Review: Slavery-focused 'Antebellum' is as gory as a horror movie, but without any of the thrills

“Antebellum” is being marketed as a thriller, even a horror movie — and while it has enough gore to qualify for the latter, it’s too sluggish to generate any real thrills as it deploys shlock effects to make its points about racism past and present.

The movie begins with a long tracking shot — an opening bit of showing off by the writing-directing team of Gerald Bush and Christopher Renz — from a Southern plantation’s front steps, through a Confederate military courtyard, to a cotton field where slaves are laboring under a hot sun and cruel overseers. The camera lands on the face of Eden (Janelle Monáe), who knows she doesn’t belong here.

Bush and Renz, music-video directors working here on their first feature, show more horrors inflicted on Eden. She’s beaten for not giving her name to her tormenter, a man in a Confederate officer’s uniform (played by Eric Lange), whose face the audience doesn’t see clearly at first. Eden is also burned with a branding iron, and regularly raped by the officer.

When a new Black woman (Kiersey Clemons) arrives at the plantation, Eden is quick to tell her to be silent, for her own good. But the warnings aren’t enough when the woman, Julia, attempts an escape and is brutally brought back to the compound.

After 38 minutes of Eden’s painful, seemingly hopeless plight, the movie changes abruptly. We cut to the present day, and a rich, successful woman, Veronica, preparing for a business trip to New Orleans, to promote her book, a Black feminist manifesto. Veronica has a loving husband (Marque Richardson) and cute-as-a-button daughter (London Boyce), and is enough of a success that she’s debating old white men on cable news and turning down a job offer from a Southern-accented corporate headhunter (Jena Malone).

Veronica is also played by Janelle Monáe, and we’re supposed to wonder what her connection is to the enslaved Eden. But there’s not much to wonder about, even if one hasn’t seen any of the movie’s advertising — or has never seen an episode of “The Twilight Zone.”

The lack of suspense in that central “twist” is what ultimately destroys our interest in “Antebellum,” along with the filmmakers’ creepy attempts at detailing the atrocities afflicted on African Americans in the pre-Civil War South.

It’s too bad, because underneath the faux-Scarlett O’Hara production design and horrific scenes of violence, there is some interesting commentary contrasting the brutal treatment then with today’s racist microaggressions that bubble beneath a crust of etiquette. That attitude is best displayed in a delightful scene where Veronica is on the town with two friends, and one of them — played by Gabourey Sidibe (“Precious”) — raises a righteous objection to the bad table the maitre’d has offered these ladies, two of them Black.

But that’s one well-handled scene in a movie with a lot of mishandled moments. Monáe has been in so many well-made, message-forward movies in the last few years — “Harriet,” “Moonlight,” “Hidden Figures” — that her presence should be a guarantee of quality. In this, the makers of “Antebellum” have let her down, and the rest of us, too.

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‘Antebellum’

★★

Available starting Friday, September 18, as a video-on-demand rental on most streaming platforms. Rated R for disturbing violent content, language, and sexual references. Running time: 105 minutes.

Review: In 'The Way I See It,' a photographer recalls his years in the White House, and the 'shade' he's throwing at its current occupant

It’s not often a political documentary is designed to make the viewer smile — righteous calls to action are the norm — but Dawn Porter’s “The Way I See It” elicits grins and laughs, because of the good-natured, happy fella that she profiles.

That person is Pete Souza, who retired on Jan. 20, 2017, from what he says is the greatest job in the world: Chief official photographer for the White House. It’s a job he held twice, first for two years in the late ‘80s, documenting the final years of Ronald Reagan’s second term, and again, starting in 2009, for the entire eight-year run of Barack Obama.

Before and in between those stints, Souza was a photojournalist, mostly for the Chicago Tribune. It was as the Tribune’s Washington photographer that he started an assignment to follow Obama, Illinois’ new junior senator, in his first term. Souza also followed Obama on his presidential campaign, and accepted the White House job after the election.

Souza’s one stipulation to Robert Gibbs, head of Obama’s communications department, was that he get full access, to photograph the private moments as well as the public ones. Obama agreed.

That’s a far different set-up than whoever has the job now, Souza notes in the documentary. He looks at a photo of Donald Trump in the Situation Room in 2019, after some Al Qaeda bigwig was killed, and can see how staged and phony the photo is. For starters, the photographer would have had to have been blocking whatever Trump and his generals were watching.

In his semi-retirement, Souza has become an expert on Trump’s manipulation of images and his administration’s use of the icons and dignity of the White House itself. Souza started reacting to Trump’s daily nonsense by posting photos from the Obama years on his Instagram, with short, snarky comments that conveyed an overall message of “this is how a president is supposed to do things.” Many of the posts were compiled into a book, appropriately called “Shade.”

Porter, through the course of “The Way I See It,” serves two missions. The first is, through Souza’s images, to chronicle the breadth of the Obama administration, and the pay tribute to the reverence that Obama showed to the presidency and the White House during his eight years there. The other is to let Souza point out, from his unique vantage point, how thoroughly Trump has disrespected the office and the building in just four years. (One wishes for an addendum, to ask Souza’s opinion of how Melania Trump redesigned the Rose Garden — where Souza and his wife, Patti, got married, with Obama officiating.)

Though there’s a sense of urgency to “The Way I See It” — Souza says he would be delighted not to contrast Trump’s White House to Obama’s, and hopes Jan. 20, 2021, will be the date he can stop — the overwhelming emotion the movie generates is of nostalgia. Yes, there was a time when the American president wasn’t a raging jerk to vast swaths of the country he was elected to serve. Those were the days.

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‘The Way I See It’

★★★1/2

Opening Friday, September 18, in theaters where available. Rated PG-13 for brief strong language. Running time: 100 minutes.

Review: Documentary 'All In' rallies its audience to fight against voter suppression

If you’re motivated to political activism through anger, “All In: The Fight for Democracy” is the movie to get your blood boiling — a persistent call to action against the forces working to keep millions of Americans from exercising their right to vote.

The history of American voter suppression begins with the Founding Fathers, who wrote into the Constitution that only male, white landowners could vote, about 6 percent of the population. 

It took the Civil War amendments to give African Americans the vote, which allowed some level of equal representation during Reconstruction. The movie details that history, and how a backroom deal in the 1876 presidential election undid that equality, through a century of Jim Crow laws. 

It took decades of protests by women to get the 19th Amendment, finally ratified in 1920, which gave women — well, white women — the right to vote. 

And it took more protests, including the famous 1965 march in Selma, to rally support for the Voting Rights Act, which mandated federal oversight of election laws in states that historically discriminated against minorities. When the John Roberts-led Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act, those same states wasted no time with new restrictions: Voter ID, purges of voter rolls, and closing polling places in areas where minorities live. And let’s not forget gerrymandering, which allows politicians to choose their voters instead of the other way around.

The framing device that filmmakers Liz Garbus (“I’ll Be Gone in the Dark”) and Lisa Cortes (“The Remix: Hip Hop X Fashion”) employ to illuminate this history is that of Stacey Abrams, the Georgia activist who ran for governor against Brian Kemp, the Republican secretary of state whose job included managing the very election in which he was running. Garbus and Cortes have no reservations in suggesting that Kemp’s handling of that election is the sort of move that, were it done in some impoverished young democracy, would draw Jimmy Carter and a team of skeptical election observers.

Stylistically, Garbus and Cortes are as in-your-face as possible. The interview subjects — Abrams, former Attorney General Eric Holder, historians, journalists, even someone from the right-wing Heritage Foundation — sit at tables, looking directly at the camera, with nothing getting between their words and the audience. It’s an effective visual device, since the movie ends with many of those people urging the audience to vote, and to check that there’s no bureaucracy keeping anyone from voting.

“All In” is a rabble-rousing documentary with a simple message: If your vote wasn’t valuable, people wouldn’t be working so hard to steal it.

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‘All In: The Fight for Democracy’

★★★1/2

Available starting Friday, September 18, on Prime Video. Rated PG-13 for some disturbing violent images, thematic material and strong language - all involving racism. Running time: 102 minutes.

Review: In 'The Nest,' Jude Law and Carrie Coon are outstanding as a couple in a crumbling marriage

Given its enigmatic title and the creepy English mansion where much of the action happens, one might assume “The Nest” was a horror movie — but it’s the emotional violence of a marriage reaching the breaking point that makes this drama so heart-stopping.

It’s the height of the go-go ‘80s, and the O’Hara family seemingly has everything they could want. Rory (Jude Law), the father, is a successful financial wheeler-dealer in New York. His wife, Allison (Carrie Coon), trains horses and teaches people to ride them. They have a 10-year-old son, Ben (Charlie Shotwell), and Rory treats Allison’s teen daughter, Samantha (Oona Roche), like his own.

One day, though, Rory tells Allison — and “tells” is the key here, this being the ‘80s — that they should move to London, where Rory sees a sales opportunity that could earn them a fortune. Soon, the family packs up for the U.K., where Rory has already rented a massive old stone house with more rooms than they can ever use. Rory hires contractors to build a stable, buys Allison a horse and a mink coat, and sets Samantha and Ben in ritzy schools.

It doesn’t take long for Allison to suss out that Rory’s grand scheme isn’t coming together as he had promised. We see what Allison doesn’t, which is that Rory’s plan involves convincing his boss (Michael Culkin) to sell the firm he spent decades building to some American corporate raiders.

Writer-director Sean Durkin — helming only his second feature after his stunning 2011 debut, the cult-survivor drama “Martha Marcy May Marlene” — establishes his characters and their relationships with swift, telling gestures and an economy of dialogue. Whether it’s the routine of Rory bringing Allison her morning coffee or the way Allison stashes a wad of cash where Rory can’t find it, Durkin creates entire lives with small moments. 

When the moments get bigger, Law and Coon are up to them. They give powerhouse performances as a couple falling apart — as Allison tires, at long last, Rory’s self-aggrandizing patter and empty promises. Their fireworks ignite “The Nest,” raising the emotional tension to compelling heights.

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‘The Nest’

★★★1/2

Opening Friday, September 18, in theaters where available. Rated R for language throughout, some sexuality, nudity and teen partying. Running time: 107 minutes.

Review: 'Chuck Berry' gives a full view of the life of the man who 'invented' rock 'n' roll

It’s hard to disagree with the claim that Chuck Berry was “the king of rock ’n’ roll” — if not the inventor, as the documentary titled simply “Chuck Berry” argues strongly, through the voices of friends and family who knew him best.

The documentary begins at one of Berry’s low points, in his teen years when he was sent to a reformatory on an armed-robbery charge, and one of his highest, when he met Themetta Suggs — whom he married in 1948, and stayed married to until his death in 2017.

Berry began his musical career in his home town of St. Louis, playing R&B in a trio and perfecting his signature guitar licks. On a trip to Chicago, he met the blues legend Muddy Waters, who told Berry to get in touch with Leonard Chess, co-founder of the influential Chess Records label. Berry took a country song, “Ida Red,” and adapted it with R&B grooves and Berry’s own lyrics; the song, “Maybelline,” became Berry’s first hit record.

The radio dial, some of Berry’s friends and admirers say here, was the one aspect of American culture that wasn’t segregated — because anybody could pick up mainstream (read “white”) stations and stations that played Black music in any major city. Some mainstream programmers couldn’t tell, by ear, that Berry was Black, and the kids didn’t care. They heard a guy singing about cars and girls and high school, and playing music they could dance to.

Director Jon Brewer — who has directed documentaries about B.B. King, Guns ’n’ Roses and other acts — collects a wide array of Berry’s peers and admirers, such as Johnny Rivers, George Thorogood, Joe Perry of Aerosmith, Gene Simmons of Kiss, Nile Rodgers, Joe Bonamassa, Gary Clark Jr. (who was introduced to Berry by, of all things, “Back to the Future”). He also gets Themetta and Berry’s children and grandchildren to reminisce about Berry’s softer side. As for Berry’s run-ins with the law, Brewer talks to Berry’s lawyers.

Even though Brewer largely tells Berry’s story chronologically, there are some odd jumps and juxtapositions — along with some unfortunate stylistoc choices, like some re-creations that are more flash than substance. When the documentary is working well, it’s because Brewer focuses on the music, and how Berry kept playing through all of his life’s ups and downs, reminding the world who put the swagger in rock ’n’ roll.  

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‘Chuck Berry’

★★★

Available starting Friday, September 18, on the Salt Lake Film Society’s virtual cinema, SLFS@Home. Not rated, but probably PG-13 for some language, and thematic material. Running time: 103 minutes.

Review: 'The Broken Hearts Gallery' is a fizzy romantic comedy, and a showcase for the delightful Geraldine Viswanathan

The romantic comedy “The Broken Hearts Gallery” goes everywhere one expects a fizzy, bubbly New York romance is supposed to go — but it also goes to some interesting places, thanks to the female-focused writing and directing of Natalie Krinsky and the dazzling central performance by Geraldine Viswanathan.

You might remember Viswanathan from her breakout role in the raunch comedy “Blockers,” as the confident, sports-loving, sex-positive teen daughter of John Cena. She also wowed audiences at Sundance a year ago in “Hala,” as a Muslim teen confronting her desires. Here, in her first Hollywood leading role, it’s clear that Viswanathan is a name we’re all going to learn to spell it and pronounce, because we’ll be writing and talking about her a lot.

Viswanathan plays Lucy, a young gallery assistant in New York who thinks her biggest night is ahead of her: She’s overseeing a major opening for her boss, Eva (Bernadette Peters), a legend in the art world — and she’ll be doing it with her coworker and boyfriend, Max (Utkarsh Ambudkar). But when Lucy sees Max with an old flame (Tattiawna Jones), Lucy’s big night unravels into disaster and Eva fires her. 

All Lucy has to show for the evening is Max’s necktie. This turns out to be the latest souvenir Lucy has collected from all of her many breakups, which form a shrine that her gal-pal roommates — cynical law student Amanda (Molly Gordon, from “Booksmart”) and lesbian lothario Nadine (Phillipa Soo, from “Hamilton”) — think is creepy and debilitating.

One good thing emerges from that bad night: Lucy accidentally meets Nick (Dacre Montgomery, late of “Stranger Things”), a nice guy who listens to her drunken sob story after she breaks up with Max. The two become platonic friends, and Lucy takes an interest in the boutique hotel Nick is trying to open. In their conversations, Nick convinces Lucy to get rid of Max’s tie, by hanging it on a nail in Nick’s hotel. She writes a little note describing the breakup, and leaves it there.

The next morning, Nick calls Lucy with a surprise: Someone has left another breakup-related item, a map for a road trip that never happened, next to the tie. Lucy posts this on social media, and very soon people from all over New York are bringing in various items left over from busted romances — and Lucy has a viral hit, one that might produce a little money for Nick’s hotel.

From that premise, Krinsky — a TV scribe making her feature debut as writer and director — spins out some wry and witty commentary about love, and the grief that comes when that love is cut off. The roommates, perfectly played by Gordon and Soo, get the best one-liners. (A favorite, when Nadine is confronted with evidence of the many Russian models she has dated and dumped: “I’m going to have to make right with the Russians, before Putin has me poisoned.”). Krinsky also creates a smart, tenderly rendered backstory to explain Lucy’s inability to let go of old memories.

The whole weight of “The Broken Hearts Gallery” is on Viswanathan’s shoulders, and she carries it like a champ. She captures Lucy’s Manhattan sophistication (good thing, considering the movie’s shot in Toronto), and also the slight desperation behind her sprawling collection of ex-boyfriends’ stuff. Viswanathan has a future as America’s movie sweetheart — and, odds are, a whole lot more.

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‘The Broken Hearts Gallery’

★★★1/2

Opening Friday, September 11, in theaters where open. Rated PG-13 for sexual content throughout and some crude references, strong language and drug references. Running time: 108 minutes.

Review: 'Sibyl' veers wildly from sex comedy to psychological drama, with an unstable shrink at the center

The French comedy-drama “Sibyl” is borderline crazy, but not for the reasons the title suggests — because this tale of a psychiatrist spiraling out of control has nothing to do with “Sybil,” the famous story of a woman with multiple personalities.

At the film’s start, Sibyl (played by Virginie Efira) is trying to reduce the voices in her life. She’s a Paris psychiatrist who is trying to retire, to give up most of her patients so she can concentrate on writing her novel. But the blank laptop screen intimidates her, and she finds little to inspire her writing in her stable life, married to rock-solid Etienne (Paul Hamy) and being mom to two daughters. 

The only thing Sibyl thinks to write about is an old boyfriend, Gabriel (Niels Schneider), with whom she had great sex but also a raging alcohol problem for which she still attends AA meetings.

Then a woman, desperate for a psychiatrist, comes to her office. Margot (Adèle Exarchopoulos, from “Blue Is the Warmest Color”) is an actress in a dilemma: She’s two months’ pregnant, and the father is Igor (Gaspard Ulliel, from “Hannibal Rising”), a very famous actor who’s married to Mika (Sandra Hüller, from “Toni Erdmann”), the director of the movie in which Margot and Igor are currently working.

Against her better judgment, and the advice of her own shrink (Arthur Harari), Sibyl takes Margot’s case, and starts weaving elements of Margot’s story into her novel alongside the scenes with Gabriel. When Margot threatens to do violence to herself, Sibyl hops on a plane to the Mediterranean, where Mika is shooting the finale of her movie. Mika knows about Igor’s affair with Margot, but holds back her rage because her only concern is getting her movie finished. 

Director Justine Triet, who co-wrote the screenplay with Harari, fashions a sharp, sometimes funny and often intense story of desire, whether for sexual fulfillment, emotional clarity or the muse to strike. Sibyl’s involvement in Margot’s life — and, as things proceed, Mika’s movie — lead the good doctor to  spin out spectacularly, and much of the enjoyment is watching Efira (who worked with Triet on “In Bed With Victoria” in 2016) try to keep going as it all collapses around her. The observation that we’re all actors in our narrative, and some are better at faking it than others, is what propels “Sibyl” to a smart, and emotionally resonant, ending.

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‘Sibyl’

★★★

Available Friday, September 11, in the Salt Lake Film Society’s virtual cinema. Not rated, but probably R for strong sexuality, language and mature themes. Running time: 101 minutes; in French with subtitles.

Review: 'Jimmy Carter: Rock & Roll President' doesn't quite make the case for Carter's musical connections

Alas, the documentary “Jimmy Carter: Rock & Roll President” plays out much like Carter’s one term in office: Carrying lots of promise in the beginning, but becoming muddled and unfocused as it goes.

The movie begins with Carter’s acceptance speech at the 1976 Democratic National Convention, when he became the party’s candidate for president. In it, he quotes Bob Dylan — the first time a major political candidate quoted a pop musician positively.

As noted by several interview subjects — a list that includes President Carter and his son, Chip, several former aides, and many musicians who are Carter’s friends — it was more common in the ‘70s for a candidate to decry the evils of that demon rock music. Carter, on the other hand, befriended musicians and asked them to perform at fund-raisers for his campaign, starting notably with a show by The Allman Brothers Band in Providence, R.I., that kickstarted Carter’s still-fledgling campaign.

Through the primaries, the upstart Carter faced opposition from the establishment Democrats, and Carter often used rock music as his ace in the hole. Campaigning in Oregon, Carter got Jimmy Buffett to perform an acoustic show at a Portland rally. Willie Nelson performed for Carter several times, and so did Johnny Cash and June Carter — with the candidate joking that he and June were distant cousins.

One sign that the music was having an effect: California Gov. Jerry Brown tried to counter, by asking his then-girlfriend Linda Ronstadt to perform in Maryland, along with some of her friends: The Eagles. Political experts say Brown’s efforts were too little, too late.

Once Carter was in office, it was up to First Lady Rosalynn Carter to organize entertainment for White House events. She arranged a series of concerts on the White House lawn, featuring country, folk, gospel and jazz artists — often with legends. (One of the funniest clips in the film shows Dizzy Gillespie and his band performing their hit “Salt Peanuts,” with Carter, once a peanut farmer, doing the odd vocal.)

Alas, director Mary Wharton (a veteran of VH1’s “Behind the Music” series) runs out of observations about music’s influence on the Carter years — even with interview subjects like Nelson and Dylan commenting. So the rest becomes a fairly straight-forward account of the Carter administration, with particular attention to the Camp David accords with Israel’s Menacham Begin and Egypt’s Anwar Sadat, and the Iranian hostage crisis that derailed Carter’s term and opened up Ronald Reagan’s landslide victory in 1980.

The movie also pays rightful attention to Carter’s post-presidential humanitarian work, and interviews more musicians who have met Carter through those efforts — including Bono, Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood.

All of it is quite nice, and some of the musical interludes — like Bono singing “Pride (In the Name of Love)” at an event honoring Carter — are fun to hear, almost as fun as hearing country singer Larry Gatlin quoting Shakespeare (which he does both accurately and in a fitting context, so there). 

The best thing about “Jimmy Carter: Rock & Roll President” is the reminder that it’s possible to have a president with an inner life, with an appreciation for something besides the mirror, and a sense of a bigger world beyond himself. To have a president like that again would be music to America’s ears.

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‘Jimmy Carter: Rock & Roll President’

★★1/2

Available Friday, September 11, in the Salt Lake Film Society’s virtual cinema, and opening at the Megaplex Gateway (Salt Lake City). Not rated, but probably PG-13 for language and mature themes. Running time: 96 minutes.