Homelessness | A Screenwriters Perspective: Current and Past Movies.

The new Tyler Perry Netflix movie “Straw” captures, better than almost any other movie I have seen, the life of a single mother Janiyah Wiltkinson, played by Taraji P. Henson, is like watching a slow-moving car wreck. Janiyah has two horrible jobs, one as a cashier in a rundown food store, with a rude, cruel boss who treats her like garbage.

Janiyah is about to lose her apartment to eviction, and her 8-year-old daughter is sick and needs medicine that she cannot afford. Janiyah’s landlord couldn’t care less about her disastrous life and refuses to give her more time to pay her rent, evicting her despite her pleading for more time – one of this movie’s singularly horrific moments. Later in this depressing story, Janiyah even has her car towed because her registration was not renewed. Life sometimes works this way for far too many of us, when it seems that everything is going wrong at the same time. How many millions in the world, through no fault of their own, fall into a life this dire and depressing?

The acting of Taraji P. Henson is outstanding, as good as her performance nine years ago in the great film “Hidden Figures” (2016). Sherri Shepherd is also outstanding as an empathetic bank executive, Nicole, who tries to help Janiyah when circumstances spiral out of control. There are some typical Tyler Perry moments in this story that do not seem to hold water, and some standard Perry movie misdirection and trickery at the end, but overall, this is a well-told story with great acting about what can happen to anyone when circumstances out of our control ruin our lives.

Tyler Perry has been one of those hard-working screenwriters and directors who has taken more than his share of bad hits over the years from several critics. This time around, few can argue that Straw is one of the best movies he has ever produced. I give this movie a solid 95% recommendation.

The new movie “Kajillionaire” is for any person in the world, who thinks that being broke, heavily in debt or even being close to homeless is not a big deal. Not only is all of this a big deal, but for so many millions of people in the world, it can be a fate worse than death.

The story of Kajillionaire is about an older man and woman and their 20-something daughter who are on the outer fringes of living on the streets. They run scams, some of them very complex that involve faking lost luggage at the airport. They duck under a fence to avoid their landlord who is renting them a former small office room that leaks foam from a next door car wash. This film stretches to a highly unusual level of storytelling that in some areas barely make sense with storylines that in some ways seem connected but then drift away. Many times when I see movies that try so hard to be different – they do not work, but this movie works and for the most part well done.

Kajillionaire stars Evan Rachel Wood, Debra Winger, Richard Jenkins and Gina Rodriguez. This is movie is not a comedy, it is a dark drama about the harsh realities of life in this country for people with no money. Over time, people become desperate animals just to survive one day to the next – and all of this makes Kajillionaire a difficult story to watch. The acting is very solid throughout, with Rodgriguez character joining this group of 3 drifters in the middle of this story – a part of the story I found to be somewhat unbelievable.

The Rotten Tomatoes ratings for Kajillionaire are a very high 88% but a very low 54% audience rating. I am more in the middle, around 72%, with a passing rating. This is not the great movie some of the critics are raving about because some parts of this story did fail and other areas are so disjointed that they do not seem to make sense. Trying to be unusual too often in any story can ruin the final production – the best recent example of this is the movie Tenet. Overall, I do recommend this movie for its stark and depressing reality of people living on the edge.