Miss Juneteenth
Writer-director Channing Godfrey Peoples’ debut feature is a quietly radical character study and a masterpiece of humanist filmmaking. Smart, innovative narrative choices elevate what, in other hands, could have been a charming coming-of-age tale into something far more special.
Instead of focusing on the teenage Kai (Alexis Chikaeze), an aspiring choreographer forced into participating in Fort Worth’s Miss Juneteenth pageant, the film centers on her mother, Turquoise (the amazing Nicole Beharie). A former pageant winner, Turquoise was unable to take advantage of her prize winnings because of her unplanned pregnancy. Now she dreams of success vicariously through Kai, wanting her daughter to repeat her successes but not her mistakes.
As much as Miss Juneteenth is an age-old tale of intergenerational conflict over paving a road towards a brighter future, it’s also something greater. Young Kai coming into her own is a heartwarming story, but the once-burned-twice-shy Turquoise finding the resilience to pursue dreams of her own again is a far rarer and more precious gem.
Cinema itself is a bit like a beauty pageant in that what stories get immortalized on screen and who gets the chance to tell them says a lot about what our society deems valuable and worth admiring, and portraits of Black womanhood like Miss Juneteenth remain infuriatingly few and far between. With any justice, though, this beautifully nuanced character study represents a bellwether of impending change on that front. (Ciara Wardlow)
Never Rarely Sometimes Always
Never Rarely Sometimes Always cuts pretense, embraces a documentary aesthetic, and travels in authentic pain. Two friends quietly escape their Pennsylvania hometown by bus and travel north to New York City, where one can terminate an unwanted pregnancy. Writer-director Eliza Hittman puts you in the seat right next to them, and she never lets you leave their side. The camera rarely offers distance, refusing relief and planting you in a teenage headspace impossible by most popular movie standards. Hittman is not interested in our political response to the narrative; she merely wants us to consider the emotional toll on her two leads and remove the blinders of those who refuse to imagine the experience. (Brad Gullickson)
The Painter and the Thief
Life is unpredictable, and therefore documentaries could be expected to follow suit, but The Painter and the Thief is more challenging than most nonfiction films with regards to our presumptions. And that’s with a premise that sounds as forced as they come but which plays out rather naturally: Benjamin Ree’s doc follows the unlikely friendship between its titular subjects, an artist who once had two giant pieces stolen from a gallery and one of the men who committed the crime.
Of course, part of the painter’s reason for reaching out to the thief is to find out what happened to the canvases — the men were so high they can’t recall the incident let alone what happened next — but she also just seems to have that sort of personality where she does things to see how they unfold (the perfect documentary subject!). It’s not that the film goes in totally wild directions, but it holds you in suspense about the characters’ motives, choices, and actions in a way that keeps you guessing and absorbed. (Christopher Campbell)
The Platform
In a prison hundreds of floors deep, there’s a single cell per floor with two prisoners per cell. Once each day, a platform with food moves from top to bottom, but not everyone gets to eat. There’s nothing subtle about this sci-fi film’s message regarding a society that lacks empathy or understanding towards its needier citizens, but it’s also never less than thrilling and shocking as it hits viewers over the head with the critique that we should be — we can be — so much better if we only tried. Black humor, gory violence, and an ounce of hope make for one hell of a ride. (Rob Hunter)
Relic
An old woman goes missing, and as her daughter and granddaughter arrive at her remote Australian home to investigate, they discover the house itself has changed in frightening ways. This is one hell of a feature debut that pairs some truly chilling scares with an emotional denouement that left me in tears. No shame. This is a horror story about love and family caught in the crosshairs of aging and dementia, and it is the best film of the year. (Rob Hunter)
Related Topics: Mid-Year Report
