KIDNEYS ON FILM: ONE SPOON OF CHOCOLATE

I guess we can add Rza to the list of filmmakers that thinks the only prerequisite for making a grindhouse homage is giving your movie a grainy filter aesthetic. I’m a little tired of modern directors thinking their 8 figure budget films with “un-woke” dialogue and tons of blood splatter equates “grindhouse” or an exploitation film. But missing the mark on the grindhouse genre is the least of this movie’s problems. The racial issues and social commentaries found in the Rza’s latest film really need to be addressed. My god…

Much like how I compared The Testament Of Ann Lee to Barbie in my last post, One Spoon Of Chocolate and Rebel Ridge have similar connections. Both are Rambo/Walking Tall/Reacher-coded stories about lone Black veterans trying to take down a small racist police department after the deaths of their cousins (while the immediate villains in One Spoon Of Chocolate aren’t cops, we come to learn later that they work for the police department). Seriously - it’s like the same premise made under vastly different ideologies.
Both movies missed their mark in some aspects but I can say that I mostly enjoyed Rebel Ridge whereas One Spoon Of Chocolate is kind of reprehensible. Somewhere between Rebel Ridge & One Spoon Of Chocolate lies a potentially good movie. One plays out like a centrist’s wet dream where almost no one dies (Rebel Ridge) and the other plays out like a pandering white guy making cartoonish revenge porn on behalf of the type of Black folks that are easy to impress (One Spoon Of Chocolate). You know…the type of Black folks that cheered for Django Unchained. This makes sense because Quentin Tarantino was a producer on this. Don't get me wrong. I love the idea of slave owners and slave catchers getting murdered in the most brutal way. But at the end of the day, Tarantino used slavery to fetishize Blackness and slavery and I'm just not cool with that. But that's just me...

And as a sidenote - I always get frustrated when folks talk about how much they liked Rebel Ridge because no one died when in fact someone did die. Sure it was off camera but there was still a casualty in the movie. Somehow all the evil racist cops got to live while the main character’s cousin (a Black guy) still managed to die in the story.

Anyway...

Because this is another Rza/Tarantino collaboration, you can expect lots of references and homages to older films. This might be the only thing I liked about this movie. Outside of obvious sources like Rambo and Walking Tall, Rza reaches back to everything from John Carpenter to cult horror.

It [CHRISTINE] pops up in [One Spoon of Chocolate] as the black truck.. The idea is that when that truck shows up, it's gonna be trouble - Rza, Conseuence

Christine / One Drop Of Chocolate

When I finished this script, I remember thinking about the scene of the doctor, and I said, ‘I'm going to try to find that movie, because it scared me, and I want to put fear in the audience’ - Rza, Consequence

Zombie Hol0caust / One Drop Of Chocolate

And because this is a Rza film, you can expect plenty of classic Kung-fu movie homages…

5 Fingers Of Death / One Drop Of Chocolate

In One Spoon Of Chocolate we follow “Unique” - a veteran/ex-con who goes to stay with his remaining family in Ohio only to find out he’s living in a sundown town ran by a corrupt police department and a vigilante gangs of racist white nationalists that kill Black people to sell their organs on the Black market. As a two-time kidney transplant recipient and a life-long fan of the Wu-Tang Clan, you’d think this movie was tailormade for me. But it wasn’t. As I said earlier, this movie is like a white guy trying to make a violent blaxploitation film to prove he’s down with Black people. But writer/director is Black. It doesn’t take much to impress certain lanes of Black viewers. All you have to do is murder the racist bad guy and somehow that makes things better (Rza didn’t even have the balls to show the audience if the main racist villain dies in the end or not!).

Besides his well-known love of Kung-fu movies and martial arts in general, the Rza’s personal life and other various Wu-Tang lore is all over One Spoon Of Chocolate. Naming the main character Unique is a nod to his cousin Ol Dirty Bastard’s 5% name; Ason Unique. In Rza’s pre-Wu Tang Clan days he fled to Ohio to stay with family after getting in to trouble. Some of the cast members in One Spoon Of Chocolate appeared in the Wu-Tang Hulu show as well. In my opinion this makes things all the more embarrassing because I would not want anything personal or close to my heart connected to this mess of a movie.
Things are just violent for the sake of being violent and the usage of the N-word would make producer Quentin Tarantino proud. I guess in a sense the Rza did achieve some level of exploitation. He just used Black pain and trauma to do it. It doesn’t make sense because this movie doesn’t really align with the 30+ years of socially conscious Rza lyrics I’ve listened to over the years.

What’s also disappointing is that even Rza fell in to the Get Out trope that a majority of modern Black films do these days. In the opening scene a young naive Black male walking on the side of the road is lured by a car full of flirty attractive white woman only to be set up and murdered by the film’s antagonists. It’s almost exactly like the opening scene of Get Out with Lakeith Stanfield mixed with the very real story of Kendrick Johnson.

similar opening scenes...

Get Out / One Drop Of Chocolate

moments later they’re subdued and abducted…

Get Out / One Drop Of Chocolate

Can modern Black cinema exist without some form of “watch out for the white boogeyman” trope???


Outside of real cases like the death of Kendrick Johnson who, like the victims in One Drop Of Chocolate. was murdered and had his organs stolen, Rza uses the imagery of racist white supremacist rallies as an influence which is so cheap to me...

One Spoon Of Chocolate (below)

Speaking of the film’s antagonists, Rza can’t make up his mind if the bad guys are torch-waving proud boys or wiggers. They’re racist but dress like they actually listen to Rza’s music. Now…I’m fully aware that there are plenty of white hip-hop fans that love the music and adopt the aesthetic of hip-hop fashion all while hating Black people. Just look at underground rap music forums or some of Eminem’s fans. The confused villains could have been some type of commentary on all of this. But this movie is so dumb that I can’t give Rza credit for that type of insightful commentary. I don’t even feel like getting in to the nitpicky stuff like the stupid decisions made by the characters in the movie or casting someone like Shamiek Moore as someone that’s supposed to be an intimidating tough guy. All of that is overshadowed by the cheap exploitative racist bullshit that this movie pulls off. Not only is Rza a coward for not showing the death of the main villain, but all the deaths of the Black men in the film are extra violent and realistic while the white bad guys get murdered quick and fast.


This is all so unfortunate because while Rza has made some dumb statements in the past, he is an intelligent artist with unique perspectives. The problem is none of that is on display here. 

HIM

I’m a fan of Jordan Peele so I don’t mean any disrespect when I say what I’m about to say but - Him is what happens when you ask AI or ChatGPT to generate a Jordan Peele-esque script. It touches on all the hot online debate topics in a very checklist sort of way. Biracial commentary? Check. Black athletes with white wives? Check. Dialogue about Black quarterbacks in the NFL? Check. Comparing pro (mostly Black) professional athletes at the NFL combine to slaves at an auction? CHECK. This is yet ANOTHER movie made for people to debate with each other on Twitter. A ragebait movie if you will. The problem is this movie is really bad. Not in a One Battle After Another kind of way. As much as I really did not like that movie, I at least had a lot to say about it. This one? Not so much. At the end of the day this is about cool imagery first. The substance and plot come third & fourth. 

It's clear that this movie exists just to set up shots like this. Just be a photographer...

Anyone familiar with this blog knows I love a good movie reference but when your only purpose is to set up scenes to reference older movies and/or paintings, I have a problem with that...

The Street Fighter / The Story Of Riki-Oh / Him

I will say that between One Battle After Anoter and Him, the understanding that some people have of biracial people is very naive and a little troubling. I’ve noticed that the Blackness of biracial is so conditional when it comes to Black folks. If you’re half Black and mixed with anything else and you just happen to simply mention that one of your parents is white or Asian or Latino, you’re met with this weird hostility form a certain sector of insecure Black people that think you’re treating your Blackness as lesser than (just recently Carmelo Anthony shouted out his Puerto Rican father at his hall of fame induction speech and so many Black Americans took offense to it). If you’re biracial and you date a light skin woman (or another biracial woman) you’re automatically a colorist that doesn’t like dark skin Black woman. It’s very childish and weird. There’s something so insecure about some modern Black people that a lot of their (very personal) insecurities get projected on to biracial people. At times, Him plays out like it was made by someone with no understanding of Biracial people outside of commentary from bitter folks on TikTok and Twitter. There's a lot of projection on to Him but if your aren't familiar with certain spaces/podcasts/social circles/social media accounts, you won't get it.

What’s so frustrating about Him is that in the right hands this could have been an interesting movie. A top prospect college quarterback (Cameron Cade) has his skull cracked right before the draft and he loses every offer except one. He goes off to train for a week with his idol (Isaiah White) whose spot he may be taking as White is considering retirement. Each day gets weirder and Cameron starts to notice things aren’t what they seem. Throw in the psychological horror aspect and you got something. I’m not saying this would have been a masterpiece but it could have been interesting in a good way.

Besides the aforementioned issues concerning how this film handles race in a naive rage-baiting kind of way, its relationship to football seems very naive as well. No offense but this movie comes off like it was directed by someone that never played a competitive sport let alone high level football. It's like it was directed by someone that made up a bunch of bad stereotypes about all athletes and then believed them just to get upset.
As I was watching Him I kept wondering if the director’s only relationship with football was watching Oliver Stone’s Any Given Sunday. I’m sure Him will be used as another indictment on toxic masculinity. I’ll be the first to acknowledge the sometimes obvious male-centric toxicity in football that starts early on in pop warner or middle school but if you don’t know it firsthand it’s easier for you to fall victim to showing it in a very naive and childish way. And that’s what happens with Him.

This is for people that don’t actually watch football but obsess over things like Travis Kelce’s dating life or angrily question why Pat Mahomes didn’t marry a Black woman. I imagine people that like to dissect the imagery in Kendrick Lamar music videos will find Him “deep” and/or “layered”. It’s not tho. Between the not-so hidden satanic imagery and all the implications about sacrifices & rituals - the movie wears its agenda on its sleeve. And if that stuff still goes over your head, don’t worry….comedian Jim Jeffries plays a personal trainer that constantly warns our young star athlete to watch out. *SPOILERS* apparently there’s a secret society/organization that grooms young biracial boys since childhood to become football stars. So outside of the target audience I mentioned earlier - this movie plays in to the dumb conspiracy theories believed by Joe Rogan/Alex Jones listeners.


This movie is just bad. The Adam Sandler remake of The Longest Yard is a better look at football and race relations. If you do see this, stick around for the ending. As bad as the movie is, I doubt nothing will prepare you for the climax. 

ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER *UPDATED*

I’m just not seeing what the rest of the world is seeing. This is an unserious movie as far as I'm concerned. I sincerely mean this when I say that I hate to be the guy that dislikes the movie that everyone seems to love but One Battle After Another was, as the young kids say, problematic. It just weirdly panders to certain specific types of people (performative liberals) and it uses current events (the migrant deportation crisis) in a very cheap way to do the pandering. But it’s ok because people like to be pandered to today now more than ever. Everyone seems to be in a bubble or an echo chamber. There’s no real discourse. No nuance or middle ground. People only want to be agreed with and if they see someone on the opposite end of the political spectrum express an opinion or even a fact they don’t like, they have to disingenuously disagree like a stubborn toddler.

Speaking of no more nuance or middle ground - I’m almost certain that because I don’t love this film and have criticisms of my community that I’ll be labeled a “coon” (a term that has lost all of it’s sting), a sellout or just out of touch. As you read on you’ll see that I have absolutely no love for conservatives but because of this critique, folks will associate me with conservatism or MAGA.
I never thought I’d say this but I’m feeling like Armond White after watching OBAA. White represents a type of Black conservative that I detest but when it comes to expressing interesting thoughts about film - there’s no one like him.

One Battle After Another is a movie made for modern Twitter liberals, unfunny Black Twitter pundits that think surface-level representation is more important than meaningful messages, folks that call Joe Biden & Kamala Harris “uncle Joe” and “auntie Kamala” and emotional college students that think they’re making a difference by debating stupid conservatives on college campuses (you aren’t making a difference. You’re just making yourself look dumb by arguing with racists using your performative feelings).

Conservatives will watch this movie and immediately get that they’re being targeted. Sean Penn’s “General Lockjaw” clearly represents a cartoonish iteration of MAGA. There’s literally a subplot (which kind of turns in to the main plot) involving a secret society of American White Nationalists that believe in racial purity. When it comes to the white characters in this movie it’s pretty straight forward and surprisingly interesting. When it comes to the Black characters, Paul Thomas Anderson treats them like caricatures.
The conservative analysis of this film will be nothing surprising. They’re always so predictable. The only critique they ever seem to have these days is “this movie made me feel bad as a straight white man”. I dunno - if a movie like Sinners or even OBAA made you feel like you’re being attacked as a white man, maybe you need to stop being so weak and not let a movie hurt your feelings. But that’s just my opinion.

Folks on the opposite side of conservatism (liberals, “the left”, democrats, etc) will watch One Battle After Another and feel validated and seen. They’ll praise the (cartoonish surface-level) representation of Black women in the movie like it’s something daring (it’s not). A lot of times white liberals can be clueless about their relationships with Black people and that comes out in One Battle After Another.
A White liberals will have “BLM” in their Twitter bio, wear a thrift store Nelson Mandela t-shirt but won’t have any actual Black friends. Furthermore - they sometimes think they know what’s better for Black people than Black people themselves. They get comfortable and insert themselves in certain Black business that doesn’t concern them. They really do sometimes see us as props. One Battle After Another just confirms this.

*UPDATE*

AND MY POINT IS PROVEN!!!!! Since posting this "review", I've expressed these same opinions on social media & youtube and these are some of the responses I've got. Non-Black liberals really don't know how to act or function when a Black person doesn't like this movie. I've been called everything from right wing (because I'm concerned with how Black women are portrayed) to disingenuous. I was told I didn't even try to understand the movie. I don't think liberals realize they're sometimes just as racist as the MAGA folks they call racist...

Besides Regina hall, I thought the Black women in the movie were used as sexual fetish props. There’s a scene in the film where a group of Black revolutionary women rob a bank and one of them starts to give a speech about Black pussy and the power of it. …Just rob the bank, please.
But lemme guess - as a man, even a Black man, I just don’t get how empowering this is supposed to be, huh? A non-Black person with blue hair and a septum nose ring will see that scene and call it “iconic” or something.
But this all makes sense. Of course a white filmmaker like Paul Thomas Anderson would be responsible for a forced scene involving a Black woman preaching about Black pussy in the middle of committing a bank robbery. The crowd that this movie is for is the same crowd that thinks getting Megan Thee Stallion to twerk for Kamala Harris will secure votes. These are the same people that think getting strippers to promote voting will secure the Black male vote because all we think about pussy.

Teyana Taylor’s entire performance was a one-note scowling jezebel stereotype. I know folks are going to describe her performance as a “strong Black woman” but in reality it was just “I’m mad but I’m also horny, white boy!” Let’s also not forget she ratted out her fellow revolutionaries (which led to most of them being murdered) proving she wasn’t really about that life. She also abandoned her child. But again - certain liberal white folks will cheer that on and call it empowering because, again, so many of them see Black people as props for their weirdo agendas. Being a mother is stifling and depressing but being a promiscuous informant that sleeps with the police (who I thought was supposed to be the enemy) is empowering and free (I'm sorry but while Teyona's character was obviously "complicated", she was still shown as a protagonist at the end of the day). 

Black folks are the only people that have their degeneracy cheered on by non-Black people as something empowering or strong. I’m also starting to get sick and tired of the strong and/or independent stereotype that has been forced on Black people in media and in real life (Black women especially). It would be nice if we were allowed to be light and silly in movies more often like we sometimes very much are. But that’s another conversation bigger than One Battle After Another.

What I thought was supposed to be a father/daughter movie about how living the revolutionary lifestyle can often times leave you with nothing to show for later in life, turned in to something else. At the end of the day the climax was about a white supremacist (Sean Penn’s General Lockjaw) joining a super powerful secret society of white supremacists that has an illegitimate black daughter that he has to kill before his fellow white supremacists find out and kick him out of the club. If that's what you're in to then cool. I guess I'm just not.

Leonardo DiCaprio was quite good and the final car chase scene was pretty great. But one sequence and a good performance doesn’t save a movie like this.
The sitcom-style ending is enough to make a logical person lose their mind. *MILD SPOILERS* DiCaprio’s daughter in the film saw how living the revolutionary life left her parents traumatized & depressed yet she still decides to follow in their footsteps?? I just don’t buy that.


I know I’m in the minority on this and some of my words sound harsh but if you can get out of your feelings maybe you can at least see where I’m coming from (notice I didn’t say you have to agree with me).

THE ALCHEMIST COOKBOOK

These last few years I’ve been fairly aware of all the semi-recent slow-burn psychological horror movies like A Dark Song, The Transfiguration, Saint Maude, Entrance, The Witch, etc, so I’m surprised this underrated 2016 gem never came up until now (courtesy of the criterion channel). The Alchemist Cookbook would actually make for a nice double feature with A Dark Song as both intentionally slowly-paced films have a lot of similar imagery and take a more realistic approach to the idea of black magic and/or casting spells…

The Alchemist Cookbook /
A Dark Song 

The motivation behind using spells & magic is quite different between the two films (A Dark Song is about grief & letting go while The Alchemist Cookbook is more about curiosity & experimentation mixed with mental illness), but  the basic similarities are still there.

In addition to the coincidental visual & thematic similarities to A Dark Song, The Alchemist Cookbook has subconscious ties to everything from early Richard Linklater…

as much as I thought I hated it [SLACKER] it was one of my earliest influences. And now watching it as someone much more educated in my film experience, I understand what he was doing - Joel Potrykus, gavinschmitt.com

Slacker /
The Alchemist Cookbook 

To unexpected sources like The French New Wave and more traditional horror films like The Invasion Of The Body Snatchers…

Some people hate the ending of ALCHEMIST COOKBOOK. I get it. Obviously, it's ripped from 400 Blows (and Body Snatchers remake). I stick by it - Joel Potrykus, twitter

The 400 Blows /
Invasion Of The Body Snatchers /
The Alchemist Cookbook 

I also found some other coincidental visual similarities between The Alchemist Cookbook and other random horror films and psychological thrillers from over the years…

Twin Peaks /
The Alchemist Cookbook 

The Fly /
The Alchemist Cookbook 

Ganja and Hess /
The Alchemist Cookbook 

I know I’m going a bit overboard with the comparisons but the more I read about Potrykus the more I appreciate his wide variety of influences. 

Take these audio/video comparisons below for example:

It doesn’t take much to realize I lift the openings to all my films from Clarke’s Made in Britain and Haneke’s Funny Games. The opening to those films make me want to punch someone in happiness. I want anarchy in character motivations and story structure - Joel Potrykus, rapportoconfidenziale

Or this direct nod to Jim Jarmusch in his feature debut Ape...

Or what I believe to be a reference to Cassavetes’ The Killing Of A Chinese Bookie (right down to the Nightclub setting and both of these scenes taking place at the end of their respective movies) 

His 2018 film Relaxer is a one long loose homage to Bunuel with an opening scene right out of Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange...

I’m sure I’m reaching on this one but one specific moment from the movie reminded of Murnau…

Sunrise /
The Alchemist Cookbook

Joel Potrykus is open about the things he borrows from yet none of his films could be called clones of Alan Clarke or Michael Haneke. It’s rare to be able to pull from so many sources yet not come off like a copycat. In my opinion it is possible to wear certain specific influences on your sleeve all while still having your own unique voice/approach and Potrykus is a great recent example of this. 

Influences and visual nods aside, this is still very much it’s own movie…

In The Alchemist Cookbook we follow “Sean” - a recluse with deteriorating mental health living off the grid in a tiny house/caravan experimenting with various potions Igor unknown reasons. Sean is visited by his friend Cortez who brings him supplies, groceries & meds from time to time (it isn’t fully laid out but Potrykus gives little nuggets of information about Sean & Cortez’s relationship prior to the events of the film).

Although Sean is unsuccessful with his spells & experimentations (…at first), he is still haunted by unknown sounds at night. Much like other slow burn horror films in the vein of Entrance (2012), the typical horror elements of the story don’t hit until the final act. Prior to the finale, this is a film about mental illness & isolation with little hints & implications to horror and psychological unease.

Because The Alchemist Cookbook is a film about both mental illness and the supernatural, this is something that can be over-analyzed to death (and it has been). My fascination with this movie is the deliberate transgressive approach (from being a horror movie that holds back on the cheap jumps & scares) to the conscious casting choices of only Black males (this is the kind of independent movie that wouldn’t typically include Black men in the lead).

Even though I’m a Black male viewer and the cast of this movie consists of only two Black male characters - I kept race out of my analysis until reading a quote from Potrykus himself saying he wanted to “take the white people out of the movie”. Once I read that I reassessed everything and I now think The Alchemist Cookbook belongs in an unofficial updated modern Black film canon (even with a White director). A few strides have been made when it comes to the portrayal of Black people and mental health on the big screen (Black men specifically in the case of The Alchemist Cookbook), but it is still kind of a rarity to find what I consider a good film that focuses on these issues. This is certainly of them.

Between the subconscious racial elements to the slow pacing, this isn’t a film for everyone (and I’m pretty sure it was never intended to be for everyone) but it is quite rewarding if you have the patience to stay the course (and to be fair the movie is only 80 minutes).

A FEW WORDS ON CANDYMAN (2021)

A few weeks ago critic/pundit Angelica Jade caught some momentary flack online for her harsh (yet honest) review of Nia Dicosta’s Candyman. Not that she shouldn’t have gotten pushback. The review is written to invite dialogue and some pushback. But it’s as if she was expected to blindly like the movie just because she’s Black. Having finally watched Candyman myself, I can say that she was pretty on point (read the review here).

I understand that Jade can be harsh at times and the “let people enjoy things” crowd can get easily triggered by people like her. But, in my personal opinion, thoughts like hers are needed with films like this. Anyone can & should have an opinion on anything they want. But who better to critique something like Candyman with a fine tooth comb than a prominent & vocal Black critic?
I know folks were rooting for this movie (and it’s still a success at the end of the day) but I did find it funny that a Black a person’s negative opinion about a film concerning deep Black issues was challenged in a somewhat immature way by non-Black people (mostly White if we’re being specific). It’s that pretentious neo-liberalism that feels like an overbearing cancer sometimes. Don’t you find it odd that the same people who cry about representation and having more Black voices gets mad at an actual (well thought out) Black voice when they don’t “fall in line”? I certainly find it odd…
Some folks have even gone so far as to call Angelica Jade the “female Armond White”. For those of you that are unfamiliar, Armond White is a very smart film critic notorious of being extra critical towards predominantly Black movies & shows (history only proves this. Look it up). I do find this label a little unfair because nowadays (and for quite some time) White’s entire personality is mostly based around being a Black conservative because now more than ever, Black conservatives love to make that conservative identity their armor in an effort to separate themselves from the pack. Today’s Black conservatives get off on being so-called “free thinkers” yet they support the same people, have the same talking points and kind of all think alike. Weird how that works out, huh?
That’s not to say Black folks on the opposite end of the political spectrum are free thinkers either. But when it comes to today’s Black conservatives they really think they’re something special when they truly aren’t. They just aren’t.
Angelica Jade isn’t really part of that crowd as far as I’m concerned.

Anyway…

I didn’t hate Candyman, but it seems like now more than ever movies (and TV shows) with Black leads exploring Black stories are being made to please folks on social media and, quite frankly, people that aren’t even Black. We’re at a point where a form of research for a movie is just scrolling social media to get ideas (see: Zola). While I don’t make it a part of my personality or wear it on a t-shirt for fake clout, I’ve been the victim of racism, police discrimination, and fetishy romanticization simply because I’m a (large) Black man. I don’t always need a movie to reinforce these things on a surface level. I already live it in real life.

Now…in no way should the atrocities & injustices committed against folks that look like me be swept under the rug or downplayed, but at the same time, Jesus Christ - Black characters can be defined by things other than trauma and drama and pain and other things that have become a moneymaking scheme by movie & television studios.

It’s like there’s an unspoken checklist of things to have in every popular Black movie/show in order for it to succeed or be taken seriously. It’s all so surface & cheap. Shows like Them, certain specific elements of Lovecraft Country, the Watchmen series on HBO, The First Purge, etc etc etc. 

Honestly - I slowly started to give up on Lovecraft when they made Emmet Till a “fun little Easter egg” on the show. I call bullshit. Emmet Till is more than a Easter egg/bookmark in a silly science fiction story. He was a child that was brutally murdered. But “blue check” twitter and the “I am not my ancestors” sector of Black folks thinks shit like that is cute & witty. It isn’t.

And does almost everything horror and/or thriller-related have to be some subpar reworking of Get Out (a movie I like but I don’t even like to admit I like nowadays because the majority of the fanbase behind it is so cringy and don’t even realize they’re the demographic being made fun of and criticized in Get Out)?


I guess one positive of Candyman is that it does make nods to classic films that came before it.

Cinderella / Candyman

Cinderella /
 Candyman

Cinderella /
 Candyman

Bram Stoker's Dracula /
 Candyman

Nosferatu / Candyman

Nosferatu / Candyman

Psycho / Candyman

There's even a possible reference to Jordan Peele's work...

US /
Candyman

This is totally speculative on my part but the idea of the haunted artwork on film, which we saw not too long ago in Velvet Buzzsaw, can be traced back to the early silent film The Portrait...

The Portrait /
Candyman

The Portrait /
Candyman

But a few cute references ain’t enough. Not even for me and that’s my “thing”…


I commend Dacosta for trying to correct certain elements of the original Candyman that didn’t sit well with some of us (the ghost of a slave murdered by white people that terrorizes other Black people is a tad bit wonky). I don’t want to give too much away or spoil anything but the big reveal towards the end is one big huge “wait - huh?” moment.
I do encourage you all to see the movie to come up with your own conclusion. It does need to be seen in order to truly grasp how much of an overall misfire it is.
And outside of the continued trend of making Black pain, Black trauma and serious internal Black issues a money-making genre, Candyman was just kind of bland, boring and messy.

I do want filmmakers like Nia Dacosta to succeed and thrive (we need more & more mainstream big budget/blockbuster directors that are Black as far as I’m concerned). But I also think we need to be more critical and expect more from certain films (and tv) that claim to “represent” Black people and their/our stories.
I’m not going to blindly like/support something just because I’m Black and it’s Black. It kind of feels like that’s the expectation these days (this is essentially how Tyler Perry got to where he is today and some folks still don’t see that they got played by him).

A FEW WORDS ON THE INVISIBLE MAN

Let me be clear - The Invisible Man is a solid movie. It’s a fun entertaining retelling of a horror classic that mixes elements of everything from Psycho & Hollow Man to The Predator & Lost Highway.

My kind of movie...

Psycho / The Invisible Man

Hollow Man /
The Invisible Man

Lost Highway/
The Invisible Man

Predator /
The Invisible Man

And I know everyone has made the Sleeping With The Enemy connection but it takes on a whole other meaning when you actually see the spot-on comparisons versus just saying a movie inspired another...

Sleeping With The Enemy /
The Invisible Man

Sleeping With The Enemy / The Invisible Man

Sleeping With The Enemy /
The Invisible Man

Sleeping With The Enemy /
The Invisible Man

Outside of the obvious (and maybe the not-so obvious) cinematic references, The Invisible Man is also a timely & topical story in terms of subject matter. Outside of the basic horror elements, this is also a movie about surviving domestic abuse. Throughout the film Moss is terrorized by her husband yet no one believes her which definitely does translate to real life. Men love calling women "crazy" or dismissing their claims for weak reasons and this movie highlights that. Yes, this movie wears its politics on its sleeve but I’m not really bothered by that. In my opinion it works overall. I was also really impressed with the editing & camera work and how it conveyed that someone was in a room even when they couldn't be seen.

What does bother me is some of the misguided hype & praise surrounding the movie. Not the actual movie itself. Often times the majority doesn’t stop to think about the thoughts & perspectives of other demographics and smaller groups of people outside of who a movie is geared towards (and I’m not saying it’s the job of the director or storyteller to consider every single person’s thoughts & feelings. But just know some folks are going to view & receive things differently than intended). It’s common knowledge that the default perspective of just about anything is White. That’s just how it is. I’m not breaking any new ground or saying something you didn’t already know. Sometimes the default setting is white even in places where they aren’t the majority. And often times the default is white men. In the case of The Invisible Man it’s white women. That's not to say others can’t enjoy this or relate to the deeper issues the film touches on (again - as I eluded to at the start of this piece, I did enjoy this). I just hope that when folks leave this movie they don't only associate white women with domestic abuse or make them the poster children when women of every race are affected by it.

I wasn’t even going to say anything about The Invisible Man but a few weeks ago a lot of (mostly white women) were misguidedly praising the movie by “thirsting” over Invisible Man co-star “Aldis Hodge” to the point where it was trending. This kind of opened up a can of worms in my (Black male) brain..

As I just stated seconds ago, I'm a Black male (with a white wife), so naturally stuff like this is going to catch my attention. These types of tweets set all of this off and got me to thinking - this kind of "thirsting" could have got Aldis Hodge killed if we were in a different era. Making Aldis Hodge the "ally" in the film felt a little cheap and safe to me (it kind of felt like a coded new age flip on the helpful “magical negro” trope which can be found in characters portrayed by everyone from Whoopi Goldberg to Morgan Freeman). I find it a bit problematic that the protagonist’s friend in the film is a person who looks like/represents a group of people that were lynched decades ago off of the strength of believing women in a movie that is partially a play on the phrase "believe women" (I'm aware the current movement of believe women is different from believing the false accusations of a woman decades ago in the deep south).
I just thought it was odd that people found the time to find this guy sexy & attractive in a movie that is far from either sexy or attractive (this is an issue that's much bigger than The Invisible Man). Without spoiling too much, The Invisible Man features scenes of various women (not just Moss) being beaten (and worse). Where do you find the time to think someone is sexy or hot in a movie like this? Naturally this could branch off in to a discussion or topic about the sometimes objectification that White woman have towards Black men and the dark history between them in America...

Emmett Till

Rosewood

And for folks thinking that the examples I am using are "dated" and/or old, less than two years ago we had a somewhat high profile case that echoed the aforementioned examples from the past...

I'm fully aware that headlines like this are exploitive but no matter how you cut it - the racial dynamic is there and people need to understand that pointing the finger at and/or calling the cops on Black people (Black males specifically) can be potentially dangerous and sometimes fatal (and they sometimes are).

As you can see the thoughts surrounding this movie open up a larger can of worms for a bigger discussion but I don't want to downplay or steal the spotlight from what the film is about which is abuse towards women. But as a socially conscious young-ish Black male, my take on the thirsting, reviews & thoughts surrounding The Invisible Man are slightly different from someone else's. And before you go any further I completely understand that the views & thoughts here are from the perspective of a man, so my opinions on the deeper issues in The Invisible Man are secondary to women who have actually experienced and/or survived domestic violence or have some kind of experience on the matter. I’m no men’s rights activist that likes to contradict women's rights. I think those guys are the worst (and a lot of men's rights activists have a direct connection to racist organizations & ideologies that no Black person should be remotely close to). And I have plenty experience of outsiders/other people trying to co-opt and/or ride the coattails of a Black civil rights movement or Black struggle for their own benefit. From people suddenly shouting “all lives matter” only after people started saying “black lives matter”, to every possible subgroup of people trying to claim reparations only after Black people started pushing for reparations. So the last thing I want to do is steer the conversation somewhere else.
But if we're going to have a deep conversation on the issues in this film and the sub-categories that spawn from it (which many critics are already doing), we should look at it from a broader lens (something I plan on doing on my own podcast very soon).

This “review” is essentially based off of the views & opinions I see on twitter, Facebook & Instagram. If you get caught up in the social media bubble (which I definitely do from time to time) you can start to think it’s a representation of what the rest of the world believes which just isn’t true. So I am aware that my own views & opinions on the praise & criticisms of The Invisible Man are based on a potentially small group of people.

And I don’t mean to get all Armond White/Brett Easton Ellis about my thoughts on The Invisible Women (who essentially felt Moss needed to "pretty up" and wear more make-up). There’s nothing worse than a mindless contrarian or someone that goes; “well, what about these people??!” when the focus is on someone/something else. And I know there isn’t a lot of nuance and/or middle ground left for potentially “spicy” conversations & opinions these days, but I think my views (which I plan to expand upon on my podcast soon) holds a little bit of weight.