Female Film Critics 24/375
Melissa Haizlip’s documentary, Mr. SOUL! mines a treasury of archival material to illustrate the scope and range of the legendary African American television show that was the focal point of Black culture from 1968-73. The film is also a tribute to SOUL!’s influential producer, Ellis Haizlip, Melissa Haizlip’s uncle.
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I knew nothing about Soul! or the estimable Ellis Haizlip before watching this documentary. I am so happy to have been introduced to both, and I hope that one day soon a show as intelligent, exciting, and unapologetic as Soul! was will return to the airwaves. Meanwhile, I’m very glad we have this documentary.
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In a better world, If Beale Street Could Talk would be nothing more — and nothing less — than a beautiful love story, merely the sweetly sexy blossoming of passion between 19-year-old Tish (glorious newcomer KiKi Layne) and family friend Fonny (Stephan James), whom she grew up with.. We don’t live in that better world.
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In 1970s Harlem, childhood friends Tish Rivers and Fonny Hunt, inexorably, beautifully fall in love and look forward to building their life together. Their love story unfolds in nonlinear fashion, so by the time Tish realizes she is pregnant, her aspiring artist lover is already in prison, falsely accused of raping a Puerto Rican woman.
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Kiki Layne has an extraordinary breakthrough performance in Barry Jenkins’ If Beale Street Could Talk, based on the 1974 novel by James Baldwin. She plays Tish, deeply in love with the unjustly accused Fonny (Stephan James) and pregnant with his child. In an interview, she discussed her early love of acting, creating the look of her character, and the challenge of doing justice to the voiceover narration, her character’s thoughts and Baldwin’s language.
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Raoul Peck’s impeccable and rigorous film I Am Not Your Negro comes at a moment when cinema is creating new conversations about race. In the footage featured in I Am Not Your Negro, Baldwin’s rationality and humanity that shine out — clear, irrevocable and freighted with an unmistakable note of warning. To deny any group of people their essential humanity has repercussions not just for the victims of oppression, but also for the perpetrators.
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“There are days when you wonder what your role is in this country, and what your future is in it?” That’s just one of the questions poet, novelist, and playwright James Baldwin asks in the documentary I Am Not Your Negro
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