Friday, March 29, 2024

Tag: racism

O Anjo da Noite (Angel of the Night)
*SPOILER ALERT* In order to fully discuss this movie, I'll need to reveal its major plot points. Sorry. Also: *IGNORANCE OF BRAZILIAN CINEMA ALERT* Sorry again. Although the late Walter Hugo Khouri was a highly acclaimed and accomplished Brazilian director, his movies are ponderously difficult to find; at last check, only...
Color Out of Space
I was never much of an H.P. Lovecraft fan, even before I knew he was a grade-A bigot -- a fact that, when I discovered it, made me proud that the internal racism radar I'd honed growing up in rural Virginia had subconsciously steered me away from his writings. I’ve...
Daniel Kaluuya in Get Out
Horror movies tend to be thought of as hollow entertainment, but horror has a long history of addressing heavy social issues, whether directly or through symbolic or allegorical means. Perhaps the heaviest of heavy social issues is race relations -- especially in the United States -- but these horror/suspense...
Body Cam
As incidents of racial profiling and police brutality continue to make headlines, Body Cam -- the Mary J. Blige vehicle about an entity haunting police officers involved in the death of a black teen -- is as relevant a film as ever. Cinematically speaking, however, it’s a bit late...
Fatima's Revenge
Because pain often fuels creativity, one of the unintentionally positive consequences of the Trump administration's weaponization of intolerance, impropriety and disinformation is that it has provided plenty of fodder for provocative, sociopolitically inclined genre cinema, like the Purge franchise. In particular, the current culture of xenophobia has proven to...
The Curse of Buckout Road
For most of America (and the world, for that matter), the name Buckout Road means very little, but in and around Westchester County, New York, it’s apparently famous for being haunted. Or cursed. Or maybe both. Less famous than regional legends like the Headless Horseman and the Jersey Devil,...
Ma movie poster
Ma is two movies in one, and which one you experience may depend on whether you’re black or you’re white. Think of it as a racial Rorschach test. On the surface, its plot doesn’t have much to do with race. It’s basically an intergenerational take on the “psycho stalker thriller”...
Tales from the Hood 2
The original Tales from the Hood arrived in the midst of the "urban" cinema movement of the '90s, providing a genre spin on the racial and social consciousness of trailblazers like Spike Lee, John Singleton and Julie Dash. More than two decades later, as social consciousness has evolved into...
Coleville
Square-jawed white guy Jake (Andrew Brooks Gagne) is having a bad day. First, he wakes up late for his job interview. Then, his car won't start, so he hops a train...and immediately falls asleep, missing his stop. Did I mention he’s also forgotten his phone? It seems punctuality and...
The First Purge
Every movie in the Purge franchise has been more overtly sociopolitical than the one before it, and The First Purge takes the series to new, gloriously radical heights in a powerful, if unsubtle, expression of the fear, frustration and anger of people of color in the United States. It's...