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 32nd guest review for Every Movie Has a Lesson. Welcome as always, Lafronda!

HER REVIEW: Promising Young Woman

Carey Mulligan has been one of the most reliable actresses over the course of ten-plus years. Starting with her first Oscar nomination for An Education, Mulligan has delivered strong performances since then in films such as Mudbound, Shame, and Inside Lewylen Davis. Now, Mulligan gives, I believe, her much strongest performance since An Education with Promising Young Woman.

Mulligan stars as Cassandra Thomas, amed school dropout who now works at a café owned by her Black wisecracking boss Gail (Laverne Cox). Cassie still lives with her parents (Clancy Brown and Jennifer Coolidge) and they wonder when she will leave the nest. She has a hobby where she pretends to get drunk and strange men think they can take advantage of her until she tricks them into thinking they can have their way with her.

Cassie had a friend named Nina who is deceased after committing suicide after being sexually assaulted at a frat party from her medical school colleagues on night. She wants the ones at the college to give into account of turning the other way when her friend asks for help. Meanwhile at the coffee shop, she meets Ryan Cooper (Bo Burnham), one of her former classmates who is now a pediatrician. They get off to a rocky start but Ryan eventually asks her out on a date.

The movie is basically about whether her new boyfriend will find out about her revenge hobby and what lengths she will go to find justice for her beloved friend who died being traumatized after the faculty rejected her pleas for help.

Several intriguing scenes are when Cassie’s parents give her a 30th birthday gift from her parents that urges her to move in a direction that benefits them more than Cassie. There is an emphatic scene where Cassie tells Ryan why she dropped out of medical school. Cassie confronts one of the people who could have helped Nina’s case. The reaction of the witness stirs Cassie’s emotions to seek not revenge but justice. Later on, Cassie gets into an altercation with a male driver and teaches him a lesson on not to mess with a woke female!

Carey Mulligan’s performance is bold and courageous. Cassie is a woman who will stop at nothing to do justice by her best friend who was failed by a rape culture that has plagued women for hundreds of years. The #MeToo movement has made rape culture more of an awareness for women whose voices were silenced by not only men but women. You would think they would be more sympathetic to a fellow woman who was sexually assaulted rather than corporatizing with the old boy’s network for reasons that are alien and self-defeating in the gender wars between men and women.

Promising Young Women is a vital film that is relevant and urgent in the post-#MeToo/Times Up era to give women the courage to stand up to bullies, both men and women. The film is a wake-up call to those who think their skeletons would be dead and buried. It doesn’t’ matter how long ago the assault was. What matters is that justice will come regardless of how many years or decades go by. Those women will indeed get their voices heard and justice comes where you would not expect it.

***RATING:* ******

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!