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Sorry to Bother You Director: Boots Riley Talent:
Lakeith Stanfield, Tessa Thompson, Armie Hammer Released: 7 December RBG Director: Betsy West, Julie Cohen Released: 4 January There will be inevitable comparisons to Get Out but really, other than a brilliantly barbed sense of humour and a double helping of Lakeith Stanfield, Sorry to Bother You is a very different film. Whereas Get Out had a very direct point to make about systemic racism in modern day America and kept to that point all the way through its horror show structure, Sorry to Bother You is a much more free-wheeling affair and veers right off into absurdity in its denouement. Stanfield plays telemarketer Cassius Green in a narrative that shares the same satirical bite as Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman in that its protagonist also finds career success when using his ‘white voice’ (David Cross). Green’s success launches him up the corporate ladder while in paradoxical tandem; his old office buddies are planning a protest against the oppressive practices of the same corporation. He is torn between all the rights and wrongs but money is money and when he reaches the top of the ladder, things aren’t quite what he expected. Or what we the audience had probably expected. Sorry to Bother You is a fun film with a fine supporting cast (Tessa Thompson, Armie Hammer, Terry Crews, Steven Yeun, Danny Glover, Patton Oswalt) and for what it might lack in political hoodwinking and tight social commentary it instead serves up just the right amount of ingenious unapologetic batshit craziness. Sorry to Bother You is its own beast and heralds the beginnings of an illustrious career for first time director Boots Riley. SOR At the age of 85, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has a renowned legal legacy while becoming an unexpected pop culture icon. She emerged from the Harvard Law School in the late ‘50s when she was one of nine women in a class of over 500. Ginsberg has spent her lifetime fighting injustices and discrimination at every tilt leading to her appointment to the Supreme Court in 1993. RBG is a deeply affectionate portrait of a woman it simply is impossible not to respect and utterly adore. She was an “exigent” mother according to her children and a workaholic who was supported by her loving husband Marty up to his death in 2010. She can’t cook, loves the opera, hasn’t missed a single day of oral arguments since joining the Supreme Court, survived two bouts of cancer and just returned to the Court after a fall where she fractured her ribs. She is both an icon and powerhouse. Taking more than $14m in the US box office proves how crucial and timely an understanding and appreciation of Ginsberg is. Contributors, besides family, include Gloria Steinem and Senator Orrin Hatch. With the controversial arrival of Brett Kavanaugh on the Court swinging it even further into the clutches of conservatives, the need for her dissenting voice goes without question. RBG has displayed an equanimity throughout her career which is singularly lacking in discourse across contemporary politics and the media. Ginsberg has proven to be a shrewd strategist, subtle persuader and a Bubby to be smitten with. MMD 77