A new trailer for the upcoming ensemble flick Rules Don’t Apply has hit the web. Set against the backdrop of Hollywood in the 1950’s, the film follows Lily Collins (Mirror, Mirror) as she is hired as a studio actress for Howard Hughes’ (played by Warren Beatty) RKO Pictures. Once there, she falls for Frank (Alden Ehrenreich), a determined driver, and they engage in what is described as an unconventional love story about ambition, infatuation, and human connection.
The film will see the long-awaited return of Warren Beatty behind the camera, his first directorial effort since 1998’s Bulworth. Beatty, who has not starred in a movie since 2001’s Town & Country, produced the film, as well as writing the screenplay, adapted from a story he wrote alongside Bo Goldman.
In addition to Beatty, Collins, and Ehrenreich, the film gathers quite the collection of Hollywood heavyweights with Annette Benning, Ed Harris, Martin Sheen, Matthew Broderick, Candice Bergen, Oliver Platt, and Alec Baldwin all making an appearance in the flick.
Set to hit theaters on November 23rd, the film is positioned for a run throughout awards season, with Beatty hoping to earn his 15th competitive Academy Award nomination. His only win came as best director of Reds in 1981, but perhaps he will taste success once more with the release of Rules Don’t Apply.
Our heroes head to the radioactive remains of Las Vegas for a little R&R between races, hoping for a jackpot of ammunition to add to their dwindling supplies. Instead, they arouse the ire of the ganglord Neon Caesar, who’s got an ax to grind with Red. Meanwhile, Muttley and his vehicles are lost in the labyrinthine sewers beneath the streets when the gangs of Vegas unite to eradicate the Racers. Our heroes must go it alone against the combined might of the Caesars, the Pharaohs, the Clowns, and the terrifying Combovers, who have great weapons. Terrific weapons. Really, they have the best weapons.
Writing
Each issue so far of Wacky Raceland has taken the time to look at a different character and explain what makes them tick. This one looks at Red Max, who has so far has only been portrayed as a Nazi with a little else to his character. When a character is a Nazi, they will be saddled with a lot of justifiable hatred, and to truly find them to be sympathizing takes a really good story with a lot of intense emotion behind it. The issue doesn’t have that, and instead barely creates any sense of pity. It also doesn’t really explain why he decided to become a Nazi either, and this is the majority of this issue. Not exactly quality reading. Writer Ken Pontac will have to work on making the readers care about more characters other than Penelope and Dick in future issues.
Artwork
The art by Leonardo Manco again diverges into two different art styles. First is the dark and dirty wasteland of the present and the crisp and the more refined style for the flashback. Unfortunately, there aren’t really as many memorable moments as in previous issues, except for a section which is obviously an attempt to try and pay homage to Mad Max: Fury Road. Of course this whole series is basically a homage to the movie already.
Conclusion
Wacky Raceland has been an interesting read in previous issues, but this is the first one to come along which isn’t at least above average. It leaves the reader to questions how long the formula of “race with a flashback mixed in” will continue. Somehow it feels liked the first major story arc may be needed instead.
Title Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children Director: Tim Burton Summary: When Jacob discovers clues to a mystery that spans different worlds and times, he finds Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. But the mystery and danger deepen as he gets to know the residents and learns about their special powers.
There are a lot of things that could be said about Tim Burton, but if there is one thing even his most die hard fans can agree on is that the last several years have not been kind to him. Abysmal failures like Dark Shadows and Alice in Wonderland have left a sour taste in the mouth of those that once loved the mind that brought us Edward Scissorhand. While most of his movies tend to at least make money they have become predictable and boring with the saying ‘that’s exactly what you would expect from Burton’ becoming a common turn of phrase. Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children looks like yet another Burton production with this issue only he was the director. The unique visuals combined with the premise seemed like the perfect harmony that could create a genre classic.
Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children is visually stunning but a clunky story and reliance on cliches does not blend well.
The premise of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children appears to be a turn on the X-Men only taking the premise even further. While Professor X hides his children in a home Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children hides the children in a literal pocket dimension. This is the logical extreme and the idea is fun. A world that is locked in the same day during World War II gives the movie a very unique look that blends steampunk and time appropriate fashion that the target audience will likely love. What that target audience is is a little harder to pin down. It looks like it could be targeted to younger people but the moment where it is revealed how the bad guys keep human?? was jarring. It is very Burton-like to blend some real horror iconography with this look but it felt a little out of place here.
The world building is the strength of the film but it is also its downfall. A book has 100,000 words to explain a world and build all of its subtle nuances, but a movie only has a short amount of time to explain everything. The unique premise takes far too long to explain and the narrative is bogged down with long bouts of exposition that while they make the world feel more real and interesting stop?? the pacing short. The second act is particularly guilty of this as the movie needs to explain our bad guys and why the need for a pocket dimension like this is even needed. Fortunately most of that exposition is being given by Eva Green who couldn’t be more perfect for this role if she tried.
The thing that can save a movie like this is the look and that is probably why they hired a visionary like Burton in the first place. The look of the movie works and it works very well but the look also makes the more cliched parts stand out even more. The bare bones of the plot are the same ones we’ve seen in every young adult adaptation; a romance that makes little to no sense and moves way too fast, embracing your inner freak, learning ‘normal’ doesn’t exist and a boy becoming a man. We’ve seen all of this done so many times that these two plots don’t fit well together. Instead of taking a premise that is well known, and adding a new coat of paint to make it look new and interesting, they instead are smashing the Burton aesthetic with stories we know way too well and the pieces do not work.
Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children is far from a bad movie and the teens that watch it are probably going to love the look. It looks great but aesthetics and visuals can only go so far if we aren’t invested in the character, and I was not invested.
Since George Romero convinced a bunch of friends and random people to eat raw meat on camera back in the 1960s, the zombie genre has proven un-killable. The mostly shambling dead have featured in countless movies and video games. The genre reached mainstream critical mass a few years ago. But since ‘The Walking Dead’ started its run, the living dead have receded to their usual niche of b-movie madness that goes straight to video. However, based on the number of zombie movies released every year, the genre is nowhere near resting in peace.
Fans of the zombie genre need look no further than the horror genre offerings on Netflix to find all manner of flesh-eating fun.
Zombeavers
I ask you to believe in the power of Zombeavers. The premise is typical horror fare with a ridiculous twist. A group of teenagers goes into the woods for some fun when they’re attacked by undead beavers and more. If you enjoy b-movie horror and things like Tucker and Dale or Lake Placid, then Zombeavers is must-watch. As ridiculous as it is, the humor, tone, and scares are all well-balanced by director Jordan Rubin. There’s also a handful of fun surprises along the way that goes well beyond just beavers.
Zoombies
The animals at a zoo are infected with a zombie virus and wackiness ensues. Everything Zombeavers does right Zoombies does the same old way. Zombeavers has fun with its premise, has characters that are worth a little investment, and some clever scares.Zoombies offers nothing new other than the concept itself and makes the mistake of taking itself too seriously.
JeruZalem
There are three gates on Earth that lead to hell. One is in the ocean. One is in the desert. And one is in … Jerusalem! Dun-Dun-Dun! We learn that in the first minutes of JeruZalem, a zombie movie directed by the Israeli “Paz Brothers.” which sometimes feels more like a tourist promotion video or a fantasy film where Google Glass never runs out of battery and shoots flawless digital video. JeruZalem is a first-person horror movie much like Hardcore Henry with demonic, winged zombies and just about every zombie trope imaginable.
The Lazarus Effect
An outstanding cast that includes Mark Duplass, Olivia Wilde, Donald Glover and Evan Peters feature in a film with a decent premise that is a mostly entertaining sci-fi/horror flick. A team of scientists can bring back the dead. But when their research is bought out by Big Pharma, a tragedy leads one of the scientists to use what he’s learned to get everything he’s lost back. Great intentions at making a more psychological zombie flick fall flat like the dead after a headshot.
Burying the Ex
Joe Dante, the director behind such great flicks like Gremlins and one of my favorites ever Explorers, drives this cinema train right into a thick wall of mediocrity. I’m not one to give much credit to Rotten Tomatoes scores, but at 28% that’s just about right. Burying the Ex stars the late Anton Yelchin along with Ashley Greene and Alexandra Daddario. The film has moments of funny, but they are few and far between. The whole thing reminds me of a late 80s horror-comedy called My Boyfriend’s Back.
Navy SEALs: The Battle For New Orleans
Also known as Navy SEALs vs. Zombies, this one here features, you guessed it, Navy SEALs taking on undead hordes to save New Orleans. The trailer for this movie is a high-octane ride that is more than enough. The movie itself is by-the-books zombie action with a little more firepower added in and a few actors that’ll make you say “Hey, it’s that guy from … oh, what was it?!”
All movies are currently available for streaming on Netflix.
Special thanks to Eddie Beis (Twitter: @Beis003) for the artwork in the main image above.
Title: Deepwater Horizon Director: Peter Berg Summary: A story set on the offshore drilling rig Deepwater Horizon, which exploded during April 2010 and created the worst oil spill in U.S. history.
The unfortunate reality of being a film critic is that there are times when not much comes out. These lulls between releases are shrinking every year but there are still weeks at a time where the best one can say about the movies being released is ‘forgettable’. This is also a time where studios can drop a movie that they might not have a lot of confidence in to avoid being completely drowned out by summer blockbusters or award movies.
Deepwater Horizon isn’t going to change the world but as a tribute to the lives lost on that day on the gulf it succeeds even if it isn’t very memorable.
Photo Credit: David Lee
The BP oil disaster is an event that the world is going to be talking about for years to come. While the gulf has more or less healed the effects are ones that are going to be felt through the generations. Those reparations are felt the most by the men and women who were there the night the rig caught fire and who lost their lives. When I saw the trailer for Deepwater Horizon I had to wonder if turning this event into a movie was really the right thing to do. It turned out that it is but the movie doesn’t quite know how to end when it comes to it. This movie was made less as a movie talking about the oil spill but more the eleven men who lost their lives that night.
The reason why Deepwater Horizon doesn’t fall completely flat is that focus. While we do see a bird covered in oil at one point the movie doesn’t seem to dwell on that too much. Character do speak about it but the immediate threat is the fire and getting all of the workers to safety. It’s a disaster movie only in this case the disaster is a real event and the people dying were real instead of disaster movie canon fodder. These people are the reason this movie was made and the entire cast does a great job of embodying that from Walberg’s ‘Dad trying to make his way in the world’ to Russell’s ‘boss who will stop at nothing to keep his men safe’ they are all believable in a very real way.
It’s just unfortunate that the movie didn’t know how to end. There are plenty of movies that should have ended earlier either by adding scenes for a sequel that will never come or the need to tap on one more action scene despite the story being clearly over. In the case of Deepwater Horizon once the rig burns down there is an abrupt shift in tone that doesn’t work. The film goes from tense thriller to the ending of a documentary and the juxtaposition didn’t work. The intentions appear to be re-enforcing that human element but that was literally the point of the entire production. It felt unnecessary and tacked on.
Deepwater Horizon appears to be designed to focus on the men and women who survived and died that night and not on the resulting fallout. However, the ending of the production felt the need to reinforce this focus in the least subtle way possible. While the movie accomplished its goal of focusing on those lives lost it should have faded to black five minutes earlier.
Doctor Strange is shaping up to be a great movie, but fans wonder where the good doctor fits into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Where has he been all this time?
Surely, he can’t be everywhere at once, but you’d think he would make his presence known at some point. Or at least try to help out the Avengers now and then.
In a Collider interview. Kevin Feige talks about the Sorcerer Supreme’s whereabouts. There’s a good reason why he hasn’t shown up to help during the Chituari invasion or the attack on Sokovia.
I wonder how long the timeframe of Doctor Strange’s plot will cover
“There are people inhabiting the same world that are stopping buildings from falling down, robots from doing this, aliens from doing that,” he says. “These people in this movie are stopping inter-dimensional forces from wiping out all of reality.
As for Doctor Strange, he has bigger problems to deal with. “We’ve always assumed that the sorcerers have bigger fish to fry when they hear there’s something in a city or there’s a bank being robbed,” Feige states. “They’re not thinking about it. They’re thinking if we don’t keep vigilant our sense of reality will disappear.”
However, Strange does get a name drop in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Although it’s a brief reference, this indicates Strange is well-known in the MCU.
While Benedict Cumberbatch will appear in Avengers: Infinity War, don’t expect him to hang out with Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. Or make a post-credits cameo in other films. Feige explains Strange isn’t that type of character.
“I don’t think he does a lot of hanging out, necessarily. No, he usually gets involved when – as I said, he’s not going to intervene in the bodega crime down the street. But as things get bigger and as threats get bigger he can serve a very good purpose and can make his presence known.”
Turning Tragedy Into Spectacle Is What Makes This Industry ‘Deepwater Horizon’ Understood That.
Taking notes from great films like ‘Towering Inferno‘ and ‘The Poseidon Adventure‘ was a great move from director Peter Berg. ‘Deepwater Horizon’ had the tough task of telling a true story while remaining entertainment. What they did with this disaster movie is incredible. I’ll admit I wasn’t sold on the film going in but the effort put in was remarkable and unique.
This felt like no disaster flick before it; the thrills were authentic and intense.
Director Peter Berg, cinematographer Enrique Chediak, and editors Colby Parker Jr. & Gabriel Fleming somehow made even routine tests thrilling. That’s what stood out during ‘Deepwater Horizon‘. It subverts genre expectations and used to them bait & switch you. This isn’t the cliched melodrama action-disaster films of the 90’s. The tropes of useless romantic sub-plots and generic heroes are gone. What we had throughout was fun action scenes that felt organic and natrually built tension.
“When faced with our darkest hour, hope is not a tactic”
I spoke about the relationship between an actor and director in my ‘Magnificent Seven‘ review and this is another example of the magic that happens when those two click. Like Antoine Fuqua and Denzel Washington, Peter Berg and Mark Wahlberg just get each other. The pair worked together on 2013’s ‘Lone Survivor‘ to great success and now repeat that with ‘Deepwater Horizon‘. Berg’s care for the character Wahlberg played named Mike Williams was outstanding but he didn’t slack on allowing others to shine in doing so.
Could they be 3-0 when they release 2017’s ‘Patriots Day‘? That film will be about the Boston Bombing like ‘Lone Survivor‘ was based on real events and like ‘Deepwater Horizon‘ was. I figured this is the new niche for Peter Berg and his films. But unlike other based-on-true-story movies from this year like ‘Sully‘, Berg found a way to make this enjoyable as a film and still pay respect.
Speaking of ‘Sully‘, the way they tried to villainize the National Transportation Safety Board came off ineffectively. But the way ‘Deepwater Horizon‘ makes B.P. and supervisor Donald Vidrine (John Malkovich) the villain seemed effortless. You want to punch Vidrine by the end of the film for what he did and in a true cinematic sense, he should have faced a grim fate but that’s not how it happened in real life.
Moving away from script, actors, and directors, there is massive technical accomplishments here. The cinematography work was truly breathtaking. The wide-shots gave scale of how a tiny oil rig ruined a massive part of the ocean. The jarring camera work disorients you when the action gets heavy. So much work went into it from cinematographer Enrique Chediak. But his work was masterfully edited by Colby Parker Jr. & Gabriel Fleming. They use match-cuts that superbly transition the scenes. Another trick they did very well was the use of juxtaposition between tense and relaxed moments.
Final Thoughts:
With making the film such a spectacle, many will say this is an exploitation of the events. Maybe that isn’t a bad thing. The film industry is about entertainment and money; I believe ‘Deepwater Horizon‘ is highly entertaining and also a bonafide money-maker. Not only that but it has great characters that are simply fleshed out and some of the best CGI disaster effects I’ve seen in a very long time. Simply put, this is filmmakers at the top of their craft.
A lot of brewery owners say they built their business from the ground up. Very few mean it in the same way as Jackrabbit Brewing Company co-owner Chris Powell.
“We were all doing everything, all the time,” Powell says and he’s not kidding. “Once we actually got our permits and could build stuff, we were here late at night after work, jack hammering out the concrete to put in the trench drain and stuff. We started assembling the equipment. We got a welder and I taught myself to weld.”
Jack hammering? Welding? Not exactly the skills you’d expect to need when you decide to open a brewery. But by mid-2011 Powell, along with co-owners Kevin Hull and two others had picked up these new skills and a whole lot more, essentially working two jobs, “70-80 hours a week… well maybe more than that actually.”
This is some of the equipment Powell welded and customized himself.
IT BEGINS WITH A BEER
So how did Powell, an attorney by day, find himself living as a brewery owning steel worker by night? Would you believe it all started over a beer?
“(I said), ‘why don’t we start a brewery?’ on New Year’s Eve while we were drinking and this was like 2011 and (Kevin) said ‘yeah let’s do it!’ ” Powell says with a laugh. “Sixteen year olds start a band, 35 year olds start a brewery I guess.”
Kevin is also an attorney. He was also Chris’s best friend at law school and like many college friends they shared many nights filled with beer. In their case though, it was beer they’d made themselves.
“We started having brewfests, little parties where we’d brew a crap load of beer and invite a bunch of people and have a good time,” Powell reflects.
But going from home brewing in college, to brewery owners with full-time jobs is a leap that seemed crazy. As it turns out the internet agrees says Powell, “if you read online about whether or not it was a good idea, most people were telling you ‘Don’t do it. It’s a terrible idea. You’re going to lose all your money.’ We didn’t listen to any of that advice.”
BREWERY ON A BUDGET
Instead, they began an experiment of opening a brewery on a budget. They found the cheapest space they could, which landed them tucked away in an industrial area in West Sacramento. Powell says they couldn’t afford fancy machinery, instead opting to get old dairy equipment and customizing it to meet the breweries needs.
“Which is like the old-fashioned approach that people did 30 or 40 years ago when they were trying to start microbrews in America,” Powell says. “We did it really low-budget.”
Welding and jack hammering, soon gave way to brewing and fermenting. The beer was flowing but only to bars and restaurants, the Jackrabbit crew choosing to forego opening a taproom.
Powell admits, it was a miscalculation of the market, “in hindsight, maybe just starting a taproom first would have been a quicker start because we didn’t understand how popular that was going to be.”
TAPPING INTO THE TAPROOM
Kevin ?? working behind the bar in the Jackrabbit taproom.
“I didn’t expect it to be this successful.” Powell says the taproom offered a connection to the public Jackrabbit didn’t have before, “we got to have a lot of one-on-one interaction with customers and see what they like, what they don’t like, hear from them directly.”
Operating the taproom meant hiring more employees (they have 10 now) which actually helped reduce Powell’s workload. He says he’s now able to mostly avoid those 80-hour work weeks that took up so much of his time just a few years ago.
“We really built everything with our hands, which is something that I’m proud of,” Powell says. “No one is getting rich doing this right now, but it’s rewarding just to see a place that we created from an idea (turn) into a real thing; people making their living working here, making good beer.”
CARVING A BEER NICHE
Jackrabbit (named for the rabbits that can be found just about everywhere in the area) distinguishes itself from many of the other Sacramento-area breweries by focusing on English and Belgium style beers. It was a decision that was made after carefully considering the market, and of course buying a bunch of beer.
“Probably a month after (deciding to open a brewery), we had our first meeting of the people who were going to do it and we went to BevMo and we bought like $100 in beer,” Powell explains. “We went to Kevin’s house and had a sip of this and spat it out and a sip of that and spat it out and took notes, ‘I like this, I don’t like that’ and just talked about what we wanted to do.”
Powell says early on it became clear early on they wanted their beers to stand out from the craft beer scene that is growing more crowded by the day. “We thought we didn’t want to be what everyone else was doing. We wanted to clear our own niche in the market.” That niche includes beers like their English-style Pub Ale and Greybeard Old Ale, Order of the Rabbit (a Belgian-style dubbel), a Golden Strong, and at any given time a variety of Saisons.
Powell says he’d like to expand the Jackrabbit brand within the region reaching to the Bay Area and Tahoe. Eventually, he’d like to see their beer sold in Nevada. For the time being though, he just wants Jackrabbit to continue to make good beer, and come up with new and interesting brews.
“We’re in the middle of a renaissance of American beer and it’s really cool be a part of America awakening and rediscovering its love of flavorful beer.”
WWE Studios Keeps Releasing Actions Movies Even If Their Stories Start To Blend Into Each Other; ‘Interrogation’ Is No Exception.
Honestly, I was thrilled when WWE began producing films. Their horror films are notable with hits like ‘See No Evil‘ and ‘Oculus‘ while action films like ‘The Marine‘ shined. But after a while, they moved away from horror and focused on these typical Hollywood action films. The newest one is ‘Interrogation‘, which stars Adam “Edge” Copeland, C.J. “Lana” Perry, and Patrick Sabongui. It is the third in a series of six WWE action films dubbed the “Action Six Pack”.
The story follows Lucas Noland (Copeland), an interrogation expert who is the best at what he does. He is joined by I.T. specialist Becky (Perry) as they attempt to stop a threat that could destroy the entire city. The pair engage in mind games with criminal mastermind Vasti (Sabongui) as they try to discover his true agenda.
Movie Review:
The plot is pretty generic when it comes to the action genre but what made it work was how well Copeland’s character was handled. His introduction where he made tactical decisions based on reading the situation was bad-ass. Timing his moves in between bullet fire and reloads, he comes off smart. The Lucas Noland character really gets going once they pair him with bad guy Vasti played by Patrick Sabongui.
The protagonist and antagonist dynamic worked well as both men were cocky about their smarts. I enjoy seeing action movies when both sides are good at what they do so they try to out-do each other. Making your bad guy seem weak as a means to push your hero as a bigger bad-ass only hurts the film’s credibility.
With a modest budget compared to widely released films, a story like this could have been scaled back a bit. To avoid becoming too procedural, I would have loved to see a more focused battle of the minds with these two actors. Both did well but couldn’t help avoiding the marketable cliched route these movies take.
The acting was fine for the most part expect when it came to C.J. Perry, who is known as Lana to WWE fans. Her role as an I.T. Specialist didn’t come off believable. Standing with Copeland and Sabongui, she looked weak in comparison. Following her character in WWE, I believe she would have excelled more in a villainous role.
Another thing I enjoyed were the action sequences. They made the entire film feel grander than the usual home video release. The introduction I mentioned was a great segment as well as the close-quarters fights. How refreshing it is to see an interrogation specialist be an awesome fighter and not just a good talker?
Final Thoughts:
Obvious flaws are present like the generic cinematography and average plot but honestly, there is some really fun sequences here. ‘Interrogation‘ is what you come to expect from WWE Studios but their formula worked well under director Stephen Reynolds. This is the second film he has done for the studio following ‘12 Rounds 3: Lockdown‘. Expect to see more of collaborations between them.
The action-thriller from Lionsgate and WWE Studios, ‘Interrogation‘, is available now on Blu-ray (plus Digital HD), DVD (plus Digital), Digital HD and On Demand.
We are just over a week away from Nate Parker’s passion project – the slavery-revolt drama The Birth of A Nation, the film that overwhelmed Sundance this last winter and sold for the biggest price tag in the festival’s history – opening nationwide to audiences.
And we’re also a few weeks removed from the news that Parker and his old roommate were not only accused, but arrested on allegations of sexual assault back in 1999.
If you want the whole story again, you can find it, but there’s no need to get into the dirty details here. It was an awful, seedy, disgusting night from what the reports suggest. The issue in front of us now involves a few things. First off, how will this film be received by the masses who know about Parker’s horrible history in that Penn State dorm? And what does this do for Oscar chances for the film?
Now, I don’t want to just sit here and say “oh no, it won’t win any Oscars!” That’s ridiculous. It’s as pointless on some level as the awards themselves. But the Oscars are still a cultural event, and think about it… here was this film, a passion project from an African-American filmmaker, lauded as an instant classic the moment it premiered at Sundance, seemingly ushered to the front of the Best Picture/Director/Actor lines, in a very poignant and crucial year for the Academy. Last year’s #OscarsSoWhite needed a counterpunch from an African-American prestige picture. The Academy needed a strong response this year, no matter what the case, and here was a miracle to make those stodgy old white males feel better about themselves, and they had it gift wrapped.
Until August.
I don’t know if The Birth of A Nation will win any Oscars and, frankly, it doesn’t matter at least a little but outside of social media controversy. Shutting the film out of the Oscars won’t bring back the victim of Parker’s crimes, who killed herself in 2012. It won’t do a damned thing. The Academy members will just have to work harder to be a little less shitty and racist when nomination time rolls around. There’s plenty of great work from minority artists out there, but this one was their Golden Goose and now they don’t know what to do. (Psst… see more movies!)
Back to that wide release… What about the masses watching this movie at all? Should there be some sort of widespread boycott for The Birth of A Nation, given its creator’s horrible transgressions? That is a tricky issue. My personal approach is to separate the art from the artist. Taking a stand on Parker’s film then means you must never watch a Woody Allen movie or a Roman Polanski movie ever again. If you say, “who cares? Those guys suck and I don’t watch them anyway,” well, you probably aren’t interested in this film and you have missed a ton of great cinema over the years.
I understand Woody Allen has done very creepy and deviant things in his past, and is probably a pederast to some degree. But I absolutely adore Annie Hall. Match Point is a brilliant thriller, Hannah and Her Sisters is terrific, and so on and so forth. Roman Polanski did some terrible things to an impressionable young girl, but Chinatown and Rosemary’s Baby are undeniable masterpieces of the highest order (not to mention the brilliance of his smaller films). I can watch these films and divorce myself from the flaws and horrible acts of their creators. It may not be the right thing to do, but it’s a compartmentalization that works for me to appreciate artistry for the sake of art.
And what about the other actors, and the hundreds of workers attached to The Birth of A Nation beyond Parker and his collaborator and fellow rapist (oof), Jean McGianni Celestin? Should Armie Hammer suffer yet another failure because of Parker’s horrific acts? What about the rest of the cast and crew who spent a great deal of time and effort on this picture? There’s more at play here than Nate Parker and his unforgivable sexual assault.
This isn’t meant to sway your position. Perhaps you’re dug in on this issue and you won’t see it on principle. To that I say, congratulations. But if we are denying this film based on Parker, then read up on the dozens and dozens of scandals and terrible actions of filmmakers and actors and weed those films out of your life as well. And while you’re at it, you might wanna check in on your favorite musicians and musical artists and take a look at their biographies. Ignoring art because you don’t like the artist, or the artist has done unforgivable things in their past, is a tough thing to manage, and that hill you’re set to die on will definitely change too often to remain consistent.
