Black Lives Matter

The Hate U Give: Beaten Down, Then Speaking Up

Jeremy BeckReviews
Amandla Stenberg in "The Hate U Give"

Overstuffed yet bracing, predictable yet provocative, The Hate U Give is above all defiantly, unapologetically loud. Yet it opens with a scene of sober, ominous quiet. As the camera glides through the fictional Compton-esque neighborhood of Garden Heights, it locks on a two-story house and creeps through an open window, where a man, Maverick, is talking with his wife and three children at the kitchen table. It could be any chat where a parent imparts advice about the larger world—about sex, politics, family values—but here, Maverick (Russell Hornsby) is calmly but forcefully telling his kids how to behave if they ever when they inevitably get pulled over by the police. Keep your hands flat on the dashboard, he says. Be respectful. Don’t make any sudden movements; don’t give them any reason to hurt you. The burden, he patiently explains to his kids, isn’t on the cops; it’s on them. His children, all under the age of 10, listen intently, as though their father is teaching them about the difference between life and death. Which, of course, he is.

In making The Hate U Give, the director George Tillman Jr. faces an unusual and somewhat perverse challenge. Tasked with adapting Angie Thomas’ bestselling novel to the screen, he must dramatize a fictional story—about the fallout of a white police officer killing an unarmed black youth—in an era where such events are horribly, commonly real. In a country already familiar with the tragic deaths of actual people—many of whom the film name-checks, including Eric Garner, Alton Sterling, and Philando Castile—do we really need an entertaining yarn about invented characters suffering the same fate? Read More

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BlacKkKlansman: For the Boys in Blue, Black Man Dons White Robe

Jeremy BeckReviews
John David Washington goes undercover in Spike Lee's "BlacKkKlansman"

During an interlude of rare tranquility in BlacKkKlansman, undercover detective Ron Stallworth (John David Washington) and his sorta-girlfriend, Patrice (Laura Harrier, from Spider-Man: Homecoming), stroll through a serene wooded area, highlighted by a bubbling stream and colorful foliage. They’re talking, as fledgling lovers tend to do, about their favorite films, and Ron asks Patrice whether she prefers Super Fly or Shaft. Patrice, the president of the Black Student Union at Colorado College, is adamant. “Shaft,” she answers decisively, explaining that she has no use for something like Super Fly, which perpetuates the stereotype of black men as pimps and thugs. Taken aback by the severity of her criticism, Ron urges Patrice to relax. After all, he says in protest, “it’s just a movie!”

That sort of dismissive, laissez-faire hand-waving—the fallacious notion that art should simply be absorbed rather than analyzed, contextualized, and debated—has never and will never apply to the motion pictures of Spike Lee. For more than three decades now, the director has made all manner of “joints”—war epics and crime thrillers, sweeping period biopics and intimate family dramas, good movies and bad ones—but all of them share a purpose that goes beyond entertainment (though they are often entertaining). Lee is one of America’s most proudly political filmmakers, using his work not just to provide audiences with a few hours of diverting pleasure but to educate, instigate, preach, and rattle. BlacKkKlansman, which tells the story of Ron’s infiltration of the Ku Klux Klan in 1972 Colorado, fits squarely within this lineage. It is by turns a suspenseful police procedural, a powerful piece of agitprop, and a ferocious indictment of a reeling nation that, in its maker’s view, continues to neglect and suppress its black citizenry. It is not just a movie. Read More

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Sorry to Bother You: Climbing the Corporate Ladder, Leave Your Blackness on the Ground Floor

Jeremy BeckReviews
Lakeith Stanfield and Tessa Thompson in "Sorry to Bother You"

A sizzling satire that’s overflowing with invention and ideas, Sorry to Bother You takes place in an America that is both entirely apart from our present reality and a disturbing reflection of it. Set in Oakland, it conceives of a land where prisons have become lifelong labor camps, where riot police attack striking workers with clubs, and where the biggest hit on TV is a moronic show called “I Got the Shit Kicked Out of Me!” Here I should clarify that this movie is a work of fiction, not a documentary.

Oh who am I kidding? Sorry to Bother You, the debut of writer-director Boots Riley, is such an extreme and provocative piece of work that nobody will confuse it with the intimately pitched, naturalistic dramas of Ken Loach or the Dardennes. But like those socially conscious filmmakers, Riley has something to say, and he’s saying it loud; excessiveness is his chosen cinematic language as well one of his foibles. Whether you hail Sorry to Bother You as a masterpiece or dismiss it as a mishmash—I’m inclined to think it’s a bit of both—you will likely agree that it’s a lot. Read More

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Black Panther: With Great Power Comes Great Villainy

Jeremy BeckReviews
Lupita Nyong'o, Chadwick Boseman, and Danai Gurira in "Black Panther"

Early in Black Panther, Ryan Coogler’s bold and thorny new film that is the eighteenth entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the titular hero asks his young sister, Shuri, why she’s bothering to upgrade an already elegant technological system. Shuri—played by an impish, scene-stealing Letitia Wright—responds with huffy wisdom: “Just because something works doesn’t mean it can’t be improved.” The MCU has its faults—low-stakes storytelling, visual sameness, an exponentially swelling character base—but as mega-franchises go, it’s pretty good, churning out suitably entertaining products that are typically funny, professionally made, and well-acted. What’s gratifying about Black Panther is the way it operates within the MCU’s preestablished confines (the groaning Stan Lee cameo, the post-credits scenes) while simultaneously seeking to push beyond them. In raw terms, it isn’t the MCU’s best movie—its hero is too bland, its story too busy—but it may be its most interesting. And in an era where carefully packaged formula rules the cinematic roost, an interesting superhero movie is something to savor.

It also helps dispel the myth that personal filmmaking and corporate oversight are somehow incompatible. With Black Panther, Coogler continues to tackle the themes of racial strife, familial loyalty, and youthful conflict that animated his previous features, the heartfelt docudrama Fruitvale Station and the boisterous boxing picture Creed. But he has also made—and I mean this sincerely rather than pejoratively—a comic-book movie, complete with bright colors, complex mythology, and CGI-inflected rumbles. His estimable achievement is to weave these elements into a cohesive vision. Black Panther is packed with excitement and ideas, but it never feels choppy or overstuffed. Read More

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Detroit: Black and White and Dead All Over

Jeremy BeckReviews
Will Poulter and Anthony Mackie in Kathryn Bigelow's "Detroit"

Detroit opens with a police raid on an African-American nightclub, an edgy incursion that concludes with dozens of black patrons being forcibly loaded into paddy wagons. The movie, which takes place in 1967, was released in theaters on July 28, 2017. That same day, the President of the United States said this:

So, yes: In an era where virtually every American movie feels unnervingly topical—from franchise films to alien adventures to romantic comedies—Detroit resonates even more than most. Directed by Kathryn Bigelow, it rakes up considerable muck, tackling two intertwined issues—endemic racism and police brutality—with unapologetic frankness. This relevance almost automatically makes Detroit worth seeing; it’s rare for a film to firmly exist in both past and present at once. But if you can set aside its political significance (not that you should, of course), what emerges is a strange, decidedly uneven movie. Helmed by a filmmaker renowned for her precision, Detroit is oddly undisciplined, chaotic, even flabby. Yet it is also, at least during its extended central passage, a gripping, nightmarish tale of sweaty panic and helpless inevitability. It doesn’t always seem to know where it’s going, but it sure shakes you up in the process of getting there. Read More

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