Click here to listen to the interview with Danny Wu. In AMERICAN: AN ODYSSEY TO 1947, Danny Wu takes an unexpected turn, jarring at first, but ultimately illuminating. After spending time providing a context for Welles’ career that presents a radically different approach to the usual tale of a wunderkind who, in his own words,… Read More »
NANNY — Nikyatu Jusu and Anna Diop Interview
Click here to listen to the interview. Led by a stunning performance by Anna Diop in the title role of Aisha, an undocumented immigrant working to bring her young son over from Senegal, NANNY is a powerful yet subtle film that uses horror as a way of addressing so much more, in this case, the… Read More »
LOUDMOUTH — Josh Alexander Interview
Click here to listen to the interview. The first thing to know about Josh Alexander’s documentary on the Rev. Al Sharpton is that it was the Rev himself who picked the title. That came up early on in my conversation with Alexander on December 1, 2022. One thing I appreciated in Alexander’s insightful and incisive… Read More »
GOD’S COUNTRY — Julian Higgins Interview
Click here to listen to the interview. One of the most unsettling moments in Julian Higgins’ GOD’S COUNTRY is a sequence in which the conflict that escalates between college professor Sandra Guidry and some local hunters comes to a head. They had taken offence when refused the right to park on her land, and after… Read More »
I’M CHARLIE WALKER — Patrick Gilles Interview
Click here to listen to the interview. I’ve lived in San Francisco for many, many years, and yet I’d never heard the story of Charlie Walker, an African-American man with a dream and a real gift for playing the system against itself. I was delighted to learn about that part of my city’s history… Read More »
EMERGENCY
EMERGENCY starts with Sean (RJ Cyler) and Kunle (Donald Elise Watkins) attending a class called Blasphemy and Taboos, taught by a perky British woman who, after reminding her students that their syllabus contained a trigger warning about this class, confronts them with the n-word. Not just projecting it onto the classroom screen in huge letters,… Read More »
CANDYMAN
CANDYMAN wants to do more than creep you out with mere gore. To that end, this sequel to the original does more than ignore the three subsequent films in that previous franchise, though it does, like those other films, drench the screen in blood from time to time. Here, though, the true horror that it… Read More »
RISE AGAIN: TULSA AND THE RED SUMMER
Anticipating the centennial of the Tulsa race riots and massacre in 1921, Dawn Porter wanted to do more that remember that criminally ignored chapter in American history. The resulting documentary, RISE AGAIN: TULSA AND THE RED SUMMER, recounts a part of our history that had, similarly, been ignored by all but the survivors, and their… Read More »
JUDAS AND THE BLACK MESSIAH
The religious overtones of JUDAS AND THE BLACK MESSIAH come towards the end of this searing examination of racial politics during the 1960s. And when they arrive, in a sequence that is most assuredly a shout-out to the Last Supper, director/co-writer Shaka King has earned the right, and then some, to invoke the metaphor. The… Read More »
ONE NIGHT IN MIAMI…
The story of ONE NIGHT IN MIAMI was inspired by actual events, which leaves plenty of room for speculation about what Malcolm X, Cassius Clay (shortly to become Muhammad Ali), James Brown, and Sam Cooke talked about in that motel room on February 25, 1964. If it was less the dialectic presented here, what each… Read More »
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