The Butler is about a black American named Cecil Gaines who rose from cotton field laborer to White House butler amidst a landscape of constant political change in the United States, including the civil rights movement. This is a fairly egregious example of an “Oscar bait” film, which panders to film reviewers and the Academy Awards by combining an “important” subject matter along with a star-studded cast.

Within the first few minutes, Mariah Carey has been raped and David Banner has been shot and killed in cold blood (I don’t consider either of these to be spoilers). This movie doesn’t waste any time getting right to one of its core themes: this movie wants to be taken extremely seriously.

The contrast between the seriousness of this film’s subject matter and its celebrity-laden cast was difficult for me to manage. Klu Klux Man members surround a bus filled with black panthers and things get serious fast. But wait a minute: is that Robin Williams playing a grey-faced Dwight D. Eisenhower? Serious stuff here, with all this weighty racism. But wait a minute, is that John Cusack as Richard Nixon? And so on. It breaks immersion.

Forest Whittaker is tremendous and the overall acting is very good. Even from Oprah, who plays Whittaker’s wife, although immersion was once again an issue for me because I kept seeing… well, Oprah. Celebrities who are known so well for one thing being cast as something else can become a difficult mental task to manage. I don’t think I had felt this way before this film since the case of this happening is so numerous. Virtually every fifteen minutes another well-known celebrity is introduced.

This movie is patently appalling. Few movies want to touch the ferociously dark side of American slavery, but this movie doesn’t hesitate to horrify you. You’ll see and hear shocking things. All part of the Oscar Bait part. What I find most ironic about that is that this film failed to receive a single Academy Award nomination. Whoops. At least it’s still a very good film.

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A few years ago I saw Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho for the first time and was blown away. Vertigo is a film I’ve been waiting to see since then. And I’m glad I did, because like Psycho, Vertigo is both incredibly striking and subtly nuanced, a potent combination which I have come to associate with Hitchcock.

Vertigo is about a retired detective in 1950’s San Francisco, John Ferguson, who suffers from a fear of heights. Shortly after retiring, he’s called to take on one final investigation as a personal favor: follow an old friend’s wife, whose husband suspects she’s been possessed by a ghost.

While following his target, Madeleine, John witnesses her suicide attempt and saves her life. The two fall in love and then the true plot of the movie begins to unravel, concluding with a magnificent twist.

What I’ve found in every Hitchcock movie that I’ve seen is that you legitimately cannot predict what will happen. You’re held by the hand and led down a path of thought which is, about halfway through the film, abruptly shaken. It’s never a subtle switchover, it’s always a stunning moment of epiphany.

Viewers are trained to expect specific points of conflict and resolution which appear at predictable places within films, known as the story arc. In Vertigo (as in Psycho), the narrative undergoes an enormous change after the halfway point which distinctly feels like the place where an ordinary film would end. But this is where Vertigo begins to reveal its genius. It lives up to the title of psychological thriller.

I love movies of this era and Vertigo is among the best of them. This movie is complex and sophisticated so pay attention. I’m sure I’ll have to watch this at least once more to even have a chance at picking up all the nuance.

Note: the version of Vertigo that I watched was the remastered HD version, which was first released in the late 1990’s. It looks and sounds amazing.

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