Film Previews

“Till”

PG-13 | 130 minutes
Director: Chinonye Chukwu
Stars: Danielle Deadwyler, Jalyn Hall, Frankie Faison

“Till” focuses on the 1955 killing of a Black teenager as well as his mother’s subsequent efforts to publicize the case and get justice for her son. 

“Till” takes its inspiration from the real-life story of Emmett Till, whose 1955 murder was a major cause for the American Civil Rights movement. In 1955, this 14-year-old Chicagoan was visiting his cousins in Mississippi when he was accused of flirting with a white woman and subsequently brutally killed. After his murderers were subsequently acquitted, Till’s mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, worked tirelessly to publicize her son’s story and bring about social change. Mamie’s decision to have an open casket at Emmett’s funeral, and to have Jet magazine publish David Jackson’s funeral photos, was driven by her motivation to ensure people everywhere knew what had happened to her son.

“Empire of Light”

R | 119 minutes
Director/Writer: Sam Mendes
Stars: Olivia Colman, Colin Firth, Ron Cook

The Empire is the kind of movie house you don’t see too often anymore, framed by bright lights and a beautiful marquee, graciously inviting all into its red-velvet seats. Hilary (Olivia Colman) serves at the front of house, opening the theater every morning and overseeing a brimming concession stand. Meanwhile, her manager (Colin Firth) calls her into his office from time to time for illicit favors. It’s a gloomy routine that Hilary grudgingly repeats, but all her co-workers recognize that she’s been a lot quieter since returning to the job after a long absence.

When Stephen (Michael Ward) arrives as an eager new employee, the two form a quick, if outwardly unlikely, connection. Hilary hides a troubled past, struggling to manage her mental health, while Stephen, a young Black man, grapples with the racism rampant in 1980s Britain. Both wounded by aggressions outside their control, they find an escape and safe harbor in one another — but their relationship, like the Empire cinema itself, cannot last forever, and soon the pair must face the reality of their differing futures.

“Armageddon Time”

R | 115 minutes
Director/Writer: James Gray
Stars: Anne Hathaway, Jeremy Strong, Banks Repeta

On its surface, “Armageddon Time” is the unsparingly well-remembered story of a pre-pubescent Jewish boy named Paul Graff (Banks Repeta), the slightly older Black kid he meets on the first day of school in September 1980 (Jaylin Webb plays second-time sixth-grader Johnny Davis), and the semi-guileless friendship these two space cadets form on the strength of their mutual interests: rocket ships and messing with their racist homeroom teacher. It’s a story about the invisible fault lines of inequality, the moral compromises demanded by the American Dream, and the very practical ways in which remembering the past can be the only legitimate defense against the social forces that keep trying to repackage it as a vision of the future. ♦