‘Miss Juneteenth’ is a surefire winner
An award-winning motherdaughter pageant drama tops the new DVD releases for the week of Jan. 19.
Winner of the Louis Black “Lone Star” Award at the 2020 SXSW Film Festival – a fitting accomplishment, given the historical significance of the Juneteenth holiday’s Texas origins – and with plenty of Oscar buzz, “Miss Juneteenth” follows a financially struggling single mom, Turquoise Jones (Nicole Beharie), who enters her teenage daughter, Kai (Alexis Chikaeze), into the local Miss Juneteenth pageant. It’s a title Turquoise won herself, but was unable to take full advantage of its college scholarship prize due to having Kai. And 15-year-old Kai is less than enthused with the idea.
Beharie gives an amazing performance in this complex role rooted in deep-seated traumas, with director Channing Godfrey Peoples deftly weaving in the holiday’s significance and history into this rich generational story, wrote Tribune News Service critic Katie Walsh in her review.
“Peoples and Beharie have established (Turquoise) as such a compelling character that you always root for her. It's not that we want to see Kai and Turquoise necessarily win the pageant, but to see them find stability and understanding in their relationships, to learn to compromise and happily coexist as individuals, and to express themselves with dignity and grace,” Walsh wrote. “That right there is real Miss Juneteenth material.”
ALSO NEW ON DVD
“The Kid Detective”: A former child detective (Adam Brody) keeps on taking trivial cases into his 30s.
“The Cleansing Hour”: A pair of sham exorcists (Ryan Guzman and Kyle Gallner) face dire consequences when one of their girlfriends (Alix Angelis) is actually possessed by a demon.
“The Climb”: Real-life best friends (Michael Angelo Covino and Kyle Marvin) grapple with how one slept with the other’s fiancee.
“Always and Forever”: A woman (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) believes her friends’ mysterious deaths are linked to her traumatic past.
“Dead Reckoning”: A woman in Nantucket (India Eisley) must stop the terrorist who murdered her parents.
“Dreamland”: A Great Depression era farm boy (Finn Cole) struggles to decide whether to turn in or help a fugitive (Margot Robbie).
“Hearts and Bones”: A Sudanese refugee (Andrew Luri) pleads with a war photojournalist (Hugo Weaving) not to display photos of a massacre in his village.
“Max Cloud”: A teenage girl (Isabelle Allen) gets trapped inside her favorite video game.
“Spiral”: A detective (Chris Rock) is targeted by a sadistic killer.
“The Village in the Woods”: A couple attempting fraud in a small village become marks themselves.
“Wander”: A grieving private investigator (Aaron Eckhart) becomes convinced a small-town case is connected to his daughter’s death.