(Akiit.com) It’s a new day. In 2021 the New York Film Festival was live and in-person and exhibited a wide array of international films that broke new ground, featured veteran Black actors at their best and blockbusters that will be in movie theaters and on streaming services later this year or early ...
(Akiit.com) It’s a farewell. An elongated sendoff James Bond fans will instinctively desire. And they should. As should any action film enthusiast who likes a dash of style mixed in with their adrenaline-rush martini. James Bond (Daniel Craig) has retired from the game and MI6. He is not happy when ...
(Akiit.com) “You have no idea the hell storm you’re about to let loose.” No one would. This roughhewn “Micro Western” strips everything down to the basics. Down to the roots. Then it explodes. In the late 1880s, Henry (Time Blake Nelson, O Brother Where Art Thou), a widower, lives just outside ...
(Akiit.com) One of the first Broadway plays I ever saw was Melvin Van Peeble’s Ain’t Supposed to Die a Natural Death. A. Robert Phillips, who led the Black Talent Program at Boston College, arranged for a group of us undergraduates to attend the play, have dinner, and enjoy New York ...
(Akiit.com) When exposition and backstory weigh down an opening scene it’s tough for a film to get off the ground. That’s the burden screenwriter Nick Schenk (Gran Torino) and novelist N. Richard Nash’s dated, over-written script gives this road trip movie. Dead weight. In 1979, Mike Milo (Clint Eastwood), an older, washed-up ex-rodeo cowboy, is sent ...
(Akiit.com) He’s a man about town. A lanky masseur in a tony neighborhood in Warsaw’s metro area. A Ukrainian immigrant. A foreigner. Not overly handsome, but magnetic. That’s the main character in this bedroom community slow-burning farce about a man whose sensitive hands rub Polish people the right way. The ...
(Akiit.com) Whether you want to chill out with your friends or want to spend your time with colleagues, Escape Hour is a good option. Here, you get into a challenging situation one after another and try to solve it with teamwork and collective intelligence. These are virtual games that you ...
(Akiit.com) Documentaries were front and center at the 20th annual Tribeca Film Festival. These are just a few of the non-fiction films worth noting. All the Streets Are Silent: The Convergence of Hip Hop and Skateboarding (1987-1997) (**1/2) In the late ‘80s, NYC rappers and skaters cross-pollinated creating a hybrid subculture. Their ...
(Akiit.com) It was a volatile time. Malcom and Martin had been assassinated in recent years. Civil uprisings and riots had just simmered down. The summer of ’69 was a chance for a much-needed cultural R&R and reawakening. That happened in Harlem’s Mt. Morris Park, when program director Tony Lawrence created ...
(Akiit.com) On a moment’s notice, these three eccentric actors can bring the crazy. Toss in cursing, car chases, gun fights, con games, whining, denying and betrayals and Ryan Reynolds, Salma Hayek and Samuel L. Jackson are in their glory. The vehicle for their sardonic deceptions is this sequel to 2017’s The ...
(Akiit.com) It’s a revelation. The rich history of Black heritage cooking and how it has influenced American cuisine is on view in this enlightening, heartfelt and surprisingly well-crafted documentary. The host for this four-part Netflix epicurean travelogue is Stephen Satterfield, founder of Whetstone Magazine, which is dedicated to food origins and culture. ...
(Akiit.com) Good courtroom dramas keep audiences hooked into a defendant’s fight for justice. The simpler the fight, the better. Just saying. Screenwriters Janece Shaffer and Colen C. Wiley took their cues from the young adult novel Monster, which was written in 1999 by Walter Dean Myers. He was an author who ...