Floyd Webb is the curator of the Black Actors in Foreign Cinema screening series, co-presented by nonprofit media arts organization Chicago Filmmakers and his company, the Blacknuss Network.
Category: Film
Posted inFilm
Ghost of drive-ins past?
From the comfort of your car or on a picnic with friends, Chicago’s outdoor movie screenings have resuscitated the alluring drive-in experience, so screentime can be spent with others all summer long.
Posted inFilm
A brand new print of Airport premieres at this year’s Music Box 70mm Film Festival
Airport (1970) introduced many tropes so closely associated with the 70s disaster genre: the reverence for—and subsequent destabilization of—then-new technologies, in this case the Boeing 707; a miasma of soap-operaish subplots; and huge all-star casts slumming for easy paychecks.
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Cinema Deathmatch: Round One explores moral-panic entertainment
Critics sometimes say that films like Running Man and Battle Royale implicate the viewer. When you watch them, you’re supposed to recognize the ickiness of your own enjoyment of uber-violence. But isn’t the ickiness also part of the enjoyment?
Posted inFilm
Jurassic World: Dominion
While there’s never really a sense of true danger for our heroes, we get just enough of the range of CGI dinosaurs and their weird traits to keep the film entertaining.
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Good Luck to You, Leo Grande
The clash between Thompson’s nervous widow and McCormack’s confident sex worker incites a dialogue that reminds us that it’s never too late to break out of our shells.
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Brian and Charles
Charles has a mannequin head, rubber gloves for hands, and a washing-machine torso. But the rest of him is quite obviously human. His hodgepodge construction neatly describes the disjointedness of the film he’s in.
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Freedom Uncut
Watching the 80s through the lenses of its superstars is its own glossy and compelling reward, but Freedom also depicts the carnage of the decade.
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Neptune Frost is limitless
It’s a sci-fi, Afrofuturistic story that is also a musical that takes place in the past, present, and future, while also spanning the wide depths of identity and innovation.
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Ms. Marvel
Marvel does a great job of spotlighting facets of American culture that often go underrepresented, and Ms. Marvel’s spotlight of Islam is incredibly well done.
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The Schoolmaster Games feels like wasted potential
If you’re looking for something to watch this Pride Month, there are better queer movies—and probably better gay porn—than can be found here.
Posted inFilm
Bros Before is stupid and horny—and wonderfully queer
Over the course of 19 jam-packed minutes, Hanson plays with the storytelling conventions of rom-coms, reality dating shows, and pornography to tell a comedically rock ‘n’ roll story about unrequited love and some of queer culture’s unspoken taboos.
Posted inFilm
Benediction
The recountal is tinged with documentary footage and nigh-experimental scintilla attempting to visualize the stuff of poetry that hint at this being something exceptional from a master’s intellect.