REVIEW: The Rape of Recy Taylor [2017]

They thought the black woman’s body didn’t belong to her. You may not know the name Recy Taylor, but you’ve definitely heard her story. It’s one of rape, lies, and cover-ups. It’s one of irreparable physical and psychological damage that still affects her family more than seventy years later. And it’s also one about a woman her refused to be silenced, who came home the night of September 3, 1944 to tell her father and husband everything about the six men that brutalized her. She was twenty-four at the time,…

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REVIEW: Loving [2016]

“You need to get you some civil rights” It took one viewing of Nancy Buirski‘s documentary The Loving Story to recruit Jeff Nichols into writing and directing a biopic of Richard (Joel Edgerton) and Mildred Loving’s (Ruth Negga) journey from newlyweds to Supreme Court precedent. But don’t think Loving is a courtroom drama. I’d estimate about ten minutes of its two-hour runtime take place inside a courthouse—fifteen if you count conversations outside its doors. Nichols instead decides to focus on the couple itself by creating a romantic example of a…

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