ARTS FILM REVIEW
Illustration by Julia Terbrock
ARTS ARTS CLUB
Moonlight For this week’s edition of City Paper Arts Club, arts editor Kayla Randall and multimedia editor Will Warren watched Moonlight, the lush, gorgeous story about identity, love, longing, and so many more emotions, centered on three acts in the life of a young black boy in Miami. Did we cry? Yes. Next, we’ll be discussing Ta-Nehisi Coates’ debut novel, The Water Dancer. These arts club chat excerpts have been edited and condensed for clarity. For the full chat, subscribe to Washington City Podcast. Kayla Randall: So Moonlight is this look at a single person, Chiron. He is a young black boy growing up in Miami, and the movie breaks his story into three parts. The first part when he is an adolescent, the second part when he is a teenager, and the third part when he is a grown man. It traverses through moments in his life. It’s all pulled together in this really beautiful narrative about identity and manhood and sexuality and life. Will Warren: It’s a beautiful coming of age story. KR: There’s so many coming of age stories, but this one is so unique. I feel like I’ve never seen a coming of age story quite like this, how Chiron’s life is painted with such specific detail. From the opening shots, you’re just in it: This is the place, and these are the people, and I know them, and here they are. Right away, everyone is really endearing. People are so human in this story; there’s no villains. Everyone is relatable in some way,
everyone is understandable in some way— even the people who do things that are harmful to both Chiron and themselves. Overall, it’s this really, really human story. The cinematography is incredible, the direction is incredible. There’s a scene where Chiron is in the ocean and he’s being taught to swim by Juan, his neighborhood drug dealer but also his father figure. It’s the most beautiful scene I’ve ever had the pleasure to witness. WW: It’s this one moment of beauty and love between this little kid and this guy who’s sort of taking him under his wing and happiness amid a lot of dark stuff that’s going on in Chiron’s life. His mom is struggling with drugs that Juan, the father figure, is selling her, so that’s a little complicated. He is being bullied a lot by other kids in the neighborhood because they think he might be gay. KR: Chiron doesn’t speak very much. What do you think about having a protagonist not really speak that much or be kind of nebulous? I personally was really moved by it and really fascinated by it. WW: I was never ever wondering what was going on in Chiron’s mind, or wanting to understand him more, and I think that is definitely because the folks playing Chiron did such a good job, but [also] the way that the movie and Barry Jenkins linger on certain details or moments. It almost makes you feel like you’re inside Chiron’s mind. You know what he’s feeling because you’re literally there within it. I think every aspect of the movie feeds into that effect. It totally worked. KR: Pretty much everything works here. WW: Yeah, it’s kind of like a perfect movie.
Action Seen Extraction Directed by Sam Hargrave The only reason to even consider watching Extraction is for the 20-minute action sequence that comes at the end of the first act. It’s an electrifying chase scene, in which Chris Hemsworth drives, punches, and shoots his way through the streets of Mumbai, leaving a trail of corpses in his wake. The camera plays both journalist and collaborator, following behind him as he sprints to escape, then spinning around a corner to identify a surprise attack. It’s also shot as if filmed in a single take, even though the seams will be apparent to even casual viewers. All in all, it’s an impressive technical achievement but one that begs for praise too brazenly. It’s the flashy, self-conscious choice of a director trying to distract you from how empty the film actually is. Hemsworth plays Tyler Rake, an ex-soldier who now works in the private sector, specializing in extracting hostages. He is hired by an Indian drug lord, whose teenage son has been kidnapped by a rival. Never mind why. It couldn’t matter less. The initial rescue is easy enough—all Rake has to do is kill a room full of nameless thugs in gruesome fashion—but getting out of the city is the tougher task, especially when the kidnapper has closed its borders, and the kid’s father has directed his own goons to steal the kid back from Rake, just so he doesn’t have to pay him. Most of these characters are defined by a single trait: their ability and willingness to kill. Nearly every scene in Extraction shows someone getting shot point-blank in the head.
It makes a run for the record in that category, which was once held by Martin Scorsese’s The Departed and is currently owned by the latest John Wick film. With so many of its action beats enacted in exactly the same fashion, Extraction feels more like a first-person shooter video game than a film. If it aimed to be a simple thrill ride it would have been better off, but it loses any claim to credibility when it foolishly tries to take seriously the relationship between Rake and the teenage hostage. To do this, they utilized the flimsy and overused “Dead Kid” device to justify Rake’s behavior. It’s the second film this year, following the addiction drama The Way Back, to insert the trauma of losing a child into a story where good character development would have done the trick, and it’s even less effective here. While many great works of drama have centered on the loss of a child, in Extraction it’s a painfully shallow attempt to make Rake seem more human, to justify his violent behavior, and to create a bond between him and the boy that feels entirely unearned. In fact, it’s not clear what Extraction is trying to earn, except more subscribers and bigger bonuses for its streaming service executives. It’s sad that this shallow puddle of a film is the best that Hemsworth, who has cultivated a promising star persona in his last few Marvel movies, could do. It’s not the blockbuster he deserves, but instead a mildly diverting action sequence with a shapeless and cynical film around it, which places it squarely in the increasingly large pile of Netflix original action films, like last month’s Spenser Confidential, that are barely good enough to watch for free on your couch when you have literally nothing —Noah Gittell else to do. Extraction is available to stream on Netflix on April 24.
washingtoncitypaper.com april 24, 2020 15