“One Night in Miami…”
What You Need to Know: Regina King is proving she can do it all. Already a highly acclaimed actress and Oscar winner for her supporting role in “If Beale Street Could Talk,” she now has turned her eye to directing. While she’s directed a few television episodes in the past, the ambitious “One Night in Miami…” is her first foray into directing a film. Written by Kemp Powers (who also has co-directing/co-writing credits on “Soul) and adapted from his own stage play, the film follows four larger than life personalities and still manages to bring forth an unexpected intimacy. It’s a beautifully choreographed production that easily calls to mind the one-room play it’s based on. Our critic found it a “flawed” but “promising” debut for King, calling it “a film with the potential to do more, push further and explore and maybe even in some ways explode those legacies to get at the men underneath them, it feels too timid, too talky, too conceptual in content for being so classical in form.”
Release Date: January 15 on Amazon Prime [Review]
“The Dig”
What You Need to Know: What we’ve come to expect from Oscar season is all up in the air this time around with new schedules and films that fall beyond the usual time frame for Oscar eligibility and buzz, making it so that it’s not as easy for us as it once was to guess the quality of the film based on its release date. January can be a bit of a dumping ground for standard studio fare but in the case of a film like “The Dig” starring Carey Mulligan, Lily James, Ralph Fiennes, and Johnny Flynn based on the novel of the same name by John Preston, it’s tougher to guess. All signs point to an engaging film with a plot that reimagines the events of the 1939 excavation of Sutton Hoo but there is also the fear that it could instead turn out something like the disastrous “Hillbilly Elegy.” That said, the cast is uniformly strong and Mulligan, in particular, is riding a hot streak following her electric turn in “Promising Young Woman.” “The Dig” is directed by Simon Stone (“The Daughter”) and adapted by Moira Buffini.
Release Date: January 15 in limited release, January 29 on Netflix.
“MLK/FBI”
What You Need to Know: Director Sam Pollard refuses to hold back in the scathing and timely documentary “MLK/FBI.” Based on the release of newly declassified files, the documentary goes into great detail to explore the US governments surveillance and harassment of Martin Luther King Jr. With voice-over interviews from Beverly Gage, Donna Murch, David Garrow, Clarence Jones, Anthony Young, and James Comey, the film looks to condemn the system that allowed and encouraged these evils to transpire. The film made its premiere at the 2020 Toronto International Film Festival where it stuck with our critic who wrote, “Pollards’ ‘MLK/FBI’ is more than an eye-opening look at an icon, and the evil forces working to tear him apart, it’s a critical chapter that should be imprinted inside every white American’s heart. Especially right now.”
Release Date: January 15 in select theaters [Review]
