Apt Pupil (1998)
DIRECTOR: Bryan Singer
CAST: Brad Renfro, Ian McKellen, Bruce Davison, David Schwimmer, Joshua Jackson, Ann Dowd, Elias Koteas, Michael Byrne, Joe Morton, Jan Triska
REVIEW:
WARNING: THIS REVIEW WILL REVEAL “SPOILERS”
Apt Pupil is a morbidly engrossing psychological thriller crafted with enough professionalism and ability to sometimes persuade us to overlook its questionable taste, even if the bad aftertaste lingers. An adaptation of a novella by Stephen King (a previous attempt at filming it was mounted in 1988, starring Ricky Schroder and Nicol Williamson, but fell through), it uses that ever-convenient go-to-guy of villains—Nazis—as a launching pad for a psychological character study. Those seeking a conventional “thriller” might be disappointed. Apt Pupil is disturbing, sometimes chilling, but the horror is not of the “boo!” variety. Apt Pupil is a slow-burn foray into the heart of darkness that resides within two seemingly very different men, and how they feed each other’s worst impulses. Continue reading
Elizabeth (1998)
DIRECTOR: Shekhar Kapur
CAST: Cate Blanchett, Geoffrey Rush, Joseph Fiennes, Richard Attenborough, Christopher Eccleston
REVIEW:
The reign of Queen Elizabeth I of England began in 1558, when at the age of twenty-five, she succeeded her half-sister Mary I. Over the course of the next forty-five years, she ushered in the so-called Golden Age and became one of the longest-reigning and most popular and successful monarchs ever to sit on the British throne. Director Shekhar Kapur’s lavish period costume drama Elizabeth, however, focuses on the early years of Elizabeth’s reign, when the young queen was surrounded by enemies and plagued with uncertainty, and facing the prospect of losing her throne—and her life—so soon after taking it.
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