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 »
ANTEBELLUM
Of the many neat twists in ANTEBELLUM, the most disturbing of all is the one that concerns the state of race relations in the modern day, and how slavery still informs it. By contrasting the subtle, and not so subtle, micro-aggressions forced upon people of color in the present with the brutality of slavery as… Read More »
THE GLORIAS
Click here for the flashback interview with Julianne Moore for FREEHELD. Julie Taymor, a visionary director if there ever was one, has done more than merely work around the inherent artificiality of the cinematic biopic. Rather, she has used it to excellent advantage in THE GLORIAS, a consideration of the life, and political education, of… Read More »
BURDEN — Andrew Heckler and Robbie Brenner Interview
Click here to listen to the interview. When Andrew Heckler first heard the story of how an African-American clergyman, Rev. David E. Kennedy, shepherding a flock in a small southern town, put his principles to work in order to save the soul of a Klan member, Michael Burden, who had seen the light, he knew… Read More »
HARRIET
HARRIET achieves the proper, and richly deserved, tone of reverence for its subject, Harriet Tubman. That is, alas, its greatest failing. The astonishing life of one of the most courageous Americans who has ever lived is told in a series of set pieces, vignettes with all drama sapped from them as they take on the… Read More »
LUCE
LUCE is less a film than a political dialectic on race and class in these United States, and a brilliant, exquisitely performed one at that. Told with a deliberate, sometimes maddening ambiguity, it challenges the audience at every turn about where the truth lies, and the limits of familial loyalty. By the end, not every… Read More »
THE BEST OF ENEMIES
We know going in to THE BEST OF ENEMIES that there will be soul-searching and redemption. The challenge for director Robin Bissell in adapting this true-life story from the book by Osha Gray Davidson was to frame doing the right thing in terms that truly demonstrate to the audience the temper of the times that… Read More »
BLINDSPOTTING — Daveed Diggs & Rafael Casal
Click here to listen to the interview. Click for the full review of BLINDSPOTTING. When I spoke to BLINDSPOTTING’s co-stars/co-writers Daveed Diggs and Rafael Casal on July 12, 2018, I decided to start the conversation with one of the things that struck me most about their film, which was the enormous compassion it shows for… Read More »
HOSTILES
HOSTILES is a film that takes itself very seriously. It should. Taking as its themes both human nature’s capacity for violence and its overweening need for mercy, it is not something to be approached lightly, something that director Scott Cooper took to heart in his adaptation of the late Donald E. Stewart’s manuscript. Set in… Read More »