Fences (2016)

Troy Maxson (Denzel Washington) is a garbage man.  He's been married to Rose (Viola Davis) for close to two decades. He has an adult son, Lyons (Russell Hornsby), from a previous relationship.  Another son, Cory (Jovan Adepo) is a teenager who lives at home.  Troy's brother, Gabe (Mykelti Williamson), is mentally ill, due to an injury he suffered during World War II. Troy's best buddy, Bono (Stephen McKinley Henderson), is a co-worker.

Troy once played in the Negro Baseball League, but he was not allowed to move up in the professional sports career due to the race politics of the time.  He sneers at guys like Jackie Robinson (the film is set during the mid-1950s) who were allowed to play on predominately white teams.  When Cory is given a chance at a college football scholarship, Troy dismisses the notion, telling his son that white people aren't going to let him do much with that.  Rose tries to diffuse the tension between father and son, but without much success.  In addition to deferred dreams, Troy deals with guilt over Gabe's fate in life, and an affair that he's been hiding from Rose.

The performances are good in this film, which is based on a play written by the late August Wilson.  As I watched the film, however, I couldn't get past the "stagy" feel of it.  Most of the action takes place in one spot, and it doesn't open itself to other locations.  There are long stretches of dialogue that probably played very well on stage, but unfortunately, can appear slow on film.

Get On Up (2014)

I've been a James Brown fan since I was in pre-school.  One of my favorite childhood memories is of watching him on "The Ed Sullivan Show".  Mr. Brown fell on his knees to the stage, and a cape was draped around his shoulders.  Normally, someone in his show would do the honors with the cape, helping an allegedly overcome-with-emotion Brown off the stage.  That time, Ed Sullivan put the cape on Mr. Brown.  Sullivan didn't know what to do when Mr. Brown suddenly revived and ran back up to the microphone. Sullivan just let the cape fall and stepped back into the wings of the stage.

This movie doesn't feature that performance, but it does cover some of Brown's other big performances such as when he went on The T.A.M.I. Show (1965), the concert featured on the famous Live At The Apollo album (1966), and a concert done in Paris back in 1971.  But the movie doesn't delve deeper into is what made The Hardest Working Man In Show Business tick.  There are plenty of hints that Brown was affected by situations in his life, but the screenplay falls short.

We get a little of Brown's (Chadwick Boseman) poverty-stricken childhood in Georgia, with absentee parents (played by Lennie Jones and Viola Davis) who had their own problems.  As a young man, Brown ends up in jail for stealing, and is saved from a long term by the family of the guy who would become his best friend, Bobby Byrd (Nelsan Ellis).  Byrd is the band member that is focused on the most.  Musicians Maceo Parker (Craig Robinson), Pee Wee Ellis (Tariq Trotter), and backup singer Yvonne Fair (Tika Sumpter) aren't shown much.  Boseman does a good job of doing Brown's signature dance moves; I was especially pleased to see a scene reenacted from the movie Ski Party (1965), which featured Brown doing a split in the snow.  Unfortunately, the movie jumps back and forth between Brown's youth, the climb up to fame, and after fame arrived.  Sometimes, titles let the audience know what year the story was in at the moment.  Most other times, I had to figure it out by the hairstyles and clothes the characters were wearing.

I thought it was a nice touch having Dan Ackroyd playing Ben Bart, who managed Brown's career for a long time.  Ackroyd knew Brown in real life, and he appeared in The Blues Brothers (1980) and The Blues Brothers 2000 (1999) with Brown.  Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones, is one of the producers of the movie.

The Help (2011)

I resisted seeing this movie for a long time.  Wasn't really interested in seeing yet another story about mistreated Black folks in the South, during the early years of the Civil Rights Movement, who are saved and/or aided by a sympathetic white person.  But then this movie and two of its actresses were nominated for Academy Awards.  "I guess I'll go see it so I'm informed on Oscar night," I thought to myself. The performances of Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer were good, as well as that of most of the other players such as Emma Stone, Allison Janney, Brice Dallas Howard, Sissy Spacek, and a woman whom I consider a queen, Cicely Tyson. 

Based on the popular book of the same name, the plot concerns college-graduate Skeeter (Stone) who is inspired by the abrupt absence of the maid who practically raised her, and the third class citizenship of the maids who work for her friends to write a tell-all book from the maids' point of view.  It's tough going because the maids don't want to speak out.  They could lose more than just their jobs in early 1960's Mississippi.  It is also a story about Skeeter's independence and different way of thinking that sets her apart from her Southern belle friends, who are happy with the "separate but equal" situation of the times.

Yes, the movie is good, but not great.  The character of Hilly (played by Ron Howard's daughter Brice) is at times like a female Simon Legree, sneering and gloating over how she treats her maid, Minnie (Spencer).  She's the typical example of racism-served-with-Southern-hospitality, which we've seen in similar films before this one.  You know that some characters will be redeemed, some will become strong, and still others will continue on in who they are before the film is over.