DENIAL and the 2016 Presidential Campaign

There's a small movie playing in select theaters called Denial, directed by Mick Jackson. The film stars Academy Award winner Rachel Weisz, alongside Tom Wilkinson, Timothy Spall, and Andrew Scott. The film is about acclaimed historian Deborah Lipstadt (Wesiz) and her legal battle with infamous Holocaust denier David Irving (Spall). The film is small scale --I doubt you've even heard of it--but it's very significant. The film is essentially a courtroom drama, with impassioned speeches and suspenseful "waiting for the verdict" scenes. It's the kind of movie that warrants an iTunes rental. I definitely think people should see it, but you don't need to rush out to the megaplex.

While the film will mostly be known as a period piece about the Holocaust, I think it does have some unintentional relevance to politics today. I say unintentional because I don't think the filmmaker Mick Jackson had any goal other than to tell this specific story. And maybe I'm just too immersed in election coverage. This election is drowning our national conversation and it's quite probable I'm seeing it in places where it isn't. But the film Denial is about trying to prove something that doesn't need to be proved by physical evidence and I see a lot of that in this election.

THE BIRTH OF A NATION is the 5th Grade Thanksgiving Pageant of Slavery Epics (Review)

I really wrestled with going to see The Birth of a Nation. Its director Nate Parker and co-writer Jean Celestin are rapists, who escaped conviction thanks to the failings of the justice system and 1990s slut-shaming. Nate Parker is also homophobic (saying he'd never play a gay character because he doesn't want to take away from black masculinity or something). I don't really know much about Nate Parker except I liked him in Gina Prince Bythewood's sublime Beyond the Lights (but he was outshined by his co-stars Gugu Mbatha Raw and Minnie Driver). Ultimately I decided to go see it because I wanted to write about it, just to see if it was good enough that I can separate the art from the artist.

Sadly, The Birth of a Nation is a garbage movie that is barely worth its running time let alone the pretzel I had to turn my crazy liberal mind into in order to justify spending money on it. I am not happy to report that the movie is an artistic failure, despite the air of prestige Oscar movie it has carried with it for the last nine months.  The film stars Parker as slave rebellion leader  Nat Turner, along with Armie Hammer, Aja Naomi King, Jackie Earle Haley, Gabrielle Union, and Penelope Ann Miller.