I'm from Detroit. I've lived in and around the city for the majority of my life. This movie has nothing to say about this city, the uprising of '67 or, most damningly, what it's like to be black in America. Detroit (the movie) is the cinematic equivalent of Ramsay Bolton from Game of Thrones; it luxuriates interminably in the depths of human depravity without ever arriving at a meaningful conclusion. Maybe the hopelessness I felt watching Detroit was intentional. It certainly doesn't feel like we've made any progress in becoming a more empathetic and just society since '67. Still, what's the point? For a black audience member, I don't see how there's anything to be found here that with which…

It’s easy to try to do too much with a historical film. As a filmmaker, you might feel the need to cast a wide net over the events in question, going down a laundry list of important dates in an effort to do due diligence to history. I prefer the approach taken by Detroit, which zeroes in on the Algiers Motel and stays with it for over an hour. The film certainly provides context for the tensions that flare in that motel, opening the film with an excellent prologue that places you right in the heat of the Detroit riots. However, Bigelow’s concerns do not lie with the riots as a whole; rather, she and Boal are interested in how…

65

Senseless provocation, although more in the idea surrounding such brutality; not whether we should show these images, but questioning what they truly provide for audiences. The nation is long past utilizing re-creation for the sake of sensation. Nothing contained within Detroit's two hours and twenty-three minute run-time provides any further introspection or advancement in depiction of racial tension. In the best way, Bigelow's film reminds me of late-historical Spielberg joints akin to Amistad or Munich; portrayals caught between the flurry of feeling and the necessity of broader contextual coherence. You'd think with Bigelow behind the camera that the film wouldn't begin with a strange animated educational re-cap regarding America's deep-seated injustices and anxiety, but it does. You'd also think…

Exploding across the stressed out summer of 2017 like a powder keg thrown into a room that’s already on fire, Kathryn Bigelow’s hectic but harrowing docudrama account of the 1967 Detroit riots is inevitably as concerned with the persistence of systemic racism as it is with its past. The years between now and then have made it impossible to isolate the two — names like Tamir Rice and Philando Castile have disallowed us from deluding ourselves into thinking what’s done is done. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Nevertheless, there’s something broadly instructive about a major director choosing this moment to make a movie about this episode in the fraught history of American race relations. With…

Ooof...

Look, I'm really not the person to talk about the major issues of this film, so I'll keep this brief (you can read what some smarter people wrote about it here, here, and here). Kathryn Bigelow is still a technically exceptional filmmaker who can make a damn gripping movie, but Mark Boal's script depicts the whole situation as a horror film with almost no context of how it got to that point (yes the animation at the beginning helps a bit, but it is not enough).

Worst of all, Detroit presents the situation in the motel as "these police officers are horrible" instead of "what happened to these people was horrible," which is, I think, an important distinction. It…

Kathryn Bigelow’s Detroit works best when the focus is on the events at the Algiers Motel. In these scenes, Detroit becomes a horror movie, a home invasion thriller and survive the night story of pure Manson Family-esque holy terror. Will Poulter wins the Creep of 2017 award as one of the most unlikable characters in recent memory as the White Devil Redneck Racist Policeman. Poulter has to play his character this way, because the story will not have the same impact on the audience. After the tragic events at the motel unfold, Detroit gets lost in its own screenplay. There’s so many questions left unanswered. Especially, the why. Why did the inexcusable horrible tragical events at the motel really occur?…

Action! - Female 4 Front: The Bigelow's Kinetic Alphas

And our journey and marathon conclude with a film I've been wanting to watch lately. A film with, to put it mildly, mixed reviews. When it was first released, many people were critical of it, while others loved it. And now that I've seen it, I can say that I understand both sides.

Indeed, much of the style that Bigelow has been perfecting for nearly a decade is present. Again, with the handheld camera makes you feel like you're right in the middle of the action, almost like a documentary. Will Poulter is outstanding as the story's villain, owing to his coldness and wickedness, making it clear that underneath the lambent…

42/100

Simulations of protracted violence are tough for me to endure. For one thing, I take zero pleasure in watching any creature suffer, no matter how strenuously the movie may work to incite bloodlust. (I can cheer a quick death, but not prolonged agony.) I also maintain— and this subject comes up so frequently that I should really write a lengthy essay about it at some point—that chronicling the torment of innocent, helpless victims is fundamentally anti-dramatic. In any case, torture porn: not my thing. Very occasionally, the ordeal will seem justifiable, perhaps because the victim is at least symbolically deserving (Audition), or because the violent act in question permanently ruptures cinematic spacetime in a way that just wouldn't be…