Selma Movie Review

Upon a second viewing of last year’s Selma, Ava DuVernay’s film about Martin Luther King and his leading the protests in Selma, Alabama, that would ultimately lead to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, I have warmed up to it more than when I first saw it. There was some outspoken backlash bout the Academy’s failure to nominate DuVernay for an Oscar. The same for David Oyelowo, who portrays King and carries the movie through most of its emotional highs and lows. The paltry number of nominations (a Best Picture nod and one for Best Song for which it won) was attributed by some to Hollywood’s refusal to accept black stories or to afford them the same status as stories about white people. These were rich arguments coming the year after 12 Years a Slave won the Best Picture Oscar. That film was about a challenging as they come. No, I think Selma was little recognized in the awards season because it simply wasn’t as good as other movies last year. Unless people believe in affirmative action for movie awards, I see no reason Selma and its director should have bumped other worthy nominees from their recognition.

A Most Violent Year Movie Review

Abel Morales is a Latin American immigrant in New York City in 1981. He owns and operates his own heating oil business amid a social and business landscape that is in decay. Corruption in his industry is rampant to the point that the Assistant D.A. (David Oyelowo) is lumping him in with all oil companies in an investigation. The city itself is witnessing its most violent time ever. The radio news is constantly recounting the previous day’s tally of violent crimes, a heavy load weighing the city down along with the cold wintry mood set by director J.C. Chandor and his production designer John Goldsmith and cinematographer Bradford Young.

Lee Daniels' The Butler Movie Review

It’s not so much that Lee Daniels’ The Butler is a bad movie, but that it’s completely toothless. Here’s a movie made by a black filmmaker whose audacious breakout was Precious, a film that doesn’t dare shy away from the hard circumstances of being black in America, specifically of being black and desperately poor in America. The brunt of the problem with the story is in Danny Strong’s screenplay, which drew on a Washington Post article about a black man who worked in the White House as a butler through eight Presidential administrations for inspiration. Still, Daniels chose the material to direct. And I’m not insisting that a black filmmaker must be consigned to telling black stories or that when he does, they always have to be gritty, but it seems to me there is some moral imperative to battle and to make audiences feel uncomfortable. Unfortunately, The Butler is so intent on being a moneymaker for the studio that it compromises pretty much all of its values so it can appealing to a mass audience.

Jack Reacher Movie Review

It has been so long since I’ve been both truly surprised and genuinely thrilled at the movies that I’d almost forgotten the feeling, but Jack Reacher reminded me of exactly the reason why I love sitting in a darkened cinema several dozen times a year. It is not the best movie I’ve ever seen. It’s not even the best movie I’ve seen this year. But it did exactly what I expect an action thriller to do and it did it competently, excitingly, originally, and without pandering to the lowest common denominator audience members. I loved this movie. I loved it almost unequivocally. I loved it for all the reasons it could have been a standard genre film, but wasn’t. Loved it for all the ways it managed to enthrall me from one minute to the next. Christopher McQuarrie, who wrote the hugely popular (though not well-liked by me) The Usual Suspects, adapted the story from the eponymous character created by author Lee Child and more specifically from one of the sixteen books featuring Jack Reacher as the main character.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes Movie Review: You Blew It Up! Damn You to Hell!

For the life of me I can’t understand why critics have been heaping praise on Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Are our standards and expectations for big-budget studio productions so low that as long as it’s not a documentary about idiots falling down we think it’s good? Have we come this far and sunk so low? Really, I don’t see what there is to appreciate in this sub-par CGI-enhanced non-spectacle that completely fails to grasp any of the subtlety or even the humor of Planet of the Apes.