Q-ell Betton

As part of a series of films, under the banner of Small Axe, British director Steve McQueen has brought a collection of dramas depicting the life of black people in the seventies and eighties in London. By all accounts, the first of the dramas, Mangrove, was well received.

Brief synopsis: A woman returns to her home town in the run-up to Christmas and causes an uproar when she tells all the proprietors in the town square that they must all leave by Christmas Eve because she has sold the land to a developer. A couple of angels, one that is still in training, hope to help her see the error of her ways.

Brief synopsis: A successful app developer creates an app that eases the burden of shopping over Christmas. Unfortunately, his busy lifestyle sees him neglecting everything in his life because of the business. When he has an accident and falls unconscious, he wakes up in Santa’s warehouse and is tasked with making one hundred toys.

Brief synopsis: A princess, days away from her Christmas Day coronation is given a chance to rekindle her romance with a love she thought lost when a fellow princess, who is her doppelgänger, switches places with her to give her a chance to get the romance back on track. A greedy cousin to the soon-to-be-queen princess, who also bears the same uncanny resembles to the princesses, throws a spanner in the works when she kidnaps one of the princesses.

Brief synopsis: When a wealthy and powerful man dies of a heart attack, he leaves his estranged daughter a strange inheritance and burden. She struggles as she searches for the truth behind the unusual inheritance whilst wanting to protect the family name.

The Two Killings Of Sam Cooke is a documentary by Kelly Duane that is emotionally resonant but ultimately underwhelming. In essence, it rehashes the story of Cooke’s death and how it was shrouded in and remains shrouded in mystery. That is the first and obvious killing.