The DC Universe movie BLACK ADAM has a lame script and is often a visual mess. The orchestral music is pretty good and Dwayne Johnson dryly delivers a few amusing one liners. That’s all I have to say about this big schlockbuster.

THE WOMAN KING, starring Viola Davis in the title role, is beautifully filmed and well-acted from start to finish. Written and directed by Dana Stevens and Gina Prince-Bythewood, the movie takes place in 1823 in the West African kingdom of Dahomey. Ms. Davis plays General Nanisca, leader of an all-female group of warriors, the Agojie, who comprise the core of the story. In her influential role, Nanisca eventually persuades the Dahomey king, Ghezo, to forego participating in the slave trade with Europeans, including Portugese merchants. To follow through with this, King Ghezo prepares for war against the Oyo empire, a larger neighboring kingdom that has long been involved in trading enemy captives, such as Dahomey people, to slavers.

The movie’s primary focus is on Nanisca and Nawi (played by South African actress Thuso Mbedu), a strong-willed young woman who joins the Agojie after defying her father by refusing to marry men who would physically abuse her. She is befriended by a veteran warrior, Izogie (Lashana Lynch, a costar in 2019’s CAPTAIN MARVEL), who becomes like a mentor to Nawi. We viewers witness the young woman evolve into a mighty warrior while navigating an initially fraught relationship with General Nanisca.

Handsome Jordan Bolger plays the half Dahomey and half Caucasian (Portugese) Malik, a man involved with slave traders allied to the Oyo. Nawi first meets him in the jungle as he walks naked out of the water, having just bathed. She grabs his clothes right before they engage in conversation. This scene is filmed from the refreshing lens/perspective of the female gaze, where an attractive man is rendered vulnerable and an object of curiosity and desire by a leading female character, who remains clothed. He wears a metal cross around his neck, which Nawi looks at with curiosity. Malik offers the necklace to her but she drops it at his feet when she runs off upon hearing his companions approaching. The implications are rich in this scene, such as Nawi’s leaving Christian symbolism behind and returning to her home without seeming influenced by this Western religion and its values.

John Boyega as King Ghezo is, well, lovely. He stands tall, handsome, and stately, having come into his own in this role after playing the comparatively child-like Finn in three STAR WARS franchise sequels from 2015 to 2019. For a good while, I couldn’t figure out where I’d seen this actor before. He is so different here, transformed. Impressive.

I was fascinated with a certain supporting character who we see and hear from now and then throughout the movie, but never get to truly know. He is a feminine, cross dressing, probably gay man (and/or maybe a eunuch?), always gorgeously dressed and graceful in movements, who has some kind of attendant (go between?) role with King Ghezo and his wives. After looking up the cast on assorted sites, such as imdb, Wikipedia, and Google, I could not clearly match a name up for either the character or actor who plays him (except, possibly, “Ajahe” for the character). Anyway, his androgynous presence had me thinking of what are called “Two Spirits” in certain Native American tribes, gay and lesbian people that are not gender binary conforming but are given important, respected positions in their society. I found myself wishing for some brief exposition as to his role and presence close to the king and his wives, including his primary wife. That was a loose end in the narrative that left me feeling like the lovely, queer man was made to seem mainly decorative and mysterious even though, clearly, his presence was substantive and relevant. Ah, well.

Without giving anything away, I will say that we the audience are led to hope for a certain outcome between some characters. But, to the writer’s and director’s credit, this movie does not completely fall into formulaic, predictable plot patterns. And to the extent that it does, I found this acceptable and satisfying. The narrative moves along with a balanced mix of character development and intense action.

The portrayal of the Dahomey here glosses over historically just how steeped they were in enslaving people within their own kingdom. Apparently, they also committed human sacrifice, which is not shown or mentioned in this production. The movie is mostly fictionalized, albeit inspired by true events.

The landscape scenery is exquisite in places, the building sets of the Dahomey kingdom’s capital city beautiful in their mix of clean lines and solid earth tones. The costumes of the Dahomey and Oyo are all elegantly worn by people each stunning in their own way. Visually, THE WOMAN KING is a colorful, energetic feast, filled with compelling, interesting characters with whom I was happy to spend a little over two hours.

The movie BROS just happened to be newly available to stream for free, so I watched it. Billy Eichner stars as Bobby, an angry gay white guy who protects himself with cynicism and perpetual bachelorhood. Enter a love interest, Aaron (Luke Macfarlane), a handsome, muscular and macho lawyer who Bobby meets at a gay dance club. They seem as believable together as, say, combining mustard and peanut butter. The purposeful overacting, especially by Eichner, feels tiresome and annoying more than funny. And Eichner as Bobby can’t stop his righteous ranting, which quickly grows old. That all said, there are some humorous moments, such as an awkward orgy scene involving the two main characters and two other men. But, what had me laughing the most is a certain scene in a gym, and the one that immediately follows, where Bobby pretends to be macho by deepening his voice and talking like a “bro.”

Basically, the movie is often structured like a television sitcom, with a few scenes being quite funny and most seeming only slightly so or not at all. There is a sweet song performed towards the end by Eichner, which feels like a pleasant respite from the production’s intentionally forced, stilted, and inane dialogue. BROS is worth checking out for free, but I’m glad I didn’t pay to see a show that’s about eighty-five percent irritating drivel and maybe fifteen percent humorous and endearing.

THE AFTERMATH (2019) is generally well-done and deeply moving in a few places, particularly a scene where Keira Knightley’s character plays “Clair de Lune” on a Steinway piano and becomes overcome with grief.

The cultural, political, and subsequent relational tensions between English military personnel with their spouses as one social group and German citizens as another are effectively explored in the movie. From there, the major theme/wider implications of navigating cultural and political differences towards finding shared or common threads within humanity come through in THE AFTERMATH, which is primarily a tender post World War II love story set in the fall and winter of 1945 Hamburg, Germany.

Alexander Skarsgard portrays a widowed German architect who is forced to host a married British couple, played by Keira Knightley and Jason Clarke. Clarke is Lewis Morgan, an Army colonel charged with assisting in the post bombing cleanup of Hamburg. The two have lost their young son a few years before. This leaves an emotional rift between them, creating the perfect situation for romantic intrigue to develop between the gorgeous, cultured, yet sad Stephen Lubert (Skarsgard) and Knightley’s lonely and grief-stricken Rachael Morgan.

I enjoyed the gradual build up of tension between characters in such stark back-drops of a bombed out city and a large, solid house filled with beautiful things. Like hollowed out and anguish-filled Hamburg, the pristine house the main characters inhabit also feels hollow and anguish-laden.

I’m not sure if this movie is particularly original and/or intellectually challenging or stimulating with any of its themes. However, it is generally pleasant and relaxing to watch, especially if you’re in the mood to view something that moves along while not being over-stimulating with too much visual busyness or details to remember and follow.

THREE THOUSAND YEARS OF LONGING is beautiful and poignant, exquisitely so I might add. The colorful visuals are lush and fun, expressions of rich, sensual imaginations. I often felt like I was watching a series of moving paintings. Tilda Swinton and Idris Elba play their roles fabulously, but the whole cast is terrific.

This movie is indeed a lovely, thoughtful adult riff on THE ARABIAN NIGHTS. I was moved to tears towards the end.

Djinns have long fascinated me since childhood. This is the most dynamic, compassionate, and sexy portrayal of a djinn that I’ve ever seen on screen.

Bravo to director George Miller and everyone else involved in the making of this cinema gem.

NOPE was the dope…until the hokey ending. I enjoyed the acting and found the four main characters interesting and likable. The movie’s cinematography was beautiful and there were some effectively creepy and suspenseful moments. Imagery and dialogue were often clever and creative. There was a lot of humor, much of it quite dark— all chuckle evoking. But, the very ending’s action and imagery did not match the quality of the rest of the production, leaving me with a deflated sense of “nope.” Ah, well.

Hong Kong-based film director Simon Chung’s I MISS YOU WHEN I SEE YOU (2018) riveted me from start to finish. Other than some early scenes set in Australia, the film takes place in Hong Kong. The narrative moves gracefully between flashbacks in secondary school and the present time, about eleven years later, of two best friends, Kevin Fong (Jun Li) and Jamie (Bryant Mak). Impressive acting and writing carries this tension-filled story along to an emotion-laden ending that left me feeling tired but relieved.

Kevin has long been in love with his best friend Jamie. He suffers from major depression to the point of him requiring psychiatric care at a residential facility. After Kevin leaves there, he and Jamie resume contact in Hong Kong. Thus begins a fraught process of reconnection between them, complicated by Jamie having a live-in girlfriend (Candy Cheung).

The film-work is purposefully uneven, juxtaposing harsh outdoor street lighting and claustrophobic indoor scenes with expansive and pleasant outside settings among trees and sky. I found myself longing for more of the latter, which intuitively made sense as the two main characters struggle to broaden and deepen their constricted lives. I the viewer felt effectively drawn into both their inner and outer emotional and sensory worlds.

Obviously and touchingly, this is a movie about the pursuit of true love between two men, one being the pursuer while the other is the avoider, made all the more complicated by the gay “taboo” element. But, on another level, this is a deeply moving screenplay about the challenge to reach a more genuine, meaningful state of existence. And that is what makes I MISS YOU WHEN I SEE YOU so humanly relatable, regardless of one’s gender or sexual orientation.