Review: In thought-provoking 'One Night in Miami,' Regina King shows she's right at home in the director's chair

After watching her in her Emmy-winning role in “Watchmen” and her Oscar-winning performance in “If Beale Street Could Talk” — and now, with her feature directing debut, “One Night in Miami” — I am convinced that Regina King can do anything.

Appoint her Attorney General. Let her quarterback the Jets. Put her on “The Masked Singer.” Whatever it is, she can do it, and brilliantly.

Here, King and screenwriter Kemp Powers (“Soul”), adapting his own stage play, imagine the conversation that occurred before one of the most famous photos of 1964. The photo was taken in a Miami diner, after Muhammad Ali — when he was still using the name Cassius Clay — celebrated taking the heavyweight title in a match against Sonny Liston. Attending this impromptu party were the football icon Jim Brown, the singer Sam Cooke, and the activist Malcolm X.

Before this photo was taken, we find Malcolm (played by Kingsley Ben-Adir) preparing his hotel room to meet the other three men. They think they’re going to a party, but Malcolm has something else in mind: A conversation about how these icons can use their status to further the cause of Black liberation.

Most of Malcolm’s attention is focused on Cooke (played by Leslie Odom Jr.), a popular singer who should, in Malcolm’s view, be using his music to further the cause — not singing sappy love songs like “You Send Me.” Cooke argues back that, as a Black entrepreneur, he’s doing his part for his people, like making sure the Black artists he manages get proper royalties when The Rolling Stones covers one of their songs.

While Brown (Aldis Hodge) looks on with amusement, and talks about his side career of getting into the movies, Malcolm also wants a word with Clay (Eli Goree). Malcolm has been guiding Clay on his path to converting to Islam, but hasn’t told the future Ali that he’s had a falling-out with the leader of the Nation of Islam, Elijah Muhammad.

King maintains the contours of the stage origins of Powers’ story — most of the “action” is confined to Malcolm’s small hotel room, and consists of heartfelt, sometimes contentious, dialogue among the quartet. That’s not a handicap here, and King as a director isn’t afraid to let ideas and words propel the drama. King also expands outside that hotel room, with some visually striking moments, in the boxing ring with Clay or on “The Tonight Show” with Cooke, among others.

King also trusts her actors, and they repay that trust tenfold. Ben-Adir bottles the intellectual intensity of Malcolm X, both as an agitator trying to provoke Cooke and a counselor to Clay in his spiritual journey. Odom (“Hamilton”) gets the showiest role, singing in Cooke’s style but also embodying the showman’s smoothness. Goree captures Clay’s ebullient confidence, and the anger bubbling underneath it. Hodge makes Brown a cool observer, more thoughtful than one expects from a football player.

Together, the four actors bring Powers’ dialogue to full life, guided by King’s light but sure hand, posing big questions about Black identity and reactions to systemic racism. They make “One Night in Miami” an exhilarating, thought-provoking experience that’s as vital now as it was would have been in 1964

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‘One Night in Miami’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, January 8, in select theaters, including Megaplex Valley Fair (West Valley City), Megaplex Jordan Commons (Sandy), Megaplex at The District (South Jordan) and Megaplex Thanksgiving Point (Lehi); available for streaming starting Friday, January 15, on Netflix. Rated R for language throughout. Running time: 114 minutes.

Review: 'Herself' is a warm, winning Irish drama, and a star-making turn for actor/writer Clare Dunne

The Irish domestic drama “Herself” is a big-hearted and inspirational story of resilience and motherly love — and a grand global introduction of actor/writer Clare Dunne.

Dunne — who has story credit and co-wrote the screenplay with Malcolm Campbell — plays Sandra White, a Dublin mother who we first see playing with her young daughters, Emma (Ruby Rose O’Hara) and Molly (Molly McCann). That brief happiness is shattered when Sandra’s husband, Gary (Ian Lloyd Anderson) comes home, sends the children away, and then savagely beats Sandra. This isn’t the first time, we know, because Sandra and Emma have a secret code to call the police.

The story cuts to some time later, with Sandra and the girls living in a hotel near the Dublin airport, subsidized by welfare — and even then, Sandra is working in a bar and cleaning a woman’s house to make ends meet. Finding a new apartment is impossible, even with rent vouchers, but she’s determined that she’s not going to return to Gary.

While juggling jobs, and a custody schedule with Gary, Sandra comes across a potential solution to her housing problem: A self-built mini-house. She can’t get the city welfare office to help, but gets an unexpected offer from Peggy (Harriet Walter), the doctor whose house Sandra cleans: Free land in Peggy’s backyard, and a loan to pay for the house materials. Sandra even finds a retired contractor, Aido (Conleth Hill, from “Game of Thrones”), to oversee construction.

Director Phyllida Lloyd (“Mamma Mia!,” “The Iron Lady”) doesn’t shy away from Sandra’s pain as an abused spouse or a poverty-stricken mom. But Lloyd doesn’t let Sandra or the movie wallow in the misery, either. This is a story about Sandra’s resolve and survival skills, as she battles bureaucracy and her own self-doubt to make a better life for herself and her daughters — and, almost by accident, discovering a community of friends who support her dream.

Dunne gives a tender, yet intense, portrayal of Sandra, a woman finally driven to leave her abusive husband and strong enough to handle the consequences of that decision. Dunne, in writing herself a plum role, gives “Herself” a warm glow generated from an emotional melodrama that’s never pandering and always true to its heart.

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‘Herself’

★★★1/2

Available for streaming starting Friday, January 8, on Prime video; now playing at Megaplex Valley Fair (West Valley City). Rated R for language and some domestic violence. Running time: 97 minutes.

Review: 'Pieces of a Woman' is one intense scene and a lot of cheap melodrama, all enlivened by Vanessa Kirby's performance

The drama “Pieces of a Woman” starts with one of the most harrowing scenes in recent memory —  so strong it won Vanessa Kirby a best-actress award at the Venice Film Festival and has her in the Oscar conversation.

But it’s all downhill after that, an average marital melodrama that can’t match that opening.

Kirby plays Martha, a successful executive who seems to have it all: A well-paying job, a luxury Boston apartment, and a good husband in Sean (Shia LaBeouf), a construction foreman on a major bridge project. And Martha and Sean are about to become first-time parents. 

Then comes that great high-wire act of a scene, a single-take 24-minute sequence that begins with Martha having contractions and Sean calling their midwife, who says she’s busy with another birth — so a substitute midwife, Eva (Molly Parker), arrives to assist in the home birth. By the end of that 24 minutes, Martha has given birth to her baby daughter, but then something goes horribly wrong.

Everything that follows in Kata Wéber’s script stems from that moment, and how the people around Martha — Sean, her sister Anita (Iliza Shlesinger), and her stern mother, Elizabeth (Ellen Burstyn) — don’t understand why she seems so emotionless in the wake of her tragedy. In the process, other problems that were submerged during Martha’s pregnancy flare up, including marital infidelity and Elizabeth’s long-simmering dislike of Sean.

These moments feel like they were cribbed from a weak TV melodrama, though with really good actors trying to milk something authentic from them. Kirby meets that acting challenge, tightly controlled and precise through all of Martha’s unfathomable grief and barely contained rage. But that early scene, where Kirby simulates childbirth and the rollercoaster of feelings that come from it, is a masterclass of in-the-moment acting.

Director Kornél Mundruczó (who worked with Wéber on the 2014 Hungarian canine thriller “White God”) provides a lush visual backdrop for Kirby and her costars to shine — and deploys Sean’s bridge project as a recurring metaphor for the span of time.

But there’s only so much Mundruczó or Kirby can do with the bargain-basement plot contrivances — including a rousing courtroom scene near the finish — that drag “Pieces of a Woman” down after the spectacular work at the beginning.

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‘Pieces of a Woman’

★★1/2

Available for streaming, starting Thursday, January 7, on Netflix; now playing at Megaplex Gateway (Salt Lake City). Rated R for language, sexual content, graphic nudity and brief drug use. Running time: 126 minutes.

Review: 'I Blame Society' an uneven mock-documentary horror story, but a good introduction to filmmaker Gillian Wallace Horvat

A Hollywood satire that isn’t as cutting as it wants to be, the mock-documentary “I Blame Society” nonetheless suggests first-time director Gillian Wallace Horvat is a filmmaker to watch out for — in more ways than one.

Horvat plays a variation of herself, a struggling filmmaker who can’t find a way into the hearts and minds of producers who tell her that her screenplay’s lead female character isn’t likable enough. When a couple of friends make an offhanded comment that she’d make a good murderer, Horvat decides the’ll make a documentary where she plots out the perfect murder.

In the opening scene, Horvat presents her plan to her friend Chase (played by Chase Williamson, Horvat’s co-screenwriter) — because Horvat’s intended target is Chase’s girlfriend, whom Horvat dislikes so much she’s given the girlfriend the nickname “Stalin.” Chase is repulsed, and cuts off ties with Gillian.

Flash-forward three years, and an underemployed Horvat, now with a film-editor boyfriend, Keith (Keith Poulson), decides to revisit the perfect-murder film idea. She decides some practice crimes — like a breaking-and-entering on an actress (Jennifer Kim) she sees on the street — will be a good warm-up for a murder. Then, after accidentally killing someone and getting away with it, she develops a taste for blood.

Horvat makes an intriguing argument — that killers and filmmakers both must be organized, detail-oriented and a little ruthless — and she displays the lo-fi cinematic chops to keep the faux-documentary format rolling longer than one might otherwise expect. The movie loses steam, though, in the final half-hour, as the body count and Horvat’s to-the-camera rationalizations get bigger and bloodier.

At the risk of sounding like the shallow Hollywood “suits” that Horvat skewers, “I Blame Society” is interesting and shows a lot of potential — but it didn’t grab me.

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‘I Blame Society’

★★1/2

Available starting Friday, January 8, at virtual cinemas, including SLFS@Home. Not rated, but probably R for violence, gore, some sexuality, nudity, and language. Running time: 84 minutes.

Review: 'News of the World' lets Tom Hanks take us across the Old West for a journey of regrets and renewal

There are few pleasures in moviegoing — even if “going” is only to the couch — that are as pure as watching Tom Hanks. The embodiment of America’s moral compass, Hanks is never better than when he’s burrowing into a meaty role, as he does as a war-weary traveler in the soulful Western drama “News of the World.”

Hanks plays Capt. Jefferson Kyle Kidd, a former Confederate officer who now — now being 1870 — journeys from town to town across Texas, reading stories from the out-of-town newspapers to audiences. Those crowds, for a dime apiece, learn from Kidd about floods a few counties over, the discussions of the state legislature, or heartwarming stories from such far-off lands as Pennsylvania.

Read the full review at sltrib.com.

Review: Pixar's 'Soul' is a warm-hearted, happily surreal look at how humans become who they are

The latest film from Pixar, “Soul,” is a witty, warm and music-focused story about a jazzman learning the secrets of how the creative spirit works.

It also confirms director Pete Docter as perhaps the greatest surrealist filmmaker since the Japanese legend Hayao Miyazaki.

Read the full review at sltrib.com.

And here’s my interview with two Utah natives who worked on creating the look and animating the moves of the Joe character.

Review: Bloated 'Wonder Woman 1984' makes you wish for one less villain

As bold and exciting as Patty Jenkins’ 2017 superhero adventure “Wonder Woman” was, her sequel, “Wonder Woman 1984” (or simply “WW84”) is a drab disappointment.

Gal Gadot returns as the Amazonian warrior turned all-American hero, disguised by day as Diana Prince, working a day job in Washington, D.C., as a researcher of antiquities at the Smithsonian Institution in 1984. Diana also thwarts the occasional crime, like the shopping mall heist in which Gadot’s Wonder Woman makes her first appearance here — which leads to the discovery of a trove of ancient artifacts.

Read the full review at sltrib.com.

Review: In 'Promising Young Woman,' Carey Mulligan makes a stunning statement as a woman seeking revenge on predatory men

The thriller “Promising Young Woman” may not be the #MeToo-era movie America wanted, but it’s the one we deserve — a heart-stopping, confrontational tale of revenge and retribution.

Carey Mulligan stars as Cassie, who we first see in a club, apparently too drunk to function. A “nice guy,” Jerry (Adam Brody), offers to help her out by calling her an Uber and escorting her home. First, though, they’ll stop at his place, where he offers her another drink and, when she seems almost unconscious, starts attempting to have sex with her.

Read the full review at sltrib.com.