Sunday, February 5, 2017

Theater Whore: Fences


Fences 10/10

Yesterday after watching two shitty films in a row I was talking to Camille and told her that I needed to cleanse myself cinematically. Later, even though she is not feeling well, she asked if I wanted to go see Fences at The Arclight. The answer or course is hell's yes. I am glad that I knew nothing about this movie other than the two main stars and that there was a play about it. Other than that I had no attachments or anything to base it off of. I like that. Its hard to describe this movie without spoiling a bunch of it or even making it sound super interesting based on the premise because there ain't no explosions of nothing. Its just an incredibly well acted movie with a small cast.


Denzel Washington (who also directed this) is a guy named Troy Maxson. He is a father, a fuck up, a hard worker, and a hard ass man to live with depending on his mood. He lives with his wife Rose played by Viola Davis. By the way, she should win any award in any category she is in because of this movie. I was saying no ladies have been knocking it out the park this year and then she goes and pulls this shit. She was incredible in this. She deals with Troy's Friday drinks and vanishing after work sometimes doing god knows what. When you find out what it was he was doing its like “Ooh...”


His friend who is a garbage collected with him is Jim Bono played by Stephen Henderson. The scenes where the two of them are just bullshitting are very funny. Troy also has another son named Lyons stops by every Friday to borrow some money from his father who gives him the same lecture every time he does. The talk that they have regarding Troy not even raising him is very good. I am sure that in real life the types of conversations they have in this would go very differently. Troy also has a brother named Gabriel played by Mykelti Williamson that suffered a head injury in the war. There is a shit ton of guilt associated with this! Oh, so much guilt. So much drama.


There is lastly Troy's son Cory played by Jovan Adepo. This kid is good. Troy does not want Cory to go for a football scholarship because he thinks nothing has changed since when he himself tried for the Negro leagues back in the day and wants his son to just get a regular job. There is this weird combination of him not wanting his son to make his mistakes, waning him to be successful at regular work, wanting to control his life, and possibly being jealous that his son has chances he never had. This movie is all talking. Just good conversations with people that range from funny, sad, scary, and tense as fuck. There were moments where I felt like I should ask if I should leave the room and let them continue this in private. I will be buying this movie as soon as I can it was so good. Check this out if you get the chance.

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