Following the fourth season of HBO’s Ballers and an Oscar-buzzed role in Spike Lee’s BlackKklansman, John David Washington — the talented son of Denzel — steps up with another forceful, socially relevant performance in Monsters and Men. In a striking debut feature, writer-director Reinaldo Marcus Green uses three perspectives to examine the shooting of an unarmed black man by a white cop in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood. The victim is Darius Larson, a.k.a. Big D (Samel Edwards), a local who sells loose cigarettes outside a Bed-Stuy deli And...
- 9/27/2018
- by Peter Travers
- Rollingstone.com
Watching Reinaldo Marcus Green’s debut feature “Monsters and Men,” about three different persons of color in Brooklyn’s Bed-Stuy neighborhood, one senses that this is the kind of serious, small-bore drama that Hollywood stopped caring about a while ago; it’s about real people in unglamorous situations, making do and struggling to move forward when they find themselves at a crossroads.
But when you take into account Green’s catalytic, section-binding incident — the suspicious killing of a black man at the hands of cops — you realize that this is the kind of movie Hollywood needs to be making. Though “Monsters and Men” isn’t the most fully realized work, its innate intelligence and matter-of-fact sensitivity are the kinds of storytelling assets we need more of, especially when the fabric of life for many continues to fray and tear in ways that demand a larger societal reassessing.
That’s certainly...
But when you take into account Green’s catalytic, section-binding incident — the suspicious killing of a black man at the hands of cops — you realize that this is the kind of movie Hollywood needs to be making. Though “Monsters and Men” isn’t the most fully realized work, its innate intelligence and matter-of-fact sensitivity are the kinds of storytelling assets we need more of, especially when the fabric of life for many continues to fray and tear in ways that demand a larger societal reassessing.
That’s certainly...
- 9/26/2018
- by Robert Abele
- The Wrap
The conversation surrounding Black Lives Matter is (and should be) about the victims of police violence who’ve yet to see any killers in blue face real consequences. It’s not about saying their lives matter more than anyone else, but that they matter at all. If you look at the headlines it’s easy to wonder if people think they do — especially the police. Just like nursery rhymes in classrooms have begun teaching youngsters how to stay safe during school shootings, many parents of Poc children are forced to provide life lessons white America simply doesn’t think about. So you can go home and say, “He shouldn’t have resisted arrest” all you want. You better know, however, that you’d be alive if you “resisted” the same way he did.
Writer/director Reinaldo Marcus Green looks to expand upon this notion by moving beyond the victim towards...
Writer/director Reinaldo Marcus Green looks to expand upon this notion by moving beyond the victim towards...
- 9/14/2018
- by Jared Mobarak
- The Film Stage
From Writer / Director Reinaldo Marcus Green comes a fantastic original screenplay of a troubled area in Brooklyn. Told from the perspective of three different characters the movie opens with John David Washington’s character Officer Dennis driving through New York listening and singing along to upbeat music only to be pulled over for no apparent reason. Turning off his music and looking rather sheepish, we start to wonder who this man really is. It’s right here from the music change that a rather bleak tone enriches the film right to the closing credits.
Cutting from Washington we move to a young man named Manny (Anthony Ramos) at a job interview. The camera closes in on his application form where we see that he has to tick a box that tells his potential employer that he’s previously had a conviction. Manny leaves his application and heads home past his...
Cutting from Washington we move to a young man named Manny (Anthony Ramos) at a job interview. The camera closes in on his application form where we see that he has to tick a box that tells his potential employer that he’s previously had a conviction. Manny leaves his application and heads home past his...
- 9/6/2018
- by David Sztypuljak
- HeyUGuys.co.uk
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