Review: "If Beale Street Could Talk"

The first time Tish and Fonny (KiKi Layne and Stehan James) step into the frame of “If Beale Street Could Talk” I thought to myself, “These may be the two most beautiful humans on earth.” Writer/director Barry Jenkins (“Moonlight”) has adapted the book by James Baldwin into a lush, gorgeous film about terrible human ugliness.

There are two pieces to the movie: the romance between Fonny and Tish, and their struggle to build a life while reconciling their families; and the imprisonment of Fonny on false charges of rape, and the effort to prove his innocence. Jenkins blends these thoughtfully but not always seamlessly, as the story slides around in time and mood.

Set in the 1970s New York City, “Beale Street” is both narrative fiction and social criticism, as was nearly all of Baldwin’s work. The film examines the pernicious toll of racism on the viability of the American Dream, how people are beat down and respond to that by acting out, often fulfilling the degrading stereotypes.

Fonny and Tish have been friends since childhood, and their joining seems almost predestined. Tish is quiet and gentle, but with a band of iron she inherits from her mother (an excellent Regina King). Fonny is a budding sculptor with a kindly soul (though he isn’t above stealing tools from the carpentry shop where he briefly worked).

There are many languid scenes of the couple simply walking or staring at each other, their eyes joining in a matrimony of the hearts.

Their plans for an actual wedding are hampered: by their inability to find a landlord who will rent a loft to black people; by the objections of Fonny’s mother, who has embraced the strict edicts of the Bible but not its compassion; and finally when he is arrested for the brutal rape of a woman from Puerto Rico.

The music by Nicholas Britell and photography by James Laxton cannot be overstated in their beauty. Many sequences coast upon just these two elements and the actors’ expressions, without any significant words or actions.

The movie suffers from a surfeit of supporting characters who may have better been excised from the story. The fathers (Colman Domingo and Michael Beach) add a lot of charm but not much substance to the narrative. There are also encounters with friends of Fonny and others, some of which add to the mix and others that simply take up space and time.

One of the most moving is a run-in with a jovial presence, Daniel (Brian Tyree Henry), who has recently been released from prison. At first happy and exuberant, downing proffered beers and ribs, he grows morose recalling his two-year sentence for stealing a car -- “I don’t even know how to drive a car” -- which foreshadows Fonny’s own fate.

I find myself regarding “If Beale Street Could Talk” much the way I did “Moonlight” -- more admiration than adoration. It’s a splendidly made movie that sometimes gets stuck in its own inertia. Beautiful movies are wonderful to look at, but they’ve got to keep moving.

Video review: "Selma"

“Selma” was a good but hardly great movie. The fact that it received an Oscar nomination for Best Picture seems more a nod to the weight of the historical subject it tackled -- the civil rights struggle that brought about the Voting Rights Act of 1965 -- rather than the actual aesthetic merits of how they depicted it.

I found David Oyelowo alternately mesmerizing and off-putting as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Director Ava DuVernay and her star have talked in interviews about their deliberate effort not to perform an impersonation of King. But the cadence of his speeches is such an important part of his legend -- so when Oyelowo purposefully avoids replicating that timbre, it subtracts from the power of those scenes.

(The filmmakers also weren’t helped by being denied permission to use the actual text of the speeches, so screenwriter Paul Webb had to whip up facsimiles.)

By far the most memorable part of the movie is the depiction of the brutal “Bloody Sunday” encounter between peaceful protestors and Alabama state troopers. Harrowing and vividly emotional, this sequence brings the dry history out of the textbook and into our eyes and hearts.

Other scenes, though, become a flat parade of supporting characters who struggle to erect any kind of identity.

In retrospect, the hurricane of controversy over the film “only” receiving two Academy Award nominations seems ridiculous. (It did win for best song.) The reason it didn’t fare better during the awards season is because it’s just not that great a movie.

Certainly worthy of our time, but not fawning admiration.

The film is being given a sumptuous video release with a host of extra features, though you’ll need to buy the Blu-ray version to get most of them. The DVD only comes with a couple of educational featurettes.

The Blu-ray adds several making-of featurettes, a music video of “Glory,” photo gallery, deleted and extended scenes, and two separate commentary tracks: one by DuVernay and Oyelowo -- I always love it when actors join their directors for these things -- and the other with DuVernay and her cinematographer and editor.

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Review: "Selma"

"Selma" has been mislabeled as "the Martin Luther King Jr. movie," which it is not, just as the three months of demonstrations for black voting rights in 1965 Alabama was not merely his doing. (Others had been organizing and protesting for two years before King arrived.)

The drama, directed by Ava DuVernay from a screenplay by Paul Webb, is a bit stodgy at times -- characters sometimes feel like they're reciting speeches instead of talking to each other. It also takes a bunch of well-publicized liberties with the historical record, such as depicting President Lyndon Johnson (Tom Wilkinson) as MLK's chief antagonist in opposing the Voting Rights Act, when the two coordinated closely.

(And it was Robert Kennedy who unleashed the FBI to spy on King on his cohorts, not LBJ.)

Still, it depicts several moments possessing great power, such as the recreation of the "Bloody Sunday" event in which state troopers ran down defenseless non-violent protestors marching from Selma to Montgomery. DuVernay brings to life the incredible struggles during the civil rights era, especially the pervasive sense of African-American being marginalized and oppressed.

Some of the quieter moments are the best, such as when a workaday woman (Oprah Winfrey) attempts to register to vote and is given an impossible citizenship test by the court clerk. (After correctly answering how many county judges are in Alabama, 67, she is instructed, "Name them.") The reality of Jim Crow would not begin to fade until hearts and minds were changed, not just laws passed.

I'm a bit ambivalent about the performance of David Oyelowo as King. Impressions are the shallowest portion of capturing a public figure's persona, but MLK's musical cadences during his speeches are so inextricably linked to his iconography that it's distracting when Oyelowo conspicuously avoids them. (Imagine someone playing Winston Churchill without the gravelly growl.)

Undoubtedly, some of this criticism is unfair. King is such a giant in our national heritage, the closest thing we have to a secular saint, that any attempt to depict him is fraught with all sorts of challenges. We bring so much baggage into the theater with us that watching the film becomes an exercise in separating our conception of him with what we see onscreen.

The movie depicts King as a man of great conviction but also one of cold calculation, who knew he was putting others in harm's way -- counting on bloodshed, even, to capture headlines and newscasts. In one somewhat shocking moment, he cheers the presence of a backward hillbilly sheriff, since he can be counted upon to split skulls and generate sympathy.

Webb's screenplay does a poor job of working in the other civil rights giants who organized the Selma protests, including James Bevel (Common) and Hosea Williams (Wendell Pierce). They wind up as a vague chorus of hangers-on and also-rans.

Stephan James stands out as John Lewis, then a college student beaten bloody during the march (and now a Congressman), as does Keith Stansfield as Jimmie Lee Jackson, murdered in cold blood by police.

It's rather disappointing that "Selma," directed by an African-American woman, does a rather poor job of representing black women in other than window dressing roles. Winfrey (also a producer) has little more than a cameo, and Lorraine Toussaint is a frequent, vivid screen presence who gets to say astonishing little. (Other than one contrived-sounding speech, she barely has any lines.)

Carmel Ejoga as Coretta Scott King is largely relegated to the home front, clutching and fretting over threats to her husband and children.

"Selma" is the sort of movie that earns respect but not ardor. It tackles a big subject, fleshes it out reasonably well, but labors to find the passion and beating hearts of those brave marchers in Selma.