BLACK PANTHER: The latest stupid-hero movie is upon us -- and breaking records, of course

The difference this time is that the schlock is in black-face, which does make a nice change from the usual schlock in white-face (or, as per Wonder Woman, schlock in pseudo-feminist-face). Still, schlock is schlock. And, as a good friend of mine who, after hearing all the plaudits from amazed critics and so rushed off to see the film on opening day, pointed out to me: "It's a children's movie, for god's sake." Which does makes one wonder about the destabilization of our increasingly idiotic critical establishment.

Oh, the movie scores it points about racial inequality-and-so-on. But since it is all about having and using super-powers, so what? This does not make the film anything approaching "serious." There are some nice moments along the way, including a lovely comedic performance from Letitia Wright (as our hero's sister), and the finale did move me more than I expected. For that I credit the movie's courage in allowing a major character (Michael B. Jordan, above, the best thing in the film) to represent unalloyed black anger turned crazy and near-suicidal in the face of centuries of injustice.

Overall though, the film is too long, too obvious and too repetitive. Chadwick Boseman, above, is better seen in just about anything else (don't miss him as James Brown in Get on Up). The rest of the starry cast come through as expected but are unable to rise above the second-rate and second-hand material. Well, what do you want? It's Marvel, for fuck's sake. (And, no, DC ain't any better). This will be the last stupid-hero movie that TrustMovies bothers to view or review.

BLACK PANTHER, running two-and-one-quarter hours, is playing all over. Click here, if you must, to find a theater near you. For an antidote to this nonsense, I recommend you try Strong Island, streaming now on Netflix and nominated for the Best Documentary Oscar.

Amateur night for satire and fun -- Kevin Willmott's DESTINATION: PLANET NEGRO!

There are enough clever ideas and saucy dialog in the new comedy from Kevin Willmott (Chi-Raq and CSA: The Confederate States of America) that one wishes the actual movie experience were better than it is. There is an amateurishness in DESTINATION: PLANET NEGRO! that goes beyond the fact that the film intends to spoof the old and often silly space-travel movies from the 1950s (do you recall Rocketship X-M?). Instead, there is something amateur in the entire execution of this film that keeps holding it back from being as all-out enjoyable and funny as it should be.

Mr. Willmott (shown at left), who wrote, produced and directed the film (and also turns in one of its better performances) is a smart fellow, all right, and his satire/spoof of how were were back in the day (the 1930s, when this black-and-white film begins) and our current decade (when it changes to "color," as someone so nicely puts it), has a lot of clever riffs on current and past people and events. What's missing is the kind of tonal consistency needed to make the satire zing and the performances sing. Some of the actors seem to be on different pages at the same time so that necessary connections, including performance style -- too broad, too laid-back -- are not being made. There is also a matter of the screenplay, which is awfully expository without being consistently funny or clever enough to compensate for this.

The film begins with a meeting of cream-of-the-crop black leaders in the 1930s (above) as they decide how the black race can better prosper, with an array of ideas being tossed about from back-to-Africa to revolution to finally leaving for a better place -- which turns out to be... Mars.

Yes! So the usual group of intrepid explorers man (and woman) up for the ride, which includes a rip-off of Robby the Robot (above, left), speaking in a voice and dialect that are more grating and less amusing than Willmott probably wanted. Where this group ends up is not quite the place it expected: It turns out to have time-traveled rather than space-traveled. But the return to earth some 80 years later gives Willmott the opportunity to talk about everything from politics and elections to music and fashion (the film's funniest line has to do with a theory of why the modern black man cannot keep his pants up around his waist).

Selling out and the venality of politics, then and now, comes into play, too, but interestingly enough, the film's most incisive and thoughtful points regard homosexuality and blacks, with a young actor named Trai Byers (above) the standout who gives the film a much-needed shot of professionalism and sex appeal with his several appearances.

It all comes out (mostly) all right, with a finale that is romantic, as well as a bit moving and charming and even history-changing -- usually a no-no in time-travel movies but evidently A-OK here. (That's Wes Studi, above, who adds the theme of additional "others" -- Mexican immigrants and Native Americans -- into the film.)

Made back in 2013 and having played a film festival or two in the intervening years, Destination: Planet Negro! is at last being distributed, via Candy Factory Films, beginning tomorrow, Friday, June 10, to VOD and Digital HD -- on all leading platforms.

Rick Famuyiwa's DOPE is smart, funny entertainment--with a necessary message

You'll know you're in good hands almost immediately as DOPE begins, sporting a bevy of definitions for the title word: drugs, a dumb person, and something that's good (as opposed to wack -- or maybe it's whack -- which is bad). That last definition may take you back to the parlance of the 1980s, a time period much treasured by the movie's leading young man, Malcolm (played with a fine combination of budding everything -- from sex appeal to intelligence to, yes, even maturity -- by Shameik Moore. Malcolm wasn't around in those "halcyon" 80s days, but he loves the music of that period, which has inspired him and his friends to create some more of it. The movie was written and directed by Rick Famuyiwa (the filmmaker is shown below), who, back in 1999 gave us the overpraised but still worthwhile The Wood. After several movies in between, Dope proves his best so far and by far.

Above all Dope is an entertainment -- not a bad level to which to aspire, particularly when the outcome is as entertaining as it is in this case. Mr. Famuyiwa's screenplay -- his dialog, narration, pacing, events depicted and in particular his understanding of the way the world works in the black ghettos of Los Angeles (the movie is set in Inglewood, California, a city TrustMovies lived in back in the late 1940s and early 50s and recalls rather fondly) -- is smart, often witty and whenever it gets preachy, it does so in a way that should make you smile, if not outright laugh. As a director, Famuyiwa seems to be trying some new stylistic tricks, most of which work pretty well. His speedy cutting between scenes, occasionally going back to show us what was left out, or substituting a bit of fantasy for reality all seem in service to telling his story in the most appropriate, cliche-free way.

The key to the movie's success lies in Famuyiwa's focusing on kids who are geeks and nerds, rather than the usual street kids with problems we most often see in movies about blacks and other "minorities." This allows us to enjoy a kind of "revenge of the nerds, black-style." For most white audiences, this will mean the opportunity to identify with these kids more easily than usual. The movie's keenest insight, however, may be that, to succeed, our hero must be both "street" and not. How he does this -- involving a successful pillar of the black community who acts as adviser and mentor to the kids (played with exquisite nuance by Roger Guenveur Smith) -- proves Dope's ace-in-the-hole, grounding the film in a sad reality, even as it teases and entertains us into such high spirits.

The supporting cast includes the likes of  Kimberly Elise as Malcolm's mom, Tony Revolori (above, right and everyone's favorite bellhop from The Grand Budapest Hotel), Zoë Kravitz (below, right) as the apple of Malcolm's eye, and Kiersey Clemons (above, left) as the lesbian high-schooler and gal pal, Diggy. As strong as the movie is concerning its hero, it is equally weak regarding most of the subsidiary characters, who are, for the most part, one dimensional. This does not destroy the film by any means but it makes it a long way from great. Yet, as I say, it's a smart entertainment, as well as a look at an under-served portion of the black community. And that, these days, is nothing to sneeze at.

From Universal Pictures and running 104 minutes, Dope hit the streets on DVD/Blu-ray/Digital HD yesterday, October 13--for rental or purchase.

Kathleen Collins' rediscovery LOSING GROUND inaugurates the FSLC series, Tell It Like It Is: Black Independents in New York, 1968–1986

A most interesting series of independent films made by black filmmakers in New York during the 18-year period between 1968 and 1986, TELL IT LIKE IT IS: Black Independents in New York, 1968–1986 should provide a nice walk down memory lane for some of us older folk, while giving younger film buffs the chance to see what was going on back then. This 25-program series includes certain landmarks of black cinema -- two of Spike Lee's early films; Bill Gunn's ahead-of-its-time vampire tale, Ganja and Hess (of which, if you've only see the original studio-released Jack-the-Ripper cut, you've not seen the real thing); and the famous interview with James Baldwin (shown above) found in I Heard It Through the Grapevine -- while also offering a lot of films and people of which even TrustMovies has not been aware. So take a look at the entire program by clicking here, and then make plans.

Kicking off this series, and in fact getting an entire week's theatrical run is LOSING GROUND, an evidently "lost" film which has now been rediscovered and is being given its first theatrical release since its creation 33 years ago. Another of those rediscovered movies brought to us by the ever-more-necessary distributor Milestone Films, this one, unfortunately, proves a real dud. One of the first feature films to be written and directed by a black woman, Kathleen Collins, below, who died prematurely at the age of 46, the movie certainly has some worthwhile themes, among them, the search for genuine feeling and experience (termed "ecstasy" by the screenwriter) by a closed-off philosophy professor, even as her successful artist husband is growing involved with an enchanting new woman.

The biggest problem with this film, and I suspect the major reason why it has not been seen, is that Ms Collins had no feeling -- none at all -- for something approaching real dialog. Everything sounds "written," and as good a cast as she had assembled, the actors were completely unable to bring that dialog to life. The film is full of intelligence and also the kind of exposition by which we know exactly what people are thinking and feeling because they constantly tell us -- and each other. This is simply not the way life happens.

Further, the filmmaker was unable -- probably due to that dialog, together with her own lack of film experience -- to get her actors to produce something approaching actual behavior. Every moment seems planned and executed by the book. I suspect Ms Collins kept a firm hand over everything, which barely allows anything to breathe. God knows the actors have all done much better work elsewhere.

Though billed as a comedy drama, there is nary a laugh in the entire proceedings (at least not an intentional one), and almost no real drama, except what is implicit in the situation Ms Collins had set up but failed to bring to life.

For the record, the leads are played by Seret Scott and Bill Gunn, as the wife and husband (shown three photos above); with Maritza Rivera (two photos above) as the attractive neighbor; Billie Allen (above, left) as Scott's actress/mother (she and Ms Scott share the film's most believable scene, where some actual "behavior" sneaks in); and Duane Jones (below) as an actor with whom Scott ends up doing a student film.

The movie opens today, Friday, February 6, at the Film Society of Lincoln Center's Walter Reade Theater and shows there or at its Francesca Beale Theater through Thursday, February 12. Click here for more information.

Nice try: Justin Simien's slow-paced look at race and class at college, DEAR WHITE PEOPLE

The characters in DEAR WHITE PEOPLE, every last one of them -- or nearly (a few seem not to have the smarts to consider such things) -- are almost desperate to discover their "place" in the world. While their current world consists of university life, they clearly have their eye set as well on the life to follow. Some of these folk are black, some are white, and some may be mixed race, but all are trying to figure out where they belong in terms of not just race but class. This is a terrific set-up for a modern-day, age-of-Obama movie, and I dearly wish that the writer/director Justin Simien had been able to do more with it.

The filmmaker, shown at left, has certainly provided an interesting array of characters -- mostly students, but a couple of administrators, too -- and given each their character "quest" and/or problem. The trouble comes when he tries mixing it all up. He doesn't seem to understand how to make a movie come to life. Instead he sees to it that all his characters, just about all the time, talk about race and class and what to do with or about them. Yet the dialog does not, shall we say, bubble. Instead it just sits there, sort of like Whit Stillman on a rare bad day. Or Spike Lee in his School Daze days, but without the pizazz. Nor do these characters seem to exist much beyond their "race" and "class" blather. That's what they're here for, and that's what they give us.

The timing and pacing are way off-kilter: slow and tired. After the screening I attended, a young woman who rode down in the elevator with me blamed this on the editing -- by Phillip J. Bartell, of the Eating Out series. Whatever you might think of those films, they certainly had no pacing problems, so perhaps the responsibility remains in Simien's hands. In any case, maybe ten minutes could profitably have been cut from this too-long movie, had someone possessed the balls to just tighten it up.

Among the cast there are a number of first-rate performers -- or at least some actors who look like they could be: Tessa Thompson (above) and Tyler James Williams (below, center) to name but two -- under better circumstances.

We see so few intelligent movies about race and class that I don't want to put this little movie down too harshly. It's worth viewing and arguing over, and I'll be interested to see what Simien does next.

Meanwhile Dear White People -- from Lionsgate & Roadside Attractions and running 100 minutes -- opened yesterday, October 17, in Atlanta, Los Angeles, New York City and Washington DC. Click here to see theaters and further playdates. 

Noel Calloway's LIFE, LOVE, SOUL: one of the most important family films of the year

It's easy to understand why LIFE, LOVE, SOUL (terrible title, but the film's quite good) was chosen to inaugurate the first annual Fatherhood Image Film Festival, which begins tomorrow -- Monday, August 5 -- up in Harlem. It's all about fatherhood: one that went missing and another that's about to begin. The movie may come off like an After School Special made full-length (its concerns are baldly stated, though they grab us nonetheless), but there is simply no denying the importance of the situation the movie creates nor the strength of the performances that bring that situation to pulsating life.

Life, Love, Soul gives us the story of a talented seventeen-year-old honor student named Roosevelt (Rose, for short), played by terrific newcomer Robbie Tate-Brickle (on poster, center, above), living an elegant lifestyle in what looks like a very solid family situation, who suddenly has all this -- and pretty much everything else -- taken from him when tragedy strikes. Raised by his mom and barely ever knowing his father, he must now move in with that man and his wife.

The film's writer, director, producer and music supervisor, Noel Calloway (at left), may not yet fully understand how to meld his story and theme into something seamless, rhythmic and interestingly paced. Right now, he's all about just getting it up there on the screen. And he's done that -- while giving his actors some prime situations to negotiate, along with some very good dialog to help them do it. No surprise: They all rise to the occasion like the pros they are.

The mother of Rose and his younger brother is played by the gorgeous and energizing Tami Roman (above, of Basketball Wives), and though her screen time is short, she's commands it completely. Chad Coleman essays the difficult role of Rose's estranged father, who seems made of equal parts guilt, anger and buried love. Mr Coleman (below, of The Walking Dead and The Wire) is, by turns, scary, moving, immediate and real.

A new school provides a couple of other helpful people in our boy's life: a girl in his class going through a somewhat similar situation (the sweet, smart Mia Michelle, shown below with Mr. Tate-Brickle), and a teacher/counselor who takes a strong interest in his new star student (Jamie Hector, from The Wire).

Special mention should also be made of the sole white member of the cast, Tamara Faye, shown below, with Mr. Coleman, who plays Rose's stepmother, Jennifer, with great affection, patience and caring. It is her character who helps negotiate for both her husband and his son that tricky road toward detente.

While watching this film, it struck me that, although it is mostly a story about blacks, whose history makes clear the importance of a father figure in the lives of its young, the tale could just as easily be told about white families, or Latinos or people from many different cultures. According to U.S. Census Bureau statistics noted in the press release sent out about the film, 24 million American children — one in three — live in a home without the presence of their biological father.

While fatherhood is a subject vital to Life, Love Soul, so are some other themes and ideas: the importance of education to our young, the meaning of good parenting, and the question/choice of abortion. That last one could have been addressed more strongly here. While we all want to see life as the choice, this works best when there are supportive parents already in place. Otherwise you can end up with something closer to the Precious scenario.

Still, there are enough excellent things to recommend about this movie that I hope New Yorkers will take a trip up to the MIST Harlem Theater, located at 46 W. 116th Street, New York City, where Life, Love, Soul has been tapped as the opener for the first annual Fatherhood Image Film Festival, tomorrow evening, Monday, August 8, at 8 p.m. From the RBC Film Group, the movie is also set for DVD release later this month, on August 27, at major retailers, and will also be available on iN Demand and all other digital outlets, including iTunes.

UNDEFEATED: high-school football immor-talized in the new doc by Lindsay & Martin

TrustMovies is no football fan. No sports fan at all, actually. He didn't even bother, much to the incredulity of the check-out girl at Trader Joe's the following morning, to watch this year's Super Bowl. So when he tells you how appreciative he is of (and impressed with) the new documentary UNDEFEATED from the filmmaking team of Daniel Lindsay and T.J. Martin, who also gave us that odd Beer Pong documentary, take this praise under advisement. That the movie was also surprisingly shortlisted and then included among the five nominees for a Best Documentary "Oscar" should not be overlooked, either.

Misters Lindsay and Martin (shown at left, with Lindsay on the right) have given us yet another one of those stories from the American South (The Help, anyone?) in which a white person enables a group of blacks to better succeed. Unlike The Help however, this film is a documentary and so it will be more difficult for naysayers to ignore or disparage it. Undefeated tells the story of a chubby volunteer football coach who determines to build a good football team at a school where none had formerly existed. How he knew that these kids could even play football, let alone become a viable and important team, is something of a mystery. Perhaps good coaches innately know these things. In any case, this one -- Bill Courtney, shown below (he's the white guy in blue) -- certainly did. And those football players -- and hell, the world we live in -- are better for it.

How all this happens is the stuff of Undefeated, and some extraordinarily wonderful but believable stuff it is, too. This is the kind of movie in which the filmmakers are able to get you so far inside their subjects, moment-to-thrilling-moment, that you find yourself holding your breath as one damn thing after another unfurls in front of you. And those things are not just football plays. You come to know these players, too -- particularly three of them: O.C., "Money" and Chavis -- surprisingly well. So well, in fact, that when you perceive something about to go amiss, you also know why and what will come of it. The filmmakers may have had extraordinary access to their subjects. More than that, though, is how they were able to capture so much, from tiny, intimate details of family life to the football games as they're being played. Talk about fly-on-the-wall verité: Here it is, in spades. And no pun intended.

Some of the scenes with the boys -- involving home life, scholarships, and each other -- are so moving that you may be surprised at the strength of your own reactions. And Coach Courtney is something else: a superlative made up of much smaller-scale positives. He's a good man, an honest man, and a smart man. "You think that football builds character?" he asks early on. "It does not. It reveals character." The film then proceeds to reveal a lot of that big C, whether it's showing us Courtney at his place of work (his coaching is just "volunteer," remember) or his place of worship (the religion here seems remarkably untainted by hypocrisy); Chavis (shown above), who has come from a youth penitentiary and has some major anger management issues; O.C., (shown at right in helmet, two photos above, with his coach), who must somehow keep his grade average afloat and test well for college; and "Money," the guy who tries the hardest, lives with his grandmother, and who, among other things, talks sweetly about his pet turtle.

As the football season moves along and initial loss turns to victory -- and more -- we're with the players and their coach every step of the way. Alternately moving, grueling, funny and inspiring, Undefeated is competing with one of my favorite film of the year, Pina, for Best Documentary (if that isn't apples against oranges, what is?). Another fine film is in the mix, too, If A Tree Falls, which tackles an incendiary subject and gives it a fine, fair and focused hearing. Good luck in choosing. Well, as Undefeated teaches us, winning is not everything. In fact, it's losing, rather than winning, that better builds character, notes our now favorite coach. His, and his team's, movie opens tomorrow Friday, February 17, in New York (at the AMC Lincoln Square, and the Landmark Sunshine) and in Los Angeles (at the Arclight Hollywood, The Landmark, and the Rave 18).

BAMcinématek & ActNow Foundation join forces for NEW VOICES IN BLACK CINEMA

A five-day film festival, being thrown by and at BAMcinématek, together with the Fort Greene, Brooklyn-based ActNow Foundation and titled ActNow: New Voices in Black Cinema, opens this Friday, February 4. According to the BAM press release, the series reflects the wide spectrum of views and themes within the African diasporan communities in Brooklyn and beyond. Home to five ActNow screenings since August 2009, BAMcinématek continues this partnership, providing exposure to new and existing voices in black independent cinema.

The series highlights both new narrative works such as Coming Back For More (2010), a documentary about Sly Stone’s long-awaited return to the stage; SUS (2010) set entirely in a British interrogation room on election night in 1979 when Margaret Thatcher first came to power; and Heart of Stone (2009), which focuses on the rise, fall, and rise of a Newark high school; and "classics" such as Wendell B. Harris’ newly restored American independent, the 22-year-old Chameleon Street (1989), which won the Sundance Grand Jury Prize.  There's more, and you can find the entire series listed here.

New Voices in Black Cinema got TrustMovies to thinking about the long history of blacks in film -- in front of the camera and (not often enough) behind it. Mr. Harris, shown above, after this big Sundance win, has pretty much disappeared from the film scene. As an actor he did a small role in the now-famous but hardly ground-breaking Road Trip (which gave Todd Phillips his first big hit). According to his Wikipedia entry, Harris is is "currently in post-production for the forthcoming documentary, Arbiter Roswell, a 14-year project that chronicles the relationship between public opinion, the media, and the military-industrial complex." Sounds good, but who knows when this entry was actually written. The IMDB makes no mention of Arbiter Roswell, though it sounds worth seeing.

Speaking of Chameleon Street (below), consider this little piece that appeared in the NY Times on January 29, 1990, after the film walked away with the top Sundance prize, while To Sleep With Anger by Charles Burnett, another whatever-happened-to black filmmaker, was awarded "special recognition" from the jury (Burnett has been working a lot in the meantime, but on projects -- TV Movies, shorts, etc. -- that appear to be off the critical radar.). The article ends with the sentence: "If there was a statement implicit in the awards this year, it was the diversity and growing strength of black film makers." Yeah, right. We hear this periodically about new black filmmakers. And then...?  Very little. Or nothing. Or nothing for awhile. Despite the continuing work of Spike Lee and Tyler Perry, the cupboard seems pretty bare.

Remember Carl Franklin, who gave us the terrific One False Move and the very good Devil in a Blue Dress way back when? He's done a few so-so to OK films since then, plus quite a bit of even better television and cable. At least he's been working, and in a relatively mainstream manner.  I sometimes wonder if there is an expectation from film critics and perhaps the industry in general that black directors should work primarily on "black films."  (Franklin, for instance, did the film version of the Anna Quindlen novel One True Thing, which is about as far from "the black experience" as you can get.) Working from an expectation like that, Gregg Araki would have to concentrate only on Japanese American movies.  As has been pointed out elsewhere, there is not a single black nominated for anything in the major categories (maybe the minor ones, too) for this year's Academy Awards. I guess it just wasn't much of a "black experience" year. But why should that keep black filmmakers from making films about any and every subject?

Back to the BAM fest: TrustMovies has seen four of the films on display and found them of varying quality. Having viewed Chameleon Street upon its debut two decades ago and found it interesting, more from a philosophical/content standpoint than from any visual/cinematic experience, it would be interesting to view it again. What it has to say about the difficulty if being black and American is anything but the usual straight-forward racism, and what the film most interestingly calls to mind in term of black identity is John Guare's Six Degrees of Separation, the play of which appeared one year after Chameleon Street and the movie version four years later. It should be most interesting to see how Mr. Harris' film holds up -- and why or why not.

An excellent documentary not by a black filmmaker (Beth Kruvant) but about a black man who helps change a school, its students, faculty and board of advisers is very much worth a look if you have not already seen it. Heart of Stone is a surprising movie, rich in history and possibilities, about a principal of a school in Newark and how he practically single-handedly turns it around into its former days of glory. When the DVD appeared last year, I covered it and did a short interview with the filmmaker. You can find that post here. See this one and be enriched, amazed, surprised and moved.

When NIGHT CATCHES US opened just two or three months back, I was gratified by the generally fine reviews it received and, though I was not invited to see the film prior to its release, I immediately stuck it on my must-see list.  Now that I've seen it (it arrives on DVD next week, February 1), I have to admit to some disappointment. It's not a bad film at all, but in terms of moviemaking skill, it is somewhat slow and obvious. Set back in two time frames -- that of the rise of the Black Panther/Black Power movement in the 60s and then some years later in the 70s, when a "disgraced" member of the group returns home for his father's funeral and must face the ire of his ex-companions -- this is the first full-length features from female black filmmaker Tanya Hamilton.  It certainly shows promise, and Hamilton managed to get two fine actors Kerry Washington (above, right) and Anthony Mackie (above, left) into her fold.

The story has its hook -- of course, we want to know what happened and why -- and the lead performances are fine, as are those of the supporting actors.  But Hamilton's film technique is only adequate and the writing pretty prosaic. The period is captured well enough, and this should take some of us older folk back to the days of Bobby Seale, Huey Newton, Stokely Carmichael and Angela Davis -- forcing us to remember those times, what we thought then, and what we think and feel now. I am a little surprised at the better-than-average reviews for the film. Perhaps critics were so pleased simply to see these days a black film that was not made by Tyler Perry --  whose work I try to appreciate -- god knows, I try! -- but which drives me up the f-ing wall with its combination of cornball cliché and idiotic religious fervor. I'll stick with Hamilton and watch her grow.

The last film of the films in the fest that I've viewed is a British walk down memory lane called SUS. Based on the play by prolific playwright Barrie Keefe, first produced back in 1979 (when both the play and its subsequent film are set), the film (also written by Keefe) takes place on the night of the 1979 General Election in Britain, which put Margaret Thatcher into the Prime Minister power slot for the first time. The movie's no sweet nostalgia trip, however, as it never at all swerves from its theatrical roots. It takes place in a police station where two white detectives (Ralph Brown and Rafe Spall) have brought in a black man (Clint Dyer, shown below) for questioning in the death of his wife earlier that evening. Are they racist pigs? Will they give it to their poor prisoner in verbal and physical spades? And will we hear speech after puny, lying speech from Mrs Thatcher, underscoring what the irony of what this election will mean for minorities and the underclass?

Yes, yes, and yes again -- which makes the movie a bit of a slough. To his credit Keefe wrote the play at the beginning of the Thatch's reign, even though the film itself was made years later. Prescience is a virtue, and so are the three performances here, all of a thorough, realistic, unhappy piece. Brown is old school nasty, Spall (Timothy's boy) is new school vicious, and poor Dyer is put-upon badly. Initially he holds his own, but the physical and verbal brutality of his adversaries, along with their complete and nearly unconscious racism is unending and just about unbearable. You want to scream, pull out a knife and kill both these pigs -- which is exactly what the filmmakers want. Director Robert Heath does a good job of blocking and keeping things moving, but the film is finally far too schematic not to seem like agitprop, truthful or not.

I'd like to see more of what's in store in this festival, but as time is limited, I probably won't. Don't let that stop you, however. ActNow: New Voices in Black Cinema begins this Friday, February 4 and plays Saturday, Feb. 5; Sunday, Feb. 6; Tuesday, Feb. 8 and Wed, Feb. 9.

Note: various filmmakers will appear in person at selected screenings, so check the complete program here for the where and when you can see them.

The Wall Street Journal is the BAMcinématek and BAM Rose Cinemas sponsor.