David R. Walker

Archive for the ‘Netflix Film’ Category

All Quiet on the Western Front

Director: Edward Berger

Cast: Felix Kammerer, Albrecht Schuch, Daniel Bruhl, Devid Striesow, Edin Hasanovic, Michael Witterborn, Sebastian Hulk, Anton von Lucke, Aaron Hilmer

Running time: 2 hours and 28 minutes

Film Rating: 8 out of 10

This film is only available on Netflix

Every year on the 11^th November at 11h00, England and some European countries mark Armistice Day which is when World War 1 ended but the significance of such an hour on such a day is clearly and brutally illustrated in director Edward Berger’s brilliant German anti-war film All Quiet on the Western Front, a 2022 remake of the 1930 film which won a Best Picture Oscar then.

This film is based on the famous German novel of the same name written by German soldier and World War I survivor Erich Maria Remarque published in 1929. The 2022 version has been nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film.

If viewers love a really brilliant war film, then All Quiet on the Western Front is highly recommended viewing, an epic film masterfully directed by Edward Berger and featuring an entirely German and Austrian cast including Felix Kammerer as the main character Paul Baumer, a young and idealistic German teenager who like his compatriots at school get pulled into the blind patriotism of German war fever as the German army is battling the French in the incredibly brutal trench warfare on the Western Front, the border between Germany and France. For complete authenticity watch this film in German with English subtitles.

To counterpoint all the violence, horror and utter bloodshed, the narrative also focuses on the diplomatic mission led by Germany to sue for peace with the French, a task given to diplomat Matthias Erzberger wonderfully played by Golden Globe nominee Daniel Bruhl (Rush). The more famous Daniel Bruhl (Inglourious Basterds, 7 Days in Entebbe, Woman in Gold) also served as executive producer of All Quiet on the Western Front and was instrumental on getting this 21^st century version of the film made and premiered at the prestigious Toronto International Film Festival in September 2022.

As the hours approach for the ceasefire, a bloodthirsty general is determined to continue fighting the French right up until the last minute before the armistice takes effect, much to the detriment of the 78^th Infantry Reserve Regiment in which Paul Baumer is part of along with his fellow soldiers Kat played by Albrecht Schuch, Kropp played by Aaron Hilmer and Tjaden played by Bosnian actor Edin Hasanovic. Collectively they represent the Iron Youth of Germany.

All Quiet on the Western Front, like similar war films including Sam Mendes’s brilliant 1917 and Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan is a gritty, stark and bloody war film about the meaninglessness of trench warfare and the unnecessary deaths of over 3 million people, many of them young men.

Beautifully shot and extremely captivating, All Quiet on The Western Front gets a film rating of 8 out of 10 and is highly recommended viewing. It’s a fascinating anti-war film about the brutalities of close combat.

Glass Onion: a Knives Out Mystery

Director: Rian Johnson

Cast: Daniel Craig, Kate Hudson, Edward Norton, Dave Bautista, Janelle Monae, Kathryn Hahn, Leslie Odon Jr, Ethan Hawke, Hugh Grant, Jessica Henwick

Running Time: 2 hours and 20 minutes

Film Rating: 7.5 out of 10

Please note this film is only available on Netflix

Former Bond star Daniel Craig reprises his role as the flamboyant Southern detective Benoit Blanc in the extravagant and complex sequel to the 2019 hit Knives Out this time featuring an entirely new cast and the location moving to a secluded island in Greece.

Writer and director Rian Johnson who garnered an Oscar nomination for the original Knives Out in 2019, has written an even more fascinating sequel surrounding the mysterious tech billionaire Miles Bron wonderfully played with a panache bordering on narcissism by triple Oscar nominee Edward Norton (Primal Fear, American History X, Birdman)  who organizes a murder mystery weekend and jets in a couple of his closest friends from America following a complex invitation which he sends to all of them in midst of the Covid19 Pandemic in May 2020.

Glass Onion, a Knives Out Mystery is a contemporary who dunnit featuring a stellar cast of 40 and 50 year old stars, a sort of revamped Agatha Christie with all the modern 21^st century twists. Bron’s group of his closest friends include fashion model Birdie Jay played by Oscar nominee Kate Hudson (Almost Famous), muscle man Duke Cody played by Dave Bautista, Tech company co-founder Andi Brand superbly played by Janelle Monae who deserves an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting actress and Oscar nominee Leslie Odom Jr (One Night in Miami).

All the friends gather on Bron’s private island in Greece where an elaborate and hi tech mansion rests complete with an array of interesting alcoves including a Glass Onion and a sports car on the roof. Bron announces to the guests that there is a murder mystery game in which he is the murder victim and they are all suspects. As the first night progresses amidst lots of drinks in fancy glasses, things go curiously awry when one of the guests is killed and Benoit Blanc has his hands full trying to solve the complex murder while assisting an associate who hired him earlier to solve a previous murder.

The Glass Onion is a delicious conundrum, a problem to be solved, a puzzle to be figured out, an onion to be peeled back layer by layer as audiences need to figure out who the real killer is.

Director Rian Johnson throws lots of glittering clues at the audience in the first half of the film, but Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery is an extravagant and lavish murder mystery set in 2020 featuring a superb ensemble cast and an immaculate performance by Daniel Craig as the fashionable Southern detective who eventually solves the riddle.

For those that enjoy a fabulous murder mystery, catch the entertaining Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery which gets a film rating of 7.5 out of 10.

Lady Chatterley’s Lover

Director: Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre

Cast: Emma Corrin, Jack O’Donnell, Matthew Duckett, Joely Richardson, Faye Marsay, Ella Hunt

Running Time: 2 hours and 6 minutes

Please note this film is only available on Netflix

When celebrated British novelist D. H. Lawrence first published his controversial novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover in 1928, almost 100 years ago, it was immediately banned for indecency and immorality. The novel was only unbanned in 1960.

This new steamy film adaptation of the infamous novel is directed by French director Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre and stars The Crown actress Emma Corrin as Lady Chatterley and Jack O’Connell (Unbroken, Tulip Fever) as the rough and toned gamekeeper Oliver Mellors, a typical Derbyshire working class man.

Set in England between the World Wars, Lady Chatterley’s Lover tells the story of a young woman who marries into Landed gentry her husband Clifford Chatterley wonderfully played by Matthew Duckett. After the First World War, Lord Chatterley returns to his country estate, wealthy but crippled, left a paraplegic from being severely injured in the war. Obviously his injuries include him not being able to produce an heir to his estate, which is always vital for the continuance of the estate.

As this young and wealthy couple navigate their new situation, Clifford basically gives Connie permission to have an affair with another man, although he did not expect her to fall so passionately in love with the groundsman Mellors played with a brutish physicality by O’Connell who delivers his best onscreen work yet.

From the way the affair begins, The Mustang director Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre already hints to the audience that this is going to be steamy and explicit, as the sexually frustrated Lady Chatterley expertly played by Emma Corrin first glimpses Mellors stark naked in an outdoor shower. Voyeurism and desire make for an enticing mix.

Lady Chatterley breaks all the social laws that govern strict separation between the classes in 1920’s Britain, particularly between the Landed gentry and the working class and finds an unlikely ally in Clifford Chatterley’s carer Mrs Bolton superbly played by Joely Richardson (The Patriot, Event Horizon, Red Sparrow).

As Clifford Chatterley becomes increasingly frustrated, his wife Lady Chatterley becomes increasingly fulfilled as she embarks on a passionate affair with Mellors often having trysts in the open or in his shed, close to where the other estate workers live. Naturally gossip amongst the servants ensue and soon Clifford is humiliated while Lady Chatterley departs for Venice realizing that she has to make a critical choice.

What makes Lady Chatterley’s Lover so significant is that as a romantic story it charts the sexual awakening of a young woman in which she makes the pivotal decisions, whether to stay with her husband or leave, whether to forgo her reputation and find independent love or to conform in a vicious upper class social world in which married woman have little room for manoeuvre.

Lady Chatterley’s Lover is beautifully filmed and extremely well-acted and brilliantly charts a forbidden love affair of a woman that would become the Gamekeeper’s Girl. Sexually explicit and gloriously elegant, Lady Chatterley’s Lover gets a film rating of 8 out of 10 and is highly recommended viewing.

tick, tick, BOOM!

Director: Lin-Manuel Miranda

Cast: Andrew Garfield, Alexandra Shipp, Vanessa Hudgens, Judith Light, Bradley Whitford, Ben Levi-Ross, Robin de Jesus, Lin-Manuel Miranda

Running time: 1 hour 55 minutes

Film Rating: 7.5 out of 10

This film is only available to watch on the Netflix streaming service

Oscar nominee Andrew Garfield (Hacksaw Ridge) takes on the role of struggling theatrical composer Jonathan Larson in director Lin-Manuel Miranda’s fascinating portrayal of his brief but explosive career in the musical film tick, tick, Boom!

Jonathan Larson’s most successful musical was a contemporary rendition of Puccini’s 1896 Opera La Boheme which become famously known as Rent. Rent, the Musical explored all the struggles of a group of young artists in New York City in the mid 1990’s amidst the worst of the AIDS crisis, and become one of the longest Broadway hit musicals running before it finally closed in 2008, grossing over $280 million in ticket sales.

Unfortunately the young and extremely talented Jonathan Larson would not see the fruits of his labour and the dynamic success of the musical he created.

As a musical film, tick, tick, Boom! Is fascinating to watch and actor turned director Lin-Manuel Miranda focuses more on the musical genius of Jonathan Larson and less on his actual life. Many of the key scenes in the film, particularly the countless arguments between Larson expertly played with a frenetic energy by Andrew Garfield and his girlfriend Susan played by Alexandra Shipp (Love, Simon; X-Men: Apocalypse) are interrupted by Larson breaking out into song which detracts from the emotional core of the film.

It is only in the second half of tick, tick, Boom! that director Lin-Manuel Miranda finds his feet and grounds the chaotic first half in a heart wrenching reality of struggling artists living in New York City battling to make ends meet amidst rejection, high rents and busking at the Moondance Diner.

In between all their struggles is the omniscient threat of extinction as the looming 1980’s and 1990’s AIDS crisis threatened to kill off most of the artistic community in New York prior to the invention of life-saving medication at the beginning of the 21^st century. 

As a biographical story, tick, tick, Boom! does suffer from an overemphasis on song and dance while neglecting the real struggles that both gay and straight artists went through to make it in America’s toughest city: New York during the early 1990’s.

Fortunately, Andrew Garfield’s brilliant performance as Jonathan Larson holds this film together balanced by some extraordinary supporting roles including Judith Light as his tough as nails theatrical agent Rosa Stevens and Larson’s best friend, the gay advertising executive Michael wonderfully played with a brittle flamboyance by Robin de Jesus (The Boys in the Band).

Viewers need to know the backstory of Rent, the musical and do some research on Jonathan Larson before watching tick, tick, Boom as this film does not operate as a conventional biography and might be confusing to those not familiar with the context.

Tick, tick, Boom! gets a film rating of 7.5 out of 10 and is recommended for those that enjoy a historical slice of American musical theatre from over 30 years ago.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Larson

Don’t Look Up

Director: Adam McKay

Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Meryl Streep, Cate Blanchett, Tyler Perry, Jonah Hill, Timothee Chalamet, Mark Rylance, Melanie Lynskey, Ron Perlman, Ariana Grande, Himesh Patel

Film Rating 5.5 out of 10

Running Time: 2 hours and 18 minutes

This film is only available to watch on the Netflix streaming service.

Similar to the absolutely disastrous 2019 film Cats in which The Danish Girl director Tom Hooper assembled an A list cast with high expectations, only for the film version of the musical Cats to absolutely flop at the box office and be completely ridiculed, director Adam McKay’s 2021 film Don’t Look Up is as big a disaster as the comet which threatens to obliterate earth and kill everyone including the vacuous media personalities, the egotistical politicians and the general American population encapsulated by a stoner performance by Oscar nominee Timothee Chalamet (Call Me By Your Name) as Jude.

Oscar winners Leonardo DiCaprio (The Revenant), Jennifer Lawrence (Silver Linings Playbook), Cate Blanchett (Blue Jasmine, The Aviator) and Meryl Streep (The Iron Lady, Kramer vs Kramer and Sophie’s Choice) unfortunately fail to lift this disastrous black comedy. Don’t Look Up just proves the theory that Netflix can attract A List stars to act in dreadful films. Next time all their agents should be shot at dawn.

Thankfully I never watched this film in a cinema.

With the exception of director Jane Campion’s excellent The Power of the Dog, Netflix films do not have that much to offer. Let’s face it the streaming service is facing a content crisis, now that everyone is back in cinemas watching Spiderman, Dune and No Time to Die.

Back to Don’t Look Up, while aspects of the script were rather funny, it really just shows how vacuous and gullible the American public are, believing everything they see in the media and on Television. That’s according to Adam McKay’s script and not my personal opinion.

Unlike Adam McKay’s brilliant take on the 2008 financial crisis in the critically acclaimed The Big Short and his even better take on politics in 2018’s Vice, Don’t Look Up falls way short of these two superior films. Even the satire and black comedy is not written with intelligence or an ounce of wit.

Don’t Look Up appears to be a spiralling pastiche of an impending extinction event in which everyone from the crazy politicians embodied by Meryl Streep’s American President Orlean and her ambitious son and chief of staff Jason wonderfully played by Oscar nominee Jonah Hill (Moneyball, The Wolf of Wall Street) to the incredibly vacuous cougar and TV presenter Brie Evantree in the Daily Rip brilliantly played by Oscar winner Cate Blanchett, all of whom seem blissfully unaware of a large meteor heading towards earth and wiping out humanity.

While Leonardo DiCaprio seems to just replicate his anxiety ridden performance in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood to a much lesser degree in Don’t Look Up and Jennifer Lawrence looks slightly confused at being in the presence of such big name stars in a film which is essentially going to be watched on an Iphone, unfortunately this deluxe extinct level event fizzles out despite the ensemble cast. Don’t Look Up is everything that genuine cinema shouldn’t be.

Don’t Look Up gets a film rating of 5.5 out of 10 and thankfully one doesn’t need to purchase a cinema ticket to watch this disaster. You can just pause the film and look away.

The Power of the Dog

Director: Jane Campion

Cast: Benedict Cumberbatch, Kirsten Dunst, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Jesse Plemons, Keith Carradine, Frances Conroy, Alistair Sewell, George Mason, Thomasin McKenzie, Alice Englert

Film Rating: 9 out of 10

Running Time: 2 hours and 6 minutes

This film is only available to watch on the Netflix streaming service

After a hiatus from filmmaking for over a decade, acclaimed New Zealand film maker and director Jane Campion returns with a tightly wrought Western style family drama The Power of the Dog which recently had its glamourous world premiere at the 2021 Venice International Film Festival.

Set in Montana in 1925, The Power of the Dog is a superbly directed cinematic adaptation of a novel by Thomas Savage about Rose Gordon and her son Peter Gordon played respectfully by Kirsten Dunst (Interview with a Vampire, Marie Antoinette, The Beguiled) who gives an Oscar worthy performance and Kodi Smit-McPhee (Romeo and Juliet, The Road) who deserves an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor at the 2022 Academy Awards.

Smit-McPhee’s performance is truly phenomenal matched only by the film’s other brilliant performance given by Oscar nominee Benedict Cumberbatch (The Imitation Game) as the hyper-masculine and brutish Phil Burbank, a charismatic Montana rancher. British star Benedict Cumberbatch also deserves another Oscar nomination for Best Actor for his performance in The Power of the Dog.

When Phil’s younger brother George Burbank, played by Kirsten Dunst’s real life husband Jesse Plemons marries the fragile Rose Gordon, he attempts to introduce Rose and her son Peter into the life of the wealthy Burbank family, Montana ranchers complete with land, arrogance and an absolute disdain for the native Americans.

Rose has to contend with sharing the sprawling mansion in Montana with her vile and threatening brother-in-law Phil Burbank, who feels nothing at gelding cattle barehanded or swimming naked in a local river covered in mud. Phil is ruthless, nasty and filled with pent-up-rage. Cumberbatch’s performance is absolute startling as he plays against type and every scene with him and Kirsten Dunst crackles with tension and that underlying threat of violence.

Into this electrifying atmosphere, quietly appears Rose’s son Peter Gordon who is studying to be a surgeon, a shy and awkward young man with a sinister habit of vivisection and harbouring a covert sexual desire.

Peter Gordon is mocked openly by Phil Burbank and his gang of macho ranchers for being a nancy boy or a faggot. He wears strange shoes and displays no interest in anything physical especially tennis.

When Phil Burbank and Peter Gordon strike up an unlikely bond, Rose cannot cope with her fragile son being bullied by her brutish brother-in-law and takes to the bottle.

Despite the fact that The Power of the Dog should have been shown at cinemas and is only available on Netflix, one cannot help but imagine watching director Jane Campion’s film on a big screen for as a masterful director she paints beautiful and complex cinematic strokes, touching on such issues as sexuality, addiction, power dynamics and more significantly the devious mind of the male psyche.

Every shot of The Power of the Dog is beautifully crafted and the entire narrative which is psychological in nature is expertly acted by Benedict Cumberbatch, Kirsten Dunst and Kodi Smit-McPhee.

The Power of the Dog is not going to appeal to everyone, but that wasn’t director Jane Campion’s intentions. Her Oscar winning film The Piano didn’t either.

If viewers loved The Piano then they will enjoy The Power of the Dog, a masterful tale of sinister family dynamics, of voyeurism and forbidden sexual desire, of lust and carnage with an ending that is both disturbing and brilliant.

The White Tiger

Director: Ramin Bahrani

Cast: Adash Gourav, Rajkummar Rao, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Verdent Sinha, Kamlesh Gill

Film Rating 8 out of 10

This film is only available on Netflix

When Aravind Adiga wrote the novel, The White Tiger, which went on to win the Man Booker Prize in 2008, his brilliant and bustling novel about contemporary India, he dedicated his work to the American film director and producer of Man Push Cart Ramin Bahrani.

So it was only apt, that Bahrani adapted the acclaimed novel for the screen and directed it, scoring him a 2021 Oscar nomination for best adapted screenplay for the film version of The White Tiger, but losing out to the masterful adaptation of Florian Zeller’s play The Father by Zeller and Christopher Hampton.

In the flurry of fine films released in the first half of 2021, The White Tiger slipped under the radar and never braved a flourishing theatrical release, only to be quietly released on Netflix on the 22nd January 2021.

The White Tiger is an exuberant tale about an impoverished man Balram that escapes the clutches of his rural poverty stricken Indian village to find a job working as a driver for a wealthy family in Delhi at the peak of India’s re-emergence on the world economic stage at the height of the country’s IT boom in 2008.

Director Ramin Bahrani’s film version could have been edited, but features capable performances by Adarsh Gourav as Balram, Rajkummar Rao as his master Ashkok and the Priyanka Chopra Jonas as Pinky Madam.

Mumbai born actor Adarsh Gourav deservedly received a 2021 Bafta nomination for Best Actor for his portrayal of the ambitious Balram who realizes that one wrong move, could lead to the death of his entire family back in the countryside, where his extended family live in abject poverty ruled by a his grandmother played by Kamlesh Gill.

Balram’s fascinating journey takes him to the plush Delhi high rises where he goes from serving and idolizing Ashkok in a subtle homoerotic way to taking advantage of this wealthy man who bribes influential politicians with impunity and is poised to take advantage of the IT boom that happened in Bangalore, whereby Western tech companies used the Indian city as a call centre hub as the Tech giants outsourced their customer support capabilities to an emerging economy with an abundant supply of cheap labour, which modern India so readily provided.

The White Tiger is a vibrant, brutal tale of how a poor man in the world’s largest free democracy becomes the master of his own destiny.

Highly recommended viewing, especially for those that have read the novel, The White Tiger gets a film rating of 8 out of 10 and is available to watch on Netflix.

Hillbilly Elegy

Director: Ron Howard

Cast: Amy Adams, Glenn Close, Gabriel Basso, Haley Bennett, Freida Pinto, Owen Asztalos

This film is only available on Netflix

Frost/ Nixon and Rush director Ron Howard brings to life J. D. Vance’s autobiographical tale Hillbilly Elegy to the screen featuring superb performances by Oscar nominees Amy Adams (The Fighter, American Hustle, Vice) and the wonderfully talented Glenn Close (The Wife, Dangerous Liaisons, Albert Nobbs) as mother and daughter. Amy Adams plays the troubled mother Bev, a nurse in Ohio who has a heroin addiction and is trying to keep her young family together, namely her daughter Lindsay played by Haley Bennett (Rules Don’t Apply, The Girl on the Train) and J. D. played by the talented Gabriel Basso (Super 8, The Whole Truth).

Glenn Close plays Bev’s mother and grandmother to her two children, the matriarchal Mamaw who ultimately steps in to raise the young J.D. when he is a boy, the younger version brilliantly played by Owen Asztalos who holds his own in some heart wrenching scenes between Amy Adams and Glenn Close.

The adult J. D. has completed law school at Yale in Connecticut and is about to be interviewed for his first legal appointment as a junior attorney at law. Before he gets to that interview in the prestigious and affluent environment of Yale in Connecticut he has to head back to Middleton in Ohio to deal with his mother Bev, expertly played by Amy Adams who has had a relapse on heroin.

J. D. doesn’t come from a wealthy family but through his grandmother’s encouragement, he studied hard, worked to pay the bills and got into law school. He was determined to escape the trap of cyclic poverty that his mother and grandmother had been trapped in.

His beautiful girlfriend Usha is back home in Connecticut awaiting for his return and is played by Slumdog Millionaire star Freida Pinto. J. D. has kept the divide between affluent Connecticut and his Hillbilly past very distinctive by not sharing his violent upbringing in Jackson, Kentucky or Middleton, Ohio with Usha.

Hillbilly Elegy is told through a series of childhood flashbacks to a younger J. D. as he had to deal with his mother’s erratic behaviour, which provides some brilliant scenes between Owen Asztalos and experienced Hollywood actresses Glenn Close and Amy Adams.

What makes Glenn Close’s performance as the chain smoking Hillbilly matriarch so brilliant is that she is playing it against type, a struggling grandmother who gets meals on wheels and barely has enough cash to feed her grandson.

Close’s performance is astounding, a far cry from her lavish and equally superb performances in The Wife, as Sunny von Bulow in Reversal of Fortune and her breakout performance as the scheming Marquise de Merteuil in the Oscar winning French drama Dangerous Liaisons. Glenn Close has never won an Oscar and she deserves to win for this supporting performance in Hillbilly Elegy.

Hillbilly Elegy is a melancholic look back at one man’s struggle to lift himself out of poverty and the immense impression his mother and grandmother made on his life and how he overcome his dire circumstances to rise up and join the professional classes while never dismissing his impoverished heritage.

Hillbilly Elegy gets a film rating of 7.5 out of 10 and is recommended viewing for those that love a good family drama.

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom

Director: George C. Wolfe

Cast: Viola Davis, Chadwick Boseman , Colman Domingo, Glynn Turman, Jeremy Shamos, Johnny Coyne, Dusan Brown, Taylour Paige, Joshua Harto 

This film is only available on NETFLIX

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is based upon a play by August Wilson and adapted for the screen by actor and writer Ruben Santiago-Hudson and August Wilson and stars Oscar winner Viola Davis (Fences) as the brash and take-no-nonsense Ma Rainey  who arrives in Chicago in 1927 to record a single for her song Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.

Conceptualized on screen by the director of Nights in Rodanthe and The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, George C. Wolfe does a capable job of maintaining the tension in this film as the characters brim with talent, anger and the capacity for violence.

Blues Diva Ma Rainey is confronted by her band members particularly Levee the angry young man who has suffered years of racial abuse and injustice, superbly played by Chadwick Boseman (Black Panther, 21 Bridges) who unfortunately passed away in 2020 due to stomach cancer.

Boseman’s performance is mercurial, brimming with talent and anger, battling to control his emotions in a harsh world filled with segregation, racial hatred and mistrust which characterised American society in the late 1920’s just before the Great Depression happened in October 1929.

Nominated for Best Actor at the 2021 Golden Globes, Chadwick Boseman’s performance has already garnered critical acclaim and if he posthumously gets an Oscar nomination for Best Actor in 2021 and wins, he will only be the third actor in the Academy Awards history to win an Oscar after his death, the previous two being Peter Finch for Network in 1977 and Heath Ledger for The Dark Knight in 2009.

August Wilson’s play is a tightly constructed drama all taking place in a recording studio and once again Viola Davis steals the show as the demanding and outrageously talented Blues singer Ma Rainey who originally hailed from Georgia. Ma Rainey’s unconventional lifestyle was way ahead of her time especially her affectionate relationship with back up dancer Dussie Mae, coquettishly played with vibrancy by Taylour Paige last seen in the excellent Detroit crime drama White Boy Rick.

As tensions increase and tempers flare at the Hot Rhythm Records one hot summer’s day in 1927, the recording manager Irvin wonderfully played with complete exasperation by character actor Jeremy Shamos (Bad Education) is intent on getting Ma Rainey’s permission to eventually release the recorded song especially after so many setbacks including Rainey’s young nephew Sylvester played by Dusan Brown, who suffers from a terrible stutter.

The dialogue in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is filled with angst and despair, but if viewers can get past that, it is a fascinating period piece about Chicago in 1927 held together by two fine performances by Viola Davis and Chadwick Boseman.

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom gets a film rating of 7 out of 10 and is recommended viewing for those that enjoyed Fences and enjoy play to screen film adaptations.

The Trial of the Chicago 7

Director: Aaron Sorkin

Cast: Eddie Redmayne, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Sacha Baron Cohen, Jeremy Strong, Frank Langella, Mark Rylance, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Michael Keaton, Ben Shenkman, Alex Sharp, John Carroll Lynch

Pacifists, Hippies and Black Panthers converge on Chicago in the summer of 1968 during the Democratic National Convention and are confronted by the police and naturally riots break out. Are the police to blame? Are the protesters to blame? It is the summer of love, anti-Vietnam protests and significant social upheaval worldwide.

This is the premise of West Wing and The Social Network Oscar winning screenwriter Aaron Sorkin’s new film in which he directed and wrote. The Trail of the Chicago 7 was originally set for a theatrical release in October 2020 but due to the coronavirus pandemic, Paramount sold the rights to the streaming giant Netflix for a cool $56 million dollars. Which explains the reason why this great film can only be found on Netflix when in fact it was best suited to a proper cinematic release.

Especially with Sorkin’s witty dialogue and his fantastic cast that he managed to assemble for The Trial of the Chicago 7.

The cast includes Oscar winners Eddie Redmayne (The Theory of Everything) as liberal pacifist and anti-war activist Tom Hayden, Mark Rylance (Bridge of Spies) as defence attorney William Kunstler, Oscar nominee Frank Langella (Frost/Nixon) as the non-nonsense but bigoted judge Julius Hoffman, Emmy winner Jeremy Strong (Succession) as hippie Jerry Rubin and a stand out performance by comedian Sacha Baron Cohen as the fast talking defiant hippie leader Abbie Hoffman.

Also in the cast are John Carroll Lynch as David Dellinger, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as Black Panther leader Bobby Seale who also got charged along with the original seven for incitement to start a riot and public disturbance.

While the first half of Aaron Sorkin’s film is confusing and needs to be anchored, the second half is brilliant as he clearly shows you what actually happens even if as a screenwriter he does get historically creative with the real facts.

Speaking of the real facts, as a viewer it is best to look up the actual story of the Trial of the Chicago 7 and the context in which the riot occurred. As Sacha Baron Cohen’s character Abbie Hofmann so eloquently says, “Everyone was in the Haymarket Tavern at the Chicago Hilton like the Sixties never happened until it came crashing through the window. “

The Trial of the Chicago 7 is a great film, very dialogue heavy but it stands together through some superb ensemble acting especially from Mark Rylance, Eddie Redmayne and Joseph Gordon-Levitt as the prosecuting attorney Richard Schultz and a fine performance by Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as Bobby Seale who actually lands up getting bound and gagged in an American courtroom.

Nominated for 5 Golden Globes in 2021 including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Song, Best Supporting Actor for Sacha Baron Cohen and Best Screenplay, Catch The Trial of the Chicago 7 now on Netflix. This courtroom drama gets a film rating of 7.5 out of 10.