Prime Time: Nickel Boys (2024)

Based on the acclaimed novel by Colson Whitehead, Nickel Boys is one of the films that would have easily passed me by completely if it hadn't been put in competition for the Best Picture in the 2025 Oscars. I had no idea what it was about, but a quick browse to check the reactions to it saw a lot of discussion about the shooting style making it a more emotional and impactful experience. I would have to respectfully disagree with a lot of those people.

Ethan Cole Sharp plays Elwood, a young black boy with a bright future ahead of him. That all changes when he is hitch-hiking one day and ends up in a stolen car. Although Elwood didn't know the driver, nor did he know that the car was stolen, he is convicted of a crime and sent to the Nickel Academy, an infamous reform school. With clear segregation in the school, and clear preferential treatment for the white students who live there, Elwood soon finds out that he'll be stuck there for a while. The school makes money by using the black students for labour. Elwood befriends Turner (Brandon Wilson), and the two try to keep their spirits up as they plan the time when they hope to one day be free, which may be a lot sooner for Elwood if his grandmother (Hattie, played by Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor) can scrape together the money for the right lawyer.

Directed by RaMell Ross, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Joslyn Barnes, Nickel Boys is a superb tale, and one that is very much worthy of a film that should stir up strong feelings and remind people of how stacked the US system is, and remains, against black people. This film does that, it cannot really fail to affect all but the stoniest of viewers, but it is rendered slightly less effective than it could have been with the choice to shoot things mainly from the POV of the main characters. Maybe it's just my own inflexibility, but that style in modern movies has been used too often for content that usually resembles videogame action, and having it here does the opposite of drawing you close to the characters, in my experience. I felt as if there was a barrier there, something always stopping me from feeling everything I wanted to be feeling. It was a distraction, and it didn't even feel consistent enough to be worth the technical effort.

I will say that Sharp, Wilson, and Ellis-Taylor do good work, but even the performances are difficult to fully judge through that mesh created by the shooting style. Hamish Linklater is effective as the sadistic man overseeing the running of the reformatory, and Jimmie Fails makes a strong impression as Mr. Hill, the schoolteacher who first sees how bright Elwood is, and tries to help him on the way to a better future, but too many other people are only half-glimpsed or shown bumping into the leads like some runaway balloons. That keeps the focus on Elwood and Turner, so it isn't a terrible decision, but I cannot help thinking, once again, that some different choices could have given us a richer, and even more powerful, experience.

I want to read the book this was based on, and (by sheer coincidence) I am currently enjoying something similar, albeit with a supernatural twist, called "The Reformatory", written by Tananarive Due, but I don't want to revisit this film. And while I would still tentatively recommend it to others, I know that they may have to keep working hard to look beyond the distracting shooting style in order to stay focused on the most important ups and downs of the main storyline.

6/10

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The Little Mermaid (2023)

I have been wanting to see The Little Mermaid ever since grown adults started crying and spitting their dummies out over the fact that the lead role had gone to a young black woman. Because, apparently, mermaids can appear onscreen in various incarnations, but making them non-white is an affront to the firmly-held beliefs people suddenly claimed to have about fictional citizens of the sea. Despite wanting to see it, I didn’t make time for it while it was at the cinema because I just cannot work up any enthusiasm for the ongoing Disney remake factory (some may claim this is less a remake, more a reworking of the source material, and I have to politely disagree).

People should already know the story, but here is the very basic summary. A mermaid named Ariel (Halle Bailey) keeps spending her time thinking about humans and the world above the surface of the sea, much to the chagrin of her father, King Triton (Javier Bardem). She then falls in love with a human, Prince Eric (Jonah Hauer-King), and ends up signing up to a Faustian pact with the scheming Ursula (Melissa McCarthy). Ariel gets to walk on land, giving her a chance to meet the Prince, but she has her lovely voice removed, as well as the memory of the deal made with Ursula.

Directed by the very capable Rob Marshall, The Little Mermaid has a number of pleasantly surprising positives. The casting of Bailey is one of the biggest, with the actress proving to be a wonderful choice for the lead role, presenting herself as believably lovely and tuneful (when she has her voice). The production design throughout, the overall look of the film whenever showing the underwater world, is very good, and there are a number of fairly realistic CG creations accompanying our lead character on her journey. It’s also worth mentioning that there are supporting roles for the excellent Noma Dumezeni and Art Malik.

The script isn’t particularly great, with David Magee responsible for the thankless task of updating the animated film while trying to balance the familiar and the fresh. He doesn’t succeed, sadly, with the familiar moments just ensuring that viewers will remember how much they love the earlier incarnation, and he’s also hampered by the fact that things have to come crashing to a halt at one point for a horrible and lifeless song to be sung by the bland Prince Eric. A few other songs work better, but they’re mostly the ones lifted from the earlier film (although Awkwafina, who voices the seagull named Scuttle, gets a very fun number).

Dull Prince aside, I enjoyed almost everyone else here, whether just in voice form or more fully shown onscreen. Daveed Diggs is a decent Sebastian, Jacob Tremblay is a good fit for Flounder, and Awkwafina is a lot of fun. McCarthy is someone I always tend to enjoy onscreen, and I am happy to say that her portrayal of Ursula is as entertaining as I expected it to be.

All in all, despite this feeling just as unnecessary as every other time that Disney does this kind of thing, The Little Mermaid is enjoyable enough. It has a better variety of representation and cultural texture than the animated film, but it suffers from the inherent disadvantage of turning cute cartoons into “real-life” imagery.

6/10

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Netflix And Chill: Blindspotting (2018)

Blindspotting is an incredible film. There's no point in trying to keep you waiting to hear my view on it. Because I'd like everyone to rush off and watch it immediately, before or after reading this review. It's not really thought-provoking, sadly, but simply underlines the huge problem of systemic racism that doesn't seem to be getting any better (particularly in the USA, but it's not a uniquely American issue).

Daveed Diggs and Rafael Casal (who also wrote the movie) star as, respectively, Collin and Miles. Collin is just finishing up his probation, after serving some jail time, and he wants to get that out of the way. One night, while driving home, he is shaken up when he sees a man chased down by a police officer and shot. This serves as a timely reminder of just how slippery the slope is for someone like himself, now a black man with a felony on his record, and how he would most likely suffer much worse consequences for his actions than Miles, who is hot-headed and problematic, but less likely to be shot by officers thanks to his white skin.

The first, and only, feature directed by Carlos López Estrada (I'll be very surprised if things stay that way), Blindspotting works as a great piece of entertainment throughout, but it also maintains an added layer to it that lends weight to every moment and builds tension in a number of ways that allow viewers to also consider their own blindspots (whether they are intentional or not). Much like a certain scene in Get Out, this is a film that has extra tension when it wouldn't necessarily play out that way with a white protagonist, and it's those moments, as much as the incredible finale, that make you realise just how often you might be choosing to ignore the reality that others around you are very much living through.

As well as their sterling work on the script, Diggs and Casal are perfect in the lead roles. Diggs is very easy to like, and he's not painted as an angel, despite the fact that his friend is the one who causes the most trouble. Casal, for his part, has enough charisma and energy to make his character much more tolerable than he otherwise would have been. Get the wrong actor in that role and the whole film is unbalanced. Janina Gavankar does well in the role of Val, someone Collin may have some kind of relationship with, depending on how he moves forward in his life and what she can see in him when it is being clouded by mistakes and misplaced loyalty, and Jasmine Cephas Jones is equally good as Ashley, the partner of Casal's character. Ethan Embry appears for a small, but pivotal, role, and you also get a fine little turn from Ziggy Baitinger, a sweet child actor involved in a couple of sobering moments, and cameos from Wayne Knight and Leland Orser.

On the one hand, it can be quite saddening that a film like this has to be made, and even more saddening that it probably won't reach those that need to see it the most (including the people who feel the need to reply to "black lives matter" with the tiresome "all lives matter", which is on a par with replying to tales of sexual abuse and harassment with a reminder that it is "not all men"). On the other hand, this is an incredible, intelligent, effective way to get across an important message.

9/10

You can buy the movie here.
Americans can buy it here.