Papillon: A Man Escaped
A petty criminal convicted of murder (wrongly, he claimed), Henri “Papillon” Charrière published his story in 1970, captivating French readers with his account of...
Crazy Rich Asians: Singapore Swing
Among us Asian-Americans, the anticipation for Crazy Rich Asians has been something like what African-Americans felt for Black Panther. The difference is, African-Americans have...
BlacKkKlansman: Undercover Brother
During this decade’s great wave of African-American filmmaking, one figure has been curiously and conspicuously absent: Spike Lee. He has always been bedeviled by...
Spy Partners
A middling entry in the genre of comic spy thrillers, The Spy Who Dumped Me is enlivened considerably by its unorthodox pairing of lead...
Nothing’s Fair in Eighth Grade
While we’re all taking the temperatures of the summer blockbusters and examining their contents for possible clues as to the direction of Hollywood, this...
Blindspotting: By the Bay
They say three makes it a trend, so here we have three movies in Black Panther, Sorry to Bother You, and Blindspotting, which comes...
M.I.6
Watching Mission: Impossible — Fallout made me feel like I was seeing a 56-year-old man’s midlife crisis dialing 911. I can’t be the only...
Sorry to Bother You: White Courtesy Phone
Much as I hate the Trump presidency, I love the wave of African-American satire in response to it. After the delirious highs of Get...
Whitney: Didn’t She Almost Have It All
Sometimes I write up obituaries of famous people on this site, and when they’ve died in unfortunate circumstances, I get angry responses. “What an...
Animal World: House of Cards
I just saw this Chinese film called Animal World at AMC Grapevine Mills, and while it's not much good as a movie, it poses...
