Review: "Selah and the Spades"

"Selah and the Spades" reminds me a little bit of "Heathers" by way of Spike Lee's "School Daze" with not a little Shakespearean rivalry thrown in. It takes the seemingly pedestrian conflicts of high school and amps them up to a level of life-shattering consequences and existential crisis. Here, prom is not just an overhyped dance by a seismic event that could lead to an outright war.

Writer/director Tayarisha Poe, making her feature film debut, introduces us to Haldwell Boarding School, a posh prep school for privileged children to prepare for college and the life beyond it by practicing the sort of cutthroat politics usually reserved for corporate high-rises or the halls of Congress.

These teens aren't just growing into cynical, malevolent adults -- they're already there.

Interestingly, even though the school is ethnically diverse, even predominantly kids of color, racial animus is not what divides the five factions who have staked out their turf like preppy street gangs.

The most powerful is the Spades, led by Selah Summers (Lovie Simone, going places), who control the illicit narcotics trade. The fact that Selah and her squad are black and deal drugs is not presented as a reflection of wider society, but simply how the balance of power has played out in this particularly little chunk of it.

As the story opens, the leadership and spheres of influence have stayed mostly stable after a contentious war a couple of years ago. The other factions are the Bobbys, led by Bobby (Ana Mulvoy-Ten), who run the illegal dorm basement parties; the Skins, led by Amber (Francesca Noel), who oversee gambling; the C's, led by Tarit (Henry Hunter Hall), the brains who sell essays and other homework; and the Prefects, led by Two Toms (Evan Roe), who run interference to keep the adults ostensibly running the school in the dark.

The Spades and the Bobbys are the dominant clans, essentially the Montagues and Capulets of this star-crossed school, though there are no romantic crossovers. Indeed, there's no love lost at all.

Simone is a treat as Selah, who puts off a vibe of strength and confidence but is quite the turmoil of self-doubt underneath. Her mother (Gina Torres) drives her for utter perfection, seeing a 93 on a test in a subject Selah has struggled in not as an improvement to be celebrated but a failure ripe for scolding: "Where's the other seven points?"

As the spring semester of senior year unfolds, Selah would seem to have plenty of reason to coast. She rules the inter-faction council that meets to collaborate and hash out differences like a grande dame at the ball. She has a solid right-hand man in Maxxie (Jharrel Jerome), who keeps the books and handles the da-to-day. The only real task facing her is choosing a successor to take over the Spades after graduation.

Selah thinks she may have found a ripe target in Paloma Davis (Celeste O'Connor), a newly arrived underclassman who works for the school newspaper and is always about, watching and taking pictures. Selah takes her under her wing, shows her the ropes and then in classic "All About Eve" fashion, begins to resent her hand-picked protégé.

I liked a lot of things about this movie, even as I recognized Poe had gathered some very interesting pieces without quite figuring out how they all fit together. The rivalry between Selah and Bobby holds a lot of untapped potential -- I kept expecting things to build to a "Godfather" level of strife, but after occasional verbal clashes things always settle down.

Jesse Williams plays the school headmaster, who occasionally turns up to give speeches that make it sound like he knows all about what's going on under his roof, though he never seems to do anything about it.

It's also unclear how the Spades and the other factions keep the sheep in line. On a couple of occasions they corner someone who's gotten out of line and give them a few bruises, but there isn't even so much as a brass knuckle in terms of ratcheting up the threat. Seems like all it would take is a little firepower, or surreptitious video, to take down the whole system.

What we end up with is a titillating but somewhat disappointing tale that doesn't meet us at eye level. "Selah and the Spades" feels more like a parable than a realistic story about children playing a high-stakes adult game.

Video review: "Harriet"

“Harriet” hasn’t been in the awards spotlight as much as it deserves. For me, there was no more powerful emotional journey in a movie this year than the story of Aramintra Ross, better known as Harriet Tubman, an icon of the Underground Railroad.

Tubman guided dozens of slaves to freedom, as she herself had made the harrowing journey as a young woman. She’s become such a mythical figure that the real woman behind the history text has been somewhat lost. Director Kasi Lemmons, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Gregory Allen Howard, breathes life into the legend.

Cynthia Erivo is amazing as Tubman, who gradually transforms from a timid, passive woman to a tough, no-nonsense leader of men.

Many people will be astonished to learn that Tubman was actually married at the time of her escape, to a freed black man no less (Zackary Momoh). But she remained a slave, having already seen her three older sisters sold like cattle and lost forever.

Joe Alwyn plays Gideon Brodess, the eldest son of the family that owns her. They grew up together as childhood friends, and it becomes clear as he becomes the patriarch of the clan that Gideon harbors a twisted obsession with Harriet. Sensing what is to come, she escapes to Philadelphia and falls in with the abolitionist movement.

During her missions to retrieve more slaves, Harriet wears men’s clothing and sings out to them in a resonant voice, old hymns about the slaves throwing off the yoke of the Egyptian pharaohs. Soon there is a large reward on the head of “Moses,” as the slave hunters come to call her.

Lemmons and Erivo go beyond mere biography to delve into the soul of a woman who felt a calling, and claimed to commune with God. “Harriet” takes a two-dimensional legend and gives her breadth and depth.

Video bonus features are not expansive but are quite nice. There is a feature-length commentary track by Lemmons; deleted scenes: “Her Story,” about the three women filmmakers who were key to bringing this story to the screen; and “Becoming Harriet,” an in-depth look at how Erivo built this character.

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Review: "Harriet"

We have a tragic tendency to sanitize great American historical figures, usually to their benefit but mostly to our own detriment. The unwillingness to see George Washington or Thomas Jefferson as complete human beings seems to take one of two forms: deifying them to the point of absurdity or trying to hold their failings as evidence of utter moral decrepitude.

Harriet Tubman is ripe for reexamination as a complicated figure. Taught in the history books as a saintly lady who was a key “conductor” on the Underground Railroad bringing slaves to freedom, Tubman has been revealed in more recent scholarship as a rough, pistol-packing woman capable of great egotism and jealousy.

“Harriet” is the vibrant new cinematic portrait of Tubman played by relative unknown Cynthia Erivo, who won’t stay that way long. Director Kasi Lemmons (“Eve’s Bayou”), who also co-wrote the screenplay with Gregory Allen Howard, has delivered a bravura film that is part reverence, part religion-tinged redemption and part action/adventure.

It’s a compelling, complex biopic.

The story begins in 1849 Maryland, where Aramintra “Minty” Ross was born to slave parents held by the Brodess family, though her father (Clarke Peters) later earned his freedom. Minty was also allowed to marry another free black, John Tubman (a soulful Zackary Momoh), but remained in bondage after the patriarch of the slave owners died and the yoke passed to the spiteful son, Gideon Brodess (Joe Alwyn, utterly chilling).

The film actually follows the historical record pretty closely, with obvious fictionalized portions to fill in the gaps. So there are created figures like Walter (Henry Hunter Hall), a charming rapscallion slave tracker who walks the line between friend and foe, and the much scarier Bigger Long (Omar Dorsey), who seems to regard returning slaves to bondage as his personal calling.

Other aspects of the story that might seem like Hollywood hokum are actually part of the historical record. For example, that Minty was injured by a heavy object thrown by a master splitting her head open as a girl that left a dent in her forehead, and was prone to somnambulist spells the rest of her life where she would go into a daze.

It was during these times that Tubman claimed to commune with God. “The hole in my head just made God’s voice more clear,” she says.

Emotionally rent by already having three older sisters sold and lost to the family forever, Minty resolves not to let the same happen when Gideon means to sell her away down south. She runs away to Philadelphia, a harrowing journey assisted by kindly black preacher (Vondie Curtis-Hall) who cites Biblical scripture about slaves honoring their masters during the day but preaches a different tune when white folks aren’t around.

There she meets and allies with noted abolitionist William Still (Leslie Odom Jr.) and finds friendship with Marie Buchanan (Janelle Monáe), a sympathetic but privileged black hotelier.

The film’s strongest sections relate to Tubman’s escapades back to Maryland and other slaveholding states to rescue other slaves, her legend steadily growing. Because she dresses in a man’s clothing and sings hymns about slaves freeing themselves from the Egyptian pharaohs, she is given the name of Moses by the slave masters. For her part, Minty takes her husband’s last name and her mother’s first to form her own “free name.”

It’s a wonderful, rich story, and at the center of it all is Erivo as Harriet.

The actress plays her as a woman born to believe she is nothing, but her faith and resolve eventually force her to strive against a system that is evil and unjust. Especially haunting is the strange relationship she has with Gideon, who grew up with her as children and clearly covets her for more than her cash price.

She begins the film with eyes wide and fearful, and as time goes on her gaze gains a hard glint. The legend of Harriet Tubman has grown to titanic size, but “Harriet” shows the extraordinaire real woman who begat centuries of stories. This is one of the year's best films.