October 2019 film review

EL CAMINO (2019) W/D- Vince Gilligan (Netflix production)

Which begins at the precise moment when Breaking Bad ends, with Walter White enacting his ultimate act of redemption by freeing his assistant, Jessie Pinckney, from his enslavement at the hands of the evil white supremacist meth gang. So then, we could call this “What Jessie did Next”. What he does is to find a way to disappear, because he knows the DEA are still after him, anxious to lock him up in a super-max facility for a couple of hundred years. But disappearing off the face of the Earth is not as easy as it might seem, even with a quarter of a million clams in your back pocket...

I haven’t come across anyone yet who didn’t think Breaking Bad was perhaps the greatest piece of television drama ever made, so its creator, Vince Gilligan had a lot to live up to. Yet he does, in this film which carries all the skill, humour and ongoing sense of lurking threat that characterised the original. Dotted with little flashbacks which take us back to the magnum opus, I can say for all BB fans, and for the 4 people who still haven’t got round to seeing it, this film represents required viewing.

DOLEMITE (2019) D- Craig Brewer (another Netflix production)

Eddie Murphy, perfectly cast and turning in one of his best acting performances to date, plays Rudy Ray Moore, a real-life character who in the 70s made a career out of a fusion of rap and stand up comedy, but who then wishes to make a ‘blacksploitation movie’ to showcase his talents. Eventually he puts his movie together on a shoestring. At first Hollywood has no interest in this upstart, but then the film gets shown in a theatre in Detroit which has its predominantly black audience in raptures of delight. Finally he is adopted into the mainstream and the rest is highly profitable history. 

In summary, Eddie Murphy finally comes of age in a movie of the front rank. We’ve already seen him shine in Dreamgirls, but here he has ensured his rep as a genuine class act.