As busy I get from time to time, I find that I can't see every movie under the sun, leaving my friends and colleagues to fill in the blanks for me.  As poetically as I think I wax about movies on this website as a wannabe critic, there are other experts out there.  Sometimes, it inspires me to see the movie too and get back to being my circle's go-to movie guy.  Sometimes, they save me $9 and you 800+ words of blathering.  In a new review series, I'm opening my site to friend submissions for guest movie reviews.

TODAY’S CRITIC: Lafronda Stumn

Lafronda Stumn is a student at Madisonville Community College and intends to graduate with an Associate's degree in Associate of the Arts. She plans on earning a Bachelors Degree in Motion Picture Studies and English at Wright State University. Her favorite Directors are Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, and Spike Lee, and her favorite actors are Al Pacino, Denzel Washington, Meryl Streep, and Halle Berry. Lafronda contacted this page looking for a place to get published and I enjoy giving people that very kind of opportunity. This is her sevennth guest review for Every Movie Has a Lesson. Welcome back, Lafronda!

HER REVIEW:

Mary J. Blige has consistently  Queen of Hip Hop has some of the most memorable songs of the 90s into the 2000s. With themes such as "Real Love," "I'm Going Down," "All that I Can Say," and "Be Without You." This time, Blige tackles a serious actress's role with her supporting term in the brilliant Dee Rees period piece Mudboud. The film tells the story of two families, one black one white, in the deep-seated racist south just before and after world war two and how the families form a bond against the intense racism that pervaded during that time.

The film began in 1939 in the Mississippi Delta were one white family attempts to moves into anther home only to discover the owner sold it to another client, leaving them to stay a small home and land that is massive to maintain. The patriarch Henry McAllen (Jason Clarke), his wife Laura (Carey Mulligan), their two daughters, and his very hateful racist father, Pappy (Johnathan Banks) live in this area. One day Henry asks another family, a black one head by pastor Hap (Rob Morgan) and his wife Florence (Mary J. Blige), to help out on their farm and Florence to work as a housekeeper. Even though Hap and Florence have a large family of five themselves, they agree to use them.

Two years later when World War II looms, Hap and Florence's eldest son Ronsel (Jason Mitchell) is sent to combat. Henry's Younger brother Jamie (Garrett Hedland) goes to fight at the same time. As both Jamie and Ronsel battle the ravages of war. Jamie has a heart change among black people when his life was saved by a black who shot down a plan attacking Jamie's plane. Ronsel is more accepted of his race in Europe and has a romance with a blonde white woman. Thiers is a blissful union until WWII is over, and Ronsel goes back home back to Mississippi, where the racial hatred is preventing in the deep-seated segregated south.

Hap and Florence welcome him back with open arms. He is also needed to help work on the farm when Hap has a bad fall and breaks one of his legs. Jamie spends most of his time drinking and flirting with his brother's wife Jane. Jamie's also tries to befriend Ronsel. Ronsel suspects Jamie's intentions but soon decides to give Jamie a chance, and soon they do indeed have a close relationship.

Jamie and Ronsel talk about the war and Jamie's change of heart among black people to Ronsel's love of a white woman and whether Ronsel should go back to her or continue to stay on the farm help his disabled dad. Problems arise when Jamie and Henry racist dad Pappy. He suspects that there is a friendship between his younger son and Ronseal. The suspicion of the consequences of interracial friendship and secrets by Ronsel life in Germany during the war put both lives at risk.

There many great scenes in Mudbound. Many include when Ronsell makes the “mistake” of leaving a grocery store in the front entrance and Pappy going in as Ronsell is leaving with Pappy demanding Ronsell leave by the back entrance. Another scene is when Laura gives Florence and Hap some extra money while Hap is recovering from a Leg injury, with Henry punishing Laura by not giving her any sex. There’s a nice scene between Ronsell and his mother Florence, when they shared some Hershey's Chocolate Ronsell got in Germany. There is also a sequence between Laura and Florence when Laura’s suffers from complications for a third pregnancy, with Florence being the lay midwife to Laura. 

The performances are genuinely astonishing, especially by Blige, Mitchell, and Hedlund. The chemistry between Mitchell and Hedlund is authentic and real. Blige conveys warmth and conviction in her scenes between Mulligan and Mitchell. Jonathan Banks is truly frightened and dementated performance as Pappy as a fan with so much hatred that his action during the film shows how low and man psyches go about his warped racist feeling.

The cinematography by Rachel Morrison does a brilliant job of the color hues and tones of the Mississippi landscape and each family's interior's dark shadows. Several scenes when Laura had birth complications and the local grocery store's interior lit very well to convey and stages a dark undercurrent of racial tension and the deep south characters' somber lives.

Director Dee Rees does a brilliant job with the authenticity of time and place in the Dixie Land South. And Covey's performance of great nuance and conviction. The costumes and art direction do justice to the realism of time and show how deep and insipid racism can be. It reminds you that it was a time that still exists in the present day. How we, as a nation, always have a long way to deal with racial tension as it pertains to the south.

CONCLUSION

Thank you again, Lafronda! You are welcome anytime. Friends, if you see a movie that I don't see and want to be featured on my website, hit up my website's Facebook page and you can be my next GUEST CRITIC!