home All News open_in_new Full Article

Straw review – Taraji P Henson rises above Tyler Perry’s tortured Netflix thriller

The Oscar nominated actor gives a powerhouse performance as a woman pushed to the edge but the punishing film around her does a disserviceTyler Perry is not beating the allegations. For decades, the content-creating studio chief has been roundly criticized for making the traumatization of Black women a persistent theme in his work. In Straw, his latest exercise in misogynoir for Netflix, he pulls out all the stops to break the camel’s back.The guinea pig for this cultural stress test is Janiyah (Taraji P Henson), an apex Perry caricature who is past the point of exhaustion. Her loud, hot and dumpy apartment isn’t all that keeps her in perennial discomfort. There’s also a precocious young daughter (Gabrielle E Jackson) with nagging medical issues, and that eviction notice on the dining table. She can’t make ends meet despite working three jobs, and her cashier’s position at the local food desert grocery store is especially thankless. When an angry customer spikes a bottle of fizzy dr...


today 38 h. ago attach_file Politics



ID: 677698336
Add Watch Country

arrow_drop_down