Purgatory

QUEEN & SLIM (C+) - You want to root for this movie -- and the Bonnie and Clyde couple on the run after a cop gets shot during a traffic stop -- but it defies you to suspend belief -- to the breaking point, to where you can't stop rolling your eyes and it's hard to care anymore.

Slim (Daniel Kaluuya) and Queen (Jodie Turner-Smith) meet for a long-anticipated first date, and it goes just OK, with prospects dim for a second. But then on the drive home they get pulled over by an angry white cop (a miscast Sturgill Simpson, the musician), and, in a twist, it's the cop who gets shot, and our instant folk heroes -- in the first of many stupid decisions -- decide to lam it. 

What follows is a series of ridiculous coincidences and improbable plot twists while these talented actors mouth the tortured aphorisms of screenwriters Lena Waithe and James Frey (yeah, the "Million Little Pieces" guy). They meander south, ostensibly destined for sanctuary in Cuba, and spend time with Queen's pimp uncle (yawn) and his harem (really?) in Louisiana for a while.

As their legend grows, members of the black community wink and look the other way, a silent fist pump for offing a cop who, conveniently for everyone's conscience here, had just a couple of years ago killed a black motorist and got away with it. Queen and Slim's relationship deepens sweetly along the way. But Kaluuya and Turner-Smith never escape the constraints of their cartoon world, from beginning to end. The plot is a flimsy house of cards, and after two-plus bloated hours (with an ending spotted a mile away), you might not care anymore what random bad decision seals their fate.

LIMBO (1999) (A-minus) - Indie legend John Sayles works in a minor key -- at times literally -- in the tale of a man and a woman, each approaching middle age with regrets, who reluctantly fall in together in an Alaskan fishing town -- only to end up, in the second half of a movie, fighting for their survival after they are stranded on a remote island.

If that sounds like two movies, it kind of is. Sayles regular David Strathairn and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio (before settling into TV work) star as Joe and Donna, both licking their wounds from traumas -- his old (and involving the sea), hers (man-related) perpetual. Donna's teenage daughter, Noelle (Vanessa Martinez), works a dead-end job with Joe and harbors a secret crush, which is crushed when Mom reveals she is dating him. 

Interesting set-up, greased by Sayles' impeccable feel for dialogue and life's rhythms. But then, Joe, drawn back to the sea, takes mom and daughter on an ill-advised joy ride that turns disastrous and leaves them holed up in an abandoned cabin with little hope for rescue, though Joe is handy enough to make them relatively comfortable and fed. Each of the three develops their own means for survival in this bizarre platonic love triangle, most notably Noelle, who discovers a young girl's diary and regales Mom and Joe with nightly readings. 

Sayles digs deep into the quiet sadness and ennui of his characters. And just when you expect a life-or-death resolution, he pulls the rug out from you with a stunner of an ending. This one is thoughtful and lived-in.