Stream It Or Skip It: ‘A Thousand and One’ on Amazon Prime Video, a Superb Urban Drama Anchored by an Inspired Teyana Taylor

A Thousand and One (now streaming on Amazon Prime Video and Peacock) marks the emergence of A.V. Rockwell as a fresh directorial voice, and Teyana Taylor as a real deal dramatic lead. The film is Rockwell’s debut, and won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. Taylor, a hip-hop vocalist and dancer who branched out into acting, graduates from supporting roles in Coming 2 America and the White Men Can’t Jump reboot to being the anchor in this absorbing drama about a mother and son scraping by in 1990s/2000s Harlem. 

A THOUSAND AND ONE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: It’s 1994. Inez (Taylor) is fresh out of Rikers Prison and essentially homeless. She spots young Terry (Aaron Kingsley Adetola) on the street and tries to talk to him. He maybe listens a little, but won’t meet her eye. She moves on, hustling on the street – she’s a hairdresser who makes her own flyers. Later, she learns Terry’s in the hospital. She stops to see him. He has a fresh bandage on his temple from trying to run away from foster care. “You left me on a street corner?” he asks, and she says not to believe what other people say about her. It’s a familiar scene to Inez. She was in foster care too, and we don’t know specifics, but it seems clear that the system has something to do with her lifetime of trouble. She takes Terry from the hospital to the home of a friend she can trust; she stops at a newsstand and, in the background, we hear a news report about a little boy who went missing from a local hospital.

Inez lucks out and finds a room to rent, then a job, then their own apartment. Terry asks about his dad. “He’s gone,” she says, and she sounds like she’s struggling to temper her harsh tone. The boy stays home alone while she works all day, and it’s an untenable situation. He’s only six. She acquires a fake birth certificate and social security number for him so he can go to school. He’ll be Daryl outside of home, but to his mom, he’s always Terry. He comes home one day and Inez introduces him to Lucky (William Catlett), who’s out of jail and has a wandering eye, but is a good man. He bonds with the boy. Inez curls up in bed with Lucky and he asks, “What do two crooks know about raising a family?” Next thing you know, they’re celebrating their wedding with a modest street party.

Subtitle: 2001. We hear Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s voice; it’s the stop-and-frisk era of New York City. Terry’s 13 now (played by Aven Courtney); he’s a quiet, sensitive kid, and a good student, good enough to be nudged into a more challenging, college-track high school. We see him and a friend stopped and hassled by cops without provocation, which rightfully distresses Inez. One arrest, justifiable or not, and the truth of Terry’s identity is no longer a secret. It’s a tenuous situation. Same goes for her marriage; she and Lucky appear to be on again and off again, and Terry’s upset about it. Now it’s four years later, and we hear Mayor Mike Bloomberg being sworn in, and see images of New York City’s great gentrification – the backdrop to 17-year-old Terry’s (Josiah Cross) impending adulthood. He’s close to a finishing line, and a starting line as well, but there’s a space between them that’s tough to navigate. Coming of age is never easy, but Terry’s is more difficult than most.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: A Thousand and One has a couple key things in common with 2022’s Sundance Grand Jury winner, Nanny – they’re from incredibly talented first-time Black female directors, telling stories about Black female New Yorkers. 

Performance Worth Watching: There’s a scene in which Inez says she’d “go to war” for her son, and we never doubt her. Such is Taylor’s conviction, which pays off late in the film when she and Cross share an unavoidably powerful moment.

Memorable Dialogue: A moment of truth for Terry when he quietly beseeches Inez, “I need to know what was real.”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: A Thousand and One is a tonally consistent, dramatically potent, superbly acted and visually inspired film. Rockwell maintains simmering tension beneath a rock-solid character-driven story – tension rooted in the fragility of the secret being kept as Terry so very slowly approaches his 18th birthday, and the encroachment of political and capitalist forces upon everything Inez has built. She fights tooth and nail to maintain the stability, the family and home, she never had. She sees it as a moral imperative to raise her son in a healthy environment, and is willing to bury a secret, and work hard, and compromise, and sacrifice her own mental health to do it. You can see weariness quietly encroaching upon Taylor’s face as time goes by, as Inez keeps one leg on either side of a widening fissure. This is a most righteous story of motherly devotion.

Rockwell shows a deft hand with actors, especially the three who play Terry, and we never question the character despite the rotating personnel. The characters and relationships could use a little more fleshing out, and one senses the director doing her damnedest for the film to not overstay its welcome (frankly, it’s so absorbing, more scenes would be welcome, and you’ll never feel the weight of its nearly two-hour run time). But she and the cast make the most of pretty much every moment, bolstered by gritty visual textures – natural lighting, subtly claustrophobic set pieces – and a thematically sturdy screenplay. One question that lingers is the plausibility of the premise: How can Inez and Terry fly under the radar, and why does no authority ever knock on the door? Ironically, they benefit from the fact that the foster-care system seemingly doesn’t care about them enough to prompt anyone to ponder whether she kidnapped him or saved him. You will care, though, no question about it. 

Our Call: One more point of praise: A Thousand and One also has a perfectly modulated, perfectly bittersweet final scene. STREAM IT. 

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.