Momma Said Come Home for Christmas (2023)

We chat with Penelope Lawson about her short film, The Dinner Party, her experience founding her own production company, and fun cinema.

This MiamisFF Review is on the short film 'Rewind Thirty'. Created and released in the United States, this short film has an unclear message.

There were too many irrelevant parts that could have been shortened, and too many characters that didn't advance the plot. Either way, some things didn't add up. This was just another played out plot with little, if any, originality in it. By the end of the film, I wasn't happy that she finally got her freedom, I was happy that it was finally over.

Remakes. Reboots. Reinventions. Redundancy. It's the common practice in Hollywood of late, sometimes offering us victorious reimagining of what can be considered cinematic classics while also, more often, falling flat on their UN-imaginative faces in utter defeat and lackluster results. Admittedly, with this in mind, I went into the newest incarnation of "The War of the Roses" with typical trepidation and cautious optimism.

"Be good. It doesn’t mean you can’t be tough. It doesn’t mean you always have to be nice. Just be good."

In Jeymes Samuel's history-infused, neo-spaghetti western, Black women are center stage with a fresh hip hop mixtape keeping rhythm in the backdrop.