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Chicago Tribune
21-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
‘The Annihilation of Fish' review: A rare James Earl Jones film, restored, returns for a victory lap
'The Annihilation of Fish' would be pretty much unimaginable, if it weren't here, now, a generation after its disappearance. It barely got into production in 1999, even with James Earl Jones heading the cast. A Toronto International Film Festival screening later that year revealed the film's singular and divisive qualities, which led to one willing distributor to take on the release. Then a harsh Variety review, deriding its lack of commercial oomph, killed the deal and the movie hid away, in limbo. Until now. Director Charles Burnett has admirers in high places, for the best possible reason: He's a pioneering poet of Black American life, and a singular cinematic talent working on his own wavelength, mixing his own mixture of joy and despair and tragedy and human comedy. Burnett's 1978 independent classic 'Killer of Sheep,' a beautiful, battered page out of Los Angeles and Watts history, will never cease to cast its spell. Within the Hollywood studio system, despite its cautious oversight, Burnett made 'To Sleep With Anger' (1990), driven by Danny Glover's finest-ever performance, as well as the Walter Mosley/Denzel Washington noir 'Devil in a Blue Dress' (1995). Burnett kept working, in film and television, fiction and nonfiction. This brings us to the unicorn of a project 'The Annihilation of Fish.' Thanks to a recent restoration funded by Mellody Hobson and George Lucas via their Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation, this bracingly cockeyed comic romance has dropped in from the past, with Lynn Redgrave and Margot Kidder in memorable supporting roles. It opens in Chicago Friday at the Gene Siskel Film Center and the Wayfarer Theatre in Highland Park. At first sight the three leading characters share little beyond a Los Angeles address, and a sense of dislocation. Jamaican American Obediah Fish has spent the last 10 years in a New York City psychiatric hospital; he's beset by an demon visible only to him, and this demon (Hank, by name) engages Fish in wrestling matches on a regular schedule. Relocating to L.A., Fish lands in the boarding house owned by Mrs. Muldroone (Kidder), who, like Fish, is a solo act, having lost her spouse years ago. She's a weed tender. Everyone has their coping mechanisms in this comic construct, protected the characters from everyday reality. This surely applies to the Puccini-loving Poinsettia (Redgrave), whose love of grand opera and Puccini's 'Madama Butterfly' in particular goes beyond mere fandom. She spends much of her time communing with the late composer as if he were alive and her special beau. Not long after Fish moves to the boarding house, Poinsettia steps off a Greyhound bus from San Francisco, laden with suitcases, and promptly becomes Fish's neighbor. Leading with flamboyant hostility and more than a little racism, this blowsy blur of a woman — in Redgrave's skillfully hammy hands, she's like every Mrs. Clackett in every production of 'Noises Off' put together — needs tending. A courtly soul, Fish is there for her, picking her drunken self up off the hallway floor after her latest night on the town. This leads to a friendship over games of rummy. (Akin to 'The Gin Game,' which Jones performed on Broadway, much of 'The Annihilation of Fish' takes place over cards.) He cooks a Jamaican feast for her. And then love blooms, in between Fish's bouts with the unseen demon from his past, with Poinsettia serving as referee. The demon fades from view. But can Fish live without his adversary? The screenplay comes from writer Anthony C. Winkler, who also wrote a short story by the same title. 'The Annihilation of Fish,' purely as material from which Burnett made his film, requires a certain amount of forgiveness and faith. Its coyness can get sticky. But the actors reward every ounce of audience faith. Once Fish and Poinsettia lower their guards, the movie settles and Burnett's touch is beguiling, all the more for his sly intimations of the supernatural — at one point, Fish tosses the invisible demon Hank out his second-story apartment window, and we see the leaves on the tree shake and sway — and his soulful embrace of these broken but unbowed lives. The movie's a rom-com at heart, but there is no other one like it. It's also as much of an L.A. story as every other Burnett film made there, and it does not shy away from 1999-era political issues, from President Reagan's de-institutionalization of countless mentally ill patients, to never-not-topical American subjects of race and prejudice. 'In South Africa, they used to put a white woman on bread and water for a year for kissing a Black man,' Fish says, after Poinsettia plants one on his kisser. Her response: 'Piss on South Africa.' 'The Annihilation of Fish' — 3 stars (out of 4) MPA rating: R (for some sexual content) Running time: 1:48 How to watch: Starts March 21 at the Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago ( and Wayfarer Theatres in Highland Park (
Los Angeles Times
21-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Charles Burnett on his lost ‘Fish,' plus the week's best films in L.A.
Hello! I'm Mark Olsen. Welcome to another edition of your regular field guide to a world of Only Good Movies. The Slamdance Film Festival is currently underway, taking place for the first time in Los Angeles. Originally started in 1995 by a group of filmmakers rejected by the Sundance Film Festival, Slamdance established its own identity as a community of artists pulling together for themselves. The in-person event will run though Feb. 26, and a virtual program will be accessible to streaming viewers from Feb. 24 through March 7 at 'On one hand, it's business as usual with the discovery of new filmmakers, launching careers and new ideas in filmmaking,' said Peter Baxter, Slamdance president and co-founder, of the festival's move to Los Angeles. 'But then on the other hand, it's a chance for our organization to grow in other ways, to fulfill on that potential, the idea here of a rising tide can float all boats in the world of independent filmmaking.' Following its premiere at the 1999 Toronto International Film Festival, 'The Annihilation of Fish' was never picked up for distribution, in part due to a particularly disastrous review in Variety. Directed by Charles Burnett from a screenplay by Anthony C. Winkler, the film follows two damaged, eccentric adults, Obediah 'Fish' Johnson and Flower 'Poinsettia' Cummings, as they meet at a Los Angeles boarding house and begin an unlikely romance. Starring James Earl Jones and Lynn Redgrave as Fish and Poinsettia, the cast also includes Margot Kidder as Mrs. Muldroone, who runs the boarding house. A delicately touching story of people abandoned by society finding a way to care for each other, the film is enjoying audiences at last, as a new 4K restoration of the film playing around the country is currently having a limited run at the Los Feliz 3 and could add more L.A. dates. A new 4K restoration of Burnett's landmark debut feature, 1977's 'Killer of Sheep' will also be released later this year. Burnett, whose other films include 'To Sleep With Anger' and 'The Glass Shield,' received an honorary Academy Award in 2017. Now 80, the filmmaker got on the phone earlier this week from his home in L.A.'s Baldwin Hills to talk about the rediscovery of 'The Annihilation of Fish.' Has it always bothered you that the movie was lost, that it hadn't been released? Charles Burnett: I didn't feel like it was a lost film, for some reason. A lot of good people were involved in trying to get it out and I had confidence in them, so I really wasn't too worried. Maybe I should have been, but I wasn't. But anyway, those things happen. I'm just lucky to get it out now. I can't complain. A lot of worse things can happen. What attracted you to the project in the first place? Burnett: I think it was the writing of Anthony Winkler. It was a challenge. It was sort of a comedy and it wasn't quite a comedy as such, but it was about human beings trying to find a sense of belonging. They didn't want to miss the opportunity to have a relationship, to experience life in its fullness. And everyone had their own particular problems that they had to overcome. These people coming together made it happen for each other. They were marginalized because of their conditions, their mental condition, but they were basically just like everybody else. Looking to complete their dreams and to find romance and find companionship in this lonely world. Even with 'The Annihilation of Fish,' as whimsical as it can be, you still feel for these characters and become invested in their lives. Has it always been important to you that your films remain connected to the real world? Burnett: It costs so much to make a film, you have to ask, 'What is the best place to put this money? How can I do the most good with this money?' It's not enough just to have people be amused. When I came up, you felt that the civil rights movement and everything, you were part of making a change. And so I sort of kept that. And that's the only way I can justify spending whatever it costs to make a film, to make it relevant. Because it has to. It's not that people say, 'I like your film,' but when they come back and say, 'I saw your film and it changed my life,' you can't ask for anything better than that. That's what I live for. What has it meant to you to have 'The Annihilation of Fish' come out at last and be received so well? Burnett: When the film came out, we had Margot Kidder, James Earl Jones and Lynn Redgrave and they have all passed on now. James Earl Jones particularly, he passed just recently, so he got a chance to maybe hear some of the reviews or something. But I'm glad that at least their families — I mean, James Earl Jones' son came up and said he was very happy and had seen the film three or four times. And he really loved it. And that was really important to me. And it makes it all worthwhile that the length that it took to get it out and people got the good reviews. And I just wish that people like Lynn Redgrave would've been here to enjoy the response. And that makes it worthwhile. To mark the film's 40th anniversary, the American Cinematheque will screen Paul Schrader's 1985 'Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters' on Saturday at the Egyptian Theatre. A deeply stylized portrait of the Japanese author Yukio Mishima (played by Ken Ogata), the film features sets and costumes designed by Eiko Ishioka. In reviewing the film, Sheila Benson wrote, 'The greatest problem is that for all its correctness and all the beauty of its production (Philip Glass' shimmering music, John Bailey's exquisite camerawork), 'Mishima' remains as tantalizing as that Golden Pavilion and as impossible to enter (almost impossible, too, to discuss in limited space). You may not be able to take your eyes from the screen, yet I suspect that comes as much from the filmmakers' passionate conviction that Mishima is a fascinating man than from anything they have told us about him.' In a 1985 interview with The Times' Jack Matthews, Schrader said, 'I've always been interested in people who sort of feel uncomfortable in their own skins, who feel limited by physical existence itself and try to get out. Mishima was certainly one of those people.' Michelle Parkerson at UCLA The UCLA Film and Television Archive will host a two-day series, 'Documenting Michelle Parkerson,' in tribute to the filmmaker whose career spans five decades. As Beandrea July's program notes put it, 'When one immerses themself in Parkerson's work, there is a sense of freedom and an unapologetic pursuit of ideas by a careful hand. … Filmmaker Yvonne Welbon captures the weight of Parkerson's considerable influence: 'For many Black lesbian media makers, Parkerson was our Spike Lee. She was the first Black lesbian filmmaker, and sometimes also the first Black woman filmmaker that we knew. She was an out Black lesbian making movies and she had been doing so for a long time. Because of her, so many of us believed that we too could become filmmakers.'' Saturday's program includes 1993's 'Odds and Ends,' a narrative short made while Parkerson was studying at the AFI's Directing Workshop for Women, along with 1987's 'Stormé: The Lady of the Jewel Box,' about America's first integrated female impersonation show and its first male impersonator, and 1995's 'A Litany for Survival: The Life and Work of Audre Lorde,' a portrait of the poet and activist. Parkerson is scheduled to attend, along with 'A Litany for Survival' co-director-producer Ada Gay Griffin and 'Odds and Ends' associate producer Felecia Howell. Sunday's program will feature 1980's '… But Then, She's Betty Carter,' a portrait of the jazz singer, along with 1983's 'Gotta Make This Journey: Sweet Honey in the Rock,' about the a cappella group. The evening will also include Parkerson's most recent documentary, 2021's 'Fierceness Served! The ENIKAlley Coffeehouse,' about a Black LGBTQ+ performing arts space in mid-1980s Washington, D.C. Parkerson is again scheduled to be in attendance. 'Swept Away' in 4K A new 4K restoration of Italian filmmaker Lina Wertmüller's 1974 film 'Swept Away' will begin a run at the Laemmle Glendale. The film stars Mariangela Melato and Giancarlo Giannini as a wealthy woman and a deckhand, respectively, on her yacht who find themselves unexpectedly thrown together when they become stranded on a remote island. Aside from taking in the beauty of the locations and her actors, Wertmüller wrings the story for political nuances of class and gender. Reviewing the film in 1975, Kevin Thomas said that the film combines elements of 'The Taming of the Shrew' and 'Robinson Crusoe' before adding, 'Miss Wertmuller in her wisdom looks beyond her beautifully orchestrated interplay between the eternal battle of the sexes and equally chronic class warfare to express a philosophical sense of life's absurdities and to attack specifically society's unrelenting tendency to alienate people rather than to bring them together.' 'Looking for Mr. Goodbar' in 35mm Playing in 35mm as part of the Cinematic Void series at the Los Feliz 3, 1977's 'Looking for Mr. Goodbar' stars Diane Keaton as a single woman who teaches deaf children by day and cruises singles bars for hook-ups by night, with her encounters becoming increasingly risky. Directed by Richard Brooks, the film is rife with internal conflicts, as if it wants to revel in a younger generation's freedoms while also feeling a moralistic reluctance to fully give over to something new. The film inspired Times critic Charles Champlin to write about it twice, one a review in October 1977 and the other a reappraisal based on audiences' reactions to the film just a month later. In his initial review, in which he lauded Keaton's performance as among the best of the year, he noted, ' 'Mr. Goodbar' is powerful, sincere and overlong, and if it raises questions about itself it is also thought-provoking. It is a new-fashioned world seen in a rather traditional handling, and its realism is still of the soundstage rather than the documentary. And finally one admires the dedication and integrity with which difficult material was handled, without that satisfaction of feeling (as I think one did after [Brooks'] 'In Cold Blood') that the unthinkable has been made comprehensible.' Big changes for James Bond Ryan Faughnder reported on the news that Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson, the half-siblings who have long presided over the James Bond franchise, have ceded creative control to Amazon MGM Studios. Though Broccoli and Wilson will remain co-owners, this ends some 60 years of one of the world's best-known film series being overseen by a single family. The most recent Bond film, 2021's 'No Time to Die,' brought to an end Daniel Craig's tenure in the role and the future of the series has been a source of speculation ever since.
Los Angeles Times
20-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Review: A master director's empathy shines in the belatedly released ‘The Annihilation of Fish'
No movie deserves the ignominious burial that Charles Burnett's 1999 romantic drama originally received. Premiering at the Toronto Film Festival before making its way to a few subsequent events, it essentially vanished in the wake of a negative Variety review, failing to secure distribution and seemingly destined to languish in obscurity. But to watch 'The Annihilation of Fish' now, 26 years after its debut, that frustrating backstory only adds extra poignancy to a picture already suffused with it. A tale of two troubled souls who find each other, the movie has become an even stronger tribute to the people (not to mention the art) we so easily push aside. Finally released after a meticulous restoration by, among others, the UCLA Film & Television Archive, 'The Annihilation of Fish' is especially welcome here in Los Angeles, which is both the movie's setting and the home of its director, whose films have too often suffered delayed or indifferent theatrical runs. A key figure in the L.A. Rebellion (named for the group of SoCal filmmakers in the 1970s dedicated to telling stories about Black life), Burnett directed the most pivotal work of the movement, 1977's 'Killer of Sheep,' which took 30 years to get a proper release due to music rights issues. (It currently sits tied at No. 43 on Sight and Sound's critics poll of the greatest motion pictures ever made.) Similarly, Burnett's 1983 drama 'My Brother's Wedding' was shown at the New York Film Festival in an incomplete version, but an underwhelmed critical reaction doomed the movie, until Burnett was finally able to re-edit and effectively finish it in 2007. Burnett's cinema often focuses on everyday characters inhabiting a working-class L.A. far removed from the glamour of Hollywood. So it should be no surprise that he has enormous affection for the people who populate 'The Annihilation of Fish' — even if few other filmmakers know what to do with them. Fish (James Earl Jones), who was born in Jamaica, has just arrived in L.A. by bus from New York, where he lived in a mental institution that decided it couldn't do anything more for him. His disturbing outbursts, in which he's convinced he must battle a demon, ultimately proved too much. Meanwhile, Poinsettia (Lynn Redgrave) has recently abandoned San Francisco after the death of her beloved. There's a catch, though: She believes she was romantically involved with famed Italian composer Giacomo Puccini, constantly talking to him as if he was right next to her. A dash of cosmic fate conspires for Fish and Poinsettia to rent apartments in the same Echo Park boarding house, run by Mrs. Muldroone (Margot Kidder), an emotionally disheveled widow who has a story about her last name and her late husband if you've got the time. She's just eccentric enough that she doesn't question the delusions harbored by her new tenants, and Burnett challenges his audience to embrace Fish and Poinsettia in the same spirit. Not that 'The Annihilation of Fish' has any patience for the cutesy tendencies that sometimes attend love stories about people with mental health problems. Burnett never insists that they're the sane ones, nor does he infantilize Fish and Poinsettia's afflictions. Instead, he applies a bracing matter-of-factness to their skewed reality. Occasionally, Fish will be seized with adrenaline as he prepares to wrestle that demon, dangerously flailing around his apartment while Laura Karpman's lilting score shifts into a jazz-infused cacophony of drums and horns. At other times, Poinsettia's rampant neediness comes spilling out, resulting in anger or despair. 'The Annihilation of Fish' observes it all with a calm eye, waiting until we acclimate to these unusual circumstances. Somewhere along the way, they will fall in love, and we'll fall in love with them. His film legacy built on Darth Vader and Mufasa, Jones rarely got an opportunity to play the love interest outside of 1974's 'Claudine.' So it's rewarding to see him as the kindly but shy Fish, nicely paired with Redgrave, whose Poinsettia is more temperamental but also more affectionate and open. A friendship blossoms thanks to a shared affection for gin rummy, but Jones slowly reveals Fish's tenderness, the possibility of romance spreading out in front of him. (He still has anxieties, though: Back in Jamaica, interracial love affairs were taboo.) Much of 'The Annihilation of Fish' takes place in and around the boarding house, but Burnett and cinematographer John Njaga Demps occasionally take the couple out into Echo Park as they go for a walk or ride a paddleboat, the gentle hum of a vibrant city in the background. And while Burnett's career has been marked by a stripped-down realism, his Indie Spirit-winning 1990 drama 'To Sleep With Anger' hinted at the otherworldly. Similar mysteries occur in 'The Annihilation of Fish': Each time Fish hurls that imaginary demon out the window of his second-story apartment, the tree below inexplicably shakes briefly. Are we imagining things? Or are we falling under the same spell as the characters? There's a theatricality to the actors' portrayal of mental illness that threatens to clash with the film's otherwise spare presentation. But Jones and Redgrave have such a consistency in how they play these skittish lovers that it drives home the point that their cruel, untamed condition doesn't adhere to the niceties of narrative convention. Never arbitrary but always unwieldy, Fish and Poinsettia's issues are unpredictably ever-present, and Burnett has enough respect for the characters not to believe that a happily-ever-after will 'cure' them. They are who they are, in sickness and in health. To experience this film is to be overcome with melancholy. The love story's fragility makes such a sentiment inescapable, but so is the sight of so many faces who are no longer with us. Redgrave died in 2010, Jones last year. Kidder died in 2018, her own struggles with mental illness well documented and heartbreaking. Beyond its examination of mental health and race, 'The Annihilation of Fish' is a story about mortality in which two older individuals, each unsure if love will ever visit them again, discover that maybe their final chapter hasn't yet been written. It's a fitting metaphor for a film that risked being forgotten — at long last, its time has come.
New York Times
14-02-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
A Great James Earl Jones Role That Can Finally Be Seen
When James Earl Jones died in September at 93, he left behind a great performance that, for 25 years, has gone virtually unseen. The movie, 'The Annihilation of Fish,' directed by Charles Burnett, had its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in 1999 but never received a proper release. Now it's getting a second chance, in a restoration that opens Friday at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. 'I hope people see it in a fresh light, and look at the talent,' Burnett, 80, said by phone from his home in Los Angeles. A great deal has changed since 1999: Burnett's masterpiece 'Killer of Sheep,' completed in 1977 and accorded a belated opening in 2007, is more widely available than it had been in those intervening years, and an honorary Oscar for Burnett in 2017 put a spotlight on a body of work that has long been championed by critics. The loose movement from which Burnett emerged — the group of film students at the University of California, Los Angeles, who became known as the L.A. Rebellion — has been the subject of academic attention in recent years. And while Jones's death occurred after the restoration of 'The Annihilation of Fish' was completed, the prospect of seeing the actor in one of his finest roles offers yet another reason to check out this surreal and disarming film. Jones plays Obediah Johnson, an immigrant from Jamaica who begins the movie having spent 10 years under institutional care. Obediah, who goes by the name Fish, is tormented by visions of being attacked by a demon — an invisible presence that he repeatedly tries to wrestle into submission, baffling those around him. Released from his supervised living situation, Fish makes his way from New York to Los Angeles; he figures that the City of Angels will give him an advantage over a demon. Upon arrival, he moves into a boardinghouse run by an eccentric landlady, Mrs. Muldroone (Margot Kidder). Soon they are joined by the woman who becomes the home's only other resident, Poinsettia (Lynn Redgrave), who is running from an invisible companion of her own: the ghost of Puccini, her lover, with whom she has called it quits. (They can't marry because California law requires a corporeal presence.) Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
New York Times
13-02-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
‘The Annihilation of Fish' Review: A Gem That's Worth the Wait
Obediah Johnson — the lost-and-found soul played by a magnificent James Earl Jones in 'The Annihilation of Fish' — has a barrel chest and a voice that sounds like it emerged, warmed and polished, from unfathomable depths. It's an instrument that many know from 'Star Wars' and 'The Lion King,' in which Jones voiced two of the most totemic fathers in movies. Yet the eloquence of his basso profundo was also instrumental in lesser-known works like 'Annihilation,' Charles Burnett's deeply humane, singular view from the margins that is receiving a theatrical release 26 years after its first public screening at a film festival. It seems shocking that it's taken this long for the film to hit theaters given Burnett's elevated standing; his masterful 'Killer of Sheep' (1978) is a milestone in American cinema and his reputation long established. There are a number of reasons that 'The Annihilation of Fish' didn't reach the world earlier. Among other things, genuine independent filmmaking, the kind that transcends formula and expectations and comes without corporate sponsorship, has always been difficult to market. And Burnett, whose filmography includes 'To Sleep With Anger' (1990), a neo-Gothic tale about a Southern interloper that slips between drama and comedy, has always defied compartmentalization. He can't be pigeonholed. 'The Annihilation of Fish' similarly evades classification, genre and otherwise. The movie is often gently funny, though occasionally lurches into boisterous excess, with jolts of slapstick and glints of ticklish nonsense. At the same time, there's a strong current of melancholy running throughout the story, which complicates and occasionally destabilizes its comedy. There are moments here when you laugh but aren't sure if you should, and instances when you wonder (and worry) if you're laughing with the characters or at them, and whether it matters. Most movies prompt you about when it's time to laugh and to cry; not this one. Written by Anthony C. Winkler, the film tells the tale of Obediah — he goes by Fish — a Jamaican immigrant who's long lived in a mental facility in New York and claims to be bedeviled by an invisible demon he calls Hank. The demon pops up unexpectedly, as imps tend to do, and Fish keeps him in check by wrestling him. They're grappling in church soon after the movie opens, a tussle that ends with Fish being abruptly ousted from his group home. 'It was like Pearl Harbor,' he protests to a functionary, 'sneak attack!' No matter. Soon, he is out the door with his suitcase and headed West, where his story begins in earnest. Fish ends up in that vexed paradise known as Los Angeles, where he moves into a modest, dilapidated apartment building run by a friendly eccentric, Mrs. Muldroone (a winning Margot Kidder). With its lush garden and stained, peeling interior, the building is the sort of place you can imagine the likes of Nathanael West and David Lynch making poetically dark use of. By contrast, Fish settles in with the pragmaticism of someone who must make do with what little life has afforded him: He spruces up his new apartment, transforming squalor into a home. Not long after, he meets Poinsettia (Lynn Redgrave). The trickiest character in the movie, Poinsettia is introduced sometime before she and Fish meet; you know she's important to his story from how Burnett cuts between them, like an anxious matchmaker. A loud, aggressively flamboyant figure given to voluble yowling and mewling, Poinsettia lives in San Francisco and claims to be in a relationship with the invisible and very dead Giacomo Puccini, a fixation that involves some strained comedy. Things improve when she too leaves for Los Angeles (before she does, Burnett tucks in an allusion to 'Vertigo,' a classic of mad love), where she moves into the apartment across from Fish's. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
