Review: 'Descendant' is a tough, emotional documentary about a slave ship's voyage, and the Alabama residents still caught in its wake

It’s not easy to inject nuance into a two-hour documentary, but director Margaret Brown does so carefully and beautifully in “Descendant,” a look at how one crime of the past creates echoes in our present.

The launch point for “Descendant” is the Clotilde, believed to be the last slave ship to deposit kidnapped Africans in the United States. The importing of slaves was abolished in 1808, and the Clotilde legendarily brought 105 souls from Africa (what is now the country of Benin) in 1860 — because, it’s said, of a bet that Alabama businessman Timothy Meaher made that he could violate the law and bring Africans to be sold into slavery. The ship arrived in Mobile, the Africans were taken to land, and Capt. William Foster then burned the ship to hide the evidence.

Brown, a Mobile native herself, traces the efforts, aided by the National Geographic Society, to find the Clotilde. She talks to a diver who tells of having “to listen to the ancestral voices” of those who were carried in those ships. She talks to a folklorist who keeps the tapes of descendants of the Clotilde’s captives, which kept the story alive when many in Mobile wanted to keep it quiet.

Most importantly, Brown airs the voices of the current residents of Africatown, the community near Mobile founded by those descendants. They speak, in interviews and town meetings, of their mixed response to the possible discovery of the Clotilde — which could bring tourism to the town, but also another chance for the white Mobile population to sanitize history all over again.

One of the more stirring parts of “Descendant” are the scenes where Brown asks some of those descendants to read passages from “Barracoon,” the long-lost work by author and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston. In 1927, Hurston interviewed the last survivor of the Clotilde, Cudjoe Lewis, and wrote his recollections down in his own dialect. The book was finished in 1931, but remained unpublished until 2018 — a sign of how incendiary the history of slavery has been and still is.

Brown addresses the current concerns of Cudjoe’s descendants — including the industrial wasteland that has grown up around Africatown, and how the Meahers (who declined to participate in the film) remains one of Mobile’s leading families. 

That’s a lot to pack into 108 minutes, and Brown does it with precision and empathy. She does it by letting Cudjoe’s kin tell the bulk of the story, letting them reclaim their shared legacy from those who might try to spruce it up and present it without rough edges or uncomfortable truths. “Descendant” becomes, then, not just a vital account of history, but an example of William Faulkner’s maxim that “the past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

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Starts streaming Friday, October 21, on Netflix. Rated PG for thematic material, brief language and smoking images. Running time: 108 minutes.

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This review originally appeared on this site on January 22, 2022, when the film premiered at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival.

Review: 'Black Adam' tries to turn Dwayne Johnson into an anti-hero and jump-start the DC movie franchise — and fails at both

With “Black Adam,” the folks at Warner Bros. (and their subsidiary New Line Cinema) once again try to move the DC cinematic universe forward in one movie where its rival Marvel took a half-dozen features — and they do it by cramming in the action without giving audiences a minute to get to know their new heroes.

The movie starts with some ancient history of a nonexistent place, a Middle Eastern country called Khandaq, and slaves to a evil ruler, King Acton, being forced to mine a fictional super-mineral, eternium, to create a crown of great power. Before King Acton can wield that power, a hero is created by the same ancient wizards who gave Shazam his powers. (Djimon Hounsou reprises his “Shazam!” role in a brief cameo.)

Flash-forward nearly 5,000 years to now, and Khandaq is occupied by a nasty paramilitary force called the Intergang — proof, alongside the Legion of Doom, that DC villain groups don’t even try to hide their intentions. A lot of people are looking for the long-absent crown, including Adrianna (Sarah Shahi), an archaeologist who’s wanted by the Intergang forces. Adrianna gets into the secret cave where the crown is hidden, gets followed by Intergang commandos, and before she’s killed she lets loose the ancient champion called Teth-Adam — played by a scowling Dwayne Johnson.

Johnson, always the confident and smiling hero in his movies, is trying a new screen persona, and it’s a struggle — no matter how many people he drops out of aircraft or sends flying toward the city’s harbor. Even in his wrestling days, Johnson was more comfortable as the good guy than an anti-hero, and that limitation sabotages this movie.

Before we’re given much time to contemplate Teth-Adam’s moral problems, the rest of the superpowered world decides it’s time to step in. Cue Amanda Waller, Viola Davis’s no-nonsense character from the “Suicide Squad” movies, who sends in a team from the Justice Society: Hawkman (Aldis Hodge), who has gold wings and super-strength; Doctor Fate (Pierce Brosnan), who can see into the future; Cyclone (Quintessa Swindell), who is a genius who can command the wind; and Atom Smasher (Noah Centineo), who can become several stories tall and is the newcomer to the group.

I’m sure all of these heroes have rich, interesting backstories, but the script (credited to three writers) and director Jaume Collet-Serra (who worked with Johnson on “Jungle Cruise”) don’t have time for that. The movie is always rushing off to the next action set piece, without ever spending even a few seconds giving us anything to make us care about who these characters are or why what they’re doing matters.

“Black Adam” feels like nothing so much as the trailers for the episodes of a 12-part Zack Snyder-produced miniseries, all smashed together. The result is a two-hour visual bombardment, all movement and not enough emotional involvement.

Fans will ask where “Black Adam” will place within the broader canvas of the DC Extended Universe. The “Shazam” references early on — heck, even the lightning bolt on Johnson’s chest — connect this movie to that hero, and Waller is a direct link to “The Suicide Squad” and a couple degrees removed from the main branch of DC’s characters. I wouldn’t hold my breath for some massive DC ensemble movie, a mega-mashup of all the brand’s big names. Johnson, this movie proves, doesn’t play well with others.

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‘Black Adam’

★★

Opens Friday, October 21, in theaters. Rated PG-13 for sequences of strong violence, intense action and some language. Running time: 124 minutes.

Review: 'Halloween Ends' looks at different levels of evil, before bringing Jamie Lee Curtis and her nemesis together one last time

Once again, a movie in the “Halloween” franchise promises to be the last, the final time that Michael Myers will kill the residents of Haddonfield — and with the sometimes brilliant, sometimes head-scratching “Halloween Ends,” director David Gordon Green seems to mean it.

Myers, the implacable evil killing machine played by James Jude Courtney, lies in wait for much of this movie, hiding out in a sewer culvert, gathering his strength. Instead, much of the movie centers on another character, a young man named Corey Cunningham (Rohan Campbell), who seems to have channelled Michael’s evil essence. Or maybe Green is centering on a non-Michael character in his third “Halloween” movie to pay homage to the Michael-free 1982 sequel “Halloween III: Season of the Witch.”

In the prologue, we meet Corey as a 21-year-old college student, asked to babysit a boy on Halloween, 2019, and how the boy’s prank goes horribly awry — making Corey an accidental killer and a town pariah. One person who looks kindly on Corey is Laurie Strode, the heroine of the franchise played by Jamie Lee Curtis.

Laurie, like Corey, is ostracized by Haddonfield, as many of the townsfolk somehow blame her for Michael Myers’ obsession with her. Never mind that Laurie has been trying to kill Michael for four decades, and that in the last movie, 2021’s “Halloween Kills,” Laurie — spoiler alert — lost her daughter, Karen (Judy Greer, seen here in flashbacks), to Michael’s murderous evil.

That was four years ago, and both Laurie and Haddonfield seem to be returning to normal. Laurie lives with her granddaughter, Allyson (Andi Matichak), who’s now a nurse in the town’s urgent-care clinic. Laurie is writing her memoir — which provides some overly wordy narration, musing about the nature of evil — and occasionally chats with Frank (Will Patton), the retired police chief, and Lindsey (Kyle Richards), kindly bartender who survived Michael because Laurie was her babysitter in John Carpenter’s 1978 original. (By the way, the maestro shares credit for the score, and his chilling original theme pops up a few times.)

Laurie finds Corey being tormented by some obnoxious high-school kids, and intervenes. Laurie is impressed with Corey, persevering in spite of the town’s reactions to him, and suggests to Allyson that they should go out sometime. They do, and a tentative romance begins.

Simultaneously, though, Corey has another encounter — with Michael Myers. When Michael doesn’t kill him, it seems like the masked monster might have found a kindred spirit, a successor to his murderous ways.

The script — a joint effort of relative newbies Paul Brad Logan and Chris Bernier, Green collaborator Danny McBride and Green himself — becomes a sometimes fascinating character study, comparing Michael’s special blend of evil with Corey’s more mundane form of slaughter. The killing scenes deliver the requisite horror-movie mayhem, though the deaths often are telegraphed so only a few scenes serve up any surprise.

Diehards may get impatient watching Corey kill townspeople while Michael is on the sidelines. But there’s a payoff, of sorts, when the promised final confrontation between Laurie and Michael commences, providing Curtis some solid kick-ass moments and the audience a chance to see the monster one last time. That is, if the powers that be can hold to their plan that this is the last time.

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‘Halloween Ends’

★★★

Opens Friday, October 14, in theaters, and streaming on Peacock. Rated R for bloody horror violence and gore, language throughout and some sexual references. Running time: 111 minutes.

Review: 'Rosaline' is a fun riff on literature's greatest romance, and a showcase for Kaitlyn Dever's sharp delivery

Lowered expectations sometimes can deliver some welcome surprises, as is the case with “Rosaline,” a direct-to-sreaming rom-com that gets its laughs by playing with the tropes of the most famous romantic drama of all.

Kaitlyn Dever, so wonderful in “Booksmart” and the only good thing in “Dear Evan Hansen,” plays the title role, a free-thinking woman in Verona, Italy, circa 1600 — when being independent and career-minded isn’t what a lady is supposed to be, as her father (Bradley Whitford) regularly reminds her. Rosaline dreams of being a cartographer, while also dreaming of finally being able to go public with her romance to a hunky young Verona man, and stop the cavalcade of old men who want to get her into an arranged marriage.

There’s a catch: The young man is Romeo Montague (Kyle Allen), whose father (Nicholas Rowe) is bitter enemies with Rosaline’s uncle, Lord Capulet (Christopher MacDonald).

And there’s another catch: When Rosaline gets stranded with another forced suitor — a handsome soldier, Dario (Sean Teale) — she misses her chance to be wooed by Romeo at the Capulet family’s masquerade ball. When she finally gets back, she finds that Romeo has suddenly fallen for someone else. What’s worse, that someone is Rosaline’s younger cousin, Juliet (played by Isabela Merced, from the live-action “Dora the Explorer” movie and this year’s “Father of the Bride” reboot).

Rosaline makes it her mission to stick close to Juliet, in a sneaky attempt to break up the new lovebirds. Rosaline gets her gay friend Paris (Spencer Stevenson) and her nurse (Minnie Driver) into the plot — and drags in Dario, who turns out not to be so awful, as grooms in a forced marriage go.

The screenplay is by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber, veterans of such romances as “500 Days of Summer” and “The Fault in Our Stars,” so they understand how to align story beats with heart beats. They’re adapting Rebecca Serle’s best-selling novel “When You Were Mine,” which references “Romeo & Juliet” from the setting of present-day California — and the script’s transfer to the Middle Ages lets Rosaline deliver the snarky, modern take on the 400-year-old romance.

Director Karen Maine — whose celibacy camp comedy “Yes, God, Yes,” was a bright spot during COVID-era streaming — keeps the jokes and the romance briskly paced and sprightly. Maine’s best tool is Dever, who gives a tightly wound performance as a modern woman trapped in this Verona finery. The result is a perfect slumber-party movie, and a romantic comedy that delivers on both parts of the phrase.

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‘Rosaline’

★★★

Starts streaming Friday, October 14, on Hulu. Rated PG-13 for some suggestive material and brief strong language. Running time: 96 minutes.

Review: 'Amsterdam' aims to cross a screwball comedy with an espionage thriller, but is too overstuffed with characters and tangents to succeed at either

So much content, and way too many people, get packed into “Amsterdam,” a meandering cross between screwball comedy and espionage thriller that never delivers enogh of either to be satisfying. 

Writer-director David O. Russell (“Silver Linings Playbook,” “American Hustle”) starts the story in New York, 1933. Dr. Burt Berendsen (Christian Bale), a semi-defrocked physician with a glass eye, is called in for an emergency by his friend from The Great War, Harold Woodman (John David Washington), an attorney who still carries the scars of the war.

Harold tells Burt he has a client who needs an autopsy done pronto. The recipient of the autopsy is Gen. Bill Meekins (Ed Begley Jr.), who was Burt and Harold’s commanding officer back in Europe, and a man for whom they owe their lives. Harold’s client, the person who wants the autopsy done, is Meekins’ daughter, Liz (Taylor Swift), who suspects that her father was murdered — and needs the evidence that only an autopsy can provide.

Burt knows a nurse at the coroner’s office, Irma St. Clair (Zoe Saldaña) — who’s kinda sweet on Burt — and she can get autopsy results in a hurry. But not soon enough, when someone is pushed into the street and run over by a truck, and the guy who gave the shove accuses Burt and Harold of doing the deed. Soon, Burt and Harold are on the run, trying to avoid the cops, who have them tagged as the prime suspects.

The movie then flashes back 15 years, to 1918, and the closing months of World War I. Burt, then a lieutenant in the U.S. Army, is put in command of a unit of Black soldiers, because no one else wants to associate with them. Not even the U.S. Army, which makes the Black enlisted men wear French military uniforms.

Burt and Harold are wounded severely, and they would be dead if not for one nurse who saves them and picks most of the shrapnel out of their faces. That nurse, Valerie (Margot Robbie), befriends both Burt and Harold, and the three become fast friends and, after the war, roommates in Amsterdam — and, eventually, the name of that city becomes a shorthand for a particular shared moment in these three peoples’ lives, a paradise .

Back in 1933, Burt and Harold — who, thanks to some major plot contrivances, reunite with Valerie — try to follow a trail of rich and influential people who can clear their good names and keep two detectives (Matthias Schoenaerts and Alessandro Nivola) off their necks. For reasons too convoluted to get into here, that list includes a rich dealmaker, Tom Vote (Rami Malek), and his status-conscious wife, Libby (Anya Taylor-Joy); Burt’s loveless first wife, Beatrice (Andrea Riseborough); two “birdwatchers” (Michael Shannon and Mike Myers) who might be spies; and the war hero Gen. Gil Dillenbeck (Robert De Niro), who could be the key to Burt and Harold’s problems — as well as an attempted coup against FDR.

It’s worth mentioning that Russell begins by informing us that the story is based, in part, on actual events. That tends to be more of a hindrance than a help with Russell’s narrative, since it causes the script to delve into some weighty topics — like the guy who’s just taken control of the German government — and never strikes a good balance between the screwball and the serious.

Russell tries to cram so many characters, and so much story, into “Amsterdam,” that it feels hectic and tedious at the same time. And while I admire some performances — particularly Bale’s beaten-down doctor and Taylor-Joy’s skeletal social climber — everyone is going in so many directions that the movie never feels like it making forward progress. 

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‘Amsterdam’

★★1/2

Opens Friday, October 7, in theaters. Rated R for brief violence and bloody images. Running time: 134 minutes.

Review: Marvel's 'Werewolf by Night' is a delicious throwback to old-school monster movies

It’s getting increasingly difficult for anything with a Marvel Studios logo to surprise us, but “Werewolf by Night” — billed as a “Marvel Studios Special Presentation,” like it was an old Charlie Brown cartoon — manages to deliver the unexpected several times during its hourlong run.

On a dark night, a gaggle of mercenary monster hunters have gathered at the mansion of one Ulysses Bloodstone, to mark his death and to earn the right to carry Ulysses’ family talisman, the bloodstone. The rules, as explained by Ulysses’ second wife, Verussa (Harriet Sansom Harris), are simple: The bloodstone will be attached to a monster, which will make it stronger but also put it in pain, and let loose on the grounds — and the first hunter who can bring the beast down can claim the stone.

Most of the hunters know each other, and can compare notes on the number of kills they have completed. Two people in attendance, though, don’t come off as your regular mercenaries. One is Ulysses’ estranged daughter, Elsa Bloodstone (Laura Donnelly), back to claim her birthright from her stepmother, Verussa. The other is, we eventually find out, is named Jack (Gael García Bernal), and he claims he’s responsible for more than 100 kills — but he doesn’t brag about it the way the other hunters do.

Once the hunt starts, screenwriters Heather Quinn and Peter Cameron drop some bombshells on the audience, and eventually we know everything we need to know about the Jack, Elsa, the monster, the hunt and the bloodstone. 

In this case, getting there is most of the fun, as Jack and Elsa reluctantly join forces to make it through the night alive. Movie composer Michael Giacchino makes his feature directing debut, and he creates a brooding, black-and-white atmosphere inspired by the classic monster movies of old — where shadows show transformations from human to beast, and sometimes from human to pile of dismembered meat. The callbacks to “Frankenstein” and “The Wolf Man” are clever, and don’t get in the way of the cleverly choreographed fight scenes.

There’s a lot that happens that I’m not describing, because I don’t want to ruin your fun as the story unfolds. I will say this: “Werewolf by Night” is a celebratory throwback to old-school horror movies, one that’s so exhilarating that you’ll hope the powers that be at Marvel make more in the franchise.

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‘Werewolf by Night’

★★★1/2

Starts streaming Friday, October 7, on Disney+. Rated TV-14. Running time: 52 minutes.

Review: 'Bros' puts Billy Eichner through the Apatow movie-comedy machine, creating a funny movie about LGBTQ joys and anxieties.

You can’t call “Bros” the gayest movie ever made — though it’s plenty gay. But this guy-meets-guy romantic comedy is, perhaps, the gayest gay movie ever made, if one uses the old definition of “gay” meaning happy.

One of the themes that star and co-writer Billy Eichner attacks frequently is that too many movies with gay characters in the lead are sad affairs about lonely gay cowboys or something, and are usually “about two straight actors trying to win an Oscar.”

“Bros” is not that kind of gay movie. Instead, Eichner becomes the latest comedian to run his stand-up persona through producer Judd Apatow’s star-making machine — the way Amy Schumer did in “Trainwreck,” or Pete Davidson did in “The King of Staten Island.” And Eichner’s persona is witty, acerbic, a little jaded, and unabashedly homosexual.

Eichner plays Bobby Leiber, a New York podcaster who talks about his failures in creative endeavors — like when he auditioned for “Queer Eye” and couldn’t cry at the right moment — and in maintaining a long-term relationship. At age 40, Bobby has largely resigned himself to random sexual encounters with men he meets on Grindr or in gay bars.

It’s at one such bar that he meets Aaron (Luke Macfarlane), a probate lawyer who’s incredibly buff. (When Bobby meets Aaron, Aaron is shirtless.) They seem to hit it off, but something in their mutual distrust of relationships and commitment keeps them from turning lustful attraction into a dating scenario.

Meanwhile, as Bobby tries to figure out what Aaron’s deal is, Bobby is also deep into his job organizing the first national LGBTQ+ history museum. Most of his work involves begging rich gay people and celebrities — including a brilliant cameo by someone perfect for this demographic — and constantly arguing with his staff, a smorgasbord of queer representation whose members can’t agree on much of anything.

Director Nicholas Stoller (“Forgetting Sarah Marshall,” “Neighbors”), who co-wrote the script with Eichner, packs “Bros” with tons of jokes and lots of funny queer icons, including Harvey Fierstein, “SNL’s” Bowen Yang, “Married With Children’s” Amanda Bearse, Jai Rodriguez (from the original “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy”) and others. One of the best running gags involve suddenly inclusive Christmas movies on the “Hallheart Channel” — a joke that’s even funnier when you know Macfarlane has starred in a few Hallmark Channel movies.

There were moments during “Bros” where I wondered if I, as a straight male, wasn’t supposed to be enjoying this, because of how some jokes target straight attitudes about LGBTQ+ people. One of Bobby’s trans colleagues, Tamara (Eve Lindley), asks in a meeting, “Guys, do you remember straight people,” which prompts their lesbian colleague Cherry (Dot-Marie Jones) to respond, “Yeah, they had a nice run.” At another point, Bobby complains that “gay sex was more fun when straight people were uncomfortable with it.”

Speaking of which, “Bros” will indeed test straight people’s comfort level with gay sex — because the sex scenes here definitely earn the movie’s R rating.

Get over it, straights. The whole point of movies is to be exposed to lives and cultures outside of your own, and “Bros” delivers a view of the world not often seen in movies. It’s also ridiculously funny, which is reason enough to watch it.

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‘Bros’

★★★1/2

Opening Friday, September 30, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for strong sexual content, language throughout and some drug use. Running time: 115 minutes.

Review: 'Hocus Pocus 2' is a funny and engaging movie, a far cry from the dull original

Maybe there is magic in the world, if a terrible movie like 1993’s “Hocus Pocus” can inspire a sequel 29 years later, “Hocus Pocus 2,” that has more laughs and heart than the original ever hoped to have.

Yes, I know the original is beloved in some quarters, a slumber-party staple for kids whose parents wouldn’t let them watch real scary movies around Halloween. I was not one of them; I checked my original review (I’ve been doing this for a long time) and I gave it one-and-a-half stars, with a little bit of charity because I enjoy Bette Midler in pretty much anything. Before settling in on “Hocus Pocus 2” the other night, I watched the first movie again, just to see if I had mellowed — and, nope, it’s still awful, a cheaply produced affair that wastes the talent of Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker and Kathy Najimy.

So how did the sequel manage to leap over my nonexistent expectations and land squarely in “hey, this is pretty good” territory? Let’s start with the fact that Midler, Parker and Najimy have leaned into the joke more this time. They play the again-resurrected Sanderson sisters knowing they’re in a ridiculous Halloween movie, and they enjoy themselves a lot more. My favorite sight gag is when the Sandersons enter a house and are looking for something; when Midler’s Winifred says “spread out,” it’s Parker’s dim Sarah Sanderson who takes her literally and starts doing the splits.

A lot of the credit for the sequel’s success goes to director Anne Fletcher (“The Proposal,” “Dumplin’”), who latches onto the humor and the sisterly empowerment of the script by Jen D’Angelo (who shares story credit with David Kirschner, who co-wrote the original, and Blake Harris). 

That empowerment isn’t held by the Sanderson sisters, but by the teen friends who inadvertently bring them back from the dead: Magic obsessed Becca (Whitney Peak, who starred in the “Gossip Girl” reboot) and Izzy (Melissa Escobedo), who are currently feuding with their friend Cassie (Lilia Buckingham) because she’s got a dorky boyfriend, Matt (From Gutierrez), who bullies Becca and Izzy. 

The set-up is also funny, a prologue in 17th century Salem that shows us how the young Sanderson sisters became witches, with a strategic cameo from Hannah Waddingham (“Ted Lasso”). The prologue also introduces the Sandersons’ tormentor, Rev. Traske, whose descendant in 2022 is Salem’s mayor and Cassie’s father — both played with droll wit by Tony Hale.

Also throw in Sam Richardson (“Veep”) as a magic-shop owner who get in over his head by the Sandersons, and Doug Jones reprising his role as the zombie Billy Butcherson, setting the record straight about his puritan “romance” with Winifred.

With that cast, and a script that’s only partly reverential to the original, and “Hocus Pocus 2” turns out to be worth a look — even if you didn’t suffer through the original.

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‘Hocus Pocus 2’

★★★

Starts streaming Friday, September 30, on Disney+. Rated PG for action, macabre/suggestive humor and some language. Running time: 104 minutes.