The second of his 12 plays dramatizing the Black experience in America during the twentieth century, August Wilson’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is a haunting and powerful experience that focuses on Gertrude “Ma Rainey” (Viola Davis, “Widows”), known as “The Mother of the Blues,” one of the first popular Black blues singers to gain acceptance…
The ghost story is common in the cinematic output of many countries. From the Mexican “The Devil’s Backbone” to the Spanish “The Orphanage” to the Japanese “Dark Water” and the British/Iranian “Under The Shadow,” as well as the renowned classics “The Haunting” and “The Innocents,” the ghost story has proven itself versatile and adaptable to…
The Democratic National Convention met in Chicago in August 1968 to choose their presidential candidate in a tumultuous year that saw the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, the passage of the Civil Rights Act, Prague Spring, and growing protests in cities around the world against the escalation of the Vietnam War. Although…
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…
Beggars can’t be choosers during the global lock-down. Cinemas are closed, blockbuster movies and their smaller brethren delayed, and Netflix’s back catalogue has been squeezed drier than a tube of antibacterial hand gel. So when the streaming platform serves up a new release, written and produced by the all-conquering Russo brothers no less, audiences were…
It is a reunion of sorts for those connected to the witless cop caper Spenser Confidential. First, the film’s star, Mark Wahlberg, returns home to his beloved Boston as the famed native son struts his reckless stuff around Beantown. Second, the film’s director, Peter Berg, reunites with Wahlberg, his “Mile 22,” “Patriots Games,” “Deepwater Horizon,”…
“Yet if hope has flown away, in a night, or in a day, in a vision, or in none, is it therefore the less gone?” — Edgar Allen Poe Winner of the Critics’ Week Grand Prize at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, I Lost My Body is an animated film about the attempt to recover…
