4 Best Movies To Watch After The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996)
Stamped from the Beginning
The Netflix documentary uses historical evidence and modern scholarship to demonstrate racism's continued role in US society. At the start of the new documentary Stamped from the Beginning, filmmaker Roger Ross Williams asks his various interview subjects, “What is wrong with Black people?” Considering that all the interviewees in question are also Black, it is unsurprising that the question’s seeming hostility initially throws many. However, once they recognize the context of that query—Williams is asking for a historical context as to what Blacks have done to deserve centuries of institutionalized racism and violence—they are more than willing and able to discuss the subject at length throughout this strong and often provocative film. Dr. Ibram X. Kendi’s book of the same name inspired the Williams’ film, a karmic debt the director pays back by including the doctor among a number of knowledgeable Black female scholars and activists. Together, they discuss how the twin stains of racism and white supremacy permeate American society in ways that continue to fester today. They explain how the concept of deeming people as greater or lesser by the color of their skin was born out of slavery. The aim was to simultaneously remove enslaved people’s distinguishing characteristics to make them seem like one undifferentiated mass and drive a wedge between them and white “indentured servants” to prevent the groups from joining forces against their common enemy, the wealthy landowner. Continue Reading →
Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
In cinema, water is a site of birth, rebirth, and drastic transformations. In movies ranging from Sansho the Bailiff to Moonlight to Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2, characters walk into vast bodies of liquid one person and exit another (if, that is, they resurface). It tracks, then, that the romantic drama Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe kicks off its central relationship at a community pool. A conversation between the film’s titular leads, set against the blue, kicks off a life-changing connection. Continue Reading →
Diana: The Musical
Next year will mark, improbably, 25 years since Diana, Princess of Wales was killed in a horrific car accident while being chased down by aggressive photographers. Like Marilyn Monroe, another unlucky blonde who was mercilessly hounded by the press before dying too young, Diana’s image has only become more indelible in the years following her death. Also like Marilyn, lots of money has been made exploiting her, in endless bullshit attempts to tell her “true” story. Musician/lyricists David Bryan and Joe DiPietro cash in on her too with the Broadway musical Diana, filmed and presented on Netflix for our viewing “pleasure.” The producers of Dear Evan Hansen owe Bryan and DiPietro a great deal of gratitude, because Evan Hansen is no longer the worst musical of 2021. Continue Reading →
Sunset Boulevard
Jeffrey Schwarz’s documentary on a never-was musical adaptation of Sunset Boulevard and its would-be makers is insightful if a bit scattered. (This review is part of our 2021 coverage of Reeling: The Chicago LGBTQ+ International Film Festival) “After Salome, we’ll make another picture, and another picture” and then a musical, and then a musical based on writing the musical, and then a picture about writing the musical and the musical based on writing the musical! Maybe it’s not something Norma Desmond could’ve dreamed of, but Gloria Swanson certainly would have approved. Continue Reading →