THE MORNING LIST
The feature films that skip the theatrical stage to land directly on the platforms number in the dozens each month. The end-of-year break leaves a little time to catch up on films that have already had time to have a brilliant career (Thieves) or go almost unnoticed (Unsinkable). Here is a selection of ten titles released in recent months which, for various reasons, deserve a catch-up session.
“Bayard Rustin”: the unsung soldier of civil rights
Produced by Michelle and Barack Obama, this historical evocation of the march on Washington in 1963 does not entirely escape hagiography. But the personality of its protagonist, Bayard Rustin, and the impressive work of his interpreter, Colman Domingo, take the film out of pious imagery. Quaker, Marxist, homosexual, Bayard Rustin was the linchpin of the gigantic demonstration at the end of which Martin Luther King delivered his famous speech. The screenplay by Dustin Lance Black (Harvey Milk) hides nothing from the debates that agitated the civil rights movement, giving Chris Rock a nice counter-job in the role of the very reformist Roy Wilkins, while finding the lyricism necessary for the celebration of a major event of the American history and one of its principal architects. T.S.
American film by George C. Wolfe, with Colman Domingo, Chris Rock, Jeffrey Wright, Glynn Turman, Aml Ameen (1h46), Netflix.
“Drone Games”: the sky is ours
The Landes make a nice substitute for California, and the drones for Harley Davidson, in this French version of The Wild Team. In a small town in the South-West, a band of “drone racers” arrives, to the great joy of a bored teenager, alone with his homemade drone. The intruders start by causing disorder before embarking on remote-controlled looting. The scenario remains summary and the characters schematic (the youth and enthusiasm of the performers partly compensate for these shortcomings), and the charm of the film lies essentially in the plastic and kinetic possibilities offered by flying machines. The dizzying shots give the sensation of plunging into the virtual universe of a video game, an impression accentuated by the chromatic work on the image which takes you a little further away. Drone Games realism to access a kind of digital poetry. T.S.
French film by Olivier Abbou, with Orlando Vauthier, Axel Granberger, Angèle Metzger (1h55), Prime Video.
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