After American Sniper was the biggest box office draw of 2014, it seems anyone will pay to see Bradley Cooper in uniform again. Deadline reports Cooper is set to produce Ghost Army, a World War II story about an agency tasked with feeding the Nazis fake intelligence about the actual number of American troops, with the …
Most prison stories are stories about men. But there are stories about men, and then there are stories about masculinity. The latter is much harder to pull off, because masculinity means different things to different men in different situations. That’s why David Mackenzie’s new film Starred Up is so masterfully tense
There’s a scene in the first act of the film where the young protagonist Eric, in an effort to gain control of a situation to proclaim his innocence, bites down on a prison guard’s genitals and holds on like a dog with a chew toy. That moment alone does a lot to encapsulate the do-or-die realities of the film’s prison environment, but more importantly showcases the immediate talent of its star Jack O’Connell: Like it or not, he demands your attention and he’s not letting go anytime soon.
Director David MacKenzie (Young Adam, Mister Foe) brings us a bloodily fresh film about a young upstart condemned to a lengthy prison sentence who thinks that he can’t be contained by the system or gangs. Upon arriving he encounters his long lost father who is also incarcerated. They are both unable to express their extreme emotions without it coming to violence.
The struggle to maintain one’s personal sense of youth is at the heart of Adore, an Australian drama that wishes to be provocative without being particularly salacious or deep. Based on one of four short stories by Doris Lessing in the collection “The Grandmothers,” Adore feels very much like an adaptation of a story that’s too brief, a mere wisp that should be a gale force.
Killing Them Softly Written for the screen and directed by Andrew Dominik USA, 2012 Set against the backdrop of the 2008 US election, chunks of both major parties’ campaign rhetoric, as well as that of former President Bush, permeate select scenes of Killing Them Softly via background radios and televisions, entering like tumbleweeds rolling across …
