Don’t know what to watch? Are you overwhelmed by how many movies there are nowadays? Gordon Briggs’ Reel Talk is here for you. Every month, this column will highlight three films from movie history that are worth your time.
This April, songwriter and filmmaker Boots Riley’s new film “I Love Boosters” will be screened at the 53rd Athens International Film + Video Festival. While he has a relatively small filmography, “Boosters” is his second feature film. Riley’s work has already garnered significant attention from critics and academics.
Specifically, Riley heavily skewers corporate greed and exploitative labor practices. Black individuals navigate white-dominated spaces, notably through the “white voice” in “Sorry to Bother You,” to achieve corporate success. “I’m a Virgo” highlights how Black bodies are viewed, portrayed as both iconic and exploited.
Sorry to Bother You (2018)
I’ve never seen a film quite like “Sorry to Bother You.” It’s passionate, political, yet still very funny. Here, we meet Cassius “Cash” Green (an always-charismatic LaKeith Stanfield) a down-on-his-luck telemarketer, who lives in his uncle’s garage.
Struggling to pay rent from his telemarketing job, Cash adopts a “white voice” to succeed at his job. When that voice change brings Cash financial success, he is swept into a corporate conspiracy and must choose between chasing profit or joining his activist friends who are attempting to unionize.
Cash having to change his voice isn’t just a fun comic premise, it’s the first step in a self-alienating process that will eventually turn our hero into something scary and strange. I enjoy how the film leans into its absurdity to show how code-switching and capitalism force all of us to become perversions of ourselves.
I was laughing all the way with this bizarre comedy, until the last act. It’s there that the film got very weird. The only way I can describe it is as a bizarre work of Afro-Surrealism. Watching the final act, I said to myself, “A movie isn’t supposed to do this.” However, it’s there that I really began to appreciate “Sorry to Bother You” not just as a comedy, but as a challenge to its viewers.
“Sorry to Bother You” isn’t just funny. Riley uses this body horror to show that, in a capitalist system, workers are stripped of their humanity and turned into literal, productive workhorses. ★ ★ ★ ★
“I’m a Virgo” (2023)
How much of our identities are created by other people? I can tell you from personal experience that being a large Black dude can be strange. In addition to dealing with people who have an irrational fear of you, I’ve also encountered MANY people who insisted I go into sports or become a bodyguard simply because I ‘looked the part.’ So it took just one episode for me to get wrapped up in “I’m a Virgo,” a surrealist coming-of-age story about a 13-foot-tall teenager.
Here, we follow the life of Cootie (Jharrel Jerome), an extremely large Black teenager living in Oakland, California. After he leaves his sheltered upbringing he forms friendships, finds love, navigates the world that is ready to turn him into a monster.
Of course, show creator Boots Riley packs in plenty of Marxist digs at capitalism and even drops in Walton Goggins as a fascist superhero. Such a ridiculous premise could easily collapse into snark, but as our gentle giant comes of age, makes friends, and finds love, we actually grow to care about him as a person and not as a postmodern symbol.
I think that’s what I appreciate about the show. While its ending felt abrupt, “Virgo” takes this man’s alienation seriously even as the world he occupies is absurd. ★ ★ ★