Tag Archives: Barry Jenkins

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Battle Scarred

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The Fire Inside

by George Wolf

Like James Mangold and the music biopic, director Rachel Morrison is facing the lure of convention with The Fire Inside. Not only is this a sports drama, but the sport is boxing – perhaps the most easily cliched in the genre.

But Morrison has Oscar-winner Barry Jenkins in her corner as screenwriter, and together they give the true story of Claressa “T-Rex” Shields the gritty authenticity she deserves.

Shields rose from a hardscrabble upbringing in Flint, Michigan to twice compete for Olympic gold, but the film earns its spot on the podium from the way it shifts the perspective to opponents she fought outside the ring.

Morrison – making her feature debut after television projects and numerous cinematographer credits on films such as Black Panther and Mudbound – avoids easy button pushing (no training montage!) to mine depth from the relationship between Shields (Ryan Destiny from TV’s Grownish and Star) and her trainer, Jason Crutchfield (the great Brian Tyree Henry).

Both Destiny and Henry and fantastic, and their partnership is rooted in a clash of raw determination and hard-won wisdom that’s inherently easy to root for. Morrison sets us up to sweat right beside them, and to understand the real-life trauma that remains when the sold out crowds head home.

Like any good sports movie, the film gives us plenty to cheer for. But that’s the easy part. It’s a bit more difficult to paint heart, humanity, and the drive to never settle with genuine feeling. But it’s clear that Shields has never backed down from a challenge, and The Fire Inside makes sure we don’t forget that.

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Once and Future

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Mufasa: The Lion King

by Hope Madden

It was hard not to be a little worried about Mufasa: The Lion King. Or maybe it was hard not to be worried about Barry Jenkins. Too few of our genuinely brilliant independent film directors come away from Giant Studio Efforts unscathed. (Quick callback to last week’s JD Chandor debacle, Kraven the Hunter.)

Surely there are some auteurs who are able to leave their unique thumbprints on Disney films. No one comes to mind except Rian Johnson, and man, people really universally loved The Last Jedi, didn’t they?   

Well, Mufasa is far from the flaming disaster of Kraven, thank goodness. And it’s not nearly as polarizingly renegade as Jedi.

Safe. That’s what it is.

It’s also very pretty, if equally needless. The film delivers the origin story of Simba’s father Mufasa, providing—as origin stories so often do—a glimpse into the early development of other beloved and not-so-beloved characters. Young Mufasa (Braelyn Rankins) is separated from his parents and his pride by a great flood. Washed far from home, he’s saved by a bratty little cub called Taka (Theo Somolu). While Taka’s father, the king, will never accept this outsider, Taka’s mother (Thandiwe Newton) takes him in.

As Simba and Taka (voiced as older lions by Aaron Pierre and Kelvin Harrison Jr., respectively) flee a marauding pride led by the villainous Kiros (Mads Mikkelsen, gloriously and effortlessly villainous), they find out what kind of lions they really are.

And here for a while we get a bit of something refreshing. Mufasa’s worthiness to rule is grounded in skills learned from hunting with the females in the pride. And some of these transcend hunting skills: he listens, he’s humble, he’s honest.

The CG animation is mainly very impressive and there are camera movements and choices that feel like new ideas in an old tradition. But tradition wins out, not just in the look but in the storytelling. (Outsiders are bad. It takes a king to lead. Women support the men who make things happen. Lions don’t eat meat?)

The core story is often interrupted by a framing device of an elderly Rafiki (John Kani) telling the story of Mufasa. These breaks are meant to be funny, and sometimes they do generate a chuckle, but they feel more like well-timed bathroom breaks for when the film hits Disney+.

But it’s not bad. Your kids might like it. They won’t likely remember it, but they won’t hate it. It’s perfectly safe.

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Voices of Experience

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If Beale Street Could Talk

by Hope Madden and George Wolf

Writer/director Barry Jenkins follows up his 2016 Oscar-winning masterpiece of a debut, Moonlight, with the ambitious goal of translating the work of a beautifully complex writer to a cinematic narrative. By respecting the material with a stirring commitment to character, If Beale Street Could Talk meets that goal with grace.

Based on the novel by James Baldwin (and the first English-language adaptation of his fiction), the film follows a struggling couple as a means to illustrate the intersecting forms of oppression facing African Americans.

Tish (KiKi Layne in an impressive feature debut) and “Fonny” (Stephan James, from Selma and Race) are a young couple in Harlem who embraces their unexpected pregnancy while struggling to prove Fonny’s innocence in a rape case.

As the surface tension is driven by the potentially dangerous chances Kiki’s mother (Regina King) takes to clear Fonny’s name, smaller, more quiet moments around the neighborhood cement Baldwin’s incisive take on what it means to be black in America.

Baldwin’s writing – a mix of brutal honesty, brilliant clarity and weary outrage – is understandably daunting as a film adaptation. Themes which breathe with life on the page can come to the screen in an awkward rush and land as heavy handed melodrama.

Jenkins, whose early script got the blessing of Baldwin’s estate even before the triumph of Moonlight, brings an elegance to the story which fits comfortably. A poetic camera, authentic characters and tender, fully realized performances—especially from the glorious King—weave together to sing the praises of Baldwin’s prose in hypnotic, and often heartbreaking fashion.

Amid a story of grim realities and American resilience lie bonds of love and family that the film never loses sight of, even in its most sober moments, which may be the most miraculous aspect of If Beale Street Could Talk.

It is a film without illusions, but one that carries the unbowed spirit of its characters on a deeply felt journey that honors its origins.