Michael DeNobile's Movie Reviews

Originally published December 2012. MY REFLECTION OF LINCOLN Steven Spielberg does it again with Lincoln , Daniel Day-Lewis giving an awe-inspiring performance of Honest Abe and Tommy Lee Jones giving one of his finest performances as the quick-witted Thaddeus Stevens. While Sally Field looks a lot like Mary Todd Lincoln, I personally felt that casting the actress who was 20yrs older than Ms. Lincoln at the historical time period of the movie removed elements of consistency (it's easy to age an actor; it's much harder to make them look younger). Another Oscar is in the future for Steven Spielberg and Daniel Day-Lewis. Movies like these remind us how human the players of history really were--full of imperfections and shortcomings as we are. We take for granted when we read our history books that the passing of the 13th Amendment meant that our nation just came to terms with slavery and then got sidetracked with Reconstruction. If you don't like C-SPAN, scenes drama...

Originally posted June 2016. REFLECTION ON THE MOVIE THE FREE STATE OF JONES Man's natural condition is freedom and to fight tyranny and oppression. Unless man is otherwise conditioned to be complacent and accept a state of slavery and even to the point, as Newton Knight put it that, "Everybody is just somebody else's nigger." As a student of multiculturalism, philosophy, and religion, I have come to the conclusions that mankind chooses over and over again to be stupid. We have made up these rules over the centuries of who is better, who is worthy of the mantel of humanity, and who gets to reap the benefits. No man is a slave except by choice. I have studied countless individuals that even in states of servitude and slavery, they are more free than those without chains. There are the blind that have more sight than those with seeing eyes. War is more than guns, guts, and glory. The wars begin when the weapons are laid down, even generations hence. Blood mu...