2019 drama
Rating: 16/20
Plot: A guy tries to reclaim a childhood home in a city that is losing everything that makes it what it is.
The reason I connected with this one so much, I believe, is that I think I love all of the influences of first-time director Joe Talbot, who wrote this movie with star Jimmie Falls. San Francisco is a dream here, the most whimsical parts exposed and the most beautiful light I've seen on my television in a very long time always finding a way to say, "Hey, look at me! I'm light!"
There's a scene very early--one before the house at the center of this plot is even shown--where the two characters are sharing a skateboard because the bus hadn't come. Pedestrians are frozen while they watch them skate past, and I'm not sure what kind of spell I was put under at that point, but I fell in love with those characters instantly. And my love for the pair never waned. Jimmie Falls, a rookie actor, gets a little mopey by the end, but you're always in his corner, even when he's gardening at a middle-aged couple's house without an invitation. Or maybe because of that. And Jonathan Majors played the best friend character so well, well enough that I wanted to jump into my television so that I could be friends with him, too. Majors plays it subdued for most of the film, but when he gets a chance to do something a little bit different, it never feels unnatural for the character. It's just great character building from these two, and I just loved them.
I don't always love the dialogue, and I'm not sure I even loved where the narrative ended up, but the ride along the way, a dreamy and meandering one with all these little haiku-esque snapshots, was such an easy ride to take. Figures on the fringes of this story always kept things lively. My favorite exchange was probably this one:
"I said sixteen. How am I going to eat sixty Twix?"
"I don't know your life."
I laughed a few times, and I teared up a few times along the way as well.
That house was gorgeous, a lovely Victorian that you can't really imagine a drug addict ever living in. Maybe I'm being unfair to drug addicts though. A central theme of this has to do with architecture and place and the connections they have to the soul, and this particular house was like a Holy Grail, a dreamy utopia, a slice of heaven, and three stories of nostalgia. Or four. I don't even know if I figured out how many floors that house had.
I want to mention to score because it might be my favorite of the year. It's from Emile Mosseri, an eclectic mix of instrumentals and popular songs performed by street performers. The tunes perfectly complement the dream that is this movie and the adventure of our hero, a black man living in something that resembles San Francisco.
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