Colman Domingo in Sing Sing
SING SING
In addition to being one of the best, Colman Domingo has to be among the least recessive actors currently working. To put it in theatre parlance, he leaves it all on the stage (and has a Tony nomination, for the 2011 musical The Scottsboro Boys, to prove it). Nothing, least of all vanity, appears to separate Domingo from his characters, and in connecting with them so fully and fearlessly, he brings them all the closer to us. Whether playing the righteous Civil Rights icon of Rustin, or the serenely recovering addict of Euphoria, or the ingratiating trombonist of Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, or the terrifying, electrifying pimp of Zola, Domingo's soul always seems to visibly pour out. Director/co-writer Greg Kwedar's Sing Sing allows it to spill for roughly 100 solid minutes. Thrillingly, however, Colman's soul isn't the only one on display. Not by a long shot.
“Based on a true story” has become such a tiresome cinematic cliché that it's bracing to encounter a non-documentary feature that actually does feel like real life, largely because, as in Nomadland, many of the people in the movie are the people the movie is about. Set almost exclusively in New York's Sing Sing Maximum Security Prison, Kwedar's drama focuses on inmates involved in the RTA – the Rehabilitation Through the Arts program, initiated in 1996, that allows the incarcerated to participate in theatre, music, dance, and other artistic workshops in order to foster self-expression and emotional growth. Domingo portrays John “Divine G” Whitfield, who's one of the program's biggest success stories, and who, as we realize during his opening recitation of a Midsummer Night's Dream soliloquy, appears to possess formidable talent. Divine G is also one of the leaders of the program's play-selection committee – a work of his own is under consideration – and about as genial, patient, and encouraging as a maximum-security inmate could be. (We learn relatively early that Divine G was unjustly convicted and has been working for years on his appeal.) But the camaraderie and fun of the men's regimented pastime is complicated by the group's new member: a wary, notoriously volatile prisoner nicknamed “Divine Eye.” (The formerly incarcerated Clarence “Divine Eye” Maclin plays himself – it's his and the actual Whitfield's stories being told – and most of Kwedar's cast is composed of rehabilitated prisoners whose character names are their own.)
Impressed as he was by the man's casual reference to, and quotation from, King Lear, it was actually G who recruited his fellow Divine into the RTA. He begins to have misgivings, though, when instead of the drama G would prefer, Eye suggests that the men perform something funny – what eventually becomes an original, time-travel slapstick involving gladiators, ancient Egyptians, Freddy Krueger, and Hamlet titled Breakin' the Mummy's Curse. (And yes, like the true-to-life RTA characters, this is a true-to-life RTA play, one written by Brent Buell.) G has further doubts when Eye, who wanted a comedy in the first place, auditions for G's presumptive role of Hamlet ... and nails it. But if it's here that you start to worry that Sing Sing will turn into a generically inspirational tale of rivalry and inevitable kinship, albeit one told from behind bars, that's not what Kwedar's and Clint Bentley's script has in store. There's an element of that, sure, but the film is more acutely concerned with the dichotomy between the restrictions of prison life and the freedom of art – or rather, the feeling of freedom that art inspires.
Beyond the Divines and G's best friend Mike Mike (Sean San José), none of the RTA participants are drawn with much evident detail. That doesn't matter, however, when you watch the men throw their entire beings into the goofy play-acting of Breakin' the Mummy's Code, and hear their hushed ebullience when describing moments in life when they were truly happy, and see them, eyes closed in a group exercise, reflect on the faces of long-lost friends. Most of Kwedar's cast is composed of non-professional actors, and they easily stand toe-to-toe with the finest screen ensembles of recent years. Although the screenplay and Kwedar's sensitive, astute direction give you plenty of reasons to, you don't merely like these guys. Through the movie's bighearted, deeply emotional portrayals, you feel you truly understand these guys, even if the script coyly avoids nearly any mention of the inmates' past (or presumed) crimes.
That's by no means a failing, as prisoners who've known each other as long and as well as these men have would hardly have reason to recount their offenses. My only real issues with the screenplay lie with some dialogue that's a tad too thematically on-the-nose, and a few plot developments – including a death that lands precisely when you expect – that are distractingly formulaic when they're not uncomfortably contrived. (That the referenced death doesn't occur in the manner you presume it will is of little help; I'm not certain that trading “predictable” for “stunningly coincidental” is an upgrade.) But despite the material occasionally veering rather heavily into pro forma “triumph of the human spirit” uplift, Kwedar and his team ensure that what's on screen is genuinely moving. Even composer Bryuce Dessner's score manages to be sentimental without sounding pushy.
As he has frequently been, Domingo is a riveting force of nature, deftly displaying how and why the passionate, hopeful, seemingly collected G slips into self-absorption and rage and despair. (Master performer that he is, Domingo also demonstrates G's acting chops while hinting that he's maybe not quite as naturally gifted as he thinks.) It's grand, and grandly scaled, work. Yet this isn't showboating, and Domingo is a smart- and gracious-enough co-star to routinely cede the attention to others: José, whose kinetic performance grows wrenching when recounting his grandmother's disappointment in him; Sound of Metal's incomparable Paul Raci, as the men's RTA volunteer, pumping up his charges and voicelessly breaking your heart; David “Dap” Giraucy, one of the many former-convict enlistees, delivering an aching tribute to his deceased dog.
It's Maclin, though, who's the true breakout, his initially menacing, ultimately transcendent turn the strongest conceivable argument for the power of art to heal and transcend. I absolutely adored Sing Sing, even if it does boast three epilogues when one would've sufficed. My streaming tears during all three indicated that I wasn't that bothered by their inclusion. Yet for my money, the finest of the lot was the first epilogue that culminated in exactly what this breathtakingly beautiful film deserves: joyous applause, and an ecstatic curtain call.
BLINK TWICE and STRANGE DARLING
Because my busier-than-usual weekend was almost comically compartmentalized, I was only able to catch three new area releases, even though six opened. But with all due respect to the rebooted The Crow, the faith-based drama The Forge, and whatever the hell 200% Wolf is, it was easy to decide what films to make time for. One, naturally, was Sing Sing. (By the way, if you're able to see that one at Davenport venue The Last Picture House, please do: The screening is preceded by a personalized welcome from the film's writer/director Greg Kwedar, who reveals that he's friends with TLPH co-owners Scott Beck and Bryan Woods. Cool!) And the other two were the suspense thrillers Blink Twice and Strange Darling, both of which I was eager to see based on their “Don't give away the secret!” marketing – a come-on that at least implies more narrative surprise than anything we'd get from The Crow. The short story of my double feature is that I loved one of the movies and mostly hated the other. The less-short story will only be slightly longer, because there's not much I can say about Strange Darling without spoiling the supremely nasty fun, and not much I can say about Blink Twice without making it sound far more fun than it is.
Directed and co-written (with E.T. Feigenbaum) by Zoë Kravitz, that latter title stars Naomi Ackie as broke and miserable cater-waiter Frida, who, while working/crashing a fancy soirée with her bestie Jess (Alia Shawkat), crushes hard on the guest of honor: a recently retired billionaire tech mogul who has the unlikely name of Slater King and the unlikelier face and physique of Kravitz's real-world fiancé Channing Tatum. Slater takes a shine to Frida, as well, and before the gals know it, they're heading off on a spontaneous vacation to the man's remote private island. During the fleeting days and nights to come, it's all champagne and fancy meals and more champagne and illicit drugs and weirdly tame nighttime debauchery in togas that suggest an about-to-fall Rome. It's also stacked with recognizable people, the men including bro friends played by Christian Slater, Haley Joel Osment, Kyle MacLachlan, and Simon Rex, and the women including Hit Man's Adria Arjona and, as Slater's personal assistant and sister, Oscar winner Geena Davis. But Frida begins to suspect that something about the island Just Ain't Right. The guests all have their phones confiscated. The servants, none of whom speaks English, keep calling Frida the wrong name. There are poisonous snakes seemingly everywhere. And worst of all, every day, no one seems capable of remembering the day before. Doesn't this setup sound like a kick?
Maybe. But what results isn't one. Rather, it's a bombastic, empty-headed exercise in lead-up with nothing in the way of satisfying follow-through, and tonally, it's all over the map. Obviously, it's not necessarily a deal-breaker when a movie wants to be suspenseful and funny and scary and sexy … though it might be when a filmmaker feels the need add “important” to the mix. But here, the suspense is middling, the laughs are nonexistent, the frights are funnier than the jokes, and the sexy is more accurately worshipful – and kind of embarrassing, as Kravitz can't stop reminding us how photogenic her beau is even when Tatum is supposed to be creeping us out. Outside of an Irwin Allen, I've also rarely seen a film with this many good actors giving this many bad (or at least massively overscaled) performances, with only MacLachlan giving his lines an elegant spin, and only Davis fashioning a figure with more than one dimension. By the time Kravitz finally landed on her softball of a Saltburn ending, I was more than ready to escape Blink Twice, which at least has the decency to open with an on-screen warning, as It Ends with Us perhaps should have and did not, of potentially triggering subject matter and violence ahead. Had the advisory come with an additional warning regarding how crappy the film was going to be, I would've appreciated it all the more.
As opposed to Kravitz's movie, which opens on the promise of frothy fun that'll eventually turn ugly, writer/director JT Mollner's Strange Darling opens with almost punishing ugliness before morphing into one of the most cruelly, grossly, dementedly delightful entertainments I've seen all year. Following a tender, acoustic rendition of “Love Hurts” that plays while a pretty blonde (Willa Fitzgerald), in slow motion, flees from some unseen threat, the score and sound effects are seemingly amped to 11, and we're suddenly placed in a sadly familiar genre scenario: watching a woman desperately try to outrun a serial killer (Kyle Gallner). Yet what makes this scene involving rather than simply grueling is the information we're given during the opening credits: that Mollner's film will be a tale told in six chapters, and the first chapter we're shown – a car chase that becomes a game of cat-and-mouse – is actually Chapter Three. We may think we know precisely what's going on while this unnamed woman is being hunted by this unnamed man, but as the numbers show, there was more to the story beforehand, and there's definitely more to come.
Aside from adding that Barbara Hershey and Ed Begley Jr. show up as a pair of Doomsday-ready former hippies (Begley's character clarifies that he's actually a former biker), that's all I'm willing to say about the plot. All that really needs to be known is that nothing, literally nothing, that happens in Mollner's “Chapter Three” is happening for the reasons we're primed to think. Although the movie may open like myriad other serial-killer flicks, the works it most readily brings to mind are the films, especially the early ones, of Quentin Tarantino, who loves to play sadistic games with chronology and expand your knowledge through the steady delay of information. Before Strange Darling, I'd never seen that approach used in the service of horror, and I think I may now have been forever spoiled by its employment. As the jumbled time-line unfurls (for the record, the order of presentation is chapters three, five, one, four, two, and six), events that initially appeared perverse emerge as sickly hilarious, and the shocks throughout are legit shocking – partly for their brutality, and partly for how reflexively, almost guiltity, they make you laugh. Adding the first-rate performance by Gallner (who's like the male genre equivalent of Maika Monroe) and the all-timer by Fitzgerald (whose portrayal is right up there with Mia Goth's in Pearl as a genre standard-bearer), Strange Darling is a macabre, giddy blast. See it. Tell your friends to see it. Do not tell them anything more about it.
