Featuring a career-making performance from Rosalind Eleazar and supporting turns from Daniel Kaluuya, Adam Driver and Anna Kendrick, Chris Rock’s latest as writer-director chronicles the extremes one Black actor goes to to keep both her career and brother alive.
Misty (Eleazar) is on the verge of a comeback — if only she could curb her worst habits. In a narcotic-fuelled mania, she went from winning an Emmy to losing a big project helmed by ace director Jordan (Rock). Jordan, however, is ready to give Misty another chance with his forthcoming remake of DREAMGIRLS. It’s a coveted opportunity, but Misty has competing concerns, such as her looming eviction — and her brother (Kaluuya), navigating life with bipolar disorder, who gets into serious trouble. As pressure to procure funds mounts, Misty finds herself considering an offer by her former flame (Driver) that’s simultaneously heinous and lucrative beyond her wildest dreams.
In the tradition of such Black cinema milestones as Robert Townsend’s HOLLYWOOD SHUFFLE and Spike Lee’s BAMBOOZLED, Rock’s searing portrait of Tinseltown exposes just how deeply racism, classism and misogyny contaminate the motion picture ecosystem. MISTY GREEN is one of the best L.A. movies in years — and its best jokes sting with the insight only a veteran wit like Rock could deliver.
“The best movie about Hollywood in years…. Explosively entertaining, savagely authentic…. MISTY GREEN is put together with so much observational exuberance that it leaves you both daunted and exhilarated.” —Owen Gleiberman, Variety “Eleazar keeps us firmly in Misty’s corner in a bold performance that simultaneously pushes the audience away while pulling us in. The tenderness with which Rock has built this vehicle around character, actress and a milieu he clearly knows intimately imbues the material with an aching depth of feeling that stayed with me for days.” —David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter “Played to wearily ferocious perfection by “Slow Horses” powerhouse Rosalind Eleazar in what should be a star-making performance (but you never know in this town!), the almost 40-year-old Misty has developed a full script of excuses for the downward spiral she’s been on…. Unfailingly burns with the self-defeating fire of a woman who’s looking for freedom in all the wrong places.” —David Ehrlich, IndieWire
