Trust the masters: Steve McQueen's 'Small Axe' and Steven Soderbergh's 'Let Them All Talk'
No Content for Old Men
with Matt Craig
Hey movie lovers!
As always, you can find a podcast version of this newsletter on Apple or Spotify. Thank you so much for listening and spreading the word!
In this week's newsletter: We've got a trio of new movies, including entries from top notch filmmakers Steve McQueen and Steven Soderbergh. We'll look at the 25 new movies added to the National Film Registry, and then preview the latest big Netflix Oscar drop. In this week's "Trailer Watch," a trailer for awards favorite Nomadland.
Word Count: 534 words
Reading time: 3 minutes
Small Axe
(Amazon Prime)
Simplifying the conversation around Steve McQueen's Small Axe to a discussion about media is reductive. Why must reviews be dominated by a desire to fit it into a certain box? Is it a series of movies? Is it a TV show? I don't know! Who cares!
These are five stories, all centered around the experience of West Indian immigrants in London during the 1960s and 70s, which do not share common characters or plot lines. One is over two hours long, another under an hour. One is totemic, another deeply personal. One is joyous, another melancholy.
What the project is, truly, is the byproduct of a platform allowing a master filmmaker the purest expression of an artistic statement. Credit goes out to Amazon Prime, though McQueen has certainly earned the long rope, with an Oscar to his name for 12 Years a Slave and most recently the yet-to-be-fully-appreciated gem Widows from 2018.
In these stories, he once again flexes his enormous talent both stylistically behind the camera and narratively on the page. The series' feature-length first episode, Mangrove, immediately vaulted into my top 10 movies of the year. I feel comfortable calling it a movie, both because McQueen publicly labeled each installment as film and because the storytelling is undeniably cinematic.
Mangrove retraces the true story of "The Mangrove Nine," a group of West Indian activists who were first bullied by police and then accused of inciting a riot and taken to trial. The comparisons to The Trial of the Chicago 7 are obvious and eerily accurate, except this movie does everything Aaron Sorkin's courtroom drama tries to do a million times better. Mangrove earns the viewer's love for its defendants by immersing us in the black culture of Notting Hill in the late 1960s, then breaks our hearts with the injustice they face.
The stakes feel so much higher than Sorkin's film, partially because it confronts the racial conflict more directly (and therefore more powerfully). Motivations are far more clear for everyone, from the white knight lawyer to the evil judge to the racist cop.
This ensemble is considerably less star-studded, though no less capable. Letitia Wright, the most well-known of the bunch thanks to a supporting role in Black Panther, and newcomer Malachi Kirby play a pair of Black Panthers who deliver monologues so stirring Sorkin would be jealous, while Shaun Parkes provides the emotional core as the owner of the Mangrove restaurant that becomes a community hotspot.
After a year of racial upheaval and more than a handful of stories interpreting it, perhaps the messages of this movie are no longer surprising. But McQueen's depiction is arguably the best of the bunch, dancing that fine line between Important Ideas and the specific story of these characters. Plus, the geographic shift out of the United States into the United Kingdom allows for a perspective that carries less baggage.
I've only seen the first two stories in Small Axe, the second of which follows the attendees of a joyous house dance party, but I can't wait to finish out the bunch. If nothing else, you should make the time to see Mangrove, one of the best movies of 2020.
Streaming Suggestions!
Something New
Let Them All Talk (HBO Max): Steven Soderbergh's reputation as one of the greatest filmmakers on the planet has slowly been eclipsed by his role as the industry's foremost innovator. Whether it's shooting on an iPhone, independently managing his own distribution, and just generally pursuing every single creative impulse in his ludicrously prodigious career. His latest challenge was to film an entire movie during the seven-day crossing of the Queen Mary 2 from New York City to London, filming during a live crossing (offering real life passengers roles as background extras) and editing at night. In the foreground is Meryl Streep, Candice Bergen and Dianne West, best friends re-uniting after decades apart to rekindle friendships and settle scores. Serious hangout vibes are emphasized by naturalistic acting performances, aided by mostly improvised dialogue and two cameras always running to capture genuine reaction shots like a documentary. Lucas Hedges and Gemma Chan's cabin fever romance sub plot is satisfying, and allows for some intergenerational conversation that resonates. Soderbergh has always been a master of withholding exposition, so the story unravels in a slow but satisfying narrative.
The Nest (VOD): Sean Durkin's marriage crisis drama delivers on its promise of being an acting showcase for leads Jude Law and Carrie Coon, but I found little entertainment in the desperate collapse of a family's livelihood after uprooting from a life in New York to move to the English countryside. The story is thought provoking -- Law is a stock broker unable to juggle personal ambition and family obligation, and Coon is a capable woman bound by the leash of a bread-winning spouse -- yet lacks the propulsiveness to keep a viewer hooked when the hope for redemption dies out. Fans of difficult relationship dramas will find a lot to chew on, but the average moviegoer ought to look elsewhere.
Something Old
The National Film Registry: The Library of Congress assembles what is meant to be a definitive collection of the most influential American movies spanning more than 100 years. This past week, they added 25 new titles. And I was shocked to find out that I had seen only six of them. So while I cannot go recommending a bunch of movies I haven't seen, just know my personal check list has gained a few new entries. In the mean time, here are the six whose immortal status I can wholeheartedly endorse: Stanley Kubrik's A Clockwork Orange; Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi in The Blues Brothers; the summer lovin' of Grease; the cultural touchstone Shrek; and last but certainly not least, Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight.
Something to Stream
Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (Netflix): Today (Friday, Dec. 18) marks the release day for the second big Netflix Oscar contender, notable not just for a powerhouse Viola Davis performance in another August Wilson play adaptation (the previous one, Fences, netted Davis her Oscar), but also as the final on-screen performance for the late great Chadwick Boseman. The Academy is eager to award Boseman the posthumous gold, but it's unclear whether that will be for Spike Lee's Da 5 Bloods or this, the story of a blues singer in 1920s Chicago. I'll be watching it alongside you all this week, tune in next Friday to hear my thoughts!
Trailer Watch: Nomadland
I unknowingly overpromised on the availability of this Frances McDormand-led awards movie, which is likely to be one of the very best of the year. Its digital release date was a few weeks back, but as of now you can only find it by getting digital tickets to online screenings, through the Lincoln Center. Which, to this point, has been near impossible to do. So until then, enjoy this newly released trailer and keep your eyes and ears open. I'm disappointed I likely won't get to it in time for my year-end list, but if there was ever a year for some revisions, it's 2020.