udo Kier. High profile performers like Charlotte Rampling and Mathieu Amalric also join the Maddin circus, along with a tremendous Clara Furey in the crucial role(s) of mysterious Margot. Many of the filmmaker’s longstanding obsessions swirl and churn: dead fathers, posterior preoccupations, sibling-linked love triangles, and an alarming rate of amnesiacs compete for attention. Bizarre contests of mettle and fortitude, another Maddin treat, arrive in a riotous showdown that sees a “saplingjack” prove himself by offal piling and bladder slapping.

Maddin admirers old and new will have a field day selecting their favorite vignettes from a practically bottomless supply of cranial confectionery. Negin’s quips and come-ons regarding the virtues of bathing will have you reaching for the Mr. Bubble. Life-giving oxygenated flapjacks sustain a quartet of submariners caught in the ultimate bind: if they surface, their cargo of blasting jelly will explode; if they remain underwater, the air supply will run out. A volcanic virgin sacrifice is interrupted by an unexpected parachutist. Undulating women skeletons double as insurance defrauders. And under no circumstances should the Aswang bananas, a pair of herbaceous vampires, be overlooked.

In his essay on “Brand upon the Brain!” Dennis Lim wrote, “Increasingly [Maddin] comes across less as a fusty antiquarian than a mad scientist, applying shock paddles to dead cinematic languages.” That observation is as true as ever applied to the filmmaker’s current work, which includes the eagerly anticipated “Seances” project. For now, “The Forbidden Room” is as beautiful as anything Maddin has ever shared. The film’s relentlessly inventive combination of old and new techniques stimulates the senses by suggesting a rediscovery of some mothballed nitrate, catching fire before our eyes.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Following the honorary Oscar he received last month at the Governors Awards (along with the blistering truth-to-power acceptance speech he made), Spike Lee doesn’t seem likely to pick up many competitive Academy Award nominations for “Chi-Raq,” even though he should. Co-written with Kevin Willmott, whose diabolically good “C.S.A.: Confederate States of America” is an inspiration to every college professor who dreams of making it in the movies, “Chi-Raq” bears all the hallmarks of Lee’s signature, inimitable style. And to everyone praising “Chi-Raq” as the filmmaker’s best work since “Do the Right Thing,” let’s not discount all the brilliant movies Lee has made between 1989 and today.

The audaciousness of “Chi-Raq” begins with a symbolically potent retelling of Aristophanes’ “Lysistrata” (by way of Leymah Gbowee) that uses the culture of contemporary American gun violence – and especially its toll on innocent victims and children – as the impetus for women to withhold sex from their partners until a commitment to peace is made. That adventurous spirit continues with the choice to deliver much of the movie’s spoken dialogue in rhyming couplets and poetic meter. The incorporation of and reliance upon music is reminiscent of “School Daze,” but “Chi-Raq” is packed with overt and covert references to all kinds of movies as well as several entries from Lee’s own filmography.

Many of Lee’s veteran ensemble members show up in roles of various shapes and sizes. Samuel L. Jackson glues it all together as dapper narrator Dolmedes, even reprising Mister Senor Love Daddy’s “Wake up!” admonition. Wesley Snipes gets loose as gang leader Cyclops, and Angela Bassett commands attention and wields power as historian and advocate Miss Helen. Harry Lennix, Thomas Jefferson Byrd, Roger Guenveur Smith, and other reliable faces are joined by Nick Cannon, Jennifer Hudson, and John Cusack, whose dedicated clergyman is loosely based on Michael Pfleger of Chicago’s Saint Sabina church.

The performance of the film, however, is owned by Teyonah Parris as Lysistrata, a young woman with “a mind like Einstein and a truly luscious behind.” Parris was strong in “Dear White People” but she is genuinely great in “Chi-Raq.” No matter how outrageous the scene – in one jaw-dropper she seduces wicked David Patrick Kelly’s General King Kong, a seriously messed-up sex fiend in Confederate flag underpants – Parris delivers from a place of total commitment. In essence, Lysistrata has to match every move made by Cannon’s tough title character, except – to paraphrase a famous line – backwards and in hot pants and a tank top.

Like so many of Lee’s finest, “Chi-Raq” can turn on a dime, swerving from scenes of painful, gut-punching grief to sequences filled with wild and ridiculous gags. Lee also drops plenty of knowledge by having characters share sobering statistics in conversation and deliver speeches directly into the camera. Even though there is nothing shy, retiring or inconsequential about the focus of “Chi-Raq” on gang-instigated death, experiencing the film causes one to imagine what movies Lee might cook up if he doubled down on firearm-related injustices and targeted the steady supply of stories in which white police officers kill unarmed black citizens.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

John Crowley’s film of Colm Toibin’s popular novel “Brooklyn” features a tremendous Saoirse Ronan – whose thoughtful and inviting presence is more than enough to recommend the movie, despite some of its easy calculations. As Eilis Lacey, a young woman who leaves her home and family in Enniscorthy, Ireland for the promise of a bigger life in America, Ronan adds another noteworthy performance to her already impressive filmography. Set in the early 1950s, “Brooklyn” trades to a significant degree on a kind of highly filtered, golden nostalgia, and opinions are divided on the success of this tactic.

Nick Hornby’s screenplay retains the soul of Toibin’s book: Eilis’ painful homesickness and heartsickness, the old-fashioned benevolence of the Catholic Church, and Eilis’ disequilibrium over her national identity – especially when she returns to the country of her birth. The movie does, however, differ from the novel in several notable aspects. The opening is more streamlined, the strange scene between Eilis and Miss Fortini in the dressing room is altered, and the film makes only the tiniest nod to the African American customers of Bartocci’s department store.

The biggest change, however, is Crowley’s decision to conclude with a definitive resolution concerning the state of Eilis’ relationship with first love Tony (Emory Cohen), scuttling the more open-ended final scene as rendered by Toibin in the novel. While the trope of a character pursued by more than one suitor ranks high on the scale of storytelling familiarity, the employment of the love triangle in “Brooklyn” functions better as a symbolic choice between the two countries Eilis has inhabited. Tony equals America while Domhnall Gleeson’s Jim Farrell stands in for all the comforts of Ireland.

In his vicious review, Richard Brody destroys the film for what he perceives as unforgivable “simplifications and sanitizations,” attacking it for misrepresenting and misunderstanding the fullness of New York City (no surprise) and for apparently promoting something like banality. Brody claims that the film “isn’t so much a bad movie as it is a virtual self-parody of a genre – that of the minor, dignified, clean-hands art-house preciosity.” While the venerable Brody is squarely in the minority with regard to “Brooklyn,” his arguments serve as a reminder of criticism’s subjectivity. Where Brody sees costar Cohen’s “comically chewy stage accent,” Michael Sragow writing for “Film Comment” remarks that “Cohen’s Tony riffs beautifully on Brando’s gallant street courtship of Eva Marie Saint.”

What Brody might be missing is the possibility that the very essence of Crowley’s cinematic interpretation of “Brooklyn” depends on the construction of a world experienced through the unreliable eyes of Eilis, whose innocence and inexperience color everything. Eilis is our guide and navigator, and her journey toward the kind of maturity that results in self-actualization in only the most vivid characters is the film’s central agenda item. Brody observes that “Eilis expects nothing, imagines nothing, knows nothing, sees nothing, does nothing,” frustrated at the perceived lack of conflict on display. Yet for Eilis, a series of tangible and frightening challenges presents her with enough conflict for a lifetime, and many viewers will come away certain that Eilis saw and imagined much, learned and did a lot.