.Movies

Mar 12, 2024

Film Review: ‘The American Society of Magical Negroes’

Consider The American Society of Magical Negroes a live-wire conversation-starter of a movie title that automatically opens up a pertinent social issue discussion. Writer-director Koby Libii’s satirical fantasy deliberately chose a hot-button phrase. As explained in the film’s introduction, a “magical negro” is a fictional character whose function is to...
Tran Anh Hung’s French Epicurean Romance
Feb 13, 2024

Tran Anh Hung’s French Epicurean Romance

Sunshine filters through the garden windows in Dodin Bouffant’s kitchen, suffusing the space with golden light and golden shadows. Most of the dramatic action in Anh Hung Tran’s The Taste of Things emanates from that luminous kitchen,...
Ava DuVernay's New Film Makes the Caste Connection
Feb 13, 2024

Ava DuVernay’s New Film Makes the Caste Connection

What does the act of a racist vigilante have to do with the caste system in India that works to the detriment of the Dalits, Jewish people during the Holocaust and the system of slavery that’s in...
Cauleen Smith's Visual Jazz
Feb 6, 2024

Cauleen Smith’s Visual Jazz

Cauleen Smith is an award-winning multimedia artist and filmmaker whose work is being featured at Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive Feb. 8-11. A retrospective of her most notable short films—from a total of 20 since...
Noir City 21: A Cinematic Journey into the Depths of Film Noir
Jan 16, 2024

Noir City 21: A Cinematic Journey into the Depths of Film Noir

Noir City 21, an annual film noir festival hosted by the Film Noir Foundation, features 12 double features of English and foreign-language noirs from the 1940s-'60s, including rare titles such as "Without Pity" and "Cairo Station."
'The Zone of Interest' is a Docudrama of Pure Malignance
Jan 9, 2024

‘The Zone of Interest’ is a Docudrama of Pure Malignance

"The Zone of Interest," a film adaptation of Martin Amis' novel, explores the life of Rudolf Höss, the commandant of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp complex, through metaphor and oblique references to the horrors of the Holocaust.
The Impact of LGBTQ+ Storytellers on Recognizing Bayard Rustin
Jan 2, 2024

The Impact of LGBTQ+ Storytellers on Recognizing Bayard Rustin

The documentary "Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin," directed by Nancy Kates, helped to inspire the new Netflix film, "Rustin," which aims to recognize the civil rights leader.
Jeffrey Wright Delivers in Hilarious Satire 'American Fiction'
Dec 19, 2023

Jeffrey Wright Delivers in Hilarious Satire ‘American Fiction’

In the provocative new movie American Fiction, Thelonious "Monk" Ellison, a university professor and novelist, finds himself in a pair of pertinent modern-day cultural predicaments, as his academic novels don't sell well and another Black author's best-selling book is a dumbed-down sell-out.
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