News & Views of Phillips Since 1976
Friday December 19th 2025
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from the series Movie Corner…
5/5 Stars
Comedy/Dark Comedy
By HOWARD MCQUITTER II
All throughout, a profound maestro of blues with a quick glimpse of future Black music, rings strong from beginning to end. At the opening scene of director Ryan Coogler’s brilliant film (if not an outright masterwork) a young man, Sammie, drives up to a plain looking church, gets out and enters the place where the pastor, his father), is giving a Sunday sermon. When he approaches the pulpit where his father greets him, the camera zeros in on a snapped-off guitar neck in his right hand. Sammie’s face is bloodied and slashed as if he’s been in a brawl. That scene alone embodies a series of metaphors and allegories that will stare audiences in the face. His father requests Sammie to drop the guitar because “If you keep dancing with the Devil, one day he will follow you home.”
In a small town near Clarksdale, Mississippi, in 1932, at the height of the Depression, identical twin brothers Stack and Smoke come back to their hometown from Chicago where they may have hooked up with Al Capone. Both men fought in the First World War before they galloped off to Chicago.… Read the rest “Sinners”
CHROMAKOPIA Is A Gorgeous, Wowing Album That Encapsulates the Time We Live In
By ARABELLA FRACISCO
Part III of III
Arabella Fracisco’s original review first appeared in the November 2024 issue of The Southerner, a student-written and student-produced newspaper at South High School in Minneapolis. The Southerner can be found online at www.shsoutherner.net.
Editor’s Note: The last 2 months the alley featured the first 10 tracks of Arabella’s thoughtful and inviting review of CHROMAKOPIA. This month we conclude with the final four tracks.
Thought I Was Dead is the eleventh track on the album and is about Okonma embracing his provocative persona, bringing up past controversies and expectations addressing them in his own playful yet rebellious way. “Everything I said I do, I did. Talk my shit? I sure damn will. You ain’t like that shit? I’ll do it again.” The track also features ScHoolboy Q and Santigold, their verses elevating the song.
The twelfth track on the album, Like Him, featuring Lola Young, beautifully tells the story of the absence of a father. At the beginning Okonma’s mom is telling Okonma how similar he is to his father. “She said that I make expressions like him, my legs to my shoulders and my chin like him, my waist and my posture like him.”… Read the rest “CHROMAKOPIA Is A Gorgeous, Wowing Album That Encapsulates the Time We Live In”
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