Something to watch tonight: Tuesday 18 July

Selma (DuVernay, 2014) is streaming for free on Whakaata Māori/Māori Television

A friend of mine came to stay with us for the long week­end and he’s always a good per­son to ask for view­ing recom­mend­a­tions because he relies almost entirely on free-to-air and free stream­ing, espe­cially the excel­lently cur­ated Māori+ stream­er from Whakaata Māori.

He had just seen Ava DuVernay’s his­tor­ic­al drama Selma for the first time – the story of Martin Luther King’s cam­paign for vot­ing rights and the march from Selma to Montgomery in Alabama in 1965. Made him cry, he told me.

I reviewed this one for Nine to Noon back at the begin­ning of 2015 and described it as “ter­rific­ally vivid … and quite hor­rif­ic” and that for 80 per­cent of the film it would have been an abso­lute front run­ner for that year’s Best Picture Oscar …

Except for the scenes fea­tur­ing white act­ors such as Tom Wilkinson (Lyndon B. Johnson) and Tim Roth (George Wallace) which simply didn’t work for me at all.

Still, David Oyelowo is mag­net­ic as MLK – espe­cially as the film didn’t have the rights to any of King’s speeches. Steven Spielberg still has those, I think.

Further Reading

Part Two of my Whānau Marama New Zealand International Film Festival pre­view has just gone up at RNZ Widescreen. Today I look at Reality, Saint Omer and Salvatore: Shoemaker of Dreams.