One Night in Miami: A Good Movie for Tonight

This seemed like a good time to review One Night in Miami, which my wife and I saw and loved on Amazon Prime Video the other night -- a good time because Joe Biden is President, a human being back in the White House, and Kamala Harris, in effect his first appointment all those months ago, is Vice President, the first woman and person of color as VP.

One Night in Miami details a long meeting between Cassius Clay (soon Muhammad Ali), Malcolm X, Jim Brown, and Sam Cooke in a hotel room after Clay beat Sonny Liston to win the World Championship in 1964.  The meeting really happened.  The conversations in the movie were scripted (by Kemp Powers) and superb.  Same for the acting (Eli Goree, Kingsley Ben-Adir, Aldis Hodge, and Leslie Odom Jr. in those four roles), and likewise the brilliant directing by Regina King.  And the story told can be a considered a preamble or foundation of Black people in power in America in the 21st century, Barack Obama to Kamala Harris.

Back in 1964, the ways to get that power were far from clear, and highly debatable.  Malcolm wants black people to stand on their own.  His greatest conflict is with Sam Cooke, who sings all kinds of sweet, catchy romantic ballads (which, by the way, I love), leaving it to Bob Dylan, much to Malcolm's consternation, to write and sing "Blowing in the Wind".  Jim Brown knows all about racism, but is in the game (football and soon movies) for personal success, at least to some extent.  The question is how much?  Clay on the verge of becoming Ali is just 22, high on his being "the greatest," but attracted to Malcolm's philosophy.

Pursuit of fame and money back then was and still is a soul-depleting business, unless you can figure out a way to pursue those goals, and keep them if you reach them, with your inner core intact, and devoted at least in part to loftier goals for yourself, your people, and the world.  The path isn't easy, and One Night In Miami portrays four black guys, incredibly talented and bright in different ways, on the edge of that path so well and memorably, it could have been a Socratic dialogue written Plato.   See it and learn and enjoy.

 

"Sam's Requests" in this anthology is about Sam Cooke!

Watchmen 1.1: Promising Alternate History

I guess I'm either the best or worst kind of person to watch and review Watchmen on HBO:  I've of course heard of the iconic comic book story and its adaptations over the years, but I never read or saw any of it, and really know nothing about it.  But with a cast consisting of Regina King and Don Johnson, and the creator being Lost's Damon Lindelof, how could I resist?

Here's what I now know after watching the first episode:  This is an alternate history or reality in which, by 2019, Vietnam is a state in the United States, which must mean we won that war (undeclared and therefore illegal, and badly lost in our reality).  Police wear masks so they don't risk killers in the public, well, killing them.  So far, this is taking place mostly in Oklahoma, to the point where the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical plays a big role.

Now, I'm a sucker for alternate realities - I have a song, Samantha, on my new album coming out early next year, which I'll no doubt tell you about later on in these weekly reviews, but for now I'll just mention that that song is about star-crossed love across alternate realities (ok, here's a rough mix of it).  And I thought Counterpoint, now sadly departed, was one of the best shows on television in the past few years (not to mention The Man in the High Castle, which with one more season left is almost sadly departed, and is flat out one of the best shows ever on television, period).  So, yeah, I'm a fan of alternate reality TV and novels (here's what I said about the late J. Neil Schulman's The Fractal Man), and I very much like the set-up so far of Watchmen.

I also liked the narrative.  Don Johnson's character is killed at the end if the episode (sorry, that's a spoiler in this reality), but the laws of television say that a star that big won't play a character who gets killed after one episode, so that means Judd (Johnson's character) either isn't really dead, even though we saw him hanging there, or he'll come back to life, which amounts to the same thing.

I also liked the music, not only because I always liked "Oklahoma" - my wife may have played a part in some summer camp production (I'm not sure, and she's sleeping, so I'll ask her tomorrow*) - but all the music is original (i.e., meaning, you don't usually hear it in a television series, even one on HBO), with, for example, a powerful rendition of a song that accompanied Judd's hanging body.  (By the way, Trump, if you're reading this, that's what a lynching is, not the justified investigation that you're now undergoing).

*Note added next morning: She did!

So, yeah, I'm liking this a lot, and expect I'll be reviewing Watchmen once a week.

more alternate reality - "flat-out fantastic" - Scifi and Scary

American Crime 3.1-2: 21st-Century Dickensian Focus

American Crime, one of the best shows on television - and on ABC, not cable or streaming, no less - is back for its third season, and off to a powerful start.

The theme this year is, again, remarkably apt, with a focus on migrant farm workers in Carolina, and the attendant ills and crimes that best everyone in the vicinity.  So far, a young prostitute, a young drug addict, and a father from Mexico in search of his son who came to make it rich in the United States are the best stories - along with the attempt of decent people, in and out of government, to help them.

This puts the third season in marked contrast to the first season, in which there was a homicide and near-homicide at its core, and the second season, which delved into a high school party rape.  But the third season has its own quiet power, which even after just two episodes is special and remarkable.

The most interesting story is about the Mexican father, played by Benito Martinez.  For most of the first two episodes, we didn't know why he wanted to come and work in the U.S.   Tonight we discover that it's to find his son, who after communicating with his family back in Mexico, suddenly fell silent.

The story of the drug user is also unusual.   He's played by Connor Jessup, picked up off the street by one of the crew bosses, played by Richard Cabral.   But it turns out this boss has something of a heart, and may, against the advice of a more seasoned boss, actually try to help the newbie.

Regina King, outstanding in now her third season on American Crime, is a social worker who tries to help the prostitute, and (of course) has problems of her own.   But speaking of outstanding, the acting of everyone in American Crime, by mostly the same cast in different roles each season, is excellent and riveting.  This, combined with the unflinching topics and 21st-century Dickensian focus, makes American Crime a series you just can't afford to miss.

See also: American Crime 2.1-3: So Real, It Hurts ... American Crime through 2.6: Brilliant and Unflinching ... American Crime Season 2: Too Little Info

And see also: American Crime, American Fine ... American Crime 1.7: The Truest Love ... American Crime 1.10: The Exquisite Hazards of Timing ...American Crime Season 1 Finale: The Banality of So-Called Justice

a different kind of crime

American Crime 2.1-3: So Real It Hurts

Checking in with a review of American Crime, now three episodes in to its second season on ABC.   Like the first season, which drilled down on a brutal murder and its ugly repercussions not only in the criminal police system but on family relations, racial relations, and diverse elements of life in today's America, the second season holds back nothing as it delves into a rape in high school - the rape of a boy who wants to be on the basketball team by at least one of the guys on the team or who wants to be on the team, at a hazing party.

So in addition to the racial and family tensions which propelled the first season, we have the big business and sacrifice and sleaze of high school sports in this second season.  As in the first season, just about everyone is culpable of something, including the victim's mother, driven to get some sort of reckoning for her son, not just because she's seeking justice, but because she's driven by guilt over some earlier development in the family, as yet unknown.

Connor Jessup - last seen in Falling Skies - is doing a fine job as Taylor Blaine, the victim, who would just as soon forget what happened rather than see himself headlined in the social media, one of the biggest destructive forces in this story.  Taylor's mother is powerfully played by Lili Taylor, from the first season, but with a much bigger role.  Regina King, Timothy Hutton, Felicity Huffman, Elvis Nolasco, and Richard Cabral are also back from the first season, in completely different roles.

At this point, Regina King's Terri LaCroix has been the most stand-out, as the mother of one of team's co-captains - at the hazing party, but not necessarily part of the rape - at least, not as far as we know at this point. Terri and her husband and son are in the upper middle class - professional and executive - and her attempt to keep her son on the right path, her struggle as both the mother of a teenage boy and the mother of a teenage African-American boy with talent and intelligence and everything to lose, is a masterpiece of subtle, complex, heart-rending drama in itself.

As was the case in the first season, there's nothing else quite like American Crime on any kind of television.   As such it makes a much needed and unique contribution, and more than holds its own with anything on cable or even streaming TV.


See also: American Crime, American Fine ... American Crime 1.7: The Truest Love ... American Crime 1.10: The Exquisite Hazards of Timing ... American Crime Season 1 Finale: The Banality of So-Called Justice

a different kind of crime

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American Crime Season 1 Finale: The Banality of So-Called Justice

American Crime ended is first season last night with its story of star-crossed lovers, Carter and Aubry, whose complicated love was too pure, too innocent, too compelling and beautiful to ever survive this gaggingly ugly and brutal world.   Carter dies from Russ's bullet  just as he's trying to call Aubry, no doubt to tell her he loves her, and Aubry's last thought before she dies of her own hand is maybe somehow Carter survived.

But we can the narrow indictment to something more specific than the world, and I don't mean just the hapless, tormented Russ, whom I'll get to in a minute.  It's the breathtaking cluelessness of the justice system - more destructive, in some ways, than mere corruption - which can't get anything right.  We've seen evil in police work on television before - The Shield would be an outstanding example - but never an exposition such as in American Crime of a system so rotten at every level.   The season ends without our knowing who did the initial killing, and certainly the authorities don't know.  They're good at nothing - not catching the criminals in the first place, not protecting the souls who come into their custody - except providing an effective training camp for further criminal acts.   I suppose this banal ineptitude afflicts most parts of our society, but it's especially grievous when it inhabits a system in which life and death is literally at stake.

Certainly the inanity prevails in the ease with which people can get guns in this country.  I knew the moment Barb bought the gun that its bullets would be used to kill Carter, though I thought she not Russ would pull the trigger.   But, in retrospect, Russ was always more broken than Barb, and it figures that his naive belief in the justice system (taking its word for it, to the end, that Carter killed his son) - unlike Barb, who was finally maybe glimpsing a deeper truth, and was pulling away from the system - would propel Russ to his act, pathetic for him, the ultimate voice of the deadly ignorant injustice for Carter and Aubry.

There are slender threads of hope, maybe Carter's sister and Aubry's mother hugging, now that Carter and Aubry can't, and perhaps realizing that they contributed to the deaths of Carter and Aubry, too. Maybe Hector, maybe Tony, but the odds are against them, as long as this sick system of justice continues.

America needs more shows like John Ridley's American Crime and its splendid acting (special kudos to Caitlin Gerard, Elvis Nolasco, Richard Cabral, Benito Martinez, Regina King, Timothy Hutton, and Felicity Huffman, but everyone was just brilliant) to strip the system bare, so we can see it for what it is.  The more I think about it,  American Crime is the best series on television in many a year. I'm glad there'll be more of it next season.

See also: American Crime, American Fine ... American Crime 1.7: The Truest Love ... American Crime 1.10: The Exquisite Hazards of Timing

a different kind of crime

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American Crime 1.7: The Truest Love

Amidst all the lies, half-truths, betrayals, incompetence, and just plain evil that populates so much of American Crime - and in the case of the evil, especially some of the authorities - the one relationship that increasingly rings true and reliable is Aubry and Carter.

And never more true than in episode 1.7.   Carter is increasingly pressured by his sister to quit Aubry. But he just can't seem to do it, even though, as we've just seen, her instincts aren't the best, to say the least, for keeping the two of them out of trouble.   But Carter tells his sister that Aubry saved him. And, in his recollection, we see that was literally the case.

Meanwhile, Aubry is getting similar pressure to leave Carter from everyone around her.   In her case, there's a motive that the police are dangling in front of her: if she testifies against Carter, that would be her ticket to freedom.   For a moment, in the hospital, it seemed that she might be turning against Carter, though I couldn't believe it.   And I was gratified with that last scene, in which her horror story of what was done to her turns out to have her brother as the perpetrator.

So Aubry and Carter are the improbable rock of Gibraltar in this story, holding firm, for now, against the cesspool tempest of deceit that is daily hurled against them.  The question is how long can they endure it.   Optimist that I always am, I'm hoping they can, to the end - but the forces arrayed against them are powerful, indeed.

Although it's still not clear who committed this American crime, it's very clear that the police don't have a creditable witness against Carter.   Hector's obviously a complete liar, and the detectives know it.   The question is whether they'll allow the prosecutors to go ahead and use it.   Chances are they will - which is part of what I meant earlier about the authorities being reprehensible.

Not reprehensible, and indeed superb, to switch gears here, is the acting in this series.  Caitlin Gerard as Aubry and Elvis Nolasco as Carter are just outstanding - and, in episode 1.7 especially, delivered Emmy-worthy performances.   Richard Cabral as Hector is excellent, as is Regina King as Aliyah Shadeed (born Doreen Nix, Carter's sister), and I haven't even mentioned the big names such as Timothy Hutton and Felicity Huffman, who are putting in what will counted as among the best performances of their careers.   The other related stories, such as Alonzo and his family, are also searing and well acted.

John Ridley's American Crime is television at its hard-hitting, truth-searching, very best.

See also: American Crime, American Fine

a different kind of crime

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