Every year, just in time for Oscar consideration, studios release a slew of prestige movies supposedly based on true stories. And every year, it turns out that most of those movies embellish the truth, gloss over inconvenient facts, and invent things for the sake of the plot. Does any of this matter? If people are…
Preferring to speak of “inclusion,” filmmaker Ava DuVernay cringes at the buzzword “diversity,” even though it’s a term that her friend and frequent producer, Oprah Winfrey, has used in the past when talking about the changing role of African-Americans within the entertainment industry. But has that controversial word…
Jesse Owens deserves a biopic. His life was important and dramatic, and it even lends itself to a narrative arc—especially the period that served as the basis for Race, the recent film that follows the track-and-fielder as he faced prejudice and eventual triumph in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. His story is undeniably…
Now that our Thanksgiving binge-watching guide has properly whetted your appetites, it’s time to look at what’s coming to Amazon Prime in December for your streaming pleasure. Amazon’s flagship series, the award-winning Transparent, will return for a second season of family dysfunction and sardonic quips on December…
David Oyelowo’s stirring turn as Martin Luther King, Jr. in Selma was generally agreed to be an impressive achievement, worthy of effusive adjectives and awards. (Unless, of course, you’re MTV, in which case some guy from The Maze Runner gave a better performance.) It was such an indelible portrayal, in fact, that…
How much do you have to know about a person before you feel comfortable making a value judgement about them? For most of us, it’s probably not much, a tendency only exacerbated by the internet age, where you’re able to know bits and pieces about millions of people at once, sorting them all 140 characters at a time or…
Ava DuVernay’s Martin Luther King, Jr. biopic Selma is available for digital download as of today, and Paramount shared this exclusive deleted scene in anticipation of the film’s Blu-ray combo pack release on May 5th.
Although the Oscars tried to prove it has black friends by cutting to every person of color in the audience at one point or another during the telecast last night, people are still understandably upset about the inexplicable absence of nominations for Selma star David Oyelowo and director Ava DuVernay. (And, you know,…
Ain’t Hollywood grand? Not the actual neighborhood or whatever, obviously, but the idea of Hollywood as shorthand for America’s film industry. It has glitz! It has glamour! It probably has a third thing! The best part of Hollywood, though, is that it’s not afraid to put everything aside and just celebrate itself for a…
While we at The A.V. Club can only discuss the Oscar race, make predictions, and complain about snubs, The Hollywood Reporter is running a new series of “brutally honest” interviews with the people who actually pick the Oscar winners. So far two interviews have been released, and under the protection of anonymity…
In the grand spirit of TV Roundtable and Music Roundtable, welcome to the creatively titled Film Roundtable, where A.V. Club writers discuss movies old and new, or sound off on topics related to cinema. In this inaugural installment, we preview Sunday’s Academy Awards.
For the busy cinephile who doesn’t have time to sit through all the nominees before the Oscars are handed out on February 22, Cineplex Movies has put together a supercut of scenes from all of the various films nominated for Academy Awards this year. The montage is not just relegated to Best Picture nominees, but…
Hollywood likes its black actors just fine; it just prefers to see them in roles where they are subservient to their white counterparts. That’s the claim that Selma star David Oyelowo made while at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, saying black actors earn awards “more for when we are subservient, when we…
Selma director Ava DuVernay and star David Oyelowo enjoy each other’s company so much they’ve decided to make another movie together, Variety reports. The duo will reteam for an as-yet-untitled project described as a “love story and murder mystery during the time of Hurricane Katrina.” (This will actually be DuVernay…
Each week, Big Issues focuses on a newly released comic book of significance. This week, it’s March: Book Two. Written by John Lewis (Walking With The Wind: A Memoir Of The Movement, Across That Bridge: Life Lessons And A Vision For Change) and Andrew Aydin with art by Nate Powell (Any Empire, Swallow Me Whole), this…
Look, everyone pretty much knew that American Sniper was going to be a hit. It did spectacular business in limited release a month ago, and expanded into wide release around the same time as last year’s military-themed hit, Lone Survivor. It has a great trailer. It has Bradley Cooper brandishing a big rifle. It’s…
Looks like it wasn’t the screeners. Conventional wisdom as to why Selma was shut out of the SAG, PGA, DGA, and BAFTA awards held that Paramount failed to send advanced screeners to guild members before voting began. Coupled with a late December release, pundits argued Selma just didn’t have time to build much buzz…
Despite being one of the weakest films to come out of the ongoing Liam Neeson revival, Taken 3 managed to disappear with $40.4 million of moviegoers’ money this weekend. The sequel took the No. 1 spot, while also serving as a reminder that America has never really outgrown its beloved, Bowery tenement pastime of…
The 87th Annual Academy Awards are only a couple of months away, leading to much spirited discussion among movie fans about which films and filmmakers deserve to have their hard work validated with little golden statues. That will then lead to another awards-season tradition as studios and op-ed columnists try to tear…
David Oyelowo doesn’t simply play Dr. Martin Luther King in Ava DuVernay’s arresting and bold biopic Selma. He becomes King. Turning the myth into man a scene at a time, Oyelowo delivers one of the most evocative and powerful performances of the year, likely to garner some warranted Oscar attention come January.
