Selma (2014) poster
2014 · drama · biography · history

Selma

Directed by Ava DuVernay2h 8m2014
ElsewhereIMDb7.599kRT99%Metacritic79TMDB7.42k
  • sombre
  • intense
Movie DNA

Sombre, steady, measured drama / biography, grounded in texture. Ambivalent, epic, measured, hand-scored across twelve axes of taste.

How every film is hand-scored →

"Selma," as in Alabama, the place where segregation in the South was at its worst, leading to a march that ended in violence, forcing a famous statement by President Lyndon B. Johnson that ultimately led to the signing of the Voting Rights Act.

Our read · Selma (2014) reads as a sombre, steady, grounded drama · biography · history entry — measured in intensity, epic-stakes in scope, measured in temperature, ambivalent in outlook. Hand-scored on twelve axes of taste — mood, pacing, weirdness, hope, stakes, humour, reality, density, warmth, auteur, intensity, and era — with a derived palette drawn from its dominant cinematography.

Where the cast leads
Fingerprint

The shape of Selma

Tonight, this looks like

What watching it is actually like.

You want powerful civil-rights history that demands attention and respect.

ends bittersweetit stays with yousteady all the waygrips by minute 15attention 4/5earns its length
Date nightWith friendsSoloWith parentsKids around
Heads-upgraphic violence

Skip it tonightPolice brutality imagery or heavy historical weight feels too much tonight.

DNA · twelve axes

The reading.

Each axis is hand-scored — not derived from votes or genre averages. The marker shows where this film sits; the gradient fill uses the film's own cinematography palette.

Mood · HeavyCosy
Pacing · Slow-burnKinetic
Intensity · GentleExtreme
Weirdness · ConventionalSurreal
Hope · NihilisticRedemptive
Stakes · IntimateEpic
Humour · NoneBroad
Reality · GroundedFantastical
Density · SparseTwisty
Warmth · ColdTender
Auteur · TransparentSignature
Your take
Rate it
star-clip-1-0star-clip-2-0star-clip-3-0star-clip-4-0star-clip-5-0
React
Discussion

Discussion

cmd enter to post

What does your Movie DNA look like?

Rate a few films you've seen. We map your taste across the same twelve axes and find the films you'll actually want to watch tonight.

Calibrate yourself