The White Tiger (2021)

I'm not gonna waste your time with a half-assed review, because anything I try to write about this movie will turn out to be less than it deserves. 

Insufficient. Completely inadequate. 

There are only two things you need to know about The White Tiger: 

1. Stop whatever you're doing. Now. Pop some corn, crank up the Netflix, and watch this movie. 

2. Adarsh Gourav will be nominated for, and deserve to win, an Academy Award for Best Actor. 

Greenland (2020)

Morgan Freeman's role as President Trumbull appears dramatically reduced. During the credit roll I realized I didn't even notice him in this film. 

The Little Things (2021)

John Lee Hancock's The Little Things is, by any definition, a crime thriller. And it's a good one. Denzel Washington and Rami Malek are convincing as two cops -- polar opposites in style and career arc -- who work together to solve a series of killings in 1990 Los Angeles. 

You remember 1990. Pre-cell phones and social media, the Internet was only emerging, and only those geeky scientists were talking about DNA evidence. 1990 policing was all about putting in the time: stakeouts, walking the pavement, knocking on doors, searching for witnesses. The Little Things portrays that era well. 

(One of my favorite scenes is when one of the detectives relays some important information to his partner by pulling his car off the Interstate and using a call box to make the call. It was the Stone Age of detective work.)

Washington's Joe Deacon is nearing the end of his career, consumed by the events of a case that changed his life and career path. Malek's Jim Baxter is an up-and-coming, buttoned-down cop consumed by putting the bad guys away at all costs. Their obsession to close cases has take a toll on their professional and personal lives. Relationships have soured, their reputations are tainted, and it appears that their mental health is starting to be affected. 

Veteran cop Deacon teaches cop-on-the-rise Baxter that it's the "little things" involved in police work that are important for solving a case. Over the course of the film Baxter also learns that the "little things," too, are important to manage when you step out of bounds to achieve a greater good. 

Washington is terrific as the subdued, humbled, and haunted Joe Deacon. And Malek -- who I've not really warmed up to thus far in movies -- is very good as the flashy and aggressive Jimmy Baxter. Jared Leto, who plays the suspected killer, transforms the movie every time he's on screen. He's both scary and funny, and at different times convinces the audience of his innocence and of his guilt. 

Leto's Albert Sparma will be a character remembered. 

News Of The World (2021)

 A well acted, entertaining movie that shows how Tom Hanks pioneered social media. One small town at a time. 

Tenet (2020)

Here’s a time travel story I understand much more than I understood Tenet. And, this story doesn’t have the audio issues of most Chris Nolan films. 

Come on, be honest. You know Nolan’s films always go this way:

The Protagonist: “We live [BOOM] [BOOM] in a [BOOM] twilight [BOOM] world.”

On The Rocks (2020)

 Bill Murray is a national treasure. Bill Murray paired with Sophia Coppola is movie gold. 

Promising Young Woman (2020)

It seems appropriate that I watched Promising Young Woman on New Year's Eve. 

The night before the year turn is a time of reflection. For hindsight; the lessons gleaned from introspection. Emerald Fennell's dark comedy -- and I'm not entirely comfortable giving it that label -- forces viewers to consider our lifetime of actions and how those action affected others. 

Carey Mulligan stars as Cassie who, in her late 20s, struggles to make progress in life. She's stuck due to tragedy that occurred years earlier when Nina, her best friend and medical school classmate, was raped. Cassie spends most of her time secretly planning and carrying out revenge on sexual predators and those who enable it. Her family and friends know she's stuck and try to support her in getting her life back on track. But she can't move on; she's too obsessed, too focused. 

She's consumed by vengeance. 

Fennell uses subtle color schemes to pull back the curtain on Cassie's psychology. The color of ink she chooses when keeping tally of the men encountered while on the prowl suggests some were treated more harshly than others. She paints each fingernail a different, bright color that suggests whimsey to everyone around her, masking that her attention to her goal is laser focused. And Fennel briefly invokes a scene from Joker to suggest that Cassie has reached an emotional breaking point. 

Promising Young Woman is a very good film. But what makes it great is that it forces the audience to identify in our own lives that line between bad behavior and behavior that happens because "we were just kids and didn't know any better." 

In my life, and perhaps in yours too, that line has moved as we've matured. The problem is how -- not if but how -- our behavior has affected the lives of other people, and what damage we've caused family, friends, and acquaintances caught in our wake.