A Thousand and One - Review Thread

A Thousand and One is a movie that made a bit of a splash at Sundance and Focus Features seems to be skipping the platforming stage and giving it a rather aggressive wide release out the gate, which I think maybe sets it up a bit for failure as it’s not really the kind of movie that can bear that, especially without any real advertising. Honestly I didn’t even know much of anything about it when I went to see it beyond the fact that it got some critical plaudits. The film starts out seeming a bit like a Sean Baker slice of life sort of thing about a single mother trying to make it through a weekend after technically kidnapping her son from foster care in New York circa 1994. At that stage of the film I can’t say I was overly impressed by it, but then the film takes a bit of an unexpected flash forward and reveals itself to be something that’s structurally more akin to Moonlight as it’s basically a movie depicting a black child as he ages through three stages of his life. But, this isn’t told in the language of international arthouse cinema like Jenkins’ film was, it’s more of a gritty little indie film despite it’s recent period setting and somewhat ambitious sweep, which seeks to match the kid’s growth with the changes that New York went through during the Giuliani and Bloomberg administrations. In this sense it’s kind of a movie that sneaks up on you, it starts out feeling rather modest but ultimately proves itself to be something of a modern day epic in its outlook at least though not it’s production values or runtime. In fact I maybe wish that first time director A.V. Rockwell had held on to this one until she had a bit more experience and clout to turn this into something a bit bigger and more refined than it is, because it feels like with some amped up casting and filmmaking finesse this really could have been something special, but as it is it’s no slouch either.
***1/2 out of Five