Zola

Television director Janicza Bravo's first feature film, Zola, which stars Taylour Paige in the title role, is based on waitress and part-time pole dancer A'ziah King's now legendary 2015 "Ho Trip" from Detroit to Tampa with a young woman, Stefani (Riley Keough), a sketchy dancer/stripper she waited on one day, Stefani's menacing "manager" (Colman Domingo) and her clueless boyfriend (Nicholas Braun). King posted 148 viral tweets during the weekend escapade, which involved prostitution, extortion, gun play and an attempted suicide. The story is told almost entirely in "hood rat" and features "internetual" embellishments -- emojis, bells and whistles -- for added spice. While the picture is most assuredly a hilarious "pitch black" comedy of the ill-mannered, it is also a pretty astute study of cultural appropriation, sex trade economics and the truly hard work of knowing one's worth.