Saturday, October 25, 2008

The Secret Life of Bees


There is a quiet power to The Secret Life of Bees that sometimes threatens to spill over into over-the-top melodrama and pure sappiness.

It doesn't and that is a credit to the performances of the all-star cast anchored by rapper/actress Queen Latifah and Dakota Fanning, who is growing up to become a fine actress.

The movie, directed by Gina Prince Bythewood, is based on the novel by Sue Monk Kidd. The story is set in South Carolina in the 1960s when blacks were still fighting for their citizenship rights.

Fanning plays Lily Owens, a 14-year-old white girl carrying a dark secret who loves to write and is fascinated by the bees that swirl into her room one night.

Her father is abusive to her and crippled by the tragic loss of his wife years ago. Owens yearns to get away, and after Rosaleen, the black housekeeper played by Jennifer Hudson, is beaten and then arrested for trying to vote, Lily and Rosaleen run away to a small South Carolina town that is somehow connected to Lily's mother.

In that town, they find the Boatwright sisters, three black women who run a successful honey-making business. August Boatwright (Queen Latifah) is the oldest sister, followed by June (a feisty Alicia Keys), a civil-rights activist too serious for love, and May (Sophie Okonedo) who feels so deeply that she has built a wailing wall outside the house to cry her blues away.

The sisters offer a welcoming home in which Lily and Rosaleen can heal and find comfort. And August is the one who becomes a deep well of knowledge for Lily who must finally deal with the pain she has buried for so long.

Nothing really comes as a surprise in this movie. Even the death of a major character later in the movie isn't that much of a shock.

But in the end, it doesn't matter. Strong performances by all help keep the sappiness at bay, especially Queen Latifah, who could have easily allowed her character to fall into a stereotypical black mammy. She instead brings a complexity to her role. As does Alicia Keys, who gives June some layers as a woman too focused to focus on the fact that she needs love in her life.

Okonedo has the hardest job of all but finds the balance between being Sean Penn in I Am Sam and Dustin Hoffman in Rainman. She manages to maintain May's dignity and grace in a role that could have, in other hands, dispensed with both.

And the ending is just right, a wonderful high note in a movie that manages not to fall flat.

Monday, October 13, 2008

Miracle at St. Anna


Spike Lee is not subtle. His movies yell, pound you over the head to get your attention. If you wonder why, pick up Ralph Wiley's Why Black People Tend To Shout.

His intention is to provoke and he has done it in compelling ways, from Do The Right Thing to his most commercial outing, Inside Man. And Miracle at St. Anna is no different.

This story of an all-black Army unit fighting in Italy during World War II begins with an old man sitting in his apartment watching John Wayne in the movie, The Longest Day. Anger is sketched out in the wrinkles of his face as he quietly says, "We fought for this country too."

That sentiment is the theme that runs through this movie, an acknowledgement that black men sacrificed their lives for a country that refused to treat them as U.S. citizens.

A few minutes later, that old man, working in New York at a post office, inexplicably shoots another man. In his apartment is the head of a statute in Italy that's been missing since 1944.

And it is to this time that we are taken, where the old man is now a young Cpl. Hector Negron fighting as part of the all-black 92nd Infantry Division in Italy. The mystery of that statute head and why he shot that man will be solved by going back in time.

In 1944, alongside Negron is Sgt. Bishop Cummings (Michael Ealy), 2nd Staff Sgt. Aubrey Stamps (Derek Luke) and Private First Class Sam Train (Omar Benson Miller).

The four men soon find themselves trapped in an Italian village even as German forces plan a secret counterattack. Train forges a special relationship with a young boy he finds in a barn. And Cummings and Stamps boil over how to deal with an America that treats Germans better than black Americans as well as fight over the affections of an Italian woman.

Lee packs a lot into the film and sometimes the effort pays off. Especially poignant are the burgeoning relationship between the boy, Angelo, and Train.

And Lee gets at in powerful ways how ironic it is that black Americans feel freer in Italy than they do in their own country. No more is that hit home than in a scene in Louisian where the soldiers come to get something to eat and then are refused, even as German prisoners are given top-shelf service. The racism is of the in-your-face variety and it stings.

But this movie is not just about racism. It is about the tragedy of war and the humanity that sometimes rises out of that muck. We see evil in its worst form at the massacre at St. Anna where Nazi soldiers shot men, women and children begging for their lives.

Yet we also see compassion and the power of human kindness in a harsh world of betrayal and brutality.

There is a rough beauty in this film anchored by Lee's powerful direction, a more than appropriate score and wonderfully rendered cinematography.

Unfortunately, Lee may have been too ambitious, which is not a bad thing if you can hold your movie together. That doesn't happen. The film falls apart in the later half with an over-the-top ending, sentimental in ways Lee has never been and ripped from the much better The Shawshank Redemption. Even worse, having Stamps and Cummings fight over a woman doesn't reveal anything about their characters but only serves to distract from the seriousness of the movie.

Here, Lee forgets the simple power of a story beautifully told. He forgets to pull back.

But that's Lee, never suble, always yelling, resulting in a film that's sometimes too noisy for its own good.

Sunday, October 05, 2008

Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist


Michael Cera may become the teenage romantic comedy hero of a new generation, possessing a sweet geeky charm no woman can apparently resist.

Or at least the women in the last few movies he's appeared in, including the wildly successful Juno, which also made Ellen Page a star.

In Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, he plays Nick, who plays in a band called The Jerkoffs. He makes mix CDs for his cheating girlfriend that he continues to pine after to the disgust of his fellow bandmates, who know he deserves someone better.

And someone better comes in the form of Norah, played by Kat Dennings, who scoops up Nick's mix CDs after his girlfriend throws them away.

As you can tell by the title, Nick and Norah are destined for each other. But their journey of love is filled with all kinds of wacky obstacles as they make their way to see fav band Where's Fluffy, which is playing somewhere that night.

First, though, Norah and Nick must find Norah's friend, Caroline (played by Ari Graynor), a perpetual drunk who has what we might tactfully call a special attachment to her gum. Her alcohol-fueled adventures are some of the most hilarious and outrageous and most enjoyable parts of this movie, and Graynor goes all out in her role, never pulling back regardless of how horrible she ends up looking. That is the essence of any comic actor.

Michael Cera and Kat Dennings display a cute chemistry toward each other, and when they finally do figure out how they feel about each other, it seems real, not forced, not fake.

This is a sweet movie without being an overly cheesy, puke-fest of romantic comedy cliche. And it doesn't hurt that the music rocks.