The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (1917)

With raw and unapologetic performances by Viola Davis and Chadwick Boseman, stories about the hardships of Black musicians are weaved in with The Blues.

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.

The fun tricks used in the production design and lighting read extremely well on-screen but hardly fulfill their purpose of trying to inject glamour into a lack-luster story with nothing to say. 

A man found himself stuck inside the passage to the subway exit on the way to work.

‘Concerto’ is esoteric at best, meant to satisfy the non-melanted’s sense of nostalgia. It is revisionist at worst, cherry-picking images that defy the true tapestry of the human condition.