Author: Andres Kabel

Inheritors of the American hobo tradition, countless casualties of the gaping inequalities in the United States now apparently roam the country’s desolated areas, living out of caravans, vans, and tents. Nomads, they’re called, and “Nomadland” is writer/director Chloé Zhao’s immersive, almost dystopian depiction of their weird worlds. Discarded by capitalism, the movie’s centerpiece, middle-aged, working-class Fern, jury rigs a van to her idiosyncratic liking, leaves her now-junked mining town, and ventures into snow, desert, and mountainscapes. The fieldwork of The Grapes of Wrath is now, in Fern’s case, our era’s subsistence piecework: packing goods in one of Amazon’s supersized warehouses; cleaning shitty toilets in an RV park; slaving away in roadside cafes; hefting sacks of beets. Forensic rather than polemic, gentle not abrasive, brutally stark without sentimentality, Nomadland could well have drifted into travelogue territory, and the sweeping beauty of Joshua James Richards’s cinematography centers the movie on vast badland scenes. And Fern’s narrative journey is hardly substantive. What elevates Nomadland into art are Zhao’s discerning vision, the elegiac piano soundtrack of Ludovico Einaudi, and, above all, Frances McDormand’s utterly natural, unforgettable, star turn as Fern. Other actors shine as well ( I always enjoy David Strathairn, here playing an awkward middle-aged man in love with Fern) and the inclusion of non-actors from the nomad community is notable, but McDormand turns what might have been a semi-documentary into a reflection on home and community and modern life. A wondrous movie.

“The Queen’s Gambit” is a chess drama, and if you are anxious about boredom, rest assured. Gladiatorial grandmaster chess is a tense, vicious sport, and this dramatisation of Walter Tevis’s 1983 novel is a tour de force. Over seven episodes, it explores the life of prodigy Beth, from her orphanage beginnings, through her troubled teens, and up into the stratospheric grandmaster world in her early adulthood. Exploring seamlessly issues of love and identity and addiction and ambition, the script flows like a river. Anya Taylor-Joy mesmerizes as famous Beth, and Isia Johnston is only slightly less impressive as child Beth, while memorable performances by Bill Camp (a chess-playing janitor), Harry Melling (a fine male player), Marielle Heller (stepmother), and Thomas Brodie-Sangster (a grandmaster) flesh out a pitch-perfect cast. Beth’s dialogue, always sharp and unexpected, could be a scripting masterclass. Steven Meizier’s cinematography, allied to the vibrant 60s costumery, ensure a constant visual feast. And the chess scenes crackle with tension and nuance. All in all, The Queen’s Gambit is a must-see.

Don’t you swoon at the opening scene of “Mank,” in which Gary Oldman, playing kinda-legendary screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz, is deposited in a desert hideaway with a nurse and typist, in order to deliver post-haste the screenplay of Citizen Kane to outcast director/actor Orson Welles? Well, if you don’t swoon, Mank is not for you. But for the rest of us, this is an ancient-but-topical tale that David Fincher unwinds with unerring discipline. Oldman is outstanding as the unkempt, alcoholic, B-grade writer on the outer, spewing out from his bed the Welles’ classic, but all the actors fit in perfectly, with special credit due to Charles Dance (a malevolent, amused William Hearst) and Amanda Sayfried as his trophy bimbo actress. Cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt creates a sumptuous black-and-white, sharp-but-smoky visual feast, and everything about the movie achieves the aim of making a movie about the making of a movie in the very style of that movie. I gather the narrative messes slightly with the history, but who cares? The way that Fincher embeds the plot in an arc of tilting against the evil media magnate and his Republican vipers is breathtaking. If anyone asks me to accompany them on a second viewing, I shall jump at the chance, and I commend Mank to you.

What better way to farewell 2020 than a spoofy news recap? “Death to 2020” is a seventy-minute, month-by-month recap of actual footage, including talking-heads commentary from experts … except that the voice-overs and interview snippets are played by actors, hamming up like crazy. The star turn is from Hugh Grant, playing a crusty British historian who gets reality confused with Game of Thrones; every one of his appearances raises a chuckle. Samuel L. Jackson also commands attention as an aggressive newsman. Samson Kayo works well as a virus expert. Other mock contributors, even when acted well, are less successful, either unfunny or too relentless or plain silly, but all of them rustle up at least one or two amusing segments. The pace is relentless, and a recap of the year can remind us of forgotten events, but overall, Death to 2020 is an hour of entertainment that winds up as an opportunity missed.

My love-hate relationship with superhero movies, as unfurled in the third decade of the 21st Century, continues. “Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn)” is apparently the second offering of a specific spin-off from Batman/Joker, the conceit being that Joker’s girlfriend, the sassy, garish, “with attitude” Harley Quinn parts from the villain and finds her way in the world, be it as goodie or baddie. In this movie, Harley finds herself arrayed with (and often against) three other amped-up female protagonists, one a cop, the others ultra-athlete goodie/baddies, in a race to save a feisty teenager (played with amazing panache and irony by Ella Jay Basco) being pursued by the film’s arch-villain, hammed up by Ewan McGregor. The storyline isn’t bad for a superhero movie but the film’s two key hooks are gorgeously choreographed action scenes and the take-no-prisoners, expletive-mouthed performance of brilliant Margot Robbie in the title role. Much of the movie sings a fevered song that is just how a superhero movie should unfold. But is it just me to tire so quickly of biffy, smashing fight scenes that, in spite of the balletic precision, quickly descend into tedium? Am I overstating my persistent flashes of impatience that bordered on tedium? Luckily, Harley Quinn’s exuberant set pieces cured most ills as the film plummeted towards a reasonably plotted ending. Overall, Birds of Prey is an odd mix of filmic brilliance and superhero blandishments, and is a fine entertainment that fails to move beyond entertainment.