Ann and I really liked this drama about Inez, a strong willed 20-something ex-con, who kidnaps her six year old son Terry from the foster system to raise him herself in mid-1990s Harlem. Teyana Taylor is terrific as Inez and is ably backed by William Catlett as Lucky, and the trio of boys playing Terry: Aaron Kingsley Adetola (at age 6), Aven Courtney (13), and Josiah Cross (17).
Director/writer A.V. Rockwell was born and raised in Queens and was about Inez's age in the 90s. The movie won Sundance's Grand Jury Prize early last year for Rockwell, co-producer Lena Waithe, and more. Some very sad trivia: an unhinged and unhoused stand-in on this movie stalked Rockwell, causing her to take out a restraining order, and two months later the stand-in murdered Michael Latt, a close friend of Rockwell's and the son of the founding director of Sundance Institute's Feature Film Program, Michelle Satter.
News clips of Mayors Giuliani and Bloomberg keep us grounded as to what year it is as the characters age and the neighborhood changes. Apparently director of photography Eric Yue used analog film for the first half to reproduce gritty Harlem of the time.
By the way, 1001 is an apartment number in the movie, but I don't remember anyone saying it out loud, either as a thousand and one or ten-oh-one.
Taylor is a musician with dozens of music videos and a few movies to her credit, none of which I've seen. Catlett has plenty of credits as well, but is also new to me, as are Adetola, Courtney, and Cross (the latter had a small part in King Richard). Rockwell makes her feature debut after a dozen shorts and a little more. This is Gunn's sixth feature and Yue's fifth.
A large number of Rotten Tomatoes' critics loved this, adding up to 97%, with its audiences subtracting a bit at 85. It is on the list of Barack Obama's favorite movies of 2023. We streamed it on Prime with a subscription on January 31.
No comments:
Post a Comment