![]() ![]() Those are minor complaints amidst Poe’s bigger ideas. Rows between rivals arrive right on schedule. The light-on-plot script is brimming with clichés, overt foreshadowing and one-dimensional characters delivering a line of gossip before scramming. That doesn’t ring true in this day and age, just ask any parent of a teenager. Instead, they talk to face to face and pass notes in class. It’s a bit jarring, given this is a modern teen flick (it uses millennial slang like “extra”) in which no one relies on technology to communicate - no iPhone, no SnapChat. Poe creates a stylish world where high schoolers act like they’re in their 30’s amid wet-blanket adults (Jesse Williams plays the headmaster) who don’t register. When Paloma grows a bit too big for her britches, Selah takes action. They discuss drugs, popularity, sex and dating. Selah lets the sophomore accompany her to senior parties. Normally cool and confident, Selah’s about to combust until she meets Paloma (Celeste O’Connor), the school newspaper shutterbug she takes under her wing. “What happened to the other seven points?” she asks. Add to that Selah’s preoccupation with her legacy (who will she entrust to run the Spades after graduation?) and an overbearing mother complaining about her 93 on a calculus test. Things get sticky when Selah’s most reliable consigliere (“Moonlight’s” Jharrel Jerome) gets a girlfriend. Selah controls the most dominant group, the Spades, who supply the booze, benzos, cocaine, Adderall and other “party favors.” It, along with the Sea, Skins, Bobbies and Prefects, conduct clandestine meetings around a picnic table where they hammer out details of a rogue prom, decide the senior prank and strike treaties and deals like the five major crime families from “The Godfather” by way of “Gossip Girl.” Rookie writer-director Tayarisha Poe sets “Selah and the Spades” (dropping April 17 on Amazon Prime) at an elite school where five “factions” ride roughshod over the student body. ![]() Raffey Cassidy’s Selah in “The Other Lamb” belongs to an all-female religious cult under the control of The Shepherd (“Game of Thrones” hunk Michiel Huisman). For Lovie Simone’s Selah Summers in “Spades,” that sect is a Pennsylvania boarding school where she’s a scheming queen bee vying for power and striving for perfection. The unique name Selah belongs to the lead characters in two new movies, the high school drama “Selah and The Spades” and the atmospheric coming-of-age parable “The Other Lamb.” Both are written and directed by women - and each film is anchored by terrific performances from the young actresses portraying the Selahs, girls fighting for agency while trapped in a cult - one literal, one figurative. ![]()
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