Welcome to my newsletter! Every month you’ll receive this update featuring all of my writing, and my favorite film and television watches.
I know I’m a tad late on my June newsletter. That month happened to be my busiest, writing-wise, in sometime. I wrote 20 pieces and appeared on a podcast, covered Tribeca from afar and served as a Guest Editor for RogerEbert’s Black Writers Week. I also traveled with Marya to the Czech Republic to cover the 56th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (I’ll have a lot more to say about this trip in the coming weeks). In the meantime, here is everything I wrote and/or appeared on last month:
Fire Island Review
In June I continued to fill quite a few blindspots by managing to watch some Jean Renoir films (particularly Grande Illusion), some early John Fords, and a few classics by Luis Buñuel, along with taking in some films at Chicago’s 70MM Film Festival, which took place at the Music Box Theater. Last month, I watched 67 films in total. Here are a few of the highlights.
3 Bad Men - A major void in my John Ford knowledge, this early silent is a simple yet deeply affecting epic. It follows three supposedly bad men who protect the life of a young woman against some real bad men. The film contains some of Ford’s best compositions of the West (high praise, I know).
Belle du Jour - Of the Buñuel films I watched (I saw seven in total), this was by far my favorite. Mostly because it centers a woman searching for sexual freedom, Catherine Deneuve working in a brothel, rather than in his past movies where women are being acted upon.
The Duke of Burgundy - While researching to interview Peter Strickland, I did a quick rewatch of his movies and I forgot how funny and subservice this film about two sexually role playing women trying to keep the spark in their relationship is.
Easy to Get - A trigger warning on this one: It’s an World War II Army training film geared toward Black GIs about VD featuring some gruesome images (and appearances by Ruby Dee and Paul Robeson, no TW on them). I first heard about this short through Sergio Mims who wrote about in further depth for RogerEbert.com.
In A Lonely Place - It’s probably Humphrey Bogart’s most unhinged performance next to his dark turn as a white supremacist in Dark Legion. Here he plays a demented screenwriter accused of murder as he obsesses over his next door neighbor (Gloria Grahame).
Liquor Store Dreams - During June I covered Tribeca Film Festival and one film I wish I could’ve written about extensively is So Yun Um’s directorial feature, a powerful documentary mixing her personal history, the legacy of Koreans living in LA and the difficulties them and the Black communities they sell to have faced.
Mahogany/Bless Their Little Hearts - I’m pairing these wildly different films: the former a fashion Blaxploitation romance starring Diana Ross and Billy Dee Williams, and the latter, an LA rebellion drama about a family living on the edge of poverty in Watts, because I wrote about both for my Black Film Recommendation series (which will soon become a paid component).
Moonfall - This is an absolutely bonkers, self-derivative disaster film from Roland Emmerich about a super-structured moon with alien tech inside of it on a collision course with earth. So of course I loved it. Low-key Halle Berry as the head of NASA is doing some of her best acting in years. She takes the material’s silliness and adds a gravitas that it probably doesn’t deserve.
Official Competition - Penelope Cruz and Antonio Banders reteam in this black comedy about stardom and creative control as a feuding director and leading man, with Oscar Martínez as an embittered rival. Every second is a hilarious surge of bitchiness from three world-class actors.
Starman - Jeff Bridges portrays an alien who falls in love with a widow (Karen Allen) after he comes to earth on a scouting mission. Bridges’ fish out of water performance is brilliant, but Allen is just as electric in this heartwarming sci-fi classic which remains just as far out today (seen in 70mm @ the Music Box).
I adore “In a Lonely Place.”