THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 2021 • THE BULLETIN
GO! MAGAZINE • PAGE 19
MOVIES & SHOWTIMES
bendbulletin.com/gowatch
TEACHABLE MOMENTS IN FILM
BY MAKENZIE WHITTLE • The Bulletin
W
e often learn from movies. They can give you information about a story you never knew before, or a tiny morsel of truth that piques your interest in a
subject encouraging you to learn more. Whatever it is that makes you learn something, films and art in general can offer teachable moments to those
who view it in the simplest ways possible. But even better than that is when a character realizes something new and grows from it and we the audience
are taken along for a ride. This is the third week of Black History Month, so it’s only fitting that the list of teachable moments in film highlights Black stories and
moments in history.
with all the hard truths usually seen in a Lee
film, “Chi-Raq” may not be his best, but is
still worth the watch. Stream it on Ama-
zon Prime or rent it on Google Play, iTunes,
Vudu or YouTube.
“Just Mercy” (2019) — Based on the true
Amazon Studios
Teyonah Parris in a scene from “Chi-Raq” (2015).
“Best of Enemies” (2019) — While it’s
overly simplistic, the surprisingly true story
about the desegregation of Durham North
Carolina schools in 1971 is thought-pro-
voking. It follows the lives of C.P. Ellis (Sam
Rockwell), the leader of the local Ku Klux
Klan chapter, and Ann Atwater (Taraji P.
Henson), a Black civil rights activist, as they
are forced to come together to decide if the
town’s schools should be integrated by head-
ing a community meeting called a charrette.
Eventually, Ellis begins to see that he and At-
water aren’t as different as he first believed.
The film is problematic in its chosen per-
spective of highlighting Ellis’s come to Jesus
moment and paints him too much as a kind
of white savior, writing off his history of big-
otry almost immediately, but there is still a
lot that can be taken away from the story.
Stream it on Showtime or rent it on Amazon
Prime, iTunes, Vudu or YouTube.
“Chi-Raq” (2015) — This Spike Lee joint
is ambitious and a little muddled, but the
musical-dramedy based on Aristophanes’
“Lysistrata” certainly packs a punch. Set in
Chicago it focuses on Englewood and South
Side gangs as they are at constant violent
odds with each other. When their wives,
girlfriends and other sexual partners be-
come fed up with the bloodshed, they de-
cide to teach them a lesson and withhold
sex until the men come to a truce. Filled
story of attorney Bryan Stevenson (played
by Michael B. Jordan), it follows his early
years as he worked to represent prisoners
— usually wrongly convicted — on Ala-
bama’s death row and give them the justice
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