25 to Life
Film Review by Kam Williams
Out-of-the-Closet Documentary Chronicles Clandestine Life of Brother Hiding His HIV Status
When William Brawner was 18 months-old, his single-mom Linda left him in the care of a suspicious male babysitter against her better judgment while she went off to class at Howard University. Upon returning home, she found her baby so scalded by hot water that he needed numerous skin grafts and blood transfusions.
Doctor’s didn’t buy the babysitter’s story that it was all the result of an accident. And the proof in the pudding rested in the fact that the creep quickly slipped out of town before subsequently disappearing from the radar entirely.
Unfortunately for William, this tragedy transpired in the early Eighties at the dawn of the AIDS epidemic, well before the medical community became aware of how to protect the country’s tainted blood supply. Consequently, he contracted HIV from one of his transfusions.
Because of the social stigma then associated with AIDS, his mother decided to studiously hide Bill’s positive HIV status over the course of his childhood. Furthermore, since the guilty woman had no idea how long he might live, she also proceeded to spoil him rotten, admittedly raising a monster the rest of the world was going to have to deal with.
For, Bill eventually blossomed into quite the handsome ladies’ man. And while he did inform his high school sweetheart, Natasha, that he was infected, he never told any of the 20+ classmates he slept with when he followed in his mother’s footsteps to Howard.
He even had unprotected sex with some of those sisters, and was almost outed by his angry ex-girlfriend who sent an anonymous letter to the President of the University, warning, “Bill Brawner is HIV+ and infecting everyone at your school.” But the roaming Romeo’s culpable response was to never again share his status with anyone, though he would remain promiscuous.
Finally, in 2006, William confessed to his shameless behavior by going on the radio to reveal to the world once and for all that he was HIV+. In addition, he founded a Haven Youth center, a healthcare facility offering infected teens treatment and counseling.
Directed by Mike Brown, 25 to Life is reverential biopic that revisits all of the above, opting to present Bill in a positive light despite his risky behavior with a string of sex partners. Granted, it’s great that he ultimately embraced honesty and even settled down and got married, but it would’ve been nice to hear from his former conquests to learn how they felt about being used and whether they’ve tested positive for the AIDS virus.
A cautionary tale about a charming predator’s penis dispensing potentially-lethal demon seed.
Very Good (3 stars)
Rated PG-13 for PG-13 for action and sci-fi violence
Running time: 87 minutes
Studio: SimonSays Entertainment
Distributor: AFFRM
To see a trailer for 25 to Life, visit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9b7qEVRpQc
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1
Film Review by Kam Williams
In recent years, movie studios have started splitting into two their adaptations of finales from young adult book series, most notably, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” and “Twilight: Breaking Dawn.” The money-making ploy is arguably little more than a transparent attempt to milk the last dollar out of a soon to expire franchise.
The Hunger Games is the latest such production to employ the cash-generating tactic, as it divides in half “Mockingjay,” the last opus in Suzanne Collins’ best-selling, sci-fi trilogy. Unfortunately, this uneventful installment basically treads water while functioning as a setup for the upcoming dramatic conclusion. Nevertheless, nothing in the power of these words could possibly affect the box-office returns of this review-proof episode.
Directed by Francis Lawrence (The Hunger Games: Catching Fire), the movie again stars Jennifer Lawrence (as protagonist Katniss Everdeen) augmented by a support cast featuring Josh Hutcherson as Peeta, Liam Hemsworth as Gale, Woody Harrelson as Haymitch, Jeffrey Wright as Beetee, and the late Philip Seymour Hoffman as Plutarch Heavensbee.
At the point of departure, we find the country of Panem plunged into chaos and on the brink of revolution. Hunger Games victor Katniss reluctantly allows herself to be recruited by the leader of the rebellion, Alma Coin (Julianne Moore), to serve as the face of the struggle in propaganda videos designed to foment further insurrection.
However, besides Katniss’ frequently fretting about the mental state of her pal Peeta’s being caught in the clutches of Panem’s ruthless President, Coriolanus Snow (Donald Sutherland), not a lot transpires over the course of this anticlimactic adventure. Worse, we have to wait another whole year for the decisive denouement.
A lame excuse to fleece the legions of loyal Hunger Games fans in the target teen/tween demo.
Fair (1 star)
Rated PG-13 for intense violence, disturbing images and mature themes
Running time: 123 minutes
Distributor: Lionsgate Films
To see a trailer for The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1, visit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXshQ5mv1K8
Horrible Bosses 2
Film Review by Kam Williams
Timing is everything, when it comes to comedy, and this sequel suffers from an acute case of terrible timing. First of all, with the Bill Cosby rape allegations figuring so prominently in the news nowadays, the last thing anybody wants to laugh at is a premise predicated upon secretly slipping a knockout pill into the drink of an unsuspecting victim.
Equally distasteful is the running joke revolving around a female trying to turn a homosexual man straight by seducing him, suggesting that all you need to alter a gay guy’s sexual preference is an attractive seductress in a skimpy outfit. The picture’s political-incorrectness even extends to ethnic jokes, such as a cringe-inducing scene where a man mocks his Asian housekeeper’s thick accent.
Throw in unfunny skits about rape, pedophilia and the Ku Klux Klan, and you have a raunchy romp that repeatedly resorts to terribly tasteless fare simply for the sake of a cheap punch line.
Directed by Sean Anders (We’re the Millers), Horrible Bosses 2 features Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis and Charlie Day reprising their lead roles as BFFs Nick, Kurt and Dale, respectively. Also returning are Jennifer Aniston as nymphomaniac Dr. Julia Harris, Jamie Foxx as feloniously-inclined Mother-[expletive] Jones, Kevin Spacey as conniving Dave Harken, and Lindsay Sloane as Dale’s wife, Stacy, while additions to the cast include Christoph Waltz, Chris Pine, Keegan-Michael Key and Jonathan Banks.
This go-round, the intrepid protagonists morph from disgruntled employees into hapless entrepreneurs with no clue about bringing their invention, the Shower Buddy, to market. Consequently, they soon find themselves ruined financially by a sleazy investor Bert Hanson (Waltz), who rationalizes cheating them with, “I make new enemies every day. It’s called business.”
So, the three hatch a cockamamie plan to recoup their losses by kidnapping the creep’s son (Pine) for ransom. What they didn’t bank on, however, was the possibility that Bert couldn’t care less about freeing his ne’er-do-well offspring (a motif reminiscent of Ruthless People (1986), where Danny DeVito ignored a demand for cash being made by his wife Bette Midler’s abductors).
Horrible Bosses 2 does admittedly have its moments, like a quite captivating car chase during which our heroes drag an uprooted chain link fence onto the freeway while on the run from the authorities. It’s just too bad that most of the movie is devoted to such a misanthropic and misogynistic brand of humor.
Fair (1 star)
Rated R for pervasive profanity and crude sexuality
Running time: 108 minutes
Distributor: Warner Brothers
To see a trailer for Horrible Bosses 2, visit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utriEZFno0E
Village Voice raves that Monk With a Camera is "marvelous." If you are in NYC on Saturday night come to the 5:20 screening at the Bunin Theater at Lincln Center and join Nicky Vreeland and Richard Gere for an intimate conversation at the Furman Gallery. First come first serve. There will also be a Q&A after the 7:20 screening with Nicky.
Buy tickets here. Opens in LA December 6th at the Laemmle Royal Theater. Click here to find other dates in other cities.
Who We Be
The Colorization of America
by Jeff Chang
Book Review by Kam Williams
St. Martin’s Press
Hardcover, $29.99
416 pages, Illustrated
ISBN: 978-0-312-57129-0
“Race. A four-letter word. The greatest social divide in American life, a half-century ago and today. During that time, the United States has seen the most dramatic demographic and cultural shift in its history, what can be called the colorization of America…
How do Americans see race now? After eras framed by words like ‘multicultural’ and ‘post-racial,’ do we see each other any more clearly?
From the dream of integration to the reality of colorization, Who We Be remixes comic strips and contemporary art, campus protests and corporate marketing campaigns, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Trayvon Martin into a powerful, unusual and timely cultural history of the idea of racial progress.”
-- Excerpted from the Bookjacket
Each generation has its share of visionaries. Long ago, William Faulkner warned that “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” In the Sixties, R. Buckminster Fuller conveyed the critical insight that “Geniuses are just people who had good mothers,” while Marshall McLuhan helped us understand exactly why “The medium is the message.” More recently, Ray Kurzweil anticipated the age of spiritual machines where computers lead and people follow.
“Who We Be” is the work of a new sage thinker with his finger on the pulse. Don’t let yourself be dissuaded by the grammatically-incorrect title of his opus, or it’s Ebonics chapter headings like “I Am I Be” and “What You Got to Say?” for the actual text isn’t written in inscrutable slang as implied, but rather offers a very articulate analysis of the evolution of American culture from the March on Washington to the present.
In fact, the author isn’t even black, but Asian-American of Chinese and Hawaiian extraction. Not one to be pigeonholed by his ethnicity, Jeff Chang previously penned a couple of books about hip-hop, “Can’t Stop Won’t Stop,” and “Total Chaos.”
Here, however, he successfully tackles subject-matter of much more depth and consequence in the process sharing a cornucopia of profound insights on themes ranging from the rise of Obama to multiculturalism to gentrification to the use of the N-word to Occupy Wall Street. For example, in a blistering critique of the economic system, he opines:
“Capitalism aspired not only to be the law, but morality, too. Freedom meant being free even from responsibility or empathy. All values would bow before economic value. Redemption would be redefined. Consumption would set the terms of the social. Creditors ruled everything around us. Debtors—a category that included almost everyone—were parasites. Capital and the state debased fundamental human relations… It’s sociality itself that’s treated as abusive, criminal, demonic.”
Sobering! With the help of a dizzying mix of evocative essays, anecdotes, quotes, quips and eye-catching cartoons and photographs, he amply illustrates what he refers to as America’s post-racial paradox. For although the country might be awash in a sort of melting pot imagery suggested by popular movies, TV shows and rainbow coalition commercials, that superficial symbolism flies in the face of the undeniable reality of rising re-segregation in terms of housing and schooling.
Pearls of wisdom from an Asian-American wannabe who deliberately employs double negatives, bad grammar, incorrect syntax and even an occasional double positive for the sake of street cred. Still, the Utne Reader saw right through that smokescreen and dubbed Jeff Chang among the “50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World.”
Who he be? He be a phat prophet! You feel me?