The Academy Awards pushed back their eligibility calendar; so all of the February is beginning to feel like the new December. After a bit of a winter doldrums, this weekend sees several high-profile new releases covered earlier in the year; so we’re re-running some lightly edited coverage below:
Minari (2020 | USA | 115 minutes | Lee Isaac Chung).
Lee Isaac Chung’s gentle and humane story of a 1980s American family who moves to an unfamiliar setting as part of a father’s career ambitions arrives in virtual wide release this weekend via a partnership between A24 and local arthouses (this link supports SIFF) Steven Yeun plays a devoted father who’s been recruited to an Arkansas factory for his prowess in determining the sex of baby chickens. But his true motivation in making the journey from California, though, is to start his own farm growing traditional Korean vegetables not widely available in the South. When the family station wagon pulls up to their new home — a trailer propped up on cinder blocks in the middle of uncultivated acres — his wife (Han Ye-ri) is flabbergasted, often hilariously, by this new living situation and her husband’s surprising interpretation of the “garden” that he promised. The incredibly cute kids (Alan Kim and Noel Kate), making sense of their new surroundings, will steal your heart, but when Youn Yuh-jung shows up as their grandmother she steals the show.
One of my personal favorites of 2020 and the most-nominated film among the Seattle Film Critics Society; so it’s no surprise that limited tickets are going fast.
Judas and the Black Messiah (2020 | USA | 126 minutes | Shaka King)
Shaka King hops on the surprising 2020 trend of revisiting the turbulent years of the late 1960s with a tremendous piece of filmmaking that makes for an interesting companion piece to Mangrove and Trial of the Chicago Seven. In this multifaceted docudrama about the rise of the Black Panthers in Chicago and the FBI’s dogged attempts to undermine it, King faces the enviable problem of having too many talented actors and a magnetically compelling historical figure that it almost stumbles by not surrendering the whole damned movie to Daniel Kaluuya’s electric performance as chairman Fred Hampton. Dominique Fishback brings strength and grounded sensitivity to Hampton’s girlfriend Deborah Johnson; Jesse Plemmons turns in a strong performance as an FBI agent who’s convinced that discrediting the Panthers is the right step toward racial reconciliation; and Martin Sheen chews through any scenery in sight to remind us that J. Edgar Hoover was a raving racist lunatic. As FBI informant William O’Neal, Lakeith Stanfield technically has the title role and is never not interesting to watch. His emotional journey from recruitment, nervously negotiating meetings with his handler, evading detection, and the struggles withe the contradictions of identifying with the cause he’s working to dismantle is a fascinating one, but even his nervy portrayal of this historical cipher often feels like it distracts from the larger narrative of the unfolding tragedy looming over Hampton.
It makes a simultaneous debut in theaters and on HBOmax this weekend.
Some movie theaters have re-opened in Seattle at reduced capacity and are showing new releases (including fresh-from-Sundance films like Land and The World To Come) , but with test positivity in King County still around 5%, an evening at the cinema is still a decision that requires each of us to weigh our own risk-reward tolerance. While that’s an option; so are virtual releases from local independent theaters.
For instance, The Grand Illusion maintains an eclectic catalog of online options including Identifying Features (a Sundance 2020 audience favorite) as well as A Glitch in the Matrix (a mind-bending documentary about people convinced we’re living in a simulation, which made a splash at this year’s festival).
For the February installation of their Reel Black film appreciation series , SIFF hosts a virtual class “Barry Jenkins and Black Skin in Color” taught by Isabella Price and focusing on Moonlight and If Beale Street Could Talk on February 16th.
Although it doesn’t start until next week, this might be a good time to start scoping out the Children’s Film Festival Seattle, organized around the theme of “Love and Light”. It opens next Thursday and runs through February 28 via Northwest Film Festival.