Michael Collins (1996)
DIRECTOR: Neil Jordan
CAST: Liam Neeson, Aidan Quinn, Julia Roberts, Alan Rickman, Stephen Rea, Ian Hart, Brendan Gleeson, Charles Dance
REVIEW:
Irish director Neil Jordan isn’t one to shy away from controversy (The Crying Game), and his latest film, a biopic of IRA (the so-called Irish Republican Army) founder Michael Collins, is sure to generate it again, both from those who feel it overly glorifies a man who, depending on who you ask, could either be labeled a freedom fighter or a terrorist, and from those who object to its negative portrayal of former Irish president Eamon De Valera. Taken on its own merits, however, Michael Collins is a well-crafted, compelling historical drama anchored by a forceful lead performance by Liam Neeson. Continue reading
Apollo 13 (1995)
DIRECTOR: Ron Howard
CAST: Tom Hanks, Bill Paxton, Kevin Bacon, Gary Sinise, Ed Harris, Kathleen Quinlan
For those old enough to have watched the April 1970 Apollo 13 crisis unfold live on television, Ron Howard’s Apollo 13 may bring back strong memories. For those who did not experience it at the time, it may serve as a fascinating history lesson. For everyone else, it’s a well-constructed docudrama, and a tribute to what one character refers to as NASA’s finest hour. Continue reading
Braveheart (1995)
DIRECTOR: Mel Gibson
CAST: Mel Gibson, Sophie Marceau, Catherine McCormack, Patrick McGoohan, Angus Macfadyen, Brendan Gleeson
REVIEW:
WARNING: THIS REVIEW WILL CONTAIN “SPOILERS”
For only his second outing behind the camera, Mel Gibson (who made his directorial debut in 1993’s The Man Without a Face, in which he also starred) has tackled the kind of ambitious undertaking Hollywood rarely mounts anymore, a grand epic throwback to the likes of Spartacus and Lawrence of Arabia. What might be more surprising is that he’s pulled it off in impressive fashion, showing he can handle a lavish production with large-scale battle scenes. In fact, among the directorial debuts or near-debuts of actors-turned-directors, it’s the most impressive entry since Kevin Costner’s Dances With Wolves five years earlier. Braveheart isn’t perfect, but it’s a rollicking, crowd-pleasing adventure painted on an epic scale with the kind of grandeur that might appeal to fans of Spartacus or The Last of the Mohicans. Continue reading
Shadowlands (1993)
DIRECTOR: Richard Attenborough
CAST: Anthony Hopkins, Debra Winger, Joseph Mazzello, Edward Hardwicke, John Wood, James Frain
REVIEW:
Richard Attenborough’s Shadowlands, telling the true story of the romance between British author C.S. Lewis (best-known for his Chronicles of Narnia series) and American poet Joy Gresham between their meeting in 1952 and her death from cancer in 1960, is a stately, sedate, but tenderly heartfelt British period drama (steeped in oh-so-British reserve) that will surely strike some as too dry and slow to get into, but anchored by a quietly powerful performance by Anthony Hopkins and a restrained study in the gamut of emotions from joy to grief, may have much to offer for fans of these kinds of low-key serious dramas.
Continue readingSchindler’s List (1993)
DIRECTOR: Steven Spielberg
CAST:
Liam Neeson, Ben Kingsley, Ralph Fiennes, Embeth Davidtz, Caroline Goodall
REVIEW:
Oskar Schindler was an unlikely hero. German businessman and war profiteer, womanizer, slave laborer, and a member of the Nazi Party with prominent friends within the SS, he happily moved in on the heels of the conquering German Army and set up an enamelware factory in occupied Krakow, taking advantage of cheap Polish-Jewish labor in the service of the Third Reich. Yet coming into such close contact with Jews at a time when his own government was implementing plans for their total annihilation seems to have lit a spark of humanity within the opportunistic Schindler, and by the Nazis’ downfall in 1945, he had bankrupted himself and his factory and endured repeated arrests by the Gestapo to bring nearly 1,200 Polish Jews safely through the war and the simultaneously blazing Holocaust. This German war profiteer and nominal Nazi had saved more Jews than any other individual. And yet, for decades afterward, his story, and theirs, remained largely untold. Continue reading
Geronimo: An American Legend (1993)
DIRECTOR: Walter Hill
CAST: Jason Patric, Robert Duvall, Gene Hackman, Wes Studi, Matt Damon, Rodney A. Grant, Kevin Tighe
REVIEW:
While its title might be simply Geronimo, a more accurate name for this movie might be The Geronimo Campaign. Walter Hill, not a stranger to the Western genre, directs this chronicle of the “Geronimo Campaign” in which famed Apache war leader Geronimo, with 34 men, managed to elude 5,000 US cavalry troops between 1885 and 1886 before his surrender in September 1886. Continue reading
The Untouchables (1987)
DIRECTOR: Brian De Palma
CAST: Kevin Costner, Sean Connery, Robert De Niro, Andy Garcia, Charles Martin Smith, Patricia Clarkson, Billy Drago
REVIEW:
Brian De Palma’s magnum opus The Untouchables (loosely inspired by the television series, which in turn was loosely based on historical fact) freely takes sizable liberties with the true story it loosely tells and is an unabashedly Hollywoodized saga of the 1930s clash between Treasury officers led by Eliot Ness and Prohibition-era Chicago crime lord Al Capone, but this is a case of the filmmakers not letting the facts get in the way of a good story. The Untouchables doesn’t pretend to be a docudrama, instead a rousing adventure that serves up a plucky band of underdog good guys versus the seemingly all-powerful big bad. It’s easy to get swept up in that kind of David vs. Goliath story, and The Untouchables succeeds on virtually every level, serving up colorful hissable villains, juicy dialogue, a fast-moving pace, some memorable action sequences, moments of humor and tragedy, and a crowd-pleasing triumph of good over evil. Continue reading
At Close Range (1986)
DIRECTOR: James Foley
CAST: Sean Penn, Christopher Walken, Mary Stuart Masterson, Christopher Penn, Crispin Glover, Millie Perkins, Eileen Ryan, Kiefer Sutherland, David Strathairn, Tracey Walter, R.D. Call, J.C. Quinn
REVIEW:
At Close Range is a spare, no-frills crime drama that eschews overdramatic embellishments and portrays a dark true story in unvarnished docudrama fashion. Set in 1978 and based on the story of the Bruce Johnston gang (with names changed), it centers on Brad Whitewood Jr. (Sean Penn), an aimless juvenile delinquent who gets drawn into the orbit of his sociopathic father Brad Sr. (Christopher Walken), who runs a local gang stealing tractors and mechanical parts. At first, Senior dazzles the impressionable youth, showing up in flashy cars, throwing money around, giving Brad a sniff of a life that seems a lot more exciting and glamorous than his. It’s not too long before Senior shows a dark side, but it might be just long enough for Brad to be in too deep. Continue reading
Inside The Third Reich (1982)
DIRECTOR: Marvin J. Chomsky
CAST:
Rutger Hauer, Blythe Danner, Sir Derek Jacobi, Sir John Gielgud, Sir Ian Holm, Maria Schell, Trevor Howard, Elke Sommer, Stephen Collins, Renée Soutendijk, Randy Quaid, Robert Vaughn, Michael Gough, Maurice Roëves, Derek Newark, David Shawyer, George Murcell, Viveca Lindfors, Zoë Wanamaker
REVIEW:
Inside The Third Reich, a lengthy, critically acclaimed TV miniseries from two-time Emmy winner Marvin J. Chomsky, is a film adaptation of the same-named memoirs by Albert Speer, a bright, cultured German architect who became Adolf Hitler’s personal designer and later Minister of Armaments and War Production, ultimately spending twenty years in Spandau Prison for his use of slave labor to keep the German war effort going, during which time he ostensibly reflected on his errors in judgment and began to write his memoirs. Although forbidden to do so in prison, Speer smuggled them out through a sympathetic guard and formed them into an autobiography upon his release. As one of the few surviving individuals to have had such intimate contact with Hitler, Speer lived well off of book sales until his death shortly before its film adaptation. While many believe Speer to have downplayed his own role in the Third Reich, and criticize the miniseries for not questioning his account, its historical value is undeniable. Inside The Third Reich was filmed on a low budget over a few months of winter in Munich, which is made apparent by the presence of snow in nearly every outdoors scene throughout the miniseries. While the vast scope and detail of Speer’s writings require numerous events to be skipped over, it serves to give the viewer the basics of the workings of the Third Reich. Continue reading