Thoughts on John Q (2002) directed by Nick Cassavetes starring Denzel Washington

 

Ever since I first heard the news of ol' Luigi Mangione, this film has stayed in my mind and so I decided to watch it again. It is amazing how even in a world after Obamacare that the United States lags so behind in the basics of healthcare. That Cuba, under one of the most destructive economic embargos this side of Gaza, still has a better healthcare apparatus than the United States is incredibly sad and depressing. I suppose that John Q and Luigi may have different political leanings, but they are celebrated folk heroes all the same. Their respective martyrdoms as much products of civil and political negligence and corruption as anything else. 

This movie may be one of the few I have seen where James Woods isn't the final boss villain. As corrupt as his character is as the fancy doctor, The hospital represented by the character Rebecca Payne and the health insurance company are the true villains of this film. The continuing inequality of healthcare in the USA is the true villain of this film. 

Ray Liotta as a cop will never not be jarring as he will always be Henry Hill to me😄

Miss Juneteenth (2020) directed by Channing Godfrey Peoples

 "Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,

Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;

Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,

Let us march on 'til victory is won."

Well today is as appropriate as ever to finally watch this movie. I had been aware of it since it made its way to home release, but did not have the interest to watch it then as a lot was going on. This is ironic as a lot of folks did watch it for the very same reason. Channing Godfrey Peoples film was made on location in Fort Worth in August-September 2019 and had it's theatrical-run in January of 2020 with a planned home-release for Juneteenth of that year. And then events in the world took a turn that is stranger than fiction and suddenly for a brief moment folks were clamoring for a film about Juneteenth. This is an indie film about a relatively-young single-mom that wants to get her daughter out of the poverty of Forth Worth, Texas that she finds herself in and figures the annual Miss Juneteenth pageant and its promise of a full-ride scholarship to an HBCU is the best chance. The film's title is a clever misdirection as it is referring to a particular Miss Juneteenth—just not the one we are thinking of coming into the film. 

I really don't watch enough of these sort-of "quiet drama" films. It was refreshing to watch a film that, while dramatic (and almost melodramatic in the first third) ends with hope and victory. A victory that was shown to be very necessary over the course of the film. I loved all the supporting characters in this film who could've been my very neighbors in certain instances, but Nicole Beharie was the tour de force actress of this movie. While she never truly spirals into a broken-blob, you are fully convinced as her character's daughter is at how much Turquoise Jones wants Kai Jones to win the Miss Juneteenth pageant and we're all holding are breath until the very end as the protagonist as to come-up against so many challenges and sacrifices for this one little dream. When the ending play out, the hope one feels that things might start to turn around is palpable.

I guess this year saw me really needing to make sure I celebrate and commemorate this holiday in my own way, and not rely on others to do it for me. I am certainly happy I finally got a chance to watch this movie and I wish everyone reading this a Happy Juneteenth!

My Review of El Norte (1983) directed by Gregory Nava

 In the current times of genocide and migrant hysteria, I thought it was time to re-visit a film that deals with the United States government's role in both. El Norte is an epic film that is told about the trials and tribulations of two Kʼicheʼ Mayan siblings named Rosa and Enrique Xuncax caught up in the U. S.- backed genocide of the Mayan population in Guatemala that occurred during the Guatemalan Civil War and make their way through Mexico to the United States. This is a tough film to watch, but a necessary one to show truth and perseverance of humanity in dark and hopeless times. This is one of the first films to make extensive use of magical realism and one of the first films to use Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings in its soundtrack.

I think this is the first narrative feature film to document a genocide while it was ongoing (and being funded by the United States). The first act of this three-act film looks at this Kʼicheʼ Mayan village called San Pedro as it is being destroyed during the Guatemalan Genocide. The daily life of the people living there and the their exploitation by wealthy planters is sown before we quickly see horrors of the genocide with magical realism playing a big role in telling the story of what is going on. It is ironic that some of the most beautiful imagery of the film is shown in this part. Because the actual place where the first act of the film takes place was undergoing the actual genocide, much of this film was shot in Southern California with some shots in Mexico until hostile locals and government agents of Mexico's then-PRI dictatorship forced the production out of Mexico. One benefit of moving production to Southern California was being able to use actual Mayan refugees as supporting cast and extras. The characters of Don Ramon and the mysterious twins represent Mayan deities to Enrique and Rosa, respectively in very interesting ways.

The second act details Rosa and Enrique's journey through Mexico to the United States and it is based on the story from Mayan folklore of the "hero twins" Hunahpú & Xbalanqué from the Mayan text Popol Vuh. They stay in an immigrant shanty town in the boarder city of Tijuana, Mexico which is directly south of San Diego, California. Though the siblings encounter various forms of anti-Indigenous prejudice in Mexico, it is not on the level of literal genocidal hate that they encountered in their own country (but this particular form of mestizo anti-Indigenous racism will remain a constant in this film and his something rarely highlighted in films about Latin America that are made for gringos). Luckily, there are also mestizos who help them—no matter how cynical they are about it. We see the first of that here when we meet a Mexican truck driver who takes them halfway through the country and we will see that again when we meet Don Ramon's friend who helps them get across the boarder. With all the horrors we witnessed in act one, it is here in act 2 that the most intense and dramatic scene in the movie takes place and we have the tunnel crawl from hell (I won't spoil it anymore than that, but it would have grave consequences for the remainder of the movie). One other thing two note is that many of the "coyotes" (the name for fixers and smugglers that help people across the boarder) and refugees we see in this part of the film are real and it adds a neorealism to this magical-realist film. If the film had ended here it would be the beautiful ending of many a Hollywood film of human perseverance, but Nava wants to make a film that shocks his audience into action not comfort them. 

In act 3 we are in Los Angeles, California. We now see Rosa and Enrique set-up in a motel for undocumented immigrants ran by a Mexican called Monte Bravo played by the late-Trinidad Silva (the second time he has played a critical supporting role in a movie about migrants). As the Xuncax siblings settle into life in Los Angeles, they take English classes and hustle from the ground-up. Rosa starts in a sweat shop and makes a friend who gets her a job in as a domestic after Immigration agents raid the sweat shop. Enrique works as a busboy until an envious Chicano co-worker calls immigration and he nearly gets caught. Meanwhile, Monte gets Enrique a job offer for good money in Chicago and Rosa's journey to across the boarder catches-up with her...

"To the rich, the peasant is just a pair of strong arms." That is said by Rosa & Enrique's father at the beginning of the film, and it is book ended at the end of the movie. The tragic tale of Rosa and Enrique is the modern Grapes of Wrath. It is a much more pessimistic film than that earlier film of migrant workers. In El Norte, the chances for good things to happen are available if people try to make the choice. It is tragic that while people do make good choices in regard to the Xuncax siblings, it's not enough. But I suppose the best the audience can do is think back to the end of act 2 when our protagonists emerge from the abandon tunnel and look out at the San Diego skyline with Mahler's 4th symphony playing in the background and take that one clear win in a movie about losses. Folks need that moment of victory to give them a reason to keep going. We certainly all need that now.

My short Review of ¡Alambrista! (1977) directed by Robert M. Young

[I wrote this on December 8, 2020]

 ¡Alambrista! was one of the first feature films to look at the issue of Mexicans crossing the border for work. This was the era before NAFTA, border walls and cages, but after the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. Even so, migrant workers trying to make money to send home or find a better life made this dangerous journey any way and Robert M. Young made this movie to document the life of one such person. Interestingly enough, and what some folks don't take into consideration, is that the main character is a migrant in the truest since of the word: he is on the run and on the hunt for any work he can get, but ultimately he ends up going back to Mexico voluntarily. The story of his time between crossing and re-crossing the border is the story here.

My Review of The Lion King (1994) directed by Rob Minkoff & Roger Allers

When I was 4 years old, the earliest film I remember seeing in the movie a movie theater was The Lion King, It was the Marlow Heights Community Theater and I went to the upstairs theater with my mom and we sat in the theater. I will always remember the stampede scene and how it felt to 4 year old me when the sound made the whole theater shake and I felt it and the impact of that never left me. It was the moment when the movies became real to me.

This movie came during the legendary Disney Renaissance and was pitched as Bambi in Africa. It merged Kimba the White Lion with Hamlet along with Pan-African and Biblical themes. It is three acts where we see the hero's journey of Simba as he goes from crown prince to prince-in-exile, to finally defeating his evil uncle and earning his father's inheritance. The music here is some of Disney's most memorable and Timon & Pumbaa would become the breakout characters getting their own tv show and a spin-off movie re-telling the events of this film from their points-of-view a la Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead. The KiSwahili phrase "hakuna matata" entered the English-language lexicon based on the song from this film. 

The voice acting in this film has to be the best assemblage of actors from this era. This is the defining James Earl Jones character for my generation (imagine how confused I was when I saw Coming To America (1988) and Star Wars for the first time). Jeremy Irons as Scar was as diabolical a sounding villain as you can imagine. The hyenas were one of the more controversial features to the movies when they were initially introduced as they reminded certain folks of the crows from Dumbo, but you can't deny that Whoopi Goldberg, Cheech Marin, and Jim Cummings brought their A-game as henchmen. Nathan Lane and Ernie Sabella as Timon & Pumbaa are again the breakout stars of the movie. 

I can't think of anymore to say than that this has been the only Disney Renaissance movie that I still come back to 31 years later. It is a defining part of my experience as a cinephile as it is for me the defining origin point of my relationship with cinema. 

My Goodreads Review of Black Skin, White Masks by Franz Fanon

I have been so focused on working on my film criticism/review game (I'm on Letterboxd, if you wish to follow me) that I have been neglecting my book reading and anime watching (not even reading manga lately). On the flipside I do have some Goodreads reviews that I have not published here yet—this review being one of them. I had posted this back in February of last year and I feel it may be one of my most controversial reviews I have done on Goodreads at the time as I did not partake in the Fanon worship as other's in my old Goodreads circle have (something that made me hype to read the book). One unexpectedly positive thing about the review is that it got the attention of the rapper Noname and that was an unexpectedly cool surprise. 

 Black Skin, White Masks by Frantz Fanon
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"There are three intertwined themes in Fanon’s writing: a critique of ethnopsychiatry (which aimed to provide an account of the mental life, in sickness and in health, of colonized peoples) and of the Eurocentrism of psychoanalysis; a dialogue with Negritude, then the dominant system of thought among black francophone intellectuals, in which he challenges its account of the mental life of black people; and the development of a political philosophy for decolonization that starts with an account of the psychological harm that colonialism had produced." - from the introduction by Kwame Anthony Appiah


So this was an interesting read. I don't read as much psychology as I do philosophy so the book is a bit of a change-up for me. This book is the landmark text to explain the effects that colonization has on the colonizer and the colonized. He is basing this from his experience as a Black Martinican in France and the people he treats and reads about as psychologist. The books reputation had long preceded it and I decided to give it a read this year to kick-off a series of reads that I plan to read. He speaks a lot in the royal "we", but is talking from his point-of-view and that of the people he reads around him. There is a lot to get through with this book and I am going to do my best to give my impressions, both good and bad.

Let me start with the good. I think this book really brought a lot of necessarily uncomfortable looks at the mind of white supremacy using psychoanalyses. I think he really does a good job in the first and most of the fourth chapter of the book in talking about this book. I like how he goes so hard in stating how absurd the approval of white people had in the life of Black Francophones.

All colonized people—in other words, people in whom an inferiority complex has taken root, whose local cultural originality has been committed to the grave—position themselves in relation to the civilizing language: i.e., the metropolitan culture. The more the colonized has assimilated the cultural values of the metropolis, the more he will have escaped the bush. The more he rejects his blackness and the bush, the whiter he will become. In the colonial army, and particularly in the regiments of Senegalese soldiers, the “native” officers are mainly interpreters. They serve to convey to their fellow soldiers the master’s orders, and they themselves enjoy a certain status.

It is clear that while he is greatly influenced by people like W.E.B. Du Bois and his high school teacher Aimé Césaire (some of the best quotes of the book are from Césaire). But the three dominate men of this book are Jean-Paul Sartre, Sigmund Freud, and, while least referenced the most important and where I'll be tearing into him from, Richard Wright.

While I think this book takes-off well, when it gets in-flight the journey is shaky and I do not think it sticks the landing. The criticism of Black consciousness (in the form of the Négritude movement) is a key part of the book. Fanon is one of these "color-blind" leftist at the end of the day. He wants the post-racial society that so many folks foolishly triumphed after the election of Barack Obama. This is what really holds back the book for me (I will mention that yes, he does not do justice to Black women in this book and his zealous adherence to classical Freudian and Adlerian psychoanalyzes greatly influenced his views on homosexuality. Others have done much to cover his misogynoir and homophobia so I am focusing on the whitewashing "universalizing" of Black culture). I have no problem with having a humanist approach to the world, but I don't think that I should have to sacrifice my culture and history for it. Black people tend to always be the one to have to give up their history for the current struggle, but no one else. I say no to this.

I am an African-American, I am not a Martinican or French West Indian (who Fanon calls Antilleans in this book) or an Afro-French/Black Francophone at all. This book looks at a lot of different people, but it is focused on Black Francophones. The idea of the post-racial society is very seductive in the way that most idealistic schools of thought are. Alas, such is wasted on me and I may well be one of the scumbags that Fanon talks about. I agree with Fanon that using reductive-stereotypes against an antagonist is unrealistic, but I think that Fanon does risk over-correcting in order to create a perfect Marxist-humanist utopia. There is a lot to criticize about different forms of cultural and historical movements. I think Fanon makes the same mistakes that James Baldwin criticizes Richard Wright for in Notes of a Native Son & Nobody Knows My Name. One can acknowledge that they are a man without having to justify it with the past, but having a past is still a good thing. Human rights are human rights, but we don't have to go and reject our past however noble or painful to justify are present.

This book was a lot, both interesting and frustrating in turns. I may add more to this review later, but this is what I have so far. Read this book, but read it critically! Fanon is not a saint, but a human being like you and me.

View all my reviews

My Review of Purple Rain (1984) directed by Albert Magnoli, music by Prince

 Few films have been so lifted by their music like this classic. Yes, I said classic. Possibly the greatest movie soundtrack of all time was accompanied by a film that would've bombed without it. Prince's musical magnum opus and his his most watchable narrative film.

Let's just get the narrative plot stuff out the way first. While this is the best of Prince's narrative films and his second best music film after Sign "☮" the Times (1987), that ain't saying much in regards to the acting. This film confirms the timeless truth that actors are better at playing musicians than musicians are at acting in movies (most of the time). Nobody does any real acting here besides the professional actors playing Prince's parents (shoutout to the late great character actor Clarence Williams III) and Morris Day & Jerome Benton who were having a blast at playing the antagonists to Prince's character (very different from real life where Prince was their very strict boss). This is the only one of the major "Prince films" where Prince was not the director and that may contribute to the acting being relatively more passable than in subsequent films like Under the Cherry Moon (1986) and Graffiti Bridge (1990). While the locations in the film are real (besides the interior shots of Prince's parents' house), much of the movie is original/made-up. In real life: Prince's parents are both Black, he is not an only child and has multiple siblings, and most importantly—all the music that appears in the film, including the songs by Morris Day & The Time and the Apollonia 6 were written by Prince alone.

What makes this film so beloved is the music. The In-story had Prince's character be at war with Morris Day over top-billing at the First Avenue club in Minneapolis, yet the music for both The Time and The Revolution were written and mostly performed by Prince himself (with Morris Day singing lead on the final product for The Time). Prince's real-life rival at this time was that other Midwestern prodigy Michael Jackson. Both men were deeply inspired by James Brown. This film and album dropped a year after the hype over Thriller had stared to subside. 1984-85 would then be Prince's time to shine and shine he would. Much of the music for the film was recorded live in concert at First Avenue in 1983 while other songs had been recorded as early as 1981. The Revolution stands as the test of time as the best incarnation of Prince's bands and of the "Minneapolis Sound." As good as Prince's follow-up album Parade was, as a soundtrack it was not strong enough to have a similar effect on Under the Cherry Moon as Purple Rain's soundtrack had on its movie.

As we approach 41 years this July since its premiere and 67 years since his birth June 7th, I think this film will live on. It was, in the middle of the 1980s, a convergence of African-American, alternative/indie, and Minneapolis cultures. "According to legend," Prince had intended the song Purple Rain to be a county music song for Stevie Nicks, but she passed on it and Prince decided to start working on it and add more gospel, R&B, and rock elements to it made the masterpiece we know today. It is right that the movie's ending climax is the title song and two encores (with an ending "happily ever after montage playing over one) on stage and let the music be the send-off of the movie on a high note. 

That's how you stick a landing☔

My Review of The Blues Accordin’ to Lightnin’ Hopkins directed by Les Blank (and Skip Gleason)

 I hate to be one of those "I liked X before it was popular"  hipster-types, but I really was into the Blues before Sinners (2025). I got into the Blues and Jazz after watching Ken Burns' Jazz documentary as a kid. It (and old-school music in general) has been a personal love of mine ever since. Of course, even in the early-2000s it was unusual for an African-American millennial to be into African-American folk music (which the Blues is), but it didn't bother me none. As it is, one of my favorite Blues musicians if Samuel "Lightnin'" Hopkins and this 30 minute Les Blank documentary is about him and the people of his neighborhood in Centerville, Texas. 

This documentary works on the classic "stream-of-consciousness" style of most of Les Blank's documentaries. We get introduced to the subject(s) of the doc and we just follow them around and let them show us what they want. In this case, Lighnin' Hopkins wanted to show his neighbors and some of his fellow musicians at a rodeo show and cookout where they would socialize and play some of their songs. While this doc is mainly about Hopkins—the breakout star would be Mance Liscomb who would get his own Les Blank documentary a few years later. The people are all quintessential Les Blank docu-subjects that you are use to seeing in his works. 

I glad that docs like this exist that just let the people show themselves as they wanted to be seen and I can't wait to watch more docs from him.

My Review of Basin Street Revue (1956) directed by Joseph Kohn

 I first watched this as a kid with my grandmother many years ago, and decided to give it a rewatch now. This was a very good variety show of multiple jazz and early R&B artists from the 1950. This was filmed at the Apollo Theater and the energy is classic of the venue. Among the music artists: Sarah Vaughan was obviously the highlight—though I did enjoy Amos Milburn’s performance as well. 

There were also non-music performances like the tap-dance performances and the vaudeville act of Nipsy Russell and Mantan Moreland (an act that was very common of the minstrel and vaudeville era). If you are interested in old-time entertainment then this is a good show to watch with some of the best artist from the generation change-over from jazz to R&B.

My Review of The Queen of Basketball (2021) directed by Ben Proudfoot

 With all the…”rage” over women’s basketball now, it can be easy to forget about the early days of women in the sport. Certainly in the pre-Title IX era when American women were given next to no support to participate in any kind of athletic competition. The late-Lucy Harris emerged as the dominate player in women’s basketball on the eve of Title IX and this documentary shined a light on her achievements and honored her before she passed away. It is a short documentary, but still a very good one and the best one I have seen produced by the NYT.

My Review of Grand Illusion (1937) directed by Jean Renoir

This film was Jean Renoir's first warning of the coming storm that was getting ready to be unleashed on the world (World War II). The film is about French prisoners of way being held (along with other Allied soldiers) during the First World War before the entry of the United States into the conflict. It details specifically a group of prisoners trying to escape. What the movie really does is capture Europe in transition between the old class-hierarchy of the 19th century and the new (and more nationally-motivated) class-structure of the 20th century (though even that had its beginning in the 19th century). While high-ranking officer POWs were treated almost like guest than enemy combatants, officers who were non-aristocrats or not as highly-ranked could expect no special treatment—though some are treated nicer by German guards who come from the same social-rank. 

While Renoir thought of WWI as "almost a gentlemen's war" and is very idealistic hopeful in this film overall, ho does not shy away from showing the class-stratification and casual bigotry of the soldiers. This is obvious in the treatment of the Jewish-French soldier Rosenthal who despite being from the French aristocracy, is still treated with casual antisemitism (one has to remember that WWI was barely a generation removed from the Dreyfus Affair (said Alfred Dreyfus would serve as an officer during the whole of WWI)). The treatment of the Colonial African-French officer is possibly worse as most of the other characters actively ignore him when he tries to talk to them. For all the talk of brotherhood by the prisoners, some barriers just ain't getting torn down. 

Jean Gabin does a great job in this movie to show why he was the white 1930s French equivalent of Denzel Washington and his character is every bit the hardness of the early 20th century as Eric von Stroheim's Prussian officer antagonist is of the 19th century and the old European aristocracy. While von Stroheim's politics were closer to Renoir's, the way he plays the head commander of the POW camps is an early proto-type of Christoph Waltz's character in Inglorious Bastards. The film's climax serves to emphasize the end of the prewar world and the beginning of the European interregnum. Many of the hopes that the soldiers had for peace would only last for 15 to 20 years. 

"War is a great illusion whose hopes are unfulfilled and promises never kept."

My Review of Festival (1967) directed by Murray Lerner

 This documentary/concert film marks the beginning of the era of Baby-Boomer concert film genre that ran into the mid-70s. This film shows the genesis of the popular image of the counterculture movement in the United States. It is based around the Newport Folk Festival between the years of 1963-1966. You have an assorted mix of Upper-Class New Englanders, Left-wing intellectuals, hipsters, and the beginning of the more drug-induced spin-off of the hipsters: the hippies. The editing of this film by Howard Alk points the way to the more extreme-styles of the Monterey Pop film of the following year, but we are not all the way there yet. It does give you a diverse, if uneven, sample of the music of the folk scene of the mid-1960s.

This may be one of the most diverse festival films—musically—of the era as you get not only "folk" music, but the Blues, Country, Bluegrass, Gospel, folk-rock and all the subgenres of those styles that were around at the time. I can appreciate that it had something for everyone and musicians who would not interact with each other anywhere else would meet at Newport, Rhode Island. Yes, a certain eccentric Minnesotan was the star attraction during this era in folk circles, but the film does try to balance him out and share equal time to performers who obvious were not as famous or worshipped. While this film can get lost after the concert films that came after it—it still is an interesting watch as a time capsule or as look at how much more political these functions were before the LSD started flowing.

My Review of I Was Born, But...(1932) directed by Yasujiro Ozu

 The most celebrated of Ozu's prewar comedies and it is one of his most pessimistic films. Two boys move with their dad to a new neighborhood and as they make their way up the social ladder, they learn that their dad is a lacky for his boss—who just happens to be the father of one of their new friends who they are fighting for top dog status with. The first part of the movie is a silly comedy where the two brothers really use all the crazy boys-tricks to deal with a bully and climb up their elementary school social circle. The second half is the more dark, bittersweet part of the movie where the boys realize the true nature of their father's position in the company where he works and it wakes them up to how the world of adults work and how what their daddy says and what he does can be so different.

This has the beginning of a lot of the Ozu trademark shots. We do have a lot more tracking shots and not every shot is three feet above the ground, but it is certainly being refined. We don't have the full on shots of every person talking yet, but it is getting close. Young Mitsuko Yoshikawa as the mom is very fine-looking.

My Review of A Straightforward Boy (1929) directed by Yasujiro Ozu

This is a 14 minute excerpt of Ozu’s first of his kids comedy films. It is basically his adaptation of the short story The Ransom of Red Chief by O. Henry. It plays into what you expect of the screwball comedies of the era and looks very unlike an Ozu film as we think of them today.

My Review of Malcolm X (1992) directed by Spike Lee

 Happy 100th Birthday to Omaha, Nebraska's own El-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz, better known to the world as Malcolm X. Few figures have become so influential without being able to be co-opted by the establishment—though it is not because folks haven't tried. James Baldwin details in his book The Devil Finds Work how Hollywood tried to get him to write a watered-down screenplay for an aborted adaptation of X's autobiography which thankfully Baldwin pulled out of. In 1991 Hollywood tried to do another adaptation with Norman Jewison at the helm, but Spike Lee caught wind of this and was able to take control of the project and make the greatest biographical film of all time and possibly Denzel Washington's greatest starring role.

This movie saw the last team-up of Spike Lee and his legendary cinematographer Eric Dickerson and it is their crowning achievement. All of the Lee/Dickerson signature shots are here in top form and all set pieces are absolutely beautiful. Nearly the whole 40 Acers stable of actors & crew. Ruth E. Carter wardrobe design is so accurate that you would've thought she was there. We get supporting actors like Delroy Lindo who has been keeping busy in 2025 is shows that he has been an expert character actor for a long time. Angela Basset plays Betty Shabazz like she was born for the role. Hell, even Spike Lee does a good job and shows why he is the best acting-director. But obviously there is one actor who shines above the rest...

Denzel Washington was no rookie before this film and this not his first Spike Lee film, but I still don't think any role he has played has been better and more important than this. Honestly, I don't know who else could've rise to the occasion to play this role other than Malcolm X himself. Quite a few people have played Malcom X in movies and television since Denzel, but none get the role as dead-on accurate as he does. He said that he spent hundreds of hours listening to as many speeches and footage of Malcolm that was available and it shows. I don't know of anyone in a film biography more take on a role so completely as Denzel Washington did and he truly makes me forget that I am watching an actor whenever I watch this movie.

I don't know what else is there to be said. Spike Lee made the best biographical film adapted from the greatest autobiography ever written. It is a three-act epic of the life of a man who has influenced countless people (including myself) into a more in-depth pride of themselves and their Blackness. I don't know what else to say but to quote from Ossie Davis' eulogy of him: 

"Malcolm was our manhood, our living, black manhood! This was his meaning to his people. And, in honoring him, we honor the best in ourselves...However we may have differed with him – or with each other about him and his value as a man – let his going from us serve only to bring us together, now."

My Review of Tokyo Story (1953) directed by Yasujiro Ozu

 When I tried to review Seven Samurai it was a nerve-wrecking undertaking because not only was it one of the greatest films of all time, but one of my personal top 5. While this is also a masterpiece film, I feel less pressure so I can critique a little easier. This film came early on in Ozu's legendary postwar run, but is rightly hailed as him at the height of his powers. He takes all the themes and feelings close to him and, with his top lieutenants Chishū Ryū and Setsuko Hara in top form (along with an incredible performance by Chieko Higashiyama), made his defining statement on life in modern Japan. I can't say it is a film I watch often, but it is one that sticks with you with its crushing sadness.

The generation conflict reaches its balance here. We get the look at both parents and children being mutually put-off by each other with the exception of the youngest daughter and war -widowed daughter-in-law. Besides them, all of the other kids come off as absolute villains. Of course, the father is also shown to not be a saint either (once again Chishū Ryū is playing a character way older than him). Hara as the daughter-in-law is a solider here—both for her in-laws in the movie and Ozu as an expert actress. Kyoko Kagawa (an actress who was an Akira Kurosawa/Kenji Mizoguchi main-stay) is used as the audience surrogate as the youngest daughter. She is the obvious future that this movie can maybe-optimistically point to.

Setsuko Hara in the foreground; Yasujiro Ozu at the far right.

I personally prefer the happier bittersweet film Early Summer (1951) when it comes to Ozu family dramas, but I can't deny the reason this is considered by the usual critics as one of the greatest films ever made. After watching The Only Son (1936) before re-watching this film and I am amazed at how much Ozu re-used some of the same locations shot-for-shot. Surprisingly, there is a panning shot in this film—though it is a short one as this movie has shaped what most people think of when they think about Ozu films. It is fairly melodramatic for an Ozu film, but it works in all the right ways. 

I doubt I will watch this film too many more times given how soul-crushing it is even when compared to other sad films, but I am glad to have watched it at least twice. 

My Review of The Only Son (1936) directed by Yasujiro Ozu

 Ozu's first sound film is a look at a family on the brink following The Great Depression. Despite the end of feudalism and the beginning of capitalism (and imperialism) in Japan following the Meiji Restoration—not everyone benefited equally as the modern class structure replaced the feudal one. We follow a poor single mother working in a factory to provide for her son all the way to his adulthood and the trials that the two deal with over the course of the film.

While the film begins during the Taishō era (1923) in a country village in the middle of Japan, it quickly time-skips to 1935 Tokyo in the middle of the Great Depression. The son has moved to Tokyo and got a job as a school teacher, but the Depression wiped out his earnings just as he became a husband and father. When his mother decides to visit him in Tokyo, she is shocked and (he ashamed) to see him and his family living in the ghetto in destitution. We spend the rest of the film watching both mom and son try to make sense of it all.

Being that this is an early Ozu film, things are a bit different from his post-WWII films. Form-wise, not only do we get tracking shots, but a full on fantasy/dream sequence at one point. Theme-wise, the big issue causing the conflict is not postwar Westernization, but the Depression itself. A lot of the generational conflict in Ozu's prewar films after 1929 comes from the economic down-turn.

The main appeal of this film is that it is the rare Ozu family drama where it is an adult son who is the focus rather than a daughter or child-son. He never did this again after the success of Late Spring (1949), but in the prewar films we get to see Ozu experiment a little. While the ending here does foreshadow the ending of Late Spring—it is made even more pitiful in hindsight knowing that our characters would not have a peaceful future, but a bloody one to look forward to.

My Review of Pickpocket (1959) directed by Robert Bresson

 I read Crime and Punishment back in 2012, but have seen its influence pop-up everywhere. I recently re-watched Le Havre (2011) whose police officer is borrowed from C&P. Of course one of the most famous adaptations of the novel is Pickpocket (1959). The protagonist Michel is as much an edgelord as C&P's Raskolnikov, but with the trademark emotional detachment that of Robert Bresson's "models" (his term for actors). Michel's god-complex inspires him to become a pickpocketer. The antagonist here—like in C&P—is a detective whose character is a one-to-one adaptation of Dostoevsky's Porfirey and he is always a step ahead of Michel while trying to convince him to give-up his life of crime. Michel's love interest Jeanne is a marked improvement on C&P's Sonia as she can counterbalance Michel without trying to aggressively confront him and she makes up for Michel's lack of humanity. 

The cameo scene of the real-life pickpocket-turned-sleight-of-hand artist Henri Kassagi is my favorite part of the whole movie. Kassagi's character teaches Michel how to pickpocket more effectively and they later team-up with another accomplice to pull more daring pickpocket operations. This features half the background music in the entire film (another trademark of Bresson).

This is one of, if not the most critically acclaimed of Bresson's films and it really is him as he reached the height of his powers. It is the full introduction to 60s Bresson and is the lead-in for the French New Wave that would start right after this movie was released. While I still hold The Trial of Joan of Arc (1962) as my favorite Bresson film, this is still an incredible movie that influenced so many movies after it (and not just Paul Schrader's).

My Review of Through the Olive Trees (1994) directed by Abbas Kiarostami

 This is Abbas Kiarostami-ception reaching its peak as at one point we see the actor who played Kiarostami in And Life Goes On (1992) being directed by another actor who is playing "current" Kiarostami in Through The Olive Trees (1994), who are both being directed by the actual Kiarostami
(who makes a blink-and-you-miss-it cameo in the movie). This is some peak-Iranian New Wave. This movie is our finale of the Koker Trilogy and takes us behind the scenes of the interpersonal drama happening during the filming of And Life Goes On (1992).

This big contention is that two of the actors in one scene of ALGO were involved in a dispute where the guy—Hossein Rezai (what is it with Kiarostami and dudes named Hossein?)—wants to marry the girl—Taherah Landanian—playing his wife, but her family is firmly against it. This causes problems for for Kiarostami as she is ordered not to talk to Rezai and this brings filming to a halt. Such a story would be a sub-plot for in most films, but is the main thrust of this film. Hossein Rezai is a traicomic character in the style of that other Kiarostami-Hossein: Hossein Sabzain of Close Up (1990). While Sabzain's unrequited love was cinema itself, Rezai's unrequited love is Tahereh who is a bit naïve and vain and not average from what we see of her—yet Rezai really keeps you rooting for him, however hopeless his quest feels The open-ended ending reinforces that it was the journey, not the destination, that this film is highlighting as we bring our journey through Koker, Iran to a close.

And touching back on that, through-out this film we have had Babak Ahmadpour and his brother as side characters. Babak starred in the first film of the Koker Trilogy and the search to find out if he was alive after the 1990 earthquake in Koker was the whole reason for the second film in the trilogy. After confirming that he is still alive in the first 15 minutes of this film, the overall-plot moves on from him rather seamlessly and you would not know how important he was to Kiarostami's canon if this was the only film in the trilogy you had watched. Life Goes On, indeed!

My Review of American Fiction (2023) directed by Cord Jefferson

 I am so glad to finally be able  to have seen this movie. As a Black bibliophile and cinephile this movie taps into two lanes. A movie which is a direct satirical attack on institutionalized racism in the book publishing industry. It is also the story of a man from an upper-middle class New England family that has just about fallen-apart as he tries to get another lease on life and career.

American Fiction (2023) (and the novel it is based on) really hits at how white liberals are gate-keeping the depictions of African-Americans in contemporary literature (and cinema) and the harm that it does when we don't get to showcase the diversity of our stories. Parallel, or in the micro, our protagonist Thelonious "Monk" Ellison is a Black novelist who does not write about contemporary Black pathologies aka "hood" literature, but more intellectual, high-art and bourgie novels. He comes from a prosperous Black New England family that has grown apart and in-decline. And then things grow worse—leading to him making choices that help his career, but betrays his morals and ethics (but again—makes him a lot of money). This movie takes a quietly cynical, but clear-eyed and satirical look at some very down-to-earth realities that people deal with and it does not give any of the characters—save two—a truly happy ending.

All of the main and supporting cast are excellent! Jeffery Wright, Tracee Ellis Ross, and Sterling K. Brown play the three siblings at the heart of the story flawlessly. Erika Alexander was the perfect love interest who was too good for Monk (and lawd—this woman is still as beautiful as she was on Living Single). I felt like Issa Rae was born to play her character similar to the character Beyoncé played in Dreamgirls (2006). Leslie Uggams seems to have moved into the character roles that Diahann Carroll used to play in her later years. This was a good film from Cord Jefferson and I am curious to see what he does next.

My Review of The Great Dictator (1940) directed by Charlie Chaplin

 The Great Dictator (1940) was marketed as the first post-Tramp movie of Charlie Chaplin after he assured people retired the character after the release of Modern Times (1936), but in-fact this film would be the last appearance of the character as who would end-up playing a nameless Jewish barber with amnesia in fake-Germany and strike an obvious resemblance the other role Chaplin plays as the villain antagonist fake-Adolf Hitler. The protagonist and antagonist never meet, but their resemblance is crucial to the film's ending-climax and it's commentary on World War II up to that point in 1940.

This film is famous for (among other things) being Chaplin's first talking movie—and he has a lot to talk about about. As his home country was being pummeled by the Germans and France had already fallen to the Nazis, he watched the USA be neutral for the most part, to some being vocally supportive of the Nazis at worst. Leftist that he was, Chaplin used his physical and rhetorical talents to try and convince American audiences that they needed to oppose fascism. Chaplin's physical set-pieces like the globe sequence (my personal favorite) and the barbershop scenes shows that his comedy and art could still translate to sound-era comedy. I think the witty dialogue also showed his British wit was not lacking. Also, I think everyone knew what to expect of mocking Hitler's infamous speech patterns. Of course, where trouble starts is when he stops going for comedy and gets serious. You can tell how raw his emotions were and how desperate he was to rally Americans to support the War-effort or have the War end entirely. This makes some scenes when Chaplin filibusters and just writes what he feels seem clunky to us today. But when it comes to the ending speech, it is the filibuster that the rest of the movie depends on and is necessary and evergreen in its message,

The film was made only a year after Germany invades Poland and the Holocaust had not officially-begun. This was still post-Nuremburg Laws (laws that were modeled after the USA's Jim Crow Laws) and Kristallnacht, so people knew of the the discrimination and repression of Jewish people in Germany (and how much it resembled the discrimination and repression of African-Americans in the United States). I wonder if Chaplin really thought a country as racist (and antisemitic) as the United States  could be convinced to oppose a nation a nation it ideologically-sympathized with. In 2025, I wonder this now.

On a side note: having fake-Mussolini have a New York Italian accent was an inspired choice😆.

My Review of The Rainmaker (1995) directed by Frances Ford Coppola

 This movie is a straight-up courtroom trial drama about a novice lawyer that takes on an insurance fraud case while also helping an old lady draft a will and helping another woman get a divorce from her violently-abusive husband. This is a very good late-Coppola/early-Matt Damon film. I like the details on court procedure that it shows and I agree with the message it has about the legal system.

My Review of My Cousin Vinny (1992) directed by Jonathan Lynn

Marisa Tomei stole the show. This movie, The Rainmaker, and A Guilty Conscience we’re 3 courtroom drama films I watched in 2023 which were really good! One of the rare films where Joe Peschi is the heroic protagonist; this film is a look at aspects of the legal system not usually show on screen.

Some update posting...

 I haven't really been posting movies on the blog since 2022, and I haven't posted movies on Letterboxd since 2023, so I am posting some reviews I had written drafts of in the last two years, but not published yet.

My Review of A Guilty Conscience (2023) directed by Jack Ng Wai-Lun

A Hong Kong jurist named Adrian Lam gets on the wrong side of the hiss boss and decides to found his own law firm and take on a case involving a Hong Kong oligarch family. Adrian gets too cocky and over-his-head and is set-up into losing the case. Years later, he finds evidence that leads to a retrial and one more shot at redemption.

While I won't spoil the film here, this was such a big it because it uses every movie court-room drama trope in the book to commentate on the class divide (and possibly the sentiment concerning recent political events) in Hong Kong. Louise Wong's role as the wrongly-accused was worthy of Ruan Lingyu. Dayo Wong really does his job right as the magistrate turned lawyer. If you liked Witness for the Prosecution or A Time to Kill then you will like this movie. 

My Short Review of The Other Side of Hope (2017) directed by Aki Kaurismäki

Following-up the last Kaurismäki film I watched, La Harve, this is also about the fate of refugees in Europe—but this time in Kaurismäki‘s native homeland of Finland. Though this film is a lot more cynical than La Harve, Kaurismäki‘s idealism about how people should be towards each other ultimately wins out. Both this film and Le Harve harken back to Jean Renoir and the idea of the guy that just steps-up to be someone in need—no questions asked. 

My Review of ...And Life Goes On (1992) directed by Abbas Kiarostami

 This the Iranian New Wave at its peak. When Iranian film-makers decide to go to extremes of blurring fiction and reality in order to tell an honest story rather than a 100% accurate one, you get what Toni Morrison called "the site of memory." How much can you blend reality and fiction together until you gain the ability to almost change reality? On June  21, 1990 the Manjil–Rudbar Earthquake struck northern Iran and killed around 45,000 people. One of the hardest-hit places was the village of Koker where Abbas Kiarostami had filmed his movie Where Is the Friends House?                                         Kiarostami gets his son and immediately makes his way to Koker from Tehran to find Babak Ahmadpour—the boy who starred in WITFH?. The movie is a recounting of this journey.

As the title suggests, the main theme of this movie is that even after apocalyptic devastation, people keep on living. As Kiarostami traveled through the region, he was marked by the resilience of the people even as they were suffering and trying to collect themselves. This film also used a favorite filming method of Kiarostami; while he and his son were portrayed by actors, Kiarostami was always behind the camera interacting directly with people in the film. In doing this, he dares you to classify this as a realist film. The meta-nature of Iranian New Wave films of this era started getting criticized by the Iranian censors and this marked the beginning of Kiarostami's decline in standing with the régime (he never criticized the pre- or post-revolutionary regimes directly, so he was never explicitly banned or went into exile, but after 1999 it became much harder for him to show his films in Iran compared to internationally). 

Abbas Kiarostami always felt that the best films are the ones that look like they made themselves and that is on display here.

My Thoughts on Sinners (2025) directed by Ryan Coogler

 These are just some small thoughts I had on this great movie! It has been awhile since I have been to the theater to watch a movie, but this felt special. I was on the fence about going to see it, but the hype got to me and I decided to spend my birthday watching it. It is an amazing film that has really put the flag down for independent and original film-making. I am not a big musical cinema lover, but it is a great film about the blues and what one is willing to give to create art. Although I still prefer Jordan Peele for my horror fix, I was satisfied with this movie. The two musical sequences with Miles Caton and Jack O'Connel were excellent as was the Buddy Guy feature at the end. Michael B. Jordan showed why he is the Robert De'Niero to Ryan Coogler's Scorsese. Wunmi Mosaku was a revelation and the break-out star for me and Delroy Lindo was a solid character actor as always. The comedic favorite of the movie was Omar Miller who takes over nearly every scene he's in after his introduction. 

I did not see this an IMAX so I guess I won't gush over the cinematography like everyone else, but I will tip my hat to Ludwig Göransson for another excellent team-up. Göransson was just as important to this film as the lead actors. And of course the leader that made it all happen is Ryan Coogler, who has yet to make a bad film.

If I have more to add, I may follow-up at a later date.

My Goodreads Review of My Love Story with Yamada-kun at Lvl. 999, volume 3 by Mashiro

 First review of the year is one I have been wanting to talk on for awhile.

My Love Story with Yamada-kun at Lv999, Vol. 3 by Mashiro
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A winter storm and black-out means that it was a perfect time for my first completed read of the year. Which is not exactly a re-read, but sort-of is. This volume recounts episodes 7-10 of the anime. I ended-up following the manga and even going back and purchasing a physical copy of this volume because of chapter/part 30 of the manga that ends this volume. To me it is one of the most startling mature philosophical expressions of love that I have seen in anime or manga.

I won't do a full-recap, but to give some backstory: this series is a shoujo romance manga about about a college student named Akane whose life is sort-of a mess after a recent break-up as she falls in love with a professional gamer named Akito Yamada—the title character (her ex was a gamer as well). In this volume she and Yamada are not yet a couple, but we are all but assured by the end of the chapter that they will become a couple (I am currently on volume 8 in which a lot more pivotal things have happened).

I want to highlight this volume because of chapter 30. During the typical "sick day" trope where one love interest becomes sick and the other takes care of them. Akane overworks herself and becomes sick, so Yamada comes over takes her to the doctor and stays by her side while she is resting. When Akane wakes-up and her and Yamada are talking about what happens they come to talk about love. Yamada has never fell in-love with anyone and instead has turned-down many girls pretty-coldly during his life and as he does finally fall in-love with Akane—he feels intense guilt for the people whose feelings he has hurt. Akane, whose ex left her for somebody else he met while online gaming, surprisingly has compassion for Yamada and Yamada questions why given her experience with her boyfriend. She states that she was glad that her ex was up-front to her about the fact that he loved someone else and didn't try to just two-time her (most of what she says here we see in happen in volume 1/episode 1 where she accepts the breakup stoicly and with a pained-smile despite being hurt by it as we would see later, but now we learn what she was thinking as this awkward/painful episode transpired). What she says next is the moment I knew this was one of the best shoujo series I have ever encountered:

"No matter what I said, I knew it wouldn't change anything, so when he broke up with me, I accepted it right away.

If he ever thinks about me or feels nostalgic, I want him to remember me smiling not bawling.

I want him to think that he had a great woman, and that he regrets leaving me. Don't you think it's better that way?"

Yamada thinks over his past, and easily agrees. While Akane is not a perfect protagonist, she is the heroine required for this story. Despite this obviously being a story of the soujo demographic-category, our lead has a lot of shounen hero personality traits. I tell you I was knocked out of my seat when I first heard those lines from above, and I still get chills reading them now. A lot of "serious" novels can't give you insight on how to deal with the end of a relationship that is equal to this. I have much that I can say about this series in its totality, but I just wanted to highlight this pivotal scene which would be a foreshadowing to another scene that would occur later on in the story (view spoiler)[when the two finally consummate their relationship (hide spoiler)]. It was nice looking back on this early part of the story again.

Al Green - For The Good Times
The irony of posting a breakup song on a review of a book that is leading to the main couple actually getting together is unusual, but I feel it works on what I was talking about.

In the Afterword, the author says that this was the volume where it started being a true romance manga. Amen

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2024 on Goodreads for Me

 Happy New Years🎊

A lookback at what I was and was not reading in 2024:

2024 on Goodreads by Various


My 2024 Year in Books

Been wanting to do one of these again for awhile. Nothing fancy here, just going to do a staight report.

I read 13 "books" this year on Goodreads. After barely reading anything in 2023 and 2022, I wanted to get back into reading-shape. I started the year out strong by reading The Origin of Others by Toni Morrison. This book was penultimate book published during her lifetime based on a series of lectures and serves as a meta-bookend to Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination. I had been wanting to read it for awhile and decided to do so in January.

I followed that major read with some lighter fair: Diana's Tree by Alejandra Pizarnik, Chihayafuru, Vol. 3 by Yuki Suetsugu, and The Malefector by Anton Chekhov. A volume of poetry, a volume of manga, and a short story, respectively. The poetry here and later in the year were to-do items that I got to cross off my list after a few years of wanting to get to them. I liked Diana's Tree, but it did not hit me with the same intensity that I got from reading here for the first time in The FSG Book of Twentieth-Century Latin American Poetry: An Anthology. Chihayafaru, volume 3 was the last book from the series that I decided to read befor watching the series' anime adaptation (I have watched season one, so far, and plan to hopefully watch season 2 this year) when I have finished the anime adaptations I will pick-up the manga from where the anime stops. Every year I read at least on Chekhov sort story on his birthday and this year I decided to read The Malefector. I can't say I really remember what it was about besides something to do with how the Russian Imperial judiciary treated Russian peasants.

The second major read that I completed this year was Black Skin, White Masks by Franz Fanon. Though I always think myself too seasoned a bibliophile veteran to get caught in the expectations-trap, it still happens. I feel various intellectual-types and hoteps have sold this book as one thing, and it read to me as a very different thing and I was slightly disappointed, but I think I understood what Fanon was saying...I just didn't fully agree with it. One interesting thing about that review is that it got attention from some interesting places.

After that I took a break from Goodreads (and reading anything not manga-related) for about 10 months. I was persuaded to come back on here after the hype and controversy over what would become my favorite read of the year: The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates. The outrage over this book is legendary at this point, but it convinced me to start reading again. Though I knew and agreed with much of what Coates talked about in the book already, reading it in journalistic detail on the page made me angry and as outraged as he was. It had been awhile since I read a book that struck me to care in such a way. I have to say that while I was keeping up at the controversies on this site over fake reviews, review-bombing, and sock-puppet accounts with the different YA books—seeing all three methods being utilized by right-wing trolls for this one book was startling and something I had never seen happen in real time since I first joined this site in December 2010. That's how you know this book was the read deal!

Since then I have been back on my reading grind. Not a lot of big literature was read by me, but more of the lighter-stuff as I gradually get back to using Goodreads again. I read Copacetic by Yusef Komunyakaa, the other volume of poetry for this year and it was decent. I had been curious to read Komunyakaa for awhile, and after reading his selections in Angles of Ascent: A Norton Anthology of Contemporary African American Poetry, I decided to read a short volume of poetry by him and came upon this book.

Al the other books I closed the year on where comic books that I had in my backlog to read. I tend to mostly read manga that I like and find as they are translated. And I mostly read them digitally unless it is a volume I really like in which case I will buy a physical copy like I did with American comic books. I have a physical manga volume that I bought over the holiday and plan to re-read and review this year (a little preview for y'all). I don't keep-up with superhero comics anymore, but I have enough of a backlog in my Comixology Kindle archives that I will continue reading and putting out reviews when I get to them.

Of the comics I read to close-out the year, I will spotlight two here:

Marvel Masterworks: The Uncanny X-Men, Volume 2 by Chris Claremount, Dave Cockrum, and John Byrne. This is the second volume of Marvel Comics' special trade paperback collection of Chris Claremont's 15 year tenure on the Uncanny X-Men comics with illustrators/co-writers John Byrne & Dave Cockrum (among others). This was a good look at the stories that are now part of contemporary American mythology at this point (and bein saturized to death by Hollywood). It was good to read these stories myself as they were originally meant to be read and I look forward to reading more.

The Promised Neverland, Volume 20. This is the last volume of one of the best-selling manga of the century, so-far. Despite the catastrophe of the second season anime adaptation, the manga itself remained just good-enough to keep me coming back for more and ended on a bittersweet, but hopeful note. This manga, along with One-Punch Man and Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, got me to start reading manga seriously in the first place so finishing this was a special milestone for me. I do hope they include the actual epilogue chapter in an official English volume one day.

Well, besides a very cynical Christmas short story by Langston Hughes, that was my year in books according to Goodreads. I was glad to keep doing this and not totally give-up on reading. I am currently reading Black Theology and Black Power by James H. Cone and hope to have it finished by the end of January. Happy New Year.

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