'Alex Wheatle': Film Review

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic“Education.” That’s as good a title as any for the final episode of Steve McQueen’s “Small Axe” project — a series of five features, some little more than an hour, designed to educate and inform audiences about the experience of London’s West Indian immigrant population, about the expectations of assimilation raised by a white-majority country and the obstacles such a society puts in the way of that goal.To get the picture, audiences needn’t see every entry of

Heat magazine, she said she reckons she is the only celebrity contestant to put on weight while taking part in the show. She explained: 'It's weird.

Naman Ramachandran India has the highest consumption of films on Netflix globally. During 2020, 80% of subscribers in the country chose to watch a film every week, revealed Monika Shergill, VP, content, Netflix India.The information is part of year end viewership data that Netflix has published for several territories across the Asia region.

As the title suggests, the documentary “Queer Japan” is big and broad, not focused.

In his nearly 1,500-page post-Partition epic A Suitable Boy, one of the longest novels in the English language, author Vikram Seth weaves the stories of two upper-middle-class North Indian families navigating ardor, marital negotiations and politicized religious conflict as their newly independent nation sloughs off the stink of colonial British rule.

Your heart sinks toward the end of Education when you learn that a weary West Indian mother's appeal for a fair deal for her son must go through the recently appointed Secretary of State for Education and Science, Margaret Thatcher. Though that was the early 1970s, before the Iron Lady rose to power as U.K.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefIndian drama film “Milestone” (aka “Meel Patthar”) was named the best film at the Silver Screen Awards, the closing event of the Singapore International Film Festival. The festival is a cornerstone of the Singapore Media Festival consumer and industry event.Directed by Ivan Ayr, “Milestone” recounts the foretaste of doom that follows a veteran truck driver when his vehicle passes half a million kilometers and he is asked to train a younger operator.

Jamie Lang In today’s Global Bulletin, the European Film Awards detail this year’s special five-day virtual ceremony, the Spain Film Commission extends an invitation to international productions, ITV Studios sells more than 300 hours of content in India and the National Lottery announces a special Pantoland performance for key workers.AWARDSThe 2020 European Film Awards have announced measures to host a COVID-19 era edition, “The EFAs at Eight,” including a series of live-streamed virtual

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film CriticIn “Alex Wheatle,” the fourth of Steve McQueen’s Small Axe films, we meet a young man who seems, quite literally, to have come from nothing. Alex (Sheyi Cole), born to Jamaican parents in 1963, was abandoned by his mother, and his father gave him over to the British social-services bureaucracy — which means that he grows up, in essence, as a Dickensian orphan.

One of 2020’s few joys has been Steve McQueen’s Amazon anthology “Small Axe,” a series telling, in some instances for the first time, the stories of the Black Brits who faced oppression during the ’60s and ’70s. While “Mangrove” touted empowerment through self-representation, “Lovers Rock” through music, and “Red, White and Blue” through reform from within, “Alex Wheatle” calls for literature as a gateway to freedom.

This late fall has been a treat because we’ve received a new Steve McQueen (“12 Years A Slave,” “Widows“) week every week for the last three weeks; when does that happen? And they are all part of McQueen’s new five-film anthology series, “Small Axe,” based on the Jamaican proverb, “If you are the big tree, we are the small axe.” Three films have debuted at the New York Film Festival earlier this fall, and those three have now aired on Amazon Prime Video.

Watch Video: 'Small Axe' Trailer: John Boyega, Letitia Wright Tackle London Racism in Anthology SeriesWhen Alex arrives in Brixton, he’s a fish out of water in the neighborhood; neighbor Dennis (Jonathan Jules, “Fighting With My Family”) takes it upon himself to fix Alex’s wardrobe, hair and inability to speak the Jamaican dialect. “I’m not African,” Alex tells the barber who has referred to him as such.

With the arrival of Alex Wheatle, the fourth of five installments that make up Small Axe, Steve McQueen’s adamant and penetrating series of roughly hourlong dramas centering on the Black immigrant community experience in post-World War II Britain, the emerging core concern is the hypocrisy involved in the nation laying out the welcome mat to newcomers in the first place while denying opportunity once they’ve arrived.

Joe Leydon Film CriticMore than two years after filming wrapped, “Superintelligence” the latest joint effort of Melissa McCarthy and her director husband Ben Falcone, has finally popped up on a streaming platform — specifically, HBO Max — which arguably is the natural habitat for a lightweight, undemandingly engaging comedy that can be enjoyed either entirely in one sitting, or sporadically in bite-sized chunks.

Black Friday. But November is also Native American Heritage Month, and it's important not to let this annual celebration get overshadowed by all of the turkey and shopping.So, what happens during Native American Heritage Month? Also known as American Indian and Alaska Native Heritage Month, these 30 days are dedicated to recognizing the resilience, rich history and countless contributions of Native Americans across the country.

Also Read: See Johnny Flynn as David Bowie in First Look at Unauthorized Biopic 'Stardust'For better and for worse, “Stardust” grapples with those issues as it follows a 24-year-old Bowie on a promotional tour through the United States in 1971, accompanied by a long-suffering Mercury Records publicist named Ron Oberman.Johnny Flynn plays Bowie, Marc Maron plays Oberman, and the point of director and cowriter Gabriel Range’s film is to trace the seeds of Bowie’s breakthrough character, Ziggy

Bill Murray and his family are in mourning. The actor's eldest brother, Ed, has died.«It’s with the heaviest of hearts that we announce the passing of the legend Ed Murray,» read an announcement posted to Instagram by his apparel company, William Murray Golf.«Named after the family patriarch, it was Ed who introduced the Murray family to this wonderful game of golf—by way of caddying at Indian Hills Country Club—at the age of 10, no less.