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Will Smith and Ben Foster in 'Emancipation'
Will Smith and Ben Foster in 'Emancipation'
Adieu Godard
(Film Movement DVD)
The aesthetic is underscored by the director’s choice to film in black and white. Adieu Godard is an inventive 2021 film by India’s Amartya Bhattacharka, “our humble tribute to the master, Jean-Luc Godard” as proclaimed in the opening frame. The story concerns an elderly Indian villager, Ananda, who pedals his bike to the nearby video store where he rents pornographic DVDs to watch with his buddies. The focus at their get-togethers is more on their leering faces than what they see on screen. The aahs and ohs of the soundtrack are clear enough.
When the video store is about to close, the owner gives Ananda a gift, a DVD of Godard’s classic in black and white, Breathless. His buddies are outraged—Jean Seberg doesn’t take off all her clothes on camera!—but Ananda is intrigued. “I think the filmmaker tried to say something new,” he says. A cineaste is born!
Adieu Godard’s cinematography is superb with contrasting long shots and close up and the screenplay delivers a story at once smart and funny—an accomplishment beyond the reach of Hollywood nowadays. (David Luhrssen)
Emancipation
(In Theaters Dec. 2 & Streaming on AppleTV+, Dec. 9)
Inspired by the story of “Whipped Peter,” this film follows the slave’s bid for freedom. Will Smith was paid $35 million to play Peter, a slave whipped nearly to death. He escapes into the Louisiana swamps, pursued by Fassel (Ben Foster), who leads a well-armed posse. Forced to leave his family behind, Peter is haunted by the separation when he joins the Union Army in 1863. A photograph taken of Peter’s horrific scars, during his army medical exam, is subsequently published in Harper’s Weekly Magazine.
Originally slated to be shot in Georgia during the summer of 2021, director Antoine Fuqua and Smith were so outraged about changes to Georgia’s voting laws, they found another shooting location at a cost of an additional $15 million. Then, in March 2022, Smith slapped Chris Rock at the 94th Academy Awards, earning so much negative publicity that Apple (having paid $132 million for the film’s distribution rights), planned to delay its release to 2023. However, several of Apple’s other “prestige” films were either flops, or were also delayed, prompting the move of Emancipation to a release date in 2022. Smith, rumored to be in the mix for an Oscar Nomination, is allowed to be nominated and win, though he is barred from attending Academy Awards events for the next 10 years. (Lisa Miller)
Entre Nous
(Cohen Film Collection Blu-ray)
Writer-director Diane Kurys presided over a film of novelistic complexity in Entre Nous (1983). Isabelle Huppert stars as Lena, a Jewish woman interned by Vichy in 1942. She is brought to the camp on a crowded bus lumbering under a load of luggage. It wasn’t a cattle car to Auschwitz, but the threat of deportation hangs overhead. Lena opts to marry a fellow internee, apparently a ticket for release at this early stage of French collaboration with the Holocaust. Much of Entre Nous concerns what happens to her postwar, including her uncertain husband Michel (Guy Marchand) and her inspiring, disruptive friendship with Madeleine (Miou-Miou). The new 4K restoration brings out the beauty of the cinematography. French art house films from the era remain a treat for the eye. (David Luhrssen)
Violent Night
(In Theaters Dec. 2)
David Harbour appears as an alcoholic, disillusioned Santa Claus in this black-comedy-action flick. On Christmas Eve, Santa is summoned by Trudy Lightstone (Leah Brady), a sweet little girl whose Christmas at her ultra-wealthy Grandmother’s (Beverly D’Angelo) mansion, has placed her in danger. Her grandparents are white-collar crooks with an ill-gotten $300 million stored in their home vault. The money is targeted by Mr. Scrooge (John Leguizamo), and his gang of mercenaries. So much for “all is calm.” Since Trudy ranks high on Santa’s “nice list”, the tipsy St. Nick leaves a bar, where he’s overly imbibed, and arrives at the Lightstone home, magical powers in tow, if somewhat out of control. The consequences for landing on Santa’s “naughty list” are sufficiently dire that even his reindeer try to keep off it. The robbers are on the naughty list and so have much to fear. Santa laments the commercialization of Christmas, but violently dispatching the criminals cheers him up. He’s the gift that keeps on giving. (Lisa Miller)
