Tag: Drama

“Love is Strange? What the heck is this? I thought you were doing Oscar Related movies this week!”

Well, I was, I swear! But. Uhh. I ran out. I didn’t finish the list. I couldn’t. I officially couldn’t get see three of the Best Foreign Films, one of the Best Animated, one of the Best Documentary, one of the Best Original Song, and of course, 14 of the 15 Shorts. Doh.

But I didn’t pick this one randomly. Oh no, this was actually nominated for a Spirit Award for Best Picture. The Spirit Awards are for indie movies and they take place this weekend as well. And look at that, this was the one film I was missing from the main Best Picture category for them.

Boo yah. I am now Hipster.

And what is more hipster than watching an Independent Movie about Gay Marriage.

Speaking of marriage, Ben (John Lithgow) and George (Alfred Molina) are getting married! They have been together for over thirty years and are obviously quite old. But NY allows it, and by golly, they wanna get on that.

Good times, happy day, everyone is happy for them!

Then George gets fired. He taught piano and other music classes at a private school, and yeah, they took his marriage as something he wasn’t allowed to do in his contract, even if they knew he was gay. So this is bad because it was their stable income, which means they cannot pay their rent, which means they have to move. But shit, Ben’s income is erratic as he is a painter and George might need to take some time to get a new gig.

So they have to go live with their family and friends. They also want to live in the city still, because that is where they can find work and maintain a NYC presence.

Ben is living with his nephew (Darren E. Burrows), his nephew’s wife (Marisa Tomei) and their son Joey (Charlie Tahan). Ben might get on their nerves.

George is living with their former old neighbors (Cheyenne Jackson, Manny Perez), a younger gay couple who are both cops. They are a lot active than George is.

Issues, annoyances, and a bad start to a new marriage.

But not as bad as his start to that painting. You can’t erase water colors.

John Lithgow is really enjoying his acting these days. From his brilliant arc on Dexter to his cameos on HIMYM, he is just doing anything he wants at this point.

Acting wise, both leads do a great job. Their love is believable and their chemistry is nice.

I just find the plot of this movie to have a mostly blah concept. So they both go separate places, one becomes an annoyance on the place he lives, the other mostly just gets annoyed by what is going on around him. And their life goes on.

In that way, this movie has a very indie feel. A small concept script with not a lot going on. And I can’t help but feel cheated of a lot of potential plot to tell a more entertaining story. Some interesting things happen, it is very realistic, and the acting is good. But darn it, I just want a bit more in my stories.

I was excited to watch Inherent Vice, because the internet told me to be excited about Inherent Vice. It was some sleek 1970s-esque drama/mystery, complete with Private Eye and missing people. It had a sexy poster and a lot of famous people in it.

I honestly didn’t see too much advertising outside of the internet, but it was also by a well respected director. Paul Thomas Anderson has made quite a few good films, all of them well acted, very well loved.

So despite it taking me, I dunno, two or so months after it first started coming out to theaters, I have finally gotten around to seeing it!

And then, uh, I saw it and left quite disappointed.

I am probably just a prude like this lady here.

Here is what I pieced together.

Larry “Doc” Sportello (Joaquin Phoenix) is a private investigator, a man with sideburns, and someone who loves women, drugs, and other hippie behavior. His ex lady Shasta Fay Hepworth (Katherine Waterston) is now sleeping with a real estate mogul Michael Z. Wolfmann (Eric Roberts). His wife doesn’t like the affair and might be planning something drastic.

Also, unrelated, Tariq Khalil (Michael Kenneth Williams) wants Doc to find his friend, a member of an Aryan gang. The man who also is a bodyguard of Mr. Wolfmann. Oh man. The plot thickens.

Either way, these two inquiries lead Doc on a strange and drug fueled path, featuring death, framing, cunnilingus, sex, more drugs, and more drugs again. Also featuring Hong Chau, Owen Wilson, Reese Witherspoon, Martin Short, Josh Brolin, Maya Rudolph and Benicio Del Toro.

My face when I found out the side burns had their own place in the credits.

I think the main point of Inherent Vice is to tell a decade appropriate story with a decade appropriate amount of drugs and hazy memory. The story feels disjointed because of how messed up the characters actually are. I’d say it is like an unreliable narrator, but I am not even sure who the narrator was, just a woman.

And I hated it. I don’t care how accurate the experience is, it just makes me feel uncomfortable. Which again, is probably the point. But these are feelings I don’t want to feel, the feelings of confusion.

The set is fine. The acting is fine. The music is good. But the story I found impossible to get into. For the most part it just felt like two characters talking to each other and uhh then the next scene. I like dramas, I like talking, I just could do absolutely nothing with this one.

I am not just reviewing Beyond The Lights because it was nominated for Best Original Song in the Oscars. No, I wanted to see it even before that!

However, yes, I am having the review out this week because of that fact.

I wanted to see it because I heard good things despite a somewhat Lifetime movie looking trailer. I wanted to see it because it was a mainly black cast and it had nothing to do with Kevin Hart or Tyler Perry. Some of their movies are terrible, sure, but at least they are actually increasing the amount of color that our TVs can show. So it is always exciting to see someone else do something to break the trend or lack of trend.

Oh hey, wait. It is British? Never mind. This means nothing now.

It can’t even help our current opinions about law enforcement!

Just kidding. Despite starring British people, it is actually American overall. Go back to flying our flags proudly, folks.

Since Noni (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) was a little girl, her mother (Minnie Driver) has been focused on her career as a singer. She was entered into talent contests and her mother would not let her settle for second place. Her mother raiser her alone and always wanted her child to succeed.

Now, many many years later, Noni is about to win a Billboard award with a collaboration with Kid Culprit (Machine Gun Kelly). It is very impressive, since she hasn’t even released her own album. She has just been on three of his tracks and they have all been super popular. Yes. Now is the time for her to break out and get one of the best selling records of all time.

But Noni doesn’t feel happy. Maybe she hates her relationship with Kid. Maybe she hates selling her body for success. Maybe she hates her mother deciding every part of her life. Maybe she just feels fake. Either way, she decides to end her life. She is saved last minute by the current cop watching her room, Kaz (Nate Parker), who calms her down and makes her feel like an individual.

And won’t you look at that. A relationship might come from it too. Sure it starts in an awkward place. He kind of saved her life. There is some awkwardness that might make people question its long lasting-ness. Especially since Kaz himself is only going to be a cop for a little bit. He wants to run for office, a political kind of guy. Being with a pop star might make people question his seriousness.

I am sure none of that will come up though. Also featuring Danny Glover, who is still too old for this shit, as a cop.

When your mom encourages an outfit like this, you know you might actually be a doll.

And then I enjoyed a movie about a pop star struggling with the music industry and feeling like a real person. Of course I did. Put it that way, it sounds brilliant. Sure, first world problems a bit, but everyone should understand the need to feel loved and important.

The romance in this picture feels very realistic and that is actually refreshing given the last few “romance” movies I have seen. They have problems, they have outside forces telling them one thing or another, and they have their own issues to work through, but they try things out and give it their best shot.

Both Mbatha-Raw and Parker give great performances. Driver is a straight up bitch, but it all fit for her character. Hell, I might not have completely hated her by the end either.

Overall, a good romance/drama. And uhh, the songs are decent too. I guess. (It won’t win).

By all accounts, I don’t think I will be able to see any other movies up for Best Foreign Film before the Academy Awards. Sad face.

I only had Ida before thanks to Netflix. Now I have Leviathan. And it won a Golden Globe, so it has something going for it.

That and a sweet sweet name. The country it comes from is okay.

Wanna know how I know this movie is Russian?

Leviathan is a story about land dispute. Because if anything, Russia doesn’t have enough land, causing the citizens to fight over it.

Kolya (Aleksey Serebryakov) is a down on his luck guy. He is good as a mechanic, his “Friends” in the community use him for favors, but it is too small of a town to really make a living there. But he has been there for a long time, has a sweet house with a lot of land on the coast.

His wife (Elena Lyadova) seems pretty distant, and his only child, a son from another woman (Sergey Pokhodaev) is kind of a dick and an average student.

But the mayor (Roman Madyanov) of the town is trying to take his land. Quite successfully! Using some legal loopholes, he is getting it for quick. Kolya is trying to fight it through the law, and through appeals, but he is losing over and over again. It seems like everyone is out to get Kolya and they all just want to use him.

And well, that is kind of true. Basically.

Also with Vladimir Vdovichenkov as a hot shot lawyer from Moscow coming to save his buddy.

Wanna know why I know this movie is called Leviathan?
(I actually have no idea.)

Leviathan is one of those movies that has a boring ass plot description, but one that ends up being far more interesting than it has any right to be.

Again, it is about a dude fighting a legal battle to just keep his home. But only kind of about that. It is about that and people treating him like shit and shit keep hitting him in the face. Literally!

No, not literally.

But still. A lot of fucked up things happen by the end, but even better is that it all makes sense by the end too. The plot points all wrap up! We aren’t left wondering anything! Yay complete films!

I mean. It has its boring. But it definitely tells a pretty good story while doing so. Glad it just wasn’t another super boring foreign film.

Let’s start with the obvious.

Literally everyone at this point knows that Fifty Shades Of Grey started out as some sort of Twilight fan fiction. People liked it, she changed the characters names a bit, gave them some new jobs and that was about it. Literally even the setting is the same. When watching, I could easily imagine Edward and Bella in each scene. The mannerisms, whatever. Yeah.

Either way. That is besides the point.

The other thing I heard about Fiddy Shades is that it is a poor portrayal of BDSM subculture and what this movie really promotes is sexual abuse and lies. Oh good. Perfect date night film then. There are also issues with the rating itself (which I will get to later) and apparently the director and book author argued a bunch on set.

I’m sorry, I can’t hear your criticisms over these chiseled abs and bare skin.

Anastasia Steele (Dakota Johnson) and Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan) met under unusual circumstances. She interviewed him at his company because he was going to be giving the commencement speech at her graduation. He is a billionaire. She is a senior English Lit major who is doing the interview for her sick roommate (Eloise Mumford). But he sees something in her and she mostly just thinks he is hot.

However, she is also very inexperienced. Despite having average looks, she is a virgin, saving herself for the one she really wants. Fuck this pretense. Christian wants to spank dat ass, and Anastasia doesn’t know what she wants, outside of the fact that she wants Christian’s body too.

So he gives her a taste. Like, a dick taste. But does that get her hooked? No, not really. She knows about what he really wants, and he makes it perfectly clear. He has a contract, things up for negotiation, everything laid out on the table. But she doesn’t want a contract, she wants their relationship instead to be confusing and “normal” where things can happen without rules. In fact, the whole film she just leads him on instead, refusing to sign the contract, not because she doesn’t want to, but because she keeps going back and forth. Not that changing your mind is bad. But refusing to come to a decision for weeks is kind of annoying.

Also featuring the Grey-clan, like Marcia Gay Harden, Max Martini, and Rita Ora. I have been told the last person is a singer.

Grey isn’t the only color in the movie. Unless Red is a shade of Grey. I don’t know, I don’t “see color.”

First of all, I am definitely disappointed in the R rating. Boooo. You might wonder why? The only way it can go higher is the dreaded NC-17 rating, which major movie chains refuse to show! Only indie art house theaters! Well, obviously, an erotic novel for adults only with very graphic sex scenes should be that rating in movie form. But also, this was like, our ONE chance for the major movie chains to change their opinion. They know this is going to make money. They wouldn’t refuse a film version when the book was so hyped up. They would have caved and maybe we would have gotten more NC-17 movies in theaters in the future.

But yeah, missed opportunity.

As for the abuse part? I looked very hard. Christian never does anything to Anna that she does not agree to. Never. Sometimes it takes convincing, but real adult people are allowed to discuss things. Yes he is more experienced, but like in real relationships there will usually always be someone more experienced. If convincing someone to try new things sexually is abusive behavior, then man, I’d imagine most relationships are abusive.

At the same time, this doesn’t really put a good spotlight on the BDSM community, known for being very high on communication. Why not? Christian follows their rules pretty well it seems (despite Anna’s best attempts to muck things up), but they also made him an abused figure in his past who came from a crackhead mom. So they are also painting the picture that BDSM is “not right” and clearly it is due to bad experiences in his youth. Shit, looks like they are also trying to burn all bridges here.

Anyways, Dakota Johnson was very believable in her role, I guess, even if she is stupidly annoying the entire time. The character’s actions rarely make sense to me, but she acted great in it. Dornan had the serial killer look down I guess, but I thought he overacted his part.

In all reality, I thought the movie was okay for the most part. But the ending was down right terrible. Terrible in a “Hey, fuck you guys, you don’t get a complete story in this one, you have to watch two more movies to get a complete story.”

Cliffhangers are one thing. They can work well for a series. But if that series can’t even complete a fucking basic arc, then it is just filler pointlessness. I don’t know anything about how the rest of this story goes, but if it is like the first one, then I can safely assume it probably should have just been one movie and not fucking three.

Also, there were no dicks in the movie. Some bush on both ends, and maybe the start of a shaft once. This is what I assume you all really wanted to know.

I was just as shocked as everybody else that The Book of Life and The Lego Movie didn’t get nominated for Best Animated Film. But also, I did give the former a 2 and the latter a 3, only. The two I gave 4’s made it and the other was a 3. So clearly, I was really on my game with the Academy.

But how was I to suspect that some foreign animated films would make it?! Crazy talk!

The Tale of Princess Kaguya is a Studio Ghibli movie, which tends to mean quality. I didn’t even know they did movies without Miyazaki, but there ya go!

I would describe this animation style as “moving painting.”

The story begins with an old bamboo cutter (James Caan), being in the forest, cutting bamboo. He sees a glowing plant, and from it drops a tiny little princess girl that can fit in his hands. Shit that’s weird. He obviously brings it back home to his wife (Mary Steenburgen), and bam. That tiny thing turns into a regular sized baby. And hey, his wife suddenly has milk inducing boobies!

That stuff is crazy. The baby grows quickly too, so the local village kids nickname her Little Bamboo. Soon, the princess (Chloe Grace Moretz) is running around with all the kids, singing songs, playing games, going on adventures. Her best friend is Sutemaru (Darren Criss).

But her dad takes her away from the forest to the city. They get a big house with clothes and someone to teach her how to be a real princess (Lucy Liu). That means being a super obedient girl, basically. Seen but not heard. Never showing emotion. Never doing fun things. Terrible.

Kaguya doesn’t want that, no matter how pretty she is. She will avoid suitors at all cost and fight the good fight. You go Glen Kaguya.

Excitingly, the art matches the emotion really fucking well.

The story is actually based on a famous Japanese folk tale, The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter. Clearly western influence made them focus more on the princess than the boring old wood cutter. It is very close to the main narrative, but in all honesty, this version is probably way better. I see there are tons of movies based on this tale already, mostly live action. But again, this is one is probably way better.

Because this one was fucking awesome!

Like, incredibly. I talked about how crazy The Wind Rises, using “Traditional 2D Animation” but feeling like a 3D CGI wonderland. This one instead felt like a living painting, like I was watching an artist make each individual scene in front of me. Just super quick. I guess actors were hanging around too to talk as the characters. The metaphor isn’t perfect, but the animation is.

What is this Unbroken thing? It isn’t Unbreakable or Unstoppable or Unthinkable. It is Unbroken? What does that even mean? I didn’t even know there was a word to describe something as not-broken. I just assumed it was the general state unless otherwise noted as broken.

English is weird.

My first thought seeing the trailer was Oscar Bait. My second thought was, wait, haven’t I already seen this movie? It was also based on a true story, during WW2, prisoner of war who got abused by a Japanese man but never gave up and overcame great struggle? Yeah. That was The Railway Man. This is just the same movie but a bigger budget and more CGI right?

Oh. That one was British and this is American. That’s the difference.

Yep, just replace him with a lad instead of a boy and it’s the same scenes.

Unbroken is the “true story” of Louie Zamperini (Jack O’Connell), an Italian-American hero or something like that. As a kid he got picked on for his nationality, so he had to run away a lot. Well, he got fast at running, noticed by his better brother Pete (Alex Russell). Next thing you know, he is on the track team, breaking records, and hey, even going to run for the Olympics.

Then boom, World War II. Next thing you know, Olympics are canceled, and Louie now a good boy wants to join the war effort. He gets to fly in planes, and protect us from Japan!

Then his plane gets shot down and they crash land in the Pacific. Fuck. A couple dudes, some sharks, no food, and nothing that can save them. Just like the Life of Pi, basically. And of course, as the trailers tell you, they eventually get found after a long ass time. Just by Japanese soldiers. So it is off to prisoner work camps for them, far from home, to be abused and treated like animals!

Boo animals!

Also featuring Domhnall Gleeson, Garrett Hedlund, Jai Courtney, Finn Wittrock and of course Takamasa Ishihara!

Run like no one is watching.

Look, I know Angelina Jolie directed it. And I know parts of it were written by the Coen brothers. But man, there was some questionable choices throughout this film for me.

First of all, the what felt like terrible CGI when they had the plane scenes bugged me. The film had some overall filter on it that got on my nerves. Was a subtle annoyance.

But also it had a lot of good things. Jack O’Connell was pretty good, although his accent could have used work. I enjoyed the scene where everyone beat the crap out of him. The backstory pre-war was entertaining for me. Some emotional stuff in the middle.

However, I think overall I liked The Railway Man more, because that confrontation between the the prisoner and his torturer were intense and a great build up. It was a bit more boring, technically, but it felt a bit more real and a lot less cheesy. This one didn’t have a great build up, but instead just your typical worse and worse until they are in a terrible camp, not just a bad camp.

In particular, near the end when main character finds extra strength despite being a beaten prisoner so that he can lift up wood high? That might as well have had cheese falling out of everyone’s ears. It made me cringe and think it was some ridiculous American power fantasy. I didn’t find it inspirational, I found it laugh able. Because up to that point too, the movie felt enjoyable enough for a 3 maybe. Even with all that time spent on the boat.

But then they went full Oscar bait or something. And I just had to shake my head.

Foreign movies are so hard for me to finally get to watch, but there are sooo many of them that I have to see for the Oscars. Booo. And it isn’t even just things nominated for Best Foreign Film! We have things that are foreign nominated for best Animated Film (which I will review in the next week), and we have Two Days, One Night, of which had Marion Cotillard nominated for Best Actress.

Best Actress! My weakest category! And this was literally the last one I had to watch to get all of the acting categories down. So of course I made this a priority outside of all the foreign movies.

So I grabbed my tissue, and prepared for the worst. After all, foreign movie nominated for Oscar and straight drama? I assume someone is going to make me cry.

Even the ice cream looks depressing.

Sandra (Marion Cotillard) has an issue. She might be losing her job. She works at a plant that only has 17 employees. They make solar panels for whoever wants solar panels. Sweet gig I guess. But Sandra has been having some emotional and psychological issues lately. She had a nervous breakdown and took time away from her job, spending time at home with her kids and husband.

But the company employees have found out they totally don’t need her at the job. Everyone overall works roughly 3 hours more a week, but they still get the job done, and it isn’t a big deal that she isn’t there. They can do it with 16. So the higher ups put it to a vote for the remaining workers. They either vote to keep Sandra as a member of their company, or they vote to receive their yearly bonus. Yep, they put her against about 1,000 euros. That’s pretty hardcore.

So it comes to no surprise when the vote goes 14-2 against her. However, they say that the company man being at the vote and it not being secretive influenced it heavily. They convince them that Monday there has to be a re-vote, a secret ballot, without outside influences in the room. So Sandra has the weekend to find her co-workers, appeal to their better nature, and hope they will keep her around too.

Also with Fabrizio Rongione, Catherine Salee, Olivier Gourmet, and Shaun Weiss. And obviously more, but some people have smaller roles or only one scene.

Trying to save your job while being silently judged. That is probably worse than sad ice cream.

Great acting alert, great acting alert!

Fuck. Cotillard did so good. I haven’t seen her in most things, like a lot of people, but I was super impressed. She lost a lot of work and constantly felt like she was on the verge of another break down. She was also incredibly realistic. And a good person. Which made her easily relatable. Her heart break and her sadness was our heartbreak and our sadness. The film itself is such a simple concept yet entirely captivating. It helps that they present you with such a simple goal too. She just needs to convince 7 coworkers to vote for her on Monday. Simple as that.

She doesn’t want to be an inconvenience, she doesn’t want to guilt trip people too much. After all, other people have their own problems and families to look over and had plans for that money. They don’t deserve to lose their bonus, yet she also doesn’t deserve to lose her job. It is real, it is relevant, and it is has a lot of gripping human drama. Man. Those French/Belgian people really knew how to connect to me on levels I didn’t even expect before.

Fuck, I guess I should watch The Immigrant now?

A Most Violent Year is one of those films I tried really hard to say before I made my best of 2014 list, because I had heard a lot of good things about it.

And uhh. That is all I can say about this movie. I mean, I might have gotten it confused with A Most Wanted Man, which became incredibly average despite also hearing great things about it. Shit, I hope this doesn’t go super average.

Super average would describe most of my dinners. Non-violent super average dinners.

There are 365 days in a year and if you killed 365 people in a year, that would be pretty fucking impressive. Like, totally psychopathic or insane, but impressive. That is not at all what this movie is about.

It is about Abel Morales (Oscar Isaac), just your average business man. It is the early 1980’s and he is the owner of Standard Oil, a heating oil company in New York City. He has big plans for his business and is working on getting a new location for his plant, right on the river. This will give him access to all the oils, allowing him to get better prices and you know, make more money!

But his trucks are being robbed at gunpoint. People are hijacking his vehicles, taking the oil and costing him thousands each time. And he has no idea who is doing it. At the same time he is being hounded by his “friend” the District Attorney (David Oyelowo), investigating him and others for price fixing, tax evasion, and the normal business stuff. This bad press in the news, plus the dangerousness of being a driver is leading his business down a dark path. The bank doesn’t want to help him get his new place anymore! And…and…he might lose it all!

Plus his wife (Jessica Chastain) really wants him to go after the culprits hard. Maybe kill them all. But he doesn’t want to do that. That would be most violent.

So Abel has to go to his competitors one by one to find out who is fucking him over and threatening his family. All while his drivers (Elyes Gabel) start carrying guns in their cabs and his lawyer (Albert Brooks) has no idea on how to help him. Oy vey, what a year.

And he still has to come home to give foot rubs at the end of the day.

A Most Violent Year is a hard movie to describe. It is like a mob movie, but definitely doesn’t involve the mob to any large extent. The main character is hard to really wrap your head around. You know he is definitely not “clean” in the ongoings of the business, but as to what specifically he did in the past they never really see.

Given he is our protagonist, you just have to assume you should root for him and not against him, given the lack of history. He wants that place for his company? Then by golly, I hope he gets it!

I actually liked Jessica Chastain a lot in this movie, playing the shit out of the housewife role who totally can control her husband and know everything going on in his company. The kind of woman who has a plan for everything and knows how to get things done. Was very subtle and very nice.

It is also the kind of movie I think I can re visit. And by that, I wouldn’t mind a sequel. Just not a direct one. Maybe one set ten years later, in a much less violent year, to see how the choices made influenced their lives. I would totally watch that movie.

I am definitely really late getting to see Dear White People. Hell, I didn’t even know what kind of movie it was going in to it. I literally thought this was a documentary.

Well, despite being a real movie and not a documentary, it took me too long to see it because clearly this movie was made for me. As a white person, having this title means that it is like a letter to me and other white people. That’s good. Gives me something to relate to right off the back.

Basically, this is almost the exact opposite of For Colored Girls.

If they think that review is terrible, they should see my review for Jane Eyre!

Dear White People takes place at an IVY league school that is undergoing some change. There are specific houses that individuals can live in and some have developed themes. Some are party houses, some are for business type folks, and then there is the Armstrong/Parker house, predominantly black.

The administration (Peter Syvertsen) wants to make houses a random process and mess up these themes to induce diversity throughout their mostly white campus. Sam White (Tessa Thompson) believes it is just an attempt to quell the social rustlings of the black students, making it harder for them to organize and protest. Sam also runs a radio show called Dear White People, calling out race issues along with appropriate music, and wrote her own book. She is pretty good at race issues.

She surprisingly wins the election for House Head against her ex Troy Fairbanks (Brandon P Bell), son of the dean (Dennis Haysbert). The elitist type.

Our other main characters are Lionel Higgins (Tyler James Williams), a gay black man journalist/writer who doesn’t feel like he belongs to any group, Coco Conners (Teyonah Parris), a student video blogger who is willing to create drama to rise to the starlight, and Kurt Fletcher (Kyle Gallner), son of the President who feels untouchable and organizes the hip-hop/blackface party.

Also featuring Brittany Curran, Marque Richardson, Malcolm Barrett, and Justin Dobies.

I found him. I found the white person!

Dear White People is an increasingly rarer satire comedy drama. Although the film is clearly fictionalized, it is inspired by actual parties around the united states and actual discrimination that people go through. It presents a lot of good arguments, including lots of social science theory at almost every opportunity. It also showcases clear examples of how the world works in the film.

But also, also, it makes it very clear this is a complicated issue with no clear solution. The entire world is not just black and white (heh). Every person is different with different experiences and what they think and say in public might not reflect their actual feelings. Sometimes people do what they are expected to do.

As for the acting, Tessa Thompson does a great job carrying this movie. She was very believable in her role and is clearly knowledgeable on the talking points. The other lead, Tyler James Williams? Well shit, his fro was so distracting I couldn’t even recognize him as the best part of the short lived Go On. His journey in this movie is the most interesting, followed closely behind Tessa’s, but more importantly is that they are both different and very realistic.

The only thing I could really want more out of this movie is even more issues brought up, or even more perspectives thrown into the mix. But hey, they might need material for a sequel.