Releasing on the heels of one of the country’s most assertive civil rights movements comes Da 5 Bloods, a Spike Lee (“BlacKkKlansman”) joint about one of the most overlooked groups in civil rights history: Black veterans of the Vietnam war. The film seemingly couldn’t have been released at a more relevant time as viewers can…
The San Francisco I knew as a young man was a place with a sense of community and culture that welcomed the adventurous, the imaginative, the creative, and the marginalized. Though, like every other major U.S. city, it was not always a place of harmony, and some neighborhoods had its dangers for outsiders, yet it…
“The catastrophic death of a star brings new life to the universe. In order for us to live, a star must die. We are all stardust.” These are the opening lines in Carol Morley’s film Out of Blue, drawing me in like one those documentaries you might see at a science museum or observatory. Images…
Altogether, Hostiles is both sprawling and narrow, profoundly tense and equally mellow. That might sound like a film of contradictions — a message too lost in the majestic western landscapes. That’s not quite the case, though. Scott Cooper’s western carries the same slow-burn sensibilities as his 2013 down-home thriller, “Out of the Furnace,” which also,…
