A Wrinkle in Time (2018)

Score: 4 / 5

I don't know why this movie's getting so much crap. It's beautiful.

Disney's latest reclaiming of old territory tackles Madeleine L'Engle's sci-fi fantasy A Wrinkle in Time, a work of profound weirdness and abstraction. While critics and audiences seem intent on proclaiming the weirdness of this film, the excessive style over substance, and some sizeable plotholes, I'd argue the same things about the source material. It's a children's fantasy, for goodness' sake. In fact, compared with Lewis or Carroll or even Rowling, I'd argue that L'Engle's fantasy is notably inferior in style, scope, and detail. So before you hear any more criticisms about these elements, question the critic: Do they really know what they're talking about? And do you care?

While this new film is indeed a victory of style over substance, that totally fits its messages of beauty and empowerment. Its trippy visuals and fabulous interplay of light and darkness feel more like the book than any amount of world-building details might. More importantly, its beauty is found in its casting and design aspects. The characters quietly reveal themselves as the most diverse group I've seen from a Disney movie, and even the interracial romance at the center of the story is a total nonissue. This is the future, guys. This is the new normal. And it is glorious.

The three Mrs W (Whatsit, Who, and Which), played by Oprah Winfrey, Mindy Kaling, and Reese Witherspoon are lovely, but it's their costumers and stylists who take the real glory here. Along with the production designers and artists. Everything in this movie is colorful, extravagant, and kinetic. A Wrinkle in Time is pure escapism, pure cinema: magic cooked up on the screen and blasted into your retinas with full force. The music is as soaring as the visuals, the acting pitch-perfect, the cinematography awesome. It's got the splendor of Avatar and the heart of Narnia and a spirit all of its own, fully embracing its own glorious diversity and female empowerment.

Of course, all this praise is not to say that the movie is perfect. Far from it. Its screenplay is mostly clunky and sparse: unfocused and seemingly without real inspiration, its stumbles its way through the story with no grace. Actually, my impression of the film was that Disney spent its resources on visual artists, good actors, and a great director, and then realized they needed some kind of script. They should have just let DuVernay do her thing. Which is to say that it's pretty clear there are significant power struggles here between her visionary vision and the studio's. And it has its weird moments, to be sure. I could have lived a long and happy life without watching Reese Witherspoon turn into a flying head of lettuce. I didn't need Michael Pena falling apart like a marionette. I didn't need Zach Galifianakis at all, especially not in a part that was female in the book. And giant Oprah -- though wonderful to behold -- felt a little unnecessary.

But when a movie can so easily transport you across the galaxy, steal your heart, and leave you breathless in wonder, who cares if it's densely plotted or thickly descriptive? Again, it's a children's fantasy, y'all! Movies like this are what America needs. Honest, sweet, and quietly insinuating its political correctness into mainstream entertainment. So go. Go watch it right now. See it on as big a screen as you can. Watching this movie right now is a political act. Support it. Give in to love and hope and light and all the things this movie champions. "Be a warrior!"

IMDb: A Wrinkle in Time

Selma (2014)

Score: 5 / 5

One of the most direct, intelligent films I've seen on racial politics in twentieth-century America, Selma is also one of the best films of the year. It doesn't preach quite as much as last year's big winner 12 Years a Slave, and it isn't as overtly sentimental as most films with a message. Ava DuVernay directs with crystal clear compassion and understanding, paired with an aggressive sense of narrative rhythm. She demonstrates time and again her willingness to show all aspects of her story, which makes her collaboration with her lead actor that much more interesting.

Driven by a fierce and engrossing performance by the incredible David Oyelowo, the film follows Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., as he works in Selma, Alabama, to overcome racial inequality and bring voting rights to the desegregated South. But King, for all his eloquent fervor and passionate dreams, isn't depicted here as anything but profoundly human -- complete with uncertainty, self-doubt, and exhaustion. We see firsthand -- literally, as the camera often takes to the street riots with handheld urgency -- exactly how King worked in both private and public life. And we see that his dreams have yet to come true in our own culture.

DuVernay and her team (notably cinematographer Bradford Young) brilliantly pull no punches, but they also carefully set up the film to allow for the countless parallels of social injustice in our own twenty-first-century country. And I don't just say that because John Legend and Common's credits song "Glory" references Ferguson. They not-so-delicately pull back the curtains on white privilege and the system of white power enshrined in our political and social institutions. Perhaps the most concise scene in this respect is when Annie Lee Cooper (played by the amazing actor Oprah Winfrey -- there, I said it) attempts yet again to apply for voters' registration. Or perhaps it's when the governor (?) played by Tim Roth discusses the Selma marches with president Lyndon B. Johnson (Tom Wilkinson) and blatantly reveals his racist agenda but receives no explicit reprimand. Or maybe it's when white preacher James Reeb (Jeremy Strong) who joined the marches is brutally and fatally attacked by white supremacists who declare that "The only thing we hate more than a nigger is a white nigger." In all these scenes and more, the filmmakers' sense of urgency and honesty make this historical drama quite thrilling and its message all the more critical.

IMDb: Selma