PAGE 20 • GO! MAGAZINE
Thursday, February 4, 2021 • The buLLeTIN
MOVIES & SHOWTIMES
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Kick off Black History Month with biopics,
documentaries about prominent Black figures
BY MAKENZIE WHITTLE • The Bulletin
T
hroughout the month of February, the listicles in the GO! Watch
section will be filled with films written or directed by or heavily
feature Black actors in lead roles. While some have probably
already appeared in lists, and no doubt a few will make their way on to
others, these stories should be looked at throughout the year and not just for
one month.
Warner Bros. photos
Denzel Washington stars in “Malcolm X” (1992).
BELOW: Chadwick Boseman in a scene from “42” (2013).
This is a cinema section that many white
audiences have neglected to immerse them-
selves in either for lack of enthusiasm or
simply lack of awareness. This reporter
is no different, and it is something
that I am consciously reme-
dying to the point where it
will no longer be a con-
scious effort. These are
beautiful, important
stories that deserve a
wider audience recog-
nition and luckily Hol-
lywood is on a course
to promote more films
like these into more
awareness. This week’s list
will focus on biopics and
documentaries on real figures
in Black history.
”42” (2013) — Chadwick Boseman could
have appeared on this list three times be-
cause in his short career he played three
greats in Black history including James
Brown (“Get On Up”) and Thurgood Mar-
shall (“Marshall). In “42” he takes the role of
color line breaker Jackie Robinson as he is
recruited for the Brooklyn Dodgers by man-
ager Branch Rickey (Harrison Ford). The
film itself is sentimental and hits all those
notes that biopics about Black people
usually do but it’s Boseman’s per-
formance that knocks it out
of the park. Rent it on Am-
azon Prime, Google Play,
iTunes, Vudu and You-
Tube.
”Hidden Figures”
(2016) — While the
film does have at least
one scene of white sav-
iorism (which never
actually happened), the
remainder of the film
centers around the three
Black women NASA mathe-
maticians during the early years
of the U.S. space program. The three leads
— Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer and
Janelle Monae — capture the emotions of
these three women beautifully. The over-
all film, while not entirely groundbreaking,
still resonates by bringing attention to these
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