I took this weekend to catch up on some movies from last year that were supposed to be quite good and to watch one new release. The two movies from last year were Vampires vs. the Bronx and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, the latter of the two is up for some Oscars, specifically for acting. The new release was Mortal Kombat, which I planned on seeing in the theater, but I ended up watching it at home on HBO Max because Regal’s app was not working right. I wish there were an AMC theater closer. All these films were enjoyable in their own ways, but there was not much overlap between them, which I do always find enjoyable, it is best to get a diverse look at films and see what each genre does well, and to see how different genres of films can deliver the same message.
From the films that I watched this weekend, Vampires Vs. the Bronx was by far my favorite. It was a story of literal vampires that were encroaching into the borough by buying up real estate and then getting blood from the victims of the sellers. This was causing gentrification in the neighborhood and pricing out many of the residents that had called this place home. A group of kids find out what was going on and they try get rid of the vampires and help their community prosper. So although this was a light hearted vampire movie with a nice comedic punch, it also had an underlying goal to it as well. The vampires were symbolic of the gentrification of neighborhoods, which is causing the people who live in these areas to no longer be able to afford their dwellings and businesses. This is not only a problem in New York, specifically the Bronx, but it is also a problem in many other major cities as well. The real culture of these places is being purged due to a surge in prices due to the high demand of people wanting to live in these areas.
It also commented on the lack of care for missing people in low income and racially diverse areas. When the vampires would take these people’s blood, they would just disappear. This led to a plethora of missing persons fliers being posted all around the city that no one from the outside world seemed to care about. If it had been in a rich affluent community and massive amounts of people would start to go missing, it would be a huge story, but since it was occurring in a neighborhood with a lower economic standard, it was not a story. This can be seen most prevalently in the Native American community where there are large amounts of people who go missing every year, many suspected of being murdered that just go under the radar because they live on reservations and the stories do not garner the national traction they deserve.
The next best movie I watched this weekend was Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. It was a film that was based on a play that took place in the 1920s. It specifically focused in on a recording session of Ma Rainey’s music in a Chicago recording studio. Although it is Ma’s band, one of the players also has a big head and thinks he is better than all of them, and this leads to conflict, especially considering how large Ma’s ego was. Both performances, one done by Chadwick Bosman and the other done by Viola Davis are up for an Oscar. Bosman is the front runner to win the best actor award, and Davis is up for best supporting actress and has a good chance of winning, but it is not as assured as Bosman. Both of their performances were great, but I am not as on board with them winning these awards. I felt like Riz Ahmed’s performance was better and a harder role to pull off, but with the passing of Bosman it seems like there is going to be a recognition of his talent and his career and this is the way to do it. (Now that the Oscars have happened and Anthony Hopkins won, it does feel wrong that Bosman did not win, but that is the Oscars.)
The main theme in this movie was inequality. There were multiple stories told by the members of the band in the room where they were warming up about different stories they or others had gone through where there had been gross injustices to Black people. Also even at the recording studio they were going through injustices. Bosman’s acting was put on the forefront with his story telling of what happened to his family, and when he reacted to the story that was told about the man who missed his train, this was when he was giving his best and most emotion filled performance. The recording studio screwed over Bosman’s character by boosting his ego very high and getting him to write some original songs of his own, and they told him that he could record his songs, but in the end he reneged on his deal and bought his songs cheap and had a white band perform them instead, and they clearly had less soul in their performance than they would have had if Bosman and his band would have performed it. This injustice in the music industry was extremely popular in the early 20th century where Black created music would be taken by white performers and made popular, leaving the Black artists with out the credit or the money they deserved.
The last movie, that was my least favorite from the weekend was Mortal Kombat. This movie was action packed from beginning to end, which was great, but it was also part of the problem with the movie. There was so much action that they forgot to develop the plot of the film. The general premise was that chosen fighters from Earth had to defeat chosen fighters from Outworld to prevent Earth from being enslaved. The thing is that this movie was based off the video game, the video game is a classic arcade style fighting game. There is no role-playing story mode, at most there are just scenes that take place between fights that explain what is going on, but people are not playing Mortal Kombat for the story. It is most well known for its violence and gore. They played into that violence from the opening scene. There was tons of severing of body parts, slashing, and stabbing. The film also played fan service in multiple ways. They used multiple of the main characters finishing moves, which were typically the most gore filled parts of the movie. They also used some of the signature lines from the video game as well. Some fit in better than others, the one that did not fit in at all was when a fight ended, and the guy gave himself a flawless victory. There are other films that are mainly action based, like John Wick that still have an ability to tell a decent story, but this film failed on the story part, or at least in making a compelling story, but to be fair, I got exactly what I was expecting from this film.
All these movies were good, it just depends on what kind of film one is looking to watch. Vampires Vs. the Bronx was a horror comedy that incorporates an interesting message underneath it, so it encompasses a large amount in a movie that is less than 90 minutes and a real fun watch on Netflix. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is a more artistic film with a more serious tone that takes on more serious topics, it was good enough to garner some Oscar nominations, so clearly it is worth a watch. Then Mortal Kombat was action packed and gore filled, which definitely has it fan base. If you want to get lost in a little over 100 minutes of violence, this is the way to go. I gave Vampires Vs. the Bronx and Ma Rainey an 85, and I gave Mortal Kombat a 79.
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