Capote and Freedomland

Philip Seymour Hoffman deserves an Oscar. That was evident after seeing Capote recently.
The movie follows Truman Capote as he insinuates himself into the lives of people in a small town in Kansas to report on the brutal murder of a family of four in 1959.
Capote has a whiny voice but a big ego, and he sees his literary breakthrough in telling this sordid tale.
Hoffman shows a man who ever so slowly builds a trust between him and one of the convicted murderers over a number of years and who grows to care about him. But he never lets that get in the way of his ultimate ambition. He's using this man as a way to catapult himself into the success he has always pursued.
It's this tension between ambition and compassion that drives the movie as Hoffman peels away the layers of Capote, making you cringe in one instance and sad in another.
The performance also make Freedomland, a searing mediation on race based on the critically-acclaimed novel by Richard Price.
The book is better but the movie does a good job of getting the book's message across.
Julianne Moore plays Brenda, a mother who stumbles into a hospital with bloody hands. She says she has been carjacked. Det. Lorenzo Council, played by Samuel Jackson, waltzes in to interview her.
Only then does she allow that her 4-year-old son is in the backseat of that car.
Brenda is white. The neighborhood she says her son was kidnapped in is black.
Those facts set off a chain reaction, as the largely white police force of Gannon, a neighboring town, descends onto the predominantly black neighborhood of Armstrong.
Residents there are mistreated. Anger grows. And Council becomes increasingly doubtful about Brenda's story.
The script could have been better, but the chemistry between Jackson and Moore is palpable, and Edie Falco, as a parent of a missing child, gives a solid performance.
And the final few scenes with Moore are amazing. It's a performance that keeps your allegiances at bay, for you don't know whether to care for her or to hate her. But you always feel her. What better compliment is there?

Something New

Today I, a 33-year-old black man, walked into a movie theater full of black women who had come to watch Sanaa Lathan fall in love with a white guy in the new movie, Something New.
Considering what a wonder Sanaa Lathan is to behold, it was tough watching her and a white guy get it on. I can say this: Simon Baker is much more handsome than Billy Bob Thorton, with whom the luscious Halle Berry got it on in "Monster's Ball."
But going beyond that superficial stuff, I found Sanaa Hamri's debut a delight to watch, a movie that celebrated love but also took into account the challenges of an interracial romance.
There's a nicely done scene in the middle of the movie in which Lathan's Kenya lashes into Baker's Brian. Brian had a hard day and he doesn't want to hear Kenya complain about the white client who cannot take her seriously because she's black.
Kenya counters that she can't take a break from being black. It's a heart-wrenching and uncomfortable scene but one that feels real.
Also real is the struggle that some single black women have in finding the so-called IBM (Ideal Black Man). One startling statistic that starts off the movie is that 42.4 percent of black women have never been married.
It is a reality that Kenya, as a successful black woman, is acutely aware of, and the introduction of Brian into her life forces her to examine her deeply-held dreams and beliefs (such as her preference for black men).
What happens when what we want in life is changed and challenged by our circumstances. What if what we want limits what we could have, ostensibly love.
The weakness in the movie, however, comes in the late introduction of the Ideal Black Man, as portrayed by Blair Underwood. It's the movie's attempt at a fair balance to show that Kenya does have viable options. But it's clear from the get-go that Blair's character is not the right man for her; Brian is.
Near the end is when the movie devolves into the predictability of romance comedies, where our hero or heroine realizes that he or she has made a horrible mistake. Kenya finally realizes that Brian is her man.
And everyone lives happily ever after.
But the journey to that cliched moment is worth taking. Chemistry, smart dialogue and an often funny and intelligent script.
Yeah, it's something new.