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The United States vs Billie Holiday

Popcorn Podcast

Leigh and Tim tackle tragic retelling The United States vs Billie Holiday. The biopic follows the tortured singer's battle with the FBI over her civil rights anthem Strange Fruit. Plus, Lucy Liu cast as a villain in Shazam: Fury of the Gods; Mads Mikkelsen joins the Indiana Jones sequel; and Florian Zeller's next project, The Son, secures Laura Dern and Hugh Jackman as the leads.

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THE UNITED STATES vs BILLIE HOLIDAY MOVIE REVIEW

Tim: Before we go any further, I'm sorry, but I just have to get something off my chest. 

Leigh: Yes? 

Tim: I think you know what this is going to be about. I have to call out the weave in the room, Leigh. 

Leigh: The weave. The bad wig. 

Tim: Leslie Jordan's wig. It has to be the most outrageous, but arguably best wig in cinema I have ever seen. I had a physical reaction when he first came onscreen and I kind of yelped, “Whoa! What the fuck?” It’s the most outrageous wig ever. If you follow Leslie Jordan's career, or even his Instagram – which I highly encourage you do, he is a phenomenally hilarious man – he's got no hair. So it jumped out big time. I was very distracted by that bloody weave…

Tim: … Ugh, it’s so infuriating just how much racism was around then – and to this day – it's just so shocking. This movie is as relevant today as much as it would be if you made it decades and decades ago.

Leigh: Let's talk about the positives here. Andra Day’s performance was stunningly raw, so powerful, and it's her feature film debut. A completely deserved Oscar nomination. 

Tim: I cannot get over that she has never acted in a film before. She is an absolute revelation. You could have fooled me that this was her debut, my goodness me. She changed her speaking voice and her singing voice to portray Billie in the most authentic way. The commitment and the chameleon-like ability that she has straight out of the gate in her first role! Her performance felt effortless to me. How did you feel? 

Leigh: Yep, she was Billie Holiday. She didn't portray her. It was a state of being, I think.

Tim: I think she so beautifully presented the legacy that Billie Holiday was always meant to have and leave behind. When she met up with Lee Daniels, the director, she didn't want to do it. She said no, she wasn’t an actress and all those sorts of things, but it was about the opportunity to establish a lost legacy or a legacy people weren't too familiar with because it was always distracted by her heroin addiction and the FBI going after her. This red thread of the song Strange Fruit was the most powerful element of this movie, and you just cannot fault her performance one bit here.

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