Judas and the Black Messiah (Shaka King, February 12, 2021) Movie • Page 4

Kaluuya was great. Has to be the favorite for best actor this year.

 

nah it’s going to chadwick. kaluuya is running in supporting. and it seems like leslie odom is the favorite there for one night in miami.

kaluuya will get his though. one of the more promising actors we have. really thought this was great.

 

Kaluuya is gonna be one of those guys that will keep giving us great performances and then in a decade he will finally get an Oscar for something mediocre

 

I was literally talking about this last night with someone

 

I have no idea what to make of this. It’s well made and full of good performances but I definitely agree that it would’ve been beneficial to have younger actors in these roles. I’m not really sure what else to say about it as a white person except that I’ll for sure be reading more pieces about this from black critics, as well as further educating myself on the events the movie is based on. Would also encourage anyone who has the means right now to consider donating to save the Hampton House
Save The Hampton House, organized by SaveThe Hampton House Committee

 

Very good movie. And upsetting. Of course.

 

Is Miami good? I’m interested in it because Regina King is cool, but the trailer made it look a little feel-good for me.

 

one night in miami rules

 

I actually enjoyed One Night In Miami more than this; it was fantastic

 

it's good but nowhere near as good as this.

 

Yeah, I wouldn’t call it a feel-good movie, but it is very enjoyable. Fantastic ensemble.

 

It’s cute. Just imagine Malcolm X stanning his much more talented friends.

 

What does this film want us to take away from it?

This portrayal of Bill O’Neal never delves into his ideology. He doesn’t really have one. He’s politically apathetic but Jesse Plemons seems to think he’s been genuinely seduced by the Black Panther party, but it doesn’t really get into his struggle if he is actually identifying with them. Is it supposed to feel hollow when we see footage of the real O’Neal saying he was on the streets, in the struggle?

This was largely solid, but could have been stronger.

 

Footage in the introduction is from Agnes Varda’s great short documentary Black Panthers, on Criterion now, for those looking to delve further into Black Panther cinema

 

These were my thoughts; I couldn't really tell what central theme or message, if any, this film had.

 

the lack of ideology complaint makes sense with the choice to have a 29 year old man in the role. lacking a clear political ideology as a 17 year old makes a good deal of sense though.

 

Just found the documentary "The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution" - will check that out soon

 

A panicked, nervous 17 year old complaining to Jesse Plemons that he's just "doing what you wanted me to do" when questioned about his allegiance with the Panthers would feel more right, though it doesn't connect with the footage of the real O'Neal saying he was out on the streets fighting for the struggle. Unless it's supposed to feel hollow, which I can accept, though it doesn't entirely feel like that's what it's going for.

 

Hand in hand with that is the lack of cinematic resolution to Hampton's ideology. The film stays with O'Neal after Hampton is assassinated, and asks questions about what it means to be a revolutionary and also a human being who has a loving, pregnant partner, but doesn't leave us in the ending with a feeling of what Hampton's fight was really for. So there's no falling action that addresses Hampton's political legacy and the community's continuation of his ideology, and it doesn't quite feel like the film is trying to speak to what Fred Hampton means to our present moment. Just brief mention of how Hampton's assassination halted the momentum of the movement. It feels very much like a historical film set in its time period and not really attempting to speak to our current moment, the way Spike Lee's Malcolm X and BlacKkKlansman do.

Again, solid movie, but it doesn't follow through on everything it touches on as elegantly or powerfully as it absolutely had the potential to.

 

I think the point of the film is exploring the ways the State infiltrated and undermined radical movements in the US. I think that O’Neal never really had a strong ideology from whatever I’ve read. He’s said he didn’t have a strong allegiance to the Panthers. He’s just a guy who got used.

I walked away thinking about how so many futures that must have felt possible were foreclosed upon during this time. As someone very interested in and sympathetic to the politics at play in the movie, I can’t imagine how it would feel to be a radical and live to see what became/didn’t become of the world today. Not trying to sound blackpilled or cynical, I just feel like political consciousness has dropped so severely over the past 3-4 decades in the US. Doesn’t mean there’s not plenty of good work to be done and worth doing, or that we are past a point of no return. It’s just..... a bummer that things got extinguished the way they did.

I guess another way of sayin this is, to me, we know the future of this movement and this struggle. In that way, the future feels like a character. And it makes this movie incredibly poignant to me.

 

I don’t think O’Neal felt any particular allegiance to Fred and the Black Panthers, but we’ll never really know outside of that PBS interview. He was clearly haunted by what he did because he came out of hiding, did that interview and tried to kill himself twice with one being successful.

I think the takeaway is he was a young person manipulated by the government and paid with it with his life. It’s also a great double feature with “MLK/FBI,” which alos shows what a creepy, racist piece of shit J. Edgar Hoover was.

 

This was fantastic.

 

One of the strengths of this film is portraying the events of the Civil Rights era as a literal war. That’s unique among historical films about race.

 

I thought this was phenomenal.

I understand the criticisms of the age of the actors, because the argument can be made that it dulls the edges of the atrocities portrayed on screen *slightly* to have them be committed to full grown adults as opposed to people who are essentially children.

In regards to the criticisms that the film sidelines Fred Hampton and his politics, I thought it was readily apparent while watching the film that it was telling Bill O'Neal's story. It's not a straight up biopic of Fred Hampton. Hampton's story is certainly an important one to tell, but biopics are really tough to pull off well in my opinion, at least as narrative films, and I tend to prefer narrative movies like this one that involve the major historical player as a character but don't try to tell their story directly. The movie introduces you to the person and intrigues you enough to go learn about them in other, far more effective and comprehensive forms.

If the script and the film overall let any character down, I would say it was the character of Bill O'Neal, and they relied on Lakeith Stanfield's performance to do some seriously heavy lifting to fill things in for the audience that they were otherwise kinda glossing over or blowing right past.

The scene where Fred Hampton first comes back to the headquarters after being released from prison and everyone surrounds him and hugs him legitimately brought me to tears and I can't even really articulate why.

 

I do find America does love the spectacle of tragedy.