Valentine's Viewing: Black History Month Edition

I have conflicting emotions regarding the holiday named for St. Valentine. A former boyfriend from my teenage years once remarked, "You know what you are? A romantic cynic." And that about sums up my attitude.

I reject as a matter of course the syrup-sodden, pink and red, cutesy-poo Cupidfest that has subsumed our national tribute to romantic love. During times without a significant other, the holiday makes a mockery of my singlehood. Still, even if I am "boo'ed up," I'm flummoxed by the Valentine's thing; the challenge is in how to mark the occasion at a level appropriate to where the relationship stands -- without tumbling over the Cliffs of Sentimentality into a hot cloying pool of Kissy Kitsch. My gag response is too easily triggered.

But underneath my crusty exterior, I'm a softie. A bouquet of posies from that certain someone acknowledging whatever warmth lies between us can definitely melt away this cynical exterior. A cleverly worded missive -- rarely found in the annals of Hallmark -- can make me smile. I too have launched a few of the heart-shaped cards at moving targets over a few Februarys. But my general policy is to carry on as though these public displays aren't necessary or even that practical.

I suffer from a similar gag response when it comes to romantic movies. Anything too stuffed with corn, dipped in schmaltz, or shot through with formulaic sugar is generally to be avoided. So my list of favorite romantic flicks is short. But I'm only human, so there are other films -- corny, schmaltzy, predictable and dripping in Hollywood cliche goo -- that still get under my skin. I'll address those in another post.

Being that February is Black History Month, I thought I'd name a few black romance classics appropriate for Valentine's Day viewing.

(Note: While I enjoyed The Best Man films, Why Did I Get Married, Just Wright, Love And Basketball, Brown Sugar, the About Last Night remake, Jumping The Broom, Something New, and the like, I wouldn't call them classics. At least, not yet.)

1. Love Jones(1997)

Nia Long and Larenz Tate get into a little sumthin' sumthin'

I don't think I've seen a movie before or since that captures contemporary black love in quite such an affecting way. Artsy young Chicago professionals Nina Mosley and Darius Lovejoy -- as played by Nia Long and Larenz Tate -- are great to look at and their chemistry is tangible. In their love scenes, you can feel the yearning, the sizzle, and the lust. The story allows us to see how their romance unfolds through events that we recognize -- the spoken word club, the friend's house party, the badly timed lingering exes, going dancing. It's the dialogue and inclusion of so much of African American culture sets the film apart. Much in the way that another Chicago-set romance that I'm fond of -- 1986's About Last Night with Rob Lowe and Demi Moore -- examines 20something love from every angle and includes a Greek chorus of negativity from those who would break up the lovers for their own selfish reasons, so do Nina and Darius face embittered people and setbacks that almost convince them that love "ain't shit." Doubt, distrust, jealousy, insecurity, missed signals, denial -- it's all there, set to a fantastic, evocative soundtrack melding alternative R&B and classic jazz. In the end, Darius realizes that that elusive joy that you create with that one special person is too precious to throw away, and we know that somehow Nina and Darius are going to work it out even as she leaves on the evening train for New York. Notable for great performances by Lisa Nicole Carson and Isaiah Washington as the respective best friends. Hard to believe the film is almost 20 years old.

2. Claudine (1973)

Diahann Carroll and James Earl Jones get that lovin' feelin'

Some would say that this film represents another kind of '70s blaxploitation, in that it exploits the trope of a black single mother on welfare in the hood who is cheating the system with a maid's job. But I don't care -- Claudine is a gem because it gets real. Hard to believe that movie makers at the time thought Diahann Carroll was a little too glamorous to carry off the title role, but Diahann -- who was raised in Harlem -- hits all the necessary notes as a mother of five who finds herself falling against her better judgment for a garbage man with a raft of problems of his own. Far from the Romeo & Juliet drama of young Harlem lovers like those portrayed by Kevin Hooks and Irene Cara in 1975's Aaron Loves Angela, directed by Gordon Parks Jr., Carroll's Claudine and James Earl Jones' Rupe are hampered by grown folks' problems: troubled and rebellious children, the grind of menial gigs, roach infested dwellings, and the government interference that poor people are sadly all too familiar with -- welfare in Claudine's case and child support in Rupe's. To consider marriage under these conditions would be to throw away everything Claudine has known, including the monthly welfare checks she depends on, and she isn't sure that Rupe will stand by her. But in the end, it's Carroll and Jones making eyes at each other and trying to make an unworkable situation work that convinces you that their love is worth the risk. Black love wins out -- neither the social worker nor the police will stop these two. Curtis Mayfield's soulful and thoughtful score, performed by Gladys Knight & the Pips, adds to the emotion of the film by voicing the thoughts of the characters. "Keep Away From Me, Mr. Welfare," "To Be Invisible," "The Makings Of You," and "Make Yours A Happy Home" are timeless classics.

3. Boomerang (1992)

Eddie Murphy as Marcus: What more would a woman need?

Not a typical romance, Boomerang is a clever, slickly-produced comedy about how complicated the road to love has become in the modern era. Directed by Reggie Hudlin, produced by brother Warrington Hudlin and stuffed with a who's who of African American talent -- Eddie Murphy, Robin Givens, Halle Berry, Eartha Kitt, Chris Rock, Geoffrey Holder, Grace Jones, Martin Lawrence, David Alan Grier, Tisha Campbell, Lela Rochon, John Witherspoon and Melvin Van Peebles -- this is the tale of a notorious Big Apple ladies' man who finally finds the girl who makes him hang up his playboy dancing shoes. The film is a testament to '90s upward mobility as the upscale characters explore dating, racism, the wages of celebrity, and the bonds of male friendship as Eddie Murphy's bad boy ad exec, Marcus, finally learns that it's no fun being on the receiving end of the deceptive seductions he's been doling out to most of the females at the ad agency where he works.

Robin Givens as Jacqueline: "God, Marcus. I was so tense when I got off the plane, but you really relaxed me. See ya."

Robin Givens is perfect as the conniving career woman determined to break Marcus down (I think her next best screen role was as Imabelle in A Rage In Harlem, a tour de force performance in which she is utterly convincing as a 1950s gold-stealing femme fatale who ultimately falls in love with the mild-mannered funeral home assistant played by Forest Whitaker). Eddie Murphy also gives the film some great quieter moments, as in his scenes with Berry and in chopping it up on the issues with his friends. There's a streak of feminism to the film in the way that Givens' Jacqueline and Halle Berry's Angela -- and though played for laughs. even Grace Jones' extreme character Strangé and Eartha Kitt's cosmetics company head Lady Heloise -- are all committed to owning their careers and their sexuality, albeit in very different ways, in a male- dominated world. The sets, costume designs, makeup and smooth soundtrack by Marcus Miller combine to give the flick a shiny immediacy, while the ace performers offer up countless golden moments of comedy that have become oft-repeated classics (some only need one word: "Marrrrrr-cus!" "Coooor-dinate!" "Strang-e!") While Marcus ultimately walks off into the Brooklyn sunset with the Halle Berry character, having professed his love, we're only 99 percent convinced that love really will bring him home the next time he's tempted.

4. For Love Of Ivy (1968)

Abbey Lincoln as Ivy: Ma'am, what part of "I'm leaving" did you not understand?

This romantic comedy is more than a bit dated, but it was a breakthrough coming just four years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act. A black romance that white people could accept, the lighthearted yarn centers on another maid, this time played by stunning vocalist Abbey Lincoln in one of her few screen turns, while the usually upright Sidney Poitier -- just past his Black Saint period in film -- plays a character with a couple of skeletons in his closet. Ivy Moore is the beautiful, dutiful and smart 20something live-in housekeeper for a Long Island businessman played by All In The Family's Carroll O'Connor and his family, including their "hip" 20something son, played by Beau Bridges. (Two years later, Bridges would portray the "hip" son of a rich New York family who buys a Brooklyn brownstone and embeds himself among his black tenants to disastrous results in the simultaneously hilarious and sobering film The Landlord, which also featured the late, great Diana Sands. He has also played the father of Tracee Ellis Ross' Rainbow character in an episode of TV's Blackish.) When Ivy decides that after nine years she's had enough of the maid game and plans to leave to attend secretarial school in New York, the family is sent into a tizzy, because, naturally, they consider her "family" and immediately plot ways to dissuade her. Despite this being a brazen attempt by whites to stop a black woman from liberating herself from servitude or gaining agency over her own future, their meddling is depicted as sweet, loving and in her own best interest. Beau's character decides that what Ivy needs is a suitor who will distract her but not whisk her off. Because, what else would keep a black woman from pursuing her dreams but a man? And a trifling one at that? The son blackmails playboy trucking magnate Jack Parks -- because he may be shady but he's black! -- who reluctantly agrees to take Ivy out on a date.

They go but she's a sheltered Southern girl and he's a smooth big city slickster secretly running an illegal casino operation out of the back of his trucks, and it doesn't seem that things will work out. Still, Jack is captivated by Ivy's simple directness, modesty and beauty. For the love of Ivy, Jack is willing to give up his double life. And just in time: In order to take Ivy away with him to New York, Jack hands over the operation of the casino to a pal and is no longer connected when the casino is busted by the police. What saves the movie from complete corniness is the chemistry between Lincoln and Poitier; Lincoln's character may be sheltered, but she knows exactly who she is. While I love Abbey Lincoln's realness, she doesn't have the same easy comic timing as the rest of the performers so that makes the tone a bit uneven, but it's still a cream puff of a flick about black romance during the swinging '60s.

5. Black Orpheus (1959)

First time actors: Brazilian Breno Mello and American Marpessa Dawn the morning after

I cannot say enough about the total magic of this film, which earned the Oscar for Best Foreign Film in 1960. Shot entirely in the favela of Morro de Babilhonia and the city of Rio de Janeiro, the film adapts the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice to then-modern times. Combining the beauty of the Afro-Brazilian people, the traditions and music of Brazil, and a tragic and timeless love story, Black Orpheus is a delight to the senses. Beautiful Eurydice arrives by boat in Rio, where residents are busy preparing for Carnaval. On the streetcar she meets the conductor, Orfeu, a fledgling musician who has reluctantly committed to marry his outgoing girlfriend Mira. Orfeu guides Eurydice up the hill to the favela where she will stay with her cousin, who is awaiting the return of her sailor boyfriend.

But Eurydice has a secret -- she left home to escape a specter in a death mask who is trying to kill her for reasons that are never revealed. Soon enough, Orfeu and Eurydice fall in love. They head to Carnaval to dance in the samba school competition in their costumes, trying to hide from both a jealous Mira and Death, who has appeared to claim Eurydice's life. When tragedy befalls his beloved, Orfeu -- still clad in his sexy sun god Carnaval gear -- embarks on a physical and spiritual journey across the city to reclaim her. What could be more romantic? Alas, the myth ends tragically. But when three small children greet the sunrise with music and dancing, hope springs eternal. And the music throughout -- by national treasures Luis Banfa and Antonio Carlos Jobim -- is sublime, as the soundtrack includes carnaval sambas, bossa nova, candomblé ritual music, and ballads. The film has detractors who say that it is French director Marcel Camus' attempt to exoticize people of color and romanticize their poverty and dysfunction (much in the same way that George Gershwin's Porgy & Bess, another classic black love story, has been reviled for being a white New Yorker's version of Southern black life, "Negro" dialect and all). Some viewers may be put off by subtitles, while others may be confused by the story's many moments of magical realism owing to its mythological roots. Watch anyway.

Honorable hearts & flowers mentions to:
- 2014's Beyond The Lights, reviewed here
- 1960's Carmen Jones, where Dorothy Dandridge and Harry Belafonte make beautiful operatic music together until murder gets in the way
- 1994's Jason's Lyric, where Allen Payne and Jada Pinkett Smith struggle to get out from - under family and gangland trauma in Houston to make a way together
- and 1972's Sounder, where Cicely Tyson's devotion to sharecropper husband Paul Winfield is palpable.

Back To Life Basics In "Boyhood"

BOYHOOD (2014)
Directed by Richard Linklater
starring Patricia Arquette, Ethan Hawke, Ellar Coltrane, Lorelei Linklater

I know the Oscars were months ago. Boyhood is old news. But I wanted to document it here because it is indeed one of those hallmarks of maverick American filmmaking that will be referred to over and over again. If you haven’t seen it, don’t worry – your failure to pay full price at the box office didn’t prevent it from getting its kudos and making its mark. Actress Patricia Arquette was rightfully lauded, earning an Oscar (and calling down wrath for the way she called for women's rights) as well as an Independent Spirit award for her performance, though Linklater and frequent collaborator Hawke did not received as many honors.

By now you have to know the film’s gimmick, that the actors assembled for a short period annually for twelve years to shoot the film. This lengthy process gives viewers the rare ability to see the story of a boy and his family grow, evolve, and change for better or worse as the years pass. Many times the scenes were improvised without a finished script. The result is a beautiful film that captures the small moments of which real life is made: The silliness, inventiveness, resilience and cruelty of children; the struggle of average adults to make career, education, parenting, and romantic choices that don’t always pan out; the tiniest moments of childhood revelation, disillusion, and hard truth over many years that shed the layers of innocence and reveal the budding adult underneath. It’s a brilliant idea to use the same actors year after year, giving the film the weight of a documentary and allowing the characters' individual journeys to unfurl without the usual filmmaking cosmetic and casting gimmicks.

We see Ellar Coltrane grown from a beautifully thoughtful 6-year-old child into a gangly, confused, but essentially goodhearted young man whose parents have tried their best to raise him but have barely prepared him for adulthood. The film should be titled “Life,” but that one’s already been taken (what springs to mind is the underrated Eddie Murphy/Martin Lawrence prison flick).

BUT ... if you are the type of movie goer that insists on a coherent, linear story line with a big payoff, Boyhood is not for you. I’ve seen some comments where viewers feel that they lost valuable hours of their own lives to this film.

*** SPOILERS ***

As Boyhood begins, parents Olivia and Mason Sr. have already parted ways, but Mason Sr. returns after a long work bid out of town, trying to resume relations with his family. Olivia is having none of it. She’s planning to go to college to improve the family situation and needs to move them to Texas, promising their two children, precocious Samantha and dreamy Mason Jr., that they will still get to see their Dad.

Ethan Hawke plays Mason Sr. as a guy who means no harm, but whose aimless lifestyle is at odds with his ex-wife’s ambitions. He's an overgrown teenager, full of dreams and ethics that no longer serve Olivia’s needs. Despite this, he grows into a loving and caring Dad who insists upon developing a real and intimate relationship with his kids. In a scene where he picks them up in his cool convertible muscle car and endures half-hearted, monosyllabic answers to questions about the tweens’ young lives, he pulls the car to the curb and draws a line in the sand. “I’m not going to be that Dad that drives you places and buys you shit,” he declares. It’s a priceless moment where he demands both respect and engagement from his children, and from us as viewers as well. Mason Sr. starts the film as a scattered fuckup, but his devotion and his frankness with them has a profound impact on keeping both kids grounded and clear that they are loved.

Patricia Arquette gives an incredible performance, notable for its simple lack of showiness. She has never been a “mannered” performer, and here she gives us a peek at a woman who is smarter than her circumstances but often finds herself having to choose the best out of a pool of poor options when it comes to love. After breaking up with Mason, she gets involved with one of her professors, a single father who seems stable, with a career, a home, and two children of his own. For a while the blended family presents a classic picture of American domesticity. But he soon succumbs to alcoholism and abuse. Olivia rightfully runs, uprooting her children’s lives in the process. A few years later she has begun teaching at the university and falls into a relationship with a student, a haunted Iraq War veteran who ultimately clashes with the laconic teenaged Mason and also spirals into alcoholism and abuse.

Boyhood is about everything and nothing, the camera walking alongside to document an average boy reaching average benchmarks (smoking, drinking, having sex, learning his strengths and weaknesses) and evolving into an average young adult. He struggles in school, is bullied by classmates, has teenage crushes, plays video games, squabbles endlessly with his smart-aleck big sister, develops an interest in photography, clashes with his stepfathers, experiments with alcohol and pot, gets his heart broken, and is coached in sports and life through by his Dad. He gets a summer job, learns to drive, applies to college. And so it goes. In his averageness is the sum total of all human stories, of a million as-yet-undistinguished American boys of all backgrounds with that most precious and easily squandered of qualities: potential.

In this thoughtful portrayal of an unremarkable life are sparks of revelation about the universality of experience. When Mason Jr. graduates from high school, the family throws him a party; Olivia then helps him pack for college and informs him that she is giving up her house for a smaller residence now that her kids will have to now live on their own. Arquette shines in the moment that Olivia has a brief breakdown. “I thought there would be more,” she says simply. “The only thing left is death.”

There are no stunts, no car crashes, no extreme acts of daring or heroism in Boyhood. No one dies a painful death. The sacrifices are small. But that is the quiet brilliance of this film, which reminds us to savor the everyday and value the time we have with those we love.

"Revolver"

2005, directed by Guy Ritchie
written by Guy Ritchie and Luc Besson

Archived -
August 19, 2010

I watched the Guy Ritchie-Luc Besson flick Revolver over the weekend. I am a fan of actor Jason Statham as well as previous Ritchie cockney romps Snatch and Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels. But this flick was different. I had to watch it twice and I’m still not sure whether it falls into the so-bad-it’s-utter-genius camp, or whether it is the filmic runoff of a madman’s brain (uh, Besson, you have shown us your daffy brilliance before; can you say The Fifth Element, among others?). Either way, the movie is gorgeously photographed (filmed on location at a seaside resort in Britain). Every shot is jaw dropping in composition, lighting, color, and set design. Directors who offer up visions of what has rarely been seen before in cinema create a great viewing experience, in my opinion. But the script has to be tight as well.

Kicking off without any opening credits beyond the title, Revolver is a hard-boiled, dark contemporary revenge flick, akin to Payday or Get Carter, with a House of Games overlay to it. Statham — in atypical greasy black hair and beard—plays Jake Green, an overly successful gambler waging a war of retribution with casino boss Dorothy (Dorothy?) Macha, played by Ray Liotta, from whose establishment Jake once snagged his excessive winnings. From this premise, Jake and the film’s viewers are in for a series of brain-twisting shocks.

At the start of the flick Jake is sprung after seven years in jail and is now bent on getting even with the man who put him there. He’s about to launch a grand scheme against his nemesis -- who is also gunning for him -- when he literally tumbles into a trap laid for him by clever underworld “brothers” Avi and Zach, played by rapper Andre 3000 and The Sopranos’ Vincent “Big Pussy” Pastore. (Does Ritchie have a thing for the name Avi? I recall that a character bore that name in Snatch as well.) Using metaphors from chess and classic con games—and the stunning revelation that Jake has somehow contracted a quick-killing fatal disease-- they make Jake a you-can’t-take-it-with-you offer he can’t refuse in which he must join them in their loan sharking operation using the millions he’s previously banked from his gambling – the same millions with which he’s only just been reunited. Jake is none too happy, as you can imagine, being that he has long-harbored plans for his dough, his archrival, and essentially the rest of his now foreshortened life. Hijacked, Jake goes along with the scheme though he still has it in for Macha.

Things get a bit convoluted. Jake is forced to dole out his own money to a series of losers and assist Avi & Zach in the increasingly violent collection efforts, all the while baiting and evading Macha’s minions. As played by Max Factor-eyed Liotta, Macha is all hissy fits and tightie-whitie crotch shots, as I guess the essence of portraying an Underworld Big Shot consists of running around a mansion in a variety of flimsy silk robes and Fruit of the Looms shrieking “I don’t care, just do it!” into the faces of other grown men. Chief among Macha’s dirty workers is the taciturn hitman Sorter, who bears not a small resemblance to the iconic operative Joubert from Three Days Of The Condor (Robert Redford flick from the '70s -- look it up). Like Joubert, Sorter is a tall ascetic with glasses who kills without compunction. Jake is on his lengthening list of marks, although he confusingly lets Jake slip away fairly often, to Macha’s increasing displeasure.

All of this plotting is, if not standard contemporary gangster film fare, still fairly well expected of Ritchie. But what makes this flick different is that it is extremely verbose, to Mamet-meets-Tarantino proportions, as Avi puts Jake – and Jake puts himself – through an existential funhouse of is-it-real-or-is-it-Memorex philosophizing on the nature of winning and losing, being and nothingness. There is much voiceover as Jake struggles to make sense of whether he is who he thinks he is, if he is in fact his own enemy, if he has a split personality, if everything that is happening is indeed happening, and whether he can win a game where the rules seem to be constantly changing.

In a bizarre series of developments, Jake becomes trapped by Macha’s men and the situation looks dire for our hero. Enter Sorter, who appears ready to deliver the coup de grace on Jake, but instead turns on Jake’s enemies and coolly dispatches them all as Jake escapes. Reeling from the confrontation, Jake now goes all New Age, Art of War counterintuitive by turning the other cheek on his arch enemy: giving money to charities in Macha’s name, then sneaking into the Big Man’s opulent bedroom in the wee hours and delivering a groveling, albeit armed, mea culpa at Macha’s bedside. What disgraces a man more than to be at the mercy of his enemy, only to have said enemy walk away? In other words, Jake has the opportunity to kill Macha while he sleepsnd doesn't, a fact that seems to destroy Macha mentally as we are served another shot of half-naked Liotta having a shuddering tear-streaked meltdown, repeating, impotently, “Fear me! Fear me!” as Jake brushes him aside. (Um, even the name Dorothy Macha is entirely emasculating, as this hard-to-watch emotional disintegration shows him to be a distinctly non-macho wuss.)

And so Jake — who discovers that his supposedly deadly blood disease was mysteriously misdiagnosed -- has won. It turns out that Avi & Zach have been his puppet masters all along, as they reveal themselves to be the two unseen yet beloved prison mates housed on either side of our hero during his seven year bid. In a twist reminiscent of The Usual Suspects, we learn that the two “brothers” – a master chess player and a master con artist -- have imagineered Jake’s labyrinthine post-prison journey, hinting at its progression and significance through chess maneuvers penciled into the margins of books they shared in the Big House, all in an attempt to continue an education they’d begun for Little Jake on the Ways Of the World -- or at least the Ways of the Big Con. And so there is celebrating all around, as Jake’s money and sanity are (we assume) restored, he is reunited with this Odd Couple of crime Yodas, and we the audience are left to sort through the psychic fallout.

While the film's title is a direct reference to a weapon, viewers are left to puzzle out the title's multiple meanings, including someone who or something that constantly revolves or spins; or even the Spanish meaning, which is to shake up or turn upside down. -- jc