A mother battles with foster care

     

   Some of the year’s toughest movies have dealt with heartbreaking issues involving foster care. A Thousand and One told the story of a woman who rescued a boy from foster care. I won’t say more because those who haven’t seen the movie should be able to experience it with fresh eyes.

     Now comes Earth Mama, a movie about a 24-year-old woman with two children in foster care and another on the way. Expanding her short film, director Savanah Leaf focuses on Gia (rapper Tia Nomore), a woman caught in a frustrating trap. Gia wants to bring her son and daughter home, but the requirements for liberating them from foster care plunge her into conflict.

      Gia can't work enough hours at a photo shop to meet the income qualification for renewed custody because she's constantly attending mandatory classes or meeting with social workers.

      The word “realism” can mean many things. I prefer the word authenticity. Not a second of Earth Mama suggests that Nomore is anything but the character she’s playing. 

      No saint, Gia has struggled to kick drug addiction that caused her to lose her kids in the first place. She’s now drug free and scenes in which she interacts with her kids show her to be a caring mother. She wants to be a good mom for them — and also to prove her own competence.

       Although one social worker seems insensitive, Leaf vilifies no one. Another social worker (Erika Alexander) suggests that Gia consider adoption. The social worker isn't coercive. She wants Gia to understand her options.

       A pregnant friend (Doechii, a rapper and singer) pressures Gia to keep the child, telling her that giving up the baby would be an affront to God — and a betrayal of her culture.

        Although she's wary, Gia meets a couple (Sharon Duncan-Brewster and Bokeem Woodbine) who want to adopt. They’re decent, well-meaning folks who have a teenage daughter (Kami Jones) who seems as if she could be Gia’s friend. 

      No one pushes Gia to do anything, but her situation minimizes her ability to maintain control of her life.  

     Neither Leaf nor any of the actors showboat; the characters  emerge unbothered by any performance puffery.

      A wary Nomore makes no attempt to ingratiate herself with the audience. Understandably cautious, Gia’s one tough cookie. And so, it seems, is Leaf who brings us close to the characters, giving us as little opportunity for escape as she gives Gia.

      I don’t mean to suggest that Earth Mama qualifies as an endurance test. It's just tells a painful story, and, sad to say, proves heartbreakingly convincing. 

         

The struggles of a gay Marine recruit

 When it comes to depicting the way the Marine Corps trains recruits, Hollywood has tended to go hard. Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket set the brutal standard for the fervor with which drill instructors try to break down their charges before allowing them to become Marines. The Inspection is another basic-training movie but with a difference. It focuses on a gay recruit who joins the Marines after spending 10 homeless years on the streets of Trenton, N.J. Based on his own life, writer/director Elegance Bratton focuses his movie on Ellis French (a terrific Jeremy Pope), a disheveled young man whose religious mother (Gabriel Union) threw him out for being gay before he had learned to stand on his own two feet. Scenes between French and his mother have bite, mostly because Union conveys the unmitigated loathing French's mother has for her son's gayness. Most of the movie focuses on French's training days, which includes a moment in which he inadvertently reveals his gayness. A tough drill instructor (Bokeem Woodbine) makes it his business to weed French out of the Corps. Another non-commissioned officer (Raul Castillo) extends some understanding, assuring French that others like him have made it to the end. Bullied by trainers and his fellow recruits, it takes all of French's resolve to continue. He develops a tie with another "outcast" recruit (Eman Esfandi), a Muslim, but mostly he's on his own. Although the movie can feel limited, it stands as a revealing look at a young man who's trying to understand whether he can fit into a world that wasn’t designed to acknowledge his existence. It's not only the Marine Corps that's making decisions here. 

A road movie with a political theme

Jodie Turner-Smith and Daniel Kaluuya create a memorable duo in Queen & Slim, a movie about a black couple that takes flight after the accidental shooting of a racist cop.

Jodie Turner-Smith brings tons of presence to the screen in Queen & Slim, a drama about a black man and woman who take to the road after they're involved in the accidental killing of a racist cop. Tall and lean, Turner-Smith isn't always behind the wheel but she drives the movie.

As the other half of the fleeing couple, Daniel Kaluuya, familiar from Get Out, has the less showy role. He plays a young man who finds himself mired in a situation that rapidly spins out of control. After the police shooting, Kaluuya's character naively tells Turner-Smith's character that he's not a criminal. You are now, she replies.

Maybe Kaluuya’s character needs to rethink his personalized license plate: It reads, "Trust God."

The two meet on the blind date that opens the movie, which unspools in ways that may remind you of other movies -- from Bonnie & Clyde to Thelma and Louise. But director Melina Matsoukas, working from a screenplay by Lena Waithe, isn't following the customary map. Queen & Slim is a road movie set against a backdrop of racially motivated injustice.

An episodic approach includes a stop in New Orleans where the couple seeks refuge with Turner-Smith's character's uncle (Bokeem Woodbine), a man who lives with several women. Bokeem's character has an improbable backstory that later comes to light.

A white Florida couple (Flea and Chloe Sevigny) adds a late-picture stop. They want to help the couple escape to Cuba where they hope to find safety.

Matsoukas, who directed Beyonce's Formation video, grounds the movie in black community support for the movie's two main characters. They inspire protests proclaiming the sanctity of black lives.

A major miscue involves the way Matsoukas juxtaposes a sex scene between the two protagonists and protests against police brutality.

There may be more going on here than one movie can handle, a story of mismatched love (she’s a no-nonsense attorney; he’s an ordinary guy), a traditional road movie, a cry of social protest and a movie with a taste for anecdotal side trips.

The points in Waithe's screenplay can be made bluntly, a defensible choice considering the subject matter but the movie piles a lot on its plate as it moves toward a finale that you'll probably anticipate before it arrives.

Queen & Slim doesn't always work. I'll say this, though: When shots are fired in Queen & Slim, they carry a violent, harrowing shock. That's more than you can say for lots of movies. This time, the violence is felt.