Malcolm and Marie.

I loved JDW, he was a standout, otherwise the whole movie felt at times a bit self indulgent, tacky, and contrived.

I viewed Malcom & Marie yesterday on Netflix and deemed it "good." The elegant black-and-white cinematography, while artistically self-conscious, resonates, and the sometimes-delicious dialogue offers some excellent points about the nature and dynamics of filmmaking, the movie industry, and the manner of "woke" white film critics. Indeed, they often seem to know little about movies themselves and prove more interested in using films to propagate the most fashionable trends in social commentary. John David Washington and Zendaya both offer juicy performances, but I actually found Zendaya more naturalistic and affecting. 

On the downside, even for a film that is obviously a black comedy and a satire, it is sometimes a bit over the top, in terms of the dialogue and acting and also the tracking shots and even the halting attempts at oral sex. Malcom & Marie seems to want to suggest sheer spontaneity, yet without quite achieving that quality. Throughout the picture, I possessed the nagging sense that this film represented the reinterpretation of something that has been done before, deep in the cinematic past, whether it is Mike Nichols' Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) or a John Cassavetes-helmed movie from that era or even, to some extent, Alfred Hitchcock's Rope (1948). 

But ultimately, Malcolm & Marie works. After a certain amount of time, I thought that it might function better as a short than a feature-length film, but I found myself pleasantly surprised that it held my attention over the entire length of the movie. For a film that features just two actors and one basic setting, that accomplishment is no small feat.