‘The Invitation’ Film Review: Nathalie Emmanuel Can’t Save Cliched Take on Socially Conscious Horror
If the mostly by-the-numbers plot of “The Invitation,” and its eventual ridiculous twist, is tolerable at all, it’s due to the effortless effervescence that star Nathalie Emmanuel lends to this modern-day horror with gothic embellishments, as a mix-raced woman barely getting by in NYC who gets to live a British royal fantasy until it turns into a literal bloody mess.
Invoking “Twilight” and “Beauty and the Beast” with watered-down hints of “Crimson Peak,” the new feature from director Jessica M. Thompson (“The Light of the Moon”) opens with a suicide scene that insinuates the timelessness of its story. It’s here that its efforts to misdirect the audience about the type of supernatural entity we are dealing with begin.
In a more recognizable present, Evie (Emmanuel), a ceramics artist that stays afloat through catering jobs, takes a DNA test that connects her with a (white) cousin in England, Oliver...
Invoking “Twilight” and “Beauty and the Beast” with watered-down hints of “Crimson Peak,” the new feature from director Jessica M. Thompson (“The Light of the Moon”) opens with a suicide scene that insinuates the timelessness of its story. It’s here that its efforts to misdirect the audience about the type of supernatural entity we are dealing with begin.
In a more recognizable present, Evie (Emmanuel), a ceramics artist that stays afloat through catering jobs, takes a DNA test that connects her with a (white) cousin in England, Oliver...
- 8/26/2022
- by Carlos Aguilar
- The Wrap
Chicago – The City of Chicago, like a number of American cities, has gone through incredible transformations in the last 25 years. Whole neighborhoods left for dead during the white flight of the 1950s-70s have been gentrified and re-settled with luxury housing … often to the detriment of those who remained there throughout many difficult years. One such case was the National Teachers Academy (Nta) a high performing grade school mostly attended by the South Loop neighborhood children of color. How the city wanted to repurpose it is chronicled in the documentary “Let the Little Light Shine” by filmmaker Kevin Shaw.
Rating: 4.0/5.0
The South Loop neighborhood, in the last 15 years or so, has had a proliferation of wealthier “settlers” in its environs – due to its close access to downtown – and the new neighbors have petitioned for a high school. The city wanted to close the relatively new infrastructure of Nta to accommodate this request,...
Rating: 4.0/5.0
The South Loop neighborhood, in the last 15 years or so, has had a proliferation of wealthier “settlers” in its environs – due to its close access to downtown – and the new neighbors have petitioned for a high school. The city wanted to close the relatively new infrastructure of Nta to accommodate this request,...
- 8/15/2022
- by [email protected] (Adam Fendelman)
- HollywoodChicago.com
In Let the Little Light Shine, a high-achieving Black school in Chicago’s South Side fights the tide of gentrification
There’s a moment early in Let the Little Light Shine, a riveting documentary on one community’s fight to preserve their grade school, when it becomes clear that Chicago’s National Teachers Academy is no ordinary place.
It’s a school assembly, and the students – overwhelmingly Black and brown children from the city’s South Side, kindergarten through eighth grade – pack benches in the cafeteria. Two of the older students perform a welcome march; the trombonist plays fine, but the clarinetist is wildly squeaky, every note off. You would expect his peers to laugh – middle school is not renowned for being a forgiving place. But the students are quiet. When the music teacher asks the clarinetist to try again, they clap in encouragement. After another squeaky run-through, the principal...
There’s a moment early in Let the Little Light Shine, a riveting documentary on one community’s fight to preserve their grade school, when it becomes clear that Chicago’s National Teachers Academy is no ordinary place.
It’s a school assembly, and the students – overwhelmingly Black and brown children from the city’s South Side, kindergarten through eighth grade – pack benches in the cafeteria. Two of the older students perform a welcome march; the trombonist plays fine, but the clarinetist is wildly squeaky, every note off. You would expect his peers to laugh – middle school is not renowned for being a forgiving place. But the students are quiet. When the music teacher asks the clarinetist to try again, they clap in encouragement. After another squeaky run-through, the principal...
- 8/15/2022
- by Adrian Horton
- The Guardian - Film News
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