A Wrinkle In Time

Ava DuVernay’s “A Wrinkle in Time” wants to be the most glorious, inspiring movie you’ve ever seen. It’s also ridiculous.

A Wrinkle In Time PosterAva DuVernay truly wants “A Wrinkle In Time” to be the most glorious, inspiring movie you’ve ever seen. She wants you – yes you, little black girl who has never seen herself represented on screen before – to believe in yourself so you can bring light into the world and be a force for positive change. DuVernay believes this so strongly that she’s even dressed Oprah in space age chain mail, glued-on diamonds and a glittery lip gloss that looks like it cost half of the movie’s $100 million budget so that Oprah can do what Oprah does best and make it seem like she’s speaking directly to you.

DuVernay certainly can’t be faulted for ambition, and at times, “A Wrinkle In Time” really does reach that high standard. It has color and beauty and a humanistic touch that another director, even one more suited to a franchise, tentpole budget, could not bring to the film.

But “A Wrinkle in Time” has no room for cynicism and snark, and it’s near impossible to avoid them for a movie with as many garish costumes, laughable set pieces, nonsensical plot threads and inflated sense of importance as this film. For as much as “A Wrinkle In Time” wants you in awe, it’s a frustrating, bizarre mess of a movie that gets harder and harder to love. Continue reading “A Wrinkle In Time”

13th

Ava DuVernay’s “13th” plays like a filmed think piece about racial injustice we’ve heard far too many times.

13th PosterI only barely watched Ava DuVernay’s film “13th,” just shy of 15 minutes to be exact, because it’s only barely a documentary. It’s more like a filmed think piece stretched to feature length. That’s not to say I don’t agree with DuVernay’s facts or assertions. I also agree there’s an urgent need to address the criminal justice flaws and the systemic racism that African Americans are faced with every day. It’s just, thanks but no thanks; I’ve already read this piece.

DuVernay doesn’t open “13th” with a personal anecdote but a fact recited by Barack Obama. “Think about that,” he says. Just imagine the staggering nature of this statistic on its face without much context. He’s explained that 25 percent of the world’s prison population is in America. Then some talking heads start unpacking that statement and rapidly spin it into a revisionist history of everything you thought you knew about America. They then explain the 13th Amendment contains a semantic loophole that effectively makes slavery legal, and in no time flat, they arrive at the conclusion that “The Birth of a Nation” single handedly shaped Americans’ perception of black people as criminals for generations to come. All in under 15 minutes! Continue reading “13th”

Selma

Ava DuVernay’s “Selma” is the rare biopic that feels modern, raw and yet still powerfully emotional and rousing.

SelmaPosterThe marches at Selma, Alabama, the boycotting of buses in Montgomery, the riots in Ferguson, Missouri, the protests in New York: these aren’t just part of a “cause”. All this isn’t just “activism”. These are people’s lives at stake, and regardless of which side of the line you stand, blood has been shed both then and now.

Lyndon B. Johnson called Martin Luther King Jr. just an “activist”, as it is depicted in Ava DuVernay’s “Selma”, saying he has one cause while the Presidential administration has 101. Much unnecessary controversy has been made over the accuracy of President Johnson’s relationship with Dr. King, but LBJ as he is seen here serves as a powerful symbol for why racial unrest in this country persists and why change continues to drag its feet.

“Selma” is a raw, emotional, and most of all modern drama that with modesty and dignity proclaims that injustice can’t be treated as just another issue on the table. Unlike other prestige biopics, DuVernay doesn’t for a minute allow melodrama into her film that would pretend that racism and violence are gone from this world. Her film is a poignant reminder of what was and how these people’s influences, both noble and ugly, still linger.

“Selma” focuses in on a small portion of Dr. King’s life work and is all the greater for it. DuVernay is able to dig into the thorny nuance of this particular event and draw modern parallels that ripple throughout the film. King (David Oyelowo) opens the film receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, and after a meeting with President Johnson (Tom Wilkinson), determines that help from the White House will not come soon enough. Their plan is to organize a rally in Selma and march all the way to the capital of Montgomery, nearly 50 miles away, in order to protest voting rights in the state.

King delivers a modest, yet powerful explanation of why voting rights for African Americans is so critical. Through fear and corruption of the courts, only two percent of blacks in Selma are registered to vote. Hundreds are then killed by the brutality of white cops and racist white residents, and all white juries led by a white judge fail to convict the killers of crimes because blacks cannot vote for the judge nor serve on the juries because they are not registered. This train of logic is crucial because a lack of convictions will certainly strike a chord with modern audiences.

And on the other side of the coin, we see repulsive logic that has most definitely carried its way through to 2015. George Wallace (Tim Roth), the then Governor of Alabama, explains to President Johnson that if blacks got the right to vote, they’d then want jobs, then schools, “then it’s distribution of wealth without work.” “Moochers” was not a term likely used in 1964, but DuVernay subtly makes her point about the way blacks are perceived today through this shocking lens to the past.

Civil Rights movies from period pieces (“The Help”) to the contemporary (“The Blind Side”) have framed their discussion of race through white people evolving, and it breeds melodrama and an assumption that things are for the better now. DuVernay doesn’t presuppose anything, and the politicking from King, Johnson and Wallace all remind of Spielberg’s “Lincoln” and the long, joint effort that went into creating change. She dodges the melodrama, keeps the film modest in scope and doesn’t lose any of King’s rousing words or messages.

DuVernay comes from the indie realm of filmmaking, and even “Selma’s” many moments of violence are visceral, in your face, raw, aggressive and all beautifully lensed by DP Bradford Young. There are fewer shots or moments of the movie dwelling on truly monstrous racists, and instead the bursts of violence throughout the film make all of “Selma” feel volatile. You can feel the tension as Dr. King begins to march thousands over Selma’s bridge out of town, and you can feel it as he or his cohorts sit in their homes, always in some form of danger from the hatred that surrounds them.

2014 was a year of great conflict, and of the movies the Academy Awards sought to recognize this year, many were biopics that focused on the heroics and struggles of the historians at the center. Of all of them, only “Selma” has captured the pulse of the nation yesterday and today.

4 stars