By Dwight Brown NNPA Film Critic “Exodus: Movement of Jah people! Oh-oh-oh, yea-eah!” chants Bob Marley. In his rousing three-minute song “Exodus” he presents a more strong and spiritual feel for Moses than Ridley Scott’s 154-minute, whitewashed sword-and-sandals epic. Travel from the north to the south of Egypt and there is a variance of skin […]

By Dwight Brown NNPA Film Critic Quick Rihanna, check to see if someone stole your diary. This ode to young black chanteuses fighting personal demons feels like the story of her life. But in fact, it’s the brainchild of writer/director Gina Prince-Bythewood (Love & Basketball), who knows her way around a romantic drama. Noni (Gugu […]

By Dwight Brown NNPA Film Critic They mostly come out at night, under the cloak of darkness. They swarm around dead bodies and carnage. Around the wounded, the maimed, the vulnerable. They’re hated by some, loathed by others. No, not vultures. Not vampires. Crime journalists. Stringers, aka “nightcrawlers,” with no conscience, who would do anything […]

By Dwight Brown NNPA Film Critic “Dear white people: The minimum requirement of black friends needed to not seem racist has just been raised…to two.” Biting satire abounds in this witty, edgy ode to racism in the age of Obama. In his debut feature film, writer/director Justin Simien’s perceptive observances take no prisoners. It’s a […]

By Dwight Brown NNPA Film Critic The last time they worked together, Denzel Washington and director Antoine Fuqua conjured up Training Day. That collaboration won Washington an Academy Award for Best Actor, and it was the only time in Oscar history that a black man won Best Actor in a film by a black director. […]