American Fiction is a 2023 American comedy-drama film written and directed by Cord Jefferson, in his feature directorial debut. Based on the 2001 novel Erasure by Percival Everett.
It stars Jeffrey Wright, Tracee Ellis Ross, Issa Rae, Sterling K. Brown, John Ortiz, Erika Alexander, Leslie Uggams, Adam Brody, and Keith David. (wiki)
They Cloned Tyrone is a 2023 American science fiction comedy mystery film directed by Juel Taylor, in his feature film directorial debut. The film stars John Boyega, Teyonah Parris and Jamie Foxx (who also serves as producer) as an unlikely trio uncovering a government cloning conspiracy. (wiki)
timespace coordinates: 1972 Colorado Springs, Colorado
BlacKkKlansman is a 2018 American biographical comedy-drama film directed by Spike Lee and written by Charlie Wachtel, David Rabinowitz, Kevin Willmott, and Lee, based on the 2014 memoir Black Klansman by Ron Stallworth. The film stars John David Washington as Stallworth, along with Adam Driver, Laura Harrier, and Topher Grace. Set in 1970s Colorado Springs, the plot follows the first African-American detective in the Colorado Springs police department, who sets out to infiltrate and expose the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. The film was theatrically released in the United States on August 10, 2018, coinciding with the one-year anniversary of the white supremacist Unite the Right rally. (wiki)
historical accuracy / Blaxploitation / imdb
This film contains clips from D. W. Griffith‘s silent movie The Birth of a Nation. While Spike Lee was a student at NYU Film School, he was so outraged that his NYU Film School professors taught The Birth of a Nation (1915) with no mention of its racist message or role in the Klan’s twentieth-century rebirth that he made a student short film titled The Answer (1980) as a response. The film so offended many of his professors that Lee was nearly expelled from NYU. He was ultimately saved by a faculty vote. (read more: trivia)
timespace coordinates: alternative present-day version of Oakland, California
Sorry to Bother You is a 2018 American absurdist dark comedy with aspects of magical realism and science fiction inspired by the world of telemarketing written and directed by Boots Riley, in his directorial debut. It stars Lakeith Stanfield, Tessa Thompson, Jermaine Fowler, Omari Hardwick, Terry Crews, Patton Oswalt, David Cross, Danny Glover, Steven Yeun, and Armie Hammer.
Boots has maintained that the film offers a radical class analysis of capitalism, rather than a specific analysis of America under President Trump, clarifying that he wrote the initial screenplay during the Obama administration, and that the target was never any specific elected official or movement, but rather a broader look at “the puppetmasters behind the puppets.” While the majority of the final script remained the same, minimal changes were made prior to shooting in order to avoid the film appearing to be a critique of Trump specifically, including removing a line where a character says “Worry Free is making America great again,” written before Trump would use the line in his 2016 presidential campaign.
The title of the film has a double meaning, referencing both the phrase’s use by telemarketers and its general usage when telling a person something you know they might not like to hear, such as the Communist themes present in the film. According to Boots, “…the other side of it is, is that often when you’re telling someone something that is different from how they view things, different from how they view the world, it feels like an annoyance or a bother. And that’s where that comes from.” The theme of the strike was used to reflect the need to “organize people in the workplace” and for workers to recognize their power. When asked on his choice to cast Armie Hammer as Steve Lift, Boots stated that Armie was a “lovable dude,” whose casting reflects the current state of “new capitalism,” where the realities of working conditions are hidden, referencing lines such as “I’m not your boss, I’m your friend.” (wiki)
TimeSpace Warps 