David Oyelowo

“As many of you know, we have implemented changes to diversify our membership in the last four years. But the change is not coming as fast as we would like. We need to do more, and better and more quickly.”

Is there any connection between these two years in a row of #OscarSoWhite,“ the hundred or so repetitions of the ”N-word” in Tarantino’s latest N-word opus magnum, and republican right wing thinly-veiled politics of exclusion, fear, and racism? Any connection at all? Maybe so. Maybe not. One thing’s for certain though—the Oscars are an American institution.

The embryonic stages of J.C. Chandor’s career have given us a director methodical in his approach to weaving tales of fallible men, drowning as the world about them collapses.

In his exciting first three films, writer-director J.C. Chandor, the son of a Merrill Lynch investment banker, has proven to be a canny, clear-eyed studier of capitalism, sensitive to its strivers and alert to its ethical storms.

Director J.C. Chandor’s latest feature, “A Most Violent Year,” might sound like just another gun-happy action pic, but the slow-burning drama was actually born out of a staunch reluctance to continue presenting violence as entertainment. And it might never have happened if Chandor hadn’t needed a job.