Money to Burn (1983)

Mark Anthony Green was unable to connect all of the pieces in his debut feature film, leaving Opus as a middling entry in an already oversaturated genre.

From its visually stunning opening credits, which show women dancing through a forest to musical rhythms that sound almost primal, to its quiet, heartbreaking final frame, Mona Fastvold’s historical rendering of the Shaker religious movement is an experience that will stay with me for a long time.

The quiet ache of guilt sitting at the dinner table, the silence after a truth is buried, and the way pain is passed down like a name.

By undermining the appeal and credibility of black characters, the show compromises the very idea of diversity and representation it sets to promote.

Sorry to Bother You ultimately speaks to the unfair advantages that the country’s power structures award to those with the resources to control others, as Lift’s easy access to the media allows his opinion to be the only one that matters in the eyes of the unsuspecting and easily impressed public. Moreover, it reveals the extent to which the American Dream has any true validity. It postulates how the promise of success and fulfillment as promoted by the American Dream more often than not leads to the undoing of the individual. Interestingly, in its revealing of the American Dream as merely a facade, Sorry to Bother You wisely questions whether or not anything can really be done to undo a system that has been accepted and in action for centuries.

Neo Sora left a realistic and yet hopeful notion for the near future and the now.