Invictus

Seen at: Cinema Saver 6, Jan. 28.

It's a shame I didn't get around to writing up this movie until now, as it was definitely one of the better motion pictures of the year as a whole.

As of a couple years back, I wasn't that big of fan of Clint Eastwood as a director, but 2008's Changeling was much better than I anticipated, and Invictus builds on that. It's a well-told period piece with vibrant characters and superior acting.

These are the kinds of historical dramas that Hollywood should make more of, namely commentaries and re-assessments of recent political events. They say journalism is the first draft of history; motion pictures should be a second or third draft sometimes. Of course history here is compressed and mutated to tell a story, but that's an inescapable fact of cinema. It works like it did in this story, I'm all for it.