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Posts Tagged ‘Hugo Weaving’

“BLACK 47”: Bastards, indeed

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on October 11, 2018| Leave a Comment »

James Frecheville

“BLACK 47” My rating: B

96 minutes | MPAA rating: R

The story arc of “Black ’47” will be familiar to anyone who’s seen a Western about a posse in pursuit of a wiley outlaw (or Apache).

What makes the film special is the setting.

Lance Daly’s movie unfolds in Ireland during the potato famine, a situation rarely if ever depicted in the movies. While the film’s dramatic tropes follow an expected trajectory, the background against which the action plays out — and which informs the film with a moral imperative — becomes a character in its own right.

In 1847 army deserter Martin Feeney (James Frecheville) arrives in his Connemara birthplace after a long journey from India. He finds a land wracked by starvation after the failure of the potato crop. Dead bodies lie by the roadsides. Virtually everyone is a shoeless beggar.

He discovers that his mother has died and his brother has been executed by the British, and he tries to intervene in the eviction of his widowed sister-in-law and her children, who promptly freeze to death.

Arrested by the local constables, Feeney slaughters a half dozen officers in their own station house, then goes on to kill the judge who hanged his brother, behead the land agent who initiated the eviction, and destroy a revival tent where Protestant missionaries offer soup to the dying…providing they give up Roman Catholicism.

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“HACKSAW RIDGE”: Brutality and transcendence

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on November 3, 2016| 1 Comment »

Andrew Garfield

Andrew Garfield as Desmond Doss

“HACKSAW RIDGE” My rating: B+

131 minutes | MPAA rating: R

“Old fashioned” in the best possible sense, “Hacksaw Ridge” is a real-life World War II combat drama that has it both ways.

It may be the most violent film ever released by a major studio, being horrifyingly realistic in its depiction of combat in the South Pacific.

At the same time it is soul-shakingly inspiring.

Brutality and spirituality are unlikely bedfellows, which makes the ultimate triumph of “Hacksaw Ridge” all the more remarkable.

In fact, the film instantly elevates director Mel Gibson back to his one-time status as a major filmmaker. Say what you will about Gibson’s misbehavior and misplaced beliefs, the guy has got the stuff.

Like “Sergeant York,” the reality-inspired classic about the World War I hero, “Hacksaw Ridge” centers on a conscientious objector who ends up winning the Congressional Medal of Honor. It even follows that earlier film’s basic narrative, dividing its running time between our hero’s life Stateside and his grueling combat experiences.

The difference is that unlike Sgt. Alvin York — who finally put aside his C.O. status and became a one-man juggernaut, killing at least 28 German soldiers and capturing 132 others — Desmond Doss practiced non-violence even in the midst of the most ghastly carnage imaginable.

With bullets whizzing around him — quite literally up to his knees in blood and guts — this Army medic singlemindedly went about his business of saving his fellow soldiers.

We meet young Desmond (Andrew Garfield) in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. Dad (Hugo Weaving) is an unshaved alcoholic still tormented by the sight of his friends being blown to bits during the Great War. Mom (Rachel Griffiths) is often on the fist end of her husband’s anguish.

As a boy Desmond is traumatized after losing his temper and striking his brother  with a rock. Swearing to never again harm another human, he joins the the Seventh-day Adventist Church, whose pacifist doctrines prohibit its members from carrying weapons.

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“THE DRESSMAKER”: High fashion and spaghetti Westerns

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on September 29, 2016| Leave a Comment »

Kate Winslet

Kate Winslet

“THE DRESSMAKER” My rating: B-

119 minutes | MPAA rating: R

So many stories, moods and contradictory elements are swirling around in Jocelyn Moorhouse’s “The Dressmaker” that it’s no wonder it never settles down into a coherent whole.

Parts of this Down Under oddity, though, are delightfully memorable.

Adapting Rosalie Hamm’s novel with her husband, filmmaker P.J. Hogan (“Peter Pan,” “Muriel’s Wedding”), Moorhouse has given this period piece a distinct visual look and no shortage of eccentric characters.

And almost everywhere you look, “The Dressmaker” is paying homage to other films and literary works.

There is, for starters, the film’s basic setup: A woman returns to the provincial town of her childhood, not so much to be reacquainted with old friends as to explore her tormented past and perhaps take revenge on those who made her youth a living hell.  That, combined with its blend of absurdist humor and angry drama, makes “The Dressmaker” a sort of modern-day clone of Friedrich Durrenmatt’s often-revived 1956 tragicomedy “The Visit.”

At the same time “Dressmaker” borrows freely from the spaghetti Western tradition. Though it’s in Australia, the town to which our heroine returns looks like nothing so much as a barren Wild West burg, complete with dirt main street, weird rock formations, ramshackle buildings and  a few leafless dead trees.

David Hirschfelder’s musical score is heavy on ersatz Ennio Morricone, right down to the electric guitars, pounding tympani and clanging chimes.

It’s 1951 and after an absence of nearly 20 years Tilly Dunnage (Kate Winslet) has returned to dusty Dungatar (emphasis on the “dung”). She moves back in with her half-cracked mother Molly (Judy Davis), who lives in bag-lady squalor in a crumbling hovel overlooking the town.

Tilly reintroduces herself by attending a local football match in a flaming red evening gown that must be the brightest object within 100 square miles.

In the years she was away Tilly worked in the fashion industry in London, Paris and Milan and she relishes the opportunity to rub the townspeoples’ faces in her sophistication.

Some locals aren’t buying this vision in their midst.  As a child Tilly was suspected of murdering a classmate and was shipped off to a boarding school in Melbourne for her own safety. She’s not exactly everyone’s favorite person.

But others, mostly long-put-upon women, see her arrival as a godsend.  Especially after Tilly uses her dressmaking and makeup skills to transform a drudge of a shopgirl (Sarah Snook) into a glamorous fashion plate capable of luring and hooking the wealthiest young man in town.

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“CAPTAIN AMERICA”: Corny in all the right ways

Posted in Popcorn movies, tagged , , , , , , on July 22, 2011| Leave a Comment »

“CAPTAIN AMERICA” My rating: B  (Opening wide on July 22)

125 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

Just when it seemed the whole comic book/superhero thing had burnt itself out in a conflagration of too much money and not enough inspiration, along comes “Captain America: The First Avenger” to make us remember why these movies can be so much fun.

“Captain America” is corny in all the right ways. It’s tongue-in-cheek funny, touching when it needs to be, warmly nostalgic and it perfectly captures its WW2 setting. (more…)

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