Favorite films

Recent reviews

• 

  Negroes with Guns: Rob Williams and Black Power 2004

  ★★★★ Watched 28 Feb 2025

  There's that footage from Agnès Varda's Black Panthers again! I think I've seen it something like four times during Black History Movie Month 2025; five if you include rewatching her documentary as well.

  I've watched a lot more documentaries this month than I usually do, and I've found I rate them on two axes: quality of the documentary, and choice of topic.

  This documentary doesn't have a lot of polish, but I found the topic infinitely compelling. I had never…

• 

  Black Barbie 2023

  ★★★★½ Watched 27 Feb 2025

  Seeing Dr. Kenneth Clark describing the famous Doll Test was quite powerful; I didn't know before about its influence on Brown vs. Board of Education.

  I loved the puppeteering of dolls for visual interstitials—a great way of keeping the movie visually engaging in a way that's on-theme, but also representative of how we play with dolls and use them to embody our narratives to help construct our understanding of the world we live in.

  This documentary has a few Letterboxd…

Popular reviews

• 

  Naked Acts 1996

  ★★★★½ Watched 23 Feb 2025 2

  There was a point early on in this movie where I wasn't sure I could get into it. The sets felt too hemmed-in; I felt like the movie wasn't getting enough space to breathe.

  I was imagining that perhaps the script had been written as a stage play since I could see it working in a minimalist staging, pools of light demarcating each scene. (I still think this could work, honestly.)

  But then at some point I got lost in…

• 

  John Lewis: Good Trouble 2020

  ★★★★ Watched 26 Feb 2025 1

  This is a good introduction to the arc of John Lewis's life and what his work has meant for the course of USA history.

  I think that's what the documentary was going for, so: success! but at the end I want to see a full ninety-plus minutes going in-depth on the topic of John Lewis's relationship with Julian Bond that's briefly touched on here.

  I didn't know about that detail of John Lewis's life before watching this, though, so, again: success!