WOODRUFF: The holiday season is often a time when people catch up on some of the year's
best work in arts, entertainment and culture.
It’s also awards season, when writers, critics and fans are making their own picks.
Jeffrey Brown continues our own look tonight with the year in feature films.
JEFFREY BROWN, PBS NEWSHOUR CORRESPONDENT: And it's time once again to take a look at
some of the year's finest work and perhaps some that you didn't know that you can now
check out.
A subjective take, of course, from two film critics who have back from time to time, Ann
Hornaday of "The Washington Post" and Mike Sargent of WBAI Radio New York.
He’s co-president of the Black Film Critic Circle.
Welcome back to both of you.
ANN HORNADAY, THE WASHINGTON POST: Thank you.
MIKE SARGENT, WBAI RADIO NEW YORK: Thank you.
BROWN: I’m going to start with one you both love clearly from the list.
I saw "Mud Bound", it’s a new one.
Mike, you start it, why did you like it?
SARGENT: Well, I like it for a lot of reasons.
Mud Bound is being compared to a modern day "Grapes of Wrath".
I say it's comparable to that but it’s definitely a film that chapters or goes over a chapter
in American history that's glossed over in a lot of ways, you know?
It touches upon a great many great important subjects, especially, you know, blacks in
the military, you know, being poor, being in the South.
And I have to say it's a film that didn't have to cost a lot of money, it's a small
film that has a much, much bigger significance.
I happen to think that Dee Rees is a fantastic talent.
I think she’s going to be one of the first --
BROWN: The director, yes.
SARGENT: Yes, the director, director Dee Rees.
I think she’s going to be nominated for the Oscar and she will be the first black
female LGBT person to be nominated, about time.
But I think she’s great.
BROWN: OK.
Let’s take a look at her short clip and you can tell us more.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: How long have you been back from overseas?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A couple weeks.
Much obliged.
Have yourself a wonderful day.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Take care.
(EXPLOSION)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's all right.
The car must have backfired.
They say it's (INAUDIBLE).
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BROWN: Well, Ann, what most people won’t know about this, it’s brand new and it’s
also out on Netflix as well.
HORNADAY: That’s right.
BROWN: What did you like about it?
HORNADAY: Oh, I just think it’s just a marvelous film.
It's a real throw back to the kind of movies that we say Hollywood doesn't make anymore,
these movies of real epic scope, sprawl, density, texture.
It's a very literary work.
It calls to mind Wilick Hather (ph), John Steinbeck (ph), as Mike indicated.
It -- to me, films by Wilick Hather (ph), John Steinbeck (ph), has the best of our lives
kind of feeling in terms of the post-war error.
As we saw there, it explores trauma, post-war trauma, and I thought it was observant and
alert to subtleties in class, friendship and depression, dependency and obedience to social
norms that Dee Rees just weaves in so beautifully and with such finesse.
And I agree.
I just think she’s an enormous talent.
BROWN: OK, a couple more.
Mike, you mentioned "Darkest Hour".
You actually both love that one.
SARGENT: Well, I love "Darkest Hour".
I love "Darkest Hour" for a lot of reasons, of course largely because of Gary Oldman's
performance.
I kept watching, trying to find Gary Oldman in the makeup and performance.
I gave up and felt I was watching Winston Churchill.
I love it because it really gave me a sense of who the man was.
I had no idea that he was getting so much opposition from this party and the government
and his own party about what went down, an it's just a great film.
And interestingly enough, the films we've seen recently, "Dunkirk" and "The King's Speech",
give us context, so when you see these events happening, you know about them just from recent
films.
BROWN: All right.
We've got a short clip of that one.
Let's take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You've wanted this your entire adult life.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No, since the nursery.
The public one.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You will have to prove yourself.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I’m getting the job I need because the ship is sinking.
It's not a gift, it's revenge.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Let them see your true qualities, your courage.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: My poor judgment.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Your lack of vanity.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: My iron will.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Your sense of humor.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ho, ho, ho.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Now go.
Be --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Be what?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yourself.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BROWN: Terrific.
Mike, another one you mentioned was "Get Out", a Jordan Peele's film.
SARGENT: "Get Out" is sort of transformative, in my opinion, reminds us of what a genre
film can do.
I’ve always thought science fiction and comedy can do something other genres can't
do saying something about the human condition without being heavy handed.
Get out reminds us horror films don't just have to be about scares.
They can be and say something about society, and this film does in such a great way, and
it also reminds us of the relationship between comedy and horror.
"Get Out's" a film, I can't think of a horror film since night of the living dead that had
something to say about society so strongly you couldn't ignore it but it didn’t take
away.
It only added to the film.
BROWN: Ann, two from you.
One is "Lady Bird".
HORNADAY: Oh, "Lady Bird" is an incredibly special film.
It is the solo writing directive debut of Greta Gerwig who we know is an actress in
lots of little indie films.
I’ve always thought she was an utterly charming, natural presence on screen.
And she makes this debut with such assurance.
It's a coming of age tale about a 17-year-old girl in Sacramento, California, played by
Saoirse Ronan, the great Irish actress, and her, you know, desperate attempts to break
free of her stifling hometown and her -- most of which are sort of crystallized in these
epic fights with her mother played in this wonderful performance by Laurie Metcalf.
It’s a profoundly moving story.
BROWN: And then there’s a big Christmas season movie, with a lot of big stars, "The
Post," which was on both your lists again.
Ann?
HORNADAY: Yes, indeed.
Well, this is -- this is an extraordinary movie.
BROWN: We should say "The Post", of course, "The Washington Post".
HORNADAY: Meaning "The Washington Post".
BROWN: Where you happen to work.
HORNADAY: Exactly.
And I’m not biased or anything like that, but it's about the episode in 1971 when Katharine
Graham and Ben Bradley had to make a decision whether to publish the Pentagon Papers after
the "New York Times" had been legally told not to.
And then they kind of entered into this epic legal fight around whether they had the right
to do so while Mrs. Graham was taking the family company public.
So, the stakes couldn't be higher.
Tom Hanks plays Ben Bradley.
Meryl Streep is Katharine Graham.
It's been directed by Steven Spielberg.
It’s just a rousingly entertaining, very deeply meaningful movie.
BROWN: I want to take a moment at this time of year to ask if there is a movie or two
that didn't get as much attention as you think it should have, that maybe we can go back
and look at.
Mike, anything in that category?
SARGENT: Well, I definitely have to say the two I would mention are recently "The Man
Who Invented Christmas".
I’m a Charles Dickens fan so I was a sucker for this going in.
But what I didn't know, I thought the title was a little pretentious before I heard it,
it's about how Charles Dickens came up with Christmas carol, but I didn't know what was
at stake for him.
And, you know, he had had a bunch of failures, he was -- had been the toast of the town,
now he was the butt of jokes.
He self-accomplished the book, and Christmas was not something that was celebrated like
it is today.
It was something that was kind of relegated to the poor.
If you were well-to-do, you didn't really even acknowledge Christmas, and it literally
transform the season and let people and society look at themselves, which is what good fiction
should do.
And Christopher Plummer is mind blowing, he's the best Ebenezer Scrooge, and there have
been many.
It's a great film.
BROWN: Ann?
HORNADAY: I’m going back in the year and I think -- you know, Mike mentioned "Dunkirk"
earlier.
We have had all these -- the spate of movies about "Dunkirk" and that era, and one that
utterly enchanted me was "Their Finest".
It’s a little movie about the British propaganda office trying to get the U.S. into the war.
And so, they make a propaganda film based on a couple of evacuees, boats, civilian boats
that helped evacuate Dunkirk, and it's sort of about this production of narrative and
myth.
But there's romance, there’s humor, there's a lot of poignancy.
It's a terrifically atmospheric portrait of London during the blitz.
BROWN: You know, it's almost impossible to talk about movies and TV these days without
thinking of the context of the news we're in, right, the sexual harassment ever since
Harvey Weinstein and now, so many other actors, directors, and others implicated.
I just wonder -- I know you're both dealing in this world now, writing about it.
To what -- to what extent do you think, Ann, you first, to what extent do you think it's
affecting the way people think about films or about Hollywood?
HORNADAY: You know, these stories that we're reading about every day, are -- we bringing
them into us as we’re watching this work.
And I think the degree to which the work itself intersects with these stories, whether it’s
thematically or in terms of a character, then I think it will be even more difficult to
separate the art from the artists.
I mean, in some cases, you know, the movie you're watching has nothing to do at all with
what you have been reading about that actor or that producer or that director.
And so, it's easier to kind of make the leap, but I do think it’s going to be part of
our baggage for quite a while.
BROWN: Mike?
I think that hopefully, you know, like what Ann says that this will change not only the
way we look at films but what films actually do get made.
And I think hopefully not only will public perspective change, I think that there are
a number of artists, whether producers, actors, actresses, directors, people behind the scenes
who will now get an opportunity where they couldn't or where they were being held back
for reasons of harassment.
BROWN: All right.
We will leave it there.
Mike Sargent and Ann Hornaday, thank you both once again.
SARGENT: Thank you.
WOODRUFF: And we have more from this conversation online.
Our critics pick their favorite acting moments of the year.
You can find that at PBS.org/NewsHour.