Till (2022) Review

Time: 130 Minutes
Cast:
Danielle Deadwyler as Mamie Till
Jalyn Hall as Emmett Till
Frankie Faison as John Carthan
Haley Bennett as Carolyn Bryant
Whoopi Goldberg as Alma Carthan
Director: Chinonye Chukwu

The true story of Mamie Till-Mobley’s relentless pursuit of justice for her 14-year-old son, Emmett Till, who was brutally lynched in 1955 while visiting his cousins in Mississippi.

I’ve been hearing a bit about this movie, mainly from hearing that it was getting some awards attention. I heard that it’s about the murder of Emmett Till in the 1950s; while it could’ve easily been mishandled, it ended up being a devastating but necessary and well made movie.

Some people might be a bit reluctant to watch this movie, understandably so. On top of it being about a tragedy like this, plenty are tired of movies focussing on black people’s suffering, especially in the past decade. For what its worth though, I wouldn’t put Till in that category. Its respectful and tasteful to the true-life events as much as possible and treats it with the thoughtfulness it deserves. They could’ve gone the graphic route by showing Emmett Till being killed on screen, but the film just show the lead up to his death and the aftermath, while his death is kept offscreen. It also serves the movie better, capturing the emotions of his mother Mamie Till rather than focussing deeply on the brutality inflicted on him. It is very much a character driven movie as it follows Mamie as she’s going through all this. At first it takes time to establish Emmett and Mamie’s life in Chicago before he goes to Mississippi, then after his disappearance and then death, it focuses on her search for justice. Till is painful to watch but affecting and moving. There are times where the movie can be slow, mainly in the second half, but the majority of the slower pacing works well enough.

The story is really led by the performances, each actor delivers a convincing performance that leaves an impression on you, no matter how small their screentime might be. Of course, the highlight is Danielle Deadwyler who is great as Mamie Till, and delivers a powerhouse performance. She has you invested in her fight and delivers a genuine and sensitive portrayal of grief and conviction. The rest of the performances are also top notch, including Whoopi Goldberg, Jalyn Hall, Frankie Faison, Jayme Lawson and Haley Bennett.

The direction from Chinonye Chukwu is great. It is very well shot, and there are even some stylistically interesting things that are done here. Abel Korzeniowski’s score was great too, making already powerful scenes even more powerful. However, probably the most distinctive directing choices had to do with what Chukwu decided to show and not show, which was very important. As previously mentioned, they concealed certain things so as to not be exploitative, but doesn’t shy away from the brutality of it all.

Till is a hard hitting and affecting movie which sensitively tells its real life story, and benefits from the excellent performances, especially from Danielle Deadwyler. It is definitely a hard watch, but I think it is worth seeing.

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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014) Review

Time: 101 Minutes
Age Rating: Medium Level Violence
Cast:
Johnny Knoxville as Leonardo (voice)
Pete Ploszek as Leonardo (motion capture)
Alan Ritchson as Raphael
Noel Fisher as Michelangelo
Jeremy Howard as Donatello
Megan Fox as April O’Neil
Malina Weissman as Young April
Will Arnett as Vern Fenwick
William Fichtner as Eric Sacks
Tony Shalhoub as Splinter (voice)
Danny Woodburn as Splinter (motion capture)
Tohoru Masamune as Shredder
Whoopi Goldberg as Bernadette Thompson
Director: Jonathan Liebesman

Spawned from a lab experiment gone awry, teenage terrapins Leonardo, Michelangelo, Donatello and Raphael live in the sewers beneath New York. Although their rodent sensei, Splinter, advises against showing themselves above ground, the justice-loving, pizza-eating brothers can’t stand idly by while evil Shredder and his minions terrorize the city. With help from intrepid reporter April O’Neil (Megan Fox) and her cameraman (Will Arnett), the Turtles set out to save New York.

I wasn’t excited for this film for a number of reasons, first of all I’m not a big TMNT fan and second of all, Michael Bay produced it and at this point it’s not even worth trying to expect good things coming out of him at this point (Though I heard 13 Hours was pretty good). However despite all that this movie really wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. There are some decent action scenes and I wasn’t really bored throughout this movie. However, it’s still not a good movie and has almost all the elements that made Transformers such a failure.

The film focuses more on April O’Neil, which I think is a pretty big mistake. It’s like how the Transformers movies focussed more on the human over the Transformers. I don’t know why Michael Bay keeps having movies focus on the humans instead of the titular characters, humans aren’t the most interesting characters when the movie has giant mutant turtles. Also the tone was a little too serious, it had the tone of a Transformers movie, that’s the vibe that I got throughout the movie. I don’t know much about TMNT but I do know that they usually have a lighter tone. Also I felt that the story wasn’t very strong, I didn’t particularly care about what was going on, I was just enjoying the action when it was happening.

Megan Fox isn’t a very good actress but she was fine in her role, she didn’t distract as much as I thought she would. The performance that surprisingly annoyed me more was Will Arnett, whose sole purpose was to be the comic relief. Shredder, the main villain of the movie is the most generic villain you could find, even Doctor Doom in the last act of Fant4stic wasn’t this roughly put together. The reason was that William Fichtner was going to be him before the casting backlash which resulted in some random faceless guy with no personality being Shredder. William Fichtner was pretty good in the movie but there was no real payoff of his character because of the production change.

Even though Michael Bay produced it, his fingerprints are all over it. The action scenes are fun to watch but they are very Transformers esque and are very over the top. A lot of people have talked about the designs of the turtles, and yes they do look a little badly designed. It’s not so much the body design I have a problem with, it’s that the heads looked a little messy. From the trailer of the sequel, the designs do look better so at least Bay and others are listening to the feedback.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be but it’s by no means a good movie. It does have some fun action scenes but at the same time it felt like a Michael Bay movie with it’s over the top action, annoying humour and a story that’s not very interesting. I don’t think you really need to see the whole movie, the main plus of the film is the action. Everything else is fine or straying into bad territory. The sequel, Out of the Shadows, actually looks pretty good and has potential to be the TMNT movie that fans want. It probably won’t have to try that hard to be better than this movie, this movie wasn’t bad but it felt quite mediocre overall.