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Trigger warning: violence against women, rape culture

“Do you think that hip-hop culture was on trial as much as Sean Combs was?” Robin Roberts asked woman–beating rapper Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson about the four-part documentary he executive produced, Sean Combs: The Reckoning.

“No,” Jackson stumbled through his damning response. “My ulti—, if I didn’t say anything, you would interpret as, that hip hop is fine with his behaviors, because no one else is being vocal….It would allow the entire culture to register as if they’re for that.”

And this is the problem with the so-called “reckoning” of Sean Combs in this docuseries.

Sure, it’s a detailed accounting of Diddy’s 35-year reign of evil in the industry. Allegations in the documentary range from drugging and raping unconscious victims and showing videos of the attacks on big screens at his parties to orchestrating the murders of Tupac Shakur and Christopher “Biggie” Wallace. His co-founder of Bad Boy Records, Kirk Burrowes, lays out the vileness intrinsic to Combs’ 35-year climb in the music industry, aptly beginning with Combs becoming famous off the trampling deaths of partygoers at Combs’ first big event in New York. Endearing moments in history, like Combs throwing his “best friend” Wallace a lavish funeral in Brooklyn, get revealed as lies since Combs allegedly charged the funeral costs to the Wallace estate to cover, then set up “freak-off” celebrations every March 9 on Wallace’s death anniversary.

“I need your energy!” Diddy-Dirty Money band member Kalenna Harper recalls Diddy saying to her in a session, an exclamation that she took as complimentary at the time, when in reality it was instructive. All four episodes show Diddy as a destiny-swapping energy vampire that dimmed the lights of everyone rising around him—emotionally, financially, spiritually, physically—so that his light would burn brighter. It paints a picture of a record executive whose insecurity was deadly; who envied the talent of the artists he had helped to shape; who saw girlfriends as mere props to impress other men and prove his greatness by “taking” women from the higher-profile men they were with before him; a monster who grooms the people around him, from artists and employees to his own sons.

Diddy’s former childhood friends do their best to lay the blame for Diddy’s notorious abuse at the feet of the single mother that raised him, Janice Combs. But you can’t be evil unchecked for 35 years at the height of any industry—let alone one as globally impactful as hip hop—and not have a culture problem. You can’t “reckon” with Diddy without indicting the culture that made him. And 50 Cent has no interest in doing that, because that violent, misogynistic culture made him too. And his friends. They’d all have to go down. So, this doc is just about Diddy, an isolated evil who acted alone, who RICO’d alone. So, the documentary fails as a work of reckoning in the same ways the state failed in its prosecution of Diddy. ‘Conspiracy: party of one’ just isn’t a thing.

Netflix denies that Jackson had any creative control over the docuseries, leaving blame once again at a Black woman’s doorstep, director Alex Stapleton. Stapleton’s series invites no experts on domestic violence nor rape culture to appear in the series to contextualize either subject or connect Combs’ harm to the larger cultural and systematic oppression in which he was allowed to operate for 35 years.

Explaining Combs’ entry into the hip-hop world, the erased co-founder of Bad Boy Kirk Burrowes states that there were only two entry points at the time: Russell Simmons at Def Jam and his former protégé Andre Harrell at Uptown. Simmons has a documentary’s worth of rape allegations against him. This is a culture that rots from the top.

The docuseries doesn’t even mention his abuse of women during his short stint at Howard University in the late ‘80s til 1990, topped off with Howard granting him an honorary degree in 2014. In 2016, the same year he beat ex-girlfriend Cassandra Ventura on camera, dragging her back into his room as she tried to escape from him in a hotel, Diddy donated $1 million to Howard to give business school students scholarships in his name. Money erasing violence against women is a pattern that can only thrive in a culture that hates Black women. There’s no “reckoning” without that acknowledgment.

The lack of experts also explains the lack of care for the victims in the presentation of information for the doc. Though some of Diddy’s many victims have an opportunity to voice their pain in the series— including Aubrey O’Day, Joi Dickerson-Neal, Capricorn Clark, producer Lil Rod and Burrowes—this “Reckoning” is not for or about them. Echoing Combs’ public treatment of O’Day and Diddy’s longtime victim Cassie, Stapleton follows suit, giving these two particularly egregious treatment. O’Day reads—for the first time—a victim statement from someone who says she witnessed an unconscious O’Day being raped by Diddy and another man. There had to have been a more sensitive and thoughtful way to bring up this woman’s statement without this on-the-spot, salacious presentation.

And then poor Cassie. Years back, Diddy did a cologne commercial featuring a naked Cassie, two of the products he was selling, and it’s lewd and leering. Stapleton uses footage from this sexually violent commercial as background while the allegations against Diddy at his sex-trafficking trial are explained, conjuring images of Cassie as a willing participant in her own abuse. With no experts to dispel this idea, the docuseries perpetuates harm against survivors of abuse rather than offering them a healing voice.

Still, the #1 TV series on Netflix has caused quite the stir of hate and disdain for Diddy. When his paltry 4 year sentence for his crimes against male sex workers is up (he was acquitted of the charges against his women victims) he will not get a warm welcome home. People don’t play about Pac and Biggie—who were no strangers to violence against women themselves. The outrage I’ve seen on social media about why Diddy was allowed to wreak hell on everyone in his vicinity unchecked doesn’t square with the behavior I usually see on these platforms. Just this summer, when Black folks voiced concerns, distress, displeasure with Black events AfroTech, Essence Fest, and Culture Con, legions of folks came forward to try and squash those complaints, to dismiss the concerns as “jealousy” of successful Black people who actually have done something with their lives, unlike the complainers. This culture of protecting so-called Black Excellence (read: rich, capitalist class Black people) is the same culture that built Diddy and allowed him to abuse and terrorize unchecked for almost four decades. “For the culture.”

As for the doc, I said in my review for Contraband Camp, “As a history of Diddy’s vile character, the docuseries is thorough. As a ‘reckoning’ for the pile of victims, bodies and carnage in his wake, it’s woefully incomplete.”

Also read:

Iconic hip hop journalist, author and editor Aliya S. King wrote a fascinating piece for Vibe Magazine (remember hip hop journalism?!? sigh) back in 2010, interviewing notorious Harlem gangster Frank Lucas about Diddy’s daddy, Melvin Combs, which sheds more light on who the hairdresser-turned-drug dealer was before his murder than this documentary does.

Stay watchin’,

Brooke

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It’s our anniversary!

One year ago today, full of questions and doubt, I launched this film/TV platform on Substack, Black Girl Watching. There was no guarantee of success. Criticism as a written art form—like much of journalism these days—was being pushed out in favor of social media influencers, vloggers and paid arms of the celebrity PR machine. People don’t like to read! the headlines often repeated. But I do. And if I do, I crossed my fingers that others might too.

And I believe in criticism as an art form; as an act of community love shared between the critic and the viewing audience; as an anti-fascist weapon to sharpen our minds and equip us to think critically about the art and messages and images we consume. And here we all are, one year later, from 500 subscribers at launch to more than 10 times that number of free and paid subscribers today! When you value my work, I get to pay bills and keep doing what I love, and I am so grateful for you!

Since that time, BGW reviews have gone viral dozens of times, landing this Substack on the list of the top 100 Culture newsletters and the top 100 TV/Film newsletters, peaking most recently at #12 behind Ava DuVernay after my review Wicked: For Good Lets Evil Win went viral!

And while my reviews for both Wicked: Part One last year and For Good this year have been instrumental in building the audience I have now, my Sinners review, “In Sinners, the Deaths Feel Like a Metaphor,” was my first viral piece on the Substack platform.

While I believe in telling my truth and backing it up with receipts in a review (hence my ever-present spoiler alerts), I rarely engage the filmmakers directly—that’s rude!—unless I really, really love the film. And y’all know, I really, REALLY, love Sinners.

Last month, at a brunch at the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills, I got to tell the filmmakers exactly how impactful this film has been for me.

I’ve been bugging ‘Sinners’ producer Sev Ohanian since I found out that the setting of Sinners, Clarksdale, MS., had a petition to bring the film to the community, since they didn’t have a movie theater. I reached out to Sev to alert him to the petition and he responded quickly, letting me know they were gonna make it happen! I also let him know about the many, many, pieces I had written about Sinners, including my Sinners syllabus, and kept him abreast of the Club Jukes I threw in L.A., first to benefit the Black non-profit community center Project 43, and then the free Club Juke celebration of my 40th birthday at The Gathering Spot LA. I couldn’t have been more thrilled to finally meet Sev in person at the brunch.

I keep watching and talking and thinking and writing about this film because the movie is a conjure, a griot. It lifts the veil between life and death and brings our dearly departed loved ones back to us.

“Every person on set brought with them a memory of a person they’d lost that they wanted to honor,” Ryan shared with me when I told him about how I saw my big cousin Eddie who passed away 14 years ago as the Smoke & Stack characters to my Sammie. Of course, the film is an homage to his Great Uncle James; his grandmother’s name is Sammie; and his aunts are twins. Costume designer and my Soror and fellow Hampton U. alumna Ruth Carter told me she put the clothes her mother used to wear on the train coming down to visit family in Virginia into the costume design for the train station scene where Stack reunites with Delta Slim and Mary.

I told the great Delroy Lindo that I saw my grandfather, who’s been gone 20 years, and some of my still-living uncles in Delta Slim. “We’ve never seen us like this on screen,” Lindo and I agreed. Yes, it’s Ryan’s brilliant script, but it was also every ounce of the cast and crew committing to a conjuring that makes the film feel the way it does for so many of us.

Michael told me the background story of my favorite image of Smoke and Annie. While the crew was setting up the scene for the characters’ reunion, Michael wanted some old-fashioned photos of the two of them, which birthed this image:

(I got the cast and crew to sign this image for me, but won’t share it or all of our convos because there are some personal messages I’ll treasure just for myself!)

Wunmi and I fangirled over sharing a legendary birthdate, July 31 (though we are one year apart)! And she shared how her final line as Smoke is dying, “I don’t want any of that *smoke* to get on her [the baby],” had a subconscious double meaning. That this killer- gangster persona that Smoke was carrying as a form of protection, first against his abusive father, then against the abusive world, wasn’t necessary where they were going. He could finally rest, and hold his baby and smile for the first time in the film, as Elijah, his true self. “Sometimes, Ryan doesn’t even know the genius he has, it’s just subconscious,” she said when they caught on to the power of that line and what it meant in the full context of the story.

“Every day was something like that!” Jayme Lawson who played Pearline shared. I told her how mad I was that she and Annie die in the film but I felt better when I saw that Pearline gets to live on as the name of Sammie’s club in Chicago; that his music honored her name and story and sacrifice for the rest of his life. “That wasn’t originally in the script,” she shared of Sammie’s club name. That was something Ryan came up with as they were designing the set for Sammie’s club and was a pleasant surprise for her. And me too! This one change saved my aching heart for the Black women griot characters in the film who didn’t get to live. The ancestors were working over time to get that idea into Ryan’s spirit!

My favorite part of the day was talking ancestors with Ryan. I shared with him about my great-grandmother, Other Mama, who was a root worker and is featured in my documentary ABANITU: A FAMILY DOCUMENTARY. Because of Sinners, my younger cousin who had watched the documentary, reached out to me to learn more about Hoodoo and root working. This film put us back in touch with our ancestors and ourselves. “Ah, man, that’s exactly what I wanted!” Ryan beamed. I could tell that just from watching the movie. This is ancestor veneration. This is why I write and study and make movies.

This is why movies will always be “that deep” to me. Movies can heal, instruct, connect and make whole. If you could do all that in a movie, why would you not do that?! I’m grateful that this movie exists, that it challenges popular Christian ideals that are rooted in anti-Blackness and anti-Africanness that were intended to sever us from our history and culture; that it connects us back to our ancestors and to ourselves. Sinners is a work of cultural criticism and I’m grateful for the reminder of how crucial this work of criticism as anti-fascist resistance continues to be.

Thank you for rocking with me this year and literally keeping me afloat. It’s only because of your support that I get to do this work that I love and feel is deeply necessary. Cheers to another year of resistance and building the new world we want to see in our art!

Stay watchin’,

Brooke

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*Spoiler alert for the plot of Wicked and Wicked: For Good*

I thought I’d seen the bottom of 2025 cinema when I watched One Fetish After Another back in September. I called it too early. Wicked: For Good is the worst movie of the year. I’m not (just) talking about the plot holes and inconsistencies; the awful pacing; the hideodeous (as they say in Oz) backlighting; the washed out colors; the ridiculous naming conceit of Part One followed by For Good; the underwhelming songs that are further undercut by the characters’ contradictory actions during the song performances; or that ridiculous sex sweater. I’m talking about the story. With a script this bad, Wicked: For Good was doomed from the start.

Yes, it’s a faithful adaptation of the second act of the Broadway musical Wicked, and that’s almost entirely the problem because it didn’t have to be. The second act is infamously thin with the most potential for improvement for a screen adaptation that’s going to double the runtime of the entire Broadway production anyway. While screenwriters Winnie Holzman and Dana Fox and director Jon M. Chu have taken some liberties with their source material in both 2024’s Wicked: Part One and its new sequel Wicked: For Good, they have ultimately chosen to sacrifice character development, story—and, most importantly, in a time of rising fascism—political integrity, in favor of keeping masses of neoliberal theater nerds happy.

And the risk-averse path has paid off. In just this opening weekend, Wicked: For Good has made $226 million worldwide, recouping its $165 million production budget. But at what cost?

A Radical Start

I’m not a Wicked hater, in general. Though I was new to the 20-year-old Broadway musical and the (extremely different, X-rated! Be forewarned!!) 1995 novel it’s based on when I watched Wicked: Part One last year, I immediately crowned it the “most radical film of 2024.”

In that daring adaptation of act one, Chu suggested a willingness to subvert the stodgy conservativeness of the Broadway musical by casting a Black woman, Cynthia Erivo, in the iconic role of Elphaba. Since her origin, the green-skinned witch has been played by scores of white women, and the text suggests she is one, but with a skin condition for which she is oppressed and ostracized. Though technically this is a story of ableism rather than racism, since Elphaba isn’t a member of a race of green people that’s systematically oppressed, Wicked isn’t exactly a story championing disability rights, as Elphaba’s physically disabled sister NessaRose winds up being the ultimate villain: a fascist enslaver, just like the Wizard, by act two.

With all the references to Elphaba’s skin color, it’s clear they’re attempting to racialize Elphaba in some sort of metaphor for anti-Blackness, and I was never going to be interested in watching a white woman’s reverse-racism-coded oppression story.

But with the casting of a Black woman in the role, the story seemed to finally have a deeper meaning. Her desire to belong in the place she was born yet rejected from because of her skin hit a thousand times harder. Erivo’s choice to wear microbraids so you know this Elphaba is meant to be BLACK, opened up the space to have a real conversation on a large, pop culture scale about our experiences as Black women with white women ops/neoliberals like her roomate-turned-frenemy Galinda/Glinda. (I’ll harp about Hollywood’s refusal to let Black British actors be British on screen—forcing Erivo to use an American accent where her white co-star Jonathan Bailey as Fiyero gets to remain British—in another piece.)

Sure, Chu and team drop the ball plenty of times in Part One after this casting choice. I will never get over the backlighting of Fiyero’s excellent “Dancing Through Life,” number, which is literally unwatchable through the blinding backlight. Casting Michelle Yeoh as the devious Madame Morrible when you know she cannot sing and barely wants to act in these movies is another. And of course, changing Elphaba’s childhood nanny into a CGI talking bear in Part One to explain Elphaba’s solidarity with the Animals who were being genocided by the Wizard of Oz is yet another. Elphaba is Black. She gets oppression. She’s a decent person. She wants it to end. No need to manufacture a “reason” for her to care, Chu, there’s Animals that are dying!

And my biggest gripe with Part One is that Chu deletes a pivotal scene where, after Elphaba knocks her college classmates unconscious with telekinesis and frees a caged lion cub with the help of Fiyero, Galinda comes to Elphaba hurt and disappointed. “I would’ve helped you,” Galinda tells Elphaba about the daring plan to buck authority and free an Animal that’s being persecuted by the state. “If you needed someone, you could’ve picked me,” she says.

Used to babying brats like her entitled sister NessaRose, Elphaba apologizes for choosing Fiyero and promises to never leave Galinda behind again. Chu deleted this scene because it makes Galinda’s betrayal of Elphaba just a few scenes later even worse, and we’re supposed to like her. While in the Emerald City at the request of the Wizard, Elphaba and her hanger-on Galinda find out that the Wizard has no real power. A once-hopeful Elphaba confronts the Wizard of Oz when she finds out that he and her mentor Madame Morrible are behind the genocide of the Animals, pushing them out of Oz, imprisoning them, stopping them from being able to speak.

The Wizard and Morrible want to exploit Elphaba’s magical powers for their own purposes to keep their facade going and to make their fascism harder to defy. Elphaba chooses to defy them instead, releasing the desire to belong and be accepted by a society as sick and twisted as Oz. She asks Galinda to fight with her, and Galinda refuses, but we’re not supposed to see this as a betrayal because she sings and cries while she does it. Galinda sides with Elphaba’s enemies as Elphaba leans into her power and flies away at the end of Part One, determined to expose the Wizard, end the genocide and free the Animals.

It was such a powerful film in the context of 2024. We were in the midst of a (still-ongoing!!!) U.S.-Israeli genocide of Palestinians that so many of us were protesting, demanding the Biden-Harris administration put an end to the genocide and theft of Palestinian land. So many of us were demanding that Kamala Harris commit to an arms embargo on Israel in exchange for our votes in that November’s Presidential election. She refused to do anything but commit to having “the most lethal” military on the planet, and to give Israel everything they wanted, just like Biden had. When directly asked if she was willing to lose the election over her support of the US-Israeli genocide in Gaza, she said a whole bunch of words that mean, “yes.” So, when she unsurprisingly lost to Trump a few weeks later, her supporters had no interest in self-reflection or accountability over who they were willing to throw overboard for their own sense of comfort. They simply lambasted her detractors, blaming 3rd-party voters and conscientious objectors for Trump’s win.

“I hope you’re happy! I hope you’re happy now! I hope you’re proud how you have hurt your cause forever! I hope you think you’re clever!” They yelled Galinda’s lyrics to Elphaba at Palestine protestors sans irony. In their fantasy, The “92%” of Black women voters for Harris were the Elphabas, standing up for justice and goodness and “the lesser of two evils” against fake white women allies like Galinda who voted for Trump behind closed doors. Never mind that Elphaba very specifically risked it all to stand on the principle that genocide is wicked and she would not be a part of it, no matter the cost to her. Never mind that “the lesser of two evils” is still evil.

Wicked: Part One became a comfort film mirroring the decisions of so many brave people in real life who put their lives on the line to stand against genocide and found renewed power in it. This was anti-fascism in a blockbuster film with incredible songs that children were watching and being inspired by! I could overlook some poor backlighting.

But, I knew it couldn’t last. This is Hollywood, after all.

For Good picks up “12 tide turns,” or, one year after the events of Part One. Morrible announces in random expository voiceover that Elphaba has not been seen by the people of Oz that entire year. In the opening scenes, Chu leans into his superficial understanding of Black Americanness by having Animals whipped and chained up in slavery as agents of the Wizard force them to build the yellow brick road. Elphaba flies in on her broomstick and breaks the chains of the enslaved Animals. She whips one of the overseers with their own whip, gets her Superhero Shot off, and then surfs away on her broom. (Ridiculous!) People in my audience clapped, but I knew it was downhill from there.

A Defanged ‘Hero’

The Wizard’s flying monkeys are after her, so she flies away without ever communicating with the Animals that she just “liberated,” or making sure they were safe or had anywhere to go. People can be mad at the lion cub she and Fiyero “liberated” in Part One for growing up to become the Cowardly Lion in For Good who hates Elphaba for taking him out of his cage. But literally, she and Fiyero did the same thing to Lion that Elphaba does in this “heroic” opening scene: dropping Animals off somewhere with no regard for their actual safety or liberation. This is at the heart of Elphaba’s frustrating character for me, and the screenwriters’ lazy politics in crafting this story.

In one year’s time, Elphaba has been doing nothing to organize or fight with the Animals, that we know of. Madame Morrible tells Ozians that “rebel Animals” are hiding her away in the forest, which sounds like typical Morrible propaganda about the scary witch and the scary Animals. Why would Elphaba need to be in hiding? Isn’t she more powerful than Morrible and the Wizard, now that she has the Grimmerie spell book? Didn’t she just say at the end of Part One, “If you care to find me, look to the western sky?” Why is she suddenly in hiding from her ops for an entire year instead of bringing them the thunder? And why does she suddenly emerge just to blow up one little section of the yellow brick road that is apparently quickly repaired and has little-to-no impact on the Wizard’s imperialist plans of having “all roads lead to the Emerald City”?

This is why, when she does finally speak with some Animals when she sees them trying to escape Oz through a tunnel they dug under a patch of the yellow brick road, (we get it, Chu, the Animals are Black people and Elphaba is your limited understanding of Harriet Tubman!) it feels completely disingenuous. Elphaba tries to stop the Animals from leaving Oz and sings the boring new song “There’s No Place Like Home,” encouraging them to stay and fight. Fight how? Fight when? Fight where? In one year’s time, Elphaba only has vibes, and what looks like a conspiracy theorist’s collection of fliers and string on her treehouse mirror that says “save the animals” written in blood? red ink, but with no actual plan to achieve that goal. Seriously, Elphaba, did you spend one year just building that tree house and assembling a bulletin board of Morrible’s wicked witch propaganda fliers? It truly feels like my ADHD plans for writing a review; step one: clean my whole house.

Cowardly Lion interrupts Elphie’s big speech to the Animals by telling everyone she victimized him as a cub and turned him into a coward and they shouldn’t listen to her. They side with him easily because they don’t know Elphaba like that because she is not actually in community with any Animals! Sure, she runs into her old nanny Dulciebear on the Underground Brickroad, but it’s clear she hasn’t seen that bear since childhood.

The next thing Elphaba does is crash Glinda and Fiyero’s surprise engagement party / yellow brick road grand opening where her bright idea is to write “The Wizard Lies” in the sky. Morrible is on hand to scramble Elphaba’s message into a threat to all Ozians, reading “Oz Dies,” instead. That tiny effort is enough to make Elphaba fly away in defeat. Her next bright idea is to enlist the help of her “father,” the governor of Munchkinland and her #1 op who has hated her since her green birth and who blamed her for her mother’s death and for her sister NessaRose’s disability—both of which he actually caused by forcing his wife to drink opium while pregnant so that NessaRose wouldn’t come out green. Turns out, the governor died of shame when Elphaba flew off with Oz’s sacred Grimmerie in Part One, so now NessaRose is governor. It’s only been a year but somehow she’s transformed from bratty school girl to Cinderella’s Step Mother. It’s the bouffant with a gray streak in the front that really cinches her wicked turn (though it’s always been up for Nessa, in my opinion, since she consistently took the side of Elphaba’s ops over her. She’s holding their classmate Boq captive as her butler and treating all Munchkins like her enslaved property who need her written permission in order to leave.

Does Elphaba—first of her name, queen of Antifa, mother of Animals, breaker of chains, protector of the realm—care in the slightest? No. When Boq tells her what NessaRose is doing to the Munchkins, Elphaba does absolutely nothing. She literally stands by and watches as NessaRose steals her Grimmerie and tries to cast a spell to make Boq love her “again” (lol). “Oh no…stop…don’t…you’re saying the words all wrong…” Elphaba says nonchalantly as Boq’s heart starts shrinking in his chest from Nessa’s spell. It’s not explained at all—thin source material, thin script strikes again!—but I’ll guess that because Elphaba cast a spell on NessaRose’s shoes to give her her heart’s desire, it allows her to read the Grimmerie (the thing whose whole personality is not being able to be read by anyone in years, except Elphaba, but whatever!). She’s able to cast a spell to hurt Boq like he’s hurt her by trying to, *checks notes*, free himself from her enslavement. Elphaba can’t reverse Nessa’s spell, but she can make it so that Boq doesn’t need a heart anymore to live, by making him the most frightening Tin Man we’ve ever seen. Nightmare fuel, truly.

In an anti-climactic scene, Elphaba finally tells NessaRose that she’s an ungrateful brat and just—leaves. The Munchkins are still enslaved, being pulled off of trains by armed guards. The Animals in Munchkinland are still in danger. And Elphaba shrugs and heads back to the Emerald City.

Her final big plan is to confront the Wizard himself at Glinda and Fiyero’s wedding and…make him tell everyone he’s a bad, bad man. That’s literally the whole plan. It’s immediately clear: Elphaba is not leading an anti-fascist revolution, she’s just doing random shenanigans with no actual plan. The Wizard declines (obviously), saying something along the lines of “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK?”

He and Glinda then lead Elphaba around by the nose for an infuriating amount of time, during the number, “Wonderful” (which Glinda has been added to because she is and has always been the star and narrator of these movies, making the submission of Ariana Grande in the Supporting Actress category an absolute fraud). Elphaba nonsensically reconsiders everything that she had already rejected in a similar scene in Part One. Maybe she could be with the Wizard, what she’s worked and waited for! She could have all she ever wanted! Why are we here again, singing “Defying Gravity,” this time with Glinda making Elphaba get on the broom? Not only are you reminding me that all the good songs are in Part One, you’re also just wasting our time.

When Fiyero puts his body on the line twice to save Elphaba from the Wizard’s guards—again, someone explain to me why a bunch of guards are a threat to the flying magical witch?!—Elphaba leaves him behind and starts a spell to save Fiyero from death which ultimately turns him into the Scarecrow we know from The Wizard of Oz. And while “No Good Deed” is the best song and performance in For Good, (please watch it in Dolby Surround Sound to understand!) it’s a silly song. I’ve tried to do good deeds but they all end up badly so I’ll just be as wicked as they say I am!! is the gist of the song. But literally, what did she “try” to do? Be an individual superhero instead of raising a community against fascism? So, your few solo attempts to fight the Wizard and a powerful system that has indoctrinated all of Oz didn’t work and now you’re giving up? Please. And if so, make her really go insane, as she does in the book. Have some fun wicked time!

But, no, that’s not in the cards. The writers need Elphaba to be this poorly organized pseudo revolutionary; they need to undercut her principled position in order for the real star to shine: Glinda.

They want us to believe that beautiful, blonde, wealthy Glinda is as compelling a main character—and character arc—as the uglified green witch who was abused by her father, betrayed by her sister and ostracized by the entire world and still chose empathy and anti-genocide over personal comfort and acceptance. They flash us back to Glinda’s childhood where, at her big, fancy birthday party with all the kids from school, she’s gifted a magic wand and is expected to do magic, but she can’t. A rainbow appears and the kids think she did it and she doesn’t disabuse them of the notion. She tries to tell the truth to her mom, who’s basically, like, Girl, you’re rich and popular and beautiful. Who cares if you can do magic? WHO CARES, INDEED?!

But this is her arc, realizing that being propped up by genocidal maniacs and whitewashing their crimes with her fake goodness is actually bad. That—could’ve actually been a good arc. The problem is SHE DOESN’T DO ANYTHING WITH THIS INFORMATION. “It’s time for my bubble to pop!” she sings in another boring new song as she examines her shining condo in the palace tower. But that would require revealing the ugly truth, that she has been a willing participant in the Wizard’s façade as he genocides the Animals. That she has been weapon number one to keep Ozians ignorant and docile as Morrible and the Wizard scapegoat and eliminate fellow citizens. That she has been actively lying to them because, as Elphaba stated, they need Elphaba to be wicked so that Glinda can be good. That she actually participated in NessaRose’s demise because she was mad that Fiyero left her at the altar for Elphaba. That would be her actually popping the bubble and facing the consequences of her actions. And, surprising no one, she never does that.

Like Fiyero told her in the beginning of the film, “You can’t resist this!” And she admits it. This façade of being “good,” of the handsome, perfect husband and the perfect life, means more to her than anything. Which is why we’re supposed to care when Fiyero dumps her at the altar. What do you mean you’re not going to continue to be in this power couple as an arm of fascist propaganda, villainizing our “best friend” from school together anymore? We’re supposed to be crushed for her and this “betrayal,” because, again, she’s the actual main character. We’re supposed to care that she’s “lost” her best friend forever, when that was her choice, over and over again.

We’re supposed to cry when Glinda leaves her tower and goes to Elphaba’s side—not to join her cause and save the Animals, but to convince Elphaba to let the little girl Dorothy that she’s kidnapped go. (Another gripe: Chu is banking on everyone knowing the story of The Wizard of Oz so doesn’t even show Dorothy’s face or tell any of the story from her perspective, while also making changes in the film that are inconsistent with what we know about The Wizard of Oz. Pick a struggle!) But Elphaba doesn’t need Glinda to tell her to release Dorothy; she makes that decision when the flying monkey Chistery gives her a letter from Fiyero telling her he is alive (as a scarecrow) and that they should leave Oz together.

The Lesser Evil

This is because Fiyero is who folks pretend Glinda is. Unlike Glinda, Fiyero doesn’t wait for Elphaba to ask him to leave with her. He’s already ‘bout that life. He helped her rescue the cub. He holds the Wizard at gunpoint so he and Elphaba can escape. He easily gives up his title as head of the guard to leave with Elphaba. I will forgive Jonathan Bailey for scream-singing in Cynthia’s face during “As Long As Your Mine”—he’s so good at yearning. We love a yearner. But I cannot ignore that the lyrics of the song say “kiss me! hold me! lie beside me!” and yet the choreography is Elphaba on one side of the tree house and Fiyero on the other side! I would hate to see them do the Wobble, the directions are right there in the song, do the thing that the lyrics say you’re doing!! And I will never forgive that sex sweater. WHY IS SHE WEARING A FLOOR-LENGTH SWEATER FOR SEX?! It’s fine. I’m moving on. The point is, no one in all of Oz has ever been a friend to Elphaba except for Fiyero.

After gifting Elphaba a hat Glinda thought would humiliate her, (and does, in fact, humiliate her!) Glinda gives Elphaba a real “makeover” this time, which hits on Elphaba’s core wound, that there’s something wrong with the way she looks and if only she could change it or minimize it, she could belong. Fiyero, on the other hand, liked her immediately and told her that she doesn’t need “Galindyfing.” When Elphaba is rejecting the Wizard and Morrible’s original proposition to be their propaganda puppet, it’s Glinda who tells her she’s “having delusions of grandeur” and “isn’t as powerful” as she thinks she is. The confidence and voice that Elphaba finds in Part One is because of Fiyero’s encouragement and despite Glinda’s betrayals.

In For Good, when the Munchkins believe Morrible’s claims that water can melt Elphaba because she’s so dirty and bad, Fiyero finds that abhorrent and obviously false. Glinda has no problem believing it’s true. When Glinda sees spilt water and Elphaba’s hat on the ground and Dorothy walking away with Elphaba’s broom in triumph, she is easily convinced that Elphaba is dead. Because she doesn’t really know Elphaba. And she was never her friend.

So when Glinda and Elphaba sing the title track “For Good,” I was a thousand times more annoyed than I was in “Defying Gravity.” They sing about how they’ve both made mistakes and hurt the other. Sure, Elphaba boned Fiyero on Glinda’s sham marriage wedding night, but Glinda built her entire state-sanctioned power on a system that villainized Elphaba, then got her sister killed and then stole Nessa’s magic shoes and gave them to Dorothy. But we should believe it’s all a wash? Okay.

Elphaba gifts Glinda the Grimmerie and basically says Glinda’s position of cowardice and slowly “changing things from the inside” was the right way all along and radical defiance of genocide and fascism was the wrong way. Elphaba blatantly says as much in the disappointing musical production, but it’s loudly insinuated here too.

When Elphaba sings “I do believe I have been changed for the better / because I knew you,” I would like some receipts. When Glinda sings it, I want to scream.

Because Elphaba’s digs at Glinda in “Defying Gravity” still ring true. “I hope you’re proud how you would grovel in submission to feed your own ambition!” Who she submits to may change, but as always, Glinda’s ambition is fed.

Glinda willingly gives up nothing she desires. Her threats to power simply take themselves out of the equation. Elphaba “melts” herself; the witch with some actual power, Madame Morrible, simply forgets she can do magic and allows herself to be taken away to prison by flying monkeys; and the Wizard flies away scot free in a hot air balloon to escape accountability for villainizing and killing his own daughter, along with all of his other crimes against nature. The last woman standing, Glinda puts her crown on like she’s Rihanna, like she earned the right to be anyone’s leader.

She burns an effigy of her “dead best friend” with Elphaba’s ops, and takes the truth about Morrible, the Wizard and Elphaba to her grave. But don’t worry, she has promised that she’s gonna really be “good,” moving forward. She doesn’t speak out against the genocide of the Animals or her role in that, she just says, “I only see friends here!” when they pop back out on the own accord. No truth, no justice, no reconciliation. Just revisionist history and Kumbaya.

Elphaba and Fiyero leave Oz and go into the Unpassable Desert as Glinda in her shining crown, stands atop the tower where they first sang “Defying Gravity” together. Back then, Elphaba sang the soprano and Glinda sang the alto to show that Elphaba was rising to new heights and Glinda was staying on the ground. Now, Glinda’s back on top, literally and figuratively, singing the soprano role as Elphaba at the lowest of the low in the desert sings the alto. And then it hits me: this is the future Kamala stans wanted.

And Elphaba, after doing nothing for a year and then trying a few things for a few weeks (a week? how much time passes in this movie?) that ultimately failed, has decided to give up and “rest” and let Glinda do the work for a change. My apologies to the 92%. She really is them.

As for Oz, one emperor with no clothes is traded for another. And they get to continue their hateful beliefs, unabated. But because Glinda vaguely promised to do “good” moving forward (who is left to hold her accountable to that?!), the Grimmerie opens for her and she’s literally handed by Elphaba (and the Universe, I guess) the ability to do magic, in the end. She gets literally everything she wanted, besides Fiyero. And she sacrifices her friendships and her integrity, and HOW MANY ANIMALS for it. Yet, the ending feels triumphant for her, not unbearably sad and pathetic.

If anyone should’ve had a triumphant ending, it should’ve been Elphaba, leading Animals out of Oz to form a new community in the land beyond it. Give her a Moses in the wilderness Exodus, surrounded by her Animal friends and her dear goat professor Dr. Dillamond who can speak again! Let Elphaba sing the top note in her end scene duet with Glinda to show that, despite their seeming positions, lowly in the desert, high in the tower, it’s Elphaba, standing in integrity, choosing to leave a hateful place, finding love and building new community, that actually makes one win in the end. That would’ve been a truly radical movie—one with an actual political framework.

Instead, Wicked: For Good merely gestures at anti-fascism and wildly swings back to its neoliberal status quo. The lesser evil wins, and is still evil. I hope you’re happy now.

Stay watching,

Brooke

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*Spoilers for the plot of Hedda, streaming now on Prime*

In 1891, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen’s play Hedda Gabler debuted on a European stage. A restless white woman trapped in a patriarchal society that’s wrestled away control over her life at every turn, Hedda moves in ways that are dangerous, deadly and wholly unpredictable to everyone who doesn’t understand what’s at the core of her desperation. But writer-director Nia DaCosta understands.

It’s no wonder that DaCosta’s 2025 film adaptation Hedda begins with talk of a “bloody mess on the carpet.” This is a movie about life and death, and who has the power to make it or take it. The stakes are high in writer-director Nia DaCosta’s fourth feature film, and no one appears more in control than the titular anti-heroine.

Played like a run-away train by Tessa Thompson in her best performance to date, Hedda Gabler, now a biracial Black woman and bastard daughter of the famous white General Gabler in 1950s England, appears calm, flippant even, as two policemen sit before her. They’re questioning her about a shooting and possible death that took place at her new palatial estate. She’d thrown a party the night before to celebrate the (unaffordable) home purchase and her 6-month marriage to the mediocre white academic George Tessman (Tom Bateman). She is framed dead center and defiant as the policemen sit across the table, their backs to us. This is the gift of DaCosta’s Hedda.

Where Ibsen’s Hedda is gossiped about for 21 pages before she ever enters the scene, and the party that leads to catastrophe takes place offstage and away from her, DaCosta’s Hedda puts the power to tell her own story directly in Hedda’s hands from the first frame. She is no less trapped under patriarchy in the 1950s than the original character, and also suffers the additional, intersecting oppressions of race, class, and sexual orientation. While her past, impossible lover that she once threatened with a loaded pistol is a man named Ejlert Lovborg in the play, 2025’s Hedda flips Ejlert into Eileen, making Hedda a closeted woman who uses her sexuality to rend control back from the men around her, while longing for the love of the estranged Eileen. And now, the party is both her idea and totally under her control. The policemen ask her to start from the beginning, and she does.

Twenty-four hours earlier, Hedda is in a lake. That evening’s party is already set, the house is all-but purchased, and the tremendous debt George will take on is assured to be covered when he’s appointed, as promised, to a professorship at the university. But Hedda has never felt more trapped, less in control. Despondent, she teeters on death’s edge when an unsuspecting George calls out to her to tell her that Eileen Lovborg (a brilliant Nina Hoss) is on the phone for her. “I trust one thing in a woman,” reads the opening quote of the film, “that she will not come back to life after she’s dead.” An untrustworthy Hedda springs back to life, running out of the lake and dropping the rocks she had in her pockets back onto the shore. Eileen confirms she will come to the party that night. Whether it’s love for Eileen or a renewed sense of purpose that reignites Hedda remains to be seen.

Ditching her suicide attempt, she kills her maids’ decorations for the party instead, stripping away traditional tablecloths and flower arrangements. She aims her father’s pistol and shoots at the sky and then again at a race-swapped Judge Brak (Nicholas Pinnok), a friend of her father’s whose enormous loan has made it possible for George to buy the estate. The gunshot frightens him but she plays off the assault as a joke, another one of her many whimsicalities, as she calls them, that led to her being shackled to a castle that she told George she wanted simply because there was a lull in their conversation one night.

In truth, she knows this debt to Brak gives him power over her, which she cannot abide. When he tries later on at the party to sexually force himself onto her, she says “You have no power over me. I control this; I say when and where.” It isn’t as true as she’d like to believe, but it gets him off of her, for the moment. When a pigeon flies near her, she aims at it, but chooses not to fire. Though mental unwellness is surely a factor in why she behaves the way she does, Hedda is quite lucid. She is the maestro of death. Her kills must be selective, purposeful, intentional; she’s not as unpredictable as the people around her assume her to be.

But she also orchestrates life. When a friend complains to Hedda that the party is dull, she insists the jazz band play something more lively and moves her guests onto the dance floor like chess pieces. In the best scene of the film, DaCosta’s eye (and cinematographer Sean Babbit’s camera) flows in and out and above a waltzing Hedda, bathed in glowing light, dressed in luxurious green (with envy) fabrics, lips a sumptuous blood red. She’s lost in the music, eyes closed and breathing–alive in a way we have yet to see her. It’s a glimpse into that wild, carefree and joyful person that Hedda was hinted to be, before being (allegedly) domesticated. The clever sound design shrinks the music to silence as we only hear her breath of life. Whatever she’s imagining that’s allowed her to feel and move like a free woman, is obviously not present in that big castle, its grand ballroom, nor her desperate-to-control-her husband.

And when she finally opens her eyes again, Eileen is there, like Hedda had manifested her. Shook by her own power, her breath catches. She seems to float towards Eileen as the rest of the world stays still. The look on her face could be mistaken for happiness, but it’s hunger. She licks her lips, rubs her fingers together. She plans a feast.

But all hell breaks loose in her when she realizes that Eileen has a new lover, Thea (Imogen Poots) and that Eileen loves Thea and no longer loves Hedda. Eileen, in her righteous white lesbian courage, calls the white Thea “brave,” because Thea left her husband to be with Eileen. She calls Hedda a “coward” because Hedda would never be with Eileen in public, nor pursue academia the way Eileen has inspired Thea to do.

“How many women professors are at that university?” Hedda asks Eileen, who must admit that there are only two. “And they’re both white,” Hedda punctuates but still doesn’t manage to penetrate Eileen’s self-righteousness. Hedda, a Black child of an unmarried Black woman and a famous white father, was born into scandal, of which she had no control. To be a lesbian as well would’ve finished her off in society, though as we saw from the first scene of her in the lake, she’s not long for the world as it is.

Eileen makes a mockery of Hedda’s loveless marriage to a mediocre white man not understanding that it’s the power of life and death that’s at stake. Obviously, the handsome, older, Judge Brak wanted her and is much more wealthy and powerful than George is, but Judge Brak not only wants to control her, but has the will and capability to do it. As a close friend of her father’s, who knows how long Brak has been exerting his will over Hedda.

George, on the other hand, is a nerd and a wimp. Though he tries to manhandle her from time to time, she slips away and he lets her go. When George notices that her red lipstick is smeared from obviously kissing Brak in a backroom, she tells him, “don’t fuss,” and he doesn’t. Though he’s obviously distressed, he holds her hand and they watch the fireworks at the party together. She can control George with sex and desire. He would go into huge debt to buy a house for her at one of her whims. Power over George is obviously not enough to fulfill Hedda, but if she has to be married to a man in order to survive in 1950s society, then she could do worse than a boring, needy, allegedly-on-the-rise professor who can be controlled.

But Eileen jeopardizes that when she shares that she’s all but assured to take the professor role at the university that George is competing for, after her groundbreaking book about sex, kinks and fetishes is published. Boring George with no book publications could hardly compete. That would mean Hedda and George giving up the new house and any hopes for the prestige that was within her grasp. Hedda stalks after Eileen and Thea, stealing glances through reflections in mirrors in the ballroom, in the hallways. There are two games at play, two Heddas in the room at any moment.

Each guest is a pawn in her plan to get Eileen back under her control, to wrest control back over Hedda’s own life. She kills two birds with one stone when she arranges for Eileen’s friend to have sex with the wife of Professor Greenwood who will make the decision between George and Eileen for the job. It doesn’t hurt that the wife also called Hedda “duskier than I’d imagined” when they first meet at the party–racism that Hedda will not let slide in her own home. Hedda liquors up Professor Greenwood and then points him in the direction of where his wife is shagging, leading to a violent confrontation.

A 3-months-sober Eileen also falls right into Hedda’s trap. After Hedda insinuates that Professor Greenwood felt contempt for her for drinking soda instead of alcohol and thought her intellectually weak, Eileen is easily pushed back into the bottle, devastating her sober coach Thea in the process and driving a wedge between the lovers.

In another brilliant change from the play, Hedda gets Eileen so liquored up and distracted–making each of her guests jump into the lake with their clothes on–Hedda’s able to steal the only copy of Eileen’s new book and make Eileen believe that she jumped into the lake with it. Ejlert simply gets drunk with the fellas and drops the manuscript on the road in the play, but DaCosta consistently keeps the wheel in Hedda’s hands. This is her devious plotting, her wicked execution. Hedda also sets Eileen up for one final humiliation in front of her academic colleagues. Soaking wet from the lake, Eileen’s breasts have peaked through her dress. Assured by Hedda that she looks perfect, Eileen goes for one last drink with the fellas in the drawing room, flashing herself to everyone. A horrified Thea can’t bear to watch Eileen make a fool of herself. The most aware of Hedda’s evil machinations, Thea confronts Hedda who merely laughs, emboldened by her own growing power.

This is when Eileen realizes her manuscript is lost and has to confess to Thea that all of their hard work is gone forever. A disgusted Thea breaks up with Eileen as a grinning Hedda watches in the shadows. She gets in position for the final blow–a move so heinous it reveals the depths of her demand for control.

In the course of a few hours in Hedda’s orbit, Eileen has been totally broken down. At her lowest and most depressed and suicidal state, without her book and without Thea, Eileen is unprepared as Hedda strikes her final blow. Though she’s got Eileen’s manuscript safely tucked away inside her gun case, she pulls out a loaded gun and offers that to Eileen instead. Years before, when Eileen broke up with Hedda, Hedda had threatened to shoot Eileen with that same gun. The only thing stopping her, she confesses, is that she knew Eileen had wanted her to shoot. That would’ve put Eileen in control, though Hedda would’ve been the one pulling the trigger. Now the action is reversed. Though Eileen would pull the trigger herself, it will be at the hands of Hedda, exactly the way Hedda wants it. Eileen leaves to do the deed and Hedda quickly acts to burn the manuscript in the fireplace to seal not only Eileen’s fate but also her legacy. Total control.

When George comes in and realizes what Hedda is doing, he tries, like a wimp and a coward, to stop her–meaning he doesn’t try that hard at all. In fact, when she tells him that she’s doing it for him, for them, because she’s pregnant with his child (a lie), he’s too overcome by the thought that this uncontrollable woman might be out of control for him. They have sex as that lurking creep Judge Brak listens on from behind the door (he is too fine for this!!).

As dawn rises, Eileen can’t manage to pull the trigger, but while tussling with a friend, the gun goes off. She’s brought into the house, a bloody mess on the carpet, leading us back to the events of the opening scene with police. Satisfied with her testimony that she was nowhere around when Eileen was shot, the police let her go as she waits, distressed, for news of whether Eileen will survive. In a blow to Hedda, she runs into George and Thea huddled together and finds out they are working to reassemble Eileen’s book. She reminds George of what helping Eileen at the expense of his own research will mean for them and he quickly answers, they’ll just get a smaller house. A dagger. George, suddenly full of a passion of his own, and Thea determined to be a published author only emphasize Hedda’s lack of purpose as they both swat away her offer to help. With one bright idea from George and Thea, Hedda’s lost the control she worked so hard to gain.

As she stashes away her gun case in tears, Judge Brak appears from the shadows with her missing gun. He knows everything Hedda has done, from the manuscript to how Eileen got the gun. If she doesn’t give herself to him, he will tell the police everything. He’s got her now. But Hedda won’t have it. She shoots the final bullets at Brak but misses. She runs away to the lake but he catches her before she can make it. Trigger warning: he tries to rape her there on the ground in broad daylight. In his frustration at her fighting back, he chokes her. It’s not until George calls from the house for Hedda that Brak realizes what he’s doing and stalks away in horror, disgust and rage.

The moment he frees her, Hedda takes off for the lake, nothing stopping her this time. She fills her pockets with the same rocks and dredges herself deeper and deeper into the lake. If anyone is going to control her life, take her life, it won’t be Brak’s violence. It won’t be Eileen’s rejection. It won’t be George’s indifference. It will be by her own hands. When the water is up to her neck, she hears what George has been calling to her: Eileen is awake! She smiles and the screen goes black.

In the play, Ejlert dies in the accidental shooting and, knowing Brak will implicate her in the scandal, Hedda shoots herself in the head. A final act that confuses everyone around her. Even with DaCosta’s choice to keep Eileen alive, there’s plenty of scandal in which Hedda could still be implicated in this anti-Black society, plenty of ways for her to lose control, plenty of reasons to finish this last act of agency over her own body. But that devious smile at the news of Eileen’s revival suggests Hedda’s own rebirth. She’s back in the game and will likely spring out of the water as she did before, a conductor of chaos, ready to wrestle with power another day.

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MORE BLACK THEATER

This month, I also had the absolute pleasure of watching my first August Wilson play on the stage, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone at A Noise Within playhouse in Pasadena. Though its had its final run in Pasadena this year, you can catch Taraji P. Henson and Cedrick the Entertainer in the iconic roles in the Broadway revival next March.

And I’ve been waiting to see the Broadway sensation JaJa’s African Hairbraiding too, and finally saw it here in LA at the Center Theatre Group. It was a must-see, brilliant production and I’m sorry to say it’s now closed, but the Tony-Award-winning play centered the stories of African immigrants in Harlem and the true cost of becoming American, making the heartfelt dramedy incredibly timely and prophetic as ICE ramps up its kidnappings of immigrant workers from all communities in real life.

Check out snaps from both plays on IG here:

Stay watchin’,

Brooke

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This Spooky Season, I’ve been revisiting some old favorites (Death Becomes Her is still perfect, The Mummy is incredibly racist to the point of being unwatchable and what is up with Rachel Weiss’s eyebrows?? Someone should pay.). I’ve also finally watched some horror movies I’ve been hearing about—Weapons, Opus, and Master. And now, I’ve done it. I’ve found the worst horror movie I’ve ever seen. But first, the others.

Weapons

*Spoilers for Weapons below*

Many people have asked me to watch Weapons. Warner Bros. even offered me tickets to see it in a theater, which I forgot to use. Sorry about that! The hype around this movie—that it’s either comparable to or better than Sinners—absolutely turned me off because it was transparent. People who hated the idea of Sinners’ critical and commercial success have been looking for a savior to champion that would knock Sinners off its throne. First: Weapons is the best horror movie of the year! Then: One Flop After Another is the masterpiece of the year! It all felt reminiscent of when racists hyped up Rocky because they were tired of Black boxers dominating the sport in real life. So, anyway, I watched Weapons.

A classroom full of students at an elementary school in a sleepy, majority-white town in suburbia disappears except for one boy. The town is horrified, the classroom teacher is harassed and bullied and the police are clueless and helpless to find the missing kids who all got up at 2:17 A.M. and ran out of their front doors, arms in a V-shape at their side, like some freaky little scissor people. I’m not going to spend too much time on this, because I don’t think the writer-director spent too much time on it either, but essentially, the sole boy who didn’t disappear has a parasite in his house, Aunt Gladys, who is decaying and needs the life-source of other people to keep going. She’s taken over the boy’s parents, but it’s not enough, so she gets the boy to bring a token from each of his classmates home. She does a spell and all the kids run out of their homes and into his basement where Gladys can feed off of their life source. The boy is responsible for keeping the zombified bodies of the other kids and his parents alive by feeding them soup. But I was told this was comparable to or better than Sinners, so I was looking for some depth, some meaning, some healing.

It’s maybe, partially an allegory for the impact of addiction; Barbarian writer-director Zach Cregger has talked about being the child of an alcoholic and dealing with addiction himself. Every adult character in the film has some sort of addiction, including the teacher, who has an alcohol dependency and a DUI, but loves her students. Like Gladys’ spells, addiction can take ahold of anyone and destroy whole communities. The parentification of children that happens when they live with an adult with addiction can be horrifying, isolating and unjust. The boy feeding his parents soup is a heartbreaking image in that context.

Like Ryan Coogler, who wrote Sinners to heal after the death of his great uncle to whom he never got to say goodbye, Cregger wrote Weapons after the death of a good friend with an addiction. That’s about where the comparisons between the films should end. There’s no healing in Cregger’s story of addiction. The little boy defeats Gladys by using his classmates as his own weapons, which both frees them all and further traumatizes them, as they’re now violent killers, and so is he. His parents wind up in a mental institution, seemingly for good; the children remain mostly zombies who’ll likely go on to traumatize other people if they ever recover; the only gay couple in the movie is violently killed, and then the movie ends.

“I don’t care if any of this stuff comes through, the alcoholic metaphor is not important to me,” Cregger told The Hollywood Reporter. I can tell. It’s a horror-comedy about a witch who needs children to live. We should leave it at that.

Opus / Master

Ayo Edebiri stars in Opus and Regina Hall stars in Master both movies about the dangers of being the only Black person in a white space. Ayo is a journalist investigating a cult led by a canceled rock star. Regina is a professor and the new master of an Ivy league dorm haunted by its ties to slavery. Master isn’t all bad—it doesn’t stick the landing, but it is a good warning for those who believe ascending to the heights of these anti-Black institutions (that were literally built on slavery) will be worth what it costs of your humanity to climb. There’s also a Rachel Dolezal dig that I could not stop laughing at, but I’m not 100% sure it was intentional. But Opus is just digital tape and runtime. It’s not particularly scary or interesting, it offers nothing new to say about cults, or vanity journalism as a tool for propaganda, and worse, it says that nothing in an uncompelling way. It’s just a movie that I watched over the summer and immediately forgot until this moment.

The worst horror movie I’ve ever seen: The Skeleton Key

*Spoilers for the plot of The Skeleton Key*

I’d heard in the background of my life that there was a horror movie about an Ivy League fraternity with secret ties to slavery and enslaved ghosts come back to life and get revenge. I thought that’s what The Skeleton Key was about. Apparently, my young mind had combined the plot of The Skeleton Key with a thriller from 2000, The Skulls (the Jonathan Jackson Yale illuminati movie that Roger Ebert called “one of the great howlers”: “It isn’t a comedy, but that won’t stop anyone.” Man! I miss Ebert.). The movie in my mind was way better than them both, but The Skulls is bad in all the typical Hollywood liberal ways. The Skeleton Key is something worse. Its 37% Rotten Tomatoes score doesn’t begin to scratch the surface.

When I call it the worst horror movie, I don’t mean that there aren’t jump-scares that might catch you or horror elements that are unsuccessful. I don’t just mean that the plodding plot and rampant stereotypes make it a slog—though that is true. I mean that this script and casting are so devious and underhanded in its anti-Blackness as to be infuriating. But let’s start from the beginning.

Kate Hudson stars as an hospice nurse who wasn’t there for her own father’s death and now must treat every patient as if they were a second chance with her father. She lives in New Orleans with her Black Best Friend^TM who exists only to correctly identify the weird African American Goings-On^TM at Kate’s new job on a plantation as a live-in nurse to an old white man who’s had a stroke and can’t speak or control his body. His rude, overbearing wife and the villain of this tale is played by The Notebook’s Gena Rowlands. And while Kate is most certainly going to jail for this role, I may never forgive Gena either. The old couple’s estate attorney convinces Kate to take the job, after unpleasantries with Gena.

But Kate becomes suspicious of Gena when the old man begs Kate to help him and tries to escape the house during a rainstorm. She goes investigating in the plantation house and finds a room in the attic, opened by a skeleton key, that’s full of mirrors and other Scary Black Things. Joy Bryant plays the BBF and she teaches Kate that the room in the old couple’s plantation house is where Hoodoo is practiced. She even takes Kate to a local Hoodoo shop to get more information, but Joy, the only Black person in the main cast, is too afraid of the Hoodoo her grandmother practiced to go inside the shop or “mess with it”. She encourages Kate to leave it alone. Which of course, Kate does not!

To summarize the summary, we have a story about a plantation house and the Black American closed practice of Hoodoo told from the lens of a white woman main character and a mostly white cast. But it gets worse. Kate believes that Hoodoo is the root cause of her patient’s inability to speak or move and therefore believes if she can learn the right spells, her patient will be cured. She goes back to the Hoodoo shop and BLACK WOMEN TEACH KATE HUDSON HOODOO. I almost turned the TV off.

But I soldiered on, not knowing the horror that awaited. Obviously, because it’s a Louisiana Plantation House, it is haunted by ghosts of Black people. But The Skeleton Key adds a twist. The Black couple who lived and worked in this house came after slavery. They were celebrated Hoodoo practitioners in their community but still needed to work for the mean white people who owned the plantation. Legend has it that, during a dinner party for the new-era enslavers, the Black couple were upstairs in the attic teaching the enslavers’ children about Hoodoo. The enslavers and their guests caught the Black couple and lynched them out in front of the house. The powerful spells Kate needs to learn to save her patient are from the notes and recordings of the Black couple. When Gena “finds out” what Kate is up too, Kate starts using Hoodoo to protect herself from Gena. And Gena fights back with stronger Hoodoo. Yes, these two white women are fighting each other with Hoodoo in a plantation house. I hate everyone involved.

When I said on Threads that I hated this movie, a few people encouraged me to keep watching to the end, “wait for the twist!”

Dear readers, the final twist is a knife: Gena is not Gena at all, she’s possessed by the spirit of the Black woman in the Hoodoo couple. Gena’s paralyzed husband used to be possessed by the Black Hoodoo man but he transferred his spirit into the white estate attorney who convinced Kate to take the job, leaving the old white man paralyzed as if from a stroke. The attorney needed Kate to come work at the house so that Gena can transfer into Kate’s body next and the couple can stay young and keep living in the house for another generation. This means that the Black Hoodoo couple were not the ones lynched by the white mob. They had brought the white children up into the attic not to teach them Hoodoo but with the intention of transferring their souls into the white children.

So the white mob lynched the bodies of the Black couple and the souls of the white children. Could this have been profound? That under white supremacy, the sins of the parents reverberate through time upon the white children’s children’s children? Perhaps in someone else’s hands.

But this story is in the hands of white screenwriter Ehren Kruger and white UK director Iain Softley. And the story they wanted to tell was a story of Black revenge against white supremacy—without any Black people in the roles. Because, in fact, this isn’t a story of “Black” revenge, it’s a perfect metaphor for what happens when deep-seated white guilt meets deep-seated white fear of repercussions.

The Skeleton Key unveils a pathology the likes of which I had yet to see manifest on screen: One day, The Blacks are gonna have their revenge, and when they do, they’re going to replace us! This fear is literally the reason why Hoodoo and other African-rooted religious traditions were banned on this land during slavery and continue to be demonized by the Christian church—and hell, Hollywood too—today.

I’m not saying all Black people are saints, but for better or worse, there’s a reason that the old saying goes: “white people ought to be glad Black people only want equality and not revenge.” History has shown that, time and again, all Black people have wanted en masse in this country is to be left alone; for the obstacles put in our path via slavery and Jim Crow to be moved out of the way; to have the right of self-determination. Immediately after Emancipation, during the Reconstruction Era, Black people who were able to, went to school to be educated, became members of congress, built their own cities and towns and had their own banks, grocers and medical practices. No Black people en masse were hunting down white people and burning their shit down as reparations for slavery. No one was dragging white people out of their plantation homes and trying to sit up in the big house themselves.

But white people certainly burned down entire thriving Black communities in Rosewood and Tulsa, Springfield and Chicago, Wilmington and Thibodaux, from the late 1800s up through the 1960s. White people certainly raided and massacred the Black town of Oscarville in Georgia, and drowned it to build Lake Lanier. White people certainly bulldozed Seneca Village in Manhattan and turned it into Central Park, and overpriced nearby housing to such a degree that the vast majority of Black people can’t afford to live near it to this day. When Black people started gaining economic empowerment by selling the cheap and easy crop of watermelon, white people certainly made a commercial industry out of mocking Black people and watermelons to the point where there are Black people today who won’t eat the fruit in front of white people, let alone grow it and sell it. White American history offers an unlimited reserve of horror stories for white people to mine. But they want to tell their stories and ours to, and make themselves the center of our stories. It’s giving obsession.

I think about what it could’ve meant in the ‘90s for Joy Bryant’s character to have been centered. Disconnected from her grandmother’s ancestral tradition of Hoodoo, to have reclaimed that tradition and used that power for her own healing, her own salvation and that of the lynched Black couple could’ve been powerful.

To write instead two grown Black adults with the ancestral connection and power of Hoodoo as people who would choose to live as white children, growing up to inherit a plantation, and willingly inhabiting the bodies of all the white people who own that plantation (six in total by the end of the film when Kate succumbs to Gena’s evil Hoodoo) is sick. It’s ignorant. It’s racist. To make the real victims of The Skeleton Key— of this barbaric system of racism—all the innocent white people like Kate and the old man and the children, while the real villains are the evil Black couple and their Hoodoo magic…it’s nasty work.

Kruger went on to menace the world again with his screenplay adaptation of Ghost in the Shell, a story about a Japanese woman that’s played by Scarlett Johansen. He also won a Razzie for Worst Screenplay for the wrong movie: Transformers. But the horror that is The Skeleton Key is what should haunt him forever.

Stay watchin’,

Brooke

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Happy Friday! It’s the weekend and there are some interesting things in theaters and streaming this weekend but I’m going to start this Your Weekend Watch edition off with a warning about a what not to watch, or at least, watch with extreme caution:

The Perfect Neighbor

Ajike Owens was a Black mom of 4, killed in front of her children by her racist white neighbor Susan Lorincz after Lorincz had harassed them for two years, unabated. Through bodycam footage, Florida’s Marion County police documented in great detail their own incompetence, their own inadequacies, their ongoing failures, which led to Lorincz being free to murder Owens. That footage has been turned into the Netflix documentary The Perfect Neighbor.

The initial fears that sparked the need for Director Geeta Gandbhir to start filming—that Lorincz wouldn’t be arrested at all, and then that she would get off using Florida’s Stand Your Ground defense—were thankfully averted. Thanks to Gandbhir’s team keeping pressure on the police and media attention on the case, in 2024, Lorincz received her punishment: 25 years in prison, essentially the rest of her raggedy life. It was a relief for Owens’ family, but healing is a long way off.

No matter; this is not a documentary about healing. Owens’ mother wanted this documentary to tell “what happened” to AJ, and it does. And proceeds will provide financial support to the family, as it should. Gandbhir won the prize for directing at Sundance in January, and the most recent headline I’ve read on the film calls it one that “the Oscars can’t ignore.”

But what good is that to her children? I can’t help but wonder how the children will feel when they become adults with agency, knowing that images of them in their most vulnerable, devastated, traumatized state are streaming in over 190 countries on Netflix. Watching their screams, I felt like a vulture circling their pain without their knowledge (how could they know they were being recorded by police cameras at that moment?) or their consent (what is the age of consent in Florida for sharing images of your trauma in a documentary?).

Like the screams of Trayvon Martin captured by a 9-1-1 call as George Zimmerman’s gun blast silences him, I’ll be haunted by the sounds and images captured in this “true crime” documentary that I’ll never watch again. Without doubt, if you watch it, it will break you. But then what? If it doesn’t stir us to abolition, then it’s just another in a long list of bodycam snuff videos of Black life. And who does that serve?

You can read my full breakdown over at Contraband Camp.

Platonic

Rose Byrne and Seth Rogen are comedy gold in this series about two platonic best friends from college who reunite after a period of separation. Love and shenanigans ensue when these two spiritual soulmates get together, causing the kind of friction and toxic codependency that only happens when someone really sees and knows you for a really long time. I love shows about friendship and how important they are, and this may be the first I’ve seen across gender lines where the friendship is explicitly what the show is about. It’s grown comedy, situational comedy, physical humor, and the best I’ve seen Byrne and Rogen yet. Between this and The Studio, Rogen is 2 for 2. If you’ve not yet seen the show, you have a joyous two seasons ahead of you!

Platonic is streaming on AppleTV+.

After the Hunt

I was about 5 minutes late to my screening of After the Hunt, entering the dinner party scene at the fabulous home of Julia Roberts’ professor Alma like a tardy guest. Alma’s way-too-close rake of a colleague Hank (Andrew Garfield) is holding court, waxing poetic about “kids today” needing safe spaces and how D.E.I. might help Alma beat him in the race for tenure since everybody loves giving women jobs now apparently. Ayo Edebiri’s student Maggie takes offense and spars with him in a retread of the better-done classroom scene in Todd Fields’ brilliant Tàr, and it reminds me that I never wrote about Tàr.

Anyway, Hank and Maggie leave the party together and the titular Hunt begins when Maggie accuses Hank of sexual assault the next day.

Everything after this moment in the film pulled me out of my suspended disbelief. Maggie is Black from a generationally wealthy family that has a dorm named after them in an Ivy League school. I’m sure that may be a thing somewhere and I still don’t believe you, nor do I believe that Maggie was written as a Black woman and not just changed to Black with the casting of Edebiri. But this is not Grey’s Anatomy, Bridgerton, a production wherein you can just swap races without doing any other work to the script (a good example of which I can’t think of right now!). Sure, her wealth and status at the school would matter, and it would also be heavily weighed against the fact that she’s Black and queer and a woman accusing a popular white male professor of assault.

Yet, in a world where men have canceled #MeToo and 7 of the last 10 presidents have been credibly accused of rape or sexual assault, After the Hunt dares to ask: what if an Ivy League institution took sexual assault against a woman of color seriously and there were consequences? I couldn’t help but think about Emma Sulkowicz, the Asian and Jewish student at Columbia University who carried her dorm mattress around campus as protest performance art after the school dismissed her rape allegation. Columbia then paid the accused a settlement after he sued the school for gender-based discrimination by allowing her to bully him with mattress art. Way more realistic outcome.

But I’m not sure director Luca Guadingo (Challengers) is interested in realism.

He’s less ambiguous in his presentation of whether Hank did the things he was accused of, contrasted with the climax of Tàr, which asks us to ponder what we lose when we cancel maybe-abusive genius. But like Tàr, Guadingo is also interested in exploring female ambition under patriarchy and how many other women a traumatized, male-centered girl-boss must step on to climb up.

There are concepts of a good movie in here and Roberts and Garfield are particularly great, but After the Hunt does not earn its runtime and the coda of the film is a disaster that only exists to fulfill the promise of the title. In that case, start the movie later or just name it something else.

After the Hunt is in theaters now. But Tàr is streaming on Peacock, so you could just watch that instead.

If I Had Legs, I’d Kick You / Die My Love

And we’re back with some more intense films. I watched Rose Byrne’s If I Had Legs, I’d Kick You and Jennifer Lawrence’s Die My Love back to back, and let me say, this White Women Are Not Okay double-feature is not for the faint of heart! Pace yourself. These are emotionally exhausting rides.

In both, Byrne and Lawrence play women suffocating under the patriarchal chokehold of motherhood while their male partners are off in the world doing this and that in the background and coming home later, dripping with disappointment at how their wives are handling their duties. Also, strangely, both feature Black men as potential threats to these unhappy homes.

It could just be these two films, or it could be an expression of growing anxiety, as even high-profile Black women like Michelle Obama and Ayesha Curry talk about how much it sucks to be second-at-most in your own life. The girls are throwing themselves into the ocean and escaping naked into the forest instead of being wives and mothers! At least on film.

Robert Pattinson’s American Accent returns in Die My Love, as the titular love who should die—presumably because he stopped sleeping with Lawrence’s Grace once she had their baby and she goes absolutely rabid. Lakeith Stanford’s Karl becomes a potential sexual cure for Grace in the wake of Jackson’s impotence, and I really wish people would be cognizant of what it means to make a character you wrote as white but cast with a Black actor. Though we’re in Grace’s perspective and are meant to be sympathetic to her, she’s in the midst of what is clearly post-partum depression and irrationality—or at least that’s how everyone around her views it. Potentially hooking up with a Black Peeping Tom in the woods as evidence of her descent into breakdown is prob-lem-a-tic! for a plethora of the age-old racist stereotypes showcased in the film that gave rise to the KKK, The Birth of a Nation. Jackson also brings home a black female dog that destroys their white tablecloth and adds more chaos to their marriage. Grace calls the dog Jackson’s “girlfriend,” and *TW/spoiler alert for those concerned about animal cruelty*: awful things happen to the dog (though not in this clip):

Sigh. Is this good acting? Is this funny? I was confused on what the tone was supposed to be in this scene. I wish director Lynne Ramsey had put more thought into some of these choices.

In If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, Byrne plays Linda, a psychiatrist and daily caregiver for her young disabled daughter. While her husband is deployed for months, the literal ceiling of her apartment caves in, forcing her to flee with her daughter into an even more confined space. Though everyone in the movie has legs, Linda feels either not capable or not brave enough to fight back against what’s constraining her. In A$AP Rocky’s second movie of the year, Rihanna’s husband appears like a Magical Negro with a drug connect who has nothing else to do but try and help a very resistant Linda. Why is this character Black and what does this mean for the story? is a series of questions I’d like more writer/directors to ponder in development. Anyway, Linda can’t be helped. Not really. Not by men. Her weird, funny relationship with her therapist co-worker Conan O’Brien is, well, weird and funny, but she is also far beyond talk therapy at this point, and too lost in a swirl of generational mother-daughter wounds that mirror the gaping hole in her ceiling.

Her resentments of her husband’s absence are justified. What she wrestles with are her resentments of her disabled daughter, which make her feel like a bad mother and a bad person. Her rage, grief and resentment are so palpable that, when it was over, I’d walked all the way to my car in a panic before I realized: I’m not married and I don’t have a kid and everything is fine! Phew! I’m far more interested in what disabled critics have to say on this film though, but my go-to critics haven’t reviewed it yet. If you see any good ones, send them my way!

If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is in theaters now & Die My Love will be in theaters Nov. 14.

The Morning Show

There are so many Black people on the show in season 4! And by so many, I mean there are four. Aaron Pierre pops in as a potential love interest for Greta Lee’s Stella, the new CEO of ATN and my favorite, William Jackson Harper (The Good Place) becomes a rival for Karen Pittman’s Mia to run the newsdesk. And thank goodness, after a powerhouse season 3, Nicole Beharie’s Chris, who was on the fence about staying at ATN last season, returns to steal another season. Y’all are watching The Morning Show, I am watching Chris & Mia in the Morning. Give Beharie and Pittman a spin-off, stat! The two overlooked divas team up and make moves that are best for them, rather than the network that they’ve been loyal to, with mixed results. The viral clips from the season, once again, are Beharie’s, proving that if you give her a scene, she’s gonna eat.

*Trigger warning* there is talk of pregnancy loss this season as we delve deeper into Chris’s backstory. As the former track Olympian prepares to host ATN’s Olympics coverage, she faces her biggest challenge yet that could make her break her reputation and her career. While I usually fast-forward through the scenes of Reese Witherspoon’s absolutely insufferable MAGA-adjacent Bradley Jackson, I must admit, Jennifer Aniston’s big finale gagged me a bit! Consistently good TV.

Watch The Morning Show on AppleTV+.

Stay watchin’,

Brooke

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No better way to kick off Spooky Season than with a screening of Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein and a brunch at Netflix with the legend himself!

Known for his Oscar-winning contribution to the monster f*cker canon, (The Shape of Water) del Toro is back with another young woman who can’t resist falling in love with something not quite human in this adaptation of the Mary Shelley classic book. But, since the movie’s not in theater’s until October 17 and not on Netflix until Nov. 7, I’ll save the deep dive until then. But it did make think of all the best gothic horror movies I have to rewatch this month! October is also Hoodoo Heritage Month, and there’s been increased interest in the closed Black American practice of Hoodoo since Sinners released in April. So, here’s my list of the best Gothic horror and Hoodoo films and shows and where to watch them.

And, as longtime Watchers may know, after two months, free pieces go behind the paywall, but for Spooky Season and Hoodoo Heritage Month, I’m unlocking all of my Sinners pieces from April, as well, which you can find below the list!

1. Interview with the Vampire (2022): When I think of gothic horror, I think of Interview with the Vampire—in all of its iterations. But the pilot of this AMC series, adapted from Anne Rice’s iconic books, is hands down one of the great TV pilots in TV history. Titled, “In Throes of Increasing Wonder,” this pilot proves why the TV series, starring Jacob Anderson as Louis, is leaps and bounds above those racist-ass books. The title plays on a phrase Rice uses in the book and elevates it, in the same way that showrunner Rolin Jones takes Rice’s source material of an 18th century Louisiana enslaver with homoerotic undertones and elevates it by making Louis a gay, Creole pimp and saloon owner in early 20th century New Orleans. By adding the intersecting oppressions of racism and homophobia to Louis, (and removing the need to sympathize with an enslaver) we get a clear and devastating understanding for why a man wrestling with God, grief and identity in the Jim Crow South might see vampirism as a logical escape—and live to regret that decision (forever). I will be doing a podcast breaking down the differences of the first two seasons of this incredible show from the book, so stay watchin’ for that!

   Watch seasons one and two of Interview with the Vampire on AMC+ and Netflix.

2. Eve’s Bayou (1997): Director Kasi Lemmons’s debut film always tops every best-of list for me and this gothic horror coming of age story has absolute everything. Starring Jurnee Smollett, Samuel L. Jackson, Lynn Whitfield, and Diahann Carroll, this film gives you Hoodoo and Vodun and unpacks the horrors of child sexual assault and the fickleness of grief and memory.

   Watch Eve’s Bayou on Peacock, Prime or Plex.

3. Beloved (1998): The ‘90s was such a magical decade for so many things, but clearly some of the best horror happened then too. Adapted from Toni Morrison’s Nobel Prize-winning book of the same name (literally one of the greatest books of all time), Beloved was a commercial flop and has since become a cult hit. Starring Oprah Winfrey, Thandiwe Newton, Kimberly Elise and Beah Richards, this film encapsulates the horrors of slavery that still haunt the soul, even after liberation.

   Rent Beloved wherever you stream movies.

4. His House: I love a haunted house with political and social commentary baked in, and nothing hits like this Netflix sleeper His House. Starring our Sinners queen Wunmi Mosaku, His House centers on South Sudanese refugees trying to survive and the haunting cost they’ll have to pay to live.

   Stream His House on Netflix.

5. Nanny (2022): Director Nikyatu Jusu’s directorial debut has been called Get Out for Black women but is much deeper than that. Unearthing the consequences of immigrant mothers who move to America to create better opportunities for the children they leave behind, Nanny centers on Anna Diop’s Aisha, a Senegalese nanny to a rich (and racist) white family on Manhattan’s upper east side. Exploited and paid under the table like so many undocumented caregivers, Aisha embodies the horror of mothering your oppressor’s children while your own are far beyond your reach.

   Watch Nanny on Prime.

6. Candyman (1992): Director Bernard Rose killed this story about the historic and institutional racism that haunts Chicago’s infamous Cabrini Green projects. Though it’s told from the perspective of a white woman protagonist, its examination of race and racism in the creation of the Black boogeyman known as Candyman surprised me with its depth and attention to detail. The legendary Tony Todd doesn’t quite get his due, but is still fantastic in the titular role; the icon Vanessa Williams steals all of her scenes, and Kasi Lemmons even makes a (too brief) appearance. Legends on legends in this truly scary and gory film that, if you like horror, you should at least see once.

   Watch Candyman on AMC+.

7. To Sleep with Anger (1990): I’m telling you—the decade begins and ends with nothing but horror hits, and this Danny Glover film features one of my earliest films featuring prominently featuring Hoodoo. Written and directed by Charles Burnett, To Sleep with Anger is uncomfortable in its dissection of Black masculinity under patriarchy. A haunted house with living evil spirits, this classic is just right for spooky season.

   Watch to Sleep with Anger free on Tubi.

8. The Woman in the Yard (2025): I reviewed this film a few weeks back on an edition of “Your Weekly Watch,” so if you haven’t gotten around to it yet, this is a perfect time to see Danielle Deadwyler do what she does best. In the psychological horror film, Deadwyler plays a mom in grief as she cares—or barely cares—for her teen son and young daughter in the aftermath of her husband’s recent death in a car accident. One day, a woman dressed in funeral attire, a black veil over her face, comes and sits in the yard of their farm. The haunting figure forces buried family truths to come to light. Though the ending is a bit sloppy, the beautifully shot and almost great film is still a worthwhile watch (even for the scaredy cats), as it explores the horrors of grief and mental health when children are depending on a mother’s wholeness.

   Watch The Woman in the Yard on Peacock.

9. The Craft (1996): Another ‘90s banger, this one featuring teen witches-in-training who form a coven and get back at their school bullies. Classic film that had me saying “Light as a feather, stiff as a board,” every night for like a month when I was 11! Rachel True, you will always be famous, and if you didn’t know, she does Tarot divination out here in L.A. and has a deck of cards and guidebook which I love!

   Watch The Craft on Tubi.

10. Sinners — obviously! I’ve watched it 12 times now, and I would love for the 13th time to be on October 31 at the Black-owned farm Bloom Ranch here in L.A. where there will be an actual outdoor juke joint that night. Who’s rolling with me?? Watch it on HBOMax, and here are all my Sinners pieces, unlocked, for this month only:

My Sinners movie explainer and review:

My Sinners movie syllabus:

And my genre analysis:

Stay watchin’,

Brooke

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This week on Your Weekly Watch, instead of a round-up of shows and films to consider, there’s nothing more important streaming right now than the livestream of the Global Sumud Flotilla. Nearly 500 activists from all over the world have been sailing on 44 ships towards Gaza on a non-violent mission to break the occupying Zionist entity’s illegal siege on and genocide of the Palestinian people and deliver life-saving aid, including baby formula, food and medicine. The Zionist entity has surrounded the Alma boat, carrying Greta Thunberg and other global activists and is preparing to intercept the boat. The more eyes that are on the livestream, the more protection and safety there will be for those on the flotilla. Please keep it on the background and stay abreast of what’s going on. All eyes on the Sumud Flotilla! All eyes on Gaza!

Novara Media also has a livestream and has been interviewing people on board giving live updates, where just now they’ve said that the Alma boat has been boarded by the Zionist entity, according to activist Kieran on the Andara boat. If intercepted, he says they will have to throw their phones into the sea:

Palestine was also front and center at TIFF this year.

Palestine 36 premiered at TIFF and told the story of Palestine under British mandate in 1936 as they laid the groundwork for the genocide and ethnic cleansing of Palestine and Palestinians. Written and directed by Annemarie Jacir, this necessary film, starring Succession’s Haim Abass, Saleh Bakri, Yumna Marwan and Jeremy Irons, shows not only the birth of the occupation, but also the birth of resistance. When people are occupied, resistance is justified. A gorgeous, sprawling, heartbreaking epic that shows the true history and resilience of a people who will be free.

With Hasan in Gaza is a documentary I saw at TIFF by Kamal Aljafari which follows his search for a man he was imprisoned with, accompanied by Hasan Elboubou. Aljafari and Elboubou began filming in 2001 after the second intifada, and shows the devatation that the Zionist entity as enacted on Gaza long before October 7, 2023. The harassment, the bulldozing of homes, the kidnapping of children is all on tape over two decades to culminate in With Hasan in Gaza. A devastating and necessary watch.

The Voice of Hind Rajab is another documentary on the murder of 5 year old Hind Rajab as she sat in a car with her murdered family members, calling for help. After approving rescue workers to save her, the Zionist entity fired 455 bullets into her car, killing her and bombing the rescue workers they’d just approved to save her. I didn’t watch this documentary at TIFF. It’s backing by stars like Brad Pitt Joaquin Phoenix, Rooney Mara, Jonathan Glazer, Alfonso Cuarón, ensured that more people will know the story of Hind Rajab. But I didn’t feel it was right to watch it while Hind Rajab’s mother was still trapped in Gaza and using GoFundMe to raise money to get out. Instead, I attended the protest right in the middle of King Street, where TIFF takes place in Toronto, and chanted in English, French and Arabic. It was a healing experience to yell and scream and conjure for a free Palestine, which we will see in our lifetimes. Last week, thankfully, Hind Rajab’s mother was evacuated. Some clips from the protest on my IG:

Stay watchin’

Brooke

*Spoilers for the plot of One Battle After Another*

I was already annoyed after sitting through One Battle After Another for nearly three hours. I’m not in the “tight 90” brigade; I don’t mind a long movie that flows, but Paul Thomas Anderson’s empty foray into white leftist revolutionary ideology and iconography hypersexualized Black women, left much to be desired in both ideology and revolution and simply refused to end.

But then Assata Shakur died as I mulled over my review of the film and the insidiousness of using a Black woman revolutionary as a plot device for white male heroics in the film became even more glaring.

One Battle After Another centers on Pat, the aforementioned white leftist revolutionary, aptly played by the real-life poster boy for performative activism and greenwashing, Leonardo DiCaprio. Now washed-up, heavily stoned and in hiding, Pat has been living as Bob, a single dad of a biracial teenager named Willa (Chase Infiniti) that he must protect from an evil Army colonel who’s out to kill them both.

The Colonel has done such good work rounding up immigrants that he’s caught the attention of a white supremacist secret society called the Christmas Adventurers led by Tony Goldwyn (why is he so good at playing a generationally wealthy white supremacist?!). The only possible obstacle to Lockjaw’s ascension is evidence that he had been in a sexual relationship with a Black woman in the past: Willa.

You guessed it: Willa is biracial to satisfy the need for a “who’s the pappy?” plotline and set off the hero’s journey. Not for Willa, mind you. Don’t be confused. This is a movie about Pat.

Pat was a skilled bomb maker in a revolutionary group called the French 75, a group that closely resembles the real-life white marxist American guerilla group of the 1960s and ‘70s, Weather Underground/The Weathermen, an offshot of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). Like the Weathermen, the French 75 bombs the outposts of their political enemies. Unlike the Weathermen, the French 75 is led by and made up of Black women. But despite a powerhouse cast of Teyana Taylor, Regina Hall and Chase Infiniti, Black women are little more than props and plot devices, and Infiniti is a MacGuffin with a gun in this story of a white male revolutionary.

Taylor appears too briefly in the role of Perfidia Beverly Hills, Willa’s mother and the leader of the French 75. Rounding out her crew is Deandra (Hall) Laredo (Wood Harris) and the rapper Junglepussy—whose character goes by the same name (everything about her character is more offensive if you don’t already know that). The film opens with the French 75 liberating migrants from a U.S. concentration camp at the Mexico border. As her batallion handcuffs the border patrol agents and hustles migrants into an awaiting getaway truck, presumably to freedom, Perfidia keeps the commander of the camp, Lockjaw (the creepiest Sean Penn has ever been, and that’s saying something) disarmed and engaged by demanding at gunpoint that he get and keep an erection. This starts the psycho-sexual fetishizing of Black women that drives the plot of the film.

But Anderson isn’t commenting on the white male fetishization of Black women, he’s directly participating in it. His camera leers at Taylor’s body just as Lockjaw does because the audience only sees her through the lens of the white men who fetishize her.

Celebrating their successful liberation of the camp, Perfidia makes out with Pat in the backseat of the getaway car. She breaks away from the kiss only to ask Junglepussy and Deandra, “Do you think he likes Black girls?” They laugh as he yells, “Of course I like Black girls! This is why I’m here!”

One can assume his attraction to Black girls is what earns him the moniker “Ghetto Pat.” A white man wrote this movie.

Like the most insufferable swirl couples you know, the French 75 insists that interracial relationships with white people are the revolution. Race is imperative to the lust all of the characters portrayed in sexual relationships feel for each other. Reminding us how bad Anderson is at differentiating satire about racists from perpetuating racism, he casts Licorice Pizza star Alaina Haim in a minor role as a 75-er and the “white girl” Laredo makes out with right before another action. Laredo calls her his “white girl” braggadociously. It’s not a descriptor of Haim’s character, it’s a prize for Laredo. In another scene, a jealous Lockjaw confronts an unaware Pat at the grocery store, decrying how much more Lockjaw looooooooves Black women than Pat does. It’s played for laughs. But what is the joke, Paul? I did not consent to this race play.

Perfidia seems to feel the same about whiteness, naming herself after a city famous for all the promise that white Americanness can hold: fame, wealth, power. But mutually lusting across racial lines doesn’t make Perfidia and her fetishizers equal. There is a huge power imbalance along racial and gender lines that Perfidia seems to ignore because Anderson ignores it in the writing of the script, let alone the character.

All of the direct actions and bombings the French 75 complete incite an insatiable horniness in Perfidia, who must kiss or have sex immediately afterward. As she and Pat separate to plant a bomb in the bathroom of a federal building, she’s confronted in a stall by Lockjaw who demands that she meet him at a hotel for sex unless she wants to be arrested for a CVS receipt’s length of terrorism charges. She doesn’t tell Pat; she doesn’t belong to him or need his permission to do what she apparently wants. She swaps one fetishizer for another and meets Lockjaw in secret in his hotel.

“Let’s fuck while the bomb goes off!” She demands of Pat who has just set a timer to detonate a radio tower in two minutes. Plenty of time for them to get in and get out. Why are they bombing the tower? If they state it, I have absolutely no recollection of it and would not put myself through this movie a second time to be sure. Like the migrants shuffled down hallways or into trucks, away from the main character’s lens, the revolution is aesthetic— little more than a series of establishing shots to prove that Pat is bout that life and Perfidia is a loose canon. What does she want besides sex? Why does she want it?

Her mother appears briefly to lecture Pat about being wrong for her daughter, who comes from “a whole line of revolutionaries.” What does that legacy mean to Perfidia? How does she reconcile that ancestral tradition with her own fetishizing of whiteness? Why is she trying to “feel like [fictional white male drug lord] Tony Montana” if she’s got a revolutionary lineage to draw from?! When all of her fucking leads to pregnancy, she chooses to have the baby at the height of her activism, why? Just like the fates of the migrants liberated from the camp or smuggled out during a raid on a convenience store, we’ll never know. Because Anderson isn’t interested in Perfidia as a character, but Black women revolutionaries as caricature. But his Black motherhood plotline is the most offensive of all.

After a bout of (presumably) postpartum depression, Perfidia abandons both her newborn and Pat. I’m guessing that Anderson received a note to explain that choice and added a reason via voiceover in post, where Perfidia wonders in frustration if Pat loves the baby more than her. We don’t know enough about Perfidia as a character to know if this is out-of-character. But Anderson devotes plenty of time to Pat complaining about Perfidia’s motherhood—or lack thereof.

As she fires off a machine gun with an engorged belly, Pat complains to other 75-ers that Perfidia acts like she’s not even pregnant. When Lockjaw confronts Pat about who loves Black women more, Pat is shopping for baby formula for the newborn—not to show Pat being a present father, but to highlight Perfidia’s absence and lack of nurturing.

Soon she lives up to her name—Perfidia, “faithlessness, treachery or betrayal” in Spanish. She gets arrested, rats out the other members of the 75, and promises herself to Lockjaw only to abandon him with a Post-It on the door like Berger to Carrie in Sex and the City (“This pussy don’t pop for you!”). It’s wholly unsurprising that she’d slip away into Mexico without her infant daughter, never to be seen again.

But it’s this lack of nurturing that underscores what Paul Thomas Anderson doesn’t get about Black women or Black revolutionaries.

Anderson invites a surface-level comparison of Perfidia to the legendary revolutionary Assata Shakur, a Black Liberation Army leader who was convicted of killing a cop, gave birth in prison and escaped to Cuba, leaving her newborn daughter behind. But Perfidia is nothing like Assata. Juxtaposed, the comparison is, again, insidious.

In the middle of a bank heist to fund their revolution, Perfidia kills a Black security guard who refuses to follow her orders. But Assata was wrongfully convicted of killing a cop. Perfidia ratted out her comrades to escape prison and wound up getting most of her closest comrades killed, including Junglepussy, Laredo and Haim’s character who was graphically shot in the head while trying to escape police capture. But Assata never told who or how her Black Liberation Army comrades spirited her away from a U.S. prison cell into the safety of Cuba for the past 46 years until her death at 78 last week. Perfidia abandoned her daughter before she was even arrested. But while the police state did everything in their power to make her miscarry, Assata actively chose motherhood in prison.

In Assata: An Autobiography, she wrote about why she made that choice:

“‘I am about life,’ I said to myself. ‘I’m gonna live as hard as I can and as full as I can until I die. And I’m not letting these parasites, these oppressors, these greedy racist swine make me kill my children in my mind, before they are even born. I’m going to live and I’m going to love Kamau, and, if a child comes from that union, I’m going to rejoice. Because our children are our futures and I believe in the future and in the strength and rightness of our struggle.”

Assata named her child Kakuya Amaya Olugbala Shakur, which means “hope for the future.”

She birthed into a hateful world a baby that came from love—of Black people, of liberation, of Kamau, and of herself. Che Guevara once said “At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality.” There is no love in Perfidia Beverly Hills. There is sex. There is power. There is chaos. But there is no love. A loveless revolutionary is just a terrorist.

I don’t use Assata’s history to say that Anderson should’ve written Perfidia more like Assata; I use Assata to show how far from the mark Anderson’s writing of Perfidia is. It’s lazy and provocative only for the sake of provocativeness, evidence of questions he never bothered to ask about the character, let alone answer. She could be an insatiably horny revolutionary whose downfall is her cowardice and selfishness—all of that is the skeleton of a fascinating character! But Perfidia has no meat, no blood, no sinew in those bones.

When there’s an embarrassment of riches like Assata’s autobiography to give context on why Black women choose to be in revolutionary struggle, and even why some fell short in their efforts to live up to their ideals, it’s revealing that Anderson simply insisted on failing an open-book test.

Instead, he takes a white Marxist group’s actions and puts a Black woman’s face on it with no further study. Bafflingly, in a surveillance state, the only one who ever seemed to wear a mask during their actions is Pat. During the bank heist, Junglepussy, another hypersexualized Black character, proudly proclaims she’s not hiding and wants everyone to know who she is. Perfidia also never masks and apparently lives with her mother, with no regard for bringing the feds to her mother’s doorstep. The sloppiness of the heist and the fall of the French 75 under her leadership resembles the end of the Weathermen in 1981, where members were captured after a botched Brinks’ truck robbery where two policemen and the truck driver were murdered.

But Black revolutionaries like Fred Hampton specifically spoke out against these kinds of reckless tactics. In an interview with ABC News, Hampton explained why the Black Panther Party would have nothing to do with white leftists movements the Weathermen and the SDS, which he characterized as masquerading as revolutionaries:

“We stand way back from the SDS and the Weathermen. We think it is anarchistic, opportunistic, individualistic, it’s chauvinistic, it’s custeristic—and that’s the bad part about it. It’s custeristic in that its leaders take people into situations where the people can be massacred and they call it revolution and it’s nothing but child’s play. It’s folly and it’s criminal because people can be hurt. We say that they’re doing exactly what the pigs want them to do. When they take people down and just do nothing, play around, and the pigs are prepared for this and they wipe all of those young people out. We think these people may be sincere but they’re misguided, they’re muddle-heads and they’re scatterbrains. The only way we can show them is to criticize them like we’re doing right now and then leave from here and then go to the federal building and have a demonstration that’s to educate, a demonstration that is disciplined and organized and let them see the examples.”

In this light, I must say a third time, it’s insidious for Anderson to use a white leftist movement that was heavily criticized in its time by Black revolutionaries and make a Black woman the face of it for the plot alone—a plot in which she doesn’t even get to actively participate!

Because the plot is a showdown between two white men fighting to hold onto Black and biracial women for reasons that keep them in constant conflict with each other. There’s no choice then but for the film to feel incongruent and exploitative of those thinly written Black women characters.

I’ve spent the last 2,000 words writing about what happens in the first 40-ish minutes of the film. The plot demands that Perfidia exists only to fuck, blow shit up and disappear so the real movie could begin. So that Pat can be the hero, the good dad, the real principled revolutionary, the present parent who lionizes his deceitful rat of a former partner to their daughter who must learn the truth about both parents the hard way.

After a cinematic wonder of a car chase that almost excuses the 2 hour and 50 minute runtime, and two separate endings where Lockjaw gets his comeuppance by the white supremacist society that he’d hoped to join, One Fetish After Another finally ends on a good note—for Pat.

After 16 years of outrunning the law, Deandra goes down trying to save Willa and Bob—who, I assure you, will not be returning that favor or even mention her again. In contrast, Pat and Willa seem absurdly safe and unbothered by the end, back in their home that was just raided by the feds not too long ago. (I guess with Lockjaw out of the picture, no one’s following up on why their house, Willa’s high school, and their entire community were raided by police and everyone’s just back to normal.) Pat gives his daughter an expository letter from Perfidia, which Taylor performs again via voiceover, to somewhat humanize a character who has been nothing but a sexualized, objectified MacGuffin herself. Willa processes the letter and leaves to attend an action in Portland, more committed than ever. The formerly overprotective Pat lets her go, satisfied that she can take care of herself and that he’s done all he can—as a father and for the revolution.

Chase Infiniti is a wonder in her debut role, and Teyana Taylor does what she can to give heart and purpose where there is none on the page. Regina Hall always deserves more and outside of Honk For Jesus, Save Your Soul, she has yet to receive it. The revolutionaries in the background led by Benicio del Toro’s karate sensei Sergio are endlessly fascinating. But we don’t get to know them or any of the migrants used as props. We don’t get to see the process of how seamlessly Sergio runs his Underground Railroad in a sanctuary city beyond how it intersects with Pat and his mission.

Because Anderson is not interested in revolution. He’s not interested in vulnerable immigrants. Despite the many jokes about lusting for them, he’s not interested in Black women. He’s only interested in the interiority of white men. Whoever complained about the lack of people of color in his movies that sparked this story should’ve left him alone to write what he knows.

Stay watchin’,

Brooke

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