Film FestivalMovie Review

Film Review: A THOUSAND AND ONE: A.V. Rockwell’s Emotional and Authentic Film Will Pack a Wallop With Viewers [Sundance 2023]

Teyana Taylor Aaron Kingsley Adetola A Thousand And One

A Thousand and One Review

A Thousand and One (2023) Film Review from the 46th Annual Sundance Film Festival, a movie written and directed by A.V. Rockwell and starring Teyana Taylor, William Catlett, Aaron Kingsley Adetola, Josiah Cross, Terri Abney, Artrece Johnson, Mark Gessner, Adriane Lenox, Will Fitz, Don DiPetta, Lia Lando, Ava Eisenson, Madeline Mahoney, Tara Pacheco, Ricky Garcia, Antwayn Hopper, Jennean Farmer and Delissa Reynolds.

A Thousand and One, directed by A.V. Rockwell, is a powerhouse drama that will shake its audience to the core with its unflinching realism and remarkable performances. Yet, the movie is also very moving and fascinating to watch despite showcasing some themes that were integrated into other movies before this one. Instead of becoming a cliched story of a young Black man named Terry (played young by Aaron Kingsley Adetola and as an older teenager by Josiah Cross) trying to rise above his circumstances (in this case, his mother Inez (Teyana Taylor) has betrayed his trust), every scene in A Thousand and One feels fresh and important. It’s a remarkable piece of work from Rockwell which one will not easily forget.

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Inez is getting out of Riker’s Island as this New York City set film opens. This film spans about a decade from the early 1990’s to the 2000’s. This movie’s story focuses on how Inez basically kidnaps a six-year-old child from the foster care system, Terry, and raises him under false pretenses. She gets fake papers to change her new son’s name and Inez takes on the overwhelming responsibilities of motherhood.

Inez is fierce, brave and absolutely unpredictable and Taylor captures every beat of her remarkably on screen. The bonding scenes between Terry (as played by Adetola) and Taylor’s Inez are tremendously developed and shed a considerable amount of light on the fact that despite her hard edges, Inez has a heart which is unstoppable. She technically does not do the right thing in the picture but that’s where the viewer must examine their own moral compass to determine what is just in the situation that occurs in the picture where Inez tries to give Terry a better life.

As the father figure to Terry and the love interest of Inez, William Catlett is also in fine form playing his role believably and with a considerable amount of forceful precision. Catlett’s character is known as “Lucky” and although he has a wandering eye, he loves Inez and Terry a great deal. In the film’s best scene, Lucky tells Terry (now played by Cross) how much he loved Inez and how beautiful he thought she was. This, in turn, inspires Terry to tell a girl at a local shop how much he adores her. There is a great deal of realism in the scenes where Terry tries to piece together the details of his life and make the pieces fit so he can have the life Inez has worked so hard for him to achieve.

There are scenes of a landlord named Jerry (Mark Gessner) who comes in and tries to fix Inez’s apartment but there’s a catch. He needs her to move out with Terry temporarily. This all occurs after Lucky gets sick with cancer. It creates chaos in the household which leads Terry to take a school worker named Anita Tucker (Ameila Workman)’s offer for a part-time job. However, when she asks for his social security card and birth certificate, we know there will be no easy answers regarding the difficult choices which must be made by the characters at hand in the film.

Inez is a strongly written character. As played by Taylor, she’s so intensely fascinating that the character becomes the central guiding force of the film. Cross is a revelation. He’s absolutely spellbinding in his scenes as he realizes what has gone on in his past and how Inez has tried to cover up the truth in order to give him a “better” life. While the life she gives him isn’t perfect, it is full of opportunities as Terry does great in school but there’s the matter of the fraudulent records which were obtained in order for Inez to raise him as her own.

Catlett is a perfectly cast actor in the role of Lucky. Catlett’s Lucky and the older Taylor’s scenes together are beautifully orchestrated and the ones between Catlett’s character and Inez are deeply moving. This picture doesn’t hide behind false truths. It presents the gritty realism of urban life coupled with the hardships that the characters must overcome to figure out the next steps their lives will take for them. In the cast of Lucky, his diagnosis becomes a barrier to familial happiness. There are significant complexities here which Rockwell masterfully interweaves into the story line.

A Thousand and One, the film’s title, represents the number of the apartment that Inez and Terry reside in. There are so many fine things about this picture from the brave acting to the unflinching honesty in the story line. While the ending doesn’t have the resolve I would have liked it to, it’s an undeniably powerful work full of rich detail that aptly captures the essence of characters living in New York City. Taylor begins the year of 2023 with a performance that will hopefully not be forgotten as the months go on. It’s a terrific piece of acting in a movie which doesn’t sugarcoat the themes it presents and instead becomes a picture that’s impossible to shake from your memory. It’s an excellent movie.

Rating: 9/10

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Thomas Duffy

Thomas Duffy is a graduate of the Pace University New York City campus and has been an avid movie fan all of his life. In college, he interviewed film stars such as Minnie Driver and Richard Dreyfuss as well as directors such as Tom DiCillo and Mark Waters. He is the author of nine works of fiction available on Amazon. He's been reviewing movies since his childhood and posts his opinions on social media. You can follow him on Twitter. His user handle is @auctionguy28.
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