Blacklight movie review: turn it off
Feels less like a movie than it does a hostage video. Poor Liam Neeson isn’t trying to hide how exhausted and trapped he is in his cinematic hamster wheel of cheap, violent revenge thrillers. It’s sad.
Barack Obama
Candyman movie review: say his name… and understand its power
Strikingly original horror with a purpose: to delve into the mythologizing of the past, to explore the boundary between cultural appropriation and artistic inspiration, to heed the lessons of history.
Rise Again: Tulsa and the Red Summer and A Crime on the Bayou documentaries review: Black history matters
Two new documentaries — one a shrewdly incisive work of journalism, the other a delicately elegant tale of injustice and friendship — tell all-but-forgotten histories of Black America. Of America.
how black lives have not mattered
Movies for understanding racism and white supremacy in America. [A teaser of an essay for Patreon patrons and Substack subscribers only.]
Synchronic movie review: Benson and Moorhead would have voted for Obama twice if they could have…
Just because a tale is science fiction doesn’t mean that plausibility and cohesion are not required. Yet we can see the narrative strings pulling along the puppet-characters, and in an ugly direction.
curated: “Donald Trump‘s Presidency Was Supposed to Be Great for Art. It Wasn‘t”
I personally have found it very difficult to focus on anything creative in the past four years (and it only got worse in 2020). And I wasn’t alone…
All In: The Fight for Democracy documentary review: the pushback against voter suppression
Enlightening, enraging history of all the ways in which the United States has tried to bar citizens from voting, plus a primer on what Americans can do right now to ensure that our voices are heard.
Becoming documentary review: hope floats
Verges on an ad for Michelle Obama’s memoir, but a sincerely warm one. We glimpse a woman authentically funny, self-aware, down-to-earth. Like spending time with a friend you didn’t realize you had.
Planet of the Humans documentary review: we’ve done it, and we’ve been doing it for centuries
From the warnings of the 1950s to the 21st-century corporate takeover of green energy, a grim look at humanity’s fate as the planet heats up. Is there any hope? This feels like only half the story.
XY Chelsea documentary review: the truth will out
Pensively melancholy, this jagged, humane portrait of US Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning is a massive challenge to the notion of soldiering as a good way for a lost young person to find oneself.
