The other Tessa Thompson movie that wasn't mentioned is "Sylvie's Love." This movie is better than "Sylvie's Love," but the family drama in the middle of this is subversive in the same way. Sylvie's Love portrays a Love story without the typical trauma and turmoil that is expected from Hollywood when they focus on Black characters. "American Fiction" does the same with its family drama while at the same time poking fun at the type of scripts and manuscripts that Hollywood and the publishing world solicit. There is a little bit of a discussion of this in our best of 2023 video: kzread.info/dash/bejne/foJkp9J-hLHcZ6Q.html

Yes…do a spoiler review. It won’t stop me from seeing the movie. Your insight is spot on.

@TheNerdSocial

5 ай бұрын

We are working on a more spoiler follow-up to this review and our reviews for "The Color Purple" and "Origin." The problem is that no one watches conversations we post that are 45 minutes or longer because none of us have the public profile of Joe Rogan or Howard Stern, who can go on for hours. Even if people did watch, editing a review like this one for "American Fiction," which is only 8 minutes long, takes a few hours. It takes the better part of two days to finish and edit a video that is an hour long, and we all have other jobs (some of us have more than one other job). The thought right now is to do a 30-minute video answering questions and getting into the spoiler details of prestige Black films from 2023. Maybe when we grow, we'll do something like Patreon and have those deep-dive, hours-long conversations for subscribers.

Thank you! Just saw this film and was so confused when two women were hysterical laughing throughout. Yes, there were funny moments, but overall, an incredible comment on today's society.

@TheNerdSocial

5 ай бұрын

Thanks for stopping by. Glad you enjoyed it! We were happy to see it get lots wins this awards season, and Oscar nominations.

This movie did not disappoint. The exchange between Monk and Issa Rae’s character towards the end was thought provoking from all perspectives. Planning to catch it again in theaters and purchase when available.

@TheNerdSocial

5 ай бұрын

Thanks for stopping by. Glad you enjoyed it! We were happy to see it get lots wins this awards season, and Oscar nominations. We'll maybe do a spoiler follow-up to this review soon.

Great review. I laughed pretty hard. I'm a black woman, at a pretty similar stage in life to the main character, Monk. I also have 2 siblings and we are bickering over how best to care for an ailing parent. Cord seemed to plant little pieces of black culture within situations that can happen to anyone regardless of color. A lot of 'show don't tell', it's the attention to detail that caused the jokes to land for me.

@TheNerdSocial

5 ай бұрын

Thanks for stopping by. Glad you enjoyed it! Yeah, Cords script was exceptional. We were glad to see him getting the accolades and awards this season for his work.

One of the best movies I seen in my life is very smart clever thought provoking funny and sharp.

@TheNerdSocial

5 ай бұрын

Thanks for stopping by. Glad you enjoyed it! Yes, it's a really great film. We were glad to see it get so much awards attention. Hopefully all the accolades it has been getting will draw more people to seeing it.

I loved American Fiction, which sadly hasn't been picked up by distributors here in Norway. I watched it as a part of being a voter in the Golden Globes, and I recently reached out to the distributor in the US to see if they could send me a screener again for a second watch. They did, so tonight I'll watch it again to write a review for our Norwegian film and TV website - maybe the distributors over here will read it and come to their senses. :)

@TheNerdSocial

5 ай бұрын

Ava Duvernay talked about this in a New Yorker article just last week. Studios tend to say things like Black films don't sell overseas as an excuse for not distributing them internationally and not investing in them up front in the same manner as white lead films. They've convinced themselves that the provincial concerns of white midwestern people in a movie like "Fargo," are any more universal than the provincial concerns of a Black family in Boston, New York, or Mississippi. It's BS, and prejudice.

Wow...I just came across this and you. Enjoyed your review tremendously. So I'm gonna follow for future content.

@TheNerdSocial

6 ай бұрын

Awesome! Thank you!

The first trailer for _American Fiction,_ was hilarious. I didn't realize it came out in limited release December 15, but thought it came out this weekend, starting Thursday January 11 at my local theater. A much better movie, _The Book of Clarence_ came out that day. I had a feeling it was splitting the audience with _Clarence_ debuting 10th and _Fiction_ nowhere to be seen. I was worried the latter would disappear after a week, as a couple movies did last year so saw it right away. You'd be better off imagining the movie from the trailer than actually seeing it, since it detours into his relationship with his estranged family across the country. The main character, Monk, has a lot of rage in him and a disconnect with people (perhaps like his late father). He meets a neighbor who read one of his books (then another book) who says she likes how he writes women and falls for him. But he doesn't agree with the opinions of the women characters in this movie and responds with hostility. And we don't see him write women characters, so I guess that was just a throwaway line. Just about any other movie where someone perpetrates a fraud, we eventually see it exposed, with consequences, but not in this movie. In _The Book of Clarence_ the main character decides to perpetrate the fraud of being a messiah and pretends to perform miracles to make money. He faces some consequences for doing this by the end. This is the movie that deserves accolades and awards, but will probably disappear and be forgotten by next Fall, since it came out in January.

@TheNerdSocial

5 ай бұрын

Thanks for stopping by. Sorry, you didn't like the film. No one on our team has seen "The Book of Clarence" yet. If we don't get advanced screeners, it's difficult for us to get to the theater to see movies that fewer people might be interested in a review for because most of us have kids. That said, we will probably see it sometime over the next couple of months, and maybe we'll make a video comparing the two films.

Love your reviews and explanations of the content!! I’m following you and sharing with my friends!

@TheNerdSocial

6 ай бұрын

Awesome! Thank you!

I'm sure the book goes into more detail- but initially it wasn't clear to me why the other siblings had such a bad opinion of their mother. Then we get that scene in the nursing home, "I always knew you weren't a queer" (or whatever the line was). Moments like this that snap you out of one emotion and drop you immediately into another. Thought the pacing and editing was excellent. Thank you for your video, new subscriber here 🙏 .

@TheNerdSocial

5 ай бұрын

Thanks! And Welcome. Glad you liked it. I think the moment you point out is a good example if why his siblings felt the way they did. However, there are things that his sister says and his brother say in other scenes that hint at the fact that he was the favorite child of both parents. Even though he was the one child out of the three not to follow in his father's footsteps.

The trailer for this movie showed such a small part of this movie. It made it look like a pure comedy. But the deep drama also hit me. The writing was aamzing and the cast elevated it even higher.

This is great commentary. Thanks…loved the contextual analysis you give. I’m gonna watch this

@TheNerdSocial

6 ай бұрын

Glad you enjoyed it! Hope you enjoy the movie. :)

I never expect the movie to be more serious and emotional than the trailers made it to be. It's like what Erika Alexander said, it's "funny sad".

I watched it and oh I hated it so much. Im surprised this film is getting praise for being daring, when it's toothless and the targets it picks are so safe like Tyler Perry. It's also dishonest because the types of black films and novels the movie shoots at for satire are not the toast of what the industry puts it's might behind today. If anything it's films like this that get the backing. The scene with Issa Rae makes no sense. What's so deep about her novel? Or is she just feeding the market as she says ? It wants to have its cake and eat it too. It's nothing like Hollywood Shuffle as it claims.

@TheNerdSocial

6 ай бұрын

Thanks for stopping by, and for your contribution to the discussion. Who has claimed it's like a Hollywood shuffle? Also, you should know that this script was adapted from a novel written in 2001. So, yes, things have changed in the publishing and media world since then...a little. Finally, our scale goes up to 10. There are things that are touched on in this movie that could and should have been fleshed out more, like the Sintara / Monk conversation. Missed opportunities like that prevent it from getting the top rating. However, when this movie is good, it's really good. In the opinion of the reviewer, of course.

@jnkazee2526

6 ай бұрын

@@TheNerdSocial Cord Jefferson considers Hollywood Shuffle the spiritual ancestors to this film.

@jnkazee2526

6 ай бұрын

@@TheNerdSocial like I said I'm not tryna bulldoze my thoughts but i dontvsee anything like Shuffle and i know it was inspired by erasure . I just think if your gonna make a satire film about black art intersection with white industry making stereotypes films one core thing thats necessary is to have what is actually tropes of today. The hood lit novel Erasure went after were in the industry at that. But that hasn't been the case for over a decade now. Probably since Precious. I would argue now the white industry bolsters the black professional class that often talk about micro aggression and hair, rather than structural racism like Shuffle did. So to focus on the "hood" black film is a cop out and a missed opportunity. Dear White People, Hair, Masters, Harlem, Insecure, Black AF, just to name a few . This is what the white industry signal boost today

Loved your review of American Fiction, critiquing and comparing greatness is spot on!

@TheNerdSocial

5 ай бұрын

Glad you liked it!

This movie was so good!!

@TheNerdSocial

5 ай бұрын

Thanks for stopping by. Glad you enjoyed the film. We were happy to see it get lots wins this awards season, and Oscar nominations.

Just watched the movie and loved it...never saw the trailer until now...the trailer is all wrong like it was marketed as a comedy to play it safe...

You're so cute

You commentary is too long. Net it out.

Does anyone remember Sideways with Paul Giamatti? I loved Sideways for where i was in my life when i first saw it, and American Fiction gives me strong Sideways vibes. Soundtrack included...

@TheNerdSocial

5 ай бұрын

Sideways is a favorite of many on the team. Yes, it is similar, although the subject matter differs. Coincidentally Jeffrey Wright will be going up against Paul Giamatti this year for the Oscar.

@Gaverny

5 ай бұрын

@@TheNerdSocial yes I almost forgot! I do hope American Fiction wins something. I'm going to read Erasure then rewatch AF. Haven't seen the holdovers yet.