Simultaneously quietly reverberating and viscerally horrific; Ava DuVernay's Selma is a fiery and subdued look at racial tensions in the mid-1960s. David Oyelowo as Martin Luther King Jr. silently stuns, portraying the historic man with vulnerability and a classical presence. Carmen Ejogo, playing King's wife, is just as vigorous and hushed, and their conversations are as powerfully intense as anything released in 2014.
The direction is quite good, with some bravura set-piece moments, and the cinematography is elegant in all the best ways. The rest however felt very familiar, and in many stretches, downright boring. Being a self-professed hater of biopics, mainly because of preachy politics, dreadful scores, and the overall sentimentalism of most productions; I can say that Selma…