For the most part, Walk the Line
is simply a standard-to-good biopic, but the performances — especially by Reese Witherspoon as June Carter — elevate it to another level.
The film is a lot of fun for fans of classic rock and roll. Playing “spot the future icon” is a lot of fun when, say, Elvis is recording his demo song (one that few music fans would immediately recognize) or offering young Johnny Cash some uppers, in a moment of dubious historical reality, but great foreshadowing for the King of Rock and Roll.
Likewise, while the music isn’t quite as good as the originals — sometimes dramatically not as good — it’s credible enough and a lot of fun to listen to.
The film’s heart, though, is Witherspoon, who conveys with a glance knowing Joaquin Phoenix’s Cash for years, not the months the film took to make, and who subtly portrays a woman older than herself without relying on ridiculous special effects makeup or dialogue cues. Her portrayal of “the other woman” agonizing over her place in Cash’s marriage is believable and touching. I suspect her days of films like Legally Blonde II are behind her.
A great deal of fun and strongly recommended for fans of Reese Witherspoon or classic country or rock and roll music.
I thought I had seen awful movies. I’d seen Highlander II. I’d seen Deep Blue Sea. I’d seen Instinct. But I never truly looked into the face of the abyss until I’d seen this movie.
This film makes me doubt the existence of a benevolent God.
Under no circumstances see this movie.
Having first read the Chronicles of Narnia in 1979, I had grave misgivings when I heard a movie was being made. I wasn’t only concerned about issues such as special effects and where they’d film the movie — Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movies were showing that wasn’t much of a problem in the 21st century. I was mostly concerned about the tone and feel of the books, which are charmingly anachronistic.
I didn’t need to worry after all: The live action The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, if it takes some small liberties with the book, gets the tone and feel of the book perfectly, giving us a battle between good and evil that feels on one level like a children’s story, while at the same time having obvious deeper currents to it, some of which can be puzzled out thematically, others of which will (mostly) be revealed in later stories.
The casting was also exceptionally well done, with all of the children actually looking like siblings and like real children (not Hollywood actor children creatures) besides. Tilda Swinton is especially good as the White Witch, who plays evil with a sophistication and intelligence rarely seen in movies.
For adults, there’s also great fun in spotting some of the celebrity voices of the wonderfully animated talking animals. Rupert Everett as the talking fox was an especially witty choice, and perfectly suited to the role.
In the end, as long as the film was, it suffers a bit from being an adaptation of a relatively short children’s novel, and feels significantly thinner than, say, Peter Jackson’s much denser Fellowship of the Ring. This isn’t a crippling blow to the movie — it’s still quite enjoyable and makes one eager for the next movie in the series — but it does mean the film doesn’t really bear the repeated rewatchings the extended editions of the Lord of the Rings movies do.
Strongly recommended for fantasy fans of all ages and the original Narnia books.
Derailed is full of surprises, not the least of which is that Jennifer Aniston, freed from romantic comedy, both on television and film, is an actress of surprising weight and darkness.
This point is driven home early, when the sexy flirtations give way without warning to something different, in a sudden change of direction, and the film has more on the way.
The film’s not perfect — Clive Owen’s protagonist does several very dumb things along the way, when the alternative really isn’t much worse, and in one case, what he does is almost unthinkably worse than what he’s been threatened with — and the big secret of the plot can be put together before Clive’s character stumbles on it, but it’s still an effective and affecting thriller.
Strongly recommended for thriller fans and especially for anyone who thought that maybe, just maybe, Jenifer Aniston had more of a future ahead of her than just an endless series of Meg Ryan-style romantic comedies.
Josh Friedman, the screenwriter soon to be best known as the a writer of the forthcoming masterpiece, Snakes on a Plane (no, really), was once mostly known for his very funny blog about Hollywood. Then he had the selfishness to go and get cancer and, not surprisingly, the blog took a more serious turn.
In the wake of his cancer surgery, Josh is in an introspective mood, and discusses life, writing, his eulogy and the words he knows will make him immortal:
I had to be at the hospital two hours before surgery and my biggest worry was leaving before my son woke up. My second biggest worry was not leaving before my son woke up.
As it turned out, he woke up a few minutes before I had to leave. I hugged him, told him I loved him and that I would see him later. Toddlers have no sense of time and as far as he was concerned, the word “later” meant either “when you walk around the corner” or “oatmeal.”
I knew that “later” meant one of two things: either “five days from now when they let me out” or “never.”
When I was young my parents took me to the funeral of a family friend. I’m sure at the time I thought she was old. I now realize she was probably younger than I am. She died of cancer, I don’t remember what kind, and who really cares. Dead is dead and no one ever asks the families of shooting victims what kind of bullet it was. What I remember was she had written her own eulogy. I don’t remember a single word of it, but I remember hearing her voice in the words. It felt like she had traveled some way to find us, and I was happy she had taken the time to visit. I missed her less, and wasn’t nearly as scared of where she had gone. She was real, she was present, and while she was less than alive she was much more than dead.
Back then I knew that words were fun toys and that I was a clever little boy who pleased the grown-ups who watched him play with pen and paper. I could rub two sentences together but did not understand that doing so might create fire. This was the first time I had witnessed a spell being cast.
I won’t spoil the rest. You really ought to read it for yourself.
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