Popular reviews

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  Review by Sally Jane Black 2

  There is a moment of intense discomfort (for me) early in this film as Charles berates his son for having long fingernails. He demands that only sissies wear their fingernails like this and forces him to cut them. His wife, Andais, looks on and is unreadable (for me). It's a vicious, ugly moment that is only heightened as he also says, "I'll give you a reason to cry in a minute." Such a chilling, terrible thing to say to a child (or to anyone), and yet, it is not played as chilling. It's clear that Charles is not intended sympathetically here, but the casualness of violence toward children pervades this film. Under other circumstances, in a melodrama or a comedy,…

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  Review by Joshua Dysart ★★★★ 4

  Late era L.A. Rebellion Cinema with looming figure of the the U.C.L.A. launched movement, Charles Burnett, writing, photographing, mentoring, and providing his own family members as actors for director Billy Woodberry in this spiritual sequel to Killer of Sheep.

  Misleadingly simple in its construction and tone, taking cues from Latin American Third Cinema, Italian Neorealism, British Kitchen Sink Drama, and all the Marxist economic concerns therein, the movie paints the world of a struggling family in Watts in the early 80’s as it seemingly was, with very little artifice placed between the viewer and subject save for a subtle mastery of camera placement and some forlorn jazz mixed low on the soundtrack.

  “Just the blues and Brecht” is how Woodberry…

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  Review by Jerry McGlothlin ★★★½ 9

  While I was watching Kaycee Moore in the role of Andais Banks, I couldn’t help but think of all the strong Black women I knew growing up. As a kid (and obviously with these women being a mother of one of my buddies or a family friend) I never really knew what any of them had been going through and still don’t, but thinking back, my memories of them—of Miss Anita (may she rest in peace), one of my parent’s best friends when I was a boy, and her daughters who used to babysit me way back when; of Mrs. Peggy & Ms. H, a pair of my childhood friends’ mothers respectively, and Miss B., the mom of a friend from…

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  Review by Lester ★★★★

  35mm @ UCLA Billy Wilder Theater w/ Charles Burnett Q&A

  From Thom Andersen's Los Angeles Plays Itself:

  White America had declared a crisis of the Black family as a cover for its campaign of incremental genocide against its expendable, ex-slave population rendered superfluous by immigrant labor power. So Black filmmakers responded by emphasizing families and children.
  Although Hollywood would lend credence to the assault by imagining South Central as a dystopian theme park of crackwhores and drive-by shootings, independent Black filmmakers showed that the real crisis of the Black family is simply the crisis of the working class family, White or Black, where family values are always at risk because the threat of unemployment is always present. So many men…

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  Review by KYK ★★★★ 1

  mend my little heart...with a giant wrench

  35mm. MoMA.

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  Review by Sean Fennessey ★★★★

  Wow. And the Archie Shepp score.

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  Review by Noah DiVincenzo ★★★½

  The most thought provoking part about this for me was :

  The Black Woman’s struggle through a heart wrenching lens.

  This doesn’t mean that I’ve disregarded the black man’s clear struggle as well; but the pieces where we see this specific pain and the causes of it are most painful to watch. The ‘human’ qualities that this story captures are what make it so hard to watch. There isn’t anything out of the ordinary occurring here, but more of a very blunt way in which the class and race issues hit the heart of a home in endless ways. You could study what it’s teaching and why things are the way that they are, but I think this was too…

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  Review by Robert Daniels ★★★★★

  “It’s just me who goes to work; it just me that sees to everything in this house; it’s just me that sees to the kids.” Andais Banks (Kaycee Moore) roars at her bemused husband Charlie (Nate Hardman). For over an hour, we’ve seen this married couple, fighting against the economic headwinds of their desolate, industrial 1970s Los Angeles landscape to little avail, drift apart to find that their finances are crushed; their love is crushed; their souls are crushed. In this argument, Andais speaks about the loneliness, embarrassment, and the physical and psychological pain she feels living in this unreciprocated house and country to the point of her hands shaking from the trauma. Because in Billy Woodberry’s Bless Their Little…

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  Review by Jack Moulton ★★★★½

  It feels like an epic blues song. A sorrowful memory recalled in real-time. It's painful, profound, and raw, without an ounce of fat on its bones. Nate Hardman gives an extraordinary performance, but I'm absolutely blown away by Kaycee Moore. How they (and director Billy Woodberry) do not have long film careers is heart-breaking, if utterly predictable.

  If you have the Criterion Channel and 85 minutes free, please spare some time for Bless Their Little Hearts. It's within spitting distance of eligibility for the official top 100 by black directors list and it needs your help to get there. It should be in the top 10 and it'll certainly challenge for a spot.

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  Review by Jake Cole ★★★★½

  It struck me early on how the scenes in which only adults are talking to each other, especially friends as opposed to a married couple, the acting comes off as stiff and awkward, as if everyone were given their lines for the day on the morning of shooting. Talk among Charlie and his unemployed brethren about their bleak job prospects has an articulate but impotent quality that will be familiar to anyone who has bitched about What America Is Like, the odd cadences of their delivery reflective of how powerless they are to better themselves.

  At home, however, Charlie feels much more naturalistic, and Hardman gives him far more shades in how tender and stern he can be with his…

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  Review by Jon? ★★★★½ 2

  man, the anguish on display here. a somber symphony of a film. the struggle of an entire people can be seen in not just the faces of the family here, but also their movements. the argument in the kitchen is so very emotional. a scene of perfect acting, and perfectly restrained filmmaking, that moved me deeply. at times it felt like the camera itself is a character, odd considering nothing about this film is flashy in the slightest. yet nearly every shot can be studied, I’m in awe of what everyone here was able to accomplish. the filming of the flat lands where the apartments are, and how dilapidated buildings are shot. not like soulless poverty porn, but rather acknowledging…

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  Review by teamgal ★★★½

  Episodic, leisurely look at the lives of a family struggling on the margins of early 80s L.A.. Beautifully staged, shot and assembled, BLESS THEIR LITTLE HEARTS is intelligent, gentle, elegant, every once in a while slamming into a wall of unexpected ferocity. A work that represents an American reality rarely thought worthy of capturing on film.

  1983, best of