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!
Small, Beautifully Moving Parts
Small, Beautifully Moving Parts is a funny—yet serious—story about a young woman who would rather play with her i-Pad than plan on the upcoming delivery of her new baby. But once it all sets in that she is, indeed, expecting, she feels a need to re-connect with her parents—a mother whom she hasn’t seen or [...]
For One Night
For One Night is a movie that shows the ugly head of racism, when it should really be a time when all students are allowed to have fun during the night of a lifetime—at their senior prom. But such is not the case for this “one night,” where we have a movie that was inspired [...]
Girl in Progress
There have been many movies where there’s a bunch of teen angst–either the young boy is upset and rebels against his father, or the young teen girl figures she knows everything, and her mom can’t tell her how to live her life. Girl in Progress is a movie, also, about teen angst, and the young [...]
Red Hook Summer
Veteran director Spike Lee’s new movie Red Hook Summer is (A): A coming-of-age story about a young, black, middle-class boy from Atlanta who calls himself Flik; (B): Lee’s thrashing of black folks about their social and cultural shortcomings or (C): Lee’s campaign platform and speech were he to run for public office. No matter what [...]
Sparkle
The movie that Whitney Houston fans everywhere have been waiting for is now playing in wide release. Sparkle is another movie about a girl group who just happens to live in Detroit and who aspire for the big time in the music field. It is a remake of the original 1976 film starring Lonette McGee, [...]
We Women Warriors (Tejiendo sabiduria)
We Women Warriors (Tejiendo sabiduria) is an independent documentary about three women striving and surviving in Colombia the best way they know how. Amid a war between insurgents, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia (FARC), and local armed forces, the three women highlighted in this documentary figure there must be a better way of life. [...]
Marley
Marley is the definitive documentary of the late Reggae star Bob Marley, whose life began amid a humble, poverty-stricken, farming environment in 1945 in Jamaica. But in the midst of these shortcomings, Bob became the “architect” of Reggae music. The documentary, which is well written and provides an exhaustive look into the musician, revolutionary, legend, and [...]
After the Wizard
Everyone is familiar with the film The Wizard of Oz and Dorothy and Toto and her three friends. It is a story from writer L. Frank Baum that has delighted generations of viewers, again and again. It has gone from plain black and white to amazing Technicolor. Well, the new film After the Wizard, which [...]
Brake
Secret Service agent Jeremy Reins, played by Stephen Dorff, has his work cut out for him in the movie Brake. He has been working detail protecting the President of the United States, but now he finds himself trapped in a clear box, which has been stuffed into the trunk of a car. He doesn’t quite know how he [...]
The Beat Hotel
The Beat Hotel is a documentary about a time during the mid to late 1950’s when many members of American intelligentsia lived in too tight confines in a walk-up hotel in the Latin Quarter of Paris. But with struggle and sacrifice came great artistic and cultural works, which are very much pertinent even during the first [...]
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