Author Archive: Elaine Hegwood Bowen
Elaine Hegwood Bowen is an editor, writer and film critic in Chicago. She is the proud parent of "the smart rapper"--chemist-turned-rapper, Psalm One!
Yelling to the Sky
Yelling to the Sky is a bad girl movie that brings together two biracial sisters, one of whom catches hell at home from her white father and also at school, as she is bullied on a daily basis. Their mother, played by Yolonda Ross, also is verbally and physically abused by the father played by [...]
Django Unchained
I am having a hard time with Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained, the latest movie by the famed director starring Jamie Foxx as Django, Kerry Washington, Christoph Waltz , Leonard DiCaprio and, of course, Samuel L. Jackson. I am trying to view it as a love story, set in slavery times. But the movie is so [...]
The Central Park Five
A new documentary from award-winning filmmaker Ken Burns is now playing in limited release. The Central Park Five chronicles the events of April 19, 1989, in New York when five black and Latino teenagers from Harlem (Raymond Santana, 14, Kevin Richardson, 14, Steve Lopez, 15, Antron McCray, 15, Yusef Salaam, 15, and Kharey Wise, 16) were arrested [...]
Celebrity Trials in the Media
Celebrity Trials in the Media analyzes famous trials of the last few decades, or at least trials that were made famous by the media frenzy surrounding them. One case covered is the 2004 Kobe Bryant sexual assault trial, which ended after 14 months with no trial at all—the trial was dismissed because the woman involved [...]
The Heart of Christmas
The Heart of Christmas is an uplifting story about a family who is facing the worst condition imaginable—their young son has been diagnosed with cancer. As they look for help, they find much support in other families faced with the same circumstances at the hospital where they have sought treatment. They also have found a [...]
Lemon
“So watch me be the artist who was born readymade. Watch me take my lemons and make the best goddamn lemonade.” These words, from the staged memoir County of Kings captures the essence of Lemon Anderson’s life, and frame the award-winning documentary Lemon, about the Brooklyn-born poet and playwright. After leaving Rikers Island, Anderson discovers [...]
30 Beats
30 Beats is set in Manhattan and follows a group of New Yorkers, whose lives are intertwined through different sexual experiences. This all happens during a summer heat wave, which seems simple enough. What better thing to engage in during a hot spell than sex? The characters run the gamut of professions or descriptions—the virgin, [...]
Peace, Love and Misunderstanding
Peace, Love and Misunderstanding is a story of three generations coming together because of an impending divorce with a mother of two teens who hasn’t seen her mother in more than a decade. Jane Fonda plays Grace, the pot-smoking, animal loving, stuck-in-the-hippies era grandmother, and Catherine Kenner plays Dianne, who has recently learned that her [...]
Katt Williams: Kattpacalypse
Katt Williams: Kattpacalypse is an hour’s worth of Katt Williams’ acerbic comedy with him taking stabs at President Obama, who is just another (insert “N” word here) as far as Williams is concerned. He submits that white America also forgot that Obama is biracial, so when they call for him to react like a black man [...]
Won’t Back Down
Won’t Back Down is an energizing movie about an unlikely pair who band together to gain support for taking over a school that has been struggling for years. Many of the teachers have become complacent, and the students just aren’t pushed to their true potentials. One parent, Jamie, played by Maggie Gyllenhaal, is a single [...]
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