Movie reviews: Selma, Patrick’s Day Jupiter Ascending

The essence of Selma (12A) is distilled in its opening minutes, as the Reverend Martin Luther King (David Oyelowo) confides his very modest personal ambitions to his wife, Coretta (Carmen Ejogo), then walks out on stage to accept the Nobel Peace Prize.

The conflict between King’s private and public lives provides the internal dynamic that drives this story, which is set in 1965, shortly after President Lyndon Johnson (Tom Wilkinson) passed the Civil Rights Act. In theory, equal voting rights had been secured in law, but the reality in the Southern states was characterised by naked racism, violent intimidation and murder.