5 For: Lee Daniels' The Butler (2013)

In this Movie Memory Machine: Five For mini-episode, Landen and Truman offer five films that better explore the Black American experience across decades of U.S. history—without reducing it to presidential cameos. Where The Butlerflattens complexity into a highlight reel, these films bring depth, agency, and artistry to the stories of civil rights, political power, and generational struggle.

 

Films Discussed:

1. Selma (2014)

2. All the Way (2016)

3. The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (1974)

4. Malcolm X (1992)

5. John Lewis: Good Trouble (2020)

 

Topics Covered:

• Why The Butler’s episodic structure feels like a history PowerPoint

• How Selma balances legacy and interiority in portraying Martin Luther King Jr.

• The dynamic between Bryan Cranston’s LBJ in All the Way vs. Liev Schreiber’s in The Butler

• Cicely Tyson’s powerhouse performance and visual symbolism in Miss Jane Pittman

• The scope and clarity of Spike Lee’s Malcolm X as a gold standard for biopics

• Why Good Trouble is a rare political documentary that feels energized, not sanitized

 

Key Takeaways:

• The Butler makes presidents the main characters of a story that isn’t about them

• These five films center Black agency, voice, and resistance in ways The Butler doesn’t

• We need stories that aren’t afraid to slow down and sit in the discomfort of history

• You deserve better than watching a parade of wax museum cameos in aging prosthetics

Listener Prompt:

What film helped you understand American history in a new way? Tell us using #MovieMemoryMachine.

 

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