BFI LFF 2020: Mangrove (2020)
★★★★☆
Mangrove, part of Steve McQueen’s Small Axe canon, is a grippingly acted reconstruction of police racism in 1970 Notting Hill, the iconic café and the courtroom sensation of the prosecution of the Mangrove Nine.
★★★★☆
Mangrove, part of Steve McQueen’s Small Axe canon, is a grippingly acted reconstruction of police racism in 1970 Notting Hill, the iconic café and the courtroom sensation of the prosecution of the Mangrove Nine.
★★★★☆
Les Misérables is an explosive first feature about simmering racial tensions in a Paris banlieu from Malian-French actor and director Ladj Ly.
★★★★★
Director Steve McQueen’s stunning new exhibition of photographs and video installations at the Tate Modern makes you open your eyes and really, really look.
★★★★☆
Queen & Slim is a first film fuelled by controlled anger by black female director Melina Matsoukas. It’s always gripping.
★★★★☆
Shola Amoo’s The Last Tree powerfully focuses on the crisis in black masculinity through the story of a Nigerian-heritage boy growing up in Britain.
Review to follow.
★★★★☆
Us is Jordan Peele’s truly scary, more-than horror, state-of-the-nation follow-up to his acclaimed Get Out.
★★★☆☆
Sorry to Bother You, the stunningly accomplished debut feature film by rapper Boots Riley, is a satirical morality tale about workplace culture, black exploitation and rampant capitalism.
★★★★☆
Steve McQueen’s Widows is a hugely entertaining, violent, female-centred heist thriller that starts with a bang and never lets up thanks to co-screenwriter Gone Girl’s Gillian Lynn’s reimagination of Lynda LaPlante’s 1983 TV series.
★★★★☆
Dee Rees, in Netflix’s Mudbound adapted from Hillary Jordan’s novel, evokes a period and place in the Deep South where racial prejudice engulfs rural communities like a muddy swamp.
★★★★☆
Get Out is actor and comedian Jordan Peele’s original horror-satire take on white liberal racism in the US.
★★★★☆
Moonlight is a very different gay coming-of-age movie by Barry Jenkins and it will break your heart.
★★★★☆
The Birth of a Nation is director Nate Parker’s emotional condemnation of America’s brutal history of slavery through the true story of one man who led a rebellion.