Anyone seen this yet? Currently standing at 100% Fresh at Rotten Tomatoes. 134-0. Reviews are ecstatic. This is already a lock for Best Picture nominee for 2017. Directed by an African-American, starring an African-American, and critics are hailing it as a masterpiece. The Academy couldn't ask for a better nominee to avoid the #oscarsowhite critique. Throw in the fact that this is a horror flick, a genre that rarely produces films that critics praise, and the accomplishment is even more impressive. Could this be another Silence of the Lambs?
From what I've read the movie pretty heavily treads on the idea that the so called "white guilt" present among white progressives and liberals is 1) Patronising and degrading at best. 2) Cover for something far, far more sinister at worst (the theme the movie takes).
On a tangent to this, the current crop of 2016 Best Pic films is one of the most diverse that I've see. Aside from the obvious of having more black-centric films not involving slavery, there just seems to be a wider range of different types of films. Still bullshit that Star Trek Beyond lost Best Makeup to goddamned Suicide Squad, though
Saw this movie a couple of weeks ago. It's not the masterpiece that critics are making it out to be but it was pretty good. My two highlights: Allison Williams The main character's TSA friend
So, I have to correct myself here. The actor playing the main character is NOT African-American. He's black, but British. This has promoted some Hollywood blacks, such as Samuel L. Jackson, to turn up their nose at the film and declare that it can't really speak to American racial paranoia because the star can't truly understand what it's like to be black in America. Of course, this is utterly ridiculous, but that hardly matters in the bizarro world of racial politics. The actor was reciting lines from a script, the same as any American actor would have. These race hustling critics are the same fools who will claim that affirmative action is necessary because the White Establishment is trying to restrict access to higher education, but then turn around and ostracize an educated black man for being an Uncle Tom.
You know, I had the exact same reaction when Laurence Olivier--an Englishman!--had the sheer, unmitigated gall to play a Danish prince.
Jackson has since backed off from his previous comments. I don't really see this line of criticism going anywhere.