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Post by theycallmemrfish on Aug 13, 2018 18:06:38 GMT
To those who've seen it, how was Topher Grace?
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Post by Sharbs on Aug 13, 2018 18:07:37 GMT
To those who've seen it, how was Topher Grace? it was more perfect casting than anything else; didn't anything profound himself
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Post by theycallmemrfish on Aug 13, 2018 18:11:50 GMT
To those who've seen it, how was Topher Grace? it was more perfect casting than anything else; didn't anything profound himself Damn shame. He had so much promise back in the day that he never quite lived up to. He was the only kid on That 70's Show that could actually act, he was picking projects like Traffic and PS during his tenure there... but then they decided to make him Venom. Boy did that undo everything.
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Post by quetee on Aug 13, 2018 18:19:47 GMT
it was more perfect casting than anything else; didn't anything profound himself Damn shame. He had so much promise back in the day that he never quite lived up to. He was the only kid on That 70's Show that could actually act, he was picking projects like Traffic and PS during his tenure there... but then they decided to make him Venom. Boy did that undo everything. I'm really surprised at his career. Well, if academy goes GA GA for this he probably has best chance at scoring nod.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 13, 2018 21:50:28 GMT
To those who've seen it, how was Topher Grace? He’s okay but it’s still hard for me to see him as anyone other than Eric Foreman with that voice. Even seeing him as a villain in Predators was jarring.
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Post by Billy_Costigan on Aug 15, 2018 18:55:19 GMT
Loved it. My new #1 of the year. I'd be shocked if it didn't score BP and BD nods.
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Post by stephen on Aug 18, 2018 2:27:12 GMT
Yeah, I think this might be Spike's best work to date. It's certainly not subtle, but Spike has never been that, but it manages to skirt the border of preachiness quite adeptly, allowing the film's message to come out less like a pre-existing screed and more like a natural stance that the viewer takes as the film goes along. The script is taut but not strained, instead allowing levity to massage its muscles right before it pops you with a haymaker wallop, and Lee's direction feels so uncharacteristically unobtrusive that I can hardly believe it's him behind the camera.
John David Washington blasts any accusation of nepotism right out of the gate. The kid is magnetic; he has a natural easygoing charm and yet can also handle the dramatic heft of such a story with equal aplomb. This is a hell of a star-maker performance. Driver also continues to carve out his niche quite well, portraying a man who has to eschew his own identity in favor of a fake persona, but who starts to meditate on what he might've lost and still lose along the way. The rest of the ensemble is excellent in their roles, most of whom tasked with playing loathsome racists and all-around vile representations of America's seedier side, and the way that they seem to encroach upon both Ron Stallworths' worlds is like watching a metaphorical noose tighten, which is a terrible and yet apt comparison. Topher Grace's portrayal of David Duke has been rightly spotlighted, but it's Finnish actor Jasper Pääkkönen (utterly terrifying and believable as a backwoods bigot) and Ashlie Atkinson (as his equally foul, horrifying wife) who really chill you to the bone. The film also brings in a pair of heavy-hitting one-scene wonders in the forms of Corey Hawkins (as firebrand leader Kwame Ture) and Harry Belafonte (as an old head who trots out post-Birth of a Nation history for an audience of rapt advocates), and Laura Harrier's performance as the student revolutionary Stallworth falls for is equally charming and radical.
The film lays it on thick here and there (with its timely subject matter, it's hard not to), but it's only in the film's final harrowing images where Spike lets it all hang out, and rightly so. The audience deserves that stomach-churning coda, to go home not with a simple torrent of text but a sickening barrage of video and photos that remind us that even though BlacKkKlansman is set in the 1970s, it is not a period piece.
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Post by Christ_Ian_Bale on Aug 18, 2018 3:49:20 GMT
Hurrying to see this Tuesday. With the redneck haven I live in, no way this plays at my theater longer than this week.
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Post by Martin Stett on Aug 18, 2018 5:05:46 GMT
Hurrying to see this Tuesday. With the redneck haven I live in, no way this plays at my theater longer than this week. If you so much as say that the confederate flag is a symbol of treason in my county (which no one can deny it is, this is historical fact), you're likely to get your tires flattened.
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Post by pacinoyes on Aug 18, 2018 11:00:42 GMT
The film lays it on thick here and there (with its timely subject matter, it's hard not to), but it's only in the film's final harrowing images where Spike lets it all hang out, and rightly so. The audience deserves that stomach-churning coda, to go home not with a simple torrent of text but a sickening barrage of video and photos that remind us that even though BlacKkKlansman is set in the 1970s, it is not a period piece. When have you ever seen a scene - ever in film history a real life scene inserted like that? and then people give credit to the filmmaker? I'm not saying it wasn't powerful - I'm saying it's more powerful than his actual film was and he should have left it out because it's not cinematically powerful - it's CNN powerful instead - he didn't write the scene, he didn't direct the scene, his actors didn't act the scene - all he did was insert the scene. Still he gets "credit" for the scene though. If you stop the film before this scene .............it's a better film. People will say no, they will say as you did that those final images are "harrowing" but to me you are changing the way that a narrative film has to work and people aren't thinking about how the gross inclusion of that scene is manipulative beyond belief.
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Post by stephen on Aug 18, 2018 14:36:15 GMT
When have you ever seen a scene - ever in film history a real life scene inserted like that? and then people give credit to the filmmaker? I'm not saying it wasn't powerful - I'm saying it's more powerful than his actual film was and he should have left it out because it's not cinematically powerful - it's CNN powerful instead - he didn't write the scene, he didn't direct the scene, his actors didn't act the scene - all he did was insert the scene. Still he gets "credit" for the scene though. If you stop the film before this scene .............it's a better film. People will say no, they will say as you did that those final images are "harrowing" but to me you are changing the way that a narrative film has to work and people aren't thinking about how the gross inclusion of that scene is manipulative beyond belief. I mean, the insertion of the scene is Spike's decision, and what's more, the film felt like it was steadily building to something like that. The constant references to modern-day society/politics ("Do you really think America would elect a man like David Duke?", "America First!") were scattered throughout as breadcrumbs, and the way that it shows that no matter what good Ron Stallworth did in the 1970s, not much has changed in the grand scope of things. And the way the footage washes over the audience, who has probably seen the images/videos in a sort of half-attentive scrolling on social media but not really focusing on it 100%, it forces the audience to look at what's happening in America. It's the second half of the Belafonte scene, because that scene shows ancient, grainy photos/images of violence post- Birth of a Nation in America . . . but in the final sequence, we see the same thing happening through modern smart-phones/cameras. You can argue that Lee didn't direct those scenes, but filmmakers have used this technique many times in the past across cinematic history. You may call it manipulative, but I think Lee's intent is that the audience has to be manipulated because America has been manipulated for so long to believe certain things. The images speak for themselves. No amount of "both sides" rhetoric can change that.
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Post by pacinoyes on Aug 18, 2018 15:17:13 GMT
When have you ever seen a scene - ever in film history a real life scene inserted like that? and then people give credit to the filmmaker? I'm not saying it wasn't powerful - I'm saying it's more powerful than his actual film was and he should have left it out because it's not cinematically powerful - it's CNN powerful instead - he didn't write the scene, he didn't direct the scene, his actors didn't act the scene - all he did was insert the scene. Still he gets "credit" for the scene though. If you stop the film before this scene .............it's a better film. People will say no, they will say as you did that those final images are "harrowing" but to me you are changing the way that a narrative film has to work and people aren't thinking about how the gross inclusion of that scene is manipulative beyond belief. You can argue that Lee didn't direct those scenes, but filmmakers have used this technique many times in the past across cinematic history. You may call it manipulative, but I think Lee's intent is that the audience has to be manipulated because America has been manipulated for so long to believe certain things. The images speak for themselves. No amount of "both sides" rhetoric can change that.Maybe but I'd argue that filmmakers - or major ones at least - have never used this technique as the climax of their film and if they did and I'm forgetting it (which is possible) they'd be called out for being banal (i.e. imagine Schindler's List ending with literal footage in the camps or Jfk with the Kennedy assassination - it would be gross) Where the film goes wrong there is its tied to representations of race throughout US film history - when he shows Gone With The Wind or Birth Of A Nation he's raising some interesting points even if at times those scenes are dramatically inert - but that last scene is more a trick and its a cheap one. If you are saying how films (as referenced in the film) can lie but the "truth" IS the truth - well that's a great point IF you did the hard work necessary to make that point ....... but you can't have it both ways and try to make that point when your use of that clip is itself literally a lie relative to the construction of what I just watched (i.e. the scene is truth as it happened, the use of the scene in your narrative film is a lie, make a documentary then). Maybe this is a new wave in what people want and will stand for and celebrate in a film. I think this will be thought of as "scene of the year" and Hereditary which I thought was a cheat in how it drew its characters was raved by many for precisely that reason. To me though, it's looking like the death of the screenwriter
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Post by stephen on Aug 18, 2018 15:33:53 GMT
Maybe but I'd argue that filmmakers - or major ones at least - have never used this technique as the climax of their film and if they did and I'm forgetting it (which is possible) they'd be called out for being banal (i.e. imagine Schindler's List ending with literal footage in the camps or Jfk with the Kennedy assassination - it would be gross) Ignoring the whole premise of JFK focusing on the Zapruder film over and over in the third act ("Back and to the left!"), the difference between those two films and BlacKkKlansman is that Lee is illustrating that things haven't changed at all. Schindler's List ending with footage of the Holocaust defeats the purpose of his film, because he deliberately shot it in black-and-white to mimic the power those historical images evoked, and the story isn't dealing with a continued Holocaust in today's society but rather how even an amoral Nazi industrialist had the capacity to do the right thing. JFK didn't need to end with the assassination because the assassination itself was depicted throughout the entire film. If you'd made the argument that Stone could've ended it with clips of other political assassinations in history, I could understand it, but it's all about context. The BlacKkKlansman coda works because the film is an extremely timely story involving David Duke, the Klan, and white supremacy, and that even though it's set four decades ago, the fact of the matter is that it is a story that is still going on to this day. Stallworth's investigation didn't dismantle the Klan or drive Duke into shameful obscurity; he is still out there, spreading his poisonous ideology, which has resulted in death and tragedy today. That's a natural narrative continuation of the events in Lee's movie. If you're a film buff, you likely know the story of Birth of a Nation and its role in reviving the Klan. But the average filmgoer might not. Stressing that cinema had the power even back then to galvanize a nation into hateful attacks, and that even the President of the United States at the time championed its influence (which, again, draws parallels to today), may seem like a trick, but I think it was done very effectively. I don't remember footage of Gone with the Wind in it, though. I know there's a bit where Duke refers to Hattie McDaniel in comparison to his own "mammy", but even so, Lee's pointing out that Gone with the Wind is an outdated glorification of the era, an idolization of a time when blacks "knew their place." Again, it's not subtle, but that doesn't make it bad.
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Post by pacinoyes on Aug 18, 2018 15:45:06 GMT
stephen in your first paragraph you're right but my point there was - it's never been done before in film history (or done successfully) because it's a cheat and if you are going to argue that's because every movie is different from this one, well ok. But I'm just arguing that film history has a tradition and so does documentary film and you can't rip that apart for your film because you can't be bothered to come up with a scripted ending (imo).
Anyway..........good talk. By the way, I believe Gone With The Wind appears in the very first scene across Alec Baldwin's face during his speech.
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Post by stephen on Aug 18, 2018 15:52:35 GMT
stephen in your first paragraph you're right but my point there was - it's never been done before in film history (or done successfully) because it's a cheat and if you are going to argue that's because every movie is different from this one, well ok. But I'm just arguing that film history has a tradition and so does documentary film and you can't rip that apart for your film because you can't be bothered to come up with a scripted ending (imo). Anyway..........good talk. By the way, I believe Gone With The Wind appears in the very first scene across Alec Baldwin face during his speech. I'd argue that the ending of the film was the dolly shot where Ron and Patrice see the cross-burning and that regardless of their victory against the Klan, the fight isn't over. The Charlottesville footage is a coda. It's the sort of thing you largely would see as the credits roll, but Lee wisely didn't want to distract from the power of the images by overlaying them with actors' and crewmembers' names. I actually missed the first few minutes of the film, coming in just as Ron was sitting down with Clay Davis and the police captain, so I didn't see Alec Baldwin at all. But from what I hear, the film opens the film in a similar way to how he closes it, by showing images and footage from the civil rights movement before Stallworth's investigation. So the coda is actually a natural progression of that. I still don't understand what your beef is in regards to Lee using this footage to attain its desired effect. People may have seen the Charlottesville images on the news/social media, but people are so inured to that sort of thing that largely, they just glance over it, then move on. But Lee forces the audience to see the car plow into the crowd, freezes on that Pulitzer-winning image of the guy being bowled over, hearing the rage, grief and terror in the protesters' voices, and reminding us that people have died and still are dying in a conflict being perpetrated by hate-mongers and bigots. You can call it a cheat or a trick, but other filmmakers have used them since time immemorial, so I don't see the problem.
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Post by pacinoyes on Aug 18, 2018 16:14:51 GMT
I still don't understand what your beef is in regards to Lee using this footage to attain its desired effect. People may have seen the Charlottesville images on the news/social media, but people are so inured to that sort of thing that largely, they just glance over it, then move on. But Lee forces the audience to see the car plow into the crowd, freezes on that Pulitzer-winning image of the guy being bowled over, hearing the rage, grief and terror in the protesters' voices, and reminding us that people have died and still are dying in a conflict being perpetrated by hate-mongers and bigots. You can call it a cheat or a trick, but other filmmakers have used them since time immemorial, so I don't see the problem.
I'll expand to address this because I do want to be clear but also I'll mention that I did review this film in this thread if anyone is curious to see my review on it as well. My problem with him using the footage is that it cheapened his film (the first 1/3 of which was great) - you can call it a "coda" but it's the ending. No one is leaving during it, it's the last thing they see. It's bending over backwards not to call it the ending I think. I thought I was pretty clear in saying you can't use real life footage to end your film - or at least I'm not aware of it ever working successfully (or being done period?) and I'm against the very idea of it. Films are films, real life events are real life events - there is not, to me, a natural progression of the two. The dolly shot as the last thing you see would be a 7/10 film for me. I knocked a 1/2 a point off for the "coda" - was that Lee's desired effect? Like I said, if 4 screenwriters (4 credited) couldn't come up with your ending..............walk away with what you have.
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Film Socialism
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Post by Film Socialism on Aug 19, 2018 3:24:58 GMT
better than the average white liberal shit, 6.5/10
haven't yall grown past this stuff by now? moderately entertaining, uneven social commentary, no risk filmmaking? hell, i thought ol spike had.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 19, 2018 4:19:09 GMT
Haven't watched it yet, but am surprised people are saying this is better than Do the Right Thing. I think that's the best film about racism I've ever seen.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 19, 2018 15:51:44 GMT
I really enjoyed it. 7.5/10.
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Post by AKenjiB on Aug 19, 2018 18:24:27 GMT
To those who've seen it, how was Topher Grace? I actually thought he was terrific. He really captured this sort of affability with Duke. He comes off as so harmless and even friendly that it makes his beliefs and goals more disturbing. A lot of people have criticized the film for using easy targets with it’s really idiotic racist characters, but I thought Topher Grace’s portrayal of Duke goes against their criticisms. He’s well-spoken, constantly wears suits and rarely curses, and seems like a nice guy to have a conversation with. He really helps give perspective as to why these guys look up to David Duke in the first place. There’s a soft-spoken charisma to him.
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Post by AKenjiB on Aug 22, 2018 0:47:07 GMT
I’ve seen the film 3 times now in a week. Here are my thoughts on it:
First off, this is probably Spike Lee’s best film since The 25th Hour (also, The 25th Hour is so underrated and more people should see it ASAP). The film is pretty superbly paced, never really dragging on or boring me. The acting is likewise top-notch all around. John David Washington was already the best thing on Ballers, but now he shows he has serious leading man material, Adam Driver’s character arc is borderline simple but I thought Driver really sold the subtleties well, especially when we see his behavior undercover vs. at the police station, and of course there’s Topher Grace who I think is pretty terrific here. He’s soft-spoken and in many ways quite friendly. It’s believable that he could sway people to think like him. The film has received some criticisms for having easy targets with its idiotic racist characters, but I thought Grace’s portrayal of Duke goes against that. He’s constantly wearing suits and saying “gosh darn” and looks like a dorky 70s dad. He seems harmless...until you hear him start talking about his beliefs.
My biggest issue with the film was the editing. While some stuff may have been intentional stylistic choices, a lot of the editing just felt amateurish. Near the end of the film, we see a guy slam down a phone twice from two angles and two men coming in for a hug twice from two angles (instead of blending the angles together so we only see the phone slam once and the hug once). I’m not really sure what was going on with that. Likewise, while the final few minutes of the film have grown on me on repeat viewings, the very final image feels...well unnecessary. There are also a few questionable visual choices (like having blaxpoitation posters pop up on the screen).
Regardless, there’s a lot that works here that made this worth watching and those complaints are pretty minor in the big scheme of things. The film deftly manages tone as you laugh at how stupid these racist morons are but then react in horror when you see how horrifying the effects of racism can be. The film ultimately results in quite a gut punch but it sticks with you. It tackles a lot of complex themes and doesn’t give you a clear answer at the end, but it makes you think and isn’t that what movies should do?
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Post by pacinoyes on Aug 22, 2018 9:00:34 GMT
Regardless, there’s a lot that works here that made this worth watching and those complaints are pretty minor in the big scheme of things. The film deftly manages tone as you laugh at how stupid these racist morons are but then react in horror when you see how horrifying the effects of racism can be. The film ultimately results in quite a gut punch but it sticks with you. It tackles a lot of complex themes and doesn’t give you a clear answer at the end, but it makes you think and isn’t that what movies should do?I never felt the Klan was that big of a threat in this film except for the non-fiction scene which I've already argued was grossly used imo. I would say it's a mess of tone specifically (4 screenwriters ): This Klan is so inept it's funny at first but ultimately Lee can't structure that into his movie logically no character dies except the Klan themselves and that's not until the awful (imo) 3rd act, etc. - why is Stallworth staking out the Klan house at all anyway (so he can save Driver oh right) or not covering his home address better - they already know he gave his real name (!) - what is the cops actual "plan" anyway to build a case because it seems its to be to sit around and listen to redneck hillbillies spew epithets and hope to not get frisked for wearing a wire (!?!)......... or for Driver or Washington to be placed in scenes where they can be spotted by redneck hillbillies they either arrested or who spotted them at his address ............which of course they won't be at risk because this funny Klan never wants to followup on that initial lie detector test or on the address thing at all (!?!)
Meanwhile the racist cop gets fired in a sort of funny audience appealing way etc. but that whole particular storyline is beyond toothless satire - when Patrice tells Ron his basic reaction to her is "let's dance" and later their discussions are all surface level "I'm a cop" - there's never any deeper talk on race nuance (or race AND Patrice's feminist nuance) or about his personal or political responsibility/conflict I can see people liking the film because its entertaining but a whole lot of the issue oriented power themes inherent in the piece gets lost too at the expense of just entertaining you.
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Post by DeepArcher on Aug 23, 2018 0:27:31 GMT
Finally saw this today, thought it was pretty great. Certain ideas/characters felt underdeveloped and a great deal of it was rushed and a bit too jumpy for my liking, but nonetheless it's a totally engrossing story that is funny and empowering, but also doesn't treat its subject matter as a thing of the past ... sure, it's certainly not subtle, but Lee always makes a damn strong case for his brand of in-your-face cinema. This movie feels like a true to call to action, ruthlessly revealing how little things have really changed. Really great performances from the entire ensemble; of course Washington was outstanding, Driver was great, but the whole supporting ensemble was really impressive -- Hawkins and Belafonte both very powerful in their single scenes, and Jasper Paakkonen, Ryan Eggold, and Paul Walter Hauser were all fantastic, even if their characters were super one-note.
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Post by The_Cake_of_Roth on Aug 23, 2018 3:54:47 GMT
I found this entertaining in parts (mostly early on), but the ending left a really bad taste in my mouth (see below), so I didn’t much care for this overall. Honestly it feels like this film is sort of preaching to the choir and I don’t feel like I got much out of it outside the basic premise of the Ron Stalwart story, which is interesting in itself but not enough to justify the praise the film gets. It kind of makes me question who the intended audience for this film is because progressive audiences are already aware of its message, and far right audiences will never watch this film…. which makes the lack of subtlety and nuance in the execution frustrating. It just feels like an angry rant from Spike Lee, but without the artfulness of Do the Right Thing… instead it comes off as weak, broad-stroke sermonizing. The most interesting parts of the film to me were the moments where Washington and Driver seem to be grappling with their identity as a black and Jewish man, respectively, while also reconciling that with their position in the system… but the film doesn’t really explore this angle in much depth and instead decides to dwell on many scenes of white supremacist caricatures who aren’t given much dimension in the first place. I really didn’t like the coda because its connection to the bulk of the film before it feels contrived (yes, I get that it’s telling us white supremacy is still happening today and not much has changed) because I don't think it makes anything before the coda suddenly more powerful… it just feels tacked on. It’s undeniably powerful footage on its own, but it’s not properly motivated by the actual dramatic narrative construction that precedes it… instead it feels tangential and, yes, cheap. I’m not necessarily against using documentary footage at the end of a film like this on principle, but here it just doesn’t feel well integrated. Spike Lee obviously has a lot on his mind, but he’s not able to weave together the issues he’s concerned with in a narratively coherent manner. This also applies to the intercutting of the Klan meeting with the scene about Birth of a Nation that happens earlier. When that scene happened, it really felt incongruent with everything else around it, like Spike was straining for some broader resonance that he wasn’t able to produce organically from the basic premise he set out to dramatize.
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Post by alexanderblanchett on Aug 27, 2018 21:29:09 GMT
An important and absolutely relevant film these days. I loved how Spike Lee mixed history with little hints of today's political situation sometimes more literal than expected. Lee portrays racism as an never ending conflict and war but also kind of spoofs it in a very respectful way. Even if some of the characters were too cartoonish for my taste. Like Connie. Nevertheless it was an important and effectly entertaining ride that gives us some of the best performances of the years at this stage. First of all there is Denzel's son John David Washington's who inheritated his fathers talent and follows his legacy. Another great performance came from Adam Driver who is Devine and steals many of the films scenes. Jasper Päakkönen gives possibly the best performance in the film. Sure his character appears to be very cartoonish too, on the paper however he is convincing with his rough and sometimes frightening aura. Laura Harrier was also wonderful and gives the film the right heart and soul. Nice change for Topher Grace in an unexpected role. Great cameo by Alec Baldwi. The score was fantastic, some editing really wonderful. Its your typical Spike Lee joint... as it was made in the 90s so glad he is back to good quality films again. The screenplay was very good as well and I loved the general look of it. Good film with many great references of the actual situation. The ending footage was heartbreaking and the most perfect way to end a film like this.
Nominations for:
Best Picture Best Director: Spike Lee Best Actor in a Leading Role: John David Washington Best Actor in a Supporting Role: Jasper Pääkkönen * Best Actress in a Supporting Role: Laura Harrier Best Adapted Screenplay Best Score * Best Costume Design Best Ensemble
Rating: 8/10
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