ANIKULAPO (2022) is a Nigerian period drama steeped in Yoruba culture and rich in African charm, offering a cautionary tale about desire and hubris. Overall, I liked it but had issues with the pacing and long runtime.

The film is framed as an epic, and it has a strong mythic quality in its simple storytelling and characters driven by primal desires. In what I’m guessing is the 1800s, Saro, a wandering weaver, arrives at the village of Oyo to make his fortune. Just when he really starts to make it, he elopes with Arolake, one of the king’s wives, who is suffering at the palace due to the jealousy of the other queens in the harem. Captured, he is beaten but it given a second chance at life due to a magical gourd that in turn gives him the power to raise the dead. Despite his second chance at life, this power may be his downfall.

There’s a lot to like here. The simple mythic quality, the magical element, the culture, the terrific sets and costumes, and the likeable couple of Saro and Arolake, it’s all terrific stuff. Where it sagged for me was in the pacing and a little in the characterization. The characters pretty much all talk and act like children swept by their desires, they have conversations taking a long time that in Western culture would only take a few minutes, and because it’s very simple to guess where the plot is going, the nearly two-hour runtime feels a lot longer.

Nonetheless, I enjoyed it for its positive qualities and the sheer novelty of it. I’d love to see more like it for sure. The movie is being marketed as GAME OF THRONES set in historical Africa, and it came nowhere near that for me, but goddamn, wouldn’t that be awesome if somebody did make that?

RRR (2022) is a face smash of a movie, so over the top in action, Indian nationalism, and melodrama it rings out like a unique Indian live-action take on Japanese anime. Despite its three-hour runtime, it’s a load of good fun if you don’t take it seriously and just let it wash over you like a force of nature.

The movie basically reimagines the lives of two real-life revolutionaries who lived in the days of colonial India. After the tyrannical British Raj and his bloodthirsty wife essentially kidnap a girl from the Gond forest people to keep as a servant, the villagers call on Bheem, the tribal guardian, to save her. Standing in his way is the British Army and worse, an Indian police inspector named Raju who will do anything to advance, though his true agenda is yet to be revealed. These men meet without knowing the true identity of the other and quickly become the deepest of friends, only to realize they’re enemies. Will friendship come first or each man’s separate duty?

Oh, man. From the musically charged rampages to the comically inept British infantry to Bheem basically throwing tigers at people, the action is laugh out loud over the top but in a good way, it’s really good fun. These men are basically superheroes, unstoppable forces of nature–Raju fire, Bheem water–and woe to the unjust who stand in their way. The two lead actors (N. T. Rama Rao Jr. and Ram Charan, who sports one of film’s most awesome mustaches) are insanely talented, jacks of all trades pulling off everything they were tasked to do and then some with plenty of heart. I loved seeing Ray Stevenson, who played Pullo in ROME, as the villainous Raj. Throw in terrific special effects, a few song and dance numbers, and plenty of soaring Indian nationalism, and that’s pretty much it. If you just run with it, odds are you’ll have loads of fun.

I did find one thing odd as a Westerner, which was seeing one of the leads often bobble his head. This was a trait I’d always associated with silly old movie stereotypes, and here it was being played straight. I looked it up, and apparently it’s a very common gesture in India, signaling either agreement or very mild disagreement. Anyway, the more you know.

Overall, while Indian cinema isn’t normally my thing, I found RRR to be incredibly accessible and fun.

Written and directed by Kenneth Branagh, BELFAST (2021) is a heartfelt coming of age story about the meaning of home in times of turmoil. I liked it a lot despite its flaws, notably Branagh periodically overplaying his directing chops.

Lovingly shot in black and white, the film, apparently based roughly on Branagh’s childhood in the northern Irish city of Belfast, is about a nine-year-old boy named Buddy who lives with his working class family. (For this, BELFAST feels a bit like Branagh’s answer to Alfonso Cuarón’s also-excellent ROMA.) Through Buddy’s eyes, we see the Troubles starting with August 1969 riot, where nationalists and unionists clashed on the streets.

As the civil strife increases and the British Army moves in, life becomes more and more precarious and Buddy, trying to live a happy childhood, faces the prospect of having to leave. Belfast is home for him, where he has friends and everybody knows and loves him. But as Belfast is becoming increasingly unsafe, he learns his real home is with his family.

As far as family drama goes, everything is here: beautiful cinematography, rousing music of the era, lovable characters played by stellar actors, and love and death. The storytelling is by turns humorous and heartfelt and menacing, and one can see how personal this work was to Branagh, particularly when the only moments in color are films and plays Buddy watches, which offer an escape from his life’s challenges and we know will become a life’s passion for him.

The only trick is this is a story told through largely through a nine-year-old’s eyes, and what we see sometimes feels a bit too much childlike. This sets up the unionists as stock villains with a final showdown that was a bit out there for me. For the real story of the Troubles, there are many historical sources that reveal exactly what a big mess it all was.

Overall, BELFAST is good stuff, its art a bit over baked and its personification of the era a bit too simplistic, but solid drama nonetheless, pulled by terrific characters and acting.

Based on the nonfiction book of the same title by Justin Fenton and written and developed by George Pelecanos and David Simon, one of the creators of the seminal HBO series THE WIRE, WE OWN THIS CITY is a miniseries that acts a spiritual sequel THE WIRE. It’s powerful, thoughtful, heartbreaking, and all too real.

Told non-linearly in time in six parts, WE OWN THIS CITY is based on the shocking true story of a plainclothes police unit in Baltimore that ended up becoming as bad if not worse than the criminals they were policing. Played by a terrific ensemble cast with numerous familiar faces from THE WIRE, the many characters include police officers, a Department of Justice civil rights team negotiating an oversight deal with the city to help it clean up its police department, the powerless police commissioner, and the FBI agents bringing the rogue police unit down.

I’m a sucker for institutional conflict and drama, where an institution’s problems and contradictions are brought to light via storytelling. An example is TRAFFIC, which examined the drug war. WE OWN THIS CITY similarly shows how the contradictions and defects in Baltimore’s police department produced the Gun Trace Task Force, which for years operated with impunity, robbing drug dealers and honest citizens, planting evidence to cover up mistakes, and eventually selling drugs themselves. The show makes the case that the problem with the War on Drugs is thinking of it as a war, resulting in mass incarcerations, the militarization of police departments, ignoring Constitutional search and seizure protections, and broken trust between police and the communities they serve.

Through this lens, we get all sides: the pain of the community that feels oppressed by an occupying force, the police who feel overburdened and under siege, the politicians in a broke city who can’t fix institutional problems. On the police side, we’re largely given the point of view of Jenkins, played by Jon Bernthal. I like Bernthal a lot but think he works too hard to chew the scenery; I have to say, though, he was born for this role. Through flashbacks, we see how the system shaped Jenkins to become the cop and criminal he is. In a fascinating bit of characterization delivered by real life, Jenkins believes he’s untouchable because he’s a super cop who delivers results, results that also give him a free pass to do whatever he wants. In his view, he may steal, frame, and sell drugs, but he’s not a “dirty” cop, which to him means being an inherently bad person.

On the downside, the storytelling convention of flipping around in time easily got confusing for me. Things are happening on multiple timelines, and I found it hard to keep track of what was happening when.

In the end, it’s a small criticism. Overall, I loved WE OWN THIS CITY and hope we get more like it.