Till

Any last words, Emmet Till? If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine. Oh my god theyre beating him with an Oscar. This story needs to always be told, disgusting people. It wasn't even that long ago, the South is fucked. There is some bad CGI in this (no, Emmet Till isn't a tennis ball taped to a stick, but like a train pulling away)

For the second time, a film by Chukwu is denied a deserving Best Actress nomination. While this reverential biopic of Mamie Till-Bradley, a leading figure in the early civil rights movement after the horrific murder of her son, follows patterns familiar to true-life dramas, it features a performance of grace and power by Deadwyler, who never misses a beat or slips into melodrama. The supporting cast is also fine, with Thompson particularly notable. Routine, but impossible not to be moved.

An outstanding central performance of a mother’s journey through grief into political awareness and a relevant, important subject matter that gets you thinking-but as a whole the film plays it fairly safe.

The movie plays out a bit conventionally and doesn't take many risks artistically I would say, but the power of the story and the combined importance of the real life characters depicted still ring through. Danielle Deadwyler turns in an emotionally draining performance and I did like how the film focused more on the effect of the trial. That Emmett's killers would go free was an inevitability in 1950's Mississippi, but the aftermath is what became vital and I felt the film did that justice.

This was a long, boring, drawn out, one-note film. It's a 2 hour 10 minute close-up of a grieving woman at a wake. On the plus side, this movie is very historically accurate, but I got much more out of the PBS "American Experience" doc.