The latest film releases include “Carmen,” “Little Richard: I Am Everything,” “Chevalier,” and “Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant.” KCRW gets reviews from Carlos Aguilar, film reviewer for the LA Times and The Wrap, and Witney Seibold, a contributor to SlashFilm and co-host of the podcast “Critically Acclaimed.”
“Carmen”
This reimagining of the 19th century opera is choreographer Benjamin Millepied’s feature directorial debut. It stars Paul Mescal and Melissa Barrera.
Aguilar: “When you're in those moments of dance … you're really taken by it. I think it falters a bit when the writer/director is trying to still give it a sense of reality and ground it in something that feels more realistic or linear, when he's really trying to reach some vaguely political ideas.”
Seibold: “When he's trying to make this film cinematic, when he's trying to do intimate character moments, or when he's trying to tell a story just through dialogue, that's where he falters the most. But he is so virtuosic in filming his dance that I'm willing to look past all of that. Benjamin Millepied is really, really good about keeping the camera way back, just letting the dancers dance, doing the entire choreography. It feels incredibly stagey. But that's meant as a compliment. I like how theatrical it starts to feel. I like how unreal it begins to feel. … I loved the visual poetry of it. I loved how it was ambitious enough to push cinema and theater together, and I think it was largely successful.”
“Little Richard: I Am Everything”
This documentary features archival tape of Little Richard himself and other performers like The Beatles, plus interviews with Billy Porter, Mick Jagger, John Waters and others.
Seibold: “I love a quote [Little Richard] gave on the Arsenio Hall Show, and it's included in this documentary film, where he says, ‘I'm not conceited. I'm convinced.’ He was just assured of his place in rock and roll history. And this documentary film is very much about how he never got that credit through much of his life. It wasn't until maybe the 1990s where people started recognizing his stature in the rock and roll community, and how much he had pioneered, and how much he invented, and how many artists he influenced like The Rolling Stones, like The Beatles.
The film also deals with a contradiction of Little Richard. Little Richard was a gay man who came out and then went back in after a while. He went into this really dogmatic Evangelical church and started singing religiously, and ended up marrying a woman even though he was clearly an out and proud gay Black man. … I think the film is built largely around that mystery about Little Richard.”
More: Director Lisa Cortés talks to KCRW about “Little Richard: I Am Everything.”
“Chevalier"
This drama is based on the true story of violinist/composer Joseph Bologne, who was the illegitimate son of an enslaved African woman and a French plantation owner.
Aguilar: “The movie really hinges on that pursuit of excellence. Since he was a child, he knew that because of being a Black person in a racist French society on the eve of the French Revolution, he had to be better than everyone else in order to have a chance. One of his closest friends, or who he thinks is a friend, is Marie Antoinette. So he hangs out with her. … She makes him a chevalier, she gives them a title. And so he feels like he's part of it, but at the same time understands that he'll never really belong.
At some point in the film, his mother is freed, and she comes from Guadeloupe to Paris to live with him. And it's then that he starts reassessing who he is and his identity as a Black man in this society.”
“Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant”
Set during the War in Afghanistan, this action flick stars Jake Gyllenhaal as an injured U.S. Army sergeant who is on his last tour. It’s written and directed by Guy Ritchie.
Seibold: “Guy Ritchie has absolutely no interest in litigating war, or looking at war violence as anything other than just cool action movie stuff. He's really good at staging these big elaborate action sequences. And now he just does it on the battlefield. A lot of his films tend to be about … an incredibly aggressive kind of male camaraderie. And that's all he's interested in. … If you like exciting action sequences and war pictures, all of that stuff is perfectly slick. Kind of dull, but it's really slick.”
Aguilar: “There's a veil of self-importance to this movie about this heroic act, and the brotherhood that crosses borders and language and whatnot. But … there's really no interest in these people. We really don't learn anything about the interpreter or his life. And also, you get a sense of only these interpreters that help the U.S. are human beings — the other people in Afghanistan really don't matter. There's no mention about the consequences of war in this country.
… The most honest moment in this movie is a sequence in which Jake Gyllenhaal’s character has to deal with the U.S. immigration system over the phone. And it's very frustrating because no one gives an answer. And the process is incredibly dragging. And they're telling him that to process a visa, he has to wait months and months. And so to me, I was an immigrant in this country, I'm very familiar with how that works. And so to me, it was like okay, so he's a white American experiencing the wrath of the U.S. immigration system.”