As Dr. Martin Luther King in Selma, Oyelowo was superb in his oratory but stilted when he left the podium. Oyelowo’s work here is subtle but so consistent. and class conflicts start to tear the family apart in a way that feels manipulative . In his nimbleness on the soccer field and his quick thinking in the snooty headmaster’s office, he conveys the reflexes of a man primed for survival: Katende barely knew his mother, who died when he was 8, and he was raised by a series of aunts. 2010 Robert took Phiona to Some of the dialogue in the It helps
Phiona and her He underestimates Katende’s drive and ingenuity. Katende soon realizes that this young girl from Katwe has a special gift, Brian Tallerico is the Editor of RogerEbert.com, and also covers television, film, Blu-ray, and video games. Change ), You are commenting using your Twitter account. Michael Sragow is a contributing editor to Film Comment and writes its Deep Focus column.
As a Westerner who has never visited, my mental images of sub-Saharan Africa have often included savannas filled with wildlife, violent rebel groups, and historic oppression in the Belgian Congo. He was gone for a long time and finally came back and he hadn’t caught the cat.
Chess is a way for him to keep his kids engaged beyond soccer and to involve other youngsters who fear getting hurt on the field. In his review A.O. The “Selma”
But it makes perfect tragic sense: Harriet is part of a cycle of children begetting children. The Western viewer is thus left wondering, sober-mindedly, how many, many geniuses with the talent to transform history are undoubtedly present in the “developing world”…if only the rest of the world had eyes to see them.
emotional plot device. Nyong’o and Oyelowo provide this movie with its sinew and fire. Mutesi is a fascinating one on its own, but what could have just been an
She sets an outsize mode of performance for the entire movie, and she makes it feel simultaneously theatrical and real. Yet nothing in this film is more miraculous, funny, or moving than Katende psyching up his Pioneers before the tournament at Kings College Bodo. It seems unlikely on He also curates “The Moviegoer” at the Library of America website. This wily, intuitive director and her team, notably cinematographer Sean Bobbitt and editor Barry Alexander Brown, plunge us into Katwe’s packed thoroughfares and alleyways, where Phiona’s mother, Harriet (Lupita Nyong’o), sends her older children out to hawk husks of corn, waving them at the windows of potential buyers whose cars inch along the muddy streets. of a film school she has founded in Uganda, where she lives: “If we don’t tell In order to calm them, and to persuade them that they have a fighting edge, he tells them a story that Wheeler has taken from one of Katende’s actual set speeches. It’s to be expected that the education segments of “Queen of A strikingly engaging and original, if occasionally overambitious, chess drama. The story of Phiona
oldest brother Brian (Martin Kabanza) cross paths with a local sports ministry head named aren’t going to compete at football, he decides to teach them something he Each of them is individualized, but the focus is on Phiona. Print Word PDF. Later, when Katende attempts to enter his Pioneers in a competition held at a swank secondary school, Kings College Bodo, the snooty headmaster doesn’t want street kids sullying his campus. translate that to Phiona’s real life but the movie doesn’t hammer it in. him, Nyong’o is phenomenal. Opposite I’d be remiss in my critical duty if I didn’t point out that “Queen of Katwe” has some serious third-act problems—most notably a murky denouement that doesn’t have a clear climax. That story also applies to the filmmakers. Nalwanga’s reserve makes it all the more moving whenever Phiona drops her chess-player persona and becomes a little girl again, yearning for her mother’s love and her rebel sister’s company. Nalwanga gives Phiona not just a poker face, but a chess face, imbued with mission. He is a member of the National Society of Film Critics and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association. They dance with a galvanic joy of movement and convey a coiling energy when they walk. The horrors of slavery in America return in Antebellum, an audacious thriller that revives thorny questions of how to portray the past, Susan Sontag, Sweden, 1969; Kino Lorber, DVD & Blu-Ray, More than words: the subtitler of Godard, Assayas, and others talks about the process in this accompaniment to our May-June 2020 Art and Craft article. September 22, 2016. In 12 Years a Slave Nyong’o played a woman who discovers that all her good qualities could be turned against her. Harriet scolds her, not realizing that she’s putting Night, and the rest of her kids, in a protective box. Rounding out the cast, Lupita Nyong’o turns in a solid performance as Phiona’s mother (though her character in the film feels more incidental than integral to the plot). QUEEN OF KATWE is based on the true story of a girl named Phiona from the slums of Uganda. She learns to play chess and uses it as a means out of poverty.
Suffused with the distinctive beauty and tragedy interwoven throughout contemporary Ugandan culture, the film is on its face a rags-to-riches chess drama, but becomes much more through its willingness to raise provocative questions about the ways in which the “developing world” is often viewed. She purchases it for resale from a stingy supplier. Oyelowo is more remarkable as Katende, a man who graduated from a university as well as the school of hard knocks. working the message of the film more than the character he’s playing. In Queen of Katwe, the director Mira Nair captures the vitality and improbable beauty of the dense, crowded street culture in an East African slum without sentimentalizing its people or underplaying their deprivations and hazards. She has an incredible ability to convey backstory. William Wheeler, the screenwriter, working from a nonfiction book by Tim Crothers, engineers the ups, downs, and sideways motions of her ascent without making it seem easy or surrendering to glib statements about “destiny.” Phiona’s sturdy, sensitive coach, Robert Katende (David Oyelowo), instructs her and his other students, a group he calls his “Pioneers,” on the necessity of devising a plan to conquer risks and obstacles in games and in life. our own stories, no one will.” That sense of ownership and authorship permeates “Queen of Katwe,” elevating it above your average feel-good biopic and allowing “Queen of Katwe” is centrally the story of Phiona Mutesi (Madina Nalwanga), a young Ugandan chess prodigy with virtually no formal education, who succeeds through sheer genius and the efforts of a dedicated teacher (David Oyelowo, who is outstanding here). So the other dogs asked, ‘What happened?’” Oyelowo, with a wonderful, tempered gaiety, brings the fable’s message home: “Me, I was just running for a meal that I can get somewhere else. With the combined efforts of Nalwanga, Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email. That being said, “Queen of Katwe” is both engrossing and thought-provoking – and well worth a trip to the cinema, if it’s playing in your area. Between victories and setbacks, Wheeler’s script leaves Nair and her cast plenty of room to fill with unpredictable behavior. Unfortunately, there was a certain cat that was so fast and most of the dogs would run after it and fail to get it.
One also shouldn’t miss how good Nalwanga is here, giving a fluid and physical performance. the street to try to scrape together change for her family, which includes two She has almost no possessions, can’t read and sells maize in Harriet doesn’t grow the maize her children peddle or the vegetables she sells at her stall.
edge of treacle are right there in David Oyelowo and Lupita Nyong’o. During a critical match, she breaks concentration and falters. The nuanced, subtle newcomer Madina Nalwanga plays
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