Talk to Me

Don Cheadle is one of the great actors of our time.

In DEVIL IN A BLUE DRESS, he did the impossible: he stole a movie from Denzel Washington. His character, Mouse Alexander, was so smart, so evil, so good, that I couldn't see the man's face for years without wondering whether he had murder on his mind. That film, made in 1995, brought Cheadle to my attention. But this has been his decade. From the cockney safecracker Bashar Tarr in the OCEAN'S movies to the one of the few things about CRASH to the understated, brave, and noble Paul Rusesabagina in HOTEL RWANDA, here's a guy who showed he can do almost anything. But nothing prepared me for Petey Greene.

If I hadn't known that was Don Cheadle under that costume, I never would have guessed it. Cheadle disappears into the role, thinking and talking faster than anyone else in the film or the audience, a man using his raw intelligence and amazing audacity to overcome nearly every obstacle put in his way. Cheadle as Greene is a force of nature, his performance nothing short of brilliant.

I came to this film through an interview with Chiwetel Ejiofor that I read on CHUD. Ejiofor was promoting RED BELT at the time, but he mentioned this as one film of which he was particularly proud. I can see why. Ejiofor plays the audience surrogate, real-life WOR program director Dewey Hughes, the man who gave the real-life Petey his job. I've already said that Ejiofor is an absolutely outstanding performer himself, and here he has the judgement and confidence to get out of Cheadle's way. Director Kasi Lemmons (who made the wonderful EVE'S BAYOU) knows what she's doing here, and she builds a film around this performance that puts us in its time and in its people's hearts in a way that few pictures manage to do.

I don't care if you don't like soul music. I don't care if you don't care about the black experience in the '60s. I don't even care if you aren't a fan of Cheadle, Ejiofor, or Lemmons. You're here because you like movies. And if you like movies, you have got to see Cheadle on fire in TALK TO ME. Queue this one up today.

Eve's Bayou

"Memory is a selection of images, some elusive, others printed indelibly on the brain. The summer I killed my father, I was 10 years old."

Who can resist a hook like that?

EVE'S BAYOU is a movie about that summer, but it's a movie about a lot more than that. It's about a time and a place; it's about being a 10-year-old girl in a loving but troubled Creole family; and it's about the sorrows we bear and the things we can never take back.

Jurnee Smollett plays Eve, a doctor's daughter in a 1950s Louisana swamp town. Her father, Samuel L. Jackson, is her hero and a respected man. He's also a philanderer, a reality that's slowly breaking the heart of her mother, the painfully beautiful Lynn Whitfield. Smollett is incredible as Eve, and she can thank a penetrating and intelligent script for her good fortune. This is not a movie with cute but struggling moppets, nor is it one about adults in children's bodies. It's about a smart and insightful young girl who's trying to make sense of things that she's simply not ready to understand. Jackson, playing the father, reminds us that he is a gifted actor in addition to being a guy audiences can believe is ready to take on a passel of dangerous, planebound snakes. His doctor is smart and foolish, dashing and clumsy. He's a man. And Lynn Whitfield, well, Lynn Whitfield has this scene: she doesn't say a word, and she absolutely broke my heart. You'll know it when you see it.

EVE'S BAYOU is more than its script and its actors, of course. The movie looks and sounds great, with a deep, inviting palette, perfect costumes and sets, and an intriguing mix of light and shadow. Its music only brings attention to itself when it wants to and manages to get under our skin. Additionally, its selection of zydeco tunes for some scenes reflects a deep understanding for and appreciation of Louisiana swamp music, and it succeeds in bringing the milieu home.

In short, all the pieces of EVE'S BAYOU work. The movie takes us places we've never been, into the lives of people we'll never know, and it does so with insight, compassion, and beauty. This movie is a winner.