Everyone knows the best films come out closest to the holidays, and this year seems like no exception. November is already seeing a great many fantastic looking films. Here are five notable films that recently opened or will open within the month.

5. “Honey Boy”

The screenplay for this film is by Shia LaBeouf, once of “Holes” fame but more recently known for his bizarre, erratic behavior. Directed by Alma Har’el and starring Lucas Hedges, the film is described as an act of therapy for LaBoeuf. Following two different timelines, the film shows LaBeouf’s ascent into stardom and his attempt to work out issues with his father via film and art. The film comes out Nov. 8, and it promises to be a wild ride.

4. “The King,” Netflix

This film is loosely based on William Shakespeare’s “Henriad,” a term for the Henry plays, and “Richard II.” Starring the world’s collective boyfriend, Timothée Chalemet, who is most well-known for “Call Me By Your Name” and “Lady Bird,” the film seems to be an attempt to translate Shakespeare for younger audiences, a statement bolstered by the appearance of actors Robert Pattinson and Lily-Rose Depp. Reviews have generally been positive, citing Depp’s strong female character and Pattinson’s short but effectual performance. The film had a limited release in theatres and is now available for streaming on Netflix.

3. “Queen and Slim”

Dealing with a pervasive and somehow divisive premise, “Queen and Slim” follows a couple – Daniel Kaluuya and Jodie Turner-Smith – on a first date thrown into chaos after a traffic stop goes wrong. Smith, known for directing Beyoncé’s “Formation” music video,  makes her leading debut. The film’s screenplay was written by Lena Waithe, known for “The Chi,” her Emmy-winning writing on “Master of None” and the fabulous rainbow cape she wore to the Met Gala in 2018. The film seems topical but not trite, with great attention to detail and lots of care in rendering race thoughtfully and powerfully. The film is released across the United States Nov. 27.

2. “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood”

Depicting one of America’s icons, “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” tells the story of a cynical reporter’s life-changing interaction with Mr. Rogers, played by another American icon, Tom Hanks. From the trailer, Hanks seems to embody Mr. Rogers perfectly, showing the triumph of love and acceptance over pessimism and hate in a time which desperately needs some neighborliness. If you’re in the mood for some wholesome, if not a bit saccharine, family cheer this holiday, “It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” releases across the United States Nov. 22.

1. “Harriet”

With a star-studded cast featuring Janelle Monae, Leslie Odom Jr. and Cynthia Erivo, this film about famed escaped slave and abolitionist Harriet Tubman has been making headlines for months. The film depicts Tubman’s journey from a young slave through her escape, many subsequent journeys back south to help others escape and her stint in the Union army during the civil war. Although packed with action the film also works to be historically accurate and racially sensitive. While possibly not as horrific as 2014 Best Picture winner “12 Years a Slave” or as stunningly rendered as Toni Morrison’s “Beloved,” “Harriet” seems to be a powerful film that is accessible to audiences without becoming overly distorted. Released Nov. 1, the film is sure to be in theatres awhile, making it the perfect Thanksgiving break monotony breaker!

 I’ve never taken a trip over fall break before. Being from Liberty, I’ve never even gone home because I was home. But after spending the last year at Oxford, where a trip to London or even the European continent was a few hours away, the last couple of months here at William Jewell College have made me restless. Unable to take a $15 bus to Paris for the weekend – my first choice – I settled for a close second: a short jaunt up to the University of Iowa to visit two friends I made at Oxford last year and one Jewell friend now starting a Ph.D. there. 

 I drove up to Iowa City on Thursday. The drive is about 4 ½ hours, so I stopped in Des Moines on the way to have some coffee and a pastry at Scenic Route Bakery and walk around the downtown area. I pressed on the two hours more to Iowa City, with plenty of peanut M&Ms as fuel, arriving in time to have dinner with friends at Bluebird Diner, which I quite liked. Afterwards, one of my friends who studies English – an Iowa specialty – took me to a reading at the famed Writers’ Workshop. Cody-Rose Clevidence, a poet, and Alexia Arthurs, a prose writer, both read selections from their work. While I cannot claim to get or even appreciate experimental poetry, the consensus of the crowd made me understand that this was good stuff. 

 I stayed on my friend’s futon for the weekend which was surprisingly comfortable, though I can’t compare it to anything because I’ve never been on a futon before. The next morning, because my English major friend had class – Iowa doesn’t have fall break – my economics friend and I met up for breakfast, pumpkin waffles, and to go have coffee and study. 

We went to Prairie Lights, the Iowa City version of City Lights, the famous San-Francisco indie bookstore and beat hangout. Prairie Lights as a bookstore and a café is great. They have a fantastic selection of new, old and independent books, and the café has good light and a pleasant atmosphere. After working for a while, I went to the Iowa City Public Library for a program from the International Writers Program called “Language at the Fault Lines.” At this panel, four different writers from four different non-English speaking countries read short prepared papers about their experience with translation and writing cross-linguistically and culturally. 

The panel was excellent and I came away with lots to think about. That afternoon, I took my two friends to the local HyVee. Neither of them has a car, because parking in downtown Iowa City can be hellish – as I learned – and the city is fairly walkable. HyVee, however, is a good 35 minute walk, so being the good friend and HyVee aficionado that I am, I offered to take them. 

 Upon returning, my English major friend and I went to another author reading at Prairie Lights. Susan Steinberg, author of “Machine” and other books, read and answered questions for about an hour, after which there was a wine and cheese reception. Expecting the cubed cheese omnipresent at Jewell functions, the cheese lover in me was ecstatic when I saw the board of assorted cheeses. After the reading and some great Japanese food, my friend, a few of their friends and I embarked on a bar crawl of the writers’ bars in Iowa City. After hitting four or so bars which famous writers from the workshop were known to frequent –we even saw Susan Steinberg at George’s, the oldest of the bars – we called it a night. 

 Saturday morning was low key – we had some great brunch and did some studying. Fall break didn’t mean there weren’t assignments due. Later that night I met up with my Jewell friend; we had falafel and saw the Downtown Abbey movie. After that, we went to Joe’s, the most central and maybe largest bar in downtown Iowa City. Being gameday, Joe’s was wild, and almost all of the majority blond, corn-fed Iowa fans were decked out in Iowa gear. After a few drinks, we wanted to dance so we headed to a club. After a few – read: many – more drinks, we danced for a few hours, talked with a few random people and then called it a night. 

I didn’t do much Sunday morning, and I headed back to Liberty around 10 in the morning, breaking up the drive by stopping in Des Moines again. 

Overall, my time in Iowa City was excellent. Although I’m glad I go to a small school, the college town feel is great. It’s cool to be surrounded by so many students with so many restaurants, bars, bookstores and cafes in a walkable area. While we may not live in that town, Iowa City is only a 4 ½ hour drive from Jewell, so if you know anyone at the University of Iowa, I highly recommend the trip.

Hew Locke’s exhibit “Here’s the Thing” opened at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art Sept. 12 and goes until Jan. 19, 2020. The exhibit is a collaboration between Ikon Gallery in Birmingham, UK; Colby College Museum of Art in Maine; and the Kemper Museum in Kansas City.

The exhibit is an exploration of the global, postcolonial world, with Locke, a British-Guyanese artist, working in drawing, painting, sculpture, photography and multimedia mediums. Locke’s most powerful tool in the exhibit is the re-appropriation of colonial forms, whether it’s jewels, precious metals, statues of Queen Victoria, trading ships or stock certificates. The use of these artifacts not only harkens back to the time when they helped produce the violence of colonialism, but it also exposes their appearance today and reclaims them, using them as part of colonial critique. Hew Locke’s personal experience involves boats, cross-continental voyages and living as a colonial subject.

“Guyana means ‘land of many waters’ – you are constantly aware of boats…People want simple answers about what this work is about, but it doesn’t exist. Migration, trade, refugees, warfare, exploration, tourism…[are] extremely messy and interlinked,” said Locke in a document about the exhibit.

While Locke’s work is striking without understanding the historical particulars of colonization, learning about the specific references he makes to ships, monarchs and events open the exhibit to even wider significance. The exhibit forces one to think and experience during the viewing process, and it also leads one to further exploration of, in this case, colonialism.

Aside from his iconic ships, one of the motifs Locke works with is the bust, as seen in the Souvenir series. Like “Untitled (Orange Queen),” the “Souvenir” series features busts of monarchs, in this case Queen Victoria, Princess Alexandria and Edward VII.

While each of the busts is white, they are all adorned with clay skulls, gold medallions, cowrie-shells military medals, fake beads, and even lace and crowns. The result is that the busts are dripping, overly adorned with symbols of wealth. The symbolic wealth, however, is consciously fake, in appearance and in the fact of its excess, giving it a hollow, shallow quality.

Locke said the following about “Untitled (Orange Queen),” in which the head is adorned with plastic toys, fake gems and cheap fake plants to the effect of gaudiness.

“It is aspirational – in that I try to take the cheapest thing I can find and work to make it look precious. The irony here is that the material I am using – such as golden plastic toy weapons and jewelry – are trying to look expensive”

Across from the “Souvenir” series is the “Wallpaper and Chinese Imperial Gold Loan.” The wall of this side of the room is an enlarged version of an antique loan document, and on the wall are small, framed versions of these loan documents. 

In one of these a painted version of Africa is overlaid on the document, painted as though it was made of jigsaw puzzle pieces. This clever and striking move points to the scramble for Africa that occurred in the heyday of colonization. The forced breaking up of Africa into mere game pieces of Europe is deftly shown in Locke’s work, coupling both historical documents with his modern work. The work’s palimpsestic quality adds another layer of meaning – emphasizing the multiplicity of identity in colonial society, the split consciousness of the colonial subject.

Taking up an entire room of the exhibit, Locke’s colossal installation, “Armada,” is extremely compelling. Suspended from the ceiling, over forty boats, many built by the artist, invoke feelings of transport, trade, travel, commerce and journeying.

“For me, a ship is a vessel to carry you on a journey,” Locke said. “It involves trade, it’s about a hope for a better life. It’s a container for the soul.”

Locke’s imaginative reimagining of ships works well to both acknowledge the devastating effects of colonialism and to reclaim colonial imagery that is forward-looking and hopeful.  

The last room of the exhibit features the video “The Tourists, 2015.” For this work Locke spent time on the HMS Belfast, a ship used in World War Two and the Korean War, which is now part of the Imperial War Museum.

In this video, Locke placed adorned mannequins throughout the ship, simultaneously acting as the ship’s crew but also, with their costumes and props, working as carnivalesque figures. This video is certainly disconcerting and another example of the reclamation of traditionally violent colonial objects in the name of critique.

Locke’s exhibit is one of the largest of his work, and it certainly makes quite a splash. Through the variety of mediums and the clever reclamation of colonial imagery as a means of critique, the exhibit shows the breadth and depth of Locke’s artistic capacities.

The exhibit runs until Jan. 19, 2020 at the Kemper Museum of Art in Kansas City. Admission is free to both the museum and the exhibit. Lunch at the museum’s Café Sebastienne is not required but is certainly tasty. 

On a recent trip to Liberty’s historic town square, you may have noticed several new sculptures. The rotating sculpture display is in its third year. The Liberty Arts Commission, per their website states that “We serve as a catalyst – to support, sustain, and strengthen our community by increasing awareness, opportunities, and public involvement in local arts and cultural activities”

What started out with only one sculpture in 2017 has grown to nine in the current year. The sculptures are located throughout the downtown Liberty area, with one located on three out of the four corners of the square, one located next to the Clay County Archives building and three around City Hall and the police station. This group of sculptures will stay up until September of next year when a new group will take their places.

The sculpture program is an attempt to connect Liberty residents with art, both local and national. The current group of sculptures comes from across the country. Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, North Carolina, Missouri, Michigan, New Mexico and Washington D.C are represented.

The sculptures this year are all made of steel varieties, with some including other materials like stained glass, enamel and concrete. While most of the sculptures are neutral in color, some are vibrantly colored with red, green, blue and orange. Given the steel material, most of the sculptures are quite modern, providing juxtaposition with the 19th century town square. The mix of the old and new shows both cognizance of both the past and future on the part of Liberty, something that gives both visitors and residents a glimpse at the town’s values.

In addition to choosing and guiding the installation process for the sculptures, the Liberty Arts Commission has created an app called Otocast with which one can follow a walking tour of the nine sculptures. Aside from guiding the walking tour, the app also lets individuals vote on their favorite sculpture. The arts commission then chooses the highest rated sculpture to purchase for permanent display.

The most recent purchased sculpture, “Open Heart” by Matthew Duffy, is now exhibited in Canterbury Park, located off of Withers Road.

The installation process for each sculpture was documented by the arts commission and posted to their Facebook page, providing the general public with pictures of the artist with their work and tidbits of information about each sculpture.

The process for applying to display a sculptures is quite rigorous. For the 2019 application, artists had to submit the artist’s name, an entry title, media, dimensions and weight, date completed, description of each entry, value, three digital images of each submitted work, artist statement and brief artist biography, current professional resume and proof of insurance.

Additionally, the commission asked artists to consider materials, durability and safety in creating their work, given the outdoor and public nature of the display.

While each individual artist was responsible for transporting and installing their work in Liberty, the arts commission did offer a $2,000 honorarium to defray costs. The artist is allowed to sell the work during the time in which it is displayed, but the work cannot be taken until after the year-long display period is over.

The commission worked diligently this year to ensure the installation of each sculpture had finished before the start of the annual Liberty Fall Festival, happening the weekend of Sept. 27. There, the sculptures can be admired by the thousands of visitors the town receives for the festival, and the arts commission will be able to promote themselves at their festival booth.

The sculpture program is a great way to introduce Liberty to new local and national art, beautify the city and serve as one of the many ways the arts commission shows the city’s support and appreciation of the arts.