What to watch on Netflix — May 2020
Something new:
Dolemite is my Name — Craig Brewer (2019)
While all the critical buzz on Netflix last year was focused on films like ‘The Irishman’ and ‘Marriage Story’, the comedy genre as always struggles to make itself heard. ‘Dolemite is my Name’ is a real a comedy gem with Eddie Murphy at his finest, a fantastic ensemble class and a funky 70s soundtrack.
Based on a true story and set in the 70s, the film stars Eddie Murphy as Ruddy Ray Moore a middle-aged, threepenny, wannabe-artist working at a record store and looking for his big break. One day he stumbles upon spoken word street poetry which he adapts into a comedy sketch, making him an overnight sensation. His big dreams keep growing until he wants to make his comedy act into a movie but encounters resistance from mainstream Hollywood that thinks he’s too black and the Blaxploitation film industry that thinks he is too old and too fat.
Dolomite is critical of not only Hollywood’s lack of inclusivity at the time (cough… today) but also of the Blaxploitation film industry. The b-movie genre began in the 70s alongside the Civil Rights Movement and for the first time offered the opportunity for black characters to be featured on the big screen as protagonists and not just side-kicks/villains. However at the same time its subject matter tended to promote negative stereotypes, with the heros usually being pimps and the settings usually being crime-ridden areas. Ruddy Ray’s journey to get his film produced exposes the hypocrisy behind both systems.
Like in all Eddie Murphy films where he plays the naive big-dreamer, we know that no obstacle can stop him, he always finds a way to beat the haters and reach his goal and thats why we love him. Dolomite also brings back the R-rated Eddie from Beverly Hills Cop, Coming to America, Trading Places who we’ve been missing for decades since he started doing only kiddie movies. However we also have more of the usual Eddie who delights us with his usual shennanigans involving playing multiple characters.
Other than Eddie’s great performance the film has an allstar ensemble cast with Keegan-Michael Key (from Key & Peele) playing an intellectual writer Ruddy Ray gets to script his movie, Wesley Snipes as D’Urville Martin the famous actor Ruddy Ray lets direct his film and his closest friend from the record store played by Craig Robinson (Darryl from The Office). Da’Vine Joy Randolph plays the other half of his comedy act and is definitely the one to watch as she is on the road to breakout success this year (look out for her as Cherise in Hulu’s remake of High Fidelity and in Miranda July’s Sundance sensation Kajillionaire).
Overall the film is a fun light-hearted spoof of the blaxploitation genre with some great acting and some funky music to keep you entertained. This is also one of the few times where the remake is better than the original. The real Ruddy Ray’s Dolomite was ambitious for what it represented and tried to do in the 70s but it’s poor production quality really doesn’t stand the test of time (however if you really want to check it out you can find it on Amazon!)… Also it has one badass poster!
Something Recent:
Looper — Rian Johnson (2012)
Before Rian Johnson made ‘The Last Jedi’ or this years great whodunit mystery ‘Knives Out’, he made some great hard-boiled thrillers such as Looper.
Looper is set in the future where time travel is outlawed and used only in secret by the largest criminal organisations. When they need someone gone and they want to erase any trace that the target ever existed they use specialised assassins called Loopers. Loopers get paid very well (in bars of silver and gold for some reason) but the catch is that their contract lasts 30 years before they have to be sent back into the past to be killed in order to “close the loop”. Joe (Joesph Gordon Levitt) is one of these loopers however his future self (Bruce Willis) refuses to be killed.
These days it’s tough to make a good thriller since the main premise of the genre is to keep the audience hooked by using carefully crafted set-ups and reveals, however todays audiences are too sophisticated, they’ve seen almost every possible twist to a thriller and thats why most films in this genre usually fall flat and come off as gimicky and predictable.
Looper on the other hand subverts our expectations in interesting ways. Instead of being set in some large future metropolis, it is set in a future Kansas City, a place few of us can imagine how it looks like now, let alone in the future. Yet the setting works really well and allows the director to create his own rules free from the stylistic constraints of every other film set in the near future. The Middle America setting paired with the washed out colours in the cinematography create a bleak world where it’s no surprise petty criminals take the offer of becoming Loopers in exchange for the chance to at least temporarily leave this world behind.
The film also brings some new elements to the time travel / noir thriller genre by incorporating intertemporal torture, telekinetic mutants and some bad*** retrofuturistic guns. Most of all the film does a great job at developing themes such as finding redemption through love and the unending viscious cycle of revenge. In a beautiful montage at the beginning of the film we see Joe go through his 30 years as a Looper in a drugged stupour and only really beginning to live in the last 5 when he finds love. A lesson he struggled to impart on his younger self throughout the film. However the important lesson young Joe needs to teach world-weary Joe is that revenge only begets more hatred and revenge.
Something Classic
Enter the Dragon — Robert Clouse (1973)
There’s no talking about the Blaxsploitation genre of Dolomite without bringing up one of the best crossover films of the period and arguably the best martial arts movie of all time — Bruce Lee’s, Enter the Dragon which includes some of the best fight scenes in film and some great Bruce Lee wisdom.
Don’t think, feel! It is like a finger pointing away to the moon. Don’t concentrate on the finger or you will miss all that heavenly glory. Do you understand?
After years of being unsuccessful in Hollywood during the 60s and only playing side-kicks and secondary roles on TV, In 1971 Bruce Lee went back home to Hong Kong, disheartened but not defeated. He negotiated with Shaw Brothers Studio and Golden Harvest to make a few martial arts action films in Hong Kong out of which came ‘The Big Boss’ (1971), ‘Fists of Fury’ (1972), ‘Way of the Dragon’ (1972) and finally on the eve of his death 3 days before it was released ‘Enter the Dragon’ (1973).
Enter the Dragon is a revolutionary film, it kicked off the popularity of not only the practice of martial arts around the world but it also marked the birth of martial arts films in general. These developed over time into the Wuxia period martial arts subgenre such as Ang Lee’s ‘Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon’ (2000) and Zang Yimou’s ‘Hero’ (2002) as well as into the rugged street fighting films all across Asia such as Tony Ja’s films in Thailand and the Iko Uwais Raid films in Indonesia.
At the time of its release, Enter the Dragon tried to capitalise on the success of Blaxsploitation films by using a similar revenge-fantasy plot motive and involving ultraviolent and highly sexualised lurid content. Bruce Lee knew that one of the biggest martial arts audiences in America at the time were African Americans so its no surprise that the only other character who is developed well is Jim Kelly’s character Williams who plays a Vietnam war vet on the run after having stood up to police brutality back in the US. He also delivers some biting lines of social commentary. After arriving in Hong Kong harbour and witnessing the poverty he says
Ghettoes are the same all over the world. They stink.
While the cinematography is very 70s with lots of attention seeking zooms, it more than makes up for it with its fast paced fight sequences all choreographed by Bruce Lee himself and a great hall of mirrors finale that is a throwback to Orson Welles’ fantastic noir Lady from Shanghai.
Make sure to catch this one while it’s still playing on Netflix!
Wildcard
Birds of Passage — Cristina Gallego & Ciro Guerra (2018)
Cristina Gallego and Ciro Guerra return as standard bearers for Columbia’s indigenous communities after their breakthrough film “Embrace of the Serpent”. Blending Columbia’s famous magical realism with a Narco rags-to-riches story and most importantly told from the lens of the indigenous Wayuu tribes of the Northern Guajira region, this film is an absolute must see, if only because this is the first ever film told in the Wayuu language. More importantly it is a cinematic tour-de-force, everything from the direction, the actings (with its mix of amateur and professional actors), to the beautiful setting in Guajira perfectly expressed in the cinematography. For those who keep saying that films these days are all the same look no further. Birds of Passage will be Colombia’s entry for Best Foreign Language Film at this year’s Academy Awards.
Indie Spotlight
Wildlife — Paul Dano (2018)
You may know Paul Dano as the crazed evangelical preacher Eli Sunday in Paul Thomas Anderson’s award winning ‘There Will Be Blood’ (2007) or if you saw one of the recommendations above ‘Looper’ (2012) then you would recognise him as Seth… Here Paul Dano takes the directorial reins for his feature debut.
Set in the 60s in rural Montana, the film stars Jake Gyllenhaal and Carey Mulligan as Jerry and Jeannette Brinson a couple dealing with a crisis and at the same time trying to take care of their teenage son Joe (Ed Oxenbould). After Jerry finds himself out of work he has a mid-life crisis and decides abandon his family to join a band of men trying to put out a wildfire thats been raging for months within sight of town. With the traditional breadwinner for the family gone Jeannette finds herself finally free from her homemaking duties and has her own mid-life crisis. In the midst of all of this their son, quiet and introverted Joe is forced to be the adult by trying to keep his family from falling apart and at the same time dealing with all the usual teenage issues.
While the film focuses on themes such as the breakup of the nuclear family which have been tackled before, the characters are all well drawn and the actors give fantastic and nuanced performances. The cinematography is also beautifully shot by Diego Garcia and favours mostly static framing with great composition and features some stunning twilight shots.
