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.

From My Collection: Thirteen Days Movie Review

The Kennedys are a mythologized family and political dynasty. The brothers John F. and Robert, because of their tragic and untimely deaths through assassination, are lionized more than almost any other political figure of the last century. Because they also had distinctive accents, speech patterns, and styles, it’s difficult to portray them on film without resorting to some form of ghastly imitation. Roger Donaldson’s 2000 film Thirteen Days, about the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, gets the casting so right for their roles that at times you almost forget you’re watching icons. You’re really seeing these characters, these men, trying to avert nuclear war and the destruction of life as we know it.

Secretariat Movie Review: The Disney Version of Horse Racing

We should expect treacly and trite when it comes to Disney’s live action films. It’s what they’ve always produced and I suppose there’s some value in good wholesome family entertainment. Certainly that’s what the Disney brand sells and it’s what many people want, but does this also have to mean that they make their films in a paint-by-numbers fashion, following the rules of Screenwriting 101 to the letter? As a company, Disney goes so far out of its way to avoid offending or upsetting anyone that the result is typically bland mediocre entertainment.

Sweet stories about animals have been their bread and butter for a long time. Secretariat is the latest about the legendary eponymous racehorse that won the Triple Crown in 1973 (the first horse to do so in 25 years). That it’s directed by Randall Wallace (who wrote Braveheart and directed Pearl Harbor) and written by Mike Rich (Radio) should tell you something about the lack of subtlety in this desperately earnest sports tale.