Posted on July 10, 2016 at 8:00 am
Three of my favorite performers will star in a new film called “Hidden Figures,” the true story three African- American women who worked for NASA during the 1960s space race. of Janelle Monae, Octavia Spencer and Taraji P. Henson will star as Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson, who are a crucial part of NASA’s history.
Here’s Katherine Johnson.
And the cast congratulates her.
Posted on July 2, 2016 at 4:31 pm
Some good news from the Motion Picture Academy — the acceptance of a younger, more diverse group of highly qualified members, which should help with the embarrassingly narrow focus that led to the #oscarsowhite problem last year, not a single person of color nominated for an acting award. New members include actors Idris Elba, Brie Larson, John Boyega, America Ferrera, Michael B. Jordan, Emma Watson, Tina Fey, Oscar Isaac, Tom Hiddleston, Ice Cube, and directors Ryan Coogler, Julie Dash, Adam McKay and Patty Jenkins. and Chadwick Boseman. It is the Academy’s largest and most diverse new group of members, more than double the 322 invited last year. 41% of the new invitees are people of color. There are 283 new international members from 59 countries. Academy president Cheryl Boone has made good on her promise for prompt action. Here’s hoping we see this kind of improvement every year.
Posted on June 23, 2016 at 5:40 pm
B+| Lowest Recommended Age: | High School |
| MPAA Rating: | Rated R for brutal battle scenes and disturbing graphic images |
| Profanity: | Some strong and racist language |
| Alcohol/ Drugs: | Alcohol |
| Violence/ Scariness: | Intense and graphic violence including battle scenes, hanging of adults and children, brutal abuse, rape, and lynching |
| Diversity Issues: | A theme of the movie |
| Date Released to Theaters: | June 24, 2016 |
The timing is not great. “Free State of Jones” is a Civil War drama based on the true story of a community of Confederate deserters and runaway enslaved people who banded together to fight for their own vision of freedom. It was filmed once before as “Tap Roots,” with Van Heflin, Susan Hayward, and Boris Karloff (as an Indian!), but this version, from “The Hunger Games'” Gary Ross, deals forthrightly with the racial issues, or at least tries to. There is an inescapable and maybe unconquerable problem in telling a story set in Civil War era Mississippi with a glorified white man as the hero, in a time when one of the most anticipated films of the year is the Sundance Grand Jury and Audience award winner “Birth of a Nation,” a film that grabbed and repurposed its title from the blatantly racist D.W. Griffith film of the silent era.
Ross brings the same passion for tackling tyranny to this story that he did to “Hunger Games.” It’s just that we’re no longer dealing with speculation and metaphor, and that means a political overlay reflecting both historical and contemporary controversies.
Matthew McConaughey plays Newt Knight, a Mississippi farmer with a wife and young son who is serving as a nurse in the Confederate army. Early on, we see him removing the uniform from a wounded enlisted man so he can tell the doctors he is an officer and get him treated. Increasingly frustrated with the endless carnage on behalf of wealthy elites who exploit the poor, it is too much for him at last when his nephew is killed in battle and he leaves, taking the body home to be buried. There he finds the Confederate forces are taking all of the food from the local farmers, leaving them to starve. On the run from the military seeking defectors, he hides out in a swamp, where he meets up with runaway slaves. There he decides that his allegiance is not to the Confederacy, which is sending poor boys to fight to preserve what today we might call the 1 percent. “I ain’t fighting for cotton,” another solider tells him. “I’m fighting for honor.” “That’s good,” Knight responds. I’d hate to be fighting for cotton.”
Writer/director Ross, working with the locations where these events occurred and a touching score from Nicholas Britell, evocatively conveys the hardscrabble lives, the literal and spiritual grit, the desperation and conviction it inspires. Knight hands guns to three little girls and, when the Confederate officer does not take them serious, Knight tells him that guns will shoot anybody. “It don’t seem to matter where the bullet comes from.” The depth of research is evident throughout, but it is never pedantic. The storyline is grounded in historical events like the Confederacy’s requisitioning of food and supplies, and post-war exploitation and terrorism, led by former Confederate officials, that prevented former enslaved persons from basic rights and murdered those who tried to assert them. There are brief glimpses into a conflict 85 years later, as the descendent of Knight’s relationship with a former slave named Rachel (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) is criminally prosecuted for marrying a white woman in violation of the state’s laws prohibiting mixed marriages. It is there to remind us that we can never dismiss the events of the past as behind us.
Parents should know that this film has very intense and graphic violence including Civil War battles and skirmishes, hanging, rape, and lynching, adults and children injured and killed, very disturbing images, some strong language with racist epithets, some sexual references
Family discussion: What did Knight find most unjust about the Confederacy? What did we learn from the 1948 courtroom scenes?
If you like this, try: “Glory” and “The Red Badge of Courage” and read about the story that inspired the film.
Posted on June 7, 2016 at 3:56 pm
Aisha Harris and Dan Kois got ideas from a range of filmmakers, critics, and historians to prepare Slate’s list of the “50 Greatest Films by Black Directors,” a response to the many “canonical” lists that overlook these films. In an interview, she talked about why it was important to research and publish this list, which they called “The Black Film Canon,” and what she learned. I asked why they limited the list to films by black directors. “The idea came from Dan Kois through the idea of #Oscarsowhite controversy and how big a deal that was earlier this year. And part of the running narrative about the reason why that there were hardly any black people nominated this year is because they often don’t get to tell their own stories. They haven’t made it to the point where they can direct a big budget film. And so we wanted to make sure that this was a list that focused specifically on black people being able to tell their own stories and the opportunities that they’ve had to do that. Obviously there are plenty of really great films not on the list that are about black characters; ‘Cabin in the Sky,’ ‘Stormy Weather,’ ‘The Wiz,’ but we were specifically interested in those who were able to get behind the camera and I think there is something really powerful to be said about black people being able to tell their own story. One of the movies is ‘Malcolm X.’ That was originally supposed to be directed by Norman Jewison who obviously directed some great films about race, including ‘In The Heat of the Night’ and ‘A Soldier’s Story,’ but we all know that movie would have been vastly different and maybe not as powerful as Spike Lee’s version of ‘Malcolm X.’ So I think there is something to be said for being able to tell your own story and that’s what we wanted to get across with this list.”
It was great to see titles on the list that some people might consider not serious or prestigious enough for “canon” status, reflecting the same broad range that has what was once dismissed as a genre film, “Vertigo,” on the top of the once-a-decade Sight and Sound ranking. “For us that was another goal. What we wanted with this list was to broaden the scope of what canon means. It doesn’t have to mean high art’ it doesn’t have to mean that every single piece of that film is perfect or that it has a big budget or it is a Hollywood studio film. We wanted to make sure that our list represented films that are culturally significant but maybe aren’t considered ‘great’ by the usual people who make these canons. A lot of people, including me, forget that ‘House Party’ premiered at Sundance in 1990 and that helped redefine what an indie film could look like. It was at the forefront. It was what indie films could look like in the 90s. We also wanted this also to be an accessible list. A lot of these movies are challenging and I am all for challenging films — we should all be challenged by films. But there is room on the list for films that don’t necessarily have to be so heavy. I think we should celebrate the movies that aren’t heavy as well as the ones that are.”
Some of the films reflect the internalized bigotry — and commercial pressures to reinforce stereotypes — of their era. “that is the sort of thing you always have to consider with older movies, especially when you’re talking about black films and black representation on films. I mean ‘The Blood of Jesus,’ the Spencer Williams film, if you are a modern viewer it’s not the easiest film to watch. The acting was theatrical and it has a very old-school mentality about the power of religion and this very antiquated notion of the sinner and redemption. But at the same time you can’t ignore the fact that it’s a very culturally significant film, it’s an historically significant film and it exists. Spencer Williams, if people know him at all, he’s known for being one half of Amos and Andy which obviously has been heavily criticized and does not hold up today by modern standards. So it is important to remember that he was also a filmmaker and a talented one at that at a time when there were barely any black filmmakers. I think is something that is worth looking at and he’s worth being acknowledged as a filmmaker and not just as this character who now is just shorthand for Uncle Tom.”
They also made a point of including black women directors like Kasi Lemmons (“Eve’s Bayou”) and Ava Duvernay (“Middle of Nowhere” and “Selma”). “As polarizing as Spike Lee can be, I think most people acknowledge that he is a force to be reckoned with whether you are talking just about black films or a film in general but when it comes to women it is just a whole different ballgame. A lot of the women on the list have only one or two feature films under their belt and they have been in the game for 20, 30 years. Leslie Harris made ‘Just Another Girl on the IRT,’ and I think that remains to this day her only feature film. And Kasi Lemmons has not made that many movies, Gina Prince-Bythewood did ‘Love and Basketball,’ and then she did ‘Beyond The Lights‘ 14 years later, so they aren’t getting the same opportunities. I mean it’s hard for black males it’s even harder for black women and Ava Duvernay is hopefully turning the tide on that and she’s obviously very vocal and very active about promoting other women and other women of color in filmmaking and I think it’s great that we have someone like her that’s hopefully leading the charge along with the sudden attention to Hollywood being so white and so male.”
Harris was not familiar with all of the films on the list and hopes it will bring them to a wider audience as well. “I just think it gets at the emotional core of slavery and also the politics that happens within slavery that I think a lot of films do not do.
Another movie that I was unfamiliar with was ‘Medicine for Melancholy.’ That’s the 2008 film by Barry Jenkins and it stars Wyatt Cenac and it’s this very beautiful black and white film. I think some people made the comparison to ‘Before Sunrise.’ It takes place in one day. Two people have a one night stand but there is also so much more going on, there are some questions about gentrification and about romance and I was really happy to see that movie and discover it. That’s one of the things I appreciated about the list and I am glad that we did was that we did not just rely on myself and Dan. We didn’t want this to be just a list. We wanted to get as many perspectives as possible and as many informed perspectives as possible and that opened up a whole other realm and I think that made the list all the better to have those suggestions thrown after us.”
Posted on April 28, 2016 at 5:58 pm
B+| Lowest Recommended Age: | Mature High Schooler |
| MPAA Rating: | Rated R for violence, language throughout, drug use and sexuality/nudity |
| Profanity: | Very strong language including n-word |
| Alcohol/ Drugs: | Drinking, drugs, and drug dealing |
| Violence/ Scariness: | Extended action violence, many guns, characters injured and killed |
| Diversity Issues: | A theme of the movie |
| Date Released to Theaters: | April 29, 2016 |
| Date Released to DVD: | August 1, 2016 |
| Amazon.com ASIN: | B01DYX9Y9M |
Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele, with a script co-written by Peele and directed by their series director Peter Atencio, have made one of the smartest and funniest comedies of the year, a film that works at every level from slapstick to sophisticated wit to social commentary and slam-bang action, with even a little romance.
Fans of the series will appreciate references like a trip to see a movie starring “Liam Neesons” but even those who have never heard of their Obama anger translator routine or their legendary East-West Bowl player names will immediately understand their characters and their situation.
Clarence (Key) is a happily married father who drives a minivan and listens to George Michael. His cousin Rell (Peele) is a pot-smoking slacker who is devastated following a break-up. But when he adopts an abandoned kitten his spirits lift, and he names it Keanu. When Keanu is stolen by the 17th Street Blips, a gang made up of gangsters who could not make it in the Bloods or the Crips, Clarence and Rel decide to rescue him. This leads to a strip club called HPV with a two-for-one lap dance special, run by drug dealer known as Cheddar (Wu-Tang Clan’s Method Man). Clarence and Rell, trying to look tough, introduce themselves as Shark Tank and Tectonic. Clarence wonders how tough someone named Cheddar could be, but Rell points out that “You only name yourself something adorable if you can back it up.” When they explain to Cheddar that they are in the market for a “gangster pet,” Cheddar tells them they can have the kitten he has dubbed New Jack (complete with do-rag and gold chain) if they lead his gang on the delivery of an ultra-potent new drug. A series of encounters, escalating in peril, violence, and hilarity. It would be wrong to spoil more, so I will leave it at this: there is a very funny surprise guest star and Clarence’s professional team-building skills come in handy.
Key and Peele, both biracial, have always found comedy/commentary gold in their ability to reflect on race and culture. By casting themselves as highly and somewhat self-consciously assimilated black men who assume the media-created image of violent black drug dealers, they have added some sharp meta-commentary to a classic set up: fish-out-of-water, normal characters drawn into abnormal circumstances. Rell’s own weed dealer, played by SNL alum Will Forte, is a white man who is also taking on a stereotyped black persona, including cornrows. Clarence, who tries to order a white wine spritzer in the strip club and who tells Rell he sounds like John Ritter, swings into what he thinks is gangster mode when Chedder’s hostile n-word-spouting henchmen approach him. The transformation is wildly funny, both the specificity of it, and the way it fits so seamlessly into our own media-created notion of that archtype and the porous aspects of his new persona as the “real” Clarence keeps peeking out. Clarence and Rell are as innocent and helpless as the adorable kitty in the midst of druglord shoot-outs. Key and Peele are pretty adorable, too, in a gangster pet sort of way.
Parents should know that this film includes extended peril and violence, many guns, characters injured and killed, drugs and drug dealing, sexual references and nudity, strip club, and very strong and crude language including the n-word.
Family discussion: Where did Rel and Clarence get their ideas of how to behave with the Blips? How did Clarence’s team building training come in handy?
If you like this, try: the Key and Peele television series, “Date Night,” and “Analyze This”
