{"id":8349,"date":"2020-01-21T09:01:37","date_gmt":"2020-01-21T14:01:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=8349"},"modified":"2020-03-03T07:23:27","modified_gmt":"2020-03-03T12:23:27","slug":"movie-picks-1917-just-mercy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=8349","title":{"rendered":"Movie Picks: 1917, Just Mercy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

1917<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I was sorry not to like 1917<\/em> better, because that conflict is cinematically neglected (trailer<\/a>). Director Sam Mendes was inspired to make it by his grandfather\u2019s stories of World War I (a rare veteran who would apparently talk about his war experience). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lance corporals Blake (Dean-Charles Chapman) and Schofield (George MacKay) are given the near-suicidal task of crossing nine miles of hostile territory to reach the commander of some 1600 British troops, Blake\u2019s brother among them. They carry orders for the commander to call off an offensive that is a certain trap. The power of the opening scene, one long take, and the two lads\u2019 perilous trek across no-man\u2019s land dwindles into predictability. There\u2019s an overlong chase scene through a bombed-out town, and an unnecessary encounter with a Frenchwoman and baby (why?). Still, audiences not familiar with The Great War may find it bracing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rotten Tomatoes<\/a> critics rating: 89%; audiences 89%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just Mercy<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Based on Bryan Stevenson\u2019s book of the same name<\/a>, Just Mercy<\/em>, directed by Destin Daniel Cretton, is the story of Stevenson\u2019s early days as a legal advocate for prisoners (trailer<\/a>). His organization, Montgomery, Alabama\u2019s Equal Justice Initiative<\/a>, has freed more than a hundred wrongly convicted death row inmates. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I<\/em>n the film, Stevenson (played by Michael B. Jordan) has taken on the case of Walter McMillian (Jamie Foxx), convicted to murdering a young white woman on evidence so flawed no court should have accepted it. Jordan and Foxx do a terrific job\u2014Jordan, unwavering; Foxx, afraid to hope.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stevenson, in real life, and in one scene in the movie, says the issue is not the fate of a single individual, but the system that institutionalizes discrimination and thwarts equal justice. (See his inspiring recent Firing Line<\/em> interview<\/a> here.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Half a century after the Civil Rights movement\u2019s heyday, those battles are not over, and the movie, though bringing out familiar tropes in both black and white characters, is a good reminder. As Danny Leigh says in the Financial Times<\/em>, \u201cThe markers of the story are so familiar (venal law enforcement, leaned-on witnesses, the courtroom), it takes nerve to tell it this simply.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rotten Tomatoes<\/a> critics\u2019 rating: 83%; audiences: 99%<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

1917 I was sorry not to like 1917 better, because that conflict is cinematically neglected (trailer). Director Sam Mendes was inspired to make it by his grandfather\u2019s stories of World War I (a rare veteran who would apparently talk about … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8350,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Movie Picks: 1917, Just Mercy - two films that don't plow new ground in terms of plot, but are powerful nonetheless.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[269,440,265,52,366,266,1567,57,104],"tags":[1692],"class_list":["post-8349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-actor","category-adventure","category-biography","category-crime","category-drama","category-history","category-lawyer","category-movies","category-the-morgue","tag-1692"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vweisfeld.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/1917.jpg?fit=480%2C480&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2aF","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8349"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8349\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8352,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8349\/revisions\/8352"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8350"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}