Alles Op Tafel 

The Magician's Elephant has a strong multicultural cast and a heartwarming story about bringing two long-lost siblings back together

The Gates, John Burr’s new thriller film, is a disturbingly realistic portrayal of three Black twenty-somethings - Derek (Mason Gooding), Kevin (Algee Smith), and Tyon (Keith Powers), as they accidentally take a wrong turn into a gated community that’s more like a modern-day sundown town. The three friends witness a variety of crimes in their new surroundings, including an attempted homicide and an attempted rape. As they attempt to alert the authorities and do the right thing, they are thwarted at every turn by the worst horror stories of American conservatism - racist white suburbanites, reckless gun violence, corrupt police, religious mania, and a megalomaniacal pastor. 

As noted in the headline, I didn’t like this movie. Not to say it’s the worst thing ever, but it’s just…meh. Nothing much to it. Very generic. No surprises. At the very least, the cast is diverse so I’ll give it that.

The power of a talented female director like Patty Jenkins and an overall diverse cast is what makes this film worth watching for me.

A consumed-by-rage woman travels from universe to universe to avenge the death of her daughter by brutally killing her murderer over and over again. And that's all that she does.

With The Father, writer-director Florian Zeller- who wrote and developed the play upon which the film is based- pulls no punches as he confidently makes every effort to put the audience in the mind of someone whose grip on reality has all but vanished. It’s a dazzling testament to Zeller’s abilities as a director as he makes his first transition from stage to film appear as if he’s been working behind a camera his entire career. The dialogue he fashions with co-writer Christopher Hampton, along with the work of production designers Peter Francis and Cathy Featherstone, collectively makes the downward spiral of dementia startlingly tangible, doing so in a way that can be comprehended by everyone except the person it directly affects.