Category Archive: Drama Film
Calvary
(dir. J M McDonagh) (2014) This is Craggy Island without the laughs, a richly human ‘who-will-do-it’ as Brendan Gleeson, the village catholic priest, struggles with his faith in the wake of a confessional death threat. Paul Byrnes in the Sydney Morning Herald well described Gleeson’s role as “the one good man in a town of jackals” – the relentless vitriol and mockery spat at him by various village types is matched by their own astonishing, preternatural candour – no feelings are spared in this story. The whole tone reflects an Irish ambivalence vis-à-vis organized religion, its utility and its scars….
Continue Reading →The Judge
(dir. David Dobkin) To make a film as bad as this, more ingredients are required than Hollywood plot #7, additional clichés and dollops of sentimentality. To the mix must be added really good actors – (Roberts Downey and Duvall; Billy Bob Thornton and Vincent d’Onofrio, who is starting to look like a confusing cross between Charles Durning and Brian Dennehy) – so that the hapless viewer is all the more disappointed when it turns out that there really is no more to this than appears. Avoid.
Continue Reading →The Hustler
(dir. Robert Rossen) (1961) A tough, raw, hard-hearted story of Eddie Felsen (Paul Newman) who wants to move up from two bit hustling at pool to beat the best, Minnesota Fats (Jackie Gleason). Great pool scenes: Fats’ seven- ball in the corner is a shot Eddie Charlton would be proud of. Newman is also highly competent, although he joked of shooting some pool decades later when a youth approached, declaring he’d seen The Hustler dozens of times and that watching Newman play pool was one of the great disappointments of his life. Perhaps Eddie does shoot good but also lucky….
Continue Reading →Donnie Darko
(dir. Richard Kelly) (2001) A lush, Gothic, teen exploitation film of superior calibre. Donnie (Jake Gyllenhaal) is a typical, upper middle class, cringing dork with anger issues and a friend called Frank, who appears to be a cross between a pooka and Satan Bunny. Frank informs Donnie that the world only has till the eve of Halloween to live. Jam-packed with ideas, some of which should lie on the cutting floor: we have surreal visual homages to the paintings of William Blake and John Martin, a soundtrack oddly reminiscent of Badlands, a rock video sequence with (of all things) Tears…
Continue Reading →Vale Mike Nichols
NOVEMBER 19, 2014 VALE Mikhail Igor Peschkowsky (Mike Nichols) November 6, 1931 – November 19, 2014 Nicholls was multifaceted, building a career in live comedy, theatre, films and television. Though he had a reputation as a golden boy (making his film debut Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? directing Burton and Taylor, cleverly innovating techniques to enhance the claustrophobic intimacy of that night from hell, and winning a best director gong the next year by casting against stereotype in The Graduate) he had as many flops as hits but they remained interesting. His routines with Elaine May in the 1950s and…
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