When Animals Dream (2014)

This incarnation of Animal Farm is filled with the generic plot points, immature humor, cardboard characters and visual flaws that you have come to know from today’s lesser children’s films.

Over the last several years, I have had the privilege of being one of the critics having the opportunity to watch and review several films from writer/director/producer Marcellus Cox, whose efforts are never anything less but grounded, relevant, and steeped in unflinching glimpses illustrating the gripping, inspired, and ever-vacillating realms that make up the human condition.

Airplane! (1980) is a fun spoof comedy with lots of laughs, right? I watched this film for the first time the other night. I loved it. Then came the racist jokes.

In the film adaptation, director Jon M. Chu turns each musical number into a massive show stopper, with grand set pieces and a wealth of diverse dancers. Yet, in this attempt to show reverence for the people of the Washington Heights barrio, Chu, or maybe more specifically those in charge of casting, left out a crucial part of the community, Afro-Latinos.

"Hustlers" returns power to groups that are traditionally deprived of it: women, the working class, and sex workers.