![\"Selma](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/469\/2024\/01\/main.jpg\")
<\/a>A decade ago, 12 Years a Slave <\/em>was stirring the Oscar stew. Though the Best Picture field included some outstanding films (Including American Hustle, Gravity<\/em> and The Wolf of Wall Street<\/em>), most prognosticators pegged Steve McQueen\u2019s searing historical epic as the film to beat. Sure enough, it won Oscar\u2019s highest accolade, and took home two other Academy Awards as well\u2014for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Supporting Actress (for Lupita Nyong\u2019o\u2019s searing performance as a horrifically abused slave).<\/p>\n It also spelled the start for what I think has been an unparalleled 10 years for race-themed dramas\u2014dramas that remind us, often painfully, of the United States\u2019 racist past, and ones that suggest how far we still have to go.<\/p>\n The movies below impacted me deeply\u2014sometimes introducing me to people and stories that I knew little about before. Many of them are flavored with the redemptive tang of faith. The majority of them were Oscar contenders in their own right. And because most of these are historical dramas, I\u2019m putting them roughly in the order in which their stories fall in history. And the first is \u2026<\/p>\n 12 Years a Slave<\/em><\/strong><\/a> (2013, R)<\/strong><\/p>\n In 1841, free-born African American musician Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor) travels from his home in Saratoga, New York, to Washington, D.C. He expected to be separated from his wife and family for just three weeks as he plays his violin for a circus. Instead, he\u2019s drugged, kidnapped and taken to Louisiana, where he spends the next dozen years dealing with unimaginable horrors.<\/p>\n But that\u2019s not quite right, is it? Because 12 Years a Slave<\/em> shows us those horrors in gripping, sickening detail. Solomon and his fellow slaves are whipped, beaten and sometimes killed. In one scene, Solomon is nearly hung\u2014dangling by the neck from a rope, his toes barely touching the ground for hours upon hours. This movie, based on Northup\u2019s own account, depicts terrible pain and abuse, and in so doing inflicts a level of suffering on those who watch it. But, at least, there\u2019s a purpose behind the pain: It brings home the horror of slavery, and it stamps those horrors indelibly in your mind.<\/p>\n Till<\/em><\/strong><\/a> (2022, PG-13)<\/strong><\/p>\n Taking place in 1955, more than a century after Solomon Northup was kidnapped and 90 years after the close of the Civil War, we see how much things have changed. In the north, that is. Things aren\u2019t perfect by any means, but Mamie Till-Mobley (Danielle Deadwyler) has built a nice life for she and her son, Emmett, in Chicago. But Emmett wants to go down south to visit family. And Mamie reluctantly allows him to go, begging him to keep his head down, his voice low and return to her safe and sound. She never saw her son alive again.<\/p>\n Till<\/em> recounts the tragic, terrible death of Emmett Till. But it also chronicles his mother\u2019s transformation from a grieving parent to a Civil Rights activist\u2014a transformation that perhaps was connected to her deep Christian faith. The film didn\u2019t receive a single Oscar nomination\u2014even for Deadwyler\u2019s extraordinary performance\u2014which I consider a travesty. This important, difficult and ultimately inspirational film is well worth a watch.<\/p>\n Loving<\/em><\/strong><\/a> (2016, PG-13)<\/strong><\/p>\n They knew that interracial marriage just wasn\u2019t done in Virginia. But Mildred and Richard Loving tied the knot anyway in June 1958, sealing their relationship in Washington D.C. While they expected to face plenty of challenges in their hometown of Central Point, Virginia, neither likely expected the local sheriff to burst into their home in the middle of the night and arrest the both of them. To avoid jailtime, the Lovings were forced to leave the state. But Mildred missed her hometown and family. And in 1965, she and Richard embarked on a legal odyssey that would last for years and shake Jim Crow laws across the South.<\/p>\n Most world-rocking events play on a huge cinematic scale. But Loving<\/em> is, at its core, a love story\u2014an inherently intimate look at two people who simply want to be acknowledged as husband and wife. Mildred (played by Ruth Negga, who was nominated for her work here) is well aware that their legal fight will have massive implications. Richard (an equally excellent Joel Edgerton) just wants to be with the woman he loves. Loving<\/em> is most compelling when it\u2019s at the couple\u2019s home, not in the courtroom. And that makes it all the more powerful.<\/p>\n Hidden Figures<\/em><\/strong><\/a> (2016, PG-13)<\/strong><\/p>\n Till<\/em> and Loving<\/em> are both movies predicated on the letter of American law\u2014and changing that law when it\u2019s clearly unfair. Hidden Figures<\/em> tackles something perhaps even more insidious: Everyday prejudice that the law struggles to touch. You might not expect that sort of prejudice in the bowels of the American space program in 1961\u2014even though it was headquartered in Virginia, the same state that had exiled the Lovings just two years before. But racism and sexism is very much alive in Langley\u2019s Air Force Base. That puts Katherine Goble, Mary Jackson and Dorothy Vaughan at a distinct disadvantage. But here\u2019s the thing: The U.S. is in a high-stakes space race with the Soviet Union, and as such, NASA needs all the talent it can find\u2014regardless of race or sex. And these three women? They\u2019re as talented as they come.<\/p>\n All the movies on this list can make you think. But this, more than any other here, will make you smile. Anchored by three sparkling performances (Taraji P. Henson as Katherine Goble Johnson, Octavia Spencer as Dorothy Vaughan and Janelle Monae as Mary Jackson) and nominated for three Oscars, including one for Best Picture, Hidden Figures<\/em> is an entertaining, inspiring treat. And while few have the stomach to watch 12 Years a Slave<\/em> more than once, this is one film you might find yourself watching again and again.<\/p>\n Selma<\/em><\/strong><\/a> (2014, PG-13)<\/strong><\/p>\n The fight for Civil Rights has birthed plenty of heroes over the generations. But no single figure represents the Civil Rights movement more than Martin Luther King Jr., and arguably no single protest was as pivotal as the King-led march from Selma to Montgomery.<\/p>\n That event, which illustrated the power of King\u2019s non-violent forms of protest and brought the horrors of racism into American living rooms across the country, gets a movie worthy of the moment in Selma<\/em>\u2014my favorite film of 2014. Though it was nominated for two Oscars (including for Best Picture) and won one (for John Legend\u2019s song \u201cGlory\u201d), it should\u2019ve been nominated for loads more\u2014especially David Oyelowo\u2019s complex portrayal of King himself. And it emphasizes the role that faith played in King\u2019s life and quest for Civil Rights. As I said in this blog<\/a>, \u201cKing was not a man who used religion as a tool for civil rights. He saw himself as that tool\u2014held by the hand of the Almighty.\u201d<\/p>\n Fruitvale Station<\/em><\/strong><\/a> (2014, R)<\/strong><\/p>\n If only the fight for equality could\u2019ve ended in victory with that march from Selma. If only King\u2019s \u201cI Have a Dream\u201d speech had marked the end of racism. We all know that racial tension is still alive and healthy in the United States\u2014and Fruitvale Station reminds us of such.<\/p>\n Oscar Grant (played by Michael B. Jordan) is no hero. He\u2019s a convicted felon, sometime drug dealer and a guy who, as the movie opens in January 2009, is determined to do better. Would he have made good on that? We\u2019ll never know: As we learn in the opening moments of Fruitvale Station<\/em>, he never had the chance. Oscar was killed by police in a night of ever-escalating tensions. Later in court, the police officer who killed Oscar had meant to shoot him with a Taser\u2014and fired the gun by mistake. Fruitvale Station<\/em> is a powerful but difficult movie to watch, given its unfurling tragedy. But it feels like both a reflection of the time it takes place (2009), the time it was made (2014, in the formative days of the Black Lives Matter movement) and our own time, too.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a>