The Nimitz Encounters (2018)

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. 

“There’s always something you can do…to make people feel like they’re welcome”

Like most young people, Leviticus is imperfect.  But I love it anyways. 

An anti-war film denouncing the valorization of senseless violence, 'All Quiet on the Western Front' is (unfortunately) all too relevant in 2022.

Ultimately the problem with The Bubble is that it plays everything for laughs to get around the audience’s defenses. But it comes off like a privileged white male thinking that ridiculing everyone else equally is the road to equality. And it’s not. And it's definitely not funny to pretend that it is.

'Jungle Cruise' is fun if you can ignore the racism of the ride it’s based on and the film’s bland, stereotypical characters.