Catching Up With 2023

So, I was planning to send this out last week but then there was a mass shooting event very close to where I live and the schools were shut down for two days and I had to explain to my kindergartner and 11-year-old why we couldn’t go anywhere, not even the woods behind our house. It was very tense around here for a few days and now we’re living in the emotional aftermath. My heart goes out to all the grieving families in Lewiston. Peace and love to all. Ban assault weapons.

Now, let’s awkwardly pivot to the 2023 movies that I caught up with earlier this month . . .

Sister Act

Polite Society (2023)
Written & Directed by Nida Manzoor
1 hour 44 minutes; Streaming on Amazon Prime

I heard good things about this action/comedy when it was released in the spring but I was a bit confused about what it was, exactly, and never got around to watching it. Now that I’ve seen it, I understand my confusion–the mix of genres is wild: a marriage plot meets action thriller meets teenage heist—with a dash of sci-fi and family drama thrown in. Somehow it all works. Set in London, sisters Lena and Ria are part of a tight-knit Muslim community, the “polite society” of the title. But they are both rebels of a kind. Lena is an art school drop out while Ria, still in high school, aspires to be a stunt woman. They are each other’s best friends until Lena is cajoled by her parents to enter an arranged marriage with a wealthy doctor. Ria is convinced this is a terrible match and goes to great lengths to prove it. Is she right or is she just not willing to let her sister move on with her life? IMDB * REVIEW * TRAILER

Learning to Fight

Never Be A Punching Bag For Nobody (2023)
Directed by Naomi Yang
1 hour 5 minutes; Streaming on Tubi (with ads), VOD $0.99

Indie film musician Naomi Yang directs and narrates this documentary about how she became obsessed with boxing after a chance stop at a Bartolo’s Boxing Gym in East Boston. As Yang gets to know the gym’s owner and head coach, Sal Bartolo, Jr., she also learns about the neighborhood of Winthrop, where the gym is located. Known for its proximity to Logan Airport, Yang discovers that Winthrop has a history of activism, as residents protested against noise and air pollution from the airplanes. She weaves together exploits of local boxers with stories of kitchen-table organizing, revealing the community’s fighting spirit. To this she adds her own reflections on why she found herself so drawn to boxing and how it helped her to confront her own passivity and defense mechanisms. IMDB * INTERVIEW * TRAILER

Jamie, Jurnee, and Tommy Lee

The Burial (2023)
Directed by Maggie Betts
Written by Doug Wright, Maggie Betts, and Jonathan Harr
2 hours 6 minutes; Streaming on Amazon Prime

I love a good courtroom drama and this movie delivers. The case in question is a contract dispute between a nearly bankrupt Mississippi funeral home director and a Canadian insurance broker/death care provider. Sounds thrilling, I know! But this case is about so much more than the contract in question. Turns out there is a lot of hidden racism in the funeral industry, and the trial turns out to be more dramatic than anyone involved initially guesses. Jamie Foxx and Tommy Lee Jones anchor the film, with Jones as the downtrodden funeral director and Foxx as the flashy out-of-town lawyer. Jurnee Smollett is the brilliant young trial lawyer hired to defend the corporate baddies. Based on a true story, it’s set in the early nineties, with great needle drops from that era. IMDB * REVIEW * TRAILER

Adapted from FBI Transcripts

Reality (2023)
Directed by Tina Satter
Written by Tina Satter and James Paul Dallas
1 hour 23 minutes; Streaming on Max

Technically, Reality is a narrative film, an adaptation of writer/director Tina Satter’s play Is This A Room. But it has documentary elements, as it is based on true events, telling the story of Reality Winner, a translator who leaked top-secret documents from the NSA in 2017. The film dramatizes the FBI’s interrogation of Winner, using the actual transcripts from the day of her capture and allowing the events to unfold in something close to real time. The FBI’s tactics are not anything like what is normally depicted in film and TV, and the banality of their initial exchanges is oddly charged. It feels real, but it isn’t, yet it is, in a way—it’s unlike anything I’ve seen before. The whole thing is incredibly tense, and unexpectedly strange as the film takes a magnifying glass to everyday speech. IMDB * REVIEW * TRAILER

For the Romantic at Heart

Emily (2023)
Written and Directed by Frances O’Connor
2 hours 10 minutes; Streaming Paramount +/Showtime or VOD $3.99

Slate’s chief book critic, Laura Miller, found this Brontë biopic ridiculous and intellectually unserious, full of emo cottage core cliches but. . . I guess I kind of like emo cottage core cliches? If you know anything about the real Emily, you’re probably going to feel like Miller, but if like me, you somehow never read Wuthering Heights, then you might be happy to go along with this swooning romance. What I loved most about Emily was the lead actress, Emma Mackie. She looks like she has a wonderful secret that she’s always just about to tell you. Other things I liked: the moody color palette, the moorland (obviously), the frocks and bonnets, and the camaraderie between Emily and her bad-seed brother, Bramwell. IMDB * REVIEW * TRAILER