Watch + Play List | March 2024

Films, shows, and tunes.

Hi hello! How did March just breeze by like that when January was 80 years long and February was 40 days and 40 nights? Anyway, I’m happy Aries season (the real start of the New Year, if you ask me) has finally arrived. I didn’t watch nearly as much as I did last month but it’s always quality over quantity around these parts. Below is the order in which the content is laid out:

• Films Watched

• B&W Film Spotlight

• Shows Watched

• Monthly Playlist

FILMS

Watching The Detectives (2007) 

I still haven’t gotten around to watching Oppenheimer because I’m incapable of hearing the words “Christopher Nolan film” without rolling my eyes at triple speed¹. I am neurodivergent, okay? If I have to watch your films 2-3 times to get what you were trying to say, I’m just not gonna do it. Unfortunately for newly minted Academy Award winner Cillian Murphy, this means that Watching The Detectives is my first and only experience of seeing him in a leading role. Watching The Detectives is a rom-com about a video store owner, Neil (Murphy) who is obsessed with film noir and pulling pranks. Neil finally meets his match in a femme fatale, Violet (Liu) who pulls better pranks and plays mind games with him for her entertainment. It’s campy and absurd, and I love Lucy Liu in this role as a quirky sociopath.

The Last Supper (1995) 

When a group of grad students invites a MAGA-coded truck driver over to dinner after he helped one of their friends, ideological differences lead to an argument that results in someone fucking around and finding out. What starts as a one-time dinner gone awry turns into a series of dinner conversations between conservative bigots and self-righteous liberals who don’t self-interrogate their hypocrisy. Sounds a lot like the current state of American politics, don’t it? There is one prophetic scene that captures the current divide between Conservative and Liberal ideologies perfectly. What does it say about our country, that our political perspectives have not expanded in 29 years?

Priscilla (2023)

If it’s one thing Sofia Coppola is gonna eat up, it’s a period piece. The Virgin Suicides remains one of my favorite book-to-film adaptations and so, I watched this purely to study Coppola’s visual mastery because I have never cared about anything having to do with Elvis Presley. As expected, Coppola’s visual approach is understated yet effective. She finds a way to craft the narrative by showing instead of telling — a scene in Vegas that features an extreme close-up shot of Priscilla’s open palm receiving a pill from Elvis conveys the turning point of Priscilla’s entry to drug use in a mere seconds. A less seasoned writer-director may have written a whole scene around this kind of transition. The film doesn’t shy away from telling the truth about how Elvis groomed Priscilla and eventually controlled her life. My only wish is that we spent more time on Priscilla finding her agency and eventually leaving Elvis. What we get instead is a montage of brief moments where Priscilla is starting to make friends, take on new hobbies, and step outside of the mold Elvis created for her. Because Priscilla Presley was an Executive Producer on this film, I can only assume that this was intentional but framing this film as Priscilla’s story yet primarily focusing on the version of herself that a man created, feels like a disservice to what could’ve been a more robust narrative about the reclamation of her autonomy.

Freaknik: The Wildest Party Never Told (2024)

The first time I heard the word “Freaknik” was the summer of 2002 when my cousins and I tried to convince our parents to let us attend a teen Freaknik at the YWCA in Minneapolis. Understandably, the name of the party gave our parents pause but they eventually let us go. My mom ended up picking us up from the function early, which was probably annoying to us then but as an adult, I completely understand because WHY WAS ANYBODY THROWING A FREAKNIK FOR TEENAGERS AT THE YWCA?! Anyway, I later learned about the original party that the YWCA function was named after and my understanding of it was that people were in the streets acting buck wild. Well, I’m glad I watched the documentary because Freaknik was so much more than the infamous reputation it gained in the late 90s. What started as a “Freaknic” (a blend of the word “freak” inspired by the song “Le Freak” by Chic and “picnic”) for HBCU students in the early 1980s morphed into a cultural phenomenon that transformed the image of the City of Atlanta forever. As the demographic morphed from mostly college students to middle age men and predators, shit hit the fan. One of the best things we got from the Freaknik era though, is the introduction of Southern hip-hop to the masses. Artists like Jermaine Dupri and Outkast used the function, which regularly drew hundreds of thousands of people from all over the country, to promote their music. The South had something to say and although the party will never be what it once was, its impact on Black culture and hip-hop cannot be understated. My only question is, why were they interviewing 21 Savage, who was born in 1992 and was 6 years old, still living in London when the last Freaknik was hosted in Atlanta, about the impact of Freaknik? I get that he was an Executive Producer, but sometimes it’s okay to just write the check.

B&W SPOTLIGHT

I realized after compiling this list that my favorite watches this month were all black-and-white films. I know a lot of folks shy away from black-and-white movies, they can seem dated and boring but in some cases, black-and-white allows the narrative to shine in ways that full color would obscure it (Passing is a perfect example of this), which is the case for the films featured below:

Paris Blues (1961)

Paris Blues follows two American home girls (Joanne Woodward and Diahann Carroll) who go to Paris for two weeks and meet two expatriate jazz musicians whom they both eventually fall in love with. I have seen stills from this film of Diahann Carroll and Sidney Poitier and have always been curious about it because as I mentioned in the last Watch + Play list, Black vintage films are rare. What sounds like a perfectly formulaic romcom, ended up having more nuance than I expected. Carroll and Poitier’s romance specifically, touched on themes about being a Black American and choosing to live abroad to avoid dealing with racism versus staying home and fighting the fight. A film during this period could only take place in Paris, it was released just six years after the question of “Will Hollywood let negroes make love?” was posed in Tan Magazine. For context, the most popular romantic comedy released in The United States in 1961 was Breakfast at Tiffany’s (which featured zero Black actors) and the most popular (if not the only) Black film released that year was A Raisin in The Sun, a story that addresses racism but without the levity that Paris Blues offers. In the early 1960s, Black folks in The United States were a long way from being able to dream about roaming the romantic streets of Paris. Still, the film has its issues with racism. First, Carroll not having top billing or being featured in the posters despite having an equal amount of screen time screams misogynoir. The 1957 novel of the same name that the film was based on, focused more on an interracial relationship between what would’ve been Woodward and Poitier’s characters. This is briefly hinted at when Paul Newman’s character makes a pass at Diahann Caroll’s in a line that will never leave my mind “[your girlfriend] might be hard to find, all these white girls look alike”. Eventually, the couples are split off into their expected racial categories, which may have been a benefit to the film given the real-life chemistry of Newman and Woodward (who were married in real life) and Poitier and Carroll (who were in the early days of a nine-year affair).

Paper Moon (1973)

Peter Bogdanovich and Ryan O’Neal worked together on one of my favorite 70s romantic comedies What’s Up Doc?, so giving this film a shot was a no-brainer for me. This film reminds me of a less PG version of one of my favorite films growing up, Curly Sue. When a depression-era con artist, Moze (Ryan O’Neal) shows up at the funeral of a past lover, he is tasked with taking a little girl, Addie (Tatum O’Neal) who may or may not be his daughter on a cross-country road trip to live with a distant family member. A precocious cigarette-smoking 8-year-old, Addie catches on to Moze’s schemes and wants in. Through finding ways to make more money off of a bible-selling hustle, Addie runs circles around Moze. My only knowledge of Tatum O’Neal before this film was that shoe episode of Sex and The City and that one time she dated Michael Jackson, but little mama carried this film. She carried it so well, that 50+ years later, she remains the youngest Academy Award winner of all time. Unfortunately, this was a traumatic experience for her because she had to endure her (very cringey) father’s jealousy. Still, this film is a master class on child acting performances. I can only hope we create better environments for child actors to thrive (more on that later).

Kokomo City (2023)

Kokomo City is a raw and unflinching look at the complexities and dangers of living as Black transgender sex workers. If you read that premise and thought “Oh, sounds like Paris is Burning”, think again. This film is directed by a Black trans woman², (unlike Paris is Burning which was directed by a queer cisgender white woman), it does not focus on ballroom culture, and its approach is much more intimate, and expansive. Not only does this documentary feature the stories and perspectives of Black trans women, but there are also interviews with cisgender Black men who love, respect and are attracted to Black trans women. Existing at the intersection of Black and trans identities provides the subjects of this documentary with an outlook on interconnectedness the struggles of all oppressed people are that every cishet person should take notes on. This is hands down one of the most important documentaries I’ve ever seen. Unfortunately, one of its subjects KoKo Da Doll was killed by a 17-year-old boy last year, which reinforces how important it is for us to unpack what we’ve been conditioned to believe about people who do not fit neatly into gender binaries — especially when those people are Black trans women who are the most vulnerable in the LGBTQ+ community.

SHOWS

Starstruck (Season 3)

Starstruck is for quirky romantics who love sarcasm and offbeat humor. The final season is our last spin around the block with Jessie and Tom. Although Tom was on my nerves for the majority of the season, I absolutely loved the way they concluded this show. There is a scene in a hospital prayer room between these characters that had me tearing up a lil bit, the writing was impeccable. I don’t know what they got in the water across the pond but I adore their approach to romantic comedies with two non-white leads, I wish Hollywood would catch up.

Quiet on Set (2024)

By now, you have probably heard about this docuseries which chronicles the horrible things that happened behind the scenes of some of the most popular Nickelodeon shows. If you are a millennial like me, I’m sure it was a lot to process. Not only is it extremely disturbing, it’s spoiled the nostalgia of what was the Golden Age of children’s TV. I won’t go into too much detail about this documentary but I will say that Dan Schneider’s response continued to fail the former staff members, child actors and their families who have endured irreparable harm. Restorative Justice is not profuse apologies or PR. Until men like him do the work of addressing their behavior with a trained professional, give financial reparations to their victims, and do us all a favor by stopping trying to reclaim the positions of power they once held, that sorry doesn’t mean shit.

PLAYLIST

No, I have not listened to Beyoncé’s new album. I’ve been living life and enjoying this beautiful Spring weather but I did listen to this playlist while writing this newsletter and I think it has a nice variety of genres and is pretty well-sequenced. If you want a more eclectic algorithm, give it a few spins.

That’s it for this month! Let me know what recommendations you enjoyed.

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LaChelle

1. The only exception to this is The Dark Night, and that is because of Heath Ledger. I’m not a huge fan of superhero films but that performance was a shining example of Aries supremacy.

2. D.Smith talks about her choice to shoot in black-and-white here.