Mubi Monday: If Beale Street Could Talk (2018)

It's a difficult job to follow up a film as impressive and moving as Moonlight but that is the job that writer-director Barry Jenkins has given himself. The fact that this isn't quite as good as that film doesn't mean it's a bad film. Not at all. It just means that it could have been better.

Kiki Layne is Tish Rivers, a loyal girlfriend to her partner, Alonzo 'Fonny' Hunt (played by Stephan James). That loyalty, and her strength, comes to the fore when Fonny is put in jail for a heinous crime that he didn't commit. With the help of her family, Tish does all she can to maintain a good lawyer and work on achieving the break that they need to get Fonny released, hopefully in time for the arrival of their baby.

Perhaps it was inevitable that this would prove slightly underwhelming, because only something close to perfect would rival the previous film from Jenkins, and there's a familiarity to the storyline here that stops it from feeling as unique and vital as Moonlight, but that familiarity is also part of the reason why Jenkins must have wanted to make it. Adapting the book by James Baldwin, Jenkins has another tale full of love and race, but it also has a sense of resignation to it, a sad inevitability as we follow the plight of yet another young black man wrongly imprisoned.

Set mainly in New York of the 1970s, Jenkins does an impressive job of evoking the atmosphere of that time without trotting out the expected selection of tunes and pop culture references, instead painting a much more detailed picture with the attitudes of the main characters and the muted colour palette used throughout.

Layne and James are both very easy to root for in the lead roles, with the former a constant source of quiet strength and dignity throughout and the latter trying to act likewise, despite viewing the world around them with more of a cynical and self-defensive attitude (the difference between the two highlighted as Fonny tells another character about a prospective landlord who was a lot more accommodating before he realised that Tish had a partner). Regina King is the standout, however, as Sharon Rivers, the mother of Tish and a woman determined to do whatever is necessary to keep her family happy, healthy, and safe. The film arguably revolves around one moving scene, featuring King and Emily Rios, and it's a moment that illustrates both great pain and great futility for both women. Ed Skrein is a loathsome police officer, and there are uniformly excellent turns from Colman Domingo, Teyonah Parris, Michael Beach, Aunjanue Ellis, Diego Luna, Finn Whitrock, and everyone else involved.

Despite the romantic notions of the main characters, love cannot solve all problems and overcome all obstacles. But it can make a bad situation more bearable, just knowing that someone who cares for you is always on your side, always has faith in you. Sometimes the doubt and judgement of everyone else in the entire world doesn't matter one bit as long as the contents of your heart and soul are an open book to the one you love, and the fact that Jenkins makes this a clear, positive, message in a story that also focuses on the bias of the American justice system and the way in which so many African Americans can be punished for crimes that police want to pin on any black individual . . . well, that's why it's not a bad film. In fact, it comes very close to being a great one. And I look forward to his next one.

8/10

You can buy the excellent Moonlight here.
Americans can buy it here.

Deep Blue Sea 2 (2018)

I have just finished watching Deep Blue Sea 2 and I am already struggling to write this review, mainly because I have immediately forgotten everything that happened. That is not a comment that reflects my memory, even if I do have my occasional moments of forgetting where I placed my headphones that are still lodged at my ears. No, it's a comment on just how absolutely forgettable this film is. It's also quite dire, but just not in any memorable way.

You may disagree with me, I cannot even recall the general consensus at this point, but Deep Blue Sea was/is an excellent shark movie. It was Renny Harlin before he went off the boil, and he had a hell of a run, it was a decent enough cast, and it had that great idea of sharks coming in to an indoor environment.

Which makes this sequel, really just an inferior retread, all the more disappointing. They even directly lift a number of moments from the first film, all of them done far less effectively.

Danielle Savre plays Misty Calhoun, a shark expert taken along with some other people to a base in the middle of the sea that is doing some important science stuff with sharks. The experiments are continuing thanks to an amoral rich guy named Carl Durant (Michael Beach) and it's not long until things go wrong, prompting the rich guy to become more and more outright evil as he attempts to save face, and his own skin.

Director Darin Scott already has a number of features under his belt, a number of them TV movies, but you wouldn't know it from this amateurish effort. Okay, to be fair, there's a very basic degree of competence here, overshadowed by the weak script (by Erik Patterson, Hans Rodionoff, and Jessica Scott - who all clearly just watched the first film and then set out to make it worse, and cheaper), but it's nowhere near the level that it should be. I'm used to watching cheap shark films with dodgy CGI, and I have been spoiled recently with some great shark films that have excellent effects in them. This sits somewhere in the middle. Some of the FX work is decent enough but too many moments just feel rushed and lacking, especially when being displayed in the scenes that should be highlights.

I started this review by mentioning how forgettable the film is and that is emphasised by the cast, none of whom make any impression whatsoever, good or bad. Savre is left adrift, no pun intended, while Beach is given a character so one-note that you're just waiting for him to meet his obvious fate. As for everyone else? Nope. I couldn't even pick them out of a line-up right now. Which might work in their favour when they move on to future projects.

When an entire movie manages to be more wooden and boring than the performance from Saffron Burrows in Deep Blue Sea then you know that's not a good thing. This is definitely one to avoid.

2/10

Available on various streaming services, here is the DVD for American shark fans.