‘Spencer’: Kristen Stewart stars as an anguished, rebellious Princess Diana in Pablo Larraín’s answer to “The Crown.”.‘Summer of Soul’: Stevie Wonder, Mahalia Jackson, Mavis Staples and others shine in Questlove’s documentary about the Harlem Cultural Festival.Scott and Manohla Dargis, selected their favorite movies of the year. Looking back, “The Great Wall” highlights the challenges that films face as they navigate the increasingly complex web of racial sensitivities. What few may have realized - and what American viewers may not know when the film is released in the United States next month - is that “ The Great Wall” was actually conceived as an effort to avoid another diversity issue: pandering. She added, “His character, a mercenary soldier who stumbles into an elite corps fighting mythical beasts, spends the course of the film being humbled, outsmarted and re-educated in Chinese virtues of bravery, selflessness, discipline and invention.”
“Those who ranted against the project as another case of Hollywood ‘whitewashing’ in which Matt Damon saves China from dragons may have to bite their tongue,” wrote Maggie Lee, chief Asia film critic for Variety. BEIJING - When the trailer for “The Great Wall,” a high-profile China-Hollywood coproduction, was released last year, critics pounced: The scenes of Matt Damon leading a Chinese army into battle seemed like yet another instance of Hollywood’s “white savior” complex and its repeated whitewashing, the practice of casting white actors in roles originally conceived as Asian (or nonwhite).įast-forward to December and vindication of sorts for this Legendary Entertainment picture: Reviewers largely dismissed the accusation, while lukewarm in their assessments of the adventure flick.