A look back at Sam Neill's versatile acting career – video obituary

Sam Neill, the New Zealand actor whose career spanned five decades, has died at the age of 78. From Oscar winners to blockbusters such as The Piano and Jurassic Park, Neill built a career playing dashing romantic leads and charismatic villains across film and television Sam Neill’s 20 best performances A life in pictures ‘A true gentleman’: actors, directors and leaders pay tribute to Sam Neill Obituary Continue reading... from Film | The Guardian https://ift.tt/HNyWTGn via IFTTT

Alma’s Rainbow review – rereleased gem of black female empowerment

Pioneering director Ayoka Chenzira gives voice to the inner lives of women at a time when they were mostly ignored, making this coming-of-age story a rare gift to treasure

Ayoka Chenzira is a pioneering black director whose films have been finding a new audience with younger generations as she enters her 70s. Her 1994 feature debut Alma’s Rainbow has now been restored and rereleased; it is a coming-of-age movie that is funny and warm, if a little scrappy. It’s set in a Brooklyn townhouse owned by prim and proper Alma (Kim Weston-Moran), who runs a beauty parlour on the ground floor. In this all-women space, Chenzira luxuriates in her female characters. The fact that historically so few films have been made about the inner lives of black women gives Alma’s Rainbow a precious quality, and the feeling that it’s a gem to treasure.

Alma lives in the house with her teenage daughter Rainbow (played with charisma and spark by Victoria Gabrielle Platt). Rainbow has been skipping school to perform with a hip-hop street dance crew. In the neighbourhood, she’s known as a tomboy, but Rainbow is starting to think about boys. Her mum, Alma, is not impressed; she’s worked to the bone to make a success of the beauty parlour, to be an independent woman and build a better life for Rainbow. It makes her strict: “Keep your pants up and your dress down,” she instructs her daughter.

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