Day: December 13, 2023

Movie Review: They Cloned Tyrone (2023)

~ Liam ~ 1 Comment

Title: They Cloned Tyrone
Release Date: July 14, 2023
Director: Juel Taylor
Production Company: MACRO Media
Summary/Review:

Along the lines of Get Out and Sorry to Bother You, this comedy/mystery/science fiction dystopia story uses the tropes of genre movies to explore institutional racism.  Fontaine (John Boyega), Yo-Yo (Teyonah Parris), and Slick Charles (Jamie Foxx) are an unlikely trio who discover that their poor Black neighborhood The Glen is subject to a government experiment in cloning and mind control.

Especially early on, this movie feels set in a heightened, satirical version of Hollywood racial caricatures of Black people, especially from 1970s Blaxploitation films.  Fontaine, Yo-Yo, and Slick Charles begin this movie as a drug dealer, sex worker, and pimp but gradually grow out of the stereotypes as they demonstrate their intelligence and resourcefulness.  I won’t spoil anything, but the plot of this movie is bonkers and the dialogue is often quite strange as well.  Foxx especially gets a lot of hilarious non-sequiturs.  This is a movie that can go from funny to disturbing and back again swiftly, but it is always very, very weird.

Rating: ***

Book Review: Matrix by Lauren Groff

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Author: Lauren Groff
Title: Matrix
Narrator: Adjoa Andoh
Publication Info: Penguin Audio, 2021
Summary/Review:

This story inspired by the real-life Marie de France, details the life and accomplishments of the abbess of an abbey in 12th-century England.  At 17, the tall and not conventionally attractive Marie is sent by Eleanor of Aquitaine to the impoverished abbey.  Over the course of her life Marie raises the fortunes of the abbey as she rises in leadership.  She also begins to have visions and works to make the abbey independent and excludes men from the abbey lands.  In fact, all the speaking characters in this novel are women.  Eventually, Marie takes on the prerogatives of priesthood such as hearing confessions and celebrating the Eucharist.

I’ve seen criticism of the book that notes that Lauren Groff draws on her experience of the subjugation of women in modern evangelical Protestant churches, which is a very different ideology than Medieval Catholicism. I think that this book needs to be read as a metaphor for achieving women’s liberation in a religious patriarchal society rather than straight-up historical fiction.
 
Recommended books:

Rating: ***