Something to watch tonight: Thursday 3 July

The Butler (Daniels, 2013)

I have a fondness for Lee Daniels’ The Butler which isn’t just down to the two central performances I mention in my quote below. It’s also the distinctive and sometimes inspired casting of the various presidents who are waited on by Forest Whitaker’s Cecil Gaines.

In the still illustrating this newsletter, we see Robin Williams as Dwight D. Eisenhower. He’s followed by James Marsden as Kennedy, Liev Schreiber as Lyndon Johnson, John Cusack as Richard Nixon and Alan Rickman as Ronald Reagan.

In December 2013, my reviews were being printed in FishHead Magazine but I was still archiving them at Funerals & Snakes:

(The Butler is)… a stagy but sincere history of post-war Black America from the point of view of a White House servant (played by Forest Whitaker). It works as a pointed reminder that it has been a very short time since the Civil Rights battles of the 1960s and that the election of a black president in 2008 was only another stage in the fight for freedom and equivalence that has been ongoing since the Civil War. It works less well as pure drama, despite a marvellous performance by Oprah Winfrey as Whitaker’s long-suffering wife – where has she been since The Color Purple? Oh, right. I remember.

I could have recommended – and probably will when the time comes – all three of the films mentioned in that column: Robert Connolly’s ambitious adaptation of Tim Winton’s The Turning and the scintillating music doco Twenty Feet from Stardom were the others.

Editor’s note: Just a reminder that due to the new job, there will be no Friday newsletter for the time being. See you on Monday!