Small Axe Anthology (Steve McQueen, November 20,2020) Movie

A collection of five films

The films:

• Mangrove, starring Letitia Wright & Shaun Parkes.
  
• Lovers Rock starring Micheal Ward & Amarah-Jae St. Aubyn.
  
• Education starring Kenyah Sandy.
  
• Alex Wheatle starring Sheyi Cole.
  
• White and Blue starring John Boyega.

 

I watched Mangrove, Lovers Rock and Red, White & Blue though the NYFF and they are all fucking great!

 

anyone start this yet

 

more i think of mangrove the higher in my estimation it goes. i'll be delighted if it doesn't peak there

 

the energy ALONE from lovers rock is otherwordly. 2/2

 

Mangrove makes Chicago 7 look like dogshit (I still like it it’s just so empty in comparison).

 

Real talk: two in, if they can maintain this level of brilliance, I don’t know how you can call this anything other than one of the most monumental achievements in the history of cinema.

 

really need to watch this

 

I know it's not the point of Mangrove but I really want Frank to cook me some Trinidadian food

 

red white and blue is pretty solid but the weakest of the three so far. hope people who see it don’t spend way too much energy on that bullshit star wars reference

 

RWB is the first one that felt like an episode of a miniseries to me.

still my #11 movie of the year

 

Whatre the other 10

 

Was hoping for better from Mangrove but man, it really falls right into all the shallow cliches huh. The more films about racism I see, the more convinced I am that To Kill a Mockingbird needs to be purged from curriculums everywhere.

Why, exactly, are the police officers racist? I couldn’t tell you. I’m not sure if even the police characters would be able to tell you if they could. They just are because they are the police and the police hate black people. End of story.

Which makes it very easy for all of the sympathetic defendants to get loud and rally and preach about how fucked up the system is, even in casual conversation with each other. It’s like they know they are characters in a movie. And that makes them all so empty, they are just a vessel for The Message. And that Message seems to be empty itself - that racism is pretty damn Fucked Up.

While watching this I kept thinking about If Beale Street Could Talk. I had always put off because I expected it to basically be this, but I finally watched it a couple months ago and I couldn’t have been more wrong. Jenkins is one of the few who seems to really get that we need to move past these kinds of Black stories, that you can make movies about the struggle of being a disenfranchised minority while also making characters that are fully fleshed out humans with inner lives that extend beyond that disenfranchisement. Instead, for all the posturing at being about resistance and speaking truth to power, these kinds of movies never amount to much more than another kind of feel-good Oscar bait

 

i heard enough about alex wheatle firsthand to think it wouldn't be as good as it was (though it's the weakest one yet)

why does there have to be only one more of these

 

Because releasing five movies in one year is insane.

 

I'm kind of bummed they released this as an "anthology" with a name. Should've just released them as five films, one week at a time. I think the title makes the general public treat it as television, and I think, even in 2020, there is still an undertone of "lesser" or "more disposable" when it comes to television.

I might just be crazy.

 

you know what i mean

 

finished education last friday. big step up from the previous two

 

Is this actually good? The prospect of watching five Steve McQueen films seems daunting.

 

Yes it’s fucking incredible

 

Only watched Mangrove and Lover's Rock so far and both were excellent. Lover's Rock was my favorite.

 

The first "episode" is good. It is easily better than McQueen's other films. Part of it has to do with the specificity he can bring to a setting like this; time and time again we see directors excel or are rejuvenated by working in their native countries and getting away from the American hegemon.

 

Mangrove is not good, but it is the only one that’s over 90min.

Lovers Rock is good, though it’s like 60% just watching people dance lol