Artifical Intelligence Thriller "Ex Machina" Examines Systemic Sexism

Alicia Vikander commands the screen as Ava.

Oscar Isaac and Dohmnall Gleeson play big roles in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, but the latest foray into a galaxy far, far away was only the second best 2015 science fiction the two made together. First prize goes to Ex Machina, a thought-provoking and engrossing sci-fi thriller that marks the directorial debut of writer Alex Garland (28 Days Later…, Never Let Me Go).

Gleeson stars as Caleb, a programmer for a Google-type software company who wins the opportunity to spend a week at the secluded estate of the company’s founder Nathan (Isaac, continuing to prove he's one of our best working actors). The only other person in the sleekly-designed compound is Kyoko (Sonya Mizuno), the house maid Nathan speaks down to and lashes out at when he’s not using her as a sex partner. And then there’s Ava (2015 breakout Alicia Vikander, totally killing it), a humanoid robot with artificial intelligence that Nathan has created.

During his stay, Caleb is tasked with being the human component of a Turing test, which gauges AI’s consciousness. During a series of sessions, Ava and Caleb seem to develop feelings for one another, and during sporadic power outages that interrupt Nathan’s camera feed, Ava tells Caleb that Nathan is a bad man who cannot be trusted. However, things are not as they seem, an atmosphere of unease persists and everyone’s motivations aren’t made clear until the finale.

That’s all I’ll say on the plot specifics of the film, which plays on the surface like a cautionary technology tale or a Frankenstein fable about the foibles of playing God. However, like last year’s Under the Skin or the Netflix show Jessica Jones, this is a pointed commentary on gender privilege and entitlement disguised in a genre traditionally targeted at the male demographic.

Nathan is the more-readily definable, self-absorbed, abusive bro, but Caleb, who for all intents and purposes is the good guy protagonist, also trades in stealth misogyny. In some ways we all do, men and women both, which is probably unsurprising seeing how we’ve been programmed in a world of systemic sexism, one where the main narrative of entertainment (books, movies, video games, whatever) features knights in shining armor winning the hearts (and bodies) of damsels in distress. Look no further than the gag that punctuates Kingsman: The Secret Service for proof. The ending of Ex Machina is a direct comment on this programming in the way it engenders an almost unconscious response in the viewer, one akin to the famous example of someone watching Do the Right Thing and coming away angry that Mookie tossed a trash can through Sal’s window.

It would be hard for me to recommend something more than I recommend Ex Machina. It’s a film with everything going for it – it’s thematically rich, all the tech aspects are top notch and the acting is sublime. I’d say it’s my favorite film of 2015, and besides maybe Creed, nothing else so far even comes close. A

"The Force Awakens" Feels Like Classic "Star Wars"

Importantly, Force Awakens gets the new characters right.

So I finally saw Star Wars: The Force Awakens and I have a lot of thoughts. Generally, I’ll admit I really enjoyed the movie. J.J. Abrams and the creative team delivered the film that fans have been clamoring for over the last three decades but that they were denied by the piss-poor prequels. This one is leaps and bounds above those films, and while it’s not really on par with the first trilogy, it’s tightly edited, expertly cast and entertaining as hell.

The Force Awakens basically follows the standard sequel escalation protocol – do what worked before, but go bigger. I mean that very literally. Once again, the bad guys have a planet-destroying base, causing one character to ask “So, it’s another Death Star?” I can’t remember the exact response, but it goes something like, “Sort of, but this one is like way, way bigger,” which is accompanied by a hologram showing the disparity and a lot of gulps from the people standing around. I’m not exactly sure why – since both the Death Star and this Starkiller Base do the exact same thing, you’d think the size would be pretty inconsequential. I guess one destroys worlds harder than the other.

Luckily Han Solo (Harrison Ford) is at this meeting, and he cuts past all the size mumbo jumbo, saying “How do we blow it up? There's always a way to do that.” And low-and-behold there is, and it’s basically the same exact vulnerability that brought down the empire in A New Hope and Return of the Jedi. So, everything’s bigger, but the same flaws persist.

The same could be said of the movie, which is basically a retread of A New Hope, with dashes of Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi sprinkled throughout. As a general rule, that’s not necessarily a bad thing – I recently wrote glowingly of Creed, a movie that does something very similar – but, while that film utilized a familiar construct to fully explore new themes and affecting character dynamics, The Force Awakens mostly trades in nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake.

I won’t lie – I love a great deal of the fanboy service, and I’ll happily revisit this world every year, especially if it feels this lived-in and emotionally resonant (more on that in a minute). But ultimately, I can’t help but feel the whole thing is pretty derivative. In a universe defined in the hearts of fans by its inventiveness and possibilities, we keep bouncing back to the same plot points about the same family in which everything paradoxically boils down to destiny. Rey (Daisy Ridley) may or may not have Skywalker blood running through her, but Kylo Ren definitely does, and it just makes the whole Star Wars universe seem so small. If Finn (John Boyega) winds up being the son of Lando Calrissian or a descendent of Mace Windu – basically the only other black characters in this series to date – it’s going to be hella annoying.

But setting aside these issues, I rather enjoyed The Force Awakens. I do think the film could’ve benefited from slowing down to breathe and allow some character moments, and that it was an emotionally dishonest misstep to have Leia (Carrie Fisher) hug Rey instead of Chewbacca (Peter Mayhew) at the end. But, despite my moaning about the derivative nature of the story, I do appreciate some of the symmetry in play here – as with A New Hope, The Force Awakens contains a lovable droid with a secret message, a hero from a desert planet with mysterious parentage, and a mentor who is struck down by a villain he raised. This makes the movements of the film predictable, but not necessarily in an unenjoyable way.

Because, it needs to be said, when the film delivers, it really, really delivers. Abrams taps into the excitement that defined this world in the original trilogy, and even better, he replicates the feeling that the characters inhabiting it haven’t been created for this story, but instead have been living fully-realized lives. We’ve been plopped into this adventure in media res and there’s a strong feeling that, even though we’re mostly trading in stock archetypes with these characters, nearly all of them have distinct personalities, emotions, histories and motivations. That makes things a lot more refreshing and engrossing than the prequels where everyone was basically a plot-serving automaton.

Harrison Ford doesn't sleepwalk through the film.

Rey and Finn are great characters to spin these movies around, not only because the fact that a woman and a black man are heading up a franchise like this is undeniably thrilling, but also because they are a lot of fun and the actors are unknowns that totally own their roles and have dynamite chemistry (I’ve long held that Abrams’ greatest strength as a filmmaker is his keen casting ability, and that’s extremely true here).

Rey is endearing, self-sufficient and resourceful and while nitpickers are arguing she’s a Mary Sue character (i.e. wish-fulfillment perfection), that’s just some horseshit, because nobody would be saying it if she was a man. Yes, she’s preternaturally good at everything she tries, from flying ships, to wielding light sabers, to controlling the force. She’s “the chosen one” archetype we’ve seen lead every film in this series, not to mention other popular films like Harry Potter and The Matrix, except this time she’s a girl. Have problems with that genre staple by all means, but it would be unfair to dwell on it here since the protagonist is a woman. I, for one, find it a refreshing change of pace.

Finn, meanwhile, is a Storm Trooper with a conscious, a self-interested antihero that initially isn’t so much about doing good as he is about not doing bad. Although he also seems preternaturally skilled with a light saber (although, to be fair, the film does show Rey expertly wielding a staff to subdue attackers early on and Storm Troopers fighting with light saber-like riot gear), he’s much less skilled than Rey, getting by mostly on luck and pluck. He’s basically a Han Solo type without the rapscallion nature and ace flying skills. Put a little more accurately, he’s basically a Ron Weasley type, or, depending on how things develop with his and Rey’s stories, maybe a Samwise Gamgee type.

I love that this role (and the role of Rey) could really be any sex or gender, but since Finn is played by a black guy, there is possibly something to his race on the thematic level. While I wouldn’t go as far as this writer, the fact is that the film gives us a black man rising up and fighting against the constructs placed upon him from birth. With the current state of racial relations and misunderstandings, that’s a noteworthy thing for a major blockbuster to do.

There are other great characters as well. BB-8 is perfectly adorable, and although he’s probably the most prequely character of the bunch since he’s just a stock good guy with no back story, the sheer force of charisma the great Oscar Issac brings to the table makes Poe Dameron far better than any hero we got into those entries. Meanwhile, Kylo Ren is basically what George Lucas wanted Anakin Skywalker to be in the prequels – petulant, whiny, flawed, corrupted and (here’s the difference) compelling. He has an undeniably interesting dynamic with every single one of the good guys besides Poe, which should be a landmine for drama in future installments.

And then, of course, there are the standbys from the first trilogy. Carrie Fisher and (especially) Mark Hamill are glorified cameos, but Harrison Ford brings a lot more energy than I would’ve expected. He carries the emotional weight of the film, forging powerful moments with each of the three main newbies before making his exit from the series.

So that’s my thoughts on The Force Awakens. It gets most of the important things right, and, excitingly, three of the four main roles moving forward are played by a woman, a black man, and a Latino man respectively, which I’m thinking has to be some sort of groundbreaking. While I would have preferred something a bit fresher, The Force Awakens is a strong start that has me excited for future outings, especially considering their being written and directed by a vibrant talent like Rian Johnson. B+

“Creed” Recaptures the Rousing Magic of the Original “Rocky”

Sylvester Stallone hands the franchise off to an up-and-comer in Creed.

The Rocky and Star Wars franchises are very different beasts, but it's amazing how, nearly 40 years into their lifespans, they seem to be riding along the same trajectory. Both started as passion projects for their creators before emerging as undisputable cultural touchstones. And, after devolving into mediocrity, both series have reemerged here in 2015 with original cast members passing the baton to new stars. Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Creed are each the seventh film in their respective franchises, and yet, oddly enough, both films are the first in their series in which the driving force isn't the original creator but instead a total unabashed fanboy.

Expectations are sky high for J.J. Abrams' Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and the stakes are clearly a lot bigger for him than they were for Ryan Coogler, writer-director of Creed. But if Force Awakens can even sort of do for Star Wars what Creed does for Rocky, well, Abrams and most film fans on the planet will be tremendously happy.

 Like Abrams' own Star Trek films or Noah Hawley's Fargo series, Creed is somehow both a loving piece or fan fiction and a great piece of entertainment in its own right. The plot intentionally mirrors that of the original Rocky -- a longshot underdog given an out-of-nowhere shot at the title based solely on his name is coached up by a reluctant old-timer and romances a local cutie -- while offering numerous nods to its increasingly bombastic sequels. A naysayer could say it's a mere retread mixed with elements of The Color of Money, but Coogler simultaneously embraces and subverts cliché, bringing a fresh feel to a familiar self-worth narrative.

Observe his clever spin on the training montage or the way he viscerally films each boxing sequence (one in a single take, another with multiple behind-the-head-shots that evoke a video game), and that becomes obvious. But it really helps that he's created a hell of a role for his Fruitvale Station star Michael B. Jordan, who undergoes a startling body transformation to portray boxing hopeful Adonis Johnson, the bastard son of Rocky nemesis-turned-friend Apollo Creed. Adonis is a rarity in a Hollywood film -- a young, complex black man. He's cocky and timid, charming and infuriating, weak and strong. It's the type of role that Tom Cruise played when he was younger and that almost nobody gets to play now, and it just really works within the Rocky construct.

Having never met his father -- he died in the ring before the boy was even born -- Adonis feels compelled to follow in his footsteps. This is despite the fact that he's an educated man with choices thanks to Apollo's widow Mary Ann (Phylicia Rashad), who plucked him out of the foster system after his mother died to raise him as her own. Mary Ann obviously doesn't condone his desire, and neither does the LA boxing community, forcing the self-taught Adonis to travel south of the border to engage in back-room bouts to get his fix. When that's no longer enough, he heads for Philly to track down Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stall
one) and get some professional training.

From there, the movie feeds you a lot of what you'd expect from a Rocky movie -- training montages, heart-on-sleeve monologues, health scares, inspirational music -- but it also lands some unexpected haymakers. There's the affecting romance with Bianca (Tessa Thompson), a deaf musician who is refreshingly living her own, three-dimensional life beyond the life of her beau.

But the biggest one comes courtesy of humbly powerful performance from Stallone, an actor who was compared to Brando when he arrived in the original Rocky but is mostly, deservedly, a punch-line. His performance here ranks with the best he's ever given -- right alongside the original Rocky and Cop Land -- and the Oscar talk swirling around him is well-founded. Stallone has allowed his iconic presence to do most of the heavy lifting over the last few decades, but here, he and Coogler wield that status like a surgical knife, using it to elevate the performance while also layering in the kind of gravitas, feeling and honesty you can only bring to a role when it has bled so fully into your own life and vice versa.

Creed is formulaic and manipulative, but satisfyingly so. Like last year's Guardians of the Galaxy, Creed is the type of film that is just so enthusiastically hitting all the right notes, that none of that stuff registers as a detraction. Coogler deftly handles everything, getting us to care about these people, and then getting us to root for them. Anyone who knows good Rocky movies from mediocre Rocky movies knows how things will end, but it doesn't matter. In the final round, when Coogler follows the film's best dramatic moment by finally allowing a few bars of Bill Conti's famous theme to play, it's just utter perfection, the kind of movie magic that every film yearns for but so few achieve. A

Fun, Inventive "Ant-Man" Makes A Compelling Case for Ant-Man

Paul Rudd and Michael Douglas star as Ant-Man, past and present.

In the past, Marvel Studios has found a way to get modern audiences to embrace possibly laughable scenarios involving warring Norse gods or gun-toting raccoons with alien tree sidekicks, but with Ant-Man they’ve managed something even trickier. They’ve found a way to make a seemingly lame super hero incredibly awesome.

For those unfamiliar, Ant-Man revolves around a super hero who can shrink down to the size of an ant and command ants to do his bidding. He may not be the lamest sounding super hero – Aquaman takes the cake there, as exemplified by shows as diverse as Family Guy and Big Bang Theory – but he's not far off.

However, via a series of inventive fight scenes, including a one-on-one battle with Falcon (Anthony Mackie), Ant-Man makes an excellent case for why Ant-Man deserves a place at the Avengers' table. It's exciting to imagine the havoc the little guy could wreck when playing alongside the big boys.

Like nearly every film Marvel Studios has made over the last seven years, Ant-Man struggles with a weak villain and repeats the same basic story about keeping a powerful McGuffin from falling into the wrong hands. And, although it was long-billed as a heist movie, the central heist of the film is underwhelmingly derivative.

Despite all that, the film is a blast. Structurally, it hits many of the same beats as Iron Man with a disgruntled second-in-command and a strong redemption angle to boot. The film offers an interesting retcon of the MCU thus far, positing that Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) was another player in the fight against Hydra, much like Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell) and Howard Stark (John Slattery).

Some super impressive CGI is used to de-age Douglas for a flashback that establishes Pym developed a suit that allowed shrinking to the size of an ant via the use of Pym Particles. Although Pym used his tech to fight America's enemies as The Ant-Man, he refused to share his formula, fearful it would fall into untrustworthy hands (smart move given Hydra had infiltrated Shield by that point even if they remained hidden until the events of Captain America: The Winter Soldier). Years later we see him struggling with the notion that his former protégée Darren Cross (Corey Stoll) is on the precipice of cracking the formula and preparing to sell it to Hydra (who else?).

Enter Scott Lang (Rudd), a wronged-engineer who struck back at the fat cats as a Robin Hood-like cat-burglar and wound up in prison. At the outset of the film, he is released from jail, and we see the struggle he has getting his life back together so he can reconnect with his beloved daughter Cassie. Pym, who has a troubled relationship with his own daughter Hope (Evangeline Lily), targets Lang as the ideal candidate to use his suit in an effort to stop Cross.

This is the first post-Avengers film to really address why other heroes aren't lending a hand, and best of all, the reason is rooted in character. Immediately after hearing Pym's pitch, Lang says, "I think we should call the Avengers," and it's refreshing as hell to hear. But Pym had a strained relationship with Howard Stark, and so he refuses to seek the help of his son, whose Iron-Man suit he dismisses as "cute tech" when compared to the Ant-Man one.

Thematically, the film does a lot with fatherhood, exploring the notion of earning the adoration our children naturally give us. The film is borderline cloying at times, but the coupling of the off-center tone and a game cast keeps everything together. This is far-and-away the jokiest Marvel film to date, and all of it lands perfectly. The film gets a lot of mileage out of size-related humor and Douglas, Rudd and Lily charm in the lead roles. However, despite filling the second most generic major role in the film (first goes to Judy Greer's no-fun mom, a role she recently played in Jurassic World), Michael Pena practically walks away with the movie on the strength of his unfettered energy and a great running gag.

Few would argue Peyton Reed is as strong a filmmaker as Edgar Wright (who shepherded the project for years but then left right before production due the creative differences), but, as a big fan of the character, Reed was a good choice to take the project across the finish line. Ant-Man is a real winner for Marvel, and another testament to their ability to turn outlandish properties into four-quadrant entertainments. Jury’s out on if they can continue that trend with next year's Dr. Strange, but I wouldn’t bet against them. B+

Cruise Leads All Star Team In "Mission: Impossible -- Rouge Nation"

Rebecca Ferguson provides an excellent sparing partner for Tom Cruise.



I’m going to go out on a limb and say it: Tom Cruise is the greatest action star of all time.

For some people, that statement is craziness, mostly because Cruise doesn’t have the physicality of Schawarzenegger or the innate toughness of Eastwood.

But just look at the films and tell me which other actor has a better body of work within the genre. I’d put the threesome of Collateral, Minority Report and Edge of Tomorrow (my review here) up against pretty much anything. Hell, even Cruise’s lower tier stuff – Jack Reacher, Oblivion (my review here), Knight and Day – would wipe the floor with the best many other action stars have to offer. And, I’ve said all of this without even including the trump card that would be the Mission: Impossible series, which recently became even more impressive with the release of the wonderful Mission: Impossible – Rouge Nation.

Right off the bat, Rouge Nation calls on Cruise’s greatest appeal as an action star – his reckless commitment. The focus of the film’s ad campaign has been the scene where Cruise hangs off of an Airbus A400M, and yet the stunt occurs minutes into the film, a little appetizer to jack up the audience. You could argue it's a superfluous scene, but really it's quite meaningful in how it sets up the film's meta narrative.

Just as Skyfall explored the relevance of James Bond and the MI6 in today's world, Rouge Nation questions the need for Ethan Hunt and the IMF. Early in the film, Alec Baldwin's CIA director insists Hunt is a reckless gambler and that the IMF is an extravagant, outdated organization that should be dissolved, but eventually he gets on board, saying "Ethan Hunt is the living embodiment of destiny."

That all might as well be a commentary on Cruise, a big-money superstar who is largely a remnant of a bygone era when movie stars were sustainably bankable. It's a different world now, but Cruise is still chugging along, wowing us with the real-world peril he puts himself in to sell these confections to audiences. There's a few cracks here and there, but he's mostly an ageless marvel, and he carries it all off with such precision, dedication and good humor.

The plot has something to do with The Syndicate, a rouge spy organization pulled right from the old TV show, but the specifics are pretty irrelevant. Like all Mission flicks, Rouge Nation simply revolves around Cruise needing to get some item (usually a list, code, or both) that's impossible to get. Differentiation comes down to the director at the helm, the team of cohorts working alongside Cruise, and the set pieces that prop the film up.

Christopher McQuarrie isn't nearly as definitive as the other directors to take a turn on this series, but I like what he does here, combining Brad Bird's jaunty tone (Mission: Impossible -- Ghost Protocol) with Brian DePalma's Hitchcockian tension (Mission: Impossible). Like it's immediate predecessor, Rouge Nation continues the hard-right turn into romp territory, and, I'll just say that it's amazing how much comedy these last two movies have gotten out of Cruise's minimalism. Guy does so much with a shrug or a glance. Meanwhile, The set pieces live up to the high bar set by previous entries in the series. I have an affinity for the staging of the tense opera sequence, but the water scene at the center of the film is a doozy, up there with the very best the series has done.

But Rouge Nation really excels when it comes to the team, a veritable who's who of the series' bests. After sitting most of the last entry out, long-time sidekick Luther Stickel (Ving Rhames) is back in action, along with Benji (Simon Pegg) and Brandt (Jermey Renner). Renner gets less to do this time out (he's mostly comic relief alongside Baldwin or Rhames), but Pegg shines here as he takes another step toward basically becoming a co-lead in the series.

Paula Patton is the only main player from Ghost Protocol who isn't back because, you know, sexism. Fortunately, the trade off means we get a large dose of Rebecca Ferguson as Ilsa Faust, an agent who may or may not be a loyal member of The Syndicate. Ferguson combines vulnerability and nerve into a fascinating package, giving the type of performance that makes you sit up and ask, "Who is this actor, and why aren't they in everything?" The relationship doesn't get full-on romantic (after that last scene in Ghost Protocol, it's still unclear where Hunt stands with his wife), but the actors have oodles of chemistry. At the film's end you're dying to see more of Ilsa, and I hope Cruise and his collaborators don't jettison Ferguson once they start breaking the story for the inevitable sixth entry in the series.

For what it's worth, Rouge Nation nestles right in at two on my list of favorite Mission flicks, right in between Ghost Protocol and the original. Honestly, it's hard for me to rank all but but the second film, which is decent enough, but definitely rates last. That's because these films are such finely-tuned entertainments. It's barely greenlit, and I'm already excited for the next one. A-

"Selma" Offers a Captivating Story and Worthwhile Commentary on Present Day Race Relations

Critics argue Selma grossly misplays the dynamic between MLK and LBJ.

While watching Ava DuVernay’s Selma, I was reminded of Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln (reviewed here). Both films focus on iconic moments in the American civil rights movement, while managing the tricky tasks of humanizing the larger-than-life icons involved. More intriguingly, both also illustrate the forceful guile and cunning strategy required to make such sweeping change.

Yes, Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr. stood on high ground ideologically and morally, but they also were willing to poke, prod and even play a little dirty to ensure success. These aren’t just stories of saints standing on the side of justice until society came around to their way of thinking – these are tales of men pulling strings to manipulate America into bettering itself.

There’s something I find so incredibly interesting about all of that, about the notion that King (commandingly played by David Oyelowo) and his compatriots in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) specifically targeted Selma because the sheriff there was a hotheaded racist who could easily be baited into doing something oppressive to nonviolent protesters. The film suggests the SCLC wasn’t concerned with long-range grass rooting – they left that to other groups like the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. No, what they wanted were headlines that would put pressure on Lyndon B. Johnson (Tom Wilkinson), a president who supported black voting rights, but who had a difference of opinion about the timing of further legislation. “We negotiate, we demonstrate, we resist,” King says in one key scene. “We raise white consciousness. And in particular, the consciousness of whichever white man happens to be sitting in the Oval Office.”

The film has come under fire in some corners for its inaccuracies, particularly related to its portrayal of Johnson as an antagonist to King. The idea that people could watch this movie and come away incensed at the treatment of a white person is pretty mind-boggling, but what makes the whole thing especially odd is that the film delivers a mostly nuanced take on the King-Johnson relationship.

Johnson isn't really the bad guy; he supports change, but doesn't agree with King's time frame. He certainly stands in stark contrast to the film's actual villains, even considering his attempts to slow King down by using wiretap information to expose the good doctor's extramarital dalliances to his wife Coretta (Carmen Ejogo). Not only does he surround himself with fair-minded advisers like Lee White (Giovanni Ribisi), but he also rebuffs a suggestion by J. Edgar Hoover (Dylan Baker) to shut down King "permanently and unequivocally" and chastises George Wallace (Tim Roth) by saying "I'll be damned to let history put me in the same place as the likes of you."

Is this exactly how it happened? Probably not, but it makes thematic and dramatic sense, and it seems a lot more logical than the assertion that Johnson masterminded the whole march or that he was totally innocent of wiretapping King (I think it's an injustice to show Johnson taking aim at King's marriage, but the dude was president of the United States, for god's sake; he damn well knew about those wiretaps). The New York Times and Washington Post have done fairly good assessments of the entire controversy for those interested in reading more on the topic, but as far as opinions go, I tend to agree with this take in Slate.

The film posits that MLK's mission in Selma was to change the discourse among the inherently good but generally apathetic multitudes within white America, to impress upon them the immediacy of the situation. Johnson becomes the major stand-in there, and the film argues that the work put in by King and his brethren eventually allows Johnson (and a large contingent of whites) to see the light, to transition from sympathy to empathy, as evinced by his words, “There is no Negro problem. There is no Southern problem. There is no Northern problem. There is only an American problem.”

This message is one that's still incredibly relevant today, given all the present day upheaval surrounding unjust treatment of blacks by law enforcement and the recent church slayings in South Carolina. Watch the scenes that depict the 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing or the beating of Jimmie Lee Jackson (Keith Stanfield) and tell me they don't seem eerily familiar. It's easy to rationalize, explain or condemn certain situations on an individual basis while pretending there is no larger race problem in America, but on aggregate such justifications don't fly any better now than they did 50 years ago. Is black life better in America now than it was in 1965 when MLK led the march to Selma? Yes, certainly, it is, just like it was better in 1965 than it was in 1865 when Lincoln was trying to abolish slavery. But it isn't where it should be, and that's an American problem.

DuVernay gets that, and Selma encapsulates it, perhaps at the risk of smudging the role of Lyndon B. Johnson. But, I found myself cheering for the man when he put Wallace in his place and later when he spoke so passionately when presenting his bill. I believe that was the film's intent, so it's hard for me to say the film is casting Johnson in a negative light. It's much more accurate to say the film is turning him into a metaphorical beacon.

Is it incongruous that I'm defending artistic license here when I took a movie like Saving Mr. Banks to task for playing loose with history? Maybe. Maybe, I'm just blinded by my ideological persuasions in both cases. But, I have to call it the way I see it, and while I see a relevant thematic purpose in this instance, I only saw corporate propaganda in the former.

Selma is not a perfect history lesson, but if it encourages people to "interrogate history" as DuVernay suggests, and if it makes people a bit more empathetic in their considerations of race relations today, then it's a movie that offers a whole lot of value. When you toss on top of that the notion that it is a well-made and captivating story on the micro level, well that's really something.  A-

Soporific "Fifty Shades of Grey" Makes BDSM Seem About As Exciting As Waiting in Traffic

Clearly one of the most iconic images in cinematic history.

Fifty Shades of Grey plays like a neutered version of 9 ½ Weeks. Well, wait, no. Although that Mickey Rourke/Kim Basinger flick has been a punching bag for the last 30 years, it does have some depth to it – interesting psychosexual exploration, discernible character arcs and, most pertinently, actual eroticism. So on reflection, neutered is probably too kind of a descriptor. It would be more apt to say “Fifty Shades of Grey plays like the castrated version of 9 ½ Weeks."

Boom! Put that on a movie poster.

In all seriousness, I’m not trying to be harsh here. Well, that’s not true, I am trying, but I don’t really want to be harsh. Although I recognize my man card would be on the line if a review of this film wasn’t a slam, I would love to be attempting to convince readers why a smutty chick flick has cinematic merit. My ringing endorsement of Magic Mike is proof of that.

But, damn this movie sucks. The dialogue is wretched, the acting is stiff and almost nothing happens. Seriously, I can’t comprehend how this film clocks in over two hours – it makes the last few Twilight films look like intricate labyrinths of dense plotting.

Speaking of Twilight, my wife tells me Fifty Shades of Grey actually started as Twilight fan fiction, and having only experienced these stories via film, I can totally see that. Take the Underworld out of Twilight and blow past the sexual tension by just getting to the sex, and you’d basically have Fifty Shades of Grey. After all, both stories have the same essential misogynistic takeaway – women are weak, male-obsessed creatures of no substance that just want to be swept up and then knocked down by a well-off, strong man. I honestly can’t believe Bella Swan and Anatasia Steele are the pop cultural heroines of our age, nor can I believe they were created by female writers and not dirty old men. Thank God that Katniss Everdeen exists and that our books and movies are offering at least one strong, positive role model for young women (and that's in addition to a way better story -- #TeamHungerGames).

All this sexism is my biggest issue with this brand of fantasy, but I might be able to look past it if Fifty Shades of Grey had a couple I could believe in. Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan are both fine physical specimens, but unfortunately they have no chemistry. In fact, I’d argue they somehow have negative chemistry. I wasn’t expecting Leonardo DiCaprio-Kate Winslet level heat, or even Ryan Gosling-Rachel McAdams energy, but this is a joke. I swear there’s a scene or two in this thing in which Johnson and Dornan look so bored that they might actually fall asleep. I guess, in that way, their both stand-ins for the audience.

And that’s the most unforgivable thing of all –  the movie is mind-numbingly dull. Thinking about it now, I'm reminded of a skit from a recent episode of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. While railing against the inequality and injustice of the American bail system, Oliver showed “Pretrial Services,” a parody segment of reality shows like Dog the Bounty Hunter that focused on humdrum and unexciting office work. I mention this because Fifty Shades of Grey is the erotic thriller equivalent of “Pretrial Services.” It has scene after scene in which the leads discuss an in-depth non-disclosure agreement, and it features the least taboo sexual fetishes imaginable – blindfolds, ice, and spanking, oh my. D-