Larry Oliver Film Reviews

  Till is a two-hour victim statement marketed as a drama. Centred on the real-life brutal lynching of fourteen-year-old Emmett Till (Jalyn Hall) in Money, Mississippi in August 1955, it focuses on the grief of his mother, Mamie (Danielle Deadwyler), putting her emotions front and centre. The primacy of Mamie’s sorrow and anger displaces every other aspect of the story – the killers, J W Milam (Eric Whitten) and Roy Bryant (Sean Michael Weber) being acquitted in the subsequent trial, though later admitting their guilt, the shopkeeper, Carolyn Bryant (Haley Bennett), whose exaggerated sense of offence led to Emmett being ‘taught a lesson’ and her subsequent perjury, escaping prosecution. A caption tells us that in March 2022, lynching was finally classified as a crime in the United States, 67 years after Emmett’s death, but the film, directed by Chinonye Chukwu ( Clemency ), who also contributed to the screenplay by Keith Beauchamp & Michael Reilly, anchors the viewer to Mamie....

  Julia Hart’s fourth feature film as director, I’m Your Woman , is conspicuous for a lack of swear words. Perhaps it is because Hart, who co-wrote the film with her husband, Jordan Horowitz, had just made a film for Disney +,   Stargirl , a teen romance starring America’s Got Talent winner Grace VanderWaal who at one point plays the ukulele at a football match. Maybe it is because Hart wanted to redefine the 1970s thriller, the decade in which the film is set. Maybe it is because with cinemas being closed during the Covid pandemic, film is turning into television – and not cable television with few holds barred but television suitable for general audiences. This is not to say there aren’t gunshots in I’m Your Woman – the main character, Jean (Rachel Brosnahan, best known for the Amazon Prime show The Marvellous Mrs Maizel ) is married to a career criminal, Eddie (Bill Heck). However, the makers are intent on tackling some tropes. When we first see Jean, she is lounging in ...