-
Review: Hidden Figures Brilliantly Shines Light on 3 Black Women Who Helped NASA Reach New Heights
Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you know that the already-celebrated film Hidden Figures is coming to a theater near you as it reaches its nationwide release Friday. Based on a book by the same name, Hidden Figures is a historical drama set in 1960s Hampton, Va., that chronicles the personal and professional lives…
-
Review: Fences Is an Acting and Directorial Feast Fit for August Wilson's Words
August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play Fences has finally made it to the big screen, directed by Academy Award-winning actor Denzel Washington. Wilson’s masterful storytelling about a working-class family living in a historic Pittsburgh neighborhood and fighting for survival, personally and professionally, jumps off the screen under Washington’s brilliant direction. Wilson’s splendid storytelling blends perfectly with…
-
With Queen of Katwe, Figuring Out What Black Moviegoers Want Remains a Mystery
Heads are swiveling over the box-office beatdown that Boo! A Madea Halloween has given Jack Reacher and Inferno, earning $27.6 million the week of its premiere and $17 million the second week, topping both thrillers starring A-listers Tom Cruise and Tom Hanks, respectively. Some are wondering how yet another Madea film can win at the…
-
Review: Moonlight Chronicles Discovering One’s Sexual Identity in the Worst of Circumstances
In Moonlight, Barry Jenkins’ (Medicine for Melancholy) semiautobiographical coming-of-age story, we follow the three life stages of Chiron (Alex Hibbert), a young African-American boy trying to figure out his identity in Liberty City, a rough Miami neighborhood. Chiron, who is nicknamed “Little,” is bullied relentlessly by neighborhood boys, who have decided that he is gay…
-
The Birth of a Nation Is an Important Film Worth Seeing Despite Its Flaws
When Nate Parker’s The Birth of a Nation won both the Audience Award and Grand Jury Prize at Sundance in January, Parker thanked God and Sundance when accepting the awards. The realization that audiences were ready for a story about Nat Turner, a black man from Virginia at the center of a slave revolt that…
-
Issa Rae’s Insecure: No Longer an Awkward Black Girl
In the words of Ron Burgundy, Issa Rae is kind of a big deal. The awkward black girl has gone from creating and starring in an award-winning web series, The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl, to creating and starring in the half-hour HBO comedy Insecure, about two friends “navigating the tricky and personal terrain of…
-
Empire’s Tasha Smith Knows a Thing or Two About Thriving in Hollywood and Surviving Shady Ex-Husbands
Tasha Smith is that rare actress who has been holding it down in the entertainment industry for quite a while now. The NAACP Image Award nominee—perhaps best known for her portrayal of Angela in Tyler Perry’s hit television show For Better or Worse—has been working as an actress for two decades. She has appeared in films—including Daddy’s…
-
Mavis Staples Tells Her Own Story in HBO Doc
Legendary singer and civil rights activist Mavis Staples has been in the business of making music and changing lives for over 60 years. The Chicago-born singer with the signature raspy voice launched her career in 1950 as part of the family gospel group the Staple Singers, consisting of her father (Pops) and three older sisters…
-
#OscarsSoWhite 2016: The History of Black Protest Against Hollywood
The 2016 Oscars are just around the corner, and many are still contemplating whether or not to boycott one of the year’s most watched awards shows for failing to nominate a single black actor, actress or director for the second year in a row. There is a long history of protest against racial inequity in…
-
What It’s Like to Be a Black Girl Who Is Assaulted in the Classroom
In 1978, when I was 6 years old, a female teacher assaulted me in a classroom. I was a rambunctious, intellectually curious child who talked a lot in class. I loooooved my homeroom teacher, Ms. S., who was kind and treated me nicely, which was important for a black girl growing up in post-civil-rights-era Lynchburg,…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
