Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised) Review

Summer of Soul 

(…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)

Dir: Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson

 

For music fans, it's been a long time since we've been to a concert, yet we will never forget the feelings associated with enjoying live music with a group of people. It's an exhilarating, emotional, and enlightening experience watching your favorite band perform your favorite song right in front of you. It doesn't need to be a band you are familiar with to understand how universal and interconnected music can be for people. 

 

Director Ahmir Thompson - better known as Questlove, the drummer for the hip-hop collective The Roots – takes us to a concert, a six-week summer music festival in 1969 known as the Harlem Cultural Festival. Bringing together 300,000 people, primarily Black locals from and near Harlem, the concert hosted some of the era's biggest acts. Musicians like Sly and the Family Stone, Nina Simone, Mahalia Jackson, B.B. King, Glady's Knight and the Pips, Stevie Wonder, Abbey Lincoln and Max Roach, Ray Barretto, and The Staple Singers all participated. In 1969, in the wake of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, this gathering was a significant cultural event during a turbulent and violent time for people of color in America. 

The film begins with an introduction to a young Stevie Wonder, finding the artist right before the hits, awards, and accolades that will change how the world knows the artist now. He plays the piano and then moves to the drums, captivating the audience and the viewer with a brilliant freestyle. It's a beautiful introduction and one that I had never seen before this film. 

How is it possible that this fantastic concert moment from a musical icon has never been seen? Because the concert footage sat in someone's basement for more than 50 years, never arranged for a music festival or fine-tuned for a movie theater release. At the same time that the Harlem Cultural Festival was happening, Woodstock was occurring upstate. When the time came to take all the footage, shot from start to finish by Hal Tulchin, from the Harlem Cultural Festival and turn it into something for the rest of the world to see, potential buyers found no interest in the "Black Woodstock." 

Questlove, with editor Joshua L. Pearson, lovingly compose a documentary that is as much a concert movie as it is a journey through a critical time in history for Black America. The music played explores both diversity and unification, while the concert event displays a new movement in culture, politics, and pride. The term "negro” would be replaced and proudly spoken as "Black," gospel, jazz, and blues music would morph into Motown, and the recognized struggle for Black people would become worldwide. The interlacing of civil rights violence footage, speeches from political activists, and interviews with concert attendees, all of them thankful for the film bringing back a forgotten memory, are impeccably arranged.

 

The musical moments are the icing on the cake. Fun moments like Sly and the Family Stone introducing funk and rock and Ray Barretto making the crowd dance with his bongo-playing. Emotional moments, like the passing of the torch between Mahalia Jackson and Mavis Staples singing Martin Luther King Jr.'s favorite song, "Precious Lord, Take My Hand." The jaw-dropping moment with Nina "The High Priestess of Soul" Simone singing "To Be Young, Gifted, and Black." It's beautiful.

 

Summer of Soul (Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised) is simply one of the best music documentaries ever made.

 

Monte's Rating

5.00 out of 5.00

Werewolves Within Review

Werewolves Within

Dir: Josh Ruben

Starring: Sam Richardson, Milana Vayntrub, Sarah Burns, Michael Chernus and Catherine Curtin

Length: 1 h 37 m

 

 

Synopsis: 

After a proposed pipeline creates divisions within the small town of Beaverfield, and a snowstorm traps its residents together inside the local inn, newly arrived forest ranger Finn (Sam Richardson) and postal worker Cecily (Milana Vayntrub) must try to keep the peace and uncover the truth behind a mysterious creature that has begun terrorizing the community.

 

 

Ladies and gentlemen, not only have I discovered my Halloween costume for 2021 but I have found a video game movie that is actually a well-made film. And I’m not the only one.

On Rotten Tomatoes, the average Tomatometer for a video game movie sits at 26%. Yes, I did the math. Werewolves Within sits at a beautiful, well-deserved 82%.

Once a board game, that Ubisoft then turned into a VR video game, Werewolves Within obviously hints at an Among Us type storyline. But writer Mishna Wolff and director Josh Ruben give the audience so much more than that.

Each unique Beaverfield resident is so well casted and well-acted that as the film progresses, you too end up picking sides and creating your own theories. No one gives anything away. 

Some viewers may be able to pick the monster early on but the story is told in such a quick, fun way, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed. 

Additionally, for presumably a lower budget film, the special effects and makeup are fantastic.

Is this your average werewolf film? No. But it’s comedic horror at its finest. And possibly the best made video game movie. Period.

It’s a limited release in theaters now with a streaming release set for July 2. Do yourself a favor and support your local theater to see this one.

 

Theresa's Rating
4.50 out of 5.00

F9 Review

F9

Dir: Justin Lin

Starring: Vin Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez, Ludacris, Tyrese Gibson, Jordana Brewster, and John Cena

2 h 15 m

 

Souped-up muscle cars, motorcycles, tanks, and even rocket-propelled space mods skid, screech, and swerve over every inch of the screen in director Justin Lin's newest Fast and Furious saga entry, now called F9. 

 

In what has become a superhero movie franchise with indestructible beings who taunt the laws of physics every time action is needed, F9 continues the adventures of Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) and his makeshift family unit. It's escapism cinema at its best, a mindless, messy, overindulgent feat of summer popcorn movie fare. That's the strange beauty of these films; they completely understand what they are doing and have crafted a formula that straddles a line of sincerity and silliness that works to keep the absurdity from becoming overwhelming. 

 

Dom Torreto leads a quiet life, living on the outskirts with Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) and his son Brian. The family understands that their life together will constantly be threatened; their past has forged their present. Dom's past returns in the form of his forsaken brother Jakob (John Cena), who worked on a pit crew with Dom for their family racing business when they were young but now is a skilled assassin. Jakob has a plot for world destruction and domination. Dom and his crew reassemble to save the world and each other.

 

Beyond the cars and explosions, the Fast and Furious franchise has always been about family at its chaotic core. F9 handles this feature most appropriately of all the films, displaying the depths that the word "family" encompasses in this world. And Vin Diesel's character is the figurehead that the world revolves around; the compassionate father, the tough older sibling, the loving husband, Dom embraces all of these parts. 

 

F9 focuses on the familial components with returning familiar faces like Michelle Rodriguez, who returns as the always supportive love interest, Letty. Tyrese Gibson and Chris "Ludacris" Bridges provide comedic banter and amusing commentary on how the crew is invincible, not one scratch after all these dangerous scenarios. F9 plays for fan service, so there are more surprises for dedicated admirers of these films.

 

Most of the actors have played these roles for a few years already, so it's no shocker that the chemistry between the cast is achieved from the beginning moments. However, notably, Vin Diesel's Dom is given more character attention with this film than in the past. Dom's story is sorted out with flashbacks featuring a younger version of the character and introducing Dom's brother Jakob. F9 does a decent job of connecting the dots for the film's narrative arc while also providing connective tissue for the entire franchise. 

 

The narrative components have grown better regarding character composition, but the action and adventure pieces have grown duller. With so many films, each trying to outdo the previous, it's inevitable that the action setpieces would lose some of their awe-inducing moments of spectacle. Whether jumping cars off cliffs, using super-powered magnets to induce destruction, or going to space, which plays more for laughs than thrills, the gimmicks here are simply fine, not fantastic. 

 

It's hard to wonder when these films will end; I guess that depends on the demand from the committed viewers who come out for these movies. While F9 may not win any awards for its brand of storytelling, it does represent an element of why movie theaters mean so much; it's a vessel to escape from reality. 

 

Monte's Rating

2.50 out of 5.00

 

Fast and Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw Review

Fast and Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw

Dir: David Leitch

Starring: Dwayne Johnson, Jason Statham, Idris Elba, Vanessa Kirby, Helen Mirren, and Cliff Curtis

“Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid”. “Thunderbolt and Lightfoot”. “Freebie and the Bean”. “Tango and Cash”. “Turner & Hootch”. 

“Fast and Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw” continues the story tradition of the “buddy” film formula; two unlikely, often complete opposite, characters are somehow forced into cooperation and are whisked into a narrative that involves hijinks, adventure, crime, even romance. We’ve had follies with escaped convicts, escapades with rogue cops, and jaunts that pair human and animal. 

“Hobbs & Shaw”, two foes who first threw each other through windows and broke each other over furniture in “Furious 7” and then continued their fighting while working together in “The Fate of the Furious”, somehow has a little bit of everything thrown into its lofty narrative structure. This is an action movie plain and simple, a summer blockbuster extravaganza with enough “boom” and “bang” to fill two movies. It completely understands how to utilize its action movie super humans to the fullest extent, allowing enough witty one-liners and tree-chopping put downs to fill the spaces between action set pieces with enough humor to distract from the glaring lapses in narrative design. Still, if you’ve seen all eight “Fast and Furious” films, watched all four of the “The Transporter” movies, or watched Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson deliver wrestling moves in World Wrestling Entertainment, you know exactly what to expect from “Hobbs & Shaw”. 

A genetically enhanced bad guy (Idris Elba) with a physics-defying motor cycle is trying to steal a dangerous, world-ending virus but is thwarted by a special agent (Vanessa Kirby) who steals the weapon and retreats into hiding. Lawman Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) and outcast Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham) are called in, unbeknownst to each other, to form a team to save the world. 

Director David Leitch, who helmed “Atomic Blonde” and “Deadpool 2”, understands how to craft an action scene and how to provide that crucial element of fan service. When working with a franchise, “Fast and Furious”, that has built expectations so high for death-defying action scenes, applying the right amount fan service can be a difficult task. “Hobbs & Shaw” hits all the obvious marks, fans get a few explosive car chases, tough guy humorous banter between Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham, and several  bone-crushing fist fights. The film is checking all the boxes. 

But there is unfortunately something missing, the element of coherence and logic in storytelling that has all but been erased from the “Fast and Furious” films as they have grown in action franchise dominance. The element of drama and emotion that fleshes out their over heroic characters which has been replaced with heavy-handed emotional scenes that feel out of place and, in the case of “Hobbs & Shaw”, a “bromance” that plunges awkwardly between moments that are trying to be heartfelt and humorous. This dramatic element succeeds a handful of times when Johnson and Statham work individually with other characters in the film, unfortunately it seldom exists between the two leads. 

“Hobbs & Shaw” highlights the primary expectations fans of the “Fast and Furious” franchise are looking for. The action moves closer to comic book movie status while the humor works on the most superficial terms. For the last film of the 2019 summer blockbuster movie season, “Hobbs & Shaw” is an easy, simple, unremarkable distraction. 

Monte’s Rating

2.25 out of 5.00