lee_eisenberg

The only feature film directed by Leslie Harris focuses on a teenage black girl in Brooklyn who has to face an unpleasant reality during her final year of high school. "Just Another Girl on the I. R. T." manages to be both funny and serious, with sharp dialogue and relatable characters. It's one of the few coming-of-age stories to focus on a girl. I'd wager that the plot may have actually happened to a few people in real life (if not exactly as the movie portrays). A fine example of 1990s arthouse cinema; the credits even define it as a movie that Hollywood dared not make. All in all, I wish that there were more like this.

Paul Robeson School of Business? That sounds like the opposite of what Robeson was about.

I interpreted Akira Kurosawa's "Hachigatsu no rapusodi" ("Rhapsody in August" in English) as a look at the issue of collective memory. In this case, it deals with the nuclear bombs dropped by the US on Japan. The protagonist is an elderly woman living with some family members near Nagasaki awaiting the arrival of a relative (Richard Gere). In one scene, they tour the city, looking at remnants of the bombing, and memorials to those who perished. The presence of a US relative probably reflects the US's reluctance to acknowledge the devastation wrought by the bombing (ironically, the bombing also enabled Japan to cover up its wartime atrocities, some of which rivaled those of the Nazis in sheer brutality).

Kurosawa apparently told Gabriel García Márquez that he wanted to convey the wounds that the atomic bomb left in the Japanese. I doubt that anything can realistically portray the absolute horror experienced by those who survived it. The most that we can do is read John Hersey's book about it. Meanwhile, I recommend this movie, and also the 2005 documentary "The Mushroom Club", about those who grew up in the bombing's shadow, and the fading memory of the bombing.

"The Puppetman" is your typical slasher about possession, this time focusing on a college student. There was nothing authentically scary about it, although it did have some mildly shocking scenes (such as one involving a cigarette). The Shudder-RLJE co-productions have been hit and miss over the years, and this leaned more miss than hit.