New streaming picks - ‘Clemency,’ ‘Crawl’
The film distribution company Neon ran a brilliant Oscar campaign earlier this year for its Best Picture-winning masterpiece, “Parasite.” Unfortunately, it also meant a couple of their other excellent movies from 2019 received less attention.
This column space already showcased the brilliant French drama, “Portrait of a Lady on Fire.” Now another Neon title from late last year has arrived on Hulu - the Alfre Woodard-starring “Clemency,” about a warden on death row facing a crisis of conscience.
Woodard’s commanding, nuanced performance in particular deserves attention. She plays Bernadine Williams, a longtime prison warden who oversees executions. Her job requires thorough, clinical procedures to a particularly awful process, and the film opens on an execution that doesn’t go as planned.
Though shaken by the incident, Bernadine’s growing feeling of complacency (and perhaps guilt) has begun to wear on her marriage (Wendell Pierce, excellent, plays her husband). Add to it a high profile case and the next scheduled execution - a man on death row for murder who has maintained his innocence for 12 years (Aldis Hodge, matching Woodard’s intensity every step of the way). Protests rage outside the prison, and the man’s lawyer (“The Good Doctor” and “West Wing” alum Richard Schiff) continues to apply pressure for clemency.
The film takes its time establishing empathetic dramatic arcs for all four characters, though everything filters through Bernadine’s escalating turmoil. Hodge is a future A-lister, and it’s compelling to watch Woodard, Schiff and Pierce (all often supporting performers) work with such rich material.
“Clemency” is written and directed by Chinonye Chukwu, who became the first black woman to win the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival (last year, for this movie). It’s sharply paced and richly written, as Chukwu was inspired by the real-life case of Troy Davis.
Hulu’s exclusive streaming deal with Neon continues to provide top-notch material for at-home viewers. As “Clemency” once again proves, seeing the Neon logo in front of the title generally means it’s more than worth a try.
For something completely different - “Crawl,” starring alligators
A young woman (Kaya Scodelario) attempts to rescue her father (Barry Pepper) from the floods of a Category 5 hurricane. He’s injured himself in a crawl space and LOOKOUT! There’s like 50 giant alligators in the water!
The B-movie adventure comes courtesy of Alexandre Aja, the French film director of “High Tension” and remakes of “The Hills Have Eyes” and “Piranha.” “Crawl” takes the material fairly seriously, and Aja crafts several exciting setpieces inside a single, very wet location despite the overuse of CGI in the creation of the alligator attackers. There’s a cute dog squaring off against the alligators too, and, look, don’t worry, the dog survives the movie.
“Crawl” was a modest success in theaters last summer, and Quentin Tarantino publicly hailed it as one of last year’s best movies. That seems generous, but it’s more than worth FREE if you have a Hulu or Amazon Prime subscription.
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Tyler Wilson can be reached at twilson@cdapress.com. He’s been writing professionally about movies since 2000 and is the co-host of Old Millennials Remember Movies, available everywhere you get podcasts and at OldMillennialsRemember.com.
