{"id":503,"date":"2022-05-18T19:34:05","date_gmt":"2022-05-18T19:34:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/content.orgosco.com\/theprofessionalpen\/?p=503"},"modified":"2022-07-24T06:58:48","modified_gmt":"2022-07-24T06:58:48","slug":"review-zola","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/content.orgosco.com\/theprofessionalpen\/2022\/05\/18\/review-zola\/","title":{"rendered":"Film Review: ZOLA"},"content":{"rendered":"

ZOLA – I’m late to the party. To be honest, I didn’t want to see it because I didn’t think Taylor was the best fit for Zola. Her AAVE and Southern drawl felt forced and inauthentic. But then I saw her in\u00a0#Boogie<\/a>, and she was one of my favorite characters. So, I finally decided to give Zola a try.<\/p>\n

What we learn here is that 148 tweets don’t necessarily equate to enough on-screen content. Because of the lack of content, however, it gave the director and editor room to play with time, space, and silence (my favorite). So, it’s a visually aesthetic film. Directors and editors should study the choices made.<\/p>\n

There isn’t much story here and we’re told in the opening credits that MOST of it are true, which means they took a few creative liberties to draw out the 1hr 30min runtime. But instead of getting lost in critiquing its structure, etc. I focused on the “real-time” moments of the theme: human trafficking. Zola was tricked into the game of prostitution and by the end, we don’t know if she escapes.<\/p>\n

Do you know what’s nuts? @trufflesaucefilm discusses this topic as well. But, as a self-produced and crowdfunded (thank you to my #realitychasers<\/a>) project, we couldn’t afford the nuances that had me totally empathizing with both women.<\/p>\n

TRIGGER WARNING<\/p>\n

The number of men and their penises that we watched this woman have relations within one night… then not be able to receive a single dime from her HARD work. It hit a lot different than my usual movie-going experiences. Maybe because I’m telling Tweet’s Story (as soon as I finished Zola, I added it as a comp to my pitch deck and website.) Maybe because as an adult I realize that you never know what other people are going through. Maybe because I realize that women are groomed from a vulnerable age and\/or time in their lives to become prostitutes then at a certain age, we make it their problem and call it their profession. Either way, I appreciated the raw detail in Zola covered up by fanciful music to keep the tone light.
\n….
\nYessss to Taylor on the pole. Her dance skills are always amazing.<\/p>\n

Written By: Shannan E. Johnson<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ZOLA – I’m late to the party. To be honest, I didn’t want to see it because I didn’t think Taylor was the best fit for Zola. Her AAVE and Southern drawl felt forced and inauthentic. But then I saw her in #Boogie, and she was one of my favorite characters. So, I finally decided to give Zola a try.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[148,7],"tags":[11,12,92,9,13,10,8],"class_list":["post-503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film-reviews","category-reviews","tag-aziah-zola-wells-king","tag-film-review","tag-screenwriting","tag-taylour-paige","tag-the-professional-pen","tag-twitter","tag-zola","entry"],"acf":{"featured_image":{"ID":504,"id":504,"title":"zola","filename":"zola.jpg","filesize":36073,"url":"https:\/\/content.orgosco.com\/theprofessionalpen\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/zola.jpg","link":"https:\/\/content.orgosco.com\/theprofessionalpen\/2022\/05\/18\/review-zola\/zola\/","alt":"","author":"2","description":"","caption":"","name":"zola","status":"inherit","uploaded_to":503,"date":"2022-05-18 19:34:01","modified":"2022-05-18 19:34:01","menu_order":0,"mime_type":"image\/jpeg","type":"image","subtype":"jpeg","icon":"https:\/\/content.orgosco.com\/theprofessionalpen\/wp-includes\/images\/media\/default.png","width":500,"height":500,"sizes":{"thumbnail":"https:\/\/content.orgosco.com\/theprofessionalpen\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/zola-150x150.jpg","thumbnail-width":150,"thumbnail-height":150,"medium":"https:\/\/content.orgosco.com\/theprofessionalpen\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/zola-300x300.jpg","medium-width":300,"medium-height":300,"medium_large":"https:\/\/content.orgosco.com\/theprofessionalpen\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/zola.jpg","medium_large-width":500,"medium_large-height":500,"large":"https:\/\/content.orgosco.com\/theprofessionalpen\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/zola.jpg","large-width":500,"large-height":500,"1536x1536":"https:\/\/content.orgosco.com\/theprofessionalpen\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/zola.jpg","1536x1536-width":500,"1536x1536-height":500,"2048x2048":"https:\/\/content.orgosco.com\/theprofessionalpen\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/zola.jpg","2048x2048-width":500,"2048x2048-height":500,"post-thumbnail":"https:\/\/content.orgosco.com\/theprofessionalpen\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/zola.jpg","post-thumbnail-width":500,"post-thumbnail-height":500}},"show_featured_content":true,"post_image":false},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/content.orgosco.com\/theprofessionalpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/content.orgosco.com\/theprofessionalpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/content.orgosco.com\/theprofessionalpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/content.orgosco.com\/theprofessionalpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/content.orgosco.com\/theprofessionalpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=503"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/content.orgosco.com\/theprofessionalpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":526,"href":"https:\/\/content.orgosco.com\/theprofessionalpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503\/revisions\/526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/content.orgosco.com\/theprofessionalpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/content.orgosco.com\/theprofessionalpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/content.orgosco.com\/theprofessionalpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}