Mississippi Damned

I'm not sure how I stumbled on this film, but I know it was over a year ago that I did so.  Maybe even 2.  I finally bought the DVD and watched it.  This movie is a film everyone should see.  The writer/director Tina Mabry does an excellent job, as do the actors.

This movie follows the story of a family in rural Mississippi beginning in 1986 and then continuing in 1998.  At the center of the film is the Peterson family.  Junior, Delores, Leigh and Kari are all members of a larger extended family who all live within a few miles of each other.  Junior has a gambling problem while his wife Delores is a hard woman from years of dealing with her husband's lying about where their money is going.  Their oldest daughter Leigh is gay and struggles with what that means to her family, but also to her own identity and the youngest child Kari has a talent for music that might be her ticket out of hell.

We also closely follow the stories of Delores's two sisters, Anna and Charlie.  Anna has an emotionally abusive husband, Tyrone.  Anna struggles with potential sterility in the early part of the film.  In combination with her husband being unable to find work, their marriage suffers exponentially.  Meanwhile, Charlie is an alcoholic who lives with a cheating boyfriend.  Her only son Sammy is an excellent ball player, but his mother's alcoholism and tendency to focus more on her boyfriends than her son, puts him in some unfortunate situations.  Eventually Charlie finds herself in her own life or death situation.

I've always been interested in family dynamics and this movie gives me all the functional dysfunction I can handle.  I see my own family in this family and I see some of the societal ills that I wonder how we'll ever get around, play out in this film.

For example, there's a theme of power through sex that runs through this film and in some very uncomfortable ways.  We see one character who feels powerless attempt to exert power on another character, using sex.  Their relationship, unsurprisingly, never recovers -- and the ways they relate to one another after the fact provides insight into just how much sex is often not at all about sex.

There's also the theme of sacrifice.  What do we give up for our family -- even though we may not like them very much.  One character sacrifices her way out of the misfortune and dysfunction, only to have another character sacrifice absolutely everything to give it back to her.

One thing is certain: this movie is HEAVY.  I took several breaks during the almost 2 hour film.  There were moments where I thought "Jesus Christ -- is there any light at the end of this tunnel?"  And there is -- but it is most certainly at the very very end.  Even with all that, though, I would watch this movie again and again -- it's that good.

The only place I've found this film is at the film's website -- but it is 2014 and this is the internet.  If you can find it somewhere, anywhere, please watch it.  Even if you don't purchase the film, I bet after seeing it, you'll want to.

One more clip.  In this scene, the women's mother (who lives with Anna) is confronted by Charlie over things that happened when she was a child.  It is very well acted and so true to the experience many survivors of abuse experience when they try to bring up what happened to them.  But you don't really experience Charlie's pain as much as you experience the mother's.  She's denying any responsibility, but you can sense that her words and her true feelings don't really match up.  It doesn't hurt that their mother is portrayed by one of my favorite "little-known actresses" Dr. Tonea Stewart.

CrazySexyCool: The TLC Story - My Review

24 hours ago the first airing of TLC's biopic finished airing on VH1 and -- I watched most of it again as the super TLC fan (aka stan) that I am. I let it all marinate over night and I have some thoughts to share...

I think it'll be easiest to talk about the movie in terms of its' casting, pacing and how well it got the facts right.

Casting -

I didn't hear ANYBODY say that they thought the casting was good, when the three women chosen to portray Tionne, Lisa and Chilli were first announced. In fact, what I saw a lot of was "who the hell is Drew Sidora?" and "can Lil' Mama even act?" and "Keke Palmer looks nothing like Chilli!"

Interestingly, though, after the movie premiered in NYC and bloggers and other journalists got their hands on advance copies of the movie, I heard a different tune. Some freely admitted they were unsure of the casting but that after seeing the movie they changed their minds. Others pretended to have had no preconceived notions and only praised the film and its actors.

I'll certainly freely admit that when I saw the cast, I had my doubts. I expected that if Lil' Mama could act, even a little bit, she'd make a great Lisa. I had all the eye rolls and heavy sighs for Keke Palmer who said in one interview that she'd always been told she looked like Chilli and I wished to see how much makeup they planned to slap on Drew to lighten her skin enough.

Now that I've seen the film, I'm singing a bit of a different tune. Lil' Mama was good. She can act and she did Left-Eye justice given what she had to work with. Of the three, I think she did the best job in her portrayal. Keke actually does look like Chilli from some angles. She had the body and the "sexy" part down pretty pat. Her dancing was adequate. There wasn't too much to complain about. Drew -- well, I think Drew had the hardest row to hoe. Not to suggest that the other two could've been portrayed by just anybody, but Tionne -- she requires a certain savoir flair... Drew had moments where she seemed to truly channel the boss (T-Boz means "Tionne is the boss") but she had just as many where I didn't know who she was supposed to be, exactly.

I'll speak to pacing in just a moment, but it (and the editing, I'm sure) certainly effected the actors' abilities to do their characters justice. The ladies have always had great charisma and been very charming and funny, especially when with each other and especially in the group's early years. I didn't see that from these actresses -- I didn't feel like these were my BFFs in my head (as I do whenever I watch a TLC interview, even now). I felt like they all got along, but I didn't feel like they had spark between them or took on that ride-or-die mentality that TLC talks about.

There were certainly high points, though. Keke Palmer did Chilli's abortion storyline justice. I think she conveyed those feelings of loss and anger very well. Drew Sidora didn't get a lot of screen time to develop Tionne's story past her sickle cell, but her hospital scenes were gut-wrenching. Especially the first. Lil' Mama had a lot of scene stealing moments. Her charisma and her ball of light was very evident in almost every scene, including the ones where we saw them audition for Pebbles the first time. This says a lot of Lil' Mama's talent. The other two ladies had the advantage of spending time with the women they were portraying. Lil' Mama had to figure hers out on her own.

However, aside from the ladies -- the rest of the casting felt off. Pebbles is the exception to that. Rochelle Aytes was a great Pebbles, I thought. But Carl Anthony Payne as LA Reid was awkward and some of the other castings were just... did you see the guy who played Puff Daddy? Probably outweighs Sean Combs by 100 lbs, easy. The guy who plays Mack 10? He probably underweighs the real Mack 10 (at the time he was portraying him) by 100 lbs. And let's don't even discuss Evan Ross as Dallas Austin, except to say Evan Ross probably comes up to Dallas Austin's chest. Seems like they got the ladies casted and said "whoever can work can have the rest of the parts."

Pacing -

This is probably my biggest sore point with the movie. It should've been a 4 hours, 2-part miniseries like all the great biopics. The Jackson 5: An American Dream and The Temptations were both 2 parters. Cramming 20 years into 2.5 hrs require that a whole lot of things get left out or smashed together.

It all started off pretty well. I felt like we were getting to know the ladies. Lisa's dad gets killed off in the first 10 - 15 minutes and we meet and then lose Crystal Jones in almost the very same scene. But once they hit the Fanmail era, the movie seems to hit warp speed. Tionne meets Mack 10, Chilli gets pregnant, has a baby and Tionne also gets pregnant, while they find a new manager and Lisa begins to take trips to Honduras, all seemingly in the same 15 minutes. You can barely keep track of what's happening with one storyline before the next one hits a bump and gets all crazy.

I was especially upset with the fly-through of Lisa's funeral. I know that's a fine line to walk. We don't want to make it a dog and pony show and we know what funerals are like, but who spoke? What was said? Who showed up? We got no glimpse and what we did see we already knew. Tionne and Chilli cried through the whole thing.

The pacing also hurt character development. We see Chilli's mom all of twice, but she's clearly been a huge part of Chilli's life. Same for T-Boz's mom. The pacing also causes the film to fail to help us understand certain plot points. For example, Lisa drinks through the whole movie. Almost from the first time we see her, she's drinking. A cursory TLC fan is probably aware that, at minimum, Lisa had an unhealthy relationship with alcohol -- but for as many times as we see her drink and we see Tionne frustrated by it, we never address it head on. What did the other two really think of it? How did the diversion center help or not help? If I weren't a TLC fan, would I really have caught that Lisa had a drinking issue from the movie? I'm not sure -- which is my point overall.

There as also Lisa wishing the other two listened to her ideas more. She mentions wanting to do futuristic things in the early part of the film, and then again when she argues against Creep as a single. Later we hear Chilli remark "we're finally doing her futuristic stuff and where the hell is she?" The pacing made it hard to keep up and understand if you didn't already know what was going to happen or what the issues were.

However, the pacing did get it right early in the film, as I mentioned. Especially around the development of Perri "Pebbles" Reid. I think some people criticize the film for spending too much time on Pebbles and how she did the girls dirty, but I argue they probably didn't spend enough time. We see the tricks she employed to keep them in the dark about their contracts as well as the tricks she used to, in a sense, cheat them out of their money. All of that is important to the story and good pacing helped bring it out.

Facts -

If you follow me on twitter -- for the hour I did get to tweet, I dropped as many TLC fact gems as I could. I knew the movie would take some artistic license, and the script writer was quick to make sure everyone knew the difference between a biopic and a documentary. Overall, the facts were pretty on (all things considered). They dramatized some things of course and skated over others as necessary.

There were little things like -- Larry. I'm convinced -- and unless Tionne or Chilli themselves tell me otherwise, this will be my opinion -- Larry was meant to represent Sean Newman. I remember when Lisa first started dating Sean. I found any picture of them together. My favorite entertainer and a fine ass man? No issue from me. But I don't recall ever hearing Sean Newman was married. Larry is though. That's the artistic license at work, and that's fine. (there is, of course, the chance that I'm just wrong, either about it being Sean or about Sean not being married, but this is my post so I"m right).

Where the facts really got iffy for me was less in actual truthiness and more in the omission of certain things. Going back to the pacing, they rushed Lisa's storyline of feeling like her group didn't listen to her. As I mentioned earlier, there were 3 references to Lisa wanting to do more futuristic type things. One occurs on the set of the Creep video. It is true that Lisa wanted to film her portions of the video with tape covering her mouth and it is true that she didn't like Creep as not only the lead single, but a single at all. What isn't shown (and to me is an issue of fact) is that Lisa disagreed with the message of Creep altogether. She recorded a rap to be added to the remixes of Creep that preaches the exact OPPOSITE message of the original song. She may have wanted to do something more futuristic, but she wanted it done to something other than Creep.

And what about poor Crystal Jones? We didn't even get to see them kick her out of her own group. At least not the way it actually happened...

But they did get some facts really right. Like with Pebbles. I know some think they made her look like a terrible person for no reason, but one thing I've never seen or heard is Pebbles deny that she had them sign contracts that put them at a serious disadvantage. She's sued and she's whined and she's made excuses but I've never heard her out and out deny it. Them facts is facts, period.

I could go on and on and on -- and I have already. Overall, I give the movie a 7.5/10. Not too shabby, but could've been better. If VH1 releases it on DVD, I want the director's cut, with all extended and deleted scenes, plus behind the scenes, interviews and makings of the MTB single as special features. That's a MUST for my collection.

Tyler Perry's Temptation

Warning: This post may contain spoilers, but given that this movie is in its 2nd weekend, I'm assuming most folks who plan to see it, have already.

I've only done one other Tyler Perry movie review. I usually save my comments on movies for twitter as I'm not movie reviewer or even a movie lover (the kind that sees them regularly, at least).

And, it's worth noting that generally, I don't rag on Tyler Perry. I have generally supported him since I became aware of him via his stage plays in 2004 or so. It's probably safe to say I've seen all of his movies and almost all of his stage plays. Not necessarily because I think he's some great writer/director/producer (I don't) but because... well... I find what he produces entertaining in some way, usually. Plus his movies make for good group outings if only for the conversation they spark afterwards.

And, I've been bothered by some of the things people say about Tyler and his characters. My usual response has been, "just because you don't know people like the ones he writes, doesn't mean they don't exist..." and I stand by that; but I'm getting to the place where I'm wondering if Tyler knows any other types of people...

I agree with most of the critiques I read of the movie. Most of them were the usual critiques of Tyler Perry. Lots of soap-operaish writing, poorly developed characters, requiring suspension of disbelief, etc... I loved one sentence in Mark Olsen's LA Times review of the movie: "Perry's ongoing disinterest in improving as a filmmaker is now seemingly part of his unshakable belief in himself, his insistence on doing his thing his way."

This is of course my chief issue with Tyler. He's established himself as a powerhouse in Hollywood (at least where films with majority black casts are concerned) and yet his films, over the last 8 years, have only gotten moderately better. His dialogue is less painful, he's using new settings (all his movies used to be set in Atlanta, we didn't even have an Atlanta reference in this movie, though there was one made of GA) and the actors continue to be relatively top notch (he's had Angela Basset, Cicely Tyson, Kimberly Elise and now Jurnee Smollett-Bell, who I heart). Yet I left this movie feeling... icky.

First what I liked: I liked that it was set in DC and not Atlanta. I liked the dialogue -- his non-Madea movies tend to be less elementary which is appreciated. There were no light-skinned saviors, which was appreciated. I liked the way the movie started, until the counselor (who we learn is Judith) begins telling her story about her sister. Cardinal counselor rule number one: try not to make a session about you.

And Tyler goes on to make a lot of other faux-pas with his fake counselor. She talks with her husband about wondering how it is she has a Master's degree and still isn't a marriage counselor. Probably because you need a doctorate to be a marriage counselor (at least most of the top programs are doctorate programs). She references not having a license... also cause for concern as she's the in-house therapist at her current job. Working as a non-licensed therapist? Um. No. Def illegal. As a school counselor, heavily trained in human development, my professional sensibilities were irked.

Then there were the moments that required suspension of disbelief. Like Judith's one day transformation from straight-laced good Christian girl to someone who loves wine (and later does coke). First, ain't nobody getting into alcohol THAT fast, and secondly why couldn't she have been drinking before, anyway? The ones that irked me the most involved Lance Gross. Lance Gross (Brice) is standing in front of you crying, begging you to come home and you don't go? WHAT REALITY IS THAT?! (ok, maybe that's not suspension of disbelief... MAYBE).

There was something about Judith that was unsettling from the beginning. Something about trying too hard to be a goody two shoes and then suddenly letting loose. Seems to me Tyler would want us to sympathize with Judith in some way but at every turn he makes her insufferable. She's unsure of everything even when she tries to be (see her annoying, but ongoing, conversations with Ava (Kim Kardashian) about her work attire). She plays victim instead of asking for what she wants -- which Tyler writes in such a way that is annoying (her husband forgets her birthday, she's crushed, but plays the passive aggressive thing, leaving a lone cupcake and card on the table), but then punishes her for going after what she wants in the end.

Many have documented Tyler's "issue" with educated women. His writing makes him seem like King of the "your degrees won't keep you warm at night" club. There is such little requirement of the men to take responsibility for their roles that it's sickening. Even when he TRIES to take responsibility for taking her for granted and being inattentive, Brandy's character Melanie/Karen says that even IF he did do those things as a husband, he's still not at fault because her cheating outweighs what he did, definitely. And I suppose I'm supposed to see Harley as getting his comeuppance when Brice slams him through a window (in the middle of the house?). While I was here for Brice's extreme testosterone-driven jackknife move, that wasn't enough to make up for Harley's actions.

Ever since Tyler hipped (chuckle) us to the 80/20 rule in Why Did I Get Married, he's been obsessed with making it part of all his story lines involving couples. Judith's unhappy in a marriage, and somehow as a wannabe marriage counselor fails to consider that she finds Harley attractive because he is everything her husband is not? She has to get her ass beat before she realizes maybe that's not the man for her? What is Tyler trying to say, anyway? Don't you dare, you educated woman you, want your husband to fulfill your needs. DON'T YOU DARE. You be happy someone wants to tolerate your degree-having, ambitious ass. That's what you do.

Lots of folks have talked about the possible rape scene in the movie. It certainly was uncomfortable watching Judith say "no" and "stop" and push his hands away only to have him disregard her wishes by saying "ok, now you can say you resisted..." and we wonder where rape culture comes from; how it starts. I guess I fail to understand why, using TP logic, then it wasn't Judith's fault that she cheated, but that's another post.

I was intrigued with the way Tyler treats Christianity in this movie. Judith is written as stuck up and holier than thou until she gets herself a little of the sex and a little of the coke. When Harley inquires why she doesn't include questions about sex in her compatibility survey, Judith is quick to say there's no reason to as she is a Christian and doesn't believe in premarital sex. Aside from breaking cardinal counselor rule #2 (this ain't about you, and what you believe) I was irritated with the way her views on premarital sex are demonized and used to show how suck up and unrelateable she is.

I let Tyler make it a lot of the time. I look past most of his failures as a writer/director/producer. Even now, I won't say I hated this movie, but it does rank down there at the bottom of the list with "Meet the Browns" (God I couldn't STAND that damn movie). Just one time I want him to write me a nice, well-educated woman who has some issue other than "can't find a good man because she's too damn picky/needy/ridiculous." No more icky rape scenes, Tyler. NO MORE. And the men in your movies need to start taking some dadgum responsibility ou'chea. This mess is getting ridiculous.

Tyler Perry's Good Deeds Did Some Good

I went to see Tyler Perry's Good Deeds (name of the movie; I'm aware you already know the filmmaker; henceforth "Good Deeds"). I was surprised that I liked it, but I shouldn't have been. I tend to really enjoy Mr. Perry's non-Madea movies. However, I did have some qualms with it but I have qualms with most movies because I'm a critical watcher. Let's dive in, shall we?

First my issues: Suspension of disbelief is always a problem in Perry's movies. I already knew that Perry's main character, Wesley Deeds, makes the assertion that he is 5th generation ivy league educated which bothered me during the promo period of the movie and of course continued to annoy me when it was said in the movie. I like that he created a well-to-do black family for us with it's own interesting privilege issues, but I wish he'd been realistic about how that family might have come to be. Also, as a person who works in schools I took issue with a few of the scenes around Lindsay (the single mother played by Thandie Newton) and her child and custody. I know several people didn't like how things tied together nicely at the end and so quickly -- more suspension of disbelief, but you have to do that sometimes for movies.

I also noted a few plot holes like when in one scene Natalie's (Wesley's fiancee, played by Gabrielle Union) friend Mark says he's never met Wesley only for the audience to later see Wesley call Mark by name and jokingly say that he'd better have a cab ride home -- not an exchange you'd expect between two people who've never met. Those happen in movies; they always annoy me but that's just me.

Right from the jump I was happy that Tyler brought us out of Atlanta and took us to San Francisco. I don't believe "The Family That Preys" was set in Atlanta either but we also were never made aware of what city it was so that doesn't count.

I've been saying for awhile now that Perry's movies would behoove themselves to make use of subtlety. Everything doesn't have to be spelled out and finally he gave me what I was looking for. We first meet the couple as they're getting ready for work. Instead of having Natalie, tell us flat out that he was predictable, we hear Natalie say the things that she knows Wesley will say because he always does and through that we learn very easily that he's a man of pattern. Not only that but in that simple exchange we can see HOW predictable he is; right down to what he'll say!

Of course Natalie goes on to eventually spell it out for a fellow character and then later for Wesley himself, but the initial subtlety was much appreciated and noted.

Perry likes to use his movies as soapboxes, especially when Madea is in them, on how to raise your kids and I thought he was going to do that this time around -- he kinda did -- but he surprised me when the single mom pushed back with some key points of her own about how difficult it is to raise a child, especially alone. As much as the point was made that kids need good parents, so was the point that good parents need support and it's very much easy to outside or armchair quarterback.

Other high points: this movie was ripe for opportunities to drag out a story line (and at 1 hour and 57 minutes, I expected it to do that in parts) but for the most part, it didn't. Perry made fairly good use of screen time, pretty much always progressing the plot. The ending is no surprise but the delivery worked enough to have even a jaded movie watcher like myself not sure what to expect, right away.

Overall, like I said, I really liked the movie. Perry surprised me with how well he wrote it. I frequently find myself in his movies wishing the dialogue was like 2 points better so it could be tolerated; this time he brought it up 5 points. I think he got great actors for all the parts. Brian White overacted once or twice, but that happens too. Wesley needed an antagonist, the brother (played by White) as sabatoger sub-plot worked but it never really fleshed out; Walter was an ass and then suddenly, we assume, he wasn't. Not much more to that except watching him just be an ass for the duration of the movie.

I'll give Tyler Perry's Good Deeds 3.5 stars out of 5.

Oh: "Time After Time" HAS to be the most covered song in American Pop history. Seriously. I also appreciated that he put "Right Here Waiting (For You)" in the movie too.