Tag: Dwight Henry

The Birth Of A Nation is titled as such to recall the film with the same name slightly over a hundred years ago. That one was racist, sure, but it was also one of the biggest movies of the time and revolutionized film so it still has a reason to be talked about today.

This modern version is about a true slave revolt that happened before the civil war. That’s right. They are taking the title back and making it pro-black. A bold and almost genius idea.

It was also one of the most anticipated films of the year, with Oscar hopes and dreams, long ovations at Sundance, and a giant bidding war to get rights to distribute. It was the first film to potentially win the Best Picture award this year, so the hype was un real. And no, Free State of Jones being terrible didn’t bring the hype down at all.

Picture of how I imagined the hype train would rush to theaters for this film.

The story is about Nat Turner (Nate Parker), a child born into slavery, who was taught to read the bible a bit by kinder owners (Penelope Ann Miller), but eventually was put back into the field.

As an adult, he was one of the head slave workers and he also preached to his fellow slaves every week. A slave preacher! Yes, because they wouldn’t let him preach to white folks of course. Well, the drought was hurting the small farm, so his owner (Armie Hammer) began to take him to other farms to have him preach to other slaves about the importance of obeying your master in order to get to heaven, helping them earn extra money.

But on these voyages he started to see worse and worse conditions for slaves. It began to break him as a person, so much that he would lash out and get more punishments on his own farm. So eventually he had enough. He got a few men together, they planned to kill all their masters, go north to an armory, grab weapons, take the town and try and end slavery once and for all. Whoops, that is most of the story!

Also starring Jackie Earle Haley as the typical evil slave catcher, Esther Scott, Aja Naomi King, Mark Boone Junior, Colman Domingo, Aunjanue Ellis, Dwight Henry, Gabrielle Union, and Roger Guenveur Smith.

Obviously, given the subject matter you can tell this will be a powerful drama and story and one has to just hope and hope that the people behind it do it justice. And since one man is behind it there is a lot of pressure on Parker to deliver. He was the director, star, writer, main producer, everything. And thankfully he also delivered.

From the cinematography, to his acting, to the costumes, to the close up faces, it was an easy and hard two hours to get through. Easy as it just seemed to flow by rarely having a dull moment, and hard given the subject matter. For those worried, it was actually a lot less graphic than I had anticipated, with a terrible scene involving teeth and some dead bodies.

Whether the movie gets the real story perfect, or what happened in anyone’s real life past is irrelevant. The film itself is actually a well-crafted piece and worthy of praise on many regards. Is it the best movie this year? I don’t think so, but it is one with few issues outside of pacing concerns and behind the scenes drama.

I don’t want to sound like a cheap comparison, but I would definitely say another recent slavery movie, 12 Years A Slave, was definitely still better. But I mean, 12 Years was reall fucking good.

Definitely go see The Birth of a Nation which you will certainty see it mentioned at awards ceremonies in a few months, but I doubt now it takes the top prize.

Beasts of the Southern Wild is a movie I had heard about, and then promptly ignored. Eh, sounded like a foreign flick. One of the critics I follow raved on it, best actress, etc, a few months ago, and I just shrugged. I will get to it eventually. Maybe.

But then it went and got itself nominated, not ONLY for best actress, but for best film as well? Damn. Not to mention all the buzz about the main actress girl, the youngest to be nominated at 9. Pretty intense. I just think they have been afraid of nominating kids before. After all, they called Hailee Steinfeld a supporting actress in the movie True Grit, despite being the main character. Oh well, Academy is stupid. Just please don’t be a white guilt movie…

Well, right now it just looks like the Life Of Pi.

In the world, there is an island community that calls itself the Bathtub. Away from the rest of the world, they tend to keep their own traditions and way of thought, never once considering leaving their paradise. Heck, they have holidays all the time, and it is relaxing. But factories are on the horizon, and with the talk of levees and the map, it is clear that are just south of Louisiana.

Young Hushpuppy (Quvenshane Wallis) is a six year old girl, learning about the world from this new school thing and her bipolar dad, Wink (Dwight Henry). Sure he is an alcoholic who sometimes beats her in their strange half house, but he also can be really kind!

Hushpuppy learns of the ancient Aurochs that are frozen in the ice caps. According to her teacher, if the ice caps melt, the Aurochs will be unleashed to reign control of the land again, and only the strong can survive it. But if they melt, heck, the Bathtub will just become flooded anyways.

Speaking of that shit. Ice caps melt, aurochs on the move. Giant ass storm, flooding, death! Levee is destroyed! Flooding recedes, but salt water envelopes their land killing the fish and crops. Can they leave their homeland from the prodding of the health people coming to save them? Or would they prefer to rough it on their own in the face of certain doom?

Ring ring ring ring ring ring ring, chicken phone!

I have been told before that if I rate movies low because I don’t like them (aka, a reason to give it a low reason), I am an ass for not taking into account cinemetography, well shot scenes, lightning, music, all that. So I will take them into account this time. This movie was super fucking grainy. It also employed a shaky cam, maybe to imply poverty or whatever, but I didn’t like it. Especially not the grainyness.

I understand that this film has a lot of metaphors in it. Clearly it represents New Orleans, a specific way of life, and Katrina. It is about a young girls reality as she sees it, which includes some weird shit happening. Aurochs and other crazies. It is hard for her to cope, I get that. But I don’t really care.

Personally, I thought the acting from Dwight Henry was great. He toed the line between abuse and caring really well, playing off his bipolar nature. But personally, I don’t see what is the big deal from Miss Wallis. Her character acted like a 6-8 year old girl. She is 9. I don’t really call that acting, that just seems like it is being yourself, being a kid. I could probably act really well if someone needed a big guy who bitches about movies on the computer, because that is what I am. I’d make a statement about boycotting the Academy Awards if she won, but I know I wont. I will just shake my head, like I do every year, wondering how [insert random shitty/weird thing] won.