A consistently clever, lighthearted and authentic trip to the art world of lower-middle-class Blacks in New York City, as Rhada Blank, a/k/a “Miss B” and “RhadaMUSPrime,” bounces between playwriting and rapping while teaching a high school theater class hung up on genitalia. Filmed in black-and-white – why? to point out its racial aspects? – the […]
If you like depressing Irish movies about spousal abuse and a mother with two kids, no money, no home and no prospects, this is your cup o’ tea. Fortunately, through a series of improbable good breaks, our heroine ends up about where she started, but quit of the abusive husband. Clare Dunn, who co-wrote and […]
1. The Mangrove / The Trial of the Chicago 7. It is fitting in this year of George Floyd and Black Lives Matter protests that my two favorite films showcase police brutality and protest. That both involve real events from 50 years ago only added to their poignancy and relevance.
If theater requires the suspension of disbelief, cartoon features must require the suspension of rational thought. After about 20 minutes of watching this, I asked my wife, “Wouldn’t you rather watch the Bee Gees?” and was greeted with a sigh of welcome relief.
The abstinence-only strictures of the Catholic Church take on the rising hormones of a 16-year-old naif in this indie charmer of a movie, and guess who wins? Natalia Dyer is perfect and perfectly believable as a teen. The hypocrisy and absurdity of Catholic sex “education” may be a tad over the top, but it’s a […]
A nostalgic, surprisingly grainy look back at the presidency of one of the most decent humans to hold the position, at a time when we’re watching someone at the opposite end of that spectrum. Other than telling us that Jimmy Carter liked rock’n’roll, as well as country, jazz and classical music, there wasn’t much point […]
An earnest effort at a feel-good romance, which felt like it was made during the era it depicted, 1957-62, not necessarily a good thing, but with the pleasing difference that almost all the characters were Black and discrimination was at most a minor issue. The acting was a bit obvious and the story was predictable, […]
The second installment of Steve McQueen’s Small Axe, Lovers Rock was a disappointment. Unlike The Mangrove, it had almost no story and just as little context. The acting was convincing and I’m sure there were dance parties that looked and felt just like that in West London in 1980 (I read). Maybe it was convincing as […]
A short story of a movie (unlike, say, Kelly Reichardt’s earlier period Western, Meek’s Cutoff), which tries to absorb us into the gentle friendship between a sweet but slow trail cook and a more ambitious Chinese frontier entrepreneur. Their business of selling dolly-cakes could also be read as a metaphor for American capitalism: the drive […]
Finally, a serious movie. And I mean, serious. Beautifully photographed empty landscapes of the American West set a metaphorical scene for the bleak nomadic life of the widowed, childless Fern, living in a van, subsisting on minimum-wage temporary jobs when she can find them, meeting other nomads but resisting any close connections. I can’t say […]
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