a review of 大流氓

MANNVANUARY FOUR: A heartfelt, warts-and-all portrait of an unconventional artist and questionable parent, rendered by his equally (if differently) talented son. Doesn't quite escape the limitations of its early '00s original cable TV-movie budget to really capture the feeling of the period it's depicting, but the dramatizations of Melvin Van Peebles' attempts to make his breakout film interspersed with faux-documentary talking head segments is an interesting approach to the material. The sudden appearance of the real Bill Cosby at the end is definitely a wild surprise all things considered, it definitely would not have made the cut if Mario made the movie within the past 10 years. But I'm glad they made the connection between MVP and America's TV Dad as two sides of the same coin, with regard to both Hollywood's depiction of Black culture and the rise of Black artists making things on their own terms.