Biopic

Oppenheimer

  • Title: Oppenheimer
  • IMDb: link

It’s been 13 years since Inception, a film which showed off director Christopher Nolan‘s innovation, technical skill, and storytelling at its peak. Since that point, Nolan’s track record has been spotty at best. While the technical skill in Oppenheimer is expected, the joy from the film is Nolan abandoning some of his trademarks, such as the overbearing booming score which at this point had become a caricature of itself,  in order to focus more squarely on a character-driven story based on a complicated man standing at the crossroads of history. The fact that it isn’t immediately in contention for best movie of the year has more to do with the troubled circumstances of its presentation rather than any failures of the film itself. More on that later.

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The Ghosts of Mississippi

  • Title: The Ghosts of Mississippi
  • IMDb: link

Throwback Tuesday takes us back to 1991 and director Rob Reiner‘s biographical courtroom drama The Ghosts of Mississippi concerning the prosecution of white supremacist Byron De La Beckwith (James Woods) 30 years after he murdered civil rights activist Medgar Evers (James Pickens Jr.). With most of the movie set in the early 1990s, Alec Baldwin stars as Assistant District Attorney Bobby DeLaughter who picks up the threads of the case after meeting the victim’s widow Myrlie (Whoopi Goldberg) and attempts to get justice for the Evers family despite the trouble it stirs up around town and within his own family.

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Judas and the Black Messiah

  • Title: Judas and the Black Messiah
  • IMDb: link

Released in early 2021 to critical acclaim, Judas and the Black Messiah explored 1960s tensions between police, and the Federal Government, and the African-American community. Inspired by true events, thief and con man “Wild” Bill O’Neal (LaKeith Stanfield) is turned into FBI informant by the agency desperate to quell the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party and the popularity and influence of its chairman Fred Hampton (Best Supporting Actor Daniel Kaluuya) in the late 1960s.

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