The latest film releases include Captain America: Brave New World, Paddington in Peru, Universal Language, and Sly Lives! Weighing in are Christy Lemire, writer for RogerEbert.com and co-host of the podcast Breakfast All Day, and Monica Castillo, freelance film critic and senior film programmer at the Jacob Burns Film Center.
Captain America: Brave New World
Nearly a decade after the release of the last Captain America film, Anthony Mackie now takes the role of the title superhero, replacing Chris Evans. The now 82-year-old Harrison Ford plays the Red Hulk with some good CGI work.
Lemire: “Anthony Mackie is taking over this role, right as the president, played by Harrison Ford. … He is coming into his own just as the president is taking office, and he's got to try to root out what this conspiracy is from within. You need to have done a whole lot of homework for other MCU things, movies that came out a long time ago, movies that nobody liked the first time around, but these are touchstones for this film. … I like Anthony Mackie a lot in this role. He's got a great deal of swagger and confidence. But also, this Captain America has a bit of imposter syndrome, because he's a regular guy. … He does not have the super serum in him like Chris Evans’ version of the character did. And so he's got wings, and they're made of vibranium from Wakanda. You got to know why that matters. More and more as it goes along, it's trying to tie into other MCU properties, both past and future, and it feels like so much connective tissue that the script is a bit of a mess. And eventually it just all ends up in the CGI extravaganza all the Marvel movies have to end up in. So it's a bummer because they had a real potential there for a while.”
Castillo: “There's some weird political undertones that are happening here, like there is a lot of dialogue around the fact that maybe we should see the good in each other and we should get along. And that just feels really, totally odd right now. ... I feel bad for Anthony Mackie because he does try to do so much with the little he's given in this script. But a lot of his big moments tend to be him talking down aggressive white men. … Is this what we're doing with our Black superheroes, like this is the best that we can give them as writers, as fans? And Captain America previously had done all these really interesting things about political thrillers, about paranoia, and who do we trust? And is the government in danger of collapsing in on itself because of secret agents and things like that. And it does not do anything with a lot of the stuff that it suggests. It just adds it in as filler, and then gives up into that big climactic fight at the end.”
Paddington in Peru
Paddington Bear and his family venture to Peru to find his adoptive aunt. Olivia Colman and Antonio Banderas make cameos.
Castillo: “I was really, really charmed. Even though I hadn't seen the previous ones, they catch you up pretty quick. … They jump into the adventure pretty quickly. We find out early on that Aunt Lucy has gone missing. So they all, as a family, go on a vacation, hop on a plane to Peru, where they meet Olivia Colman as a delightful singing nun, and they also meet Antonio Banderas as [an] explorer who's going to lead them down the river. And those two are having so much fun, just being the most silly they've probably ever been on screen. And of course Ben Whishaw as … the voice of Paddington, he is so delightful and so charming. I had a lovely, lovely time.”
Lemire: “It's about being an immigrant and finding your place in a new country. And so if you want a political subtext, for sure it's there. I am a Paddington aficionado. I have seen them all. … Paddington 2 is still the best out of all of them. Paddington 2 is one of the highest rated movies ever, like on Rotten Tomatoes, higher than Citizen Kane. … This has not quite reached those heights, but it's got all of the same charm, the same whimsy, the same really intricate word play, and just the building upon laughs and bits, and there's a great deal of setup and pay-off.”
Universal Language
Experimental director Matthew Rankin sets this in his hometown of Winnipeg, Canada, but now Farsi is the dominant tongue there. He also plays himself.
Lemire: “It's this totally inspired mixture of Canada and Iran. … These are the influences on the director and co-writer and star, Matthew Rankin here. The movies that he loved were all from Persian cinema. … It's a few different little intertwined stories in this version of Winnipeg that is recognizable and yet not. It's quirky and slightly off kilter. And there's this great precision to the cinematography and to the tone and to the dialog and how people regard each other. It is sweet and it is weird and unlike anything I've ever seen before. It's just like a small delight with some unexpected emotional punch to it.”
Castillo: “This is melding different cultures and genres and emotions and everything that's going on. You're following three different stories that overlap with each other at different times before all coming together. All these different characters come across other very strange and odd, offbeat characters. But it's so welcoming, and it feels so warm. … You don't know where this movie is going, and you're just along for the ride. Highly, highly, highly recommend this one.”
Sly Lives! (aka The Burden of Black Genius)
Directed by Questlove, this documentary is about Sly Stone, one of funk music’s pioneers and the father of KCRW DJ Novena Carmel.
Castillo: “It unpacks not just his life story and his tumultuous journey through fame. It also deals with how Black geniuses are treated by the culture and the pressure that is heaped upon them. And it's like a vehicle for a deeper conversation. … We get a lot of fascinating insight from the clips that [Questlove is] able to find, the archival footage of some of their first concerts. … But then he has some really candid conversations with members of the band, other people who were fans of Sly’s work, and retraces that really heartbreaking journey that Sly had struggling with drug addiction. There's a lot of one-on-one conversations with music producers who really like dig own and explain to you musically why Sly did something so different, and why it blew people's minds that he was mixing funk and rock and doing all of this extra work. … It is like a master class in Sly’s work.”
Lemire: “Questlove is so encyclopedic, and so you can feel that passion for music, but it's never pedantic, he's not teaching a course on this. He's sharing his appreciation for this artist and really taking a comprehensive look at what made him singular, and then what made him ultimately influential. … Unlike a lot of recent music docs, which are pretty worshipful because they have to be in order to get access to the catalog, this really digs into his demons. And this speaks to what the subtitle is about — the burden of Black genius — how there was so much pressure on him as a cultural icon, and so he got further and further into addiction to escape that, and then that hampered the work. And it became this vicious cycle. … I really appreciated the brutal honesty that exists here, along with putting his genius into context.”