Interview with Craig Atkinson, Co-producer/Cinematographer of Detropia
The next time you’re out of town let the locals know you’re from Detroit. You’ll get sympathetic remarks from people who think it’s such a “shame” what’s happening in the city. I’d argue most people aren’t well educated about the conditions that have led to the city’s decline, however. Detropia, a documentary currently being screened in select theate...[Read More]
Movie Review: People Like Us
It turns out that men have daddy issues too. The premise of the new film People Like Us is pretty simple. Like many movies about family, it starts with a death. Jerry Harper, music producer/ramblin’ man/eternal hippie, dies and leaves instructions for his estranged son, Sam (Chris Pine), to go to an apartment complex and take care of the strangers who live there. Turns out these people are S...[Read More]
Dear White People: A Reason to Return to the Theater
Never mind the group-specific title. Dear White People is a movie we can all be excited about. Billing itself “a satire about being a black face in a very white place,” Dear White People follows the events leading up to a race riot at a prestigious, predominately white university through the perspectives of four, very different, black students. “While the script was culled from my own college expe...[Read More]
Movie Review: Snow White and the Huntsman
The only similarity between Snow White and the Huntsman and the Disney tale with which you’re probably familiar is that both start with the words: “Once Upon a Time.” On the other side of that phrase lies a kingdom where men are mere bystanders against the forces that reign supreme: beauty and dark magic, wielded dangerously by bad-ass women. Evil queen Ravenna (Charlize Theron) is a man-hat...[Read More]
Movie Review: Red Tails
The inherent issue with having an all-black cast is mainstream society will label Red Tails a “black” movie. This would be a grave disservice. The story of the Tuskegee Airmen, or the 332nd Fighter Group of the United States Army Air Corps, is an integral part of American history. Because of their successes, World War II could not have been won, therefore making Red Tails a movie about the freedom...[Read More]
Movie Review: Joyful Noise
I’ll admit it: When I saw the ubiquitous trailer for Joyful Noise, I thought, this movie came out 10 years ago. It was called Sister Act. Then I thought. Wait – maybe it was called The Fighting Temptations, the God-awful 2003 movie about another small-town choir hoping to win a big competition. I’m happy to report, very quickly into the movie I learned the similarities between those fi...[Read More]
Movie Review: The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975
The new film The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 examines the Black Power Movement in the US through the eyes of Swedish journalists. Piecing together footage primarily from Swedish Television archives, this fascinating documentary seeks to lay historical context to the racially turbulent period in America from 1967 to 1975. Opening in 1967, the year prior to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassinati...[Read More]