More Than One Lesson

For five seasons, Jordan Peele and Keegan-Michael Key tackled any and all topics on their sketch comedy series Key & Peele. Over those 55 episodes, their love and encyclopedic knowledge of film- particularly horror movies- came through in several sketches, so it’s hardly surprising that Peele’s directorial debut is a horror film. What is surprising is that he displays a command and confidence that belies the fact that it is his directorial debut.

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In 2001, a relatively unknown 40-year old British comedian named Ricky Gervais burst onto the BBC. As David Brent, the hopelessly oblivious boss on The Office, the character describes himself as “a friend first, a boss second…probably an entertainer third.” Brent’s excruciating mugging, tone-deaf jokes, and attempts to be everybody’s friend, pained his employees and made the audience laugh and cringe in equal measure. Both in the lead role and as the co-writer and co-director of all 14 episodes (it was designed to be that short), Gervais managed to always walk a tightrope without falling off of it. Brent was almost a cartoon character but he remained just believable enough, as did the show, that viewers running across it unaware The Office was a mockumentary could have been forgiven for believing it was real.

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2014’s John Wick was not an ordinary action film. The directorial debut of longtime stunt coordinator and second unit director Chad Stahelski not only presented action in a unique way, it created a fascinating world populated by characters that were intriguing from the moment we met them. Primarily though, it was an action film as a character study of a man who had gotten out of a world seemingly no one gets out of and what happens when returning to it- “Just visiting” as he puts it- is the only choice he has.

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Martin Scorsese has never kept his Catholic upbringing a secret. While he has certainly never made Christian films, his lifelong internal struggle of faith has informed his work throughout his now 50 year career as a filmmaker. It is most overt in works such as Mean Streets, The Last Temptation of Christ, and Gangs of New York. But it is such a part of him that his films that don’t have at least a small piece of Christian iconography are notable for the absence of it. He is probably the only mainstream filmmaker of which that can be said. Now with Silence, Scorsese takes an unflinching look into what it means to truly be a follower of Christ under the harshest of circumstances.

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Several times throughout Hidden Figures, one of the film’s three protagonists- African-American women working at NASA in the early 1960s- will walk into a room, and dozens of white co-workers will turn to look, very surprised at who they see. Some of them look skeptical, some alarmed, some distrustful, and others still, are clearly upset. While this could have become a heavy-handed visual to repeat so many times, it quietly becomes an interesting thematic idea which ties into a claim one of the three women makes during the film. The idea of how important it is to be first. This was true of the space race between the United States and the Soviet Union and it was true for the women working for their opportunity to be a part of that race. What these women find is that the first one through the door isn’t always welcome there. The first is often greeted with hostility or incredulity. To be accepted, the first can’t merely be competent. The first has to be great.

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If his first two features are any indicator, Damien Chazelle really wants all of us to love jazz. We may be indifferent to it- or possibly even hate it- now, but with 2014’s Whiplash and now his musical La La Land, Chazelle appears to be making that his life’s work. Whether or not he reaches his ultimate goal, as long as he keeps making films at the level of his first two, he is certainly achieving something special.

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Tom Ford had long been a highly successful fashion designer when in 2005, at the age of 43, he chose to start his own film production company. Four years later he made his directorial debut with the sorrowful character study A Single Man. While it’s no surprise the film was visually striking, what was most impressive was the subtlety, sensitivity, and focus on character that he displayed in his first feature.

Now, seven years later, Ford has made his second film, Nocturnal Animals. Given Ford’s background and ongoing career success in fashion, the fact that he was returning to the director’s chair after such a lengthy hiatus suggested that he wasn’t just making a movie to pay the bills or because filmmaking is just in his blood. He didn’t just have a story to tell, he had a story he needed to tell. At first, it is unclear as to why he or anyone else would want to tell this story (stories, really). But after a frankly bizarre opening credits sequence and the initial sense that the stories unfolding before us will be deeply unpleasant, Nocturnal Animals ultimately becomes an experience that gets into your head, under your skin, and that stays with you.

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We all have our Christmas movie staples. It’s a Wonderful Life, White Christmas, Love Actually, any version of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. We also love our favorite genre films that happen to take place at Christmas. Die Hard, Gremlins, anything with Shane Black’s name on it. But each year I love to find other Christmas gems I haven’t seen before and occasionally they make their way into the rotation. I first watched the 1942 comedy The Man Who Came to Dinner five years ago and now I can’t imagine Christmastime without it.

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While it would be unfair to ask any film to be on par with one of the greatest ever made, when a movie chooses to open its story in 1942 Casablanca, it’s going to have a lot to live up to. While Allied boasts Brad Pitt and Marion Cotillard as its leads, a screenplay by Steven Knight (Locke), and direction by Robert Zemeckis, it’s no surprise that it is not in the same league as Michael Curtiz’s Casablanca.

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First contact with alien races has been depicted in many different ways through the history of science fiction. Some stories are about invasions, others offer hope of friendship with far away worlds, but always there is uncertainty and at least some degree of fear for the characters in their forever changed universe. Arrival doesn’t put all of its cards on the table right away in that regard but it does engage the heart as well as the head throughout, which is always welcome.

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