Malcolm and Marie (2021) is the latest portrait of a white director and writer implementing universality behind the ruse of diversity, or what I call cinematic blackface. We encounter the couple after Malcolm’s (John David Washington) directorial debut. Marie (Zendaya) is overtly upset; an emotion made conspicuous as she smokes and makes Malcolm (unbaked) Mac…
Category: Movie Reviews
A womanist analysis of mainstream and indie films.
American Skin, A Black Female Perspective (Spoilers)
When I think about American Skin, I think of those tarred and feathered, the black bodies dangled over scorching hot flames, their limbs dipped and torched, their “American” skin charred black. This skin, which too often acts as wrapping paper for the murdered, is America. Director, writer and producer Nate Parker depicts America in the…
One Night in Miami, A Black Female Perspective
I was uncharacteristically excited to see Regina King’s One Night in Miami. This excitement was motivated by an opportunity to support both a black director and black screenwriter. My overall resistance to plays as films remains as does the America’s employment of seemingly black ambiances to propagate anti-black ideals. I have abridged my thoughts into…
Bad Hair, A Black Female Perspective
Justin Simien’s most recent creative effort Bad Hair espouses the horror/science fiction genre with race commentary. The film follows Annie, a black female protagonist who wants to make something of herself in the vain media subculture of an anti-black world. When the corporate plantation receives a new overseer, the stakes of Annie’s upward mobility become…
Black is King, A Black Female Perspective
Beyonce’s Black is King delivers an aesthetically pleasing cultural collage. From waterfalls to regal braiding, the film captures the pure beauty of black people who occupy both central and peripheral spaces in the film. The music also engenders a Pan-Africanist sound that melds the diaspora together in a melody as diverse a the colors of…
Little Fires Everywhere, A Black Female Perspective
For those unfamiliar with Harriet Jacob’s text Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, there is a part of the narrative when Linda Brent, the enslaved protagonist, opts for motherhood autonomous from her overzealous slave master. In a seminar course, my black female classmates, in tandem with my white male professor, vehemently argued that…
The Photograph, A Black Female Perspective
I saw The Photograph only days after completing Imani Perry’s Looking for Lorraine. Perry’s text holds hands with Alice Walker’s essay Looking for Zora, as both black women take on the archival pilgrimage to integral pages of the black past. The Photograph features a similar journey, as Mae (Issa Rae), a museum curator, falls in…
Just Mercy, A Review
Just Mercy begins the new year with the latest African embodiment of the American mantra: “if you work hard, you can achieve impossible things.” The film, based off Bryan Stevenson’s book of the same title, delineates an abridged version of the trials and tribulations encountered and overcome by a young lawyer who confronts a corrupt…
Bombshell? B!tch Please, A Black Female Perspective
This review will be uncharacteristically short. My conciseness results not from a lack of things to say, but from a prominent effort to not grant more attention to an undeserving source. Bombshell highlights former Fox chair Roger Ailes’ demise. Ailes, who, for years, objectified white female journalists, seizing their dignity for airtime, easily embodies the…
Queen and Slim, A Black Female Perspective
Queen and Slim begins with a dearth blacks in America have become accustomed to—the dearth, or violent obscurity, in representation. British actors as African-Americans proves even more jarring in a film that repeatedly references the characters as “African Americans.” Neither lead fits this description, so the label becomes a mask, a costume that the lead…
Whispers of a Womanist 