Malcolm & Marie (2021)

Is there anything more "on brand" in a Hollywood relationship than two people who are just frustratingly in love but in a more hostile, toxic, and passive aggressive way?  For film director Malcolm (John David Washington) and his live-in lady love, Marie (Zendaya), they seem to be together in a Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) style relationship, where they toggle between loving kisses and praises to dish throwing and cutting each other's throats over the smallest words used in a conversation.  As the couple return to a sheik Los Angeles house in the hills, after the premiere of Malcolm's latest film, they start in on each other, their critics, their love-life, and pretty much any topic of conversation you can think of, all while listening to records and drinking.  Malcolm is laser focused on the journalists who are intent on giving his latest opus a bad review in the papers, but it's coming out as tongue lashings to his loved one, who can be just as critical and supportive at times as the critics who Malcolm lives and dies by.  As Marie snaps back at Malcolm, we truly begin to see the portrait of a relationship that causes whiplash with the emotional car wrecks each character steers into over and over again.  In this gorgeous black & white, two person flick, shot entirely during the 2020 Covid pandemic, don't expect a massive cast of hunks, but you're getting quality over quantity with star John David Washington, traipsing around shirtless in a couple of shots!