R.I.P. #OscarsSoWhite: Why 2017 Will Be The Most Diverse Awards Season In Decades
Eight movies with diverse casts and crews are vying for Oscar inclusion this year, and they’re sure to upset the status quo.
Archives | Viola Davis
‘Suicide Squad’ Review: These Heroes May Be Bad, But Their Movie Is Even Worse
“Suicide Squad” promises to flip the script on superhero movies by forcing the audience to root for the bad guys. But that isn’t enough.
Suicide Squad
A secret government agency led by Amanda Waller recruits imprisoned supervillains to execute dangerous black ops missions in exchange for clemency and saving the world from an unknown but powerful threat.
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Based off the novel by Jonathan Safran Foer, a 9-11-themed book that centers on Oskar Schell, an ambitious young nine-year-old who scours New York City in search of a lock that a key his father left him will open. The boy’s father died in the 9-11 attacks and Oskar was also said to be an amateur inventor, jewelry designer, astrophysicist, tambourine player and pacifist at such a young age. [Synopsis courtesy of AceShowbiz]
Beautiful Creatures
Ethan Wate just wants to get to know Lena Duchannes better, but unbeknownst to him, Lena has strange powers. As Lena’s 16th birthday approaches she might decide her fate, to be good or evil. A choice which will impact her relationship forever.
The Help
Aibileen Clark (Viola Davis) is a middle-aged African-American maid who has spent her life raising white children and has recently lost her only son; Minny Jackson (Octavia Spencer) is an African-American maid who has often offended her employers despite her family’s struggles with money and her desperate need for jobs; and Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan (Emma Stone) is a young white woman who has recently moved back home after graduating college to find out her childhood maid has mysteriously disappeared. These three stories intertwine to explain how life in Jackson, Mississippi revolves around “the help”; yet they are always kept at a certain distance because of racial lines.
Won’t Back Down
Two determined mothers, one a teacher, look to transform their children’s failing inner city school. Facing a powerful and entrenched bureaucracy, they risk everything to make a difference in the education and future of their children
Doubt
It’s 1964, St. Nicholas in the Bronx. A vibrant, charismatic priest, Father Flynn (Academy Award® winner Philip Seymour Hoffman), is trying to upend the schools’ strict customs, which have long been fiercely guarded by Sister Aloysius Beauvier (Academy Award® winner Meryl Streep), the iron-gloved Principal who believes in the power of fear and discipline. The winds of political change are sweeping through the community, and indeed, the school has just accepted its first black student, Donald Miller. But when Sister James (Academy Award® nominee Amy Adams), a hopeful innocent, shares with Sister Aloysius her guilt-inducing suspicion that Father Flynn is paying too much personal attention to Donald, Sister Aloysius sets off on a personal crusade to unearth the truth and to expunge Flynn from the school. Now, without a shard of proof besides her moral certainty, Sister Aloysius locks into a battle of wills with Father Flynn which threatens to tear apart the community with irrevocable consequence. [Synopsis courtesy of Miramax]
Trust
Safe and sound in their suburban home, Will and Lynn Cameron (Clive Owen and Catherine Keener) used to sleep well at night. When their fourteen-year-old daughter, Annie, made a new friend on-line – a sixteen-year-old boy named Charlie – Will and Lynn didn’t think much of it. But when Annie and Charlie make a plan to meet what happens in the next twenty-four hours changes the entire family forever. Charlie is really a forty-year-old serial pedophile (Chris Henry Coffey) and, once Annie’s rape comes to light, it becomes a touchstone event that reverberates through the entire family. [Synopsis courtesy of TIFF]
It’s Kind of a Funny Story
A clinically depressed teenager gets a new start after he checks himself into an adult psychiatric ward.
Custody
In one corner, there’s Sara (Moreno), a young, single mother of two who suddenly finds herself embroiled in a custody battle when her son’s teacher calls the Administration for Children’s Services regarding a cut above his eye. Then there’s Martha Schulman (Davis), a beleaguered family court judge struggling through a 23-year marriage to Jason (Tony Shalhoub), and finding that it might not be possible to compartmentalize work and home. Recent law school graduate Alexandra Fisher (Panettiere) is assigned to Sara’s case, and finds it brings up haunting memories of her own. Hanging over it all is the recent death of a young girl whom the system failed. [Synopsis courtesy of Tribeca Film Festival]
Blackhat
Set within the world of global cybercrime, Legendary’s BLACKHAT follows a furloughed convict and his American and Chinese partners as they hunt a high-level cybercrime network from Chicago to Los Angeles to Hong Kong to Jakarta. Directed and produced by Michael Mann, the film stars Chris Hemsworth, Viola Davis, Tang Wei and Wang Leehom, and it is written by Morgan Davis Foehl and Mann. Legendary’s Thomas Tull and Jon Jashni produce alongside Mann, while Alex Garcia and Eric McLeod serve as the executive producers.