Stranger Says:

Everyone knows Maya Angelou for her now canonical auto-bio, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, but this doc reminds you that there weren’t many major artistic or political post-war movements that Maya Angelou didn’t contribute to in a serious and enduring way. The film tracks her life from the day her parents put her on that train to Arkansas, where she suffered serial rape as a child, to her rise out of that mess. Writing with Hughes in Harlem, chilling with Baldwin, MLK, Malcolm X. Starring in Jean Genet’s The Blacks. Writing lyrics for B.B. King. Being Kunta Kinte’s grandmother in Roots. Publishing a million books. Formally, the doc’s just interviews with people in chairs cut with photographs of those people when they were younger. But you'll clap internally for two hours as Maya and friends (even Hillary Clinton!) talk about how she made made history. (RICH SMITH)