Read on Twitter
I was so deeply moved by #Da5Bloods 
, which struck me as a perfect movie for the moment because it's a film about struggling to discern what the right thing to *is*, much less with summoning the strength to do it: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/06/17/da-5-bloods-has-no-easy-answers-thats-why-its-perfect-movie-moment/
, which struck me as a perfect movie for the moment because it's a film about struggling to discern what the right thing to *is*, much less with summoning the strength to do it: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/06/17/da-5-bloods-has-no-easy-answers-thats-why-its-perfect-movie-moment/
A couple more thoughts about #Da5Bloods : The combination of Chadwick Boseman's performance as Norman and Spike Lee's decision not to de-age his actors for the flashback sequences are a knockout.
: The combination of Chadwick Boseman's performance as Norman and Spike Lee's decision not to de-age his actors for the flashback sequences are a knockout.
Boseman has a really hard task before him: he's playing a memory rather than actual person. And yet he manages to do that beautifully, without becoming flat in the process.
The combination of Boseman's work and the decision not to de-age lends the flashbacks an incredible melancholy. They're obviously memories, but those scenes show how alive memory can be. TBH, it makes the flaws of the de-aging in #TheIrishman eve more apparent.
A second observation: after revisiting #TheHelp and #GoneWithTheWind for last week's column, it was a relief to watch a movie about race and racism that doesn't return, once again, to the Enlightened By The Standards Of The Day White Person. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/06/13/case-revisiting-gone-with-wind-help/
That figure has value in the cinematic canon, not least because there's value in getting white people who think of themselves as enlightened to explore the limits of that enlightenment! But man does that conversation take up a lot of cinematic oxygen!
And movies like #Da5Bloods are a reminder of what can happen in the space that opens up when we're not having that same conversation over again.
are a reminder of what can happen in the space that opens up when we're not having that same conversation over again.
(It's very worth reading @viet_t_nguyen on the cliches the movie falls into. Unacknowledged in #Da5Bloods is that the characters are stealing from indigenous groups like the Hmong as much as from the CIA. ) https://twitter.com/viet_t_nguyen/status/1273028020459040768
is that the characters are stealing from indigenous groups like the Hmong as much as from the CIA. ) https://twitter.com/viet_t_nguyen/status/1273028020459040768
