There is not a white person in the world, who could ever talk to any black person and say that they understand what it is like to be black in a dangerous neighborhood and be pulled over by a police officer. To say that you “understand” to a black person about this issue, disrespects how bad this problem has been in this country for many years. Anyone who hears the intimidating police sirens following behind is already put on edge. When you’re black this experience is exponentially worse; proportional to part of the country and the training and humanity of the random police officer who stops you.

The new movie “Queen & Slim” is an idea for a film that was inevitable, when a young black couple, Queen and Slim played by Jodie Turner-Smith and Daniel Kaluuya are pulled over by a dangerous and bigoted police officer and then turn his own gun against him after an altercation. For the rest of this movie they are on the run for their lives, driving from Ohio all the way to Miami Florida, hoping to escape to Cuba. One flaw with this movie are that there is too much driving across the country in what appears to be filler to make the movie 2 hours long. The other flaw is that there is a video of the altercation with the police officer that goes viral, and this video clearly shows that the entire incident was in self defense. Given that the altercation was clearly self defense, much of what follows is not strong enough to carry the message of this story. There is also a scene in a convenience store, where Slim gives his gun to an insane store clerk, just because he wanted to see what it felt like to hold the gun. Obviously, nobody would ever be stupid enough to do something like this and because of this, Slim is almost killed with the gun he took from the police officer.

I did not like the ending of this movie at all, and despite the critics giving this movie a very high 85% rating, mine is only 70% because too much of this story involves some long boring scenes of driving through the Southern United States and not enough story telling. I give Queen and Slim a very mild recommendation, mainly because of the message and not for the film.

As far as this ongoing horrendous police shooting issue in this country, both sides of this story are best explained in the scene below from the movie “The Hate U Give” by the actor Common, who plays a black police officer in this excellent film, released last year.

A wealthy family. A murder mystery involving the family Patriarch an old Victorian Castle and “Knives Out” seems like another Agatha Christie murder mystery, with a complicated plot and an ending that requires a long series of flashbacks that define and explain everything that happened in the previous 2 hours. I have never been a fan of any screenplay that requires an explanation at the end. For me, all this means is the story was not told well enough throughout the movie. The exception here is that the story was so complicated it actually did require a summary at the end. The other very unusual aspect of this story is that the lead character, the family maid, played by Anna de Armas, cannot lie without vomiting after. I have to admit, that I have never seen or heard of any like this before.

The most exceptional thing about “Knives Out” is the large number of known actors in this production including Daniel Craig, Chris Evans,
Jamie Lee Curtis, Don Johnson, Michael Shannon, Christopher Plummer and Ana de Armas. Overall, the acting was very good but my rating is more in the 75% range, not the very high 96% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. This movie is just OK, not great but I do recommend it.

For the most part, the critics are trashing “21 Bridges” starring Chadwick Boseman. The main reason for the low ratings for this solid movie is because all or most of this story has been done before in one form or another in other movies or TV shows. The problem is, police stories in movies or TV dramas have dominated the industry for many years and because of that, every idea, surprise ending, gun fight, police corruption, or massive injustice has already been seen. What remains is judging the quality of the production, the acting and how believable the story is. In my opinion, 21 Bridges, along with the recent “Black and Blue” – also trashed by the critics, connects on all counts and should be considered a very solid and entertaining police drama. My rating for this movie is a solid 80%, not the wrong and very low 45% on Rotten Tomatoes.

All of the acting 21 Bridges is outstanding, with Chadwick Boseman as the lead detective trying to find 2 criminals who killed 8 cops during a drug shootout.  Sienna Miller is unrecognizable as one of the police offers helping to find the 2 killers and J.K. Simmons as the police captain. 

Some would argue that closing all 21 Bridges out of New York City in the middle of the night, is something that could never happen. For a seasoned movie goer, some of the surprises were easy to figure out within the first hour, but the story was so well told, none of this mattered.   Once again, the critics are very wrong and I recommend 21 Bridges.