My apologies for a delayed start to using this column to celebrate Black History Month as I am eternally playing catch up and last week was busy trying to finish up with the reviews I was behind on.  With Valentine’s Day around the corner, I felt it would only be appropriate to start our look at Black romances on screen.  This will be the first abbreviated topic of the column largely because the romance and romantic comedy genres are decidedly not my thing and so I have a decidedly limited pool of films (good or bad, Black or any race) to pull from.

There are a couple that immediately spring to mind though.  First up is the most obvious and the most recent, If Beale Street Could Talk.  It’s gotten unfairly overlooked through much of award season and was released very late in the year which hurt it in a lot of end of the year countdowns (certainly our/my own), but it’s just a beautiful shot and realized work whose central romance has to thread so many lines between the crime at the center of the film and the separation between them, but comes out surprisingly hopeful.

Traveling back to the 1970s, we have the Diahann Carroll/James Earl Jones starring Claudine, which likewise balances its more comedic and dramatic elements with the mother at the center living on welfare, supporting six kids, and having to lie about her relationship and job status if she wants to get by.  The two make a great couple though which is such a key to the success of any romantic film.

I debated heavily about whether to put Jungle Fever here.  It is a deeply flawed look at interracial relationships from Spike Lee, but it’s still a good title and like so many of Lee’s works there’s plenty here worth talking about even if all the commentary doesn’t quite land.  Granted, the best part of this romance film is Samuel L. Jackson as Wesley Snipes’ crack addict brother so let me throw in one more bonus entry.

Sure, it’s held back by Omar Epps’s dopiness, but I liked Love & Basketball far more than I thought I would.  Sanaa Lathan carries this romantic drama about… the title says it all, doesn’t it?  Plus, we get to highlight a female director in Gina Prince-Bythewood.

As a second bonus, here’s the short Something Good – Negro Kiss, the earliest known recording of two African-Americans kissing.  It was also added to the American National Film Registry last year.

As a topic this week, what are your favorite Black romances in film (regardless of genre)?

Doc Pick of the Week

Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror (2019) dir. Xavier Burgin (Shudder): Based on the book by Robin R. Means Coleman, PhD., we have both a thematically appropriate title and one that is right up my alley.  Those of you familiar with my writing here will know I have a big thing for the horror genre and for writing about the different aspects of the genre.  While I’ve tackled a number of Black horror films before whether it was as stereotypical villains, as stars, or by looking at African films (an area of the world that was sorely neglected), the Black experience in horror film was one I never tackled as a thread topic or in any depth.  I can’t even say that I featured that many films with prominent Black actors.

Thankfully, today’s title seeks to fill in that gap.  Unlike Half the Picture, which sought to look at the history of female directors in film, I was happy to see the film approach the topic from a more historical approach and chart the development of the various stereotypes and the examples (for better or usually worse) in the genre.  It casts its net a bit too wide in scope, going beyond horror at times while not delving enough into those early stereotypical horror roles for my liking (I mean I get why), but as it went on it did start to focus more on specific titles.  The highlights of those were typically a couple of the more obscure ones with the film being dragged down by an obsession with The Girl with All the Gifts, which it refers to repeatedly throughout and with little connectivity (also Get Out, but that makes slightly more sense and is far better).

It also has some quite questionable reads on films, most egregiously its take on Poltergeist where it attempts to co-opt the film for Black people and somehow construe it as being a fear of Black and brown people and not you know, a revenge for the taking of and lack of consideration for Native American land.  As a documentary it’s not that well produced, but it’s an important and overlooked topic that’s worth viewing for that reason alone and one that manages to at times raise some interesting points.

B-B-B-Bonus Doc – Hale County This Morning, This Evening (2018) dir. RaMell Ross (Hale County Site): Normally I try to keep this to one doc, but I didn’t want to wait a week to highlight this film which also premiered this week on PBS.  It’s available to stream for two weeks after broadcast according to this post so here’s your chance to knock out an Oscar nominee.  It’s also thematically appropriate as it focuses on two African-American men from Hale County, Alabama.  It follows them over a five year period as they take divergent paths including one’s path into basketball.  While this may sound a bit familiar, do not going expecting Hoop Dreams 2 as this is a very non-traditional documentary.

The film is extremely minimalist, favoring fly-on-the-wall  film-making and often layering in some unusual music choices.  The occasional interstitial and some very basic labeling is the only real intrusion on what little narrative there is and offer limited information and questioning.  It’s fond of context free scenes that mostly just build on the atmosphere of the world around these two men.  There’s a number of lengthy time lapse shots with the film frequently cutting to lengthy shots of the outdoors, shadows on the ground, or just anything away from the stars of the film.  It favors very tight shots on the subjects, their families and friends, these too largely static though a couple skillfully stick with them as they move, namely Daniel Collins the basketball player.  It’s very much not going to be for everyone, and I think you will be able to tell about ten minutes in if this is going to be your thing or not.  It’s a bold and uncompromising work for better or worse.

This Week in TCM

Sights and Sounds from the Critics Top 250

None This Week

The Week in Movie Reviews

– WTF ASIA 42: The Mission (1999)
– Made Overseas: Journey To The West: Conquering The Demons (2013)
– Millennial Malaise 05: Reality Bites
– The Lego Movie 2 Plays the Hits
– LGBT Movies: More Romcoms
– Hallmark Bonus: The Story of Us Recap/Review
– Building Entertainment: The Animated Films of the Walt Disney Studio. So Dear To My Heart

Finally,

What have you been watching and what did you think of it?