‘Movie Corner’ Archives
Movie Corner Bonus: Candyman
Horror/Thriller Universal Pictures (2021) ★★★★ (4 out of 5) By HOWARD MCQUITTER II Universal Pictures If one says “candyman” five times consecutively in an audible voice one can expect a ghost from the past, a large Black man with a hook on his right hand who will kill anyone daring to repeat his name five times in a row. Director Nia DaCosta takes a slightly different take from the original Candyman, directed by Briton Bernard Rose (Frankenstein , Paperhouse ), whose horror film is referred to by some to be the Halloween of the 1990s. Behind DaCosta's version is a steady and reliable hand of one the screenwriters - Jordan Peele. A 2020-21 look at the former Cabrini-Green neighborhood (still there in the 1990s but crumbling in desperate need of repair) which is "nicely" hidden by white developers and whites who have fled to the suburbs and exurbs. Candyman still hangs [...]
Movie Corner: “Old”
Old: courtesy Universal Pictures (2021 Universal Pictures) ★★☆☆☆ By HOWARD McQUITTER M. Night Shyamalan is up to another one of his "prize" thrillers that simply doesn't add up to a hill of beans. I often say I'll go for the ride with a movie if it lacks in major areas, but with OldI just wanted to not even get on the ride. Back in 2002, with his film The Sixth Sense(his first actual film is Wide Awake in 1998),the public was in awe of starring actors Bruce Willis, Haley Joel Osment, Toni Collette, Olivia Williams, Donnie Wahlberg, and Glenn Fitzgerald. Shyamalan's The Sixth Sense, indeed a sensation, drew viewers from word of mouth as well as by advertisement. Old is the movie that should have never left the drawing board. At first, about a dozen tourists are told about an isolated "paradise" island which is supposed to be the ideal vacation spot. Strange things [...]
Summer of Soul
Movie Corner (...Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised) Documentary/Music (2021 Searchlight Pictures) ★★★★★ By HOWARD MCQUITTER II Harlem Cultural Festival in 1969 is the festival all but forgotten, deliberately thrown (literally) down in a basement. Many people in Harlem at the time believed the festival is the main reason racial disturbances that year didn't occur like the previous year after the assassination of Martin Luther King on April 4,1968. All in all, over 300,000 Harlem residents, 99% African American, crowded into Mount Morris Park (now Marcus Garvey Park) - all outdoors - to see and hear a great tribute to African American music: gospel, jazz, blues, rhythm & blues, and soul. The few cops at the festival are barely visible. Nearly all the security is provided by the Black Panthers for an energetic, peaceful, and historical [...]
