I’m tempted to say Wright’s Thelonious “Monk” Ellison, a misanthropic writer and college professor, would be friends with Paul Giamatti’s crabby boarding school history teacher from “The Holdovers” if they lived on the same timeline and in the same cinematic universe, but they share so many similarities they probably wouldn’t want to be in the same room with one another. Jeffrey Wright is usually third or fourth or fifth on the call sheet, providing invaluable and memorable supporting work in films such as “Broken Flowers” (2005), “Casino Royale” (2006), “Source Code” (2011), the “Hunger Games” films and “The Batman” (2022), with the occasional starring role, e.g., “Basquiat” in 1996 and the 2016 prison drama “O.G.” In writer-director Cord Jefferson’s timely and sharp and subversively funny “American Fiction,” Wright is accorded the relatively rare opportunity to take the lead, and he delivers a richly layered performance that reminds us he’s one of the best actors of his generation.
