REVIEW: Battle at Big Rock [2019]

It’s one of them. If Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom had one purpose, it was for clone baby Maisie Lockwood (Isabella Sermon) to do what Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard) couldn’t: let the dinosaurs go free. While the idea of using Lockwood resources to create an ark and save as many species as possible to exist in their own island sanctuary away from hubristic humans was a ruse to illegally sell them all off to the highest bidder, the mercenaries under Eli Mills’ (Rafe Spall) employ ended up playing Noah anyway.…

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REVIEW: Passing [2021]

What have you told him? Irene’s (Tessa Thompson) hat is pulled down and her eyes lowered as she walks through a crowd of white customers inside a New York City toy store. Her words are brief. Her movements exacting. And when she sees a fallen man on the sidewalk, she second guesses her instinct to discover if he’s okay. Why? Because she’s not certain she’ll be okay if she does. Irene is a Black woman in 1920s white society doing everything she can to not be noticed. So, she hails…

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REVIEW: High Flying Bird [2019]

I love the Lord and all his Black people. A film like Steven Soderbergh‘s High Flying Bird is exactly what the Netflix model makes possible. You could even say the whole thing is a metaphor for the streaming service’s desire for a seat at the cinematic table. They’re a disruptor proving that what they offer is more valuable to the industry than the industry is to them. The theaters need content to stay in business, but the content makers no longer need theaters to screen to the public. The dynamic…

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REVIEW: A Wrinkle in Time [2018]

Love is the frequency. While waiting outside the bathrooms after A Wrinkle in Time finished, I saw a white couple with their two young, fair-haired daughters walking out of the theater. Mom and Dad were explaining to one how movies are interpretations. They were reminding her that she had an idea of what the characters looked like while reading and now Ava DuVernay showed hers onscreen. The girl looked up and said, “Yeah. Most of them were blonde in the book.” They went out of earshot soon after, just as…

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REVIEW: 42 [2013]

“He discombobulated the man” Much like the origin of forty-two as Douglas Adams’ “Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything” being nothing more than a joke—an ordinary, smallish number he chose—the fact Brooklyn Dodgers first-baseman Jackie Robinson wore it on his back simply derives from it being stitched on the jersey he was given. Baseball is a numbers driven game with statistics at the forefront of how players are drafted and utilized on the field and writer/director Brian Helgeland’s 42 follows suit with its timelines, batting…

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