Larry Oliver Film Reviews

  When I started this blog seven years ago [in 2015], I did not envisage a Black American woman given $50 million to make an action-packed historical drama set in a country I’d never heard of. The Woman King , a modest box-office hit (domestic gross $63 million and counting) represents progress. Gina Prince-Bythewood didn’t write the screenplay (credited to Dana Stevens from a pitch by the actress Maria Bello) but proves the perfect match of director to subject matter; her previous credits include the Netflix superhero movie, The Old Guard , in which she demonstrated her action movie chops. Set in 1823 during the reign of King Ghezo (1818-58), The Woman King tells the story of a group of women warriors, the Agojie, led by Nanisca (Viola Davis) who defend Dahomey against a rival kingdom. It is a story of love, sacrifice and kicking men’s ass that hits every note it reaches for. Dahomey, renamed Benin in 1975, is situated in West Africa, nestled between Togo and Nigeria, with a mo...

  Contains spoilers The opening of Farewell Amor is deceptive: a single static shot of people waiting in the Arrivals hall of John F. Kennedy International Airport. Our eyes are drawn to a figure holding a sign in the centre of the frame. However, it isn’t this figure who is important, rather Walter (Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine), a tall and as we discover soft-spoken Angolan who steps forward from the left of the frame to greet his wife, Esther (Zainab Jah) and teenage daughter Sylvia (Jayme Lawson), whom he has not seen for seventeen years. While Walter headed to America at the end of the Angola Civil War, Esther and Sylvia migrated to Tanzania (specifically Dar Es Salaam) where Esther found and enthusiastically embraced God. As she hugs her husband, calling him ‘Amor’, she allows her handbag to fall to the ground. Sylvia quickly picks it up and puts it on top of suitcases stacked on a luggage trolley that she is pulling. As Walter, a taxi driver, takes the pair into New York City,...