Dear friends,
A very promising Cannes line-up was announced this week with films from Sean Penn, Wes Anderson, Joachim Trier, Asghar Farhadi, and Sean Baker. Plus, Nabil Ayouch, a director from my home country of Morocco, will also be competing for Palme d’Or. So exciting.
I wish you a great weekend.
Film of the Month: Widows
by Taylor Leigh Harper, edited by Salwa Benaissa
On rental services from $2.99. 🍅 rating: 91%.
When I think about heist films, I remember my father urging me to watch Spike Lee’s Inside Man for the first time, promising “a twist worth watching out for.” For me, this movie came to represent all that a heist film should be: an airtight thrill that’s slick, usually bloody, the heist itself choreographed down to the second—following in the footsteps of genre classics like Heat and Point Break, or similar to other contemporary hybrids like Inception or Hell or High Water.
But even more recently, I re-discovered yet another titan of the heist genre that remains woefully underrated: Steve McQueen’s Widows.
Snubbed entirely by the Academy Awards in 2018, Widows delivers a smart, violent, and uniquely emotional crime film with an exceptional cast. It begins with the aftermath of a failed heist gone fatally wrong and the four newly widowed women left behind.
Just as Veronica Rawlings (Viola Davis) begins reckoning with her shocking loss, a sudden knock on the door echoes throughout her empty home—and with it comes the outstanding debt her late husband owes to crime boss Jamal Manning (Brian Tyree Henry). Veronica is forced to think quickly and cunningly, transforming a group of widows into on-the-fly thieves.
What follows is expert plotting, political scheming, and a deeply poignant meditation on the changing landscape of Chicago, the stage upon which the film both unfolds and explodes. At its core, Widows is a film about vengeance and violence, and the ways in which these are at the center of both the heist and the city itself.
But what strikes me most about Widows—and why I’m surprised it isn’t higher on watchlists—is the way McQueen filters vengeance and violence through these grieving widows. In heist films, there are always bodies; in Widows, the men dispose of one another like toys, but the women hesitate, deliberate, and react to every instance of violence enacted. This awareness of greed and brutality perpetuated is unnerving. Worse yet, the feeling of its cycality is not only necessary, but also repugnant, and devastating.
Widows is worth the watch for its provocative, crushing performances as well as its complicated interpretation of the crime genre. Most of all, though, it delivers the thrill of the heist with all the titillation and uncertainty that a racing clock can conjure, and then some.
OUR TOP MOVIE OF THE WEEK
American Animals
New on Amazon Prime. 🍅 rating: 88%
Continuing with the theme of heist movies, this one is told in a way that’s different than most. The movie (with its actors and story) is often interrupted by monologues from the people it’s about. The opening scene even reads: “this movie is not based on a true story, it is a true story”.
Two friends decide to rob their local library from rare books worth millions. They’re driven by money but also by wanting something different than their monotonous everyday lives in Kentucky.
Mark Jenkins of NPR: “Stuffed with references to classic crime flicks, American Animals is British writer-director Bart Layton's clever and assured bid to rival Stanley Kubrick and Quentin Tarantino.”
OUR TOP TV SHOW OF THE WEEK
Kim's Convenience
The fifth and final season is new on Netflix 🍅 rating: 100%
It doesn’t feel right to bring up this show’s much-awaited last season without recommending to read what its star Simu Liu (Jung) said about the show’s cancellation here, and the cast’s struggles with the show’s “overwhelmingly white” producers. It seems the producers canceled the show to work on Strays, a spin-off focused on “the only non-Asian person in the show’s main cast”.
This easy sitcom is about a Korean-Canadian store owner in Toronto. Kim is opinionated but not always in sync with the times, which leads him to offending many of his customers.
And like many immigrant fathers, the success of his family is his priority, but his methods are questionable. This led him to being estranged from his son Jung, who was a rebellious teenager and now works at a car rental.
Kim’s Convenience often switches between silly and serious, but its brilliance comes out best when it mixes both.
📰 The New Yorker: “Our most prestigious television series often double as commentaries on modern life. Though Kim's Convenience is set in the present, it feels like watching an alternate time line.”
OP PICKS OUTSIDE OF NETFLIX AND AMAZON PRIME
We Are Lady Parts
New on Peacock 🍅 rating: 100%
This new British comedy is about Lady Parts, an all-female, all-Muslim Punk band. In an attempt to make their sound “heavier”, they recruit Amina, a shy Ph.D student who plays guitar really well but her nervousness can randomly induce bursts of diarrhea and vomiting.
TOP PICKS OUTSIDE OF NETFLIX AND AMAZON PRIME
City Hall
New on Kanopy 🍅 rating: 100%
This four-and-a-half-hour documentary is a patient and insightful exploration of the local government in Boston, MA. French film magazine Cahiers du Cinéma chose it as the best film of 2020.
That’s it for this week, I hope there’s something in there for you.
The next edition of this weekly letter will be in your inbox Friday, May 11th.
Until then,
Bilal