Screening Room: ‘Free State of Jones’

Mahershala Ali and Matthew McConaughey in ‘Free State of Jones’

In 1862, a Mississippi farmer named Newton Knight got sick of fighting for the Southern cause. He gathered a band of like-minded rebels against the Rebels and fought a guerrilla war that (briefly) established a free (of slaves, too) corner of the Confederacy.

Free State of Jones, written and directed bySeabiscuit‘s Gary Ross, starsMatthew McConaughey as Knight. It opens this week. My review is atFilm Journal International:

As the...