Selma - A Short(ish) Review

Continuing my trend of trying to get through some of the Oscar nominees, even though I’ve definitely now missed the deadline, I watched Ava DuVernay’s historical drama Selma.

Selma is based on the 1965 Selma to Montgomery voting rights marches led by Martin Luther King, Jr., James Bevel, and Hosea Williams, of the SCLC and the SNCC.

I didn’t like Selma, and it has nothing to do with the controversies it’s been involved in; it’s because it isn’t really that great of a movie. 

The cinematography is nothing special; the scenes are lit well, and it’s color-corrected to match the time period, but DuVernay and cinematographer Bradford Young don’t do anything that interesting with the camera. Sure, the camera goes handheld when the action picks up, uses slow motion at times to accentuate some chaos, and while the camerawork never gets so hectic that it alienates the viewer, it also doesn’t do anything special in itself to be that praiseworthy. It’s good technique in itself, but nothing great.

The movie’s pace is slow; building a tension that boils over at just the right times. Outside of that, Selma is a bit of a mess. In its defense, it has a lot of ground to cover, but doesn’t really do a good job at keeping us informed about the amount of time that is passing by. When it does, it uses these weird little graphics with an FBI seal and a typewriter sound effect, like we are supposed to be watching the film from a government surveillance point of view. What makes this extra weird is that J. Edgar Hoover, head of the FBI at the time, was in the movie for about three minutes, and has no real impact on the film as a whole. The story is much more about King and President Lyndon Johnson, which is also a problem because they have the same exact conversation four or five times throughout the movie.

At times, David Oyelowo’s performance as Dr. King is transformative. At times. There are other times when the movie screeches to a halt because Oyelowo is having such a hard time chewing on King’s southern accent and rhetoric. With all the vocal inconsistencies and shoddy dialogue, it made for a just very good performance. To say it outright, David Oyelowo’s performance was not Oscar-worthy.

The same goes for nearly all the other non-naturally-American accented performers in the film, too. I normally have no problems with performers not having perfect accents, even if they are playing a real person, but Selma was tough for me to get through. The film has Tim Roth, Tim Roth, trying to do a southern accent. This problem is especially noticeable when preceding or following scenes have actor Stephen Root, who does a great southern accent, in them. This problem causes many of the performances in Selma to fall flat, and adds extra inconsistency to an already messy film.

In addition to not being well accented, most of the supporting cast members are bland and one-dimensional. Several characters are around because they needed to be in order to move the plot forward. Coretta Scott King was there because she is Mrs. King, and had to ask Malcolm X for help for some reason. She is also strangely written and directed to be this embodiment of disapproval that ominously looms over Dr. King’s shoulder. Did you know that Common is in Selma? It doesn’t matter; he has like four throwaway lines. President Lyndon Johnson is played by Tom Wilkinson, but with the way it’s written it could’ve be played by any old white guy and it wouldn’t have made a bit of difference. The only interesting supporting character is Giovanni Ribisi as Lee C. White, and that’s because Ribisi is a weird dude to begin with. Apparently White was an important advisor to President Johnson; could’ve fooled me.

What bothers me is that DuVernay has talked extensively about how hard it was determining what characters were important, who needed to be added, subtracted, etc., but then made any character not named Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. relatively unimportant. She did an excellent job at writing speeches for Dr. King without using any material from the actual speeches, and she should be praised for that, I guess, but outside of that, she didn’t turn in an astounding script overall, and that turned into a not great movie.

I can imagine that all of this reads like nitpicking, but this movie was nominated for Best Picture, and I simply don’t feel like this movie should be in the conversation with the others this year. 

Furthermore, I don’t think this somewhat inaccurate retelling of a real event really adds anything to the current conversation about racism. Now before you start wagging your finger at me because of what I said in my Whiplash review about historical correctness, let me be clear: I understand the inaccuracies were to help DuVernay tell her story the way she wanted to, and she is under no real obligation to make her fictional film about a real event historically accurate. That being said, Selma’s inaccuracies caricature both parties in a way that makes you disapprovingly shake your head at America’s mistakes regarding the Civil Rights movement without making you think about the issues it represents any differently. Hell, the most revelatory part of the movie is that song at the end written by John Legend and Lonnie Lynn. Wait, who the hell is Lonnie Lynn? Oh hey, that’s Common. Ah, that’s why he was in the movie!

For all my criticism, Selma is a good movie. It was well-produced, not completely ugly, and above-averagely acted. Unfortunately its inconsistencies and story issues make it nothing particularly special, and I feel that the film has started some misguided conversations about lack of diversity/sexism/racism in films and filmmaking. See it eventually.

Whiplash - A Short Review

I didn’t really know much about Whiplash until I heard people talking about how good it was, or rather how good J. K. Simmons is in it. With the Oscars that I didn’t watch (I care about who is picked, just not the broadcast itself) this week, I decided I’d better check this flick out.

Whiplash follows the story of Andrew Neiman, a first-year jazz student at Shaffer Conservatory of New York, one of the best music schools in the county, and his relationship with Terence Fletcher, the conductor of the school’s best jazz band, who has a reputation of being abusive to his students any opportunity he gets.

The movie is a slow train wreck and you see everything coming. It’s powerful, frightening. Whiplash is not a drama, it’s a psychological thriller. Fletcher becomes the monster that lives under Neiman’s bed; he wants to be one of the greats and Fletcher convinces him that he is the only person who can make that happen. Fletcher’s seduction forces Neiman to alienate himself from friends and family, and his abuse pushes Andrew beyond his limits and ultimately to his breaking point.

It’s clear that Writer/Director Damien Chazelle has a personal relationship with not only the story, but also with jazz and drumming. He gives Whiplash a jazz-like rhythm, knowing just when to speed up, slow down, or go crazy. The depth of field opens and closes with the intensity of the scenes, with shots getting tighter. The editing also moves with the rhythm of the music, until the film starts rapidly cutting with Andrew’s drum hits, until we are only seeing quick frames of drums, cymbals, and eyes.

This isn’t just in the visuals, either; the characters performances have a similar rhythm, showing vulnerability one moment, volatility the next. Simmons’ performance is otherworldly. His intensity crosses the line perfectly, and there are a number of moments where you no longer see a man, you see a monster. His character becomes a dark cloud that looms over each scene, and you are continuously waiting for the storm that comes from him. 

Miles Teller’s performance as Neiman is also nothing short of brilliant. His beginnings as an awkward and unsure young man are convincing enough that you cringe every time he lets Fletcher’s tutelage force him into making another bad decision, his drunk-with-power desire making another alienating statement to someone who cares about him.

As for the criticism it has received about getting Jazz history wrong, the critics mostly miss the point. They usually note how the film is “not about jazz”, but then forget that it’s not about getting jazz history right, either. There is an anecdote in the film that is told inaccurately so one character can better manipulate another, so it doesn’t have to be right. Some critics further argue that it’s the film’s job to portray Jazz history accurately, which it’s not. The film’s job is to tell its story, and it can do so however it so chooses. The film is about abuse of power, which the film gets right. Fletcher’s accolades are alluring, and the characters, the victims, think it’s worth the abuse because he perpetrates that he is trying to push his students to greatness.

Whiplash is a beautifully crafted movie, which has a unique rhythm that fits right between Indy and Hollywood, and is worth every bit of praise that it has received. See it immediately.

X-Men: Days of Future Past - A Short Review

 Originally published 5/26/14

Saturday we went to see X-Men: Days of Future Past. I was blown away. I may be biased as I was more excited to see this movie than anything else this summer and Days of Future Past is one of my favorite story arcs in comics. I set really high expectations, which surprisingly, Days of Future Past met.

Front to back, this movie executed to the best of its ability. It was able to create its own worth as well as amplify the power of the previous film, X-Men: First Class, and even the other films in Fox's X-Men franchise.

Taut from the beginning, the movie throws information at you and expects you to keep up. Its pace slows a bit after the opening sequence, using character introduction and early exposition to get you up to speed, only to repeat the process. This helps increase the sense of urgency in the story as well as driving home a couple of the films themes.

The film wastes very little screen time. Bryan Singer and the filmmakers show you that the one thing that's going to be more spectacular than the action sequences are the characters and story itself. Very few shots focus solely on the spectacle of the computer generated imagery (which is great-looking, by the way). The visual language of the film is consistent, the cinematography interesting, and most of all, the filmmakers never forget what the movie is: A character story; all of the action is still steeped in character (dat Quicksilver scene). In fact, the prettiest looking shots in the film are dialogue scenes and close-ups.

I think my favorite part of Days of Future Past is the writing and the acting. Whether it was in the beginning of the writing phase, or somewhere along the way, the filmmakers realized that they had some of the best actors working today, in roles large and small, and pretty much told them to turn the feels on full blast. Everyone turns in a sparkling performance, whether it was the sad and disconnected performance by Jennifer Lawrence as Mystique, or the brilliant role reversal of McAvoy as the angry and emotionally unstable Professor Xavier, while Michael Fassbender plays the now calm and resolved version of Magneto he becomes. Then of course there is a small scene with McAvoy and Sir Patrick, which is giving me feels just thinking about.

All gushing aside, I have a couple minor complaints. Most of the major characters from First Class were written out, or more or less and afterthought. The elements of those characters are definitely hinting at the future of the story, whether it becomes tangible or not, which added depth to the film, but in a sense it also seemed tacked on to remind you that those characters mattered.

I also can't help but want more of the future story. I understand what it had to be to increase the tension of the story, but the most Oscars are on the future side of the story, and you can never have too much of Sir Patrick and Sir Ian. It would have also been really awesome to see more of the future mutants and understand their story, because Bishopppppppppppppppppppp.

X-Men: Days of Future Past is the best X-Men movie to date, but not just because of its own power and execution, but because the filmmakers did what I thought couldn't be done: Reverse the damage done by the not-so-great X-Men and Wolverine films. See it immediately.

Godzilla - A Short Review

Originally published 5/26/14

Having to wait for my friend to get back from his vacation, I finally saw Godzilla, and thankfully my county has a Dolby Atmos theater to see it in. Here's some thoughts I had about the movie.
Godzilla, as a character and story device, was fantastic. Literal and Allegorical, Godzilla was fierce, complex, and breathtaking.

The music and sound design was amazing, adding to the intensity, grandeur, and nostalgia of Godzilla. Probably my favorite part of the film.

While the film was great-looking, it was a bit...bland. The camerawork and effects were really good, but the overall look of the film was nothing to write home about. Truthfully, stunning cinematography was never part of the franchise, more of an expectation I had for the filmmakers.

Godzilla featured better than average acting all around, with particularly great performances by Bryan Cranston and Ken Watanabe. A number of the characters lacked depth in the writing, more specifically Ford Brody (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and his family (Elizabeth Olsen as wife Elle and Carson Bolde as son Sam), and that lack of depth, coupled with poor character connections, didn't build the kind of emotional bridge I needed to identify, or care, about Ford and his family's journey.

The movie was also devoid of a lot of "close call" moments, failing to really raise the stakes over the course of the film. In reflection, this was a bit of a problem with most of the Godzilla films, with the original relying on the allegory to increase the tension, and the monster versus movies relying on the spectacle of the fight to overshadow the stakes.

There were very few things I didn't like, and they all have to do with the lack of emotional depth and visual flair that I had expected from director Gareth Edwards, given all the hype about his love for the source material and his previous film. Technically great, but lacking the kind of punch I wanted for Godzilla.

The overall narrative was effective and it did what I wanted it to: It combined the deep symbolism of the 1954 original with the monster versus films that followed and popularized the franchise.

Despite the film's shortcomings, it was written, paced, scored, and executed in the best way it could in the Studio System, successfully bringing Godzilla into the era of modern American cinema the way it should be.

Godzilla was a very good film, and I very much liked it, but it's tough for me to call it great.

I recommend seeing it, though, preferably in the non-3D format and in a theater that has a Dolby Atmos sound system.