Tag: Historic

Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom review

“Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom” turns out to be a very long movie as it encompasses a huge portion of the political figure’s life.

The movie begins with Nelson Mandela, played by Idris Elba, as a young attorney and follows his path to becoming an idealist and eventually a revolutionary leader. The movie also chronicles his personal life, including his marriage to Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, who was played by Naomie Harris.

Eventually, the movie also goes into detail about the 27 years Mandela spent in prison which was followed by his election as president of South Africa.

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Dallas Buyers Club review

Director:
Jean-Marc Vallee
Cast:
Matthew McConaughey
Jared Leto
Jennifer Garner
Rated: R

Matthew McConaughey continues his great streak of movies lately with “Dallas Buyers Club.”

In the movie, McConaugey plays Ron Woodroof. An electrician living in Texas in the late 1980s. Woodroof lives a life full of doing drugs, having unprotected sex and not having much of a plan for the future. His world is flipped upside down, though, when he goes to the doctor and discovers he is HIV positive.

As Woodroof begins to come to terms that he does have the illness, he learns that the FDA and pharmaceutical companies don’t allow certain medications into the United States and that an unproven drug is being sold to the masses. Woodroof begins to travel out of the country to get new, better, medication at first to just make money, however, over time he learns it effects an entire community.

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12 Years a Slave review

Director:
Steve McQueen
Cast:
Chiwetel Ejiofor
Benedict Cumberbatch
Paul Giamatti
Michael Fassbender
Rated: R

Steve McQueen’s “12 Years a Slave” follows Solomon Northup (Ejiofor), a free black man living in the state of New York in the 1840s. Solomon is a professional violinist and lives comfortably with his family. This changes though when he takes a job in Washington D.C. and is captured by slave traders.

From there on out, Solomon suffers hardships as he is sold to different owners and witnesses and experiences multiple horrors.

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Rush review

Director Ron Howard, whose previous work includes “Apollo 13” and “Frost/Nixon,” returns with “Rush.” The film is a chronicle of a real life rivalry that developed between Formula 1 racers James Hunt, played by Chris Hemsworth and Niki Lauda played by Daniel Bruhl.

The film shows how both drivers got started in the lower ranks of the motorsport and through time worked to become two of the biggest names in the industry. During the 1970s, both men’s private lives are delved into, revealing what else was really driving them. The movie culminates with the 1976 world championship for Formula 1 in which they both compete for the title.

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The Butler review

Director:
Lee Daniels
Cast:
Forest Whitaker
David Oyelowo
Oprah Winfrey
Terrence Howard
Cuba Gooding Jr.
Rated: PG-13

This is one of those films where you have to know the difference between “based on” and “inspired by.”

“Lee Daniels’ The Butler,” follows the story of Cecil Gaines (Whitaker), who began his life working in a cotton field as a child. After seeing his father get killed, Cecil grows up learning how to be a server inside a house. Eventually, Cecil makes his way to the Washington D.C. and over time finds himself working as a butler in an upscale hotel.

His skills allow him to be noticed by a supervisor at the White House and he begins working there soon after. Cecil ends up working under multiple presidents while serving as a butler at the White House and is able to observe major moments of how the administrations dealt with civil rights issues. Meanwhile, the job puts a bit of a strain at times on his marriage with his wife Gloria (Winfrey), as well as his son, Louis (Oyelowo), who becomes involved with multiple civil rights movements through the film.

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Django Unchained review

Director:
Quentin Tarantino
Cast:
Jamie Foxx
Christoph Waltz
Leonardo DiCaprio
Kerry Washington
Samuel L. Jackson
Rated: R

Leonardo DiCaprio should consider playing a villain more often; he’s quite good at it.

“Django Unchained” follows the title character played by Jamie Foxx. At the beginning of the movie Django is a slave being led to an unknown location. However the caravan that he’s in is stopped by a man named King Schultz (Waltz). Schultz, a bounty hunter, ends up freeing Django and asks him in return to help him identify a trio of criminals for their bounties. Django agrees and the two end up working together as a bounty hunting duo.

As the two work together, Django informs Schultz that he has a wife who is still a slave and aims to get her free. The duo discovers that Django’s wife, Broomhilda (Washington), is owned by a rich plantation owner named Calvin Candie (DiCaprio). The heroes then decide to try and get into the plantation and rescue Django’s wife.

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Les Miserables review

Adapted from the 1862 novel written by Victor Hugo, “Les Miserables” follows the story of an ex-convict named Jean Valjean, played by Hugh Jackman, whom upon leaving prison tries changing his life and becoming a better man than he was before. He breaks parole though and because of this, the law-obsessed inspector Javert, played by Russell Crowe, goes to no ends throughout the movie to try and capture Valjean.

After getting his life back on track and avoiding Javert, Valjean meets a woman named Fantine, played by Anne Hathaway who has had to sell her body to support her young daughter, Cosette. Upon her death, Valjean makes a promise to protect Cosette and raise her as his own. The rest of the film is about his struggles of raising Cosette and an envisionment of France in the early 1800s.

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Lincoln review

Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln” based off the book “Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln,” is the story of the days in Abraham Lincoln’s presidency when he made efforts to pass an amendment to abolish slavery. The film follows Lincoln’s attempts to garner the necessary votes through the House of Representatives to get the amendment passed. To do so, Lincoln and members of his cabinet have to speak and try to not only unite the Republican Party, but get some Democratic Congressmen on their side.

Daniel Day-Lewis’ performance is superb as the 16th president. The biggest achievement that he pulls off in the film is humanizing the very larger- than-life man that Lincoln has become through the ages. This is in main part due to the multi-layering that Day-Lewis does with Lincoln’s character. The audience is really able to get to know who Lincoln is through the screen, instead of just learning what he did in documentaries and books.

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Argo review

Welcome to the elite director club, Mr. Affleck.

“Argo” is Ben Affleck’s latest film as a director, and apparently the third time’s the charm as this one is as good, if not better, than his previous two projects. The film takes place during 1979, when six Americans escaped the U.S. embassy in Iran and went into hiding with the Canadian ambassador. Affleck plays the role of Tony Mendez, a CIA agent who specializes in extracting hostages. Mendez is tasked with coming up with a plan to help the six diplomatic personnel escape from the revolution-torn country.

Mendez eventually comes up with a dangerous but workable plan that involves creating fake identities for himself and the six people that are in Iran. Fake identities would label that the seven are a film crew scouting areas for a sci-fi movie. The plan is selected and Mendez gets the help of Hollywood producer Lester Siegel, played by Alan Arkin, and make-up specialist John Chambers, played by John Goodman. Together they set a plan in motion to create publicity for a fake film called “Argo,” so that Mendez has a plausible story for being in Iran and getting the six out.

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Big Miracle review

Director:
Ken Kwapis
Cast:
John Krasinski
Drew Barrymore
Ted Danson
Dermot Mulroney
Rated: PG

It’s like the Free Willy genre is making a comeback lately.

Big Miracle is a movie inspired by the true events that happened in Alaska in 1988. Three whales became trapped by ice and had no way of getting to the ocean since there was only a single hole for them to get a breath from.

Because of this, news reporter Adam Carlson (Krasinski) does a story on it and attracts many volunteers and attention from the media from across the United States, however with so many coming together disagreements begin to arise. So they have to come together in whatever way they can to stay on task and save the whales.

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