2023, Juel Taylor (screenplay Creed II) -- Netflix
I kind of cringe when I write "black movie" as a thing because, in all honesty, I am just an observer of someone else's experience, in pretty much all movies. I feel a need to label things to better understand things, to shape them into my experience. Even if my experience of it is entirely based on pop culture (and your demographic, dude). So, let's drop that from now on. I mean, its already been said, but enough is enough.
Kent writes about the movie here.
Dystopian scifi is usually set in the Near Dark Future. But we have been saying, something pithfully, for the last ten years or so, that we might be living in a dystopian future, now. Its the mind playing the same trick that it does for conspiracy theorists, in that things cannot be this horrible without being... fictional... right? Someone is out there manipulating the world, in ways more than it was always manipulated, influencing this greater enshitification (to semi-quote Doctorow) of the world that we cannot seem to claw back from.
This movie envisions a window on one particularly enshitified existence, wherein your life is dominated by run down housing projects, falling apart homes, drug dealers, pimps & hoes, drive-bys, lottery scratchers that never win, and a plentitude of alcohol & drugs. Fontaine (John Boyega, Pacific Rim: Uprising) is a low level drug dealer, morose and sardonic, who personally demands his money from Slick Charles (Jamie Foxx, Project Power), a throwback braggadocio of a pimp. But earlier that evening Fontaine broke the leg of a competitors corner boy, and as he leaves Slick's motel room, he is murdered by the competitor. Thinking-of-retiring ho Yo-Yo (Teyonah Parris, The Marvels) witnesses it.
The next morning, Fontaine wakes in his bead to begin his usual routine: talk to mamma through her door, buy a scratcher & lose, buy a 40 of malt liquor, give the bum some, etc etc etc. His routine and life is empty, but not ended. But Slick and Yo-Yo notice; how could they not. Their state of befuddlement allows them to notice the black SUV that snatched up a man and connect it to whatever is going on. Following it, they are led to a typical rundown house which happens to have an elevator in the closet, which leads down to a secret mad scientist laboratory. And thus it really begins.
So, hidden lairs, evil scientists, massive (and I mean MASSIVE) conspiracy, and satirical commentary. At the same time the Shadowy Bad Guys are keeping the cliche thug lifestyles alive they are also breeding a whiter black man, someone who can "pass" (except the hair, the hair is sticky). Yes, this community, and others, are "the control group" because gentrification is the end-goal, a homogenization of all of American, a more united United States. Cringe.
The movie has a lot of fun making its commentary while playing on so many cliches and negative stereotypes. One of the deepest cuts happens as background noise in a hair salon as a teacher complains about having to spend her own money on school supplies, only to have it all fade away as soon as her hair straightener is applied. I cannot comment on how effective the social satire is, but it was all well constructed.
Wait. "Black-Comedy" ? That tag is its own deep cut.
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