Sylvie's Love: Out of tune

Sylvie's Love (2020) • View trailer

2.5 stars. Rated PG-13, which is needlessly harsh, for mild sexual content

By Derrick Bang

At first blush, Sylvie’s Love — an Amazon Prime original — is a charming romantic drama, very much in the cinematic style of its late 1950s/early 1960s setting.

 

Having discovered their shared interest in quality jazz, Sylvie (Tessa Thompson) and
Robert (Nnamdi Asomugha) can't help wondering if they have other things in common ...
such as a mutual attraction.

We rarely get a film so richly, thoroughly immersed in that period’s jazz scene. The incredibly busy soundtrack is laden with classics — “Waltz for Debby,” “Summertime,” “My Little Suede Shoes,” Sarah Vaughan’s “One Mint Julep” and many, many others — along with era-appropriate originals by score composer Fabrice Lecomte, drolly titled “B-Bop,” “B-Blue” and “B-Loved.”

 

Stars Tessa Thompson and Nnamdi Asomugha are enchanting together, and we’re easily charmed as their characters meet and begin what becomes a challenging relationship. Nothing is particularly novel about writer/director Eugene Ashe’s narrative, but his film nonetheless delivers an affectionately retro, comfortably familiar vibe.

 

Until he hits us with a thoroughly ridiculous and wholly unwarranted left turn, as we near the story’s conclusion. Which, frankly, ruins everything.

 

I don’t often see a filmmaker sabotage his own work so catastrophically.

 

Following a fleeting (and rather pointless) flash-forward, the story opens during the hot Harlem summer of 1957. Sylvie (Thompson) fills her days helping at her father’s music store — Mr. Jay’s Records — although she actually spends more time glued to a TV set: not as a casual viewer, but as the careful observer of what goes into the production of a show, because she hopes one day to establish a career in television.

 

Robert (Asomugha) plays tenor sax in a bebop quartet led by the less talented — but much better known — Dickie Brewster (Tone Bell). Robert chafes at the artistic limitations, but, well, a gig is a gig.

 

Needing to supplement his income, Robert applies for a job at Mr. Jay’s Records, after seeing a “help wanted” sign in the window. He and Sylvie share a flirty meet-cute moment, but she’s unavailable; she’s waiting for her fiancé to return from war service.

 

“Unavailable” doesn’t meet “uninterested,” of course, and — as the days pass — nature takes its course. This romantic inevitability is given swooning intensity by pop tunes such as Doris Day’s “Fly Me to the Moon,” the Drifters’ “Fools Fall in Love” and Louis Armstrong’s “A Kiss to Build a Dream On.”

 

The Upside: Moderately uplifting

The Upside (2017) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rated PG-13, and rather harshly, for suggestive content and drug use
By Derrick Bang

Hollywood efforts to remake French films are spotty at best; for every reasonable success — Point of No Return and Three Men and a Baby come to mind — we endure half a dozen wincingly awful bombs such as Dinner for Schmucks, My Father the Hero, Two Much, The Toy, Oscar, The Jackal and … well, you get the idea.

Helping Phillip (Bryan Cranston, left) with his daily correspondence is one of many tasks
that Dell (Kevin Hart) initially finds bewildering ... particularly when Yvonne (Nicole Kidman)
makes a point of removing hand-addressed, light blue envelopes from the stack.

Too many American filmmakers simply don’t get — or fail to appreciate — the wit, subtlety and gentle humor of European writers and directors, who obviously have more faith in their viewers’ intelligence. American remakes tend toward vulgarity, boorishness and broadly overstated farce. Characters who felt real in a French original, become garish burlesques.

I therefore greeted the announced remake of 2011’s The Intouchables with wariness, particularly when Kevin Hart — an aggressive comedian hardly known for delicacy — was announced as co-star. The original is a quiet masterpiece that’s both funny and deeply touching; directors Olivier Nakache and Éric Toledana did a superb job of turning Philippe Pozzo di Borgo’s 2001 memoir — Le Second Souffle (A Second Wind) — into a heartwarming dramedy about two men from completely different worlds, who nonetheless forge a deep, interconnected friendship.

Well, color me surprised. Director Neil Burger’s The Upside may not have the emotional impact of its predecessor, but it’s a game effort. Credit screenwriter Jon Hartmere for retaining both the original’s crucial plot points, and (for the most part) its thoughtful, often melancholy tone. The modifications required by transplanting these events to New York are integrated smoothly, and Hartmere even made a few wise improvements (such as ditching a snotty daughter character, who was a pointless distraction).

Best of all, Burger successfully guides Hart through a comparatively nuanced performance, mostly bereft of the mugging, wild gesticulations and wide-eyed bluster that have become his signature in moron comedies such as Ride Along, Get Hard and Central Intelligence. His Dell is a fairly real guy here: one to whom we can relate, and with whom we can sympathize.

He’s an embittered ex-con who can’t see beyond a lifetime of bad choices. He’s long separated from a girlfriend (Aja Naomi King, as Latrice) and son (Jahi Di’Allo Winston, as Anthony) who want nothing to do with him; he’s also just this side of being sent back to court by a parole officer whose patience has worn thin. The latter’s final edict is adamant: Get a job. Now. Or tell it to the judge.

The Birth of a Nation: Strong delivery

The Birth of a Nation (2016) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated R, for violence, cruelty, rape and brief nudity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.7.16

It’s telling — likely for all the wrong reasons — that the Nat Turner slave rebellion hadn’t yet been dramatized in an American film.

Having viewed a solar eclipse as a sign — of a black man's hand reaching to obscure the
sun — Nat Turnet (Nate Parker, foreground) gathers an increasingly large band of
equally enraged slaves, in order to begin a movement that he hopes will gather strength
and build, from county to city to state.

Aside from earning a chapter in the 1977 TV miniseries Roots — which got a few key details wrong — the event has gone unacknowledged by mainstream visual media.

Until now.

Nate Parker’s The Birth of a Nation was the darling of this year’s Sundance Film Festival, taking both the Audience Award and the Grand Jury Prize; without doubt, its arrival is timely. But tapping into the current combustible zeitgeist is ephemeral; relying on that sort of serendipity has consigned many films (and books, and plays) into the basement of forgotten relics.

The question is whether Parker has made a truly good film: an honorable, balanced and historically truthful document that will stand the test of time, and resonate with future viewers. On balance, the answer is yes: This shattering drama falls somewhat short of the bar set by 2013’s 12 Years a Slave, but it’s worthy competition. Thanks to these and other recent entries such as Selma and Fruitville Station, we’re experiencing an alternate — and equally valid — depiction of events which, in some cases, have remained shamefully overlooked.

ALL drama is compelling, particularly when experienced from differing viewpoints. Variety — as ever — is the spice of life.

Granted, Parker’s Birth of a Nation occasionally is guilty of grandiloquent excess. (The angel imagery is a particular overreach, as is his tendency toward unnecessary close-ups.) The indiscriminate butchery fomented by Turner is glossed over; no matter how justified the rage, it’s difficult to condone the slaughter of children (a detail Parker simply disregards).