Malik’s Movie Reviews Past & Present
You cannot have a discussion about either the craft or the business of Hollywood filmmaking without talking about Gone With the Wind. Based on a hugely popular novel, the film version lived up to the spectacle of the novel, romanticizing the ‘fighting spirit of the South.’ Uh huh. You probably see why I picked […]
My sincerity has always been one of my calling cards; so it stands to reason that pathological liars are people I consider to be my polar opposite. The best movie I’ve ever seen about people like this is still Shattered Glass; but The Informant probably deserves to be in the conversation now. The film […]
Richard Pryor is universally recognized as the black comedian who set the stage for the onslaught of African-American stand ups who followed him in the 80s, 90s, and present day. An argument can be made that there are funnier stand up films by some of the comedians that came after him, but Richard Pryor Live […]
If I made a list of the top 25 films about black sexuality (sarcasm), She’s Gotta Have It would be at or near the top. The story, which today still feels a little ahead of its time, focuses on a young sister named Nola Darling who has three lovers: the pretty boy Greer Childs, the […]
The best movie I think I’ve seen so far this year was The Hurt Locker. The most entertaining movie I think I’ve seen was 500 Days of Summer. As the poster, the trailer, and the prologue all indicate, this isn’t a typical romantic comedy. ‘The Guy’ in this one (played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt) believes […]
The Hurt Locker is probably the best film I’ve seen so far this year. The story revolves around the three young men who make up Bravo Company, played by Anthony Mackie, Brian Geraghty, and Jeremy Renner. The best film I’ve seen so far set in the Iraq War, Bravo Company has one primary job: […]
Originally written for Sylvester Stallone (who would take parts of the original idea to make Cobra), Beverly Hills Cop is universally agreed to be the film that made Eddie Murphy a movie star. Don’t need much more for the intro, on to the tale of the tape… Relevance: In terms of African-American ‘movie stars’ (which […]
It’s my favorite genre by far, but at this point in the game it is damn near impossible to break new ground with crime drama. Public Enemies is a really good movie on its own. Michael Mann, Johnny Depp and Christian Bale doing a film about the true life story of John Dilinger. If […]
In recent memory, there have been few films that have stirred up the flames and sparked discussions about the lack of roles for black actresses in general, and the portrayal of black sexuality overall, the way that Monster’s Ball has. The plot revolves around a romance between a former death row security guard and the widow […]
Openly taking its cues from Scarface, New Jack City was an ‘anti-drug’ movie about a group of young brothers in New York rising to the type of the drug game in the early years of hip hop. I openly admit this was a personal favorite of mine growing up as a teenager in the early […]
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