Hidden Figures: A+ The comment most everyone makes as they walk out if the theater is "How did this not ever get publicized." As a matter of FACT--the actresses in the film thought it was a fictional script! Seriously. It is the best America has to offer--it makes us remember we are-- as the great Zora Neale Hurston once explained, and I am paraphrasing-- we are all paper bags filled with all things precious and common but those bags all have the same ingredients, just the color of the bags are a different shade. These three women broke barriers and lived lives that were understated, but not underestimated. They had to prove themselves in the late 50's and early 60's--nothing handed to them. They faced the prejudiced attitudes of white society (and NASA dominated by men). This may not win many Oscars but it wins the hearts and minds of its audience.
Lion: A- Never any spoilers from me except that this true story, like "Hidden Figures" also amazes the audience. I did not go in with huge expectations, but I came out very impressed. The young boy steals the show. However, the pain of the adult character played by Dev Patel is evident as each of us flashes back to our own childhood and we reflect on those pictures in our mind of where we came from and who raised us. I thought of that brownstone in Brooklyn that my grandparents owned, playing on the streets with my best friend Tootie (really, his dad raised pigeons). There are images none of us can shake, but at least we know where that home is (or can find it on Google Earth).
Moonlight A The two Gentleman pictured below, Barry Jenkins and Tarell Alvin McCraney, have produced a heartbreaking look at their troubled "Throwaway" neighborhood in Miami, Liberty City and the troubled characters that inhabit it. Roger Wilkins, the esteemed author and professor of George Mason University, once explained that a child born without parents is like a child born without skin. Chiron is that little boy, whose fiction was fact for both the men who created "Moonlight": their mothers were both crack addicts and HIV Positive. Much like the film's creators, Chiron has no father is in the picture and a mother essentially abandons him McCraney explains why the film is so relevant, "If we don't tell these stories, we lose who we are." That is the truth of the formerly segregated communities of the early 1960's, and despite all the efforts of Dr. King and the Civil Rights Acts, these cities disintegrated during what Professor Wilkins calls "the Second Great Migration," with the upper and middle class African Americans breaking free from segregated cities that reminded them of slavery and humiliation of Jim Crow. What was left were the poor, the elderly and the uneducated. The crack/ drug invasion tore through cities like Liberty like a hurricane, and it became the reality we see in "Moonlight." However, that is the history behind of the story. The film's humanity is the most compelling. The sexual and racial issues evolve as we see Chiron's life in the three iterations, from a seven year old, to a teenager, to the mirror image of someone who saved him. The duo who produced the film escaped the vicious cycle of poverty and drug dependency because, as they admit, they were saved by figures in the neighborhood. But they are the exception to the rules because they are exceptional. So is their film. It is hard to watch "Moonlight" if you, like me, come from White Privilege, if you have avoided these cities out of fear (me, as well), or if you watch TV programs that portray these places as crime infested, morally bankrupt in need of some handsome duo to save someone or lock others up (not me!). Black Lives Matter and their lives, like everyone's, is in desperate of love, hope, and attention.
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