Just Mercy
Reproductive justice. Climate justice. Food justice. Social justice. Append the word “justice” to any other word and you’ve got a ready-made brand platform for niche activism. As cultural forces shape…
Black Lives Matter
The Last Black Man in San Francisco
At the end of the day, we’re all just looking for a place to call home. Movies have long wrestled with this sentiment and not just in a physical sense….
A Hero Ain’t Nothin’ But a Sandwich
Politicians, journalists and experts rarely agree, but they have all named the current opioid situation a plague. It’s an appropriate word, with historical and biblical connotations; in every generation, our…
If Beale Street Could Talk
Barry Jenkins and Damien Chazelle both directed Oscar-nominated movies this year. The last time that happened was in 2017 when Chazelle’s La La Land was mistakenly announced as the Best…
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
My Spider-Man was the 1981 “Spider-Friends” version, complete with invented sidekicks, incomprehensible Saturday morning subplots, shoddy animation, and a little dog too (spoiler: they were all killed off by a…
Claudine
“I have known this woman all my life,” Diahann Carroll writes in her autobiography.* “We grew up together in the same neighborhood.” Lest someone might interpret that statement as metaphorical,…
Sapphire
“We’re all the children of God,” a black sophisticate remarks to her boyfriend, after he has interacted with the police. “Forget it.” The exchange is brief — the actor isn’t…
Black Panther
I didn’t expect to feel tears stream down my face so shortly into Black Panther, but within the first few minutes of the film, I was already impacted heavily. In…
Mudbound
As a child, like many others, I loved to play in the mud. We had a “sandpile” next to our barn that was about 25% sand with the rest dirt,…
Latest Podcasts
The Irishman
Christmas movies are overrated. Why not spend the holidays with a film full of sociopaths instead? That was Netflix’s gamble when they released Martin Scorsese’s latest offering on their streaming…
Parasite
As protests spring up worldwide and economic populism becomes the defining politic of the moment, it was only a matter of time before a film tapped into the zeitgeist. That…
Joker
No film in recent memory has been as polarizing as Joker. A scroll through Rotten Tomatoes reveals a spectrum of reactions ranging from the highest praise of the year to…
Booksmart
Booksmart has been on our radar since its release in May. With a 97% Rotten Tomatoes score, it’s one of the best-reviewed films of the year. But now, it’s our…
Once Upon a Time In Hollywood
The ninth film from Quentin Tarantino is now playing, and it’s filled to the brim with everything you love or hate about his movies. When Once Upon a Time In…
Avengers: Endgame
Eleven years ago, Iron Man changed comic book movies forever. Not only was the movie great, it was the beginning of a journey through the Marvel Cinematic Universe, with each…
