June is African-American Music Appreciation Month — Black Music Month, as President Barack Obama officially shortened it in 2009 — and digital television channel Bounce TV, as well as its streaming-platform arm Brown Sugar, is celebrating the month with a bevy of films and documentaries.
Houston's own Beyoncé Knowles Carter will be featured in two such productions.
Over at Bounce, you can see her in Cadillac Records, the 2008 biopic on legendary Chicago blues label Chess Records. She plays Etta James, while Mos Def takes on Chuck Berry and Jeffrey Wright assumes the role of Muddy Waters. (The movie will air on these days and times.)
Meanwhile, on Brown Sugar, you can also see Beyoncé: On Top, the hour-long, 2018 doc that chronicles her rise from Houston girl to Destiny's Child frontwoman to the all-powerful Queen Bey.
Bounce TV will also show the 1978 musical The Wiz, starring Michael Jackson and Diana Ross; the 2005 Dirty South rap drama Hustle & Flow, starring Terrence Howard; Idlewild, that 2006 musical starring Big Boi and Andre 3000 from OutKast; and the 1992 inner-city drama Juice, starring the late, great Tupac Shakur.
And, on Brown Sugar (which will be free to anyone accessing the service through Xfinity X1 from June 15-21), look for documentaries and concert films featuring such icons as Michael Jackson, Prince, Al Green, Rihanna, and gospel legend Mahalia Jackson.
For more information, visit the Bounce TV site here.
The impact that writer/director/producer James L. Brooks has made on Hollywood cannot be understated. The 85-year-old created The Mary Tyler Moore Show, personally won three Oscars for Terms of Endearment, and was one of the driving forces behind The Simpsons, among many other credits. Now, 15 years after his last movie, he’s back in the directing chair with Ella McCay.
The similarly-named Emma Mackey plays Ella, a 34-year-old lieutenant governor of an unnamed state in 2008 who’s on the verge of becoming governor when Governor Bill (Albert Brooks) gets picked to be a member of the president’s Cabinet. What should be a happy time is sullied by her needy husband, Ryan (Jack Lowden), her agoraphobic brother, Casey (Spike Fearn), and her perpetually-cheating father, Eddie (Woody Harrelson).
Despite the trio of men competing to bring her down, Ella remains an unapologetic optimist, an attitude bolstered by her aunt Helen (Jamie Lee Curtis), her assistant Estelle (Julie Kavner), and her police escort, Trooper Nash (Kumail Nanjiani). The film follows her over a few days as she navigates the perils of governing, the distractions her family brings, and the expectations being thrust upon her by many different people.
Brooks, who wrote and directed the film, is all over the place with his storytelling. What at first seems to be a straightforward story about Ella and her various issues soon starts meandering into areas that, while related to Ella, don’t make the film better. Prime among them are her brother and father, who are given a relatively small amount of screentime in comparison to the importance they have in her life. This is compounded by a confounding subplot in which Casey tries to win back his girlfriend, Susan (Ayo Edebiri).
Then there’s the whole political side of the story, which never finds its focus and is stuck in the past. Though it’s never stated explicitly, Ella and Governor Bill appear to be Democrats, especially given a signature program Ella pushes to help mothers in need. But if Brooks was trying to provide an antidote to the current real world politics, he doesn’t succeed, as Ella’s full goals are never clear. He also inexplicably shows her boring her fellow lawmakers to tears, a strange trait to give the person for whom the audience is supposed to be rooting.
What saves the movie from being an all-out train wreck is the performances of Mackey and Curtis. Mackey, best known for the Netflix show Sex Education, has an assured confidence to her that keeps the character interesting and likable even when the story goes downhill. Curtis, who has tended to go over-the-top with her roles in recent years, tones it down, offering a warm place of comfort for Ella to turn to when she needs it. The two complement each other very well and are the best parts of the movie by far.
Brooks puts much more effort into his female actors, including Kavner, who, even though she serves as an unnecessary narrator, gets most of the best laugh lines in the film. Harrelson is capable of playing a great cad, but his character here isn’t fleshed out enough. Fearn is super annoying in his role, and Lowden isn’t much better, although that could be mostly due to what his character is called to do. Were it not for the always-great Brooks and Nanjiani, the movie might be devoid of good male performances.
Brooks has made many great TV shows and movies in his 60+ year career, but Ella McCay is a far cry from his best. The only positive that comes out of it is the boosting of Mackey, who proves herself capable of not only leading a film, but also elevating one that would otherwise be a slog to get through.
