Last week I gave my thoughts on 3 movies that I saw during a marathon day at the theater. This week, part 2, where I discuss 2 now-Oscar nominated films that I saw last weekend. Both have gotten critical raves, but I had very different opinions of them.
1. If Beale Street Could Talk: I didn't know anything about this film until I started reading some positive reviews and heard positive feedback on one of my favorite entertainment podcasts ("Pop Culture Happy Hour"). The movie follows Fonny (Stephan James), a young black man in 1960s New York who gets wrongly accused and arrested for sexually assaulting a neighborhood woman. He leaves behind his pregnant fiancée Clementine (Kiki Layne) while sitting in jail for months and months. Fonny is close to Clementine's family, especially her mother Sharon (Regina King), but he's mostly estranged from his extremely religious and disapproving family. I enjoyed James's performance opposite Julia Roberts in the recent Amazon drama Homecoming, and here he's just as magnetic. The core of the film is his character's sweet romance with Clem, and the actors do share a ton of chemistry, but this alone wasn't enough to sustain my interest in the film. The message of injustice against wrongly accused black men is an admirable one, but the writers don't seem very interested in the case itself, keeping the details of the assault mostly in the background of the plot. This takes away much of the film's overall impact. There are some interesting scenes in which Sharon tries to talk to the accuser into dropping the case, in which King really shines. But there are other extended sequences, such as Fonny talking to his friend about nothing in particular, which bored me to death. The movie was far too long, and editing it down more would have made me enjoy a lot more than I did.
2. A Star is Born: I had been wanting to see this film for a while, and I'm glad that I was able to do so before it ended its theatrical run. The film follows aspiring singer Ally (Lady Gaga), who by chance meets the already-famous country singer Jackson Maine (Bradley Cooper) and soon becomes a star herself. The two singers share a tumultuous relationship marred by Maine's alcoholism and resentment over Ally's fame eclipsing that of her husband. By moving away from the weird image that she became known for early in her career and becoming a more down-to-earth performer, Lady Gaga has proven that her career has legs. She's also stretched her acting muscles with her performance in American Horror Story, but that was also a weird, out-there type of performance. In this film, she strips all of that down and proves that she's also a serious dramatic actress. Her character's relationship with Maine is believable, and that's mostly due to the strength of both actors. Cooper, who also directs the film (but shockingly wasn't nominated for a Best Director Oscar) is gruff and ragged; his character spirals downward for much of the film, culminating a shocking ending that I definitely didn't see coming. He's a generous performer, letting Gaga steal much of the spotlight. The movie also boasts several strong supporting characters, particularly Jackson's older brother and sometime manager Bobby (Sam Elliott, also Oscar nominated) and even several scene-stealing drag queens played by RuPaul's Drag Race alums Willam and Shangela. I still haven't even mentioned the amazing original music which gives the movie much of it's life; it's no wonder that the soundtrack topped the music charts for week. Even with a running time over 2 hours, this movie kept my rapt attention the entire time, and it deserves all of the awards that are coming to it.
No comments:
Post a Comment