Boys State (AppleTV+, 2020)

 I'm an alumnus of Boys State. 

The 1982 American Legion Mountaineer Boys State, to be precise, held each summer at Jackson's Mill, in Lewis County, West Virginia.  The week-long camp where highs school juniors -- identified as leaders in our respective schools and communities -- were sent each summer to learn about government. 

(And, how to socialize with hundreds of other boys we'd never met until we were assigned randomly to bunk and shower with them.)

At my age, 1982 is a bit of a blur. I recall spending a lot of my experience marching. We who lived in Marion Cabin were more than slightly rebellious; we snuck out at night to hoist jock straps up the flagpole so they'd be saluted  beside Old Glory each morning, and generally believed most house rules were simply suggestions. Our misbehavior resulted resulted in pre-dawn marching designed to break our will. 

It didn't. 

Many of my 39-year-old memories were awakened while watching Boys State, the documentary in which Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine chronicle the experiences of 1,000 17-year-olds as they formed a representative government at the 2018 Texas Boys State. I was reminded that  in 1982 my 17-year old self discovered the world is more complicated than I previously thought, and recognized that it was the loudest among us who usually won the elections. Most of the boys central to Boys State are brighter and more aware than I was at their age. Some are gifted with true insight; others only think they are. 

This documentary shows that  -- like the real USA legislative process -- loud continues to win elections, but insight and authenticity wins respect. 

Remember the name Steven Garza. In a decade he will be passing real legislation for all of us.

We can only hope.

  

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. 

Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (Netflix, 2020)

Set in Chicago in the 1920s, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom allows the audience to eavesdrop on a group of African American musicians as they prepare to record a song that will make a lot of money for some white people. 

We hang out in the basement and meet the band -- Cutler, Toledo, Levee, and Slow Drag -- as they talk about their past experiences and their dreams of the future. We watch Ma Rainey use the only power she has -- withholding her singing voice -- to bully her white managers until she get what she wants. And we watch those managers do her bidding, no matter how much she frustrates them, because they know a little frustration now will lead to a big payday for them later. 

Even though this movie is set in the 1920s and is based on a play written by August Wilson more than 35 years ago, the themes explored strongly resonate today. Despite a growing diversity in our society, whites today hold power and the privilege that comes with it. If black people have some power to wield, it's because whites recognized that it benefited whites and allowed it to happen. 

Temporarily. 

The audience witness the characters in Black Bottom recognize that truth, and sympathize with each as he or she struggles to deal with it. 

Viola Davis is wonderful in the supporting role of Ma Rainey. Ma's hard to like -- she's a bully, and she comes off as selfish and arrogant. But Davis pulls back the curtain to let the audience in on how and why she behaves that way, which makes her relatable to the viewer. The star of the film is Chadwick Boseman. His turn as Levee is his final performance before dying from colon cancer in August, 2020. 

This role may well have been his finest. 

Levee is ambitious but filled with rage about how he's treated in a white majority society. He has a right to be: he's lived a hard 32 years of second class citizenry, and he's seen more than his share of race-based violence and tragedy. Unlike Ma, who makes a lot of money for white men in the recording business, Levee has no power. The rage he feels about his lack of standing grows until it explodes in the next-to-last scene of the movie.

Black Bottom explores the desire for equality and opportunity in our American society. Ma weaponizes it so that she doesn't lose it. Others keep their heads down and adopt an attitude of "that's just the way it is," so that they can earn a living. Some act out against that reality, and suffer tragedy as a result.

Ma Rainey's Black Bottom is a well crafted, well acted drama that will get some Oscar buzz whenever the post-pandemic Oscar buzz happens. And the buzz will be well deserved. 

Wonder Woman 1984 (2020)

Joe Walsh -- the legendary rock guitarist, not the less-than-legendary former congressman -- wrote the song "Decades," in the early 1990s. His song was a reflection on each decade of the 20th century, with highlights about the good and the bad that happened in each. 

His comment on the 1980s? "The 80s were a waste of time." Period. He called it and moved on. 

He was right. 

The 1980s, in the US of A at least, was a decade of greed and selfishness. "Greed, for lack of a better word, is good," said Gordon Gekko in Wall Street. And an entire generation ate that shit up. We wanted to look good, feel good, and have more tomorrow than we had today. Truth became less important than  acquisition. And we talked ourselves into believing that was OK because, well . . . that perspective allowed us to focus on getting more stuff. 

Wonder Woman 1984 is commentary on that lifestyle. The movie points out the obsession we had way-back-when with how we look, what we have, and how we're willing to embrace dishonesty to achieve our desires. WW84 is a morality play that teaches us the quest to achieve our greatest wish typically harms other people. And when that wish is finally fulfilled it often comes at a great cost to who we are as individuals and as a society. 

That's the best part of Wonder Woman 1984.

The movie has a lot of problems that can't be ignored: the special effects are campy and the plot is thin. The greatest blunder, in my opinion, was in the presentation of Maxwell Lord. The movie character Maxwell Lord bears no resemblance to the DC comic Maxwell Lord. While that inconsistency can be frustrating to fanboys, in this case the movie version of Lord is simply over-the-top goofy. 

That hurts the movie because he's too big a loser to be taken seriously. 

Gal Godat is fine as the super-heroine, and Chris Pine lends a lot to the movie. But it's Kristen Wiig who is the breakout star of this flick. She has to show tremendous range to make her Barbara Minerva work, and she pulls it off well. 

The movie answers the long asked question: "Can Wonder woman fly?" And, there's a fun mid-credit scene you'll want to stick around for.