Loving, out recently, dramatizes Richard and Mildred Loving’s interracial marriage and struggles with the law. I just saw it – magnificent and very understated performances and direction. I’d never seen bricklaying portrayed interestingly. I highly recommend it, though it’s a very low key movie.
And, oddly, neither actor is American. He’s an Aussie and she’s Irish/Ethiopian.
No one’s seen it?
Probably not. It’s in “limited release”, which means a relative handful of theaters. Which is stupid in light of digital film distribution, but the studio executives have their funny little ways.
It’s unfortunate for those of us in smaller cities and towns that they don’t play movies they don’t expect to make lots of money. I’d love to see this but if I don’t go the one weekend they decide to show it (if they do) I’ll be out of luck until DVD time.
If I were in a small town, I’d be pissed.
The studios are stuck on their current model, and have not changed it for the realities of digital distribution.
For instance, a small town theater could, with satellite file distribution, play two or three different films a day, changing the films every night. They could show *Loving *at 7 PM on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, with another film at 7 on Tuesdays, Thursday and Saturday.
Every theater has the ability to be a “repertory house” like we had in the Seventies.
I would love that. It’s frustrating to hear about so many good movies that I can’t find within a 100-mile radius, even when they are released “nationwide”. It doesn’t help that so few theaters are independently owned and operated.
Loving is showing at almost 500 theaters around the U.S. at the moment. That’s not a huge opening week number, but it’s not a small one either. I just want to warn people who come this thread and immediately decide that obviously Loving can’t be showing anywhere near them that they need to check the website for the film first. It gives all the theaters where it’s showing:
Sadly, even if a theater owner wanted to program like that, the distributors probably wouldn’t let them. They’re still stuck in the mindset of shipping prints around.
It’s not stupid at all. This film is being pushed as Oscar bait. Even if they are expecting most of their money to be made digitally Oscar rules require it to be released in theaters first. Even with limited distribution it makes sense to get the name out there before to gets released digitally so meeting the bare minimum requirement for a nod doesn’t make much sense either.
Ruth Negga seemed to come out of no where to me. Agents of Shield, Preacher and now a likely Oscar nomination all in a row.
It’s still stupid to limit the distribution like this. They’re stuck on the model of shipping a limited number of prints from theater to theater, one after the other.
I saw it, it’s wonderfully made, so much feeling conveighed with so little dialog. Having said that, prepare to have guts worked. One of those films I wouldn’t have missed, but I’m in no hurry to see again.