Making it look easy.

Good morning Consumers. This is please consume, film newsletter that double butters your popcorn.

This is what we got for today 👇️

• Tom talks about a hidden gem in Denzel’s filmography.

• We get our first look at David Fincher’s newest film. And my god is it beautiful.

• All the news and notes from the last few days.

Let’s get rolling…

We’ve been foaming at the mouth to do a week like this.

We love Denzel Washington and his vast reaching range as an actor, and with the release of Equalizer 3 (which we imagine will be his best film to date) we couldn’t let this opportunity slip away!

Devil in a Blue Dress (1995)

Written by Tom Fortner

Carl Franklin’s Devil in a Blue Dress inhabits a unique space between Chinatown and In the Heat of the Night, a very real world in which the wheelings and dealings of the local elite are influenced not only by personal gain, but by intentional suppression of a group of people.

Enter Easy Rawlins (Denzel Washington), a Black man recently laid off, unfairly, and looking for work. He’s approached by a white man who has a job for him: locate a woman. He slides a hundred dollars over the table and Easy accepts. He needs the money.

And so begins his seedy descent into the underworld of L.A.

As the film’s tagline puts it: “In a world divided by black and white, Easy Rawlins is about to cross the line.”

Black and White

“The American Dream has always been a spectacular lie”, opens Julian Kimble’s essay on the film for the Criterion Collection, and nothing is more evident than that as we watch Washington’s character navigate the racially charged alleys of 1940s L.A.

Easy has a house and a nice car. He likes owning a house, and he’s one of only a handful of black men in town who owns one.

His success is fragile however. He’s two months behind on the mortgage, and pretty soon he’s being confronted by young teenagers who have the aura of future Klan members and being arrested for a murder he didn’t commit

The film is a noir, but not a typical one. It embraces the trope of alienation at the edge of society to tell the story of African Americans in America. Easy Rawlins isn’t a fringe character, he’s handsome and kind and successful, but he is reduced to one by societal prejudices.

Making Easy Look Easy

Okay, on to Denzel.

The character of Easy is perfectly tailored to Denzel. The gravitas that he carries today as a respected older actor is glaringly present in this film, made almost 30 years ago, and is so important to the character. The audience has to believe that Easy is the type of man to work hard and be successful as a Black man in 1940s America. Never once is there a doubt that this man could do that.

And yet there’s fierce pride and anger in the performance alongside his restraint and determination. Watch as Easy is arrested and questioned by the police. Easy is vocal about his innocence and knows this is unjust, but recognizes the danger of the situation. At one point, he retaliates after a blow to the back of his head but quickly backs away, knowing he’s toeing the line between life and death.

This makes the dynamic shift in the middle of the film, from being hired to find the girl to investigating for his own purposes, all the more believable. Easy isn’t the type of man to be a passive actor in a mysterious production he knows nothing about.

It’s almost as if Denzel is playing himself, but it’s clear that this is a great performance.

Denzel is the reason this film is good.

Today’s Scene

Let’s take a look at this week’s new trailers…

The Killer

The Book of Clarence

Here are a few things that we found interesting over the last few days…