Movie Reviews

Director/writer Charles Burnett’s adaptation of Gary Paulsen’s award-winning young-adult novel about slavery and literacy is a fine tribute to the freeing power of the literacy.

“Just Mercy” follows defense attorney Bryan Stevenson and his fight for justice in Alabama. A Harvard graduate, Stevenson goes to Alabama and works with Eva Ansley (Brie Larson), a local advocate, to defend people who have been wrongly convicted. Stevenson faces multiple legal and political tactics and overt racism as he fights for justice with the system stacked against them.

"The Color Purple" is a 2023 American coming-of-age movie musical directed by Ghanaian filmmaker Blitz Bazawule. Marcus Gardley's screenplay is based on the stage musical of the same name, which in turn is based on the 1982 novel of the same name by Alice Walker.

The overlooked civil rights activist, educator, and advisor to Martin Luther King Jr., Bayard Rustin, often called the architect of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, is finally getting his due, thanks to the new film directed by George C. Wolfe titled "Rustin."

“Green Book,” directed by Peter Farrelly, is inspired by the true story of a 1962 tour of the Deep South by African American pianist Dr. Don Shirley and Italian American bouncer Frank “Tony Lip” Vallelonga, who served as Shirley's driver and bodyguard.

Freedom Song is a biographical made-for-television drama film based on true stories of the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi in the 1960s. It tells the story of the struggle of African Americans to register to vote in the fictional town of Quinlan and the group of high school students who are eager to make grassroots changes in their own community.

The hit musical “1776” is a fictionalized version of the drama and intrigue involved in writing the Declaration of Independence. It is art rather than history. However, Ed McNulty points out two scenes that carry the emotion of the debate about whether to include a complaint that the British forced slavery on the American colonists.