Lackawanna Blues (2005)

Every once in a while a film comes along with characters we all know and love. A film where you see people you know portrayed on screen. It's cinema very at its best.Lackawanna Blues is that film. Set in 1960s upstate New York, the story surrounds a rock- solid woman, who is the foundation for her community. This, based on a true story film, is told from a child she accepted as her own. This child, Ruben Santiago-Hudson wrote the screenplay.*Emmy winner, S. Epatha Merkerson stars as Nanny, a woman who has wit, drive and determination for helping others in her boarding home. She does this as she wrestles with infidelity from her young lover, Bill Crosby, played by the **Oscar nominated Terrence Howard. But make no mistake; see this film for the amazing performance of Merkerson, who is brilliant in this role. She encompasses a person we have all known, and perhaps love.Lackawanna Blues is already on DVD; be sure to pick it up at your local video story today.*Merkerson has already won an Emmy, Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild for this role.**Howard has an Oscar nomination for his role in Hustle & Flow.

LACKAWANNA BLUES is a fine stage play by Ruben Santiago-Hudson and an even finer film as the author adapted his own life story for the screen. This brilliant film ignites the screen with rich colors, fine music, brilliant editing, superb direction by George C. Wolfe, and a cast so stunning that they make an encore viewing compulsory! Yes, it is just that good.The story is based on the author's life as the child 'Junior' (Marcus Carl Franklin) raised in the inimitable home of soulfully empathetic Rachel "Nanny" Crosby (S. Epatha Merkerson), a lady who devoted her life to aiding the disenfranchised by transporting them from the South, from mental hospitals, and from the streets to Lackawanna, New York. The boy recalls all the lessons he learned about life from the inhabitants of the house - odd characters with painful pasts - and from the disintegration of his racially mixed biological family rescued by Nanny. The myriad characters of the home are too numerous to outline but they are portrayed by some of the finest actors in the business: Terrence Howard, Rosie Perez, Mos Def, the beautiful Carmen Ejogo, Louis Gossett Jr., Jeffrey Wright, Ernie Hudson, Charlayne Woodward, Jimmy Smits, Patricia Wettig, Macy Gray, Liev Schreiber, Kathleen Chalfant, Lou Myers, Hill Harper - the list goes on and on.In the course of the film we are introduced to the cruelties of racism, the history of desegregation, the dynamics of drug abuse and violence, the infectious joy of African American music contributions to our musical culture, and the courage of one fine woman who battled all the hardships the world can dish out to maintain the dignity of those with whom she came into contact. S. Epatha Merkerson is wholly submerged in this role, a role she makes shine like a beacon of reason in a world of chaos. She offers one of the most stunning performances of the past years, and had this film been released in the theaters instead of as an HBO movie, she without a doubt would add the Oscar to place along side her Golden Globe award.The entire cast is exceptional and Wolfe handles the acting and the story like a master: like riffs in a jazz piece, he pastes tiny moments of conversation with each character and Junior along with flashes of scenes from the story with the matrix of dance fests at the local clubs brimming over the top with incredible blues, jazz, dancing, and joy. The production crew has mounted this little miracle of a picture with extreme care and never for a moment does attention lag from the momentum of the story. Highly Recommended, almost Compulsory Viewing! Grady Harp

This movie begins in the 1950s in Lackawanna, NY, when Ruben Santiago Jr. was born. This is his story which spans roughly 30 years. But there is another main character which really gives the whole movie its tone, and reason for the story being told.S. Epatha Merkerson is Rachel "Nanny" Crosby, a 50-ish woman who has turned her two story home into a boarding house and restaurant. She never turns anyone away, even if they seem a bit crazy. But she also isn't shy about standing eye to eye with a bully looking for the wife he beat up the night before. Nanny has the good fortune of being there for little Ruben when the boy's mom and dad both turn out to be more interested in the rest of the world than their son. Nanny becomes Ruben's real mother, and in her care he grows up to be a fine, well educated man.What the movie accurately depicts is how it was to live as a black person in the 1950s and 1960s in Lackawanna, NY. It is a side of society that we seldom see in movies. It has a great ensemble cast, but it is Merkerson as Nanny that makes the movie what it is. Hers is as good a perforations as any most of us have ever seen. The cast also includes the real Ruben Santiago Jr. as Freddie Cobbs.It is out now on DVD. Truly a special movie.

"Lackawanna Blues" takes place in the 1950's and tells the story of a young "black" (well, actually, black and Latino) boy whose parents are unable to take care of him, so he is reared by the neighborhood "Mama" who owns a boarding house full of eccentric people. The movie works when the story focuses on the two main characters--the boy and his adoptive mother. Unfortunately so many characters weave in and out of the movie that I found them downright distracting. But the biggest problem with the film was the MTV-style direction by George C. Wolfe. Okay, I know I'm not watching a PBS Masterpiece Theatre production, but does the camera have to keep moving and jumping around so much? This constant shifting actually distances the viewer from the performers on screen. The performances of S. Epatha Merkerson as the adoptive mother and Marcus Carl Franklin as the young boy are generally very good, but "Lackawanna Blues" was good material that should have been allowed to breath.