Beyond the Lights (2014)
Directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood
Noni Jean is a hot new rising star. But not all is what it seems, and the pressure causes Noni to nearly fall apart - until she meets Kaz Nicol, a promising young cop and aspiring politician who's been assigned to her detail. Can Kaz's love give Noni the courage to find her own voice and break free to become the artist she was meant to be?
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What critics compared Beyond the Lights to
Gina Prince-Bythewood (“Love and Basketball”/”Beyond the Lights”), the rare woman of color who directs, mounts this action pic with oodles of verve.
Prince-Bythewood is a good director, as evidenced by previous work like “Love & Basketball” and “Beyond the Lights,” so it’s a pity that she’s saddled with such a rotten script and lackadaisical stunt coordination.
Director Gina Prince-Bythewood ( Beyond the Lights ) does a fantastic job with the action sequences, which aren’t as spastic and all over the place like too many gun-focused fight scenes.
Prince-Bythewood is the other kind: in the years since her marvelous debut, the 2000 Love & Basketball, she has made only two features, The Secret Life of Bees (2008) and Beyond the Lights (2014).
Director Gina Prince-Bythewood ("Love & Basketball," "Beyond the Lights") knocks her first action movie out of the park, her background in romance coming into play in the most startling and deeply meaningful way here.
And in 2014's Beyond the Lights, a young R&B artist escapes from her handlers and considers changing her entire look and sound.
Sure, aspects of this story recall a more dramatic take on “Notting Hill” and “Forgetting Sarah Marshall,” along with “Nashville”-esque revelations.
Gugu Mbatha-Raw (Belle, Beyond the Lights) has a small role as a functionary sporting ears that look like flattened sweet potatoes.
As Titus and Kalique, Douglas Booth (2014's " Noah ") and Tuppence Middleton (2014's " A Long Way Down ") disappear without resolution, while Gugu Mbatha-Raw (who had a breakthrough year in 2014 with "Belle" and "Beyond the Lights") is criminally squandered in the nothing part of a dog-eared hybrid named Famulus."Jupiter…
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The protagonist, NASA comm officer Ava Hamilton, is played by Gugu Mbatha-Raw, the star of Belle and Beyond the Lights , though she’s probably more familiar to Netflix viewers as half the central couple in Black Mirror ’s “San Junipero” episode.
Gugu Mbatha-Raw, who was so excellent in the under-appreciated Beyond the Lights , does a great job with the lead role, despite how incredibly tiresome it is to have yet another lady astronaut whose entire motivation for being in space is love and family.