Newsletter: Indie Focus: Dancing with history in ‘I Am Not Your Negro’ and ‘La La Land’

Hello! I’m Mark Olsen, and welcome to your weekly field guide to a world of Only Good Movies.

It’s getting to be the time for best-of lists and the like, and we’ll be posting one of our own soon enough. Perhaps signifying how tough and occasionally arbitrary that list-making can be is something like filmmaker Robert Greene’s hard-to-categorize “Kate Plays Christine.” Greene will be appearing soon at L.A.’s Cinefamily, in events co-presented with local screening series Acropolis Cinema, for the local premieres of two of his earlier films, “Fake It So Real” and “Actress.” The evenings should make for a strong introduction to his work, which blend documentary and fictional storytelling.

We’ve had a great year of screening events — with guests including Tori Amos, Pedro Almodóvar and Kelly Reichardt — and could very well wind up with some more bookings as awards season rolls on. We’re especially excited by the prospect of showing “The Neon Demon” big and bright and loud in a theater on Monday, Dec. 12. Director Nicolas Winding Refn and composer Cliff Martinez will be there for a Q&A afterward, discussing their ongoing collaboration. For more information, check in with events.latimes.com.

‘I Am Not Your Negro’

Directed by Raoul Peck, and with a writing credit given to James Baldwin, “I Am Not Your Negro” is a powerful, dazzling look at identity and race as told through the work of Baldwin, specifically his attempt to write a book that examined the lives and deaths of three men he knew: Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. The film includes extensive footage of Baldwin and features voiceover of Samuel L. Jackson reading his words.

In his review for The Times, Kenneth Turan said that what makes the film “a mesmerizing cinematic experience, smart, thoughtful and disturbing, goes well beyond words.”

Turan concluded his review with “‘Not everything that is faced can be changed,’ Baldwin says at one point, ‘but nothing can be changed until it is faced.’ As much as any film out there today, ‘I Am Not Your Negro’ helps us face our racial divide and possibly begin to change it as well.”

Writing for the Guardian, Jordan Hoffman said, “It in no way diminishes Peck’s work as a filmmaker to suggest that Baldwin’s ideas and personality are the author of this movie. It is a striking work of storytelling. By assembling the scattered images and historical clips suggested by Baldwin’s writing, ‘I Am Not Your Negro’ is a cinematic séance, and one of the best movies about the civil rights era ever made.”

Peck sat for a long conversation with programmer Thom Powers during the Toronto International Festival that you can watch here.

Peck also spoke during the AFI Fest in Los Angeles. In an interview for the festival’s website, he said, “If there was any pressure, it was the self-inflicted pressure to do right by Baldwin — to figure how to be faithful to his words, in a world that asked, at every moment, for simple answers to complicated issues.”

‘La La Land’

“La La Land” that has been so widely talked about since it first premiered on the festival circuit earlier this fall that it’s hard to believe it’s only just now getting its commercial release. Directed by Damien Chazelle, it’s a modern-day musical starring Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone as a pair of struggling artists, he a musician and she an actress, trying to make it in Los Angeles. The film’s candy-bright colors and sunny disposition mask a yearning for something richer and deeper.

In his review for The Times, Justin Chang wrote, “Chazelle has assembled a vibrant, infectiously hummable pastiche of musical and cinematic styles — an entrancing ode to the glories of cinema past as well as a heartfelt expression of faith in the medium’s future.”

Reviewing for the New York Times, A.O. Scott said the film “succeeds both as a fizzy fantasy and a hard-headed fable, a romantic comedy and a showbiz melodrama, a work of sublime artifice and touching authenticity. The artifice lies in the gorgeous colors, the suave camera movements and the elegant wide-screen compositions. In the songs and choreography too, of course, though it has to be said that, with one or two exceptions, these are more competent than dazzling. You’re more likely to remember what you saw than what you heard.”

One of the things that is making “La La Land” a fascinating point of discussion is the fact there is any discussion at all, that a film which looks so harmlessly agreeable has also generated strong pushback from critics who aren’t having it.

At MTV News, Amy Nicholson, for example, wrote, “Nostalgia — especially the type of nostalgia designed solely for knowing nods — gets in the way of the film’s ability to run. Eventually, La La’s light-footed glee will trip over its baggage … You’re forever getting kicked out of the moment and asked to applaud.”

For the New Yorker, Richard Brody noted of Chazelle: “He venerates and celebrates bygone methods and mannerisms because he applies them like formulas — and those formulas take the place of original creation, of a spontaneous sense of style and a natural, personal sense of beauty … There’s even more verve in the musical parodies of ‘Popstar’ than in the strenuous emptiness, forced whimsy, and programmed emotion of ‘La La Land.’”

For The Times, Chazelle wrote about some of the musicals that influenced the film. There are expected names like filmmakers Vincente Minnelli and Rouben Mamoulian, and stars Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Judy Garland and Cyd Charisse, but also more unexpected entries like “Touki Bouki” or “Beau Travail.”

‘Miss Sloane’

Though it opened in Los Angeles a few weeks ago, the political thriller “Miss Sloane” is expanding around the country. Jessica Chastain gives a fiery performance as a Washington lobbyist who finds an unexpected purpose.

In his review for The Times, Justin Chang wrote, “Reality, of course, is a fairly elastic concept these days, and if there’s a flaw in ‘Miss Sloane,’ it’s that in future years its juicy Machiavellian gamesmanship may not look farfetched but dated — a throwback to a time when there were clearer consequences for professional misconduct, when people still retained their capacity for outrage. See this smart, showboating movie now, before its simmering sense of justice begins to feel like a thing of the past.

Gugu Mbatha-Raw, left, and Jessica Chastain star in “Miss Sloane.”

(Katie Falkenberg / Los Angeles Times )

The film seems to be exactly the kind that The Times’ Steven Zeitchik wrote about recently when he looked at movies that have become caught up in the shifting sands of history, landing in an environment different from one their creators might have imagined.

“The Trump victory is so seismic that it falls on to a very short list of events that change the way we perceive almost everything else,” Zeitchik wrote. “That includes — and maybe especially applies to — our cinematic escapism.”

Writing about the film for the Washington Post, Alyssa Rosenberg added, “It’s a naive movie that believes itself to be cynical, and as a result, misses just how deep the rot in Washington really lies.”

Stanley Kubrick movies in L.A.

All month long, L.A.’s New Beverly Cinema is featuring Stanley Kubrick movies, including “Barry Lyndon,” “Lolita,” “The Killing,” “A Clockwork Orange” and “The Shining.” (How they aren’t showing “Eyes Wide Shut,” which among its many virtues is an incredible Christmas movie, is another matter.)

Kubrick movies are easy to take for granted — you assume you know them and file them away — but part of their brilliance is how rewatchable they all are. Kim Morgan wrote an insightful essay on “Barry Lyndon,” which concluded, “You have to think about it, search within yourself while these beautiful images soak into your soul. And Kubrick knew this power. As Kubrick himself said, ‘The most important parts of a film are the mysterious parts — beyond the reach of reason and language.’ ”

The American Cinematheque also has a real treat for those still find the theatrical experience something truly special, as it is giving a run throughout December to its brand-new 70mm print of Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey.”

Email me if you have questions, comments or suggestions, and follow me on Twitter @IndieFocus.