American Black Beauty (2005)

A Black woman centered in a box office rom-com with a happy ending and no struggle love.

The Bluff unravels its mystery slowly, opening on the capture of a ship captain named Bodden (Ismael Cruz Córdova) and the swift execution of his entire crew. Then, viewers are treated to a tranquil British settlement in the Cayman Islands in the 1850s, where a mother bakes a coconut birthday cake for her son in a house suspiciously rigged with makeshift tripwires and burglar alarms. As it turns out, that mother is Priyanka Chopra’s quick witted and resourceful ex-pirate Mrs. Ercell Bodden, and her husband’s captors are on the way to the island to hunt her down for abandoning them and stealing their loot. The pirates of the Libertas land on the beaches of Cayman Brac, and the scenes that follow show a Viking-esque slaughter of half the island.

Considering the runtime, I expected each scene to hit harder as opposed to a series of montages and vignettes. 

Hope has great characters, inventive ideas, an incredible imagination, a palpable intensity, and numerous other aspects that make it one of the best of the year. 

The film blends reality and the supernatural world together, leaving the viewer unsure of what’s real and what’s merely a figment of Michael’s agitated imagination.

Have a Good Trip offers a rather balanced look at psychedelic use. While its main narrative is the stories of recreational use by celebrities, it does delve into the medical history of psychedelics and its use in psychotherapy.