Loving (2017) - Movie Review

Racism, much like any other identity-based prejudice, has never made that much sense to me on a fundamental level. I understand man’s inherent distrust of whatever is different to themselves, but at the same time, the idea of considering someone else to be lesser than myself based purely on something about them that they were born with or are otherwise unable to change is ludicrous. Call it a side effect of living most of my life with numerous labels that immediately had me pinned as being different from everyone else, but I never saw the point in any of it. Of course, just because I don’t understand it, that doesn’t mean that I am blind to its existence in the real world; far fucking from it. As such, films like this could be released at any time of the year and it will always be timely. While you ponder how depressing that is, let’s get into today’s film.

Free State Of Jones (2016) - Movie Review

This is going to be a very, very short review. While I could just use the Christmas season as my excuse for not wanting to focus too much on such bleak notions as slavery, and admittedly the year has been depressing enough without needing to actively look for reasons to make it worse, it really just boils down to me not having as much to say about this film as I would have liked. My 12 Years A Slave review should show that I’m not the most articulate person when it comes to this subject, and what little reserves I have were spent writing about 13^thearlier this month. As such, I’m just going to get right into this in a rather informal fashion.

Selma (2015) - Movie Review

It forms a lump of coal in my stomach to admit this, but we live in a world where statements like this still need to be said: There are very few things in this world uglier than racism. The actions people will commit under the flag of protecting one’s own ethnicity against all others can enter into the truly stomach-churning and, while we have definitely made some progress beyond our past actions, such things are still an open wound for most nations if not all. However, it is a common thought in the creative world that our darkest moments can give birth to our brightest works of art. In the last few years, especially during Oscar season, we’ve gotten the lion’s share of film exploring racial themes: 12 Years A Slave, The Butler, Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom, not to mention the numerous war movies set in World War II like Fury and The Monuments Men; most of which are well-done or at the very least well-intentioned. Given how today’s film falls along similar lines, let’s see just how bright this turns out if at all.