The Purge: Anarchy
Film Review by Kam Williams

Dateline: America, 2023. It’s now nine years since the country voted the New Founders of America into power. High on that elitist political party’s agenda was designating March 21st as the Purge, a day on which all law is suspended, meaning anything goes, rape, robbery, even murder.

Most citizens opt to stay inside for the duration of the annual ordeal, battening down the hatches with a Bible or a weapon in hand, since they can’t call upon the cops to come to their assistance in the event of an emergency. Yet, many turn vigilante to rid the streets of the dregs of humanity, others seize on the opportunity to even the score with someone they have a grievance against.

A couple of hours before the “fun” starts, we find Eva (Carmen Ejogo) rushing home from her job at a diner to be with her teen daughter, Cali (Zoe Soul). In the process, the attractive waitress ignores the crude passes of both a co-worker (Nicholas Gonzalez) and her apartment building’s custodian (Noel Gugliemi).

Elsewhere, Liz (Kiele Sanchez) and Shane (Zach Gilford) are driving to his sister’s while debating about whether to inform her that their marriage is on the rocks. But the two soon land in desperate straits when their car conks out on the highway only minutes before the siren sounds signaling the beginning of the Purge.

That moment can’t come soon enough for revenge-minded Leo Barnes (Frank Grillo) who’s itching to get even with the drunk driver (Brandon Keener) that not only killed his son, but got off scot-free on a legal technicality. However, soon after the Purge starts, the police sergeant reflexively comes to the assistance of Eva, Cali, Liz and Shane, all of whom are on the run from a bloodthirsty death squad.

So, he puts his plan on the backburner temporarily to protect the frightened foursome. That endeavor proves easier said than done in The Purge: Anarchy, a stereotypical horror sequel in that it ups the ante in terms of violence, body count, pyrotechnics and gratuitous gore.

Unfortunately, the film pales in comparison to the original, which was a thought-provoking thriller raising questions about poverty and privilege. This relatively-simplistic installment pays lip service to that intriguing theme in almost insulting fashion, envisioning instead a nihilistic U.S. which has merely degenerated into a decadent dystopia where blood-thirsty rich snobs relish slaying the poor purely for sport.

It is, thus, no surprise to witness the rise of an African-American guerilla leader (Michael K. Williams) who’s exhorting the masses to revolt by indicting the Purge as racist. An entertaining enough, if incoherent, splatterfest which unapologetically lifts familiar elements from such apocalyptic classics as The Hunger Games (2012), V for Vendetta (2006), The Warriors (1979), Escape from New York (1981) and Hard Target (1993).

A perhaps prophetic satire celebrating senseless slaughter as a natural national holiday in such a gun-loving country!

Good (2 stars)

Rated R for profanity and graphic violence

Running time: 103 minutes

Distributor: Universal Pictures

To see a trailer for The Purge: Anarchy, visit

Rosie Perez

The “Handbook for an Unpredictable Life” Interview

with Kam Williams

 

Everything’s Coming Up Rosie!

Rosie Maria Perez was born on September 6, 1964 in Bushwick, Brooklyn where she was raised in a Catholic orphanage after being abandoned by her mom and taken from her aunt. She made a most memorable screen debut as Spike Lee’s girlfriend, Tina, in Do the Right Thing, and later landed an Oscar-nomination for a nonpareil performance in Fearless. Her many other credits include White Men Can't Jump, Won’t Back Down and The Counselor.

 

Rosie serves as the Artistic Chair of Urban Arts Partnership and sits on the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS. Here, she talks about her career and her autobiography, “Handbook for an Unpredictable Life.”  

 

 

Kam Williams: Hi Rosie. I’m honored to have this chance to speak with you.

Rosie Perez: Absolutely, Kam.

 

KW: I really enjoyed the book!

RP: Oh, you’re one of the few journalists who actually read it before speaking to me. That’s wonderful!

 

KW: What inspired you to write your autobiography?

RP: I didn’t really know at first. I kept asking myself, “Why am I doing this?” because I’m such a private person. Then, one day, the head of programming at my charity, the Urban Arts Partnership, said she was excited that I was writing it, and she hoped I’d be giving copies to the students. My first reaction was “No,” since the subject-matter was really heavy, and because of some of the language I was using. But she then reminded me that I’d already shared my stories with them, and I almost burst into tears. I realized, “Oh my God! That’s why I’m writing it.” Those students had been the first people, outside of my inner circle, to hear my story. It happened when I participated in one of our programs called Life Stories, where we encourage the kids to open up and share so they can understand their lives. One day, I was challenged to share my story with them. That‘s where finding the inspiration and strength to write this book began.   

 

KW: I found it very moving, especially since I had no idea about any of it. I just thought of you as that bubbly, talented, attractive actress I’d seen in movies and on talk shows.

RP: And I am that person, but I’m also this one. And the reason I decided to share with the students was because I saw them come into the Academy so burdened by life every day. When you are a low-income, poverty-stricken, Title 1 kid, you have so much to endure just waking up. So, you may have a bad attitude or a chip on your shoulder before you even get to school. You may arrive so anxious, angry, hungry or apathetic that you may say to yourself, “Why should I pay attention in class?” You might be beaten-up on the way to school, because you live in a bad neighborhood. Still, I had to inform them, especially the seniors, that they didn’t have the luxury of bringing all that baggage into the world which they would be stepping into as adults. I’d say, “You need to come to terms with it, or let it go. One or the other. And if you can do both, then you’re golden.” If you are unable to get past that baggage, the opportunities that should be yours will not be yours.

 

KW: Well, I applaud you for overcoming so many obstacles. After all, the odds of making it in Hollywood are long enough for someone coming from a privileged background.   

RP: I hear you, since the odds were supposedly great. But you know what? I knew I was going to be successful from day one. From day one. That’s why it throws me whenever someone says it was such a fluke that I was successful.

 

KW: The Judyth Piazza question: What key quality do you believe all successful people share? 

RP: I would say tenacity and perseverance. You have to be like a dog with a bone. You can’t just let it go. And number one is belief. You have to believe in yourself. You need to have the audacity to be great.

KW: The Harriet Pakula-Teweles question: With so many classic films being redone, is there a remake you'd like to star in?

RP: Wow! No one’s ever asked me that question. I wouldn’t try it, but the only one that popped into my head is A Woman Under the Influence, the John Cassavetes film starring his wife Gena Rowlands. Her depiction of mental illness frightened me. Her performance shocked me, because it was so simple.

 

KW: Is there any question no one ever asks you, that you wish someone would?

RP: No, I can’t think of anything, although that question is probably out there.

 

KW: When you look in the mirror, what do you see?

RP: Me! I see me, and the reality of me gets clearer as I get older, and I’m loving it.

 

KW: The Ling-Ju Yen question: What is your earliest childhood memory?

RP: The crib, the peach bedspread, and the French doors at my aunt’s house when I was 2.

 

KW: What is your favorite dish to cook?

RP: Pollo guisado, it’s a Puerto Rican-style chicken stew.

 

KW: The Uduak Oduok question: Who is your favorite clothes designer?

RP: Oh, I don’t have a favorite.

 

KW: The Mike Pittman question: What was your best career decision?

RP: To go to college.  

 

KW: The bookworm Troy Johnson question: What was the last book you read?

RP: “White Girls” by Hilton Als. Blown away! http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1936365812/ref=nosim/thslfofire-20  

 

KW: The music maven Heather Covington question: What was the last song you listened to? 

RP: To be honest, “Drunk in Love” by Beyonce’. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00HFWYA3E/ref=nosim/thslfofire-20

 

KW: If you could have one wish instantly granted, what would that be for?

RP: That my husband [Erik Haze] and I will be in premium health until we take our last breaths, so that we could enjoy every single second of our lives together.

 

KW: The Jamie Foxx question: If you only had 24 hours to live, how would you spend the time? 

RP: With my husband and my family. It wouldn’t matter what we were doing. We’d probably be telling each other how much we appreciate each other while watching boxing and eating a good meal. Of course, it would turn into a party. 

 

KW: The Kerry Washington question: If you were an animal, what animal would you be?

RP: A horse.

 

KW: The Anthony Anderson question: If you could have a superpower, which one would you choose?

RP: I have no idea.

 

KW: The Anthony Mackie question: Isthere anything that you promised yourself you’d do if you became famous, that you still haven’t done yet?

RP: Yes, to go back to school and get a degree.

 

KW: What was it like to skyrocket to fame?

RP: It was both difficult and wonderful. It was quite difficult for me because, being raised in a home, I’d come to hate being pointed at whenever we went out in public in a group. It’s still uncomfortable for me to be stared at, although I’ve learned to deal with it better. It makes me self-conscious. 

 

KW: The Viola Davis question: What’s the biggest difference between who you are at home as opposed to the person we see on the red carpet?

RP: I’m more guarded and shy on the carpet. At home, I’m the silliest cornball who talks way too much and wants to be quiet and left alone at the same time. And I love to entertain, but in a small, intimate way. But I feel like I can be myself on Craig Ferguson’s show. I have so much fun on his couch, because he’s an idiot. That man cracks me up. I think there’s a kinship in our silliness. I dance like he does in my living room all the time.  

 

KW: The Melissa Harris-Perry question:How did your first big heartbreak impact who you are as a person?

RP: You might think it was being abandoned by mother. But no, it was being taken away from my aunt at the age of 3, because I was self-aware by then and I knew what was going on. That was my biggest heartbreak, and it informed a lot. I didn’t want it to be my whole story as an adult. So, I’ve learned to heal that heartbreak and move on.

 

KW: The Columbus Short question: Are you happy?

RP: Yeah.

 

KW: The Teri Emerson question: When was the last time you had a good laugh?

RP: About an hour ago during a meeting at my charity. I laugh a lot. It’s disgusting how much I laugh during the day.

 

KW: What advice do you have for anyone who wants to follow in your footsteps?

RP: [LOL] I don’t know that I would encourage anyone to follow in my footsteps.

 

KW: The Tavis Smiley question: How do you want to be remembered?

RP: As someone that gave back, because the people I remember the most in my life are the ones that gave. 

 

KW: Thanks again for being so forthcoming and so generous with your time, Rosie, and best of luck with both the book and your career.

RP: Thank you, Kam. I really, really appreciate it.

 

To order a copy of Handbook for an Unpredictable Life, visit:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0307952398/ref%3dnosim/thslfofire-20

Wish I Was Here
Film Review by Kam Williams

As an actor, Zach Braff is most closely associated with the character J.D. from Scrubs, the Emmy-winning sitcom which enjoyed a nine-year run on network television from 2001 to 2010. As a director, he’s best known for Garden State, the quirky, semi-autobiographical feature film where he played a struggling actor who returns to his hometown in Jersey for his mother’s funeral.

Wish I Was Here is more akin to the latter, being another delightful, dysfunctional family dramedy which Zach directed and stars in. He also co-wrote it with his brother, Adam, and the offbeat adventure milks much of its mirth from Jewish culture in a manner often evocative of Joel and Ethan Coen’s A Serious Man (2009).

The point of departure is suburban L.A. which is where we find 35 year-old Aidan Bloom (Braff) in the midst of a midlife crisis. The fledgling actor is on anti-depressants and in deep denial about his dwindling career prospects, despite the fact that he last worked ages ago in a dandruff commercial.

What makes the situation problematical is that he futilely fritters away his time auditioning, oblivious to his breadwinner wife’s (Kate Hudson) resentment. She hates being stuck like a rat on a treadmill in a stultifying government job where she’s being sexually harassed on a daily basis by the pervy creep (Michael Weston) who shares her cubicle.

But she can’t quit her job because their kids, Grace (Joey King) and Tucker (Pierce Gagnon), won’t have food on the table or a roof over their heads. As it is, they’ve already sacrificed some luxuries, like the built-in pool that sits empty in the backyard.

Something’s gotta give when grandpa Gabe (Mandy Patinkin) suddenly announces that his cancer has returned, so he can no longer afford to subsidize his grandchildren’s expensive private education. Not wanting to subject them to the substandard, local public schools, Aidan grudgingly agrees to abandon his pipe dream of Hollywood stardom in order to homeschool them.

However, this affords him an unexpected opportunity to not only share some much-needed quality time with them, but to orchestrate an overdue reconciliation between his long-estranged brother (Josh Gad) and their rapidly-declining dad, as well. Soon, adolescent Grace develops the confidence to blossom from a repressed wallflower into a show off sporting a metallic purple wig, and 6 year-old Tucker finds fulfillment toasting marshmallows in the desert with his more attentive father.

By film’s end, expect to be moved to tears by this poignant picture’s bittersweet resolution and sobering, universal message about the importance of family. And don’t be surprised if the weeping persists way past the closing credits.

Excellent (4 stars)

Rated R for

Running time: 120 minutes

Distributor: Focus Features

To see a trailer for Wish I Was Here, visit

America: Imagine the World without Her

Film Review by Kam Williams

 

Revisionist Documentary Speculates about Alternative U.S. Reality

 

What would the U.S. look like today if the Minutemen had lost the Revolutionary War to England? That query is the launching pad of America: Imagine the World without Her, an unapologetically right-wing documentary written, directed and narrated by Dinesh D’Souza.

D’Souza, a political pundit who immigrated here as a teenager back in the Seventies, proudly wears his patriotism on his sleeve, announcing at the outset, “I love America! I chose this country!” before launching into a full-frontal attack on such controversial left-leaning leaders and public intellectuals as Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Ward Churchill, Noam Chomsky, Michael Moore, Elizabeth Warren, Michael Eric Dyson, Bill Ayers, Howard Zinn, Saul Alinsky and Hillary Clinton.

But he levels his most caustic remarks at Barack Obama whom he indicts as a liar by playing a number of incriminating comments from “If you want to keep your doctor, you can keep your doctor” to “Nobody is listening to your phone calls.”  D’Souza goes on to explain the President’s behavior as merely part of a strategic socialist conspiracy to destroy the capitalist system.

The movie is basically an attempt to prove that the United States is a great nation with no reason to be ashamed of its past, as suggested by its supposed detractors like Reverend Wright who is heard again in his most notorious sound bite, “No! No! No! Not God bless America… God damn America!” D’Souza brushes aside shameful chapters in our history like slavery and the slaughter of the Indians by arguing that there were just as many black slave owners as white ones, and that Native Americans had fought with each other for millennia prior to the arrival of European settlers.   

His goal is to inspire the masses to rise up and save the country before it’s too late. I suspect that the picture will serve as red meat to arch-conservatives already inclined to dismiss Obama and other progressives as communists in liberals’ clothing. Unfortunately, it also won’t do much to encourage civil discourse or to bridge the intractable stalemate between Democratic and Republicans sitting on opposite sides of the aisle.

            Divisive D’Souza: Imagine an America without him!

 

Fair (1.5 stars)

Rated PG-13 for violent images   

Running time: 104 minutes

Distributor: Lionsgate Films

 

To see a trailer for America: Imagine the World without Her, visit:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7r3Ef7Ssy8

Rage

Film Review by Kam Williams

 

Shades of “Taken” Abound in Gruesome Nicolas Cage Vigilante Vehicle

            In recent years, Nicholas Cage has made a lot of mediocre movies, and Rage is no exception. This B-movie action flick might be best thought of as an unapologetic rip-off of the Liam Neeson vigilante vehicle Taken. 

            But where Neeson was a retired CIA agent, Cage plays a reformed ex-con. And while the former was frantically searching for his missing daughter, the latter is looking for whoever fired a fatal bullet into the head of his sweet, 16 year-old daughter. As for the villains, Taken’s were Albanian sex traffickers while Rage’s are Russian mobsters. 

            Otherwise, the stories are similar enough to warrant a comparison. At the point of departure we find Paul Maguire (Cage) and his trophy wife, Vanessa (Rachel Nichols), bidding his daughter (Aubrey Peeples) adieu for the evening as they head out to dinner at a local restaurant. The overprotective father makes a point of impressing upon Caitlin’s boyfriend, Mike (Max Fowler), that he doesn’t want any hanky-panky on the premises in his absence.   

            However, what actually transpires proves to be far worse than anything he imagined, for he gets a call from Detective St. John (Danny Glover) informing him of a break-in back at the house. Turns out that Caitlin’s been kidnapped and, based on the clues supplied by Mike, Paul suspects that her abductors might be the same ruthless Russian gang he’d had the temerity to rip off 19 years earlier.

            Sadly, her lifeless body is soon discovered, and all the evidence points to the posse’s kingpin, Chernov (Pasha D. Lychnikoff). So, rather than let the police solve the crime, Paul opts to take the law into his own hands, and rounds up a couple of his tough buddies (Max Ryan and Michael McGrady) before embarking on a revenge-fueled reign of terror armed to the teeth.

Gritty and gruesome, Rage is an unapologetic splatterfest featuring pyrotechnics, pistol-whipping, stabbing and slow-motion senseless slaughter murders via sawed-off shotgun. The body count gets pretty high en route to the protagonists’ surprising showdown with Chernov, a barrel-chested Vladimir Putin lookalike.

Think Taken with a heckuva twist!

Good (2 stars)

Unrated

Running time: 98 minutes

Distributor: RLJ/Image Entertainment

To see a trailer for Rage, visit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3FVLRN7Nzc