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Fences doesn’t take the opportunity to do anything cinematic with August Wilson’s classic source material, however, it does boast career-best performances by Viola Davis and Denzel Washington

Troy Maxson (Denzel Washington) is one of the most complex characters to be committed to stage, and now film. No wonder it took James Earl Jones and Washington to portray his many layers properly on stage. In Fences, August Wilson created a compelling character study of a larger than life man who is living in a world that doesn’t recognize him.

Set in Pittsburgh in 1957, Fences follows Troy Maxson, a garbage man who spends each Friday — his payday — drinking with his co-worker and best friend Jim Bono (the great Stephen McKinley Henderson) and telling various stories ranging from his tangle with death to his abusive father. In particular, he dwells on his time as a star baseball player in the Negro Leagues. However, after aging out, he becomes bitter that he was never given the chance to play in the Majors — by the time the film takes place, Jackie Robinson has already broken the color barrier. This resentment coupled with his boisterous personality causes him to convince himself that everyone and everything are stacked against him. Even his wife, Rose (Viola Davis), who has steadily stood by him for years, and his son, Cory (Jovan Adepo), whose success in football brings back the strong memories of baseball in Troy, received a jolt of his rage.




Washington plays Troy as a man who is forgotten in the world, but a huge force to the ones around him. For Troy, he is the lead of his story and never a supporting role in someone else’s — a fact that comes to haunt him in regards to his wife. For those closest to him — Rose, Cory, his grown son Lyons (Russell Hornsby) — Troy is the sun that they both revolve around and are threatened to be destroyed by if they fall out of orbit. The one person who has some emotional control over Troy is his brother Gabe (Mykelti Williams — he would have been a fantastic Best Supporting Actor contender at the Oscars), a World War II veteran who was mentally handicapped in the war. His innocence to the situations and Troy’s guilt about him is the only thing that gets to him. At one point, Bono says, “some people build fences to keep people out and other people build them to keep people in.” While it’s an unsubtle nod to the metaphor that is the title, it’s an important line that perfectly sums up Troy’s unspoken meshes and Rose’s attempt to assuage them. Wilson’s prose and dialogue remind us that playwrighting and screenwriting are two entirely different things. However, it’s lines like those that also remind us why plays are so powerful. They speak the simple truths that often feel out of place in film.

Washington, who along with Davis won a Tony for the Play, stepped into the director’s chair to lead the same cast that he performed beside on stage — save for his son, who was played by a different actor in the play. His reverence for the material, which was written by August Wilson himself before his death in 2005, is apparent. He seemingly didn’t change a single word from the script, which is admirable but feels like he loses the chance to make something more cinematic. Of course, though, Wilson’s script and powerful language are more than enough to make up for any lack of cinematic flourish. If anything, it does more to support the material, which of course is the first job of a director. What he does do, is give each and every actor a place to flex their talents.

Viola Davis still plays to the back of the house in the film. The now infamous “I’ve been standing with you” scene will go down as one of the best-acted scenes in history thanks to the emotional flood she is able to release. However, it’s the smaller moments, which make the case for the film, that makes her performance, as a whole, great. She carries the weight of her 18 years of marriage on her face. The look she makes when Troy does something to remind her of the terrible hubris that has defined his life and decisions. One day, when she received a life achievement award, her monologue scene will be the one that they include from this movie. However, you can remember her achievement in this film as one of the single greatest performances from beginning to end.

While Fences begins as the story about a man that can’t help but absorb all the energy and attention around him, it ends as her story, one of a woman taking back the power she lost for all the years she spent with him. However, the themes run deeper than that. It, of course, touches on the societal issues of the time, but the more interesting, and affecting, is its commentary on parenthood. It asks how you give your children your strengths while protecting them from your weaknesses? How do you prepare your kids from the world and society when it’s constantly changing before your eyes? In the case of Troy, he can’t grasp the change, which is understandable considering the circumstances he lived in. However, it’s his stubbornness of not allowing Cory to grow and live that drives a wedge through his family. His stubbornness and pride is the shadow that follows him. In turn, Troy is the shadow that follows Cory.




There’s nothing groundbreaking cinematically in Fences. Any opportunities Washington takes to go outside the setting of the play — the vast majority of the film takes place in his backyard and house — feel out of place. However, there’s no doubting that August Wilson’s play is one of the great American dramas to ever grace the stage. While it doesn’t translate perfectly to film, the performances and emotions do — multiple people, including my friend I was seeing it with, cried at the end. In the end, it’s a really important lesson to be mindful of the space you take up in your tiny slice of the world and to leave room for those around you. However, on a macro level, Fences speaks more to our issues today than many people would expect. As Denzel so beautifully put in his SAG speech, August Wilson use his 10-play “Pittsburgh Cycle” to tell the stories of African-Americans that are pushed into the margins of literature, theater, and film. Also, though, Fences portrays what could happen when society constantly denies you the opportunity to advance yourself or simply live.

★★★½ out of 5

Fences is available on DVD, Blu-Ray, and digital on Amazon!

With a stellar performance by Natalie Portman, magnificent direction by Pablo Larraín, and groundbreaking screenplay, Jackie uncovers the woman behind the most iconic First Lady in history

Many movies try to give you an inside look at a famous figure. They try to show you the real person behind the mystery of their façade. However, very few understand their subject on an intimate level. The portrait that Chilean director Pablo Larraín painted with Jackie has so much color and life and emotion that it may be one of the greatest biopics ever committed to film. Taking place over the few days following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Jackie focuses on the precarious juggling act that Jackie Kennedy had to pull off in the wake of the darkest moments of her life. And while Larraín must be lauded for his accomplishments with the film, Natalie Portman’s tour-de-force performance as Jackie Kennedy, which will go down amongst the great performances of generation, drives the film to its satisfying and haunting end.

In lesser hands, this movie could have been shrouded in melodrama and meaningless dialogue. Larraín doesn’t try to sanctify Jackie. He appreciates her for her flaws — her often self-contradictory decisions, changing performance for the public, press, and staff — and studies how they affected her decision-making. By framing the story from two different angles — Jackie speaking to an unnamed reporter (Billy Crudup) only a week after the events of November 22, 1963 and speaking to a priest (the late-great John Hurt) looking for guidance — we can see her from two completely different emotional states — anger and confusion — as she navigates the political and personal waters that come when a President and husband are killed.




Even though the movie only shows events from the day of the assassination on — save for a few moments before and a recreation of her famous White House tour — Jackie taps into the mind of the third youngest First Lady from the moment she became a Kennedy. As she says in confidence to the priest, “I never wanted fame. I just became a Kennedy.” Her life as a First Lady is perfectly encapsulated in the week following her husband’s assassination. The movie is concerned with the juxtaposition between the performance she puts on for the public, the perception the public has of her, and the private life that she desperately wanted to keep shut. The Kennedys are one of the most enigmatic political dynasties our country has ever seen and Jackie may be the most mysterious member.

Screenwriter Noah Oppenheim — who has only penned The Maze Runner and Allegiant before — pulled together the shattered pieces of Jackie Kennedy’s psyche and assembled them in a poetic non-linear narrative where each scene builds on the last. He doesn’t become distracted by the extraneous details of her marriage to JFK — though there are references — or life preceding her time in the White House. Instead, he concerns himself with how the incredible weight of being First Lady both prepared and disadvantaged her in this unimaginable situation. He brilliantly uses the 1962 TV special A Tour of the White House with Mrs. John F. Kennedy — which Larraín beautifully and meticulously reconstructs — to give viewers a taste of how Jackie was perceived by the public which, as she says, is as “some silly little debutante.” Using her discussion with the journalist, he lets her air out her unfiltered feelings about the assassination — which she vividly describes in tears before saying, “don’t think for one second I’m going to let you publish that” — and funeral. In these scenes, Jackie toes the line between another performance and pure emotional turmoil.

However, her reaction is understandable. Not only did she lose her husband in an incredibly violent way that she had to bear witness to, she has to explain to her kids why their father isn’t coming home, leave her home with no complete sense of what she’ll do next, and plan a funeral that will be watched by millions and attended by some of the highest-ranking people in the world. On top of that, she is asked questions and is pushed to fulfill certain agendas depending on the official without a single person asking how she is feeling. Oppenheim and Larraín often sneak in her anxiety of her future and legacy in the White House by including her fixation on Mary Todd Lincoln, who became destitute after her husband’s assassination.

Between the non-linear structure constructed by editor Sebastián Sepúlveda, the unnerving score by the magnificent Mica Levy, and the singular yet classic cinematography of Stéphane Fontaine — he also shot the magnificent Elle and Captain Fantastic — Jackie is an assemblage of eclectic artists that thrive under the vision of Larraín. However, what they all have in common is the way they’re meant to make you feel — distraught.

No scene pulls together each of those elements and shows the pure brilliance of Jackie — for all its calculated storytelling and piercing dialogue — than a scene with no dialogue, no historical basis, and seemingly no point in the narrative structure. Late at night, Jackie dons her various and iconic dresses and twirls around her private wing in the White House listening to the Broadway cast recording of “Camelot” while drinking vodka and popping pills. It’s an astounding and courageous decision to portray a woman so revered by the country in a raw and emotional state. But it all goes back to the decision not to sanctify Jackie and instead show her as a woman with more weight on her shoulders than anyone should bear at one time.




Almost no one could empathize and few could sympathize — Jackie’s confidant and secretary Nancy Tuckerman (a truly excellent Greta Gerwig) is the only one who comes close — with the situation that Jackie is in. Even JFK’s brother Bobby (Peter Sarsgaard, a standout among the supporting actors) has his own agenda to fulfill. Larraín and Oppenheim finally let Jackie be the star of her own life instead of a supporting role in someone else’s. If anything, the film is groundbreaking for that. However, Jackie is groundbreaking because, for the first time, a filmmaker could empathize with their subject on a level that has yet to be explored in their history. Jackie always hid behind the person she was in front of the camera or behind the role of the First Lady. Still, she wanted to leave her mark. She wanted to have a legacy. Well, for the first time I think that the extraordinary woman that she was had finally been exposed. At one point in the movie, she says, “I believe the characters we read on the page become more real than the men who stand beside us.” Well, whether the story is true or not, I believe that Jackie has shown us the woman who stood beside us.

★★★★★ out of 5

Jackie is available for digital rental on Amazon!

Kathryn Bigelow delivers a tense and terrifying telling of the 1967 Detroit Riots with one of the strongest ensemble casts of the year.

Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal have proven to be an infallible pair when it comes to portraying real-life war events — The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty are among the best movies of the century so far. But in their next collaboration, they went away from the present-day Middle East conflicts and turned their sights to the 1967 Detroit Riots, which came on the heels of similar riots in several cities across the country. Bigelow treats the film like a docudrama more than her others by intercutting scenes with footage and photos from the actual events. By filming with the shaky cam quality of the archival footage, Bigelow begins to blur the line between the film and the actual artifacts from 1967.




In the macro sense, Bigelow is sure to give the story a time and place. Not just saying that it’s in Detroit in America in 1967, but about the rise of Detroit and how race plays into the city’s DNA. While the riots are obviously at the center of the movie, its focus is on one specific incident that took place in the middle of them at the Algiers Motel.

Like the best screenwriters, which Mark Boal has proven that he is, the movie establishes the three main characters that we will follow. Larry Reed (Algee Smith, who does Oscar-caliber work) is the lead singer of The Dramatics, a Motown group that is on the up and up when the riots break out. When their gig gets broken up because the violence has escalated, Reed and his friend Fred take refuge in the Algiers. Meanwhile, Detroit police officer Philip Krauss guns down a looter simply getting groceries in broad daylight. After being chewed out by his superior, he’s let back out on the street with even more aggression than before. Lastly, Melvin Dismukes (John Boyega), a security guard tasked with guarding a grocery store during the riots, is in a unique position as a middleman between the law enforcement and the rioters. However, he finds that both sides have reasons to discount them.

The Algiers Motel seems to be indifferent to the events surrounding it. Music is playing. People are dancing and having fun. However, nothing could prepare them for the nightmare that they are about to experience. Carl (Jason Mitchell, who makes the most of his small role), a guest in the motel, shoots a fake pistol filled with blanks at a National Guard outpost near the motel — the National Guard and State Police were called in to help control the riots. Convinced that there must be a sniper in the motel, several policemen, including Krauss, national guardsman, and Dismukes make their way into the hotel. The policemen gather up the guests, many of them teenagers, line them up against the wall and begin interrogating them to find either the gun or the shooter.

From there, the movie becomes a horror movie that is one of the tensest experiences at the movies in years. Krauss, drunk with power, begins to torment the motel’s inhabitants to try and suss out where the “shots” came from. Poulter is absolutely terrifying as the dictator-esque officer. He begins to resemble Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange more and more as the hours tick by and he begins to physically and emotionally abuse the dozen or so in the motel.

Those people include Larry, Fred, two white girls (Kaitlyn Dever and Hannah Murray), and Greene (Anthony Mackie, great here), a Vietnam war veteran. Bigelow doesn’t give a moment of relief during the entire incident. She holds tight on the actors’ faces to give a sense of claustrophobia. We get to see the incident from the perspective of the victims and the antagonists, which makes the impact even harder. The actions of the officers here are so clearly put on display that fear and hatred both make it into your mind. Even when national guardsman start to question the officer’s actions, they are reluctant to intervene for fear of suffering blowback. Bigelow gives incredible detail that makes you consider the incident from all angles. And all of them are terrifying.




The last third moves at a slower pace than the first two and plays a lot like the closing text of another movie. It tells us where the story goes from there. It’s effective in the sense that it helps audiences feel the effects of systemic racism in our country and, mostly through Smith’s Larry Reed, the individual plights that black people feel at its hand. However, narratively the scenes are long-winded. In particular, courtroom scenes featuring John Krasinski as a defense lawyer for the police department feel out of place and could have easily been summed up in title text and still left an impact. The one aspect of the final act that does work is Larry Reed’s story.

Detroit comes exactly 50 years after the actual events took place in 1967 and the movie makes you feel the outrage of the time. However, movies are as much about the timing as they are about the actual filmmaking. And Detroit comes at a time where that outrage is as high as ever. Whether or not Bigelow and Boal should have been the people to tell this story, what is up on the screen, at least for the middle third, is a breathtaking film experience that is incredibly affecting.

★★★½ out of 5

Watch Detroit on Amazon!