In my efforts to keep this blog more up-to-date, instead of having content only around Awards Season, I’d like to start a new weekly series where I document the shows/films I watch each week. I don’t have a good track record of keeping up with routines, but I’m gonna try my best anyway! I’m a few weeks behind, but here is the first of my weekly entries, documenting what I watched in the first full week of January, ending on January 11th.

In the first week of 2020 I consumed quite a lot of media. I caught up on my Netflix shows, including ‘Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj’ and Vox Media’s ‘Explained’, finally started Part 2 of my Netflix fav ‘Terrace House': Tokyo 2019-2020’, worked up the courage to start and finish the 3.5-hour epic ‘The Irishman’, and marathoned three films in theaters back-to-back-to-back: Oscar contender ‘1917’ and two films that depict the horrors of capital punishment - ‘Clemency’ and ‘Just Mercy’.

‘Clemency’ is one of the most positively-reviewed films of 2019 most people haven’t seen, an unfortunate fact considering it features a career-best performance by Alfre Woodard (‘Cross Creek’, ‘The Lion King (2019)’). Written and directed by Chinonye Chukwu, the first Black woman to win the U.S. Dramatic Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, the film follows Bernadine Williams (Woodard), a death row prison warden, and the psychological toll it takes on her after years in the role.

From the very first shot of the film, we see Woodard portraying a woman who’s morally broken. Putting inmates to death year after year has surely gotten to her. Yet it’s still a job, her character tells herself. And at least she’s putting these men to death as humanely as possible, right? But we see the character wrestling with the idea that maybe there is no humanity in government-sanctioned murder.

Besides Woodard’s Oscar-worthy performance, the film features another standout in Aldis Hodge (‘Straight Outta Compton’) as Anthony Woods, a death row inmate convicted of killing a cop. While Woodard’s role shows us the psychological toll capital punishment can take on those who execute, Hodge’s role shows us the same toll on those who are told when and how they will die. It’s difficult to understand what that can do to a person - to a human being.

‘Just Mercy’ is based on defense attorney Bryan Stevenson’s memoir of the same name, detailing his challenging experience fighting for the innocence of Walter McMillian, a Black man framed and put on death row for the murder of a young white woman in Alabama.

Director and co-writer Destin Daniel Cretton, director of the Indie darling ‘Short Term 12’ and Marvel’s upcoming ‘Shang-Chi and the the Legend of the Ten Rings’, does an admirable job bringing this story to the big screen, even if he doesn’t exactly break any new ground in doing so. ‘Just Mercy’ is the standard legal drama we’re accustomed to, and it follows the same predictable narrative path, but it doesn’t mean it’s not still impactful. What makes the film stand out is it’s talented cast, including Michael B. Jordan (‘Fruitvale Station’, ‘Creed’) portraying Stevenson, Jamie Foxx (‘Django Unchained’) portraying McMillian, and Cretton-regular Brie Larson (‘Captain Marvel’) as a local activist.

Jordan and Foxx’s respective characters are an interesting pairing, with Stevenson being a man who was not born nor raised in the South, who hasn’t faced the same violent racism as someone like McMillian knows well. We see Stevenson climbing an uphill battle, working to convince the Alabama courts to recognize McMillian’s conviction was based on faulty evidence, while at the same time trying to convince McMillian himself - someone who’s lost all hope and knows how “the real world” operates - that the fight is worth it.

Despite these A-list leads, the standout role here is Rob Morgan as fellow death row inmate Hebert Richardson (‘The Last Black Man in San Francisco’). Richardson was a real Vietnam War veteran convicted of accidentally killing a neighbor by setting off a homemade bomb, a result of his PTSD. Morgan is heartbreaking in his portrayal of Richardson, a man who accepts his guilt but who is also an example of the country’s systemic failure to protect its own.

Seeing ‘Clemency’ and ‘Just Mercy’ back-to-back was and powerful (and depressing) experience. I can’t imagine anyone watching these films and leaving with the perspective that the death penalty should remain in this country. A system that disproportionately affects Black people and people of color, and one that ultimately kills many innocent people, is one that should be abolished - not just because innocent people are affect, but because it’s immoral to murder a human being.

‘Clemency’ and ‘Just Mercy’ are still playing in theaters.

Week 1 Watchlist:

1/2: Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj (Season 5, Episode 6) - “Why We Can’t Retire”
1/3: Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj (Season 5, Episode 2) - “Trump’s Worst Policy: Killing Asylum”
1/3: Explained (Season 2, Episode 4) - “Athleisure”
1/5: Terrace House: Tokyo 2019-2020 (Episode 13) - “All or Nothing”
1/9: Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj (Season 1, Episode 7) - “Content Moderation and Free Speech”
1/11: Clemency
1/11: 1917
1/11: Just Mercy
1/11: The Irishman