Katy O’Brian and Kristen Stewart sizzle off the screen in their portrayal of a toxic relationship.
I’m a sucker for a good film noir, or even a mediocre film noir that pushes all the right buttons. Director Rose Glass’ new flick, Love Lies Bleeding, has got my number. Glass, whose first film for A24 was the psychological horror Saint Maud, has studied the classics, and it shows. But Love Lies Bleeding is a neo-noir that uses the form as a jumping-off point, rather than being shackled to the past.
When we first meet Lou (Kristen Stewart), she is shackled to her past. She’s working at a gym in small town Texas, somewhere near the Mexican border. Much of her job entails bailing out a toilet that is perpetually clogged by the pumped up patrons. Some of that foul bowel activity may be the side effects of the black market steroids she slings on the side. The year is 1989, so it’s not a great time for Lou to be an out lesbian in Texas. Then Jackie (Katy O’Brian) walks in.
Jackie is an aspiring bodybuilder from Oklahoma, who happens to be currently homeless. In one great early shot, she does pull-ups on a pipe under a bridge while trucks rumble by overhead. She gets a job at the local shooting range by showing the manager J.J. (Dave Franco) a good time in the parking lot of the club. Before she even has a place to stay, she uses the money to join Lou’s gym. Jackie’s ultimate goal is to compete in a bodybuilding competition in Las Vegas, and from the looks of her extremely stacked body, she’s got a shot at a trophy.
Lou certainly notices Jackie’s assets, and after the two of them run off some alpha males who aren’t bright enough to realize they’re barking up the wrong tree, they fall into bed together. Glass has a lot of fun shooting the sex scenes, bathing these two unconventional beauties in blue light like an erotic thriller from the 1980s. Over a morning-after omelette, Jackie admits she doesn’t have a place to stay and asks if she can crash on the couch. Lou makes clear that’s not where she’ll be sleeping.
Another 1980s trash cinema trick Glass has down pat is the training montage set to pop music. I’m sure they would have loved to have had “Eye of the Tiger” play while pushing in on Jackie’s ripping muscles, but Clint Mansell’s pulsing electronic score gets the point across nicely. Jackie’s single-minded pursuit of physical perfection gets a boost when Lou introduces her to steroids. Unfortunately, this new chemical enhancement proves destabilizing to Jackie’s already fragile psyche. Glass uses flashes of psychedelia to draw us into her deteriorating mental state. The gun range where Jackie works just happens to be owned by Lou’s estranged father Lou Sr. (Ed Harris) who, it turns out, is using the range as a front for his gunrunning operation, supplying weapons to Colombian drug cartels. There’s always an element of Greek tragedy in a good film noir, where the characters carry their doom in them, just adjacent to their strength. Lou Sr. teaching a woman in the throes of spiraling steroidal psychosis to use a gun certainly qualifies.
Lou’s cut the old man off, but she keeps in touch with her older sister Beth (Jena Malone), who is being brutally abused by her husband J.J., the amorous gun range manager. When J.J. puts Beth in the hospital, and Lou finds out about Jackie’s prior carnal knowledge of J.J., the pressure becomes too much, and Jackie lashes out. The repercussions of her violence spread through this small town in true noir fashion, with framing, counter-framing, bushwhacking, and betrayal around every corner.
Glass’ direction is confident and occasionally daring, and her two leads sizzle off the screen. The ending swerves hard toward the magical in a way I’m still not sure I’m on board with. Film noir is outwardly cynical, but the greats, like Out of the Past, always have a romantic core — even if the fire of love ultimately consumes the lovers. Compared to the corrupt world of Love Lies Bleeding, Lou and Jackie’s toxic relationship looks downright healthy.
Love Lies Bleeding is now playing at Malco Collierville, Paradiso, Stage, and Wolfchase cinemas.
A prisoner of Auschwitz
walks through Commandant Rudolph Höss’ garden in
The Zone of Interest. (Photo: Courtesy A24)
While I was watching The Zone of Interest, my mind kept going back to “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.” Ursula Le Guin’s Hugo Award-winning 1974 short story describes a utopian city where all of the civic functions seem to run pretty smoothly, and all of the citizens are cared for and happy. But this town has a secret. Once citizens are old enough, they are shown a prison cell where a child in chains is slowly being starved to death. The citizen is told Omelas’ happiness and prosperity depends on this child’s suffering.
Most people just shrug and move on with their otherwise fulfilling lives. There’s just one kid in the box, and so many who are doing great. It’s a fair trade-off, they think. But every now and then, someone who finds out about the child chained in the prison cell wanders into the wilderness and never comes back. Why anyone would do this is a mystery to those who stay behind.
In Jonathan Glazer’s new film, exactly one person walks away from a beautiful villa built next to a death camp. Because the moment comes so unexpectedly and is done so perfectly, I won’t spoil it in this review, except to say that the one who walks away is not Rudolph Höss (Christian Friedel), the owner of the home who, not coincidentally, is also the commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp.
It’s 1943, and Rudolph is riding high. The Nazi project of conquering all of Europe to the Urals, exterminating the Jews and subjugating the Slavs so that the Aryans can have lebensraum (“living space”) to build beautiful farms where they raise beautiful, white families, is working. Rudolph and his wife Hedwig (Sandra Hüller) refer to themselves as “settlers.” As befitting an SS officer of his rank, the couple has a huge house with a sprawling garden and even a swimming pool with a slide. On one side, their property backs up to an idyllic country stream. The other side shares a wall with the Auschwitz death camp, whose foreboding stone buildings are just visible behind the razor wire. This is convenient for the commandant, who likes to work from home.
Rudolph Höss, not coincidentally, also starved random children to death. He did it as a method of collective punishment every time a prisoner escaped Auschwitz.
The real genius of The Zone of Interest is that Glazer never shows any of Rudolph’s work on screen, save for one moment when a line of prisoners is led into his fields by guards on horseback. But the signs of the atrocities happening just over the wall are inescapable. When the wind is right, ash from the crematoria floats over laundry drying on the clothesline. Hedwig gets periodic deliveries of fine clothes and household goods confiscated from prisoners as they were led to the gas chamber.
The family, which includes five children, carries on with an eerie normality, but the one thing they can’t filter out of their perfect little world is the noise. The Zone of Interest is up for five Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay, where it faces stiff competition. The one award it deserves to win outright is Best Sound. Tarn Willers and Johnnie Burn’s soundscapes faithfully recreate what it was like to live next to a murder factory. When Hedwig’s mother (Imogen Kogge) visits, their tour of the gardens is punctuated by screams and gunfire. One of the film’s most chilling moments comes when the couple’s toddler son overhears his father order the guards to drown a prisoner in the river where the family plays.
Glazer’s last film was the excellent 2014 sci-fi creeper Under the Skin, which starred Scarlett Johansson as an alien predator who develops empathy for her Earthling prey. Rudolph and Hedwig don’t act like monsters. Mostly, they just stick to their routine as busy executive and doting housewife, throwing kids’ birthday parties, tending the garden (or at least supervising the enslaved gardeners), and navigating office politics. Ninety percent of the time, Glazer stays in their perspective — this is a film about how monsters view themselves, after all. But even surrounded by all the creature comforts, the family can’t keep reality at bay forever. The question Glazer’s remarkable film raises in the viewer is, “What atrocities do our comfortable lives allow us to ignore?”
The Zone of Interest Now playing Malco Ridgeway Cinema Grill & Bar
While renovations for Tom Lee Park were underway, Carol Coletta, Memphis River Parks Partnership (MRPP) CEO and president, knew that the project was worth remembering. It’s a story almost a century in the making, beginning with Tom Lee’s heroic act of saving 32 people from drowning in the Mississippi River in 1925. “Very few public assets or public parks are built with one person’s courage and display of generosity and humanity at its core,” she says.“We had this in mind every step of the way … the opportunity to bring that story to the forefront and put that at the center.” A film, it seemed, would best document MRPP’s efforts in continuing that story, so Coletta commissioned filmmaker Molly Wexler and her team at Last Bite Films to follow the four-year journey.
“We didn’t specify the story,” Coletta says. “We just said to Molly and her great crew to just document what’s going on here and talk to everyone, see what you see. And I think they really landed the story really neatly because in a lot of ways, they’re really telling a story about equity and at its heart that’s what the story of the making of this park is all about. We had this mantra of a riverfront for everyone. And not just for a few days a year, not just to be enjoyed by a few, but really a riverfront for everyone.”
Part of the beauty of a documentary, as opposed to, say, a book, is that individual voices come together, with each voice taking direct ownership of part of the story. It’s a story of many, not just one, Coletta says. “It just comes alive and I think it sticks in a way when you hear straight from people who’ve been involved, people who feel affected by it, seeing some of the images. It opens with a beautiful image of Tom Lee’s family and just to see them, just to hear from them, and how meaningful this was to them is a lovely part of the story. But it’s a piece of the equity story.”
The film, she continues, “has a real emotional center to it that is quite lovely, and so I think it will be a film that can be enjoyed by people who know nothing about Memphis and know nothing about this park. … I think of major projects that have been built in Memphis, and the histories teach us a lot about what it takes to build something ambitious. I’ve seen a lot of projects get built and I hope someone who’s going to build the next project can look at this film and say, ‘Let’s learn from this experience.’”
The 25-minute documentary, titled “A Riverfront for Everyone,” will premiere at the inaugural This Is Memphis event on Friday, February 16th, ahead of Tom Lee’s birthday on Sunday. For the premiere, MRPP will host a silent auction of fun, unique, Memphis-related experiences, and will serve generous bites and drinks throughout the evening. Cocktail attire is suggested. Purchase tickets here.
MRPP also plans to air and to screen “A Riverfront for Everyone” on WKNO and at film festivals at later dates.
I generally don’t get too bent out of shape about the Academy Awards. I guess my attitude comes from a lifetime of disappointment stemming from the fact that Oscar voters don’t like the same things I like. Academy Awards nominations and wins are best viewed as conversation starters, not any objective (whatever that means) measure of the best films of the year.
Having said that, Past Lives was ROBBED! Yes, I’m YELLING ABOUT IT!
Maybe it seems strange to be crying — no, YELLING foul about such a quiet film that has been lavished with accolades. Yes, it is nominated for Best Picture, and writer/director Celine Song was nominated for Best Original Screenplay. Both of these nominations are well deserved. But Past Lives deserved more.
The film opens in millennial Seoul, South Korea. Na Young and Hae Sung (played as children by Seung Ah Moon and Seung Min Yim, respectively) are middle-school classmates. Just as they move from fast friends to puppy love, they are separated when Na Young’s family immigrates to Toronto, Canada.
Twelve years pass. Na Young has Westernized her name to Nora Moon, and is now played by Greta Lee. She has moved to New York City for her education and to pursue a career as a playwright. Hae Sung (now played by Teo Yoo) is finishing up his hitch in the South Korean military and trying to figure out what to do with his life. Hae Sung does some internet searches for Na Young, but since he’s unaware of her name change, they come up empty. He puts out an open call for help in reconnecting with his long lost not-quite-girlfriend via Facebook, and word gets back to now-Nora via the Korean diaspora. It seems she has never stopped thinking about him, either.
From opposite sides of the world, they reconnect on period-appropriate video conferencing app Skype. (Song may be the first director to induce nostalgia with Skype’s “boodle-oodle-oodle-oop” incoming call alert sound, but she probably won’t be the last.) It’s these conversations where Teo Yoo and Greta Lee shine. They’re subtle, quiet, and totally relatable. Nora and Hae Sung are hesitant at first. They’re happy to see each other, for sure, but also feeling each other out. Emotions are complicated on both sides. A lot can change in 12 years, especially when that time period is half a lifetime. They become each other’s comfort, something to run to after a hard day. But the distance between them seems unbridgeable. Eventually, Nora breaks it off, saying she wants to devote herself to her career by taking a slot at a prestigious writer’s retreat, while Hae Sung goes to China for language lessons. The first person Nora meets at the writer’s retreat is Arthur (John Magaro), a fellow writer, and they immediately hit it off.
Then, 12 more years pass. Now Nora and Arthur are married and living in New York City, both with reasonably successful careers, but no children. Out of the blue, Nora gets a message from Hae Sung. He’s going to be in New York on business and was wondering if they could finally get together and see each other in real life for the first time since Seoul. Nora accepts, but when they finally do lay eyes on each other, things become a lot more fraught and complex than either one of them ever imagined.
Lee, who has been low-key brilliant in Russian Doll and What We Do in the Shadows, absolutely deserved a Best Actress nomination for her work as Nora. She juggles conflicting motivations and feelings with remarkable subtlety — which is perhaps a strike against her with an Academy that tends to equate good acting with MORE acting.
The same with Teo Yoo. In lesser hands, Hae Sung would have been a whiny loser or a John Cusack-ian perfect (yet kinda toxic) boyfriend. Instead, he’s a successful, otherwise well-adjusted guy who is following a deep impulse he doesn’t fully understand. And while we’re at it, John Magaro could have easily come off with a Best Supporting Actor nomination as the long suffering Arthur.
Maybe if it had been released in 2024, Past Lives would have gone on to a big Oscar sweep. But 2023 was the best year for film in recent memory, so the competition is crowded with worthy nominees. Even the ones I would have swapped out for Past Lives (I’m looking at you, Maestro) are still well-made and enjoyable films. Just like the star-crossed lovers it portrays, there’s an alternate world where things worked out better for Past Lives.
Past Lives Now Streaming Hulu and Amazon Prime Video
Rickey Fondren III center with microphone (Photo: Claire James)
“If you want to master something, teach it,” the great physicist Richard P. Feynman is said to have remarked. “The more you teach, the better you learn.” That’s certainly borne out by the recent experiences of students who teamed up to create a new musical film and instructional package on African-American history for the Soulsville Foundation. Once it premieres online this Friday, February 2nd, it will be available as a free download for educators and students throughout Black History Month and into September. Producing such a film for the national event is a tradition the foundation began after Covid made live performances risky, and it’s continued ever since. And taking the project’s mission to heart caused this year’s student-producers to learn much along the way.
“What Stax wants to do is keep the history and message of soul music alive, but especially that of Stax Records, and the impact that the label had not only on the Memphis community, but the world at large,” says Anaya Murray, a high school senior and Stax Music Academy (SMA) student who served as the film’s co-writer and co-producer. “Black History Month is an opportunity to remind people of this important part of Black culture and American culture. In our film, Stax Meets Motown, we focus on two record labels who were rivals and competitors, and what they both contributed to music, but it’s about more than that.”
Anaya Murray (Photo: Ayanna Murray)
Indeed, the film and companion study guides delve into the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and 1970s, the Detroit Riots of 1967, the history of Black radio, the recording industry, and fashion. At the same time, the topic is also perfectly suited to a musical. “Think High School Musical and Grease,” Murray says of the film, which she masterminded with fellow high-schoolers Andrew Green and Rickey Fondren III. Green and Fondren attend SMA, as does most of the cast.
“There are moments where they’ll break out into song, where there’s dancing, and it’s all Stax and Motown music. And then, I’m one of the songwriting students at the Academy and we wrote an original song for the end credits. So we pay homage to Stax and Motown and then add something new. And all the sounds that you hear are Stax students singing and playing.”
That includes Murray herself, who also studies voice at SMA, and the story, set entirely in Booker T. Washington High School (which many Stax artists attended), is designed to both teach and give performance, recording, and songwriting students a chance to shine. As Murray explains the plot, “Lisa, the lead, moves from Detroit to Memphis, and it’s the simple story of her learning about Stax and the culture, but also of the Memphis kids learning from her about Detroit and Motown.”
Yet ultimately the film reveals the SMA’s support for more than music. As Murray says, “I’ve been a student at Stax Music Academy since my first year of high school, and once I started to show an interest in filmmaking over the past two years, Stax noticed that and gave me an opportunity to assist on the script for last year’s [Black History Month] film.” She also developed her own material, winning the 2023 Indie Memphis Youth Film Fest Jury Award for her film, Father’s Day.
Eventually she was tapped to write this year’s screenplay. “I’m really excited about the opportunity because screenwriting is something I love to do,” she says. “Then I was able to get Andrew Green, one of my film friends, on board. He’s also planning to go to college for screenwriting and directing. And Rickey is a singer at SMA, but acting is really where his passion lies. He’s actually co-starring in the film as the love interest, but he was really excited to go into screenwriting as well, so he helped a lot with doing research to make sure that we were really providing accurate information.”
Thus did the writers learn as they progressed, and gaining the Soulsville Foundation’s stamp of approval was proof positive that they got the facts right. Now the film and instructional materials are being readied for their premiere. As Murray explains, all involved are aware of how important this educational mission is: “When it goes live, they send that link out to students not only in the United States, but worldwide as well. It is a global event.”
This year marks the 10th anniversary of the Morris and Mollye Fogelman International Jewish Film Festival. The monthlong event features 10 films, ranging in genre and subject, but all with some sort of Jewish connection. “They’re not all Jewish content, but maybe they have a Jewish director or something that ties it into the Jewish community,” says Sophie Samuels, program director for cultural arts and adult services at the Memphis Jewish Community Center (JCC). “We always want to introduce different types of cultural arts to our community, so I think that this is a great way to do it.”
For the festival, the JCC has a committee of about 10 people who “takes a list from about 45 films each year — and [the films] usually come out within the past two years — and we narrow them down until we get our films.” The goal, Samuels says, is to present a variety of offerings. This year’s films range from a documentary about a porn cinema empire and the eccentric woman behind it (Queen of the Deuce), to an animated story of a family living in the shadow of the Holocaust (My Father’s Secrets). “We try to do something for everyone,” Samuels says.
This year’s festival opens on Tuesday, January 30th, at 7 p.m., with Remembering Gene Wilder, a documentary taking a close look at the life of the “performer, writer, director, and all-around mensch.” A screening of the documentary Repairing the World: Stories from the Tree of Life will follow on Sunday, February 4th, at 4 p.m., with its coverage of the community affected by violence and trauma after the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting. On February 6th, the JCC will screen the romantic drama March ’68, which takes place during Poland’s exodus of nearly 15,000 Jews due to a hostile anti-Semitic campaign, and on February 11th, festival-goers can view The Narrow Bridge, a documentary that follows four individuals, Palestinian and Israeli, who are part of an organization called Israeli Palestinian Bereaved Families, who aim to turn their personal devastation into social change.
Other screenings include the animated My Father’s Secrets on February 18th; documentaries Queen of the Deuce on February 20th, Simone: Woman of the Century on February 22nd, Hope Without Boundaries on February 25th, and Vishniac on February 27; and the Israeli musical/rom-com Our Story on February 29th.
Overall, Samuels hopes the festival brings the community — Jewish and non-Jewish — together. “I think that it’s great, especially after Covid, for people to be in a place that they feel comfortable in and to see other people and connect over these films.”
Tickets for individual films are $7, or $5 for JCC members. Series passes are $49, or $35 for JCC members. Visit jccmemphis.org for a full schedule, descriptions of all the films, and to purchase tickets.
Morris & Mollye Fogelman International Jewish Film Festival, Belz Theater at the Orgel Family Performing Arts Center, Memphis Jewish Community Center, 6560 Poplar Avenue, Tuesday, January 30-February-29, $5-$7.
Jeffrey Wright’s virtuoso
performance complements the
virtuosic writing in American Fiction.
Thelonious “Monk” Ellison (Jeffrey Wright) has a big problem in American Fiction. He’s a writer and English professor, but his latest book is not going over well with publishers. It’s long and complicated, full of mythological symbols and classical references. Not exactly a recipe for a bestseller, but he’s got an audience, and it’s enough for Monk to get by in the publish-or-perish world of academia.
That’s not enough anymore, says Monk’s agent Arthur (John Ortiz). It’s got to be bold, direct, honest, from the street. That’s what readers want from Black authors these days — realness. But the trouble is, Monk’s book is honest and from the heart. His family is all well-to-do professionals. His sister Lisa (Tracee Ellis Ross) and brother Cliff (Sterling K. Brown) are both doctors, and his retired mother Agnes (Leslie Uggams) lives on Cape Cod. His “real life” isn’t what people expect from a Black writer.
He is painfully reminded of what they do expect when Arthur suggests he attend a reading of the latest bestseller by Sintara Golden (Issa Rae), We’s Lives In Da Ghetto. The narrative is wall-to-wall Black trauma porn. The almost impenetrable dialect Sintara writes in is nothing like her reserved urbane speaking voice. It’s all a put-on by someone trying to fake authenticity by giving the predominantly white audience’s own preconceptions back to them.
Monk is jolted out of his professional bubble when Lisa dies unexpectedly from a heart attack, and he is forced to help arrange her funeral with his cokehead brother and Agnes, who is showing the first signs of Alzheimer’s. He takes a little comfort with Coraline (Erika Alexander), the lawyer who lives on the beach next to his mom.
To vent his frustrations, Monk bangs out a sloppy potboiler filled with stories of urban poverty, crime, and social dysfunction told in transparently fake street slang. He submits it to his agent as a final raised middle finger to the publishing industry. But to his surprise, Arthur loves it. When he shops My Pafology around to publishers under the name Stagg R. Leigh, a bidding war erupts. Since Monk’s terminally square appearance would undermine the “authenticity” of the product, he claims to be a gangsta on the run from the law and refuses to make public appearances. Stagg R. Leigh’s book advance is staggering — which is good because Monk needs the money to pay for his increasingly frail mother’s care.
Monk’s bitter kiss-off has become the biggest success of his career — and a publishing sensation. But Monk soon realizes that he can’t tell anybody he’s Stagg R. Leigh, or the whole bubble will burst. Even worse, isn’t he now just perpetuating and profiting from the same harmful stereotypes he was raging against in his satire? At what point does “satire” end and “realistically absurd” begin?
It’s that last question that American Fiction ultimately applies to itself. Monk gets cold feet and tries to sabotage his fictional career with increasingly outlandish pronouncements and behavior. But each escalation is met not with condemnation but rapturous applause. Writer/director Cord Jefferson, who won an Emmy for his writing on the 2019 HBO series Watchmen, adapted Percival Everett’s 2001 novel Erasure into American Fiction, which just goes to show you that the complex questions of representation and stereotyping have been knocking around long before the moral panics of the 2020s.
Jefferson keeps it balanced between the outlandish and the real by going back and forth between Monk’s personal travails — a deteriorating family life and a fraught new romance — and the increasingly outrageous, yet plausible, arc of his meteoric writing career. Then finally, like his protagonist, the movie tries to sabotage itself to see how far you’ll go along. It’s a virtuosic writing job which wouldn’t have worked without a virtuoso performance by Jeffrey Wright. American Fiction is at its funniest when it’s all too real.
New year 2024 concept, beginning of success. Text 2024 written on asphalt road and male runner preparing for the new year. Concept of challenge or career path and change.
What do you mean it’s almost January? If you’re anything like us, the encroaching new year has really seemed to have come out of left field. The churning news cycle means that we’ve had our heads down covering the arts, a mayoral race, the Tennessee legislature, and everything in between. But despite a packed 2023, there are plenty more stories on the horizon. With 2024 just around the corner, our writers take a look at what we can expect in Memphis news next year.
Breaking News
Paul Young
Paul Young taking the mayor’s seat will be the Memphis news story to watch in 2024.
Memphis hasn’t had a new mayor for eight years; hasn’t done things differently for eight years — for good or bad. So, Memphians can expect new ideas, fresh faces, and new approaches to the city’s same-old problems (but maybe some new opportunities, too).
Paul Young (Photo: Paul Young for Memphis)
Some could argue too much emphasis is put on the mayor’s office, much like the president’s office. But that office is where the city’s business is done daily, from police and fire to trash collection and paving. Yes, these ideas are later shaped by the Memphis City Council and, yes, the mayor is expected to carry out rules formed entirely by the council. But all of that is executed (executive branch, get it?) by the mayor and his team.
Young has already named a few key staffers. Tannera Gibson will be his city attorney and Penelope Huston will be head of communications, according to The Daily Memphian. Young told the Memphian, too, that he’ll keep the controversial Cerelyn Davis as chief of the Memphis Police Department.
Memphis in May
This next year could be make or break for the Memphis in May International Festival (MIM).
It ended 2023 with a whimper. The nonprofit organization posted a record loss of $3.4 million and record-low attendance for Beale Street Music Festival. Also, its longtime leader Jim Holt announced his retirement.
MIM leaders put Music Fest on hiatus for 2024. It also moved the Championship Barbecue Cooking Competition to Liberty Park.
Meanwhile Forward Momentum and the Memphis River Parks Partnership (MRPP) announced a new three-day music festival at Tom Lee Park (called River Beat) and a new barbecue contest, both in May.
It’s unknown if these new events could supplant MIM. Speculation, though, has the future of the nonprofit in question. It’ll be worth watching.
Tennessee General Assembly
State lawmakers are hard to predict.
Last year, for example, one GOP member spent countless hours persuading his colleagues to add firing squads to the list of options for the state’s death row inmates. Another wanted to add “hanging by a tree” to that list.
However, one can easily predict Republicans will seek to make life harder for the LGBTQ community. One bill paused last year, for example, would allow county clerks to deny marriage rites to anyone they choose (wink, wink).
The little-known but hard-working Tennessee Medical Marijuana Commission may approach lawmakers next year with a plan to get a state system off the ground. Dead medical cannabis bills have become too many to count over the years. But the hope is that the group’s expertise after years of study may help tip the scales.
Easy bets are also on bills that mention “abortion” or “trans.” — Toby Sells
Politics
Oddly enough, the city’s incoming chief executive, Paul Young, remains something of an unknown despite his extensive exposure (and his consistently adept campaigning) during the long and trying mayoral race that concluded in October. Nor will the aggressive ballyhoo of his preliminary activities — parade, concert, and inaugural ball, no less! — have shed much light on his intentions in office, though his inaugural address will be highly anticipated in that regard.
Major changes may be in the offing, though so far the shape of them is not obvious. Young’s announced reappointment of police director C.J. Davis at year’s end may be an indication that, in the personnel sense, anyhow, there may well be a continuum of sorts with the administration of outgoing Mayor Strickland.
C.J. Davis (Photo: Memphis Police Department)
The newly elected council, meanwhile, is expected to be measurably more progressive-minded on various issues as a result of the election than was its predecessor.
A city task force already launched — GVIP (Group Violence Intervention Program), which involves an active interchange of sorts between governmental players and gang members (“intervenors,” as they are designated) in an effort to curb violence on the streets. It will be picking up steam as the year begins.
And follow-up readings will still be required in 2024 on an initiative sponsored by outgoing Councilman Martavius Jones and passed by the council conferring lifelong healthcare benefits on council members elected since 2015, upon their having completed two terms.
(News of that move prompted an astounded Facebook post from former Councilman Shea Flinn, who served back when first responders’ benefits had to be cut and a controversial pension for city employees with 12 years’ or more service was rescinded. Said Flinn: “Do I have this correct? Because I don’t want to be gassing up a flamethrower for nothing!”)
The Shelby County Commission, having worked in tandem with Mayor Lee Harris in the past year to secure serious funding for a new Regional One Health hospital, continues to be ambitious, hoping to acquire subpoena power from the state for the county’s recently created Civilian Law Enforcement Review Committee and to proceed with the construction of a long-contemplated Mental Health, Safety, and Justice Center.
The commission is also seeking guidance from the DA’s office on the long-festering matter of removing County Clerk Wanda Halbert from office.
At the state level, almost all attention during the early legislative session will be fixed on Republican Governor Bill Lee’s decision to push for statewide application of the school-voucher program that barely squeaked through the General Assembly in 2019 as a “pilot” program for Shelby and Davidson counties. (Hamilton County was later added.) The program was finally allowed by the state Supreme Court after being nixed at lower levels on constitutional grounds. Democrats are universally opposed to its expansion, as, for the record, are the school boards in Shelby County’s seven school districts. Prospects for passage may depend on how many GOP legislators (a seriously divided group in 2019) are inclined this time to let the governor have his way.
Also on tap will be a series of bills aimed at stiffening crime/control procedures, some of which may also try to roll back recent changes in Shelby County’s bail/bond practices.
Oh, and there will be both a presidential primary vote and an election for General Sessions Court clerk in March. — Jackson Baker
Music
No sooner does yuletide appear than it’s gone again in a wink, as we turn to face a new notch on life’s yardstick. Yet even before 2024 dawns, Memphis has great music brewing on this year’s penultimate day, December 30th, from the solo seasoned jug band repertoire of David Evans (Lamplighter Lounge) to the revved-up R&B-surf-crime jazz-rock of Impala (Bar DKDC) to Louder Than Bombs’ take on The Smiths (B-Side).
Ironically, DJ Devin Steele’s Kickback show at the Hi-Tone is keeping live music on the menu with a six-piece band alongside the wheels of Steele. Down on Beale Street, bass giant Leroy “Flic” Hodges and band will be at B.B. King’s, and the Blues City Café will feature solid blues from Earl “The Pearl” Banks and Blind Mississippi Morris.
Susan Marshall (Photo: Jamie Harmon)
While New Year’s Eve seems particularly DJ-heavy this December 31st, there are still some places to ring in the new year with a live band. Perhaps the most remarkable will be when three of the city’s most moving women in music — Susan Marshall, Cyrena Wages, and Marcella Simien ringing in midnight — converge at the freshly re-energized Mollie Fontaine Lounge. A more up-close, swinging time will be found at the Beauty Shop’s meal extravaganza set to the music of Joyce Cobb. Orion Hill’s Mardi Gras Masquerade will feature Cooper Union (with Brennan Villines and Alexis Grace), and Blind Mississippi Morris will hold court again at Blues City as a gigantic disco ball rises up a 50-foot tower outside on Beale. For that Midtown live vibe, Lafayette’s Music Room’s elaborate festivities will feature the band Aquanet.
For many Memphians, the new year will begin with a look backward as a smorgasbord of bands — from Nancy Apple to Michael Graber to Oakwalker and beyond — gather at B-Side to honor the late Townes van Zandt on January 1st. The revival of the 1970 musical Company, opening at the Orpheum the next day, also honors an earlier era’s muse, but its five Tony Awards suggest that even today it “strikes like a lightning bolt” (Variety). And the historical appreciations continue: On January 14th, Crosstown Arts’ MLK Freedom Celebration will feature the Mahogany Chamber Music Series, curated by Dr. Artina McCain and spotlighting Black and other underrepresented composers and performers; and on January 20th GPAC will host jazz trumpeter, vocalist, and composer Jumaane Smith’s Louis! Louis! Louis!, blending his own compositions with those of Louis Armstrong, Louis Prima, and Louis Jordan — three giants of the last century.
Who knows, maybe reflecting on all this past greatness will teach 2024 a thing or two? — Alex Greene
Coming Attractions in 2024
2023’s dual WGA and SAG strikes disrupted production, so 2024 should be an unpredictable year at the multiplex. Studios are currently engaged in a high-stakes game of chicken with the release calendar, so don’t take any of these dates as gospel. In January, an all-star apostle team led by LaKeith Stanfield and David Oyelowo tries to horn in on the messiah game in The Book of Clarence.
February has the endlessly promoted spy caper Argylle, a Charlie Kaufman-penned animated film Orion and the Dark, the intriguing-looking Lisa Frankenstein, and Bob Marley: One Love left over from 2023, as well as Ethan Coen’s lesbian road comedy Drive-Away Dolls.
March is stacked with Denis Villeneuve’s return to Arrakis, Dune: Part Two; Jack Black voicing Kung Fu Panda 4; Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire; and Focus Features’ satire The American Society of Magical Negroes.
Monsters will collide in Godzilla x Kong.
April starts with Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire and Alex Garland’s social sci-fi epic Civil War.
May features Ryan Gosling as The Fall Guy and Marisa Abela as Amy Winehouse in Back to Black. On April 24th, we have a three-flick pile-up with Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, The Garfield Movie (animated, thank God), and Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. ALL HAIL IMPERATOR FURIOSA!
Anya Taylor-Joy in Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
June brings us Inside Out 2, which adds Maya Hawke as Anxiety to the Pixar classic’s cast of emotions. There’s another Bad Boys film on the schedule that nobody has bothered to title yet. Meanwhile, Kevin Costner goes too hard with punctuation with Horizon: An American Saga — Chapter One. (Chapter Two drops in August.)
In July, there’s the horror of Despicable Me 4 and Twisters, a sequel to the ’90s tornado thriller that lacked the guts to call itself Twister$. Ryan Reynolds returns as the Merc with a Mouth in Deadpool 3, the first Marvel offering of the year.
In August, Eli Roth adapts the hit game Borderlands, which, if you think about it, could actually work. James McAvoy stars in the Blumhouse screamer Speak No Evil. Don’t Breathe director Fede Álvarez directs Priscilla’s Cailee Spaeny in Alien: Romulus.
September is looking spare, but Tim Burton, Michael Keaton, and Winona Ryder are getting the band back together for Beetlejuice 2, so that could be fun.
October looks a tad more promising with Joker: Folie à Deux, a psychosexual (emphasis on the “psycho”) thriller with Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga. There’s also the cheerful Smile 2, evil clown porn Terrifier 3, and a Blumhouse production of Wolf Man.
November sees a remake of The Amateur, Barry Levinson’s mob thriller Alto Knights, Ridley Scott’s Gladiator 2 with Denzel Washington, and Wicked: Part One, led by Tony Award-winner Cynthia Erivo.
Then, the year goes out strong with Lord of the Rings: War of the Rohirrim, an anime Tolkien adaptation from Kenji Kamiyama.
This time next year, we’ll be gushing over Barry Jenkins’ Mufasa: The Lion King, Robert Eggers’ boundary-pushing Nosferatu remake, and an ultra-secret Jordan Peele joint. — Chris McCoy
Memphis Sports
Here’s a one-item wish list for Memphis sports in 2024: Ja Morant videos that are exclusively basketball highlights. The city’s preeminent athlete stole headlines this year with off-the-court drama that ultimately cost him the first 25 games of the Grizzlies’ 2023-24 season. Morant’s absence was more than the roster could take, particularly with center Steven Adams sidelined for the season with a knee injury. More than 10 games under .500 in mid-December, the Grizzlies must hope the star’s return can simply get them back to break-even basketball. If that happens — and with the rim-rattling displays that have made Ja a superstar — the new year will have brought new life to the Bluff City’s flagship sports franchise.
And how about a first regular-season American Athletic Conference championship for Penny Hardaway’s Memphis Tigers? The AAC is a watered-down version of the league we knew a year ago (no more Houston, no more Cincinnati), with Florida Atlantic now the Tigers’ primary obstacle for a league crown. A controversial loss to FAU in the opening round of the NCAA tournament last March created an instant rivalry, one that will take the floor at FedExForum on February 25th. David Jones is an early candidate for AAC Player of the Year and sidekick Jahvon Quinerly gives Hardaway the best collection of new-blood talent since “transfer portal” became a thing.
Seth Henigan (Photo: Wes Hale)
With Seth Henigan returning to quarterback the Tigers for a fourth season, Memphis football should also compete for an AAC title and an 11th consecutive bowl campaign. AutoZone Park will hum with Redbirds baseball and 901 FC soccer throughout the warm-weather months, and the PGA Tour will make Memphis home when the FedEx St. Jude Championship tees off on August 15th.
But let’s hope 2024, somehow, becomes the Year of Ja in this town. The heart of Memphis sports echoes the sound of a basketball dribble. And one player speeds that heartbeat like no other. — Frank Murtaugh
Oscar Jimenez will suit up for 901 FC next season. (Photo: Courtesy USL/Louisville City FC)
Meanwhile, 901 FC can look forward to welcoming some unfamiliar opponents to the confines of AutoZone Park next season. A restructured United Soccer League means Memphis will bid adieu to the Eastern Conference and kick off its 2024 season as part of the Western Conference. That means that 22 of 901 FC’s 34-match schedule will be against Western Conference opponents, starting with a March 9th home season opener against Las Vegas Lights FC. There’s a new COO in Jay Mims, while we can expect plenty of new players to suit up before Stephen Glass leads the team out for its first game.
One thing that soccer fans will not be looking forward to, however, is a new stadium, with plans for a soccer-specific Liberty Park arena scuppered after $350 million in state dollars earmarked for sporting renovations did not include any provisions for 901 FC. — Samuel X. Cicci
I’m not convinced the special wasn’t ultimately written and directed by a sentient bag of cocaine. — Nathan Rabin The worst two hours of televisions ever. — David Hofsted
The reviews are in — and have been in since 1978 — for the Star Wars Holiday Special. It’s not good. “It’s absolutely insane,” says Chad Barton, co-owner of Black Lodge. “It is just a weird nightmare fuel.” No one in the cast seems to want to be there, Carrie Fisher admitted she was high on coke, the plot is bizarre, Bea Arthur randomly appears, the list goes on.
And yet the Black Lodge is dedicating the entire evening tonight to the special. Naturally. And it’ll be in the vein of a Rocky Horror Picture Show viewing, complete with singing, shouting, and throwing things. Again, naturally.
“I’m a huge Star Wars fan,” Barton says. “And I watched this a really long time ago and was super horrified by it, but also really intrigued by it because it’s very strange. And a lot of people don’t know about it. … It’s kind of a fun way for Star Wars fans to come together and enjoy something in a very kind of silly way. And I always thought that it was weird that there’s a lot of other things of a similar ilk that get kind of a sort of reverence and this doesn’t get that. Even George Lucas said that if he could, he would destroy every copy of this that ever existed. And we think, No, you shouldn’t destroy a copy of this because it happened and it’s insane that it actually happened. Yeah, we want to celebrate it.”
This will be the third time the Lodge screens the film. The first go-around drew about 100 people, and last year “did about the same or a little better.” “It’s a nice off-kilter holiday experience that you can have,” Barton says. “We have our own callbacks and prop bags.”
At one point in the film, the wookies take over the screen, except there are no subtitles. “You have no idea what they’re saying,” Barton says. “And so we went in and added subtitles for the wookies and kind of created a story for them, and it changes every year. So it’s not the same experience every time you come back from year to year.”
For the event, the Lodge will have Star Wars-themed dishes and cocktails. “It’s kind of a surprise. But we generally try to like work within the constraints of whatever the Star Wars universe has,” Barton says of the menu. “And then a couple of cocktails to go along with it. As we say, you’re going to need the cocktails to get through it because it’s pretty bad. You need to be drunk while you’re watching.”
The screening, which kicks off at 7 p.m., is free to attend, but donations to Lodge are welcome. Prop bags will be for sale for $5.
Eli Roth’s Thanksgiving carves up a whole lot more than just turkey.
In 2007, Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez were at the top of their game. The two directors had come up from the indie underworld at the same time in the early ’90s. Tarantino’s Kill Bill films were critical and commercial successes, and Rodriguez was doing both mainstream blockbusters with Spy Kids and cutting-edge animation with Sin City. They teamed up to make a tribute to the shameless, cheap exploitation films of the drive-in era. Grindhouse was a double feature condensed into a single movie by leaving the middle reel out of each film. Rodriguez’s contribution was Planet Terror, a hyper-violent zombie sci-fi flick starring Rose McGowan as a go-go dancer with a machine gun leg; Tarantino’s was Death Proof, a car chase movie starring Kurt Russell as a murderous stuntman driving a sinister black hot rod.
Tarantino and Rodriguez invited their film bro buddies to make trailers for movies that could never get made which ran before and between the two features. Rob Zombie did one for “Werewolf Women of the S.S.”; Edgar Wright did a hilarious voice-over riff called “Don’t.” But strangely, three of the trailers for films that “could never get made” actually ended up getting made. Rodriguez made “Machete” around legendary Mexican-American stuntman Danny Trejo, and it spawned two successful feature films. (I’m still waiting for Rodriguez to complete the trilogy with Machete in Space.) Then there was the self-explanatory Hobo with a Shotgun from Canadian filmmaker Jason Eisener, who got his slot in Grindhouse by winning a South by Southwest Film Festival contest. And now, there’s Thanksgiving by Hostel director Eli Roth.
The original trailer had to be cut down a bit to avoid the entire film being slapped with a NC-17 rating. Roth’s feature just squeaks under the bar for an R rating, but it is every bit as demented and shameless as the trailer. As the name suggests, Roth’s film is smack dab in the middle of the slasher horror tradition of Black Christmas and Halloween. Like John Carpenter, who Roth is clearly channeling here, the jump scares and arterial spray are flying cover for unsparing social satire.
Thanksgiving in Plymouth, Massachusetts, is like Halloween in Salem — the epicenter of holiday vibe. That’s why it feels so off that RightMart owner Thomas Wright (Rick Hoffman) has decided to open his big box store on Thanksgiving, while he enjoys a greeting-card-worthy Thanksgiving dinner with his family. One of the hallmarks of the grindhouse slasher pics is that almost everyone you meet is an insufferable jerk, so it’s more satisfying when they inevitably get killed. Thomas’ daughter Jessica (Nell Verlaque) is the least unsympathetically portrayed character in the film, but still, she’s the one who inadvertently starts a riot on Thanksgiving when she lets her obnoxious friends into the RightMart before it officially opens at 6 p.m.
For Roth, the FightMart riot is his Omaha Beach in Saving Private Ryan. Fully feral American consumers tear each other to pieces over discount waffle irons. The security cameras make the rioting shoppers look like rats in a maze driven crazy by some kind of perverse psychological experiment. It’s the first of a series of blistering images Roth conjures using the familiar tropes of Thanksgiving.
A year later, the Wright family business has settled a bunch of lawsuits, and Jessica and her friends are the subject of harassment on social media. Then, a new, much more threatening harasser appears, using the pilgrim name John Carver. I had never really thought of how terrifying the traditional Plymouth Rock pilgrim outfits were until Roth showed me one dismembering people with an axe. Sheriff Eric Newlon (Patrick Dempsey) asks Jessica to help find the killer before he finds them. But there is no shortage of suspects who carry grudges from the FightMart riot, so Jessica’s amateur detectives have their work cut out for them.
The ironic part of Thanksgiving is that it started as a joke about a low-budget exploitation film that was too weird to be made, and now, 16 years later, it’s become a really good low-budget exploitation film. Roth hits that elusive sweet spot between stupid and smart. It’s gross, it’s in shockingly bad taste, it indicts its audience simply by existing, and yet, you can’t look away. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!
