‘Really Love’ Is a Smoldering Dream

There has been a resurgence of films with majority Black casts across all genres coming from mainstream studios, and independent films. Romance films starring Black people have returned to the screen after a near-total erasure since the ’90s. Recent films like The Photograph, Moonlight, and If Beale Street Could Talk have reminded audiences about Black tenderness and intimacy, even when these moments are brief and fleeting in the narrative. However, with Angel Kristi Williams’ Really Love, a film centered squarely on a romance, we are reminded of the gentleness of Black love and that Black women, in particular, deserve big grand gestures and declarations. 

Set in gentrifying Washington D.C., Really Love follows Isaiah (Kofi Siriboe), a struggling painter vying for representation and a solo art show. Watching his peers and his mentor (Michael Ealy) continue to soar is beginning to weigh on Isaiah’s self-esteem. His astounding talent is clear — even if his own family doesn’t entirely support his career choices.

Stevie (Yootha Wong-Loi-Sing) is also at a crossroads in her life. Stepping into her final year at Georgetown Law School, she’s torn between the activism work that tugs at her heart and the bigwig law firms that are vying for her attention. If it were up to her mother, she’d be commanding a corner office in some big city sky-rise, but Stevie isn’t so sure. 

Continue reading at Showbiz Cheatsheet.

A Woman Discovers Exactly What She’s Capable of in the Sharp Crime Drama ‘I’m Your Woman’

In crime dramas, the focus is usually on the criminal. The narrative follows their motives and mishaps. Very little attention is paid to the people who absorb the most significant repercussions of this nefarious behavior. Namely, the women often left in the wake of bad men are given very little screen time. We saw this displayed in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather saga when Michael Corleone’s wife Kay wanted to escape her volatile marriage. Then it was depicted more recently in Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman as Frank Sheeran’s daughter slowly learns his true nature. However, in Julia Hart’s I’m Your Woman, the filmmaker puts women back front and center, reminding them of their power. 

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'High On Heels' Is An Informative Snap-Shot Of A Polarizing Shoe

There is something regal about a high heeled shoe. Without ever having to say a word, a woman wearing a stunning shoe shows up in the world in a certain way, commanding power and certain spaces that women are still trying to access today. In his documentary short, High On Heels, filmmaker Adelin Gasana explores the history of heels, which stretches back well into the 16th century. Their origins began in Persia on the feet of men who rode horseback. High On Heels also explores how modern-day women feel about the gorgeous and often painful footwear as we continue to navigate various spaces while shattering sexist practices and behaviors. 

Most women know that heels aren't practical. As little girls, many of us admire the sleek stilettos and the women around us who effortlessly glide around in them. However, when the time comes for us to step into our own pair of shoes, pinched toes, painful heels, blisters, and ankle twists often follow. Still, despite the ramifications, many of us are continually drawn to this style of shoes. 

Using historian Lisa Small's overview of the history of heels, Gasana also pulls in anecdotes from women of all walks of life, including dancers, models, anchors, actors, and a variety of others. Because of the film's rapid pace, there was little time to dive into the fashion industry or examine how heels have played a role in women's "professional" dress. Also, though the interviewees' title cards and professions eventually appear on-screen, it would have been more helpful for them to appear as soon as the interview began to give the film more authority and structure.

Nevertheless, Gasana paints an informative and well-rounded portrait of a polarizing shoe. He gathers quotes from doctors who have seen the damage that heels have on the feet, women who would much rather be wearing flats, and those who wouldn't be caught dead in anything less than a three-inch heel. 

High On Heels is now streaming on Amazon Prime. 

Grand Army pushes past teen tropes into compelling storytelling

Set in early 2020 in Brooklyn, New York, Grand Army begins with a bang of Cardi B. lyrics, a city-wide emergency, and a flurry of notifications lighting up Grand Army High School students’ cellphones. Just a few minutes into the show’s premiere, the student body finds itself under lockdown following a suicide bombing attack in the community. In a frenzy of fear and crazed excitement, the students merge in stairwells and on classroom floors, waiting for the chaos to calm. This might seem far-reaching for a teen drama, but considering the times we’re in, it’s sadly typical.

In the ’90s, the short-lived teen drama My So-Called Life got to the heart and truth of the high school experience. More recently, HBO’s Euphoria cast a blazing light on Gen Z, a generation of bright-eyed humans witnessing more and discovering things quicker than older generations could have ever imagined. Based on her Slut: The Play, Katie Cappiello’s Grand Army joins the few projects that give us an authentic view of teenhood and the emotional saga of high school without exploiting its young people or hiding behind a glaze of Hollywood tropes.

Continue reading at The A.V. Club.

John Boyega Is On Fire in ‘Red, White and Blue’

Though set in the 1980s like Lovers Rock, another movie in Steve McQueen’s Small Axe series, the tone of Red, White and Blue feels much more familiar to Mangrove, a film set in the ’60s. In its short runtime, the gripping drama chronicles the early career of real-life former superintendent Leroy Logan (John Boyega). A young forensic scientist growing increasingly weary of his days locked away in a lab, Leroy decides to fulfill a childhood dream of being a police officer.

Though he’s well-aware of racism and injustices, having even experienced some first hand, Leroy is determined to shift the Black community’s perception of the police while calling out racist treatment and politics within the force. If that sounds like a naive endeavor for a 20-something Black Londoner in the 1980s, it’s because it is. 

Instead of breaking through and shattering the mold, Leroy finds himself pigeonholed and ostracized from his fellow police officers who remind him at every turn that he’s not really one of them. More painful than the enraging treatment he faces at work is what Leroy deals with at home. 

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'Give or Take' Is a Charming Look at Truth and Grief

The truth is a combination of what you remember and reality. It's a lesson hard learned for many of us. In director Paul Riccio's charming dramedy, Give or Take, he explores the relationship between a grieving son and his father's boyfriend. Riccio unpacks all the ways the one person could be so very different to various people and at distinct moments within their lifetime. 

Martin (co-writer) Jamie Effros) is exhausted. A dissolution New Yorker, he's reluctantly returned to his childhood home in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, following the death of his father, Ken. Distant from Ken for most of his life, Martin's animosity in the wake of his father's passing is apparent. From the moment the camera zooms in on his face, the audience knows he would rather be anywhere else. But Give or Take is much more than a film that examines grief. 

Instead of just a typical harrowing tale of a man getting his loved one's affairs in order, Martin is confronted with one aspect of his father's life that he's spent years ignoring. It's the reason why he's avoided Cape Cod for so many years and seems to have barely any interest in memorizing his dad. 

Ted (Norbert Leo Butz), Martin's father's long-term boyfriend, is barely holding it together. In the wake of his lover's death, he's desperate for something or someone to grab on to. Ted learns quickly that he won't be seeking support in his late partner's son. After all, Martin arrives, shouldering his anger, resentment, and distance. Instead of coming together, the two men resign themselves to co-exist n a bubble of icy civility. They tiptoe around one another, arguing over the funeral programming, and if the house --that is now going to Martin -- should be put up for sale. 

Grief, longing, and the desire to speak your truth are all challenging things to tackle on-screen. However, Riccio carefully paints a tapestry of realism — equal parts, pain, and humor in Give or Take. He doesn't allow Ted and Martin to sit in their distress and angst. Instead, he fleshes out their story with an assortment of illustrious outsiders. There's Cape Cod's realtor queen, Patty King (Cheri Oteri), an uproariously funny woman determined to get the house on the market. There's also Emma (Joanne Tucker), an old high school friend of Martin's, Terrence (Louis Cancelmi), an eccentric pool service guy, Lauren (Annapurna Sirimm), Martin's absent girlfriend who's "not a fan of funerals," and Colin (Jaden Waldman), the precocious little boy from next door who appears to have mastered the art of zen. 

Well-acted and with elements of silliness, despite the sometimes heavy subject matter, Riccio's film though occasionally predictable, is wholly atypical. He makes it clear that Martin's anger toward his father has nothing to do with his sexuality. Instead, it has to do with the facade Ken was trying to uphold that kept his son at arm's length and allowed them to truly bond. Though Martin returns home to say goodbye, hearing stories about his father and being confronted with Ted's overwhelming pain forces him to see his father's humanity— and himself in a new light. 

In the end, Give and Take is a film about the varying aspects of who we are as people. As Martin and Ted attempt to manage their pain and grief separately; eventually, it bubbles to the surface, exploding in a spectacular and slightly surprising way. 

'Mangrove' Will Leave You Enraged, but That's the Point

Like Lover’s Rock, Mangrove, the first film chronologically in Steve McQueen‘s Small Axe series, begins with a song. Based on a true story, the film opens in 1968. We meet Frank Crichlow (Shaun Parkes), a self-assured Black man who smokes and plays card games in a vibrant room with other men. The liveliness and color he’s initially surrounded with fade into a muted neutral color as he descends up into London’s streets and walks forward into the community of Notting Hill.

Frank is on a mission. Having closed his previous establishment that appeared to be a catch-all of questionable activity, including numbers running and a meeting place for alleged criminals, he’s ready to open his Mangrove restaurant. A Trinidadian-born Londoner, Frank is proud to serve dishes and deliver ambiance so near and dear to him. 

Continue reading at Showbiz Cheatsheet.

Janelle Monáe: ‘Antebellum’ Is a ‘Kick in the Stomach’ to White Supremacy

Making Gerard Bush and Christopher Renz’s Antebellum was always going to be a challenge. Films set in the plantation South press against open wounds that are still present in the 21st century. The film follows Veronica Henley (Janelle Monáe), a race scholar who finds herself trapped in a horrific dream where she lives out her days as an enslaved woman named Eden living in the Civil War period.

Haunting and brutal scenes from the period are juxtaposed against the picturesque Southern landscapes in direct contrast to the late 19th century’s reality. Antebellum is a mind-bending narrative that presents the country’s racial horrors as they truly are and what Black women, in particular, have had to endure for survival.

Monáe’s spellbinding performance as a woman caught between two worlds has never been more timely at a moment when everything for Black people is at stake. It’s a searing reminder that our stories must be told in all of their vast nuances, no matter how painful they might be.

Continue reading at Zora.

Steve McQueen's 'Lovers Rock' Is a Sumptuous Display of Black Joy

Black joy undoubtedly exists. The diaspora would never have survived all that has been thrust upon it without these moments of levity. However, throughout the history of cinema, studios and filmmakers have made very little room for Black love, romance, lust, and sensuality. It is only in recent years following the twenty-year drought that existed between films like Love & Basketball, Love Jones, and even The Best Man that Black love has reemerged in cinema. Steve McQueen’s Lovers Rock has solidified itself in this new emergence of Black passion, seen in recent films like Queen & Slim and The Photograph.

Set in London in 1980, Lovers Rock follows a group of young people as they descend on a house party to celebrate Cynthia’s (Ellis George) 17th birthday. Having enlisted her West Indian family’s help, we watch Cynthia’s mother and aunties working in the kitchen, preparing pots of curry goat and ackee and saltfish to sell. They take time to sway their rounded hips and sing-along to the radio between the chopping and stirring. 

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'Concrete Cowboy' is Warm, but not Quite Riveting

Cowboys are deeply embedded in American popular culture. After all, the Western genre dominated Hollywood box offices for years. Films like Once Upon A Time in the West and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly have become the standard for idyllic versions of the heroic cattle-header. Though his legacy stretches from the streets of South Central LA to North Philadelphia, the Black cowboy has been erased from the history books. However, with his coming-age-story, Concrete Cowboy, first-time feature filmmaker Ricky Staub is unveiling an underworld often overlooked while highlighting a young teen’s fragile road to manhood. 

Based on Greg Neri’s novel, Ghetto Cowboy — Concrete Cowboy follows Cole (a gripping Caleb McLaughlin), a teen boy living in Detroit with his single mother. Terrified for her son’s life and out of options following yet another school expulsion, Cole’s mother packs his clothing in garbage bags and drives the near 600 miles from Detroit to Philly. 

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'MLK/FBI' Strips Back the Legend of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. To Reveal a Man With Strengths and Flaws

Sam Pollard’s MLK/FBI opens in 1963 at the March on Washington. It was just five years before Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s death and eight years after he was thrust onto the global stage as America’s moral leader. It was an arduous role for anyone to carry, certainly for a Black man who rose and fell amid some of the most tumultuous decades in our nation’s history. Yet, whether he was ready to shoulder this burden or not, Dr. King did so despite drastic attempts to undermine him at every turn. 

Using historian David Garrow’s book, The FBI and Martin Luther King, Jr., as a framework and some of the FBI’s declassified files on King, Pollard unveils the FBI’s crusade against Dr. King the did not end until the day he died. Through stunning archival footage and modern-day audio interviews from people like Civil Rights leaders Clarence B. Jones and Andrew Young and historians like Garrow and Beverly Gage, MLK/FBI is as much about Dr. King is it is about J. Edgar Hoover and W.C. Sullivans’s obsession with him. The FBI was intent on dehumanizing King with a five-year-long campaign that involved wiretappings, secret recordings, and spying to ruin his public persona. It is a saga of a government agency gone rogue. 

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'Akilla's Escape' Is a Masterclass in the Duality of Manhood

The past has its way of catching up with us. It’s something Akilla Brown (Saul Williams) has always known, and in many ways, he’s accepted his fate. In Charles Officer’s fast-paced neo-noir, Akilla’s Escape, the director turns his lens on two versions of the same man. In the present, Akilla flies through Toronto’s underworld as a notorious supplier, increasingly wary of his high-risk lifestyle. In the past, Akilla is a 15-year old living in Brooklyn in the ’90s, terrorized by his menacing gangster father, Clinton (Ronnie Rowe), and helpless to help his broken mother, Thetis (Olunike Adeliyi), find a way out. 

‘Akilla’s Escape’ forces the past to collide with the present

At 40, the exhausted drug supplier can sense that his time is running out; he just doesn’t quite know when. Though he’s making plans to shutter his Toronto-based marijuana farm to go legit and open a dispensary, his boss and business partners are not on board. Still, troubled by memories of his childhood and determined to move in a different direction than he’s done for the past 25 years, Akilla’s mind made up. Everything changes for him one night when his past comes barreling into him. 

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Regina King's 'One Night in Miami' is Immaculate

Muhammad Ali, Jim Brown, Sam Cooke, and Malcolm X were towering men with different ideologies, but they were also good friends. In her feature film debut, One Night in Miami, Regina King reaches back some fifty-plus years in the past to extend her lens and capture these men at various points and stages in their lives. In a well-imagined, thoughtful, and beautifully shot movie, she pulls them inward toward one another on an ordinary evening just before everything changed. 

One Night in Miami opens in 1963. Ali — known then as Cassius Clay, is in the boxing ring in London raging against Henry Cooper. Halfway across the world, Cooke (Leslie Odom Jr.) can feel his star power starting to wane after a less than stellar performance at New York City’s Copacabana. Down South, Brown (Aldis Hodge) has returned home to St. Simons Island, Georgia, to seek advice from whom he perceives to be an old friend. In Queens, X is trying to determine how to distance himself from the Nation of Islam and his mentor, Elijah Muhammad. 

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The Director in the Middle of the #CancelNetflix Backlash Speaks Out

Aside from rare examples like Crooklyn, Eve’s Bayou, and Beasts of a Southern Wild, Hollywood has dismissed the young Black female experience. But with her feature film debut, Cuties, French Senegalese filmmaker Maïmouna Doucouré is putting the spotlight on Black girls while helping them reclaim their girlhood.

Doucouré won a distinguished directing award for Cuties when the film debuted at Sundance in January, but months later, she found herself in the middle of a media firestorm after Netflix released a shocking poster for its English-speaking audience. The poster showed a sexualized image of young girls that stood apart from the film’s religious versus secular context and nuance. Though Netflix has apologized for its failure, Doucouré has been the recipient of numerous death threats and personal attacks.

In recent days, the hashtag #CancelNetflix has trended in response. Some viewers find the film to sexualize young girls. Others point out that the film is the unfortunate victim of a poor marketing campaign and that critics took the poster out of context.

Set in present-day Paris, Cuties follows 11-year-old Amy (Fathia Youssouf), a recent transplant from Senegal who becomes increasingly enamored with her classmate Angelica (Médina El Aidi-Azouni), the queen bee of a group of schoolgirls who call themselves the Cuties. With her mother preoccupied by the devastating news that her husband has taken a second wife, Amy desperately throws herself into becoming a Cutie, even taking part in a dance competition with Angelica and her friends. Like most girls new to town, she just wants to belong.

Amid the film’s Netflix debut and the swirling social media scandal, Doucouré spoke with ZORA about Cuties, standing in her truth, and why this story is so important for her.

Continue reading at ZORA.