Capone's Art-House Round-Up with SOUTHSIDE WITH YOU, MORRIS FROM AMERICA and Herzog's LO & BEHOLD!!!

Hey, folks. Capone in Chicago here, with a few films that are making their way into art houses or coming out in limited release around America this week (maybe even taking up one whole screen at a multiplex near you). Do your part to support these films, or at least the good ones…


SOUTHSIDE WITH YOU
The most romantic film you will see all year just happens to be a barely fictionalized account of the first date of the couple who just happen to occupy the White House for a few more months. Writer-director Richard Tanne’s debut feature, SOUTHSIDE WITH YOU, is a simple yet wildly ambitious and slightly audacious look at two smart, thoughtful problem solvers who both happened to live on the South side of Chicago in the summer of 1989.

Michelle Robinson (played by Tika Sumpter, of the RIDE ALONG films) was all about her career at the law firm (where she was the only black woman employed). She was also the supervisor of one Barack Obama (Parker Sawyers), a Harvard-educated summer associate, who somehow became the star of the office almost immediately. One of Obama’s gifts was reading other people and knowing how far he can push them, so rather than simply ask Robinson on a date, he invited her to a community meeting he was attending. But what she didn’t know was that the meeting was only a small part of the day he had planned for them. What you must realize going into SOUTHSIDE WITH YOU is that it is most definitely not about watching the man who would be President and the woman who would be the First Lady; it’s about a guy on the make, who is willing to use every trick in his playbook to get this woman to kiss him by the end of their full day together.

The resulting film is a magnificent exercise in smart, funny, entertaining walk-and-talk, get-to-know-you banter, the kind we usually only get from the likes of Richard Linklater’s BEFORE… trilogy. But as they move through their day together, we learn about their history, shared goals, family values, career expectations, and their real sense of where this neighborhood is headed. They go to a museum, to see DO THE RIGHT THING at the Music Box Theatre (I doubt they made the trip to Wrigleyville for that, but they did see it that day), and even ate the ice cream that finally binds them.

But don’t forget, Obama was a player. So he did take her to that community meeting at a church, where he is immediately surrounded by people who love him and talk him up to Robinson like he hired them to do it. And then Obama gives a speech about an issue of the day, and that’s when the politician first emerges. Filmmaker Tanne has crafted a speech that feels so authentic, you’d swear it was taken from a transcript. Obama starts small—cracking a joke about the preacher who presides over this place; then he moves on the bigger issues at hand, ending with what seems like a reasonable, rational solution. It certainly helps that Sawyers bears a remarkable resemblance to the President, but it’s the writing that drives the moment home.

In a scene not too long after, the couple are at a bar. At this point Michelle has noticed the way that Barack tenses up (and sometimes even pulls out his dreaded cigarettes) whenever the subject of his father comes up. Her gifts as a natural problem solver are on full display, as she advises her future husband on forgiving the man who abandoned his mother when he was quite young. It’s a revealing moment that shows how quickly she understood and got to a couple of the dark corners of his mind as well.

But most of the film is just fun and enjoyment—the spirit and early emotions of a first date, without actually calling it that (at least she refuses to). And not surprisingly, the film makes for a wonderful date movie by refusing to fall into the traps about men and women that dominate so many modern romantic-comedies. SOUTHSIDE WITH YOU is a film about adults with so much still to come in their lives, some of which they probably didn’t envision back in 1989. The film isn’t afraid to tackle issues of race, especially in the context of their largely white office place, and it’s a source of frustration for both, but a challenge they’re willing to take on.

SOUTHSIDE WITH YOU refuses to get deep into political agendas or ideals; we’ll save that for the history books. This is about the first day of feeling something strong about someone else, about that slow-moving lightning bolt that hits your heart, about somebody moving so far past your expectations that you know, from this day forward, you won’t be able to look at them the same.


MORRIS FROM AMERICA
Writer-director Chad Hartigan has a way of sneaking his life lessons in when and where you least expect them. His previous work, 2013’s delicate THIS IS MARTIN BONNER, concerned an older gentleman who leaves his long-established life on the East Coast and moves to Nevada. The film was quiet and deliberately paced to the point where it almost felt fragile. But his latest, MORRIS FROM AMERICA, is an entirely different piece—a coming-of-age piece that is as much about the 13-year-old central character’s father growing up as it is about the boy’s emergence from his self-imposed shell.

Still reeling from the death of his mother, young Morris (newcomer Markees Christmas) and his father, new widower Curtis (Craig Robinson of “The Office” and HOT TUB TIME MACHINE fame) have relocated to Germany of all places, where Curtis has a coaching position for a local soccer team. The pair tend to get along, but Morris’s troubles fitting in at school (or anywhere with kids his age) is discouraging to his father, and the life lessons tend to come at a rapid pace. Morris is the only black kid at his school, but that isn’t his only barrier. He’s shy, heavy, terse when engaged (even by those trying to be friendly), and doesn’t speak German fluently yet. His one true friend is his tutor, Inka (Carla Juri of WETLANDS), who is not only teaching him a second language but is also giving him advice on what girls like in terms of behavior.

One girl in Morris’s class, Katrin (Lina Keller), seems to look at him more with curiosity than with any romantic potential, but that doesn’t stop Morris from developing a crush on her. In an effort to impress her, he decides to develop his skills as an amateur rapper and enters a local talent show. Watching Morris attempt to navigate these foreign waters is often quite uncomfortable, made only less so by his father’s attempts to encourage his son to make new friends, when Curtis has yet to make any real new friends himself (there is one fleeting, awkward scene of sharing beers with other coaches).

Although it’s barely addressed until the end of the film, MORRIS FROM AMERICA is about two men—one young, one grown—who miss the woman in their lives. Neither wears their pain on the surface, but it’s still clearly there and will be slow to go away. Late in the film, Katrin convinces Morris to take a bus to Hamburg to see a DJ friend of hers perform; she surprises him by asking the DJ to bring Morris up to freestyle rap, and it feels like a single-step beginning in the right direction for the kid. But after being abandoned in Hamburg, he’s forced to call home for help, and the resulting long car ride with his father includes a long monologue from Robinson about his first romantic gesture involving Morris’s mother. Not only does Robinson deliver the tale in a funny, meaningful way, but it also speaks to just how much he loved this woman and misses her every day. Filmmaker Hartigan isn’t trying to make us sob, but that doesn’t stop him from reaching right into our chests and gently squeezing our heartstrings.

Another universal message of the film is about being yourself, which might sound like a cliché, but in the context of MORRIS FROM AMERICA, it’s very specifically about the kid’s rap lyrics, which initially focus on sleeping with multiple women at once, wasting people, and collecting stacks of cash—surprisingly enough, Morris has no life experience with any of these practices. Rather than discouraging Morris from rapping altogether, Curtis pushes a “write what you know” philosophy on his son, and the results are impressive. The film is positive and hopeful, without resorting to over-the-top, uplifting nonsense. This is a work about making the best of a unique and often-stressful life situation, and sometimes, that’s all we can hope for or achieve.


LO AND BEHOLD: REVERIES OF THE CONNECTED WORLD
When a new doc by Werner Herzog comes out, you don’t even think about it; you just go. His insights into his subjects and resulting narration and questions (which alternate from hilarious and deeply touching to downright disturbing) always make for wildly entertaining works, such as GRIZZLY MAN, ENCOUNTERS FROM THE END OF THE WORLD, and CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMSr. Unlike his other docs, LO AND BEHOLD does not focus on one person or place. Herzog’s ambition is to capture a bit of the uncapturable by looking at many aspects of technology and the digital world it has created and will likely never stop being modified, updated and made easier to enter into.

More a filmed thesis, the movie offers 10 entry points into the online world, from the sacred ground (just a small room on the UCLA campus, really) where the internet was effectively born, and interviews with great thinkers like Elon Musk to sobering questions about the role of robots in the near future and one of the worst examples of cyber-bullying ever recorded. As always, Herzog is posing impossible inquiries of his subject—“Does the Internet dream of itself?”—but the answers never disappoint, and the resulting responses form a type of loose and highly engaging philosophy that tells us as much about Herzog as it does about his subject.

Herzog deliberately juxtaposes examples of the connected world that make our future seem bright with ones that seem to spell our doom as a polite and caring society. The filmmaker seems to be skirting the idea of pulling together a master philosophy about the world of today and the world to come, but he never quite pulls all of his threads into a single strand. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but Herzog has so much to say about each of his focal points that it’s sometimes surprising and slightly frustrating not to hear what his final assessment is on the subject of, for example, artificial intelligence. I’m still more of a fan of his single-subject works, but LO AND BEHOLD might be one of his most informative pieces and feels the most like surreal art.

-- Steve Prokopy
"Capone"
capone@aintitcool.com
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