March 20, 2018

Black Panther: A Perspective

I haven’t been motivated enough by any of the recent movies to add to the discussion. Black Panther has changed that. Although not a revolutionary film, elements of it speak to me profoundly.How does Black Panther paint the African-American portrait? How does it interact with other films from Africa and the African diaspora?
March 26, 2010

Slumdog Millionaire (Danny Boyle, 2008)

In Slumdog Millionaire, a disenfranchised wants to prove he did not cheat after participating in India’s “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?”
March 22, 2010

City of God (Fernando Meirelles, 2002)

A reviewer compared City of God to Goodfellas (Martin Scorsese, 1990) and many parallels could be made between the two. As they both fall into the genre of gangster films, they depict violence in a raw, uninhibited way, in a realist fashion. City of God, with its documentary-style aesthetic—camera shakes, voice-over narration, etc., uses that realism to emphasize its story’s […]
June 9, 2013

Graceland (Ron Morales, 2012)

Graceland is a dark and dirty moral tale of desperation and revenge, denouncing corruption. Yet, it isn’t sophisticated enough to deal with the subject.
March 28, 2013

Sunny (Hyeong-Cheol Kang, 2011)

Sunny is at once a coming-of-age film, with detective elements, feminine-pop aesthetics, fleshed-out characters and intricate narrative elements.