Tag: film reviews

Castles in the Air: A Review of Greta Gerwig’s <i>Little Women</i>

Castles in the Air: A Review of Greta Gerwig’s Little Women

Impatient for Greta Gerwig’s Little Women to come out, I watched the 1994 movie again to bide my time. Susan Sarandon (Marmee) and Winona Ryder (Jo) steal the show, delivering the movie’s most memorable lines critiquing Victorian gender expectations, such as when Marmee dismisses a neighbor’s concerns about her daughters’ ...
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Utilizing Film in Our Courses on Slavery and the Enslaved

Utilizing Film in Our Courses on Slavery and the Enslaved

Teaching the history of slavery in the United States well, like teaching any complex topic mired in historical mythologies and mixed public interests, is a daunting task. Pedagogical approaches to slavery have to face off against centuries of public misconceptions and avoidance. I constantly try to engage and inform students ...
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<i>Men Go to Battle</i> and the Civil War's Dark Turn

Men Go to Battle and the Civil War’s Dark Turn

ABRUPT, adj. Sudden, without ceremony, like the arrival of a cannonshot and the departure of the soldier whose interests are most affected by it. Dr. Samuel Johnson beautifully said of another author’s ideas that they were “concatenated without abruption.”                       ...
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aaihs

Mass Incarceration And Its Mystification: A Review Of The 13th

This article was originally published by The African American Intellectual History Society (AAIHS) and is reprinted here with permission. Although some of the material falls outside the temporal boundaries of this blog, we believe our readers will find it to be a valuable review, due to its connections to the Civil War. ...
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Matthew McConaughey stars in The Free State of Jones

Right and Wrong in “The Free State of Jones”: Making Sense of the Civil War Film Tradition

No one quite knows what to make of “The Free State of Jones,” the latest big-budget feature film about the history of the Civil War. Some have praised it as the “final word on racism’s vicious legacy” while others have lambasted it for engaging in “the passive violence of distortion.” ...
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At a meeting of the Union League, Moses (Mahershala Ali) and Newt (Matthew McConaughey) tell the Freedman that all citizens shall have the right to vote.

Aiming for Accuracy: Free State of Jones, Contingency, and the Meaning of Freedom

Early in Free State of Jones a Confederate soldier proclaims he is not fighting for slavery but rather “for honor.” His comrades, including poor Mississippi farmer Newton Knight (Matthew McConaughey), needle him. Considering the "Twenty Negro Law,” Conscription Act, and tax-in-kind law, they point out that their blood only helps ...
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Hateful Eight 3

Hateful and Forgetful: Tarantino’s Latest Chooses Gore over Racial Commentary

Is Minnie's Haberdashery, the one room stagecoach stop in which all but a few scenes of Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight take place, the director's version of hell? If so, hell is a cold place of contradictions, unexpected alliances, violence, vulgarity, and truly bad coffee. Stuck in Wyoming blizzard with ...
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