Talk to Me (Kasi Lemmons, 2007)

Talk to MeLemmons’s biopic of Petey Greene, one of Washington, D.C.’s most notorious media personalities in the late 1960s and ’70s, gives conventional treatment to a decidedly unconventional man. The film is plenty engaging, especially with Don Cheadle and Chiwetel Ejiofor’s fine central performances, which sell their unlikely odd-couple brotherhood, and at times the film spurs genuine reflection about the interrelation between the media and their audiences. But it still makes one wish that Lemmons had found a stylistic and narrative corollary to her subject’s rebellious, firebrand persona. (DVD)