Review: Red Tails (2012) is a low-key, mostly entertaining history lesson/B-movie.

Red Tails
2012
120 minutes
rated PG-13

by Scott Mendelson

The strongest aspect of director Anthony Hemingway and producer George Lucas's Red Tails is that it lives in a somewhat Utopian film industry where African-American dramas aren't all that big of a deal.  The picture may have an unfair burden of proving the bankability of larger-budget ($58 million) genre fare revolving entirely around African Americans, but you don't see that sweat onscreen.  It treats itself not like a test case, or a passion project for one of the more financially successful independent filmmakers of our age, but merely a B-movie action drama that involves actors like Cuba Cooding Jr. Terrence Howard, and David Oyelowo.  Red Tails may be (unfortunately) an anomaly, but those behind and in front of the camera treat this as if it were one of many minority-led historical dramas that open each month at the local multiplex.

One to represent all? How The Help is being punished for a lack of minority-driven films, rather than its own merits as a movie.

I'm not going to get into a point-by-point rundown of why I think many of the criticisms being hurled at The Help are just-plain wrong.  First of all, Entertainment Weekly's Owen Gleiberman already did just that, so I'll merely link to his piece.  Second of all, much of the outcry over The Help comes not from what is in the movie itself, but rather what isn't in the film, and (more importantly) what isn't in the marketplace.  It is a clear case of film critics (and social commentators) reviewing not the movie itself, but everything outside the film.  As a stand-alone film, it works as a solid, if not awe-inspiring character piece involving a number of women (black and white) who exist in an employer/employee relationship during the middle of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement.  If the picture were one of a dozen films being released by a major studio that centered around African-America actors, its flaws would be less of an issue, merely reasons for calling the film good rather than great.  There may be a dearth of African-American-centered major studio releases.  But it is silly to condemn the one 'shining' example and punish it for the non-existence of other pictures like it.

The problem isn't that the new Ultimate Spider-Man is Black/Hispanic. The problem is that Peter Parker had to die to make it happen.

The Ultimate line, from the beginning around ten years ago, was a way for writers and creators to take the classic Marvel characters and retell their stories in a way that was unchained from the decades of continuity and was arguably more realistic and level-headed.  From The Ultimates that presented our dear Avengers as a bunch of dysfunctional nutcases to an X-Men mythology that introduced Wolverine as Magneto's assassin, the alternate universe was a chance to try something different without disregarding the narratives and continuity that had been built up since 1962.  So it comes as no surprise that the Ultimate line would offer a replacement Spider-Man, one who is in fact a mixed-race teen rather than the traditional lily-white nerd from Brooklyn.  Of course, the official announcement today has set off the various criticisms, some of it rooted in racism, some of it merely rooted in the general fanboy whining whenever something is done differently than it was before (see - Sam Raimi's organic web shooters, the casting of Michael Keaton as Batman, etc).  Overall, a racial minority, mixed-race no-less, taking over the cowl of Spider-Man in what is as much a mainstream Spider-Man comic book as the traditional 616 universe is an obvious sign of progress and should be taken as such.  My problem isn't with Miles Morales becoming the new Spider-Man.  No, my problem is that Peter Parker had to die for it to happen.