DVD pick of the week: "Night Catches Us"

After watching writer/director Tanya Hamilton's "Night Catches Us" for the second time, I had to go and double check that it really is her feature film directing debut. It indeed is, and as such, its a bold and often powerful vision from an exciting new voice in the world of movies.

And it certainly doesn't hurt that in Anthony Mackie and Kerry Washington she has two of the best young actors - black, white or anything else - working in movies today to tell at once a both intimate and ambitious story about the Black Panther movement and, more importantly, how its successes and failures impacted the individuals left in the wake of its peak.

Hamilton's movie opens with the pledge of allegiance read over images from the black power movement and ending with a question mark. Though it lacks subtlety, as her story does at points throughout, its an effective way to introduce a movie that asks big questions about the movement's effectiveness.

After that we find Anthony Mackie's Marcus Washington returning to Philadelphia in 1976 for the funeral of his father. The prodigal son gets a less than warm welcome from his brother Bostic (Tariq Trotter), who has joined the Nation of Islam, and this is the first sign among many that for Marcus, it's very hard to go home again.

From the outset of "Night Catches Us", we get a strong, effective and most importantly natural sense of time and place, accomplished not with the cartoonish attire that mars far too many portrayals of the era, but instead with the overall mood (or perhaps what Jimmy Carter famously called malaise), and with a big assist from the Roots (do they ever stop working?) in providing a funky soundtrack that pulses throughout the movie. And it helps that, having visited Philadelphia myself last year, I can report that some of the neighborhoods there do indeed look like they were frozen in time more than 30 years ago.

As Marcus reacquaints himself with his old surroundings, we slowly find out more about the world and the woman, Kerry Washington's Patricia Wilson, he left behind. In the past that shaped them and clearly still in many ways haunts them, Marcus and Patricia were soldiers in the Black Panther Party, along with Patricia's late husband, Neil, who goes unseen except in photographs but clearly hovers over everything that unfolds in "Night Catches Us". Patricia is now a lawyer raising her 9-year-old daughter Iris and 19-year-old cousin Jimmy, who is by far the more immature of the two dependents, and often much of the neighborhood, opening her home to any of the kids who need a hot meal.

Marcus also bumps up against more of his old Black Panther running mates, and that's when we find out more about his story, and why it's so hard to return. As we meet Duane "DoRight" Miller (played by Jamie Hector, aka Marlo Stanfield on "The Wire", and more on similarities with that great show later), we find out that Marcus is suspected of snitching to the feds in the case that led to Neil's death. And the truth about what did and didn't happen in that story shapes the most compelling portion of Hamilton's often complicated tale, and allows Mackie and Washington to truly shine.

Against the wishes of the older man she's involved with, Patricia offers Marcus a room in her home, and as they slowly become closer, the secrets and lies of their past also come simmering to the surface. "Night Catches Us" is at its best as they dance around the truth of their past as Iris, curious about what happened to her father, asks more and more questions. Even as Patricia claims "we don't talk about the past," she clearly clings to her idealized vision of it. Washington and Mackie let the percolating passion play out in glances that say much more than Hamilton's occasionally heavy-handed script, and its just a delight to watch the two of them on screen together.

Marcus and Patricia try to live in a world that is gray rather than starkly black and white, where, much like on David Simon's "The Wire". right and wrong collide so strongly they are often almost indistinguishable. It's when Hamilton steps out of this cocoon, however, to ask bigger questions about the often contradictory goals of the black power movement, that her story falls apart a bit in the third act.

Unlike with "The Wire", the white cops in "Night Catches Us" are one-dimensional composites that too often veer into caricatures. This robs much of the power from Jimmy's story, which asks one of Hamilton's most important questions: What is left behind after, rightly or not, so much anger is stirred up?

That Hamilton falls a bit short of answering this pales next to what she has accomplished, however, in diving into a period of American history that has too often simply been (for lack of a better word) whitewashed and telling the compelling story of two people caught up in it. She also assembles and utilizes the best largely black ensemble cast I've seen (also keep an eye out for another "The Wire" vet, Wendell Pierce, aka Bunk, as a detective who keeps hounding Marcus) since Darnell Martin's very entertaining "Cadillac Records". Check "Night Catches Us" out now on DVD, and definitely keep an eye out for what Tanya Hamilton, having dealt deftly with a complicated episode of America's past, now does with her own future.

A Saturday morning mix of clips

Before I get into any of that, including glimpses of two great documentaries I managed to see yesterday at the Rehoboth Beach Independent Film Festival and a Studio Ghibli picture just guaranteed to make you smile, there is one bit of good news this morning.

Though most of my head knows that "Easy A" isn't one of the best movies of 2010, in my heart it has lingered as the funniest movie I've seen this year, so it will almost certainly end up in my top 10 for the year. And besides, Emma Stone is just so thoroughly charming throughout that its perfectly easy to give in to the fact that this is as light as light can get and just go along for the very fun ride.

So it's nothing but good - if incomplete - news that "Easy A" director Will Gluck and star Stone are reuniting for Sony Screen Gems for an as-yet-untitled and -unscripted comedy. The wild card here is that it's not yet known who will write the flick, but here's hoping it's "Easy A" scribe Bert V. Royal, who clearly knows the funny.

In less exciting Gluck news, he did both and write and direct the rather generic looking friends-with-benefits comedy with the uninspired title of, well, "Friends With Benefits," starring Mila Kunis and Justin Timberlake and set to come out July 22.

And after that, all I have today is a couple of clips that bring the funny and two looks at movies I managed to catch yesterday in Rehoboth. You know, it really is a shame that Curtis Hanson has pretty much disappeared, because I quite liked at least a few of his flicks, especially the Eminem biopic "8 Mile," which I'm pretty sure airs on at least one basic cable channel every single Saturday afternoon. And though he clearly needs the work, I'm fairly certain Hanson isn't directing the upcoming Justin Bieber biopic (yes, really) "Justin Bieber: Never Say Never," but I'm glad Babelgum pilfered from his flick for this very funny parody "8 kilometer." Enjoy.



Now, I've never seen Jimmy Fallon's show, and if I'm ever sitting in front of a TV at that hour, I'll be watching Conan O'Brien instead, but it's nice to see that Fallon at least uses his fantastic house band, The Roots, for some real musical madness from time to time. Here, it's Jeff Goldblum crooning "Just a Friend," only to be joined later by Biz Markie himself, all backed by the Roots (who, for my money, put out the best album of 2010 with "How I Got Over.") There's really not much more to say about this except that Biz clearly learned nothing at all from his stint on "Celebrity Fit Club." Enjoy.



And finally today, I managed to catch two nearly perfect documentaries yesterday (and one truly disastrous Indian movie, "Like Stars on Earth," but I really don't have anything to say about that.) First up is "Enemies of the People," which spotlights the very hard work of newspaper journalist Thet Sambath, who for 10 years plus in his spare time has been embedding himself with veterans of the Khmer Rouge killing machine and often coming face to face with pure evil. It's personal for Sambath, whose mother, father and brother were all killed by Khmer Rouge operatives, and that's what makes this difficult movie so engaging. And his interviews with Nuon Chea, Pol Pot's No. 2, are as chilling as Errol Morris' encounter with Robert S. McNamara in "Fog of War." Highly recommended as soon as this becomes available, and it's in "Save" mode now at Netflix, so hopefully soon. Enjoy the U.S. trailer.



"Summer Pasture" was nominated this year for a Gotham Award in the category of "Best Movie Not Playing at a Theater Near You," and that certainly would have been true for me if not for the Rehoboth fest. The film itself is deceptively simple but thoroughly charming as it takes a look at six months or so in the life of a Tibetan nomad couple who herd yaks for a living. It has a little to say about modernization and a lot to say about life, without ever hammering you over the head with any of it. This may not sound terribly appealing, but trust me, it all just really works very well. I have no idea when this might come to DVD in the west, but with the Gotham love, hopefully it will be soon, and I'll certainly let you know when I hear of it. Enjoy the trailer.



And really finally, there also isn't much to say from me about this great Studio Ghibli group shot except that it's the thing that most made me smile this morning, especially since my single favorite Ghibli character is the great Porco Rosso. Enjoy, and have a great rest of the weekend. Peace out.

Listen to and watch the "Soundtrack for a Revolution"

Is there really a completely fresh way to examine a story as familiar as that of the American civil rights movement?

Probably not, but "Soundtrack for a Revolution," which hits DVD on Sept. 28, comes very close by looking at the spirituals and other songs that gave the movement its rhythm and spark.

Along with a brisk recounting of the titular revolution that changed the American South forever, it offers fresh takes on songs such as "We Shall Not Be Moved" and "This Little Light of Mine" by some of the best contemporary soul, R&B and gospel performers, including John Legend, Wyclef Jean, The Roots, Joss Stone and Mary Mary.

The songs all get polished up and beautifully delivered, especially Stone's "Eyes on the Prize," but they're all outshone by an Alabama church choir, the Carlton Reese Memorial Unity Choir, who show that these songs are, after all, still strongest in their raw, natural form.

And though this is a story we all learned in elementary school, this documentary directed by Bill Guttentag and Dan Sturnam still manages to bring it some new perspective through its choice of living witnesses to the movement. There are heavyweights such as Rep. John Lewis and Andrew Young, but here it's a story best told by the soldiers - many of them only children or teenagers at the time - who waged this war of ideas on the street.

Seen filtered through their eyes and in often extremely brutal footage, scenes as small as the violent breaking up of a lunch counter sit-in to as monumental as the "Bloody Sunday" march in Selma, Alabama, are brought back to life in a powerful way.

The movie hits hardest when the music and the tale it drives come together, most dramatically when Richie Havens' solo acoustic rendition of "Will the Circle Be Unbroken" is accompanied by a slide show of photos of some of the many people who lost their lives in the moment, closing with the four little girls who died in the bombing of the 16th Street Church in Birmingham, Ala. It's both extremely hard to watch but also impossible to take your eyes off of.

And in the end, "Soundtrack for a Revolution" works as well for what it says as for what it leaves unsaid. To hear Lewis calmly describe how he was spit on and beaten can't help but make you think of how he was treated again during our recent national debate about health care reform, and no matter where you come down on that issue, it's a solid punch in the gut.

As for DVD extras, there's really only one, but it's a natural extension of the movie: The studio performances of all the great songs featured in it. Along with the performers listed above, there's also soul singer Angie Stone and the Blind Boys of Alabama with Anthony Hamilton, and they're all first-rate (well, actually, I personally can't stand John Legend, who is really just a pale imitation of Stevie Wonder, but that's just my opinion.)

For a history lesson that entertains at least as much it enlightens, "Soundtrack for a Revolution" is well worth checking when it hits DVD on Sept. 28.