Film & TV

There are enough allusions to the star’s life in this tale for a younger audience to be intrigued.  References to her great affection for “Papa” Hemingway are well founded.  Ava made three films based on his stories: The Killers with Burt Lancaster, The Snows of Kilmanjairo with Gregory Peck, and The Sun Also Rises with Humphrey Bogart, forming a fast friendship with the author.  Mazar’s free-wheeling character defends her “Papa’s” philosophy that “it’s the castration of desire that is indecent.”

This YouTube original documentary is a harrowing look at the exploitation of young women who are forcibly pushed into marriage by their families, many as young as 13.  Out of indifference or ignorance or economic necessity, their elders sell or surrender their female offspring to the demands of the greater society.  Rukhshanda Naz has spent her life working on behalf of women and the prevailing view in society that women’s place is “in the home or the grave.” 

“My hope is that the documentary inspires its viewers to reflect on the places and rituals (comic shops and otherwise) that have given them a sense of belonging, as my comic shop did for me,” Desiato said in a statement. And to the extent that the movie prompted me to reflect on my own experiences at a comic shop, it’s successful. The problem is that reflection isn’t necessarily the most engaging response to elicit from a viewer.

Her philanthropic legacy didn’t make the cut – aside from a few visual footnotes just before final credits roll. Those footnotes touch on her charitable giving to black colleges, social services and activism with the NAACP. While viewers will enjoy the series, I want them to learn that Walker didn’t just live a life of hard-won opulence. She exemplified black women’s generosity. Walker distinguished herself on a philanthropic landscape dominated by white people.

U.S. movie theaters have closed nationwide as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, turning dark nearly all of the country's 40,000-plus screens in an unprecedented shutdown. With most of Hollywood's March and April releases already postponed, the Walt Disney Co. on Tuesday also cleared out its May releases as well, including Marvel's Black Widow. The largest chains had tried to remain open even as Hollywood postponed its upcoming release plans and guidelines for social distancing steadily diminished the recommended size of crowds.

A 2D cutout of a lamb spins down onto a plain green screen while the narrator says: “It’s a lamb.” The same thing happens twice more. Then the whole sequence repeats again, only this time, the narrator says “One, two, three,” as each lamb lands. It’s boring. It’s repetitive. But when the same babies who watched Baby Einstein were shown this, their eyes tracked the arrival of each lamb, suggesting that they were engaged and following it.

In examining the daunting reality we face every day, we consider the journey of the monster who perpetuates it. And when we consider the journey of this monster from beginning to end, we see how the nightmare unfolds. It’s common for us to see someone like a psychopath (Jojo Rabbit) or a sociopath (The Irishman) and trace their history back to a point or a series of points of trauma. Without this confluence of events, they may not have turned out to be as destructive as they are. They experience hardship at an early, tender time, and thus their worldview is tainted from then on.

Parasite is the best movie of the year, and Joker is a close second. Still, it’s hard to imagine the Academy resisting Quentin Tarantino’s exquisite plunge into 1969 Hollywood. The movie is catnip for voters. Plus, Parasite is destined to get its due in other categories. The screenplay for Parasite is one of the greatest original scripts in recent memory. It has a dazzling, Shakespearean depth. Quentin Tarantino’s screenplay is flawed (especially that unacceptable ending, which flirts with canceling out the significance of everything that leads up to it), but the vision he expressed on the page merits recognition.