Marked by endlessly rotating, fluid hallucinations of start and decay, it’s a symbolism-wealthy fantasia that marries the personal and the political in ways that veer from the sweet to the sinister. There’s gnarly, unnerving texture to every thing in this unhinged movie, which fragments and reforms like a nightmare born from the darkest recesses of the mind. Throw in nods to Apocalypse Now, The Bridge on the River Kwai and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, and you have an epic that’s bursting on the seams, sometimes to its overstuffed detriment.
Nonetheless, Lee’s action-movie investigation of inner, domestic and world racial dynamics—and defiance—thrums with timely anguish and fury, and is bolstered by an Oscar-worthy flip from Lindo as a MAGA-supporting man drowning in chaotic rage. Disaffection and sorrow hover over Tesla, Michael Almereyda’s daringly unconventional movie about the famed nineteenth-century inventor. Less an try at a cohesive life story than … Read More
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