12 Years a Slave Movie Review

The terrible and embarrassing legacy of slavery is a dark mark on this country. It was a human atrocity that we have only just begun to understand. It remains, more than 150 years after its eradication, the defining factor in race relations. White people would not be where they are in terms of status and privilege without having held black people in bondage. And blacks continue to bear the burden of that time. I’m not sure any movie could possibly do perfect justice as a representation of the horrors of slavery, punishments, beatings, rapes, and other indignities that slaves suffered, but 12 Years a Slave comes closer than anything I’ve seen. This is possibly the least sanitized version ever put on film.

Mud Movie Review

Through its association with The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn alone, the Mississippi River evokes something distinctly American, although even Twain was seizing upon the sense of adventure wrought by explorers from Lewis and Clark onward who ventured west in search of the country’s Manifest Destiny. The River is a dividing line between the east with its magnificent cities, institutions of higher learning, tamed land, and civilization, and the new frontier, lawlessness, and new beginnings of the east. More than that, the Mississippi is a mighty river, flowing hard and fast, washing away the junk people don’t want or try to hid, and occasionally carrying people southward, like Huck Finn and Jim, to escape.

Martha Marcy May Marlene Movie Review

Marth Marcy May Marlene is a grim, almost nihilistic portrait of a young woman indoctrinated by a cult with a powerfully coercive leader. The title refers to the woman’s three names she goes by. Her real name, used only by her sister and brother-in-law, is Martha. Marcy May is the name given to her by Patrick, just one of many ways in which he establishes a paternalistic stronghold over the young women on his farm and a method of stripping their old identity from them to mold them into his personal harem. Marlene is the name they all use when answering the phone.