MOVIE REVIEW: Black or White

Black or White starring Academy Award winners Kevin Costner (Dances with Wolves) and Octavia Spencer (The Help) is a good intentioned racial melodrama that involves a custody battle amongst grandparents portrayed by the lead actors, of their granddaughter Eloise (Jillian Estell in a charming performance).

When's Costner's character Elliot's wife dies and Spencer's Rowena wants custody of her as well so that Eloise can live in a house filled with more relatives that she can count on.

This is Kevin Costner's best film role in years and portraying his alcoholic lawyer character is no easy task. A string of bad luck has always been on his side since aside from losing his wife in a car accident, he also lost his daughter while giving birth to Elaine. To add salt to the wound, his absentee granddaughter's Dad Reggie (Andre Holland) is a convicted criminal. Naturally Elliot despises him.

Octavia Spencer's Rowena might be a caricature of the black woman stereotypes that we usually see on the big screen but the Oscar winner rose above it and gave a performance that's a worthy foil to Costner's. Luckily the two have excellent chemistry and it makes Black or White rise above from a material that can easily mistaken for a Tyler Perry and/or a Hallmark movie if not for Costner and Spencer's performances.

MOVIE REVIEW: Two Days One Night (Deux Jours, Une Nuit)

In Two Days One Night, French superstar Marion Cotillard gave her best performance since she won the Oscar best actress as chanteuse Edith Piaf in La Vie En Rose. She portrays Sandra Bya, a worker at the Solwal solar plant who after being hospitalized finds herself with no job after her co-workers opted to vote her out for a bonus instead.

But when Sandra was able to persuade the company's head Dumont (Baptiste Sornin) to go on a second ballot after she found out that their supervisor Jean Marc (Olivier Gourmet) persuaded the workers, she together with her loving husband Manu (Fabrizio Rongione in an affecting performance) reached out to her co-workers to vote for her over the weekend hence the title.

Cotillard with her sad eyes and frail frame is perfection as Sandra. You can't help but be sympathize for her as she talks to everyone on the ballot uncertain on the outcome. The best thing about Sandra is that her character can easily be made a saint/martyr but her bouts with depression, relying on the pills she takes only makes her human.

Directors Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne showed the other side of present time Europe which we don't see in the movies. The struggles of the working class and their individual response on how to face it make Two Days One Night a socially relevant movie to come out of the region yet a highly entertaining one due to it being a highly unpredictable suspense film anchored by Marion Cotillard's amazing performance.

MOVIE REVIEW: Kingsman: The Secret Service

The TV ads and it's movie poster are misleading. Kingsman: The Secret Service doesn't fall into the Spy Kids and Agent Cody Banks genre of film aimed primarily on kids, this is venturing more into Kick Ass territory with a substantial amount of violence and profanity that makes any James Bond movie tame.

Make no mistake however, the film is a pure delight to watch which comes as a no surprise as the movie is directed by Matthew Vaughn of X-Men First Class (2011) which for me was the best one of the series and the first Kick Ass. 

When an old super-secret spy organization disguised as a tailoring shop named Kingsman in London's famed Saville Row lost one of it's membesrs, it's up to Agent Harry Hart aka Galahad (Colin Firth playing a well mannered British gentleman which is right on his alley yet who does all those fight scenes that is all new to us as moviegoers) to look for a new member as a tech CEO (Samuel L. Jackson) slowly plans to control the world.

Alongside with Michael Caine and perrenial villain playing a good guy for a change Mark Strong (Sherlock Holmes), it is amazing to watch Firth and Jackson all together on the big screen having fun and newcomer Taron Egerton who played it's young new recruit Eggsy held up well on his own with his veteran co-actors.

MOVIE REVIEW: Selma

Selma chronicles one of the lesser known incidents in US history (as far as I'm concerned) in the 1960's, in the deep South when the Civil Rights movement attempted to march peacefully from Selma, Alabama to the State capital of Montgomery to demand voting rights for African-Americans in the time where segregation was still fully implemented and recognized in that State. 

Working from a wonderful unsentimental script by Paul Webb, and ably directed by Ava DuVerney, Selma is a powerful film in a chapter of Martin Luther King Jr.'s remarkable life as he fights the sitting US President at that time Lyndon B. Johnson to pass the Voting Rights Act. 

British actor David Oyelowo was born to portray the Civil Rights leader. Aside from some strking resemblance to MLK Jr., he gave a passionate performance that showed Dr. King was really a highly principled and charismatic man who never accepted violence as means to get their point across the nation and yet he was no saint. It is only in this movie that I found out that he was having problems with his wife Coretta (an elegant Carmen Ejogo) about infidelity. Selma proved that Martin Luther King Jr. was human after all. 

It's amazing that four of the major characters in the movie were portrayed by British actors. Oyelowo (MLK Jr.), Ejogo (Coretta), President Lyndon B. Johnson (Tom Wilkinson) and Alabama Governor George Wallace (Tim Roth). All of them were great. 

The heart of the movie though belongs to the film's producer Oprah Winfrey, who played Annie Lee Cooper. In one of the film's early scenes, she displayed firmness yet surrender as she was trying to register to vote. This is a different Oprah from her previous film The Butler as well as the talk show host the world has learned to love. She may not have much scenes compared to the other actors but when you're Oprah, you better make sure your supporting role would be a memorable one and she passed with flying colors.

Selma is a perfect companion piece to 2013's Oscar Best Picture winner 12 Years a Slave, we can see how civil rights in the world's most powerful country has progressed and sadly until now there's still a long way to go.