Summer of Soul (PG-13)
Questlove (billed here as Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson) directs this documentary/concert film about the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, a series of awesome concerts that took place in a park in Harlem. The concerts were free and, based on the crowd shots throughout the footage of the concerts, they brought in an audience of all ages from the surrounding community of Black and Latin American neighborhoods — we see little kids next to parents, teens and 20-somethings, middle-aged people and older concertgoers. The music reflects this too, with performances of soul, blues, gospel, funk, jazz, Afro-Latin music, African music, pop and Motown. In addition to these performances, the documentary gives us interviews with some of the artists who performed, their kids, concertgoers, music fans (including Chris Rock and Lin-Manuel Miranda and his father, Luis Miranda) and those with insight on how the concerts were put together.
Perhaps the most shocking element of this knock-out collection of talent under one performance umbrella is that the series was filmed but then sat, unsold, even after a promoter went out trying to pitch it as the “Black Woodstock.” This movie starts to right that cultural wrong, which also puts the concert in the political context of the time.
Thank you, Questlove, for bringing Summer of Soul (…Or When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised) to a wide audience. Now please find a way to release an extended soundtrack album. A+ Available on Hulu and in theaters.
Dream Horse (PG)
Toni Collette, Damian Lewis.
If your initial response to this movie was sort of “meh, horse movie,” the better bucket to put it in would be the one with Calendar Girls, Full Monty and 2020’s Military Wives: Plucky U.K. community rallies around underdog competitor in whatever — in this case, it’s a town in Wales and the competitor is a racehorse owned by a syndicate of locals. Dream Alliance, as they call the horse, is cared for by Jan Vokes (Toni Collette) and her husband, called Daisy (Owen Teale), after it is born. Jan was the one who had the idea to buy a mare, hire the stud services of a much-lauded racehorse and pay for it all with a group of owners including her boss at the pub where she works, a coworker at the supermarket where she also works and others in her town. Howard (Lewis), a local accountant who was burned by syndicate horse ownership once before, is nonetheless interested in getting back in the game — even if he’s promised his wife he won’t do it again.
This just-folks group of owners find themselves dealing in the upper-crust world of horse racing and racehorse ownership, with other owners seeming to look down their noses at the group and even the trainer initially uninterested in working with them. But, of course, who doesn’t love an underdog — when Dream Alliance starts to win, the horse and the group become The Story in local races.
This is a perfectly fine movie for family movie night (assuming an audience of probably about 10 or 12 or so and up; old enough to get enough of the comedy and to be excited and not bored by the talking and the races). I think I’d heard about this movie most in reference to its being one of the first movies that film reviewers and other pop culture commentator types saw back in theaters, and this feels like the kind of movie that you might meet up with multi-generations of the family to see. It’s pleasant — well-crafted enough and with overall solid performances such that you won’t find yourself picking at flaws, but not particularly taxing in any way. These are amiable people to spend time with and the story is just charming and uplifting enough. B In theaters and available to rent or own.