Selma Review

RYAN: 2014 was really the year of the biopic!  Four of the five motion pictures and actors nominated in the Best Drama categories at the Golden Globes are all based on real people.  It’s a tight race to be sure and Selma is a serious contender in both categories.

CAROLINE: There has been great buzz for this, not to mention it’s produced by Oprah and she’s in it too.

RYAN: Plus Brad Pitt exec produced.  Add this to producing Oscar winning Best Pic from last year, 12 Years a Slave, and he’s become a powerhouse producer.

CAROLINE: And Angie’s directing turn with Unbroken, another biopic contender this season – they’re already unstoppable.  Where else can they climb in Hollywood?

RYAN: That’s a rhetorical question, clearly.  As for Selma, it’s outstanding.  And educational while entertaining.  It’s about such a pivotal moment in our nation’s history and it would be one thing to read about it in a history book but to see this dramatization is incredibly powerful.

CAROLINE: It’s the true story of the fight for the right to vote in Selma, Alabama in 1965.  It’s not that long ago.

RYAN: Look at what we’re still dealing with with marriage equality.  Things change slowly and there’s always a fight for what’s right.  The dramatization in this movie is so enthralling though.  The period is recreative impeccably.

CAROLINE: So come on… how’s Oprah?

RYAN: She doesn’t have a very large part but she’s good.  She’s always been a competent actress.  She has a couple powerful moments as an African American being denied the right to vote.  You’re on pins and needles.

CAROLINE: How’s David Oyelowo as Martin Luther King Jr.?

RYAN: Incredible.  The competition is cray.  Eddie Redmayne, Benedict Cumberbatch… none of these men make you feel like they’re doing impressions and yet they really become these men.  Their talent is maddeningly brilliant.  I love how well David nails Martin’s speech patterns – so rousing and real.  He just commands the role.

CAROLINE: He is a great actor.

RYAN: There were so many brutal, horrible things that happened with the wave of racism in Selma at that time.  It’s a disgusting side of humanity.  Just inconceivable and it’s real.  It’s our nation’s history.  You can’t help but feel hit in the gut by it.

CAROLINE: That has to speak to the truth of what happened but also must be good direction.

RYAN: Very good.  Powerful.  Even how it chronicles King’s convos with President Johnson are incredible.  And you know we respect MLK so much that I think of him as older, like in his 50s.  But he was only 39 when he died.  It’s remarkable, just remarkable, how articulate and confident and brilliant he was.  Such a leader and such a frustrating, devastating loss because who knows what else good he could have accomplished had he not been assassinated.

CAROLINE: So true.

RYAN: And you’ll like to know I cried a bit, rare as it happens for me while watching movies – but they were of the happy variety.  It’s such a fantastic movie.  It tells this important, pivotal story and honors MLK.

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