With the success of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, the future prospects for Oscar Isaac are looking even more plentiful than already did. Prior to Star Wars, he enthralled audiences with brilliant performances in such films as Inside Llewyn Davis, A Most Violent Year, and Ex Machina – not to mention a Golden Globe winning performance in the HBO miniseries, Show Me a Hero. And, before he hits the big screen this summer in X-Men: Apocalypse, he stars alongside Garrett Hedlund in the new thriller, Mojave. In Mojave, written and directed by William Monahan (London Boulevard), Garrett Hedlund stars as Thomas, a burnt out actor that decides to go out into the desert to “find himself “– only to meet an intellectual drifter, named Jack (Oscar Isaac), …show more content…
No disrespect to film’s true lead, Garrett Hedlund, but Isaac is the only aspect of this production that isn’t as dry as the desert. Isaac simply oozes charisma, portraying a Shakespeare-admiring drifter. Make no mistake about it, though – Isaac’s character, Jack, is as ruthless as they come, quite frankly because he has nothing to lose. Hedlund, who most recently starred in the under-whelming Peter Pan prequel, simply titled Pan, portrays a brooding, disassociated character that is in search of a reason to live. The man, Thomas, wakes up next to a gorgeous woman (that’s not his wife, mind you) – looking like the fourth runner-up in a Kurt Cobain look-a-like contest. The guy probably has enough wealth to live comfortably for the rest of his life, yet he has to drive out to the desert in search of the meaning of life – which turns out to be nothing more than a reason to drink heavily and scream at …show more content…
The intrigue was right there, courtesy of a commendable and compelling performance by Oscar Isaac. In contrast, Garrett Hedlund’s character is not on equal footing, and is far too dry to compete with an eccentric drifter with nothing to lose. In all honestly, William Monohan’s script and directing capabilities aren’t completely without merit – although Mojave is nowhere near as captivating as his career gem, The Departed. Still, this protagonist versus antagonist narrative could have used a fine tooling – unless this mirror image plot was meant to confuse viewers about who’s the good guy and who’s the bad guy (a question that’s even present by Isaac’s character in the film at one point). In the end, Mojave does earn a recommendation, if for no other reason that it puts the true talent of Oscar Isaac on display. Sure, it’s a major about-face from the excitable Poe Dameron – but Isaac is a force to be reckoned with just the
Numerous screenwriters and directors have often dealt in their films with the theme of borders, whether literal and officially recognised, like military ranks or state frontiers, or abstract and metaphorical, like those of morality, justice, race, and gender, along with several others. As a consequence, as John Gibbs points out, one could assemble these movies, especially those taking place on the confines between Mexico and United States, under the label of ‘border films’ (2002: 27); thus contextualising them in a very specific tradition, which includes pictures such as Touch of Evil (Orson Welles 1958) or The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (Tommy Lee Jones 2005). Accordingly, another notable movie belonging to the ‘border film tradition’ is Lone Star: an acclaimed 1996 hybrid of western and mystery film conventions, directed and written by independent filmmaker John Sayles. The picture recounts the story of a murder investigation, which leads the main character, Sheriff Sam
The influence of Hollywood can be seen increasing or decreasing the public’s perception of a person, group, or cause in the matter of moments. John Wayne is one that can be argued to have had am extremely large impact on the creation/influence of war films through personal views. In Allan Dwan’s film Sands of Iwo Jima, the most expensive film to date, he we give John Wayne the nod for the lead role of Sergeant Srkyer, whose job was to lead a group of inexperienced Marines into Iwo Jima. This would be Wayne’s first Academy Award nomination, thus solidifying his emerging influence in Hollywood. Though John Wayne had no military experience whatsoever, his political beliefs, and his portrayal of an American within his films helped him gain support from high national figures.
Matthew McConaughey is the very bane of my existence. How he managed to have such a well-known and prestigious acting career is far beyond my understanding. He’s the kind of person that just shouldn’t be allowed to open their mouths. The long, drawn out, unbearable amount of time it takes him to get out a single god forbidden sentence is exhausting and plain painful to watch. His “famous Texan accent” makes him sound extraordinarily stupid, almost as though he grew up in a rural village that used horses as their only source of transportation, burned all books other than the bible as a religious practice, and watered their plants with Gatorade.
Tim’s Vermeer Tim’s Vermeer is a documentary film. It is about the struggle of a man to recreate a painting of Vermeer by seeing a rebuilding of the studio of Vermeer through a mirror arrangement. Tim Jenison got the encouragement from David Hockney’s theory that painters used visual strategies to accomplish their fascinating quality and established a double-mirror version of the camera lucida. He spent approximately 130 days to create a perfect and flawless imitation of Vermeer’s music lesson. He finally reached to the conclusion that the double mirror technique is a practical clarification for the distinctively lifelike painting style of Vermeer (Howard).
The Fisher King (1991) is a film that uses a subtle combination between comic moments and tragic drama, and it is successful in touching to the audience by tragedy and depression. The film starts with Jack Lucas, a New York deejay, shows the major symptoms of narcissistic personality disorder, comes into the mix because he talks to the killer before his rampage. There is a mass shooting at a restaurant. He feels meltdown, depression and unknown how to deal with it. Jack intends to commit a suicide under the bridge, but he encounters with thugs, who think he’s a homeless and want to beat him.
The following line from The Florida Project best sums up the film: “You know why this is my favourite tree? Cause it’s tipped over and it’s still growing.” Spoken by Moonee while eating jelly sandwiches with Jancey on the trunk of a lush, collapsed tree, the line draws a perfect similarity between the fallen tree’s continued growth and the motel residents’ efforts to trudge through poverty despite their representations in society. Sean Baker’s The Florida Project depicts Moonee, a six-year old living at the Magic Castle (a dilapidated motel just outside Walt Disney World) with her unemployed mother Halley.
“A Raisin in the Sun,” written by Lorraine Hansberry in 1959, was the first play ever produced on Broadway by an African-American woman and was considered ground-breaking for it’s time. Titled after Langston Hughes’ poem “Harlem,” sometimes known as “A Dream Deferred,” the play and the subsequent film adaptations are honest examinations of race, family, poverty, discrimination, oppression and even abortion in urban Chicago after WWII. The original play was met with critical praise, including a review by Brooks Atkinson of the New York Times where he wrote, “For A Raisin in the Sun is a play about human beings who want, on the one hand, to preserve their family pride and, on the other hand, to break out of the poverty that seems to be their fate. Not having any axe to grind, Miss Hansberry has a wide range of topics to write about-some of them hilarious, some of them painful in the extreme.” The original screen adaptation released in 1961 was highly acclaimed in its own right, and was chosen in 2005 for preservation in the United States of America National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for its cultural and historical significance.
The editing, camera angles, and the music all rang bell. Comparing this film to the preview films weve watched this one was beyond in a different level. The film broke the hays code the
The Revenant is a novel by Michael Punke originally published in 2002. Punke’s story is one of history, and it has been previously adapted into a movie in 1971 titled, Man in the Wilderness. All media and book did not stick to the original historical figure of Hugh Glass. Most recent adaptation in 2015 by Alejandro G. Iñárritu. Despite the fact that the movie was made famous based on inaccuracy of the actual true story, it still presents wonderful cinematography.
Individuality is unaccepted and isolated from our society that embraces conformed values. The Copy Shop and L’homme sans tete are examples of short films that reflect this ironic problem of society where individuals are not identified with their individual morals, but conformed morals enforced by society. The 2001 short film, Copy Shop by Virgil Widrich conveys the idea of conformity. This is done foremost through the metaphor of 'copies' that fill up the film's world that represent conformity, where the composer satirises our society which is filled up by 'copies' of individuals sharing conformed ideals.
Emilio Estevez’s purpose in creating this film was to show how different types of people with different backgrounds can mesh together and motivate each other. In The Way, Emilio Estevez uses the literary devices such as characterization and conflict to get
In the film Extreme Measures someone can find ideas of Secular Ethics throughout the film involving Utilitarianism and its basic tenets along with Kantian analysis. The basic tenets of Utilitarianism include the principle of utility, Hedonism, and the viewpoint of a disinterested and benevolent spectator. While the tenets of Kantian Ethics, which include good will, the formula of universal law, the formula of the end itself, and the categorical imperative. These basic ideas setup arguments for and against the Utilitarian ideas set up by doctor Myrick. In the film doctor Myrick makes the claim that it is worth the deaths of unwilling subjects in order to help/save the lives of millions.
In both my professional and personal life I am in relationship with immigrants, some legal and some illegal. It is through relationships and other storytelling methods, like films, that we can empathize and understand another person’s or a group of people’s plight. The city of Pittsfield, where I live, is currently in discussion about accepting around 50 Syrian refugees into the community. My first thought when I found out about this was “How can I help?” These are people who have survived war, traveled extensively, and have no belongings and no money.
“Hacksaw Ridge”: the Film Review Hacksaw Ridge is a war drama based on documentary materials; it was directed by Mel Gibson and first demonstrated in 2016. The film tells story of Desmond Doss, a man with difficult fate. The character does not want to interact with weapons because of his faith and negative previous family experience, like an assault on his brother with a brick or an attempted assassination of own father, which hit his wife, Desmond’s mother. But Doss decided to join the army despite of his believes; the main part of plot happened in Japan in 1945. His refusal of weapons’ usage created contentious relationship with officers and fellow soldier; Doss even fell for tribunal, but was saved by his father, who participated in the Great War.
Throughout the years, the auteur theory slowly ensconced itself as an essential key to film analysis, providing a specific guideline to evaluate a director’s film. One of the most