The arrival of June brings with it a full feeling of summer, and it’s precisely that feeling that might occasionally call for some time spent in the air conditioning perusing streaming services like Peacock. In addition to a solid slate of originals, Peacock is also home to some genuinely great movies, and we’ve got one picked out that is perfect for the heat of June.
If Beale Street Could Talk tells the story of a young couple living in New Orleans who fall in love in the 1960s and come face to face with harsh discrimination. It’s an underseen, beautiful movie well worth your time. Here are three reasons you should check it out on Peacock this month.
It features the indomitable Regina King
Among the many great things about If Beale Street Could Talk, perhaps the most important is that it’s the movie that finally won Regina King her Oscar. King plays Sharon Rivers, the mother of Tish, the young woman who falls in love in the film. In King’s hands, Sharon becomes the movie’s most crucial character as she tries to save her daughter’s lover from being incarcerated for a crime he did not commit.
Her steadfast loyalty to the young couple, and her determination to find justice in a world that seems unwilling to give it, made this performance a standout from the moment the movie first premiered.
It has one of the great scores of the 21st century
Director Barry Jenkins and composer Nicholas Britell have one of the most productive relationships in movies today, and Britell’s score for If Beale Street Could Talk might be his best work. Taking partial inspiration from the jazz of New Orleans, but spinning it in new and unexpected ways, Britell’s score is more evocative of the soaring love story than of the horrors that these two face in the world around them.
Britell is one of the few composers working today who seems to be genuinely innovating with each new composition, and while you might love the Succession theme, If Beale Street‘s score is just as worthy of your time.
It feels horribly relevant today
Barry Jenkins’ career has been at least part about the horrors of Black life in America, and If Beale Street Could Talk is a prime example. The film’s story of a couple broken up because one is accused of and arrested for a crime he didn’t commit feels like it could just as easily be told in contemporary America.
To Jenkins’ credit, though, the film spends plenty of time celebrating the love between the two characters at the center of the story, instead of simply sitting in the misery that’s all around them.
If Beale Street Could Talk is streaming on Peacock.
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