Harriet

Grade: C

With her new film Harriet, director Kasi Lemmons (Eve’s Bayou, The Caveman’s Valentine) has assembled a cast full of mostly unknowns, and a few interesting and talented people sprinkled in. This tells the story of Harriet Tubman, starring Best Actress Oscar nominee Cynthia Erivo, who has a beautiful singing voice. The names I recognized in the cast include Janelle Monae, Vondie Curtis-Hall (who directed a film from the 90’s I admired very much called Gridlock’d, starring Tim Roth and Tupac Shakur), and Jennifer Nettles (from the country group Sugarland). English actor Joe Alwyn is a “highlight” – if you can call it that – as a stern, acidic slave owner.

Lemmons mentioned in various press events and in a Q&A that she wanted to make a “freedom film,” rather than a “slavery movie.” For this reason, there isn’t much violence toward slaves in the film. Certainly not compared to Glory and 12 Years a Slave. Harriet, the movie, is decent for the kind of thing they’d make you watch in school, but beyond that, it never really took off for me. When going through the list of movies I need to see before the Oscars every year, there are some that I’m not anticipating with excitement – that I’m looking forward to getting out of the way so I can cross it off the list and move on. Sometimes I get surprised by how much I end up loving a particular movie, like what happened with Hacksaw Ridge. And then there’s times, like now, where my reaction is exactly what I’d expected.

Grade: C