Review: Will Smith's Oscar hopeful "Emancipation"

please welcome new contributor Ankit Jhunjhunwala...

Will Smith stars in "Emancipation"

by Ankit Jhunjhunwala

It is arguable that all movies benefit from a theatrical experience - though some do more than others. The benefits are not merely technical (superior audio & video quality) but also behavioral. A paying public in a cinema is a captive audience and usually sticks with a film to the bitter end. At home, on streaming platforms, abandonment is easy and, by all accounts, frequent. This latter practice is likely to hurt Emancipation, which concludes with a sensational Civil War action set piece that is sure to rouse audiences. Only they have to get through 90 minutes of airless tedium to get to it.

Emancipation is a project undoubtedly born out of noble intentions. The infamous Whipped Peter photograph, showing the horrifically lacerated back of a Black man, remains a powerful contemporaneous record of the unimaginable cruelty suffered by Black Americans at the hands of white slave owners...

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Links: Irish cacophonies, crowded rooms, and guild prizes

• IndieWire did you see SNL's sketch lampooning Ammonite and Portrait of a Lady on Fire as "Lesbian Period Drama"
• Towleroad Tom Holland to play Billy Milligan the first person to successfully use Dissassociative Identity Disorder as a criminal defense in the series The Crowded Room
• The Guardian asks a very real and interesting question: which films have missed their moment given the pandemic. Lots of films benefit from feeling 'of the moment' and not all of the films coming out in 2021 and 2022 will.

 More after the jump including trouble for film production in Georgia, Bowen Yang's Titanic hilarity, and the Art Directors Guild Awards...

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