When I write a review this close to the start of a new year, I usually see most of the movies considered for one of the big six Oscar awards. If I don’t, I will usually await the arrival of those limited releases set for a wide release a couple of weeks later. Regardless, most people would have known of all the big-budget or Oscar-worthy movies by the time of a January 1st post. In 2020, all of the rules had changed, and the cinema has not been an exception. Some big-budget movies slated to come out during the year have been tabled until the pandemic ends and will likely come out in the second half of 2021. However, the Academy has made date modifications, which means that films will be eligible for the end-of-year awards as long as they are released by February 28, 2021. It’s usually around the start of the new year when I start watching the final one or two movies that might receive a Best Picture nomination. 2020 is a different kind of beast, and this review is my first of the year of a film that will receive a nomination for that award.
Category Archives: Thomas Francis Murphy
Free State of Jones (2016)
With his scraggly beard, yellow teeth, foreboding scowl, and deliberate limp, Matthew McConaughey’s (Amistad, A Time to Kill) portrayal of Newt Knight, a poor white farmer who led an extraordinary rebellion during the Civil War, is a far cry from the same man who was pigeonholing his career a decade earlier by playing the same character over and over in hit or miss romantic comedies like How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, Failure to Launch, The Wedding Planner, Fool’s Gold, and The Ghosts of Girlfriends Past to name a few. McConaughey reinvented himself three or four years ago and re-established himself as a dramatic leading man with the likes of The Lincoln Lawyer, Interstellar, HBO’s True Detective, Killer Joe, Mud, and Dallas Buyer’s Club, for which he won Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role at the 2014 Academy Awards ceremony. While he’s had his misses recently (has anyone even heard of 2016’s The Sea of Trees?), he has continued to have the ability to pick and choose his movies, and, unlike his string of romantic comedies, he continues to branch himself out further and further.
Continue reading Free State of Jones (2016)