I was a fan of Ava DuVernay because of one of her early films, I Will Follow, which was released long before Selma. I stopped watching the Oscars when Spike Lee’s 25th Hour wasn’t nominated for anything. Don’t even get me started on Lee’s Malcolm X. For me, my favorite movie of 2014 is Snowpiercer. I’m only going to write about Selma and DuVernay. The Oscars are a part of the old media establishment, a self-congratulatory body that ordinarily misses greatness until it is time to distribute a lifetime achievement award, if it even gets it right then. I can play the Oscar game and correctly guess who will win, but I’ve put away childish games.

I go to the movie theater to see things anew, and Selma succeeds more than not in getting me to see old, well-trod historical material in a new human light. Selma is at its best when it takes unknown everyday people in dangerous situations and makes the audience care deeply about what happens to them: a small family running into a diner for shelter, a dignified middle-aged woman in cat-eye glasses being beaten and exposed on a bridge, a Boston nerdy minister leaving a diner and a young college student striking off from his friends. Selma makes historical figures like John Lewis become human again before the audience realizes that the person that we have been empathizing with is THE John Lewis.

The casting is brilliant. If you have ever seen The Color People and then realize what Oprah’s character is doing to save a young man, you will want to scream and cry at the same time. Tim Roth is an excellent actor, but if he ever plays you in a film, you know that you’ve done something wrong in your life. Dylan Baker does not even look like J. Edgar Hoover, but he is famous for playing morally unsavory roles. When in doubt, always cast a Brit, and the Brit will do a superb job. David Oyelowo IS MLK Jr. Carmen Ejogo has always been one of my favorites-you may remember her from The Purge: Anarchy. Tom Wilkinson as LBJ may have illustrated the only time that anyone can use the N word and get away with it.

Selma is a perfectly timed movie considering it was released at a time when people are questioning why so many people are marching to protest extrajudicial killing, i.e. murder, of unarmed, predominantly, black people in US. Selma is not a perfect movie. Though it does more than its predecessors in showing that women and gay men played an important part in the civil rights movement, it relegates them to the sidelines more than I would have preferred. Selma still largely equates the movement with King though it shows that the movement often acted without him.

I am still waiting for the movie that accurately represents the central role that black women actively played in the movement, and not just as emotional and/or logistic support to the men in the movement. They played prominent roles. Though Selma portrayed a more textured MLK Jr. than any of its predecessors by effectively addressing his failings as a husband, I still need a movie to muddy him up a little more so we can appreciate fully that human beings can do great things and still be chauvinistic or filled with pride. Perhaps I was unfairly expecting those two things from DuVernay because she is a woman, but I still want them.

Selma suffers from pacing issues and perhaps does not connect all the dots for viewers unfamiliar with history like Spielberg’s Lincoln. Does everyone know about the 4 little girls being bombed in a church? Does everyone understand why MLK Jr. and his colleagues could not stay in the hotel and had to depend on Niece Nash’s hospitality even though segregation was legally over? Unlike Lincoln, I think that the subtlety in Selma worked, but I think that a few people may leave confused.

I would encourage everyone to see Selma in theaters. It is not only an instant American classic, but a civil duty as an American in today’s political local and national climate and as vote with your dollar nod to diversity if you ever want a black woman to direct a major studio motion picture again.