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Your weekend watch with Tony and Manohla
Before saving the summer with “The Old Guard”, Gina Prince-Bythewood proved she had a film game with her first film.
By Manohla Dargis
For those looking for the thrill of summer movies, it has been an endless season of discontent. With many theaters closed and the industry on hold, the audience has been broadcasting and yawning for hours. So thank you to the goddess for Gina Prince-Bythewood, whose Netflix action and adventure “The Old Guard”, with its mysteries, kinetic action, tight settings and considered superheroes, has given us the transport thrill we need.
All this to say it’s time to revisit “Love and Basketball”, Prince-Bythewood’s first feature film and his first on-screen triumph. Launched in 2000, it stars Sanaa Lathan and Omar Epps as friends with years of training who have young adults joined by emotions for each other and a shared hobthrough for basketball. Located in Los Angeles (where Prince-Bythewood led the track at the University of California), it uses non-public detail to memorably open up a larger, richer world.
Prince-Bythewood, who began writing for television, developed the script for “Love and Basketball” in Sundance’s labs. Funded through New Line Cinema, a Warner Brothers department (Spike Lee, an angel father), it premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2000. When the film was released a few months later, New York Times critic Elvis Mitchell expressed complaints but admired it very much. and especially Lathan. And he got better when he wrote that when he came to his screenwriter and director, the film “the first, even unstable, step of intriguing new talent.”
It took time for this ability to take a big step, but not for lack of attempts, and it was 8 years before his film at the moment, “The Secret Life of Bees,” put Prince-Bythewood back in our vision box. Since then, he has worked tirelessly, perfecting his craft and announcing his skill with films such as “Beyond the Lights” (2014) and the limited series “Shots Fired” (2017). With “The Old Guard,” she has become the first black woman to make a wonderful ebook comedy movie.
It’s been years since I realized “Love and Basketball,” and I’m waiting to see him again. I hope you do too. (My film partner, A.O. Scott, is on vacation.) I’m curious to see if I like it as much now as I do then. And I wonder how Prince-Bythewood’s cinema has changed. She has been a delicate actor director, but she also knows how to move the camera. How apparent were your talents?
You can stream or buy “Love and Basketball”; here’s a guide. Comments will be open until 12:00 p.m. Tuesday, Eastern time, so please come in, we want everyone on the bench.
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