Film Review: Steve McQueen’s ‘Red, White And Blue’ Starring John Boyega

Steve McQueen helped raise the curtain on the 2020 BFI London Film Festival on Wednesday night, with his feature Mangrove — one of his five films in the BBC/Amazon Small Axe anthology — getting its European premiere in London and simultaneously across select cinemas around the U.K.

Jake Kanter International TV EditorIt’s been more than six years in the making, but Steve McQueen’s anthology drama Small Axe finally has a date for when it will land on British TV screens.The BBC has announced that it will premiere the five-part series on November 15 on BBC One and iPlayer.

Even without yet having seen all five of the original films in Steve McQueen's riveting Small Axe anthology for Amazon and BBC, which surveys two decades of West Indian experience in London, it seems appropriate that the series concludes with a story of Black resistance embodied in the determination of one idealistic man.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film CriticIn “Red, White and Blue,” the fifth and final film of Steve McQueen’s Small Axe anthology (and the third to be shown at this year’s New York Film Festival, after the lilting reggae house-party movie “Lovers Rock” and the wrenching social-protest courtroom drama “Mangrove”), Leroy Logan (John Boyega), a British research scientist, figures that he’s had enough of the lonely work of staring at tissue specimens through a microscope, so he decides to become a member

One of the great joys of the New York Film Festival has been watching Steve McQueen’s new film anthology “Small Axe.” Composed of five works set between the late-’60s and early-’80s, the two recently screened films — “Lovers Rock” and “Mangrove” — are intimate slices of life of a little-represented community, British Black folks from the West Indies, resiliently thriving amidst a racially hostile environment.

One of the great joys of the New York Film Festival has been watching Steve McQueen’s new film anthology “Small Axe.” Composed of five works set between the late-’60s and early-’80s, the two recently screened films — “Lovers Rock” and “Mangrove” — are intimate slices of life of a little-represented community, British Black folks from the West Indies, resiliently thriving amidst a racially hostile environment.

NEW YORK -- In a movie year mostly lacking big, ambitious releases, Steve McQueen’s “Small Axe” anthology is an unqualified main event. While many other filmmakers are on hold, the “12 Years a Slave” director has raced to finish not one but five new films.The movies, spanning 1968 to 1985, are each individual stories about the West Indian community in London.

Naman Ramachandran BBC Studios sells Steve McQueen’s “Small Axe”; ZDF commissions natural history series “Africa From Above”; “Married at First Sight” gets live wedding; ITV orders game-show format “Game of Talents”; travel format “Heads and Tails” goes to Spain; Jellyfish promotes Natalie Llewellyn; German Film Office opens in New York; and Monte-Carlo TV Festival sets 2021 dates.BBC Studios has secured several global pre-sales for Oscar, BAFTA and Golden Globe-winning filmmaker Steve McQueen‘

Jake Kanter International TV EditorBBC Studios has closed a raft of global deals for Steve McQueen’s hotly-anticipated anthology drama Small Axe, which will premiere on BBC One in the UK and Amazon in the U.S.Australia’s Foxtel, France’s Salto, Spain’s Movistar+, Russia’s KinoPoisk, and Greece’s Cosmote TV are among the territories to have picked up the show.

Steve McQueen's ravishing Lovers Rock summons a potent sense of a community gathering that caresses and cocoons those present, shutting out the hostilities of the city outside. The second movie to premiere at the New York Film Festival from the director's Small Axe anthology for Amazon and BBC, Mangrove, which is set a decade earlier, in 1968-70, shows how another regular gathering place for the same immigrant community provides a cherished home away from home.

A West Indian proverb holds, “If you are the big tree, we are the small axe.” “Lovers Rock,” the first film made available of Steve McQueen’s Amazon miniseries “Small Axe,” first interpreted the saying as a metaphor for the joyous spirit in the Black British community. But his newest installment, “Mangrove” swings a different emphasis on the rebellious phrase.

Todd McCarthy If Lovers Rock provided a sensuous, feel-good vibe to the opening night of this year’s unusual New York Film Festival, Mangrove supplies a follow-up thwack to the head and punch to the gut.

Peter Debruge Chief Film CriticAsk yourself: What do the words “Black Power” signify to you? That’s the question several of the Mangrove Nine — nine Black activists arrested when a public demonstration against London police harassment on Aug. 9, 1970 devolved into an incendiary example of the very thing they were protesting — put to each and every one of the potential jurors in what would prove to be a landmark civil rights trial.

Today show kept calling to ask if I would consider coming on as a correspondent.For many months, the answer was a firm no. The press were not my friends.

Naman Ramachandran Spanish auteur Pedro Almodóvar’s English-language debut “The Human Voice” and British artist Steve McQueen’s “Lovers Rock” have been added to the British Film Institute London Film Festival.Almodovar’s short, loosely based on Jean Cocteau’s play, presents a woman on the edge portrayed by Tilda Swinton, who is waiting for her lover to call. It will play in the festival’s shorts program, and screen at BFI Southbank on Oct.

Also Read: 'One Night in Miami': Regina King Opens Up About Directing 4 Men Portraying Real-Life Icons (Video)Boyega and Wright’s entries were featured at this year’s New York Film Festival, which was held virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“If you are the big tree, we are the small axe,” states a Jamaican proverb, inspiring the title of “Small Axe”, an upcoming anthology series from director Steve McQueen for Amazon Prime Video.

“If you are the big tree, we are the small axe,” this is the Jamaican proverb that has inspired filmmaker Steve McQueen‘s, “Small Axe,” a collection of five films inspired by real-life events about ordinary people showing courage, belief, and resilience to overcome injustice and achieve something transformative in their West Indian community.

Earlier in the week, the 2020 incarnation of the New York Film Festival got underway officially, with one part of Steve McQueen’s Small Axe anthology, Lovers Rock, serving as the Opening Night Selection. Having seen it, the movie serves as both a strong start for NYFF this year, as well as a smaller and far less awards friendly selection.

Greg Evans Associate Editor/Broadway CriticBritish perfumer Jo Malone has slammed her namesake former company for its treatment of John Boyega, the Star Wars actor who resigned this week as the brand’s global “ambassador.”“I am so horrified and disgusted about what has been done to John,” Malone said today on UK’s ITV program Lorraine. “How dare somebody treat him [like that], and he finds out he is replaced on social media?…They never spoke to him.