Learning about a Bayou romance from a generation ago, a pair of thirtysomething New York professionals uncover something about themselves in “The Photograph” (2020). Stylishly filmed, scored and acted, it’s like an African-American version of a Richard Gere film – but better, because Richard Gere isn’t in it. Instead, Issa Rae and LaKeith Stanfield are the leads atop a strong cast that checks all the romance-flick boxes – sassy girlfriend, wacky married couple, eager co-worker, gracious boss, etc. Yet, thanks to the story within the story and its long, slow (but not too slow) unwinding, this formula seems more elegant than usual.
Archives for posts with tag: Courtney B. Vance
Yeah, I know “Office Christmas Party” (2016) is stupid, but it’s appropriately stupid for the plot (epic gesture needed to save the company). It’s necessarily stupid for its genre (R-rated farce). Simply put, it’s just the right amount of stupid (although I saw the unrated version, so, technically, what I saw was extra stupid). Jennifer Aniston and Jason Bateman have made like 377 films in the past few years, so they seem to be homing in on a formula in which they’re both uptight and everyone else is crazy (although I do wish the formula involved my seeing fewer penises).
As I watched “Isle of Dogs” (2018), I was reminded how much I used to enjoy “Samurai Jack.” There’s a zen-like inner calmness at the center of these two pieces of Japanese-flavored animation that I savored. This film is loaded with metaphors for all kinds of stuff I didn’t have time to try to discern (it’s a dark story about the potential for a doggie holocaust, and there’s heavy – perhaps too heavy – political symbolism). I was too busy either trying to make out the tiny writing on my normal-human-sized television or I was simply enjoying the calm, deliberate, confident storytelling.
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