Suburbicon - George Clooney (2017)

You can easily laugh through some dark comedies. George Clooney's "Suburbicon," (based on a screenplay by the Coen Brothers, Clooney, and Grant Heslov) is a comedy in which, the fun and humor are juxtaposed with a backdrop of suffering that isn't funny at all.

Gardner Lodge (Matt Damon) is an ordinary man, as far as we can see, whose luck spirals downward to an alarming level of rot. Damon is the box office draw, but the Protagonist, the leading man if you will, is actually Nicky (Noah Jupe), Gardner's son.

Nicky is the single innocent in this story. He's the only character who's not an amoral wretch. At the start of the film, the kid is put through a traumatic experience. The sequence is excessively grim, the kind of content that even the darkest of most dark comedies wouldn't touch.

The boy is woken in the middle of the night and dragged down to the dining room. He is tied down by a couple of brutes. He sees his mother Rose, and aunt Margaret (both played by Julianne Moore) are tied down as well.

After a few minutes of intimidating threats, the brutes chloroform all of them.

When Nicky wakes up, he learns that his mother did not survive the attack. His father and aunt are fairly blasé about the incident.

Aunt Margaret moves in to help Nicky and Gardner get used to living without Rose. There may be something sinister behind that.

Rose's death starts a chain of unfortunate events that could very well toss the family right on its head. Nicky and Gardner are threatened throughout the film by nosey cops, gangsters and a corrupt insurance investigator looking to take the Lodges for everything they've got.

Watching Gardner and his sister-in-law Margaret's lives fall apart is hilarious. "Suburbicon" creates so many characters whose demise we gladly cheer for.

There is a secondary plot is focused on a black family, the Mayers, who move into the neighborhood. Nicky strikes up a friendship with Andy Mayer, the new black kid in town.

But the neighborhood doesn't just object to the family's arrival, it rages. As the Lodge family's safety is on the decline, the Mayers face a hostility from the town that simmers through the story and explodes at just the worst time.

It's wonderful how Clooney manages to slowly transform the normal people we were introduced to at the beginning into the sociopaths they really are. "Suburbicon" mirrors the place where the center of the morality of our country is right now, without sounding too self-righteous.

"Suburbicon" is about "Some very fine people," and how they devolve into monsters most wouldn't have recognized before.

The film is screamingly funny all the way through until the end, but it is decidedly disturbing at the same time. You've been warned.

Mudbound - Dee Rees (2017)

Sometimes, a film comes around, reaching for epic status. A great many of these are enthusiastic, but embarrassingly bad. Some actually do reach epic status.

Dee Rees' "Mudbound" is an ambitious film. It wants to be everything: a war story, a drama, but most of all, an acceleration of hatred between man against man, family against family, white against humanity.

When Ronsel Jackson (Jackson Mitchell) a black servicemen, comes home a hero from World War II, his family is ecstatic. His dad, Hap (Rob Morgan), is overjoyed when Ronsel tells him he intends to stay with his family, in Mississippi and work on the family's farm.

Of course, this is problematic to say the least. The Jackson family are tenants of the McAllen's, led by an inhuman patriarch, Pappy (Jonathan Banks). He doesn't miss an opportunity to make it clear to Ronsel that he doesn't care what respect or rights he had during the war. Ronsel is back here in Mississippi.

In fact, the whole McAllan family together represents a familiar "racism with a smile." They demand absolute servitude from the Jacksons, even as the head of their family, Hap is incapacitated by a broken leg, and expected to be working.

Meanwhile, Ronsel starts a strange kind of friendship with Jamie, (Garrett Hedlund), one the McAllan boys coming back from the war as well. They bond over their partying, fighting, close calls, womanizing, the toll killing people can take on one's soul, and their shared shell-shock.

At one point, there's a rare scenario when the McAllans are in a position to humble themselves and ask a desperate service from the mother of the Jackson family, Florence (Mary J. Blige). The McAllan children have gotten sick and they can't reach a doctor. Laura, (Carey Mulligan) understands Florence knows how to care for them. Knowing that her family won't get any kind of thanks, that the McAllan family will continue to demand servitude, Florence agrees to help. Yes, the McAllans are monsters, but you can't take that out innocent children. Of course, when the danger is passed, things continue as they were.

Ronsel and Jamie continue their friendship, getting closer as they spend more time with each other. But there's a dark shadow lurking over them: Pappy McAllan. The man's cold, deliberate malice is deadly. More-so than Jonathan had ever dreamed.

When the story reaches its boiling point, every single character is hurt. And what's truly sad is that these tragedies have no moral. They're empty and meaningless. None of it was necessary. In the end, there's just loss and grief.

But this film is bigger than the violence. With the backdrop of Belgium and other WWII stages, "Mudbound" covers decades in these families' lives. It covers a love triangle, the increasing boldness of the Ku Klux Klan, the sparks of the Civil Rights movement, a story of vengeance, of fathers and sons and  it nails each of these smaller story contained within.

The film reaches for epic status and touches it.

And Jonathan Banks deserves recognition for his work as he brings white hatred and quiet savagery to the screen personified on his very face. I'm still frightened by the thought of him.





 

Roman J. Israel, Esq. - Dan Gilroy (2017)

Dan Gilroy's legal drama/thriller "Roman J. Israel, Esq." is one of the most ambitious films to come out in 2017. It wants to be so many things: thriller, drama, an attempt at a biography, and squeezed between all that, just a bit of romance.

Roman, played by Denzel Washington, is an introverted lawyer who has dedicated decades of his life to fighting for civil human rights.

For decades, Roman has stood in the background, under the wing of his boss and mentor. He's not one to seek the spotlight. He prefers his quiet but important work to practice than the kind of legal work that brings one glory.

When his mentor is incapacitated by a stroke and later dies, Roman's world turns upside down. Now he has to be integrated with humans. Roman feels a great weight put on his shoulder. He feels alone in his determination to see that their clients' civil liberties are defended.

George Pierce, (Colin Farrell) represents a significant power shift in the firm. He now runs Romans' office and aims to turn the law firm on its head, threatening Roman's important civil work in the firm. Roman's smacked down every time he tries to work on one of his civil rights cases.

Roman's life, and his career, are put on the line as he has to start to decide whether or not he can learn to work as a lawyer focused on money.
This misery continues through the second act. We wonder if Roman has a breaking point. Are there circumstances under which he would be willing to sell out?

The rest of the film kind of melts into a law-thriller. There's no center, no focus. Roman's story feels incomplete as if we are just watching a merging of several sub-plots.

The trailer makes "Roman" come off as a civil rights film, but it's a disappointment when you find it's more or less just about a guy going through midlife crisis.

And the half-hearted romance they throw in could have easily been cut from the film without missing a single beat. Maybe that's why the film feels so unfocused.

But "Roman J. Israel Esq." does have virtue.

We watch Roman as he tries to take on not just one case, but the entire prison system.  It shines a spotlight on how malicious our justice system really is.

He insists that, "A person is more than the worst thing they've ever done."As we can see in the U.S. today, with mandatory minimums and unbending, merciless Prosecutors, the punishments handed down are usually excessive ,especially when it comes to young black men.

Of course, lawmakers who point this out are labeled "soft on crime," which would hurt their careers. That is why it's up to the courts to fix this problem and that's why I do hope a lot of people see this film. It's a fight most of America either doesn't know about or doesn't care about. That's why Roman's struggle is worth it.

As for Gilroy's effort itself: The entire film feels uneven and will leave you unhappy and confused. Hell, I can't even decide if it's a thriller or a drama.

So, I guess come for the politics, not the quality of storytelling.

Because in a word, meh.