Out of the Furnace (2013)
Russell Blaze (Christian Bale) goes to prison after he kills a little boy in a drunken accident. When he’s released, his dad has died, and his girlfriend, Lena Taylor (Zoe Saldana) is now in a relationship with the city police chief Wesley Barnes (Forest Whittaker).
Russell’s brother, Rodney Blaze (Casey Affleck) fights in underground boxing matches to pay off his gambling debt to John Petty (Willem Dafoe). To erase this debt, he convinces Petty to arrange a fight with the sociopath Harlan DeGroat (Woody Harrelson).
Christian Bale is fantastic as the honorable Russell, whose incredible sense of loyalty and affection for his younger brother propels him to the film’s tragic conclusion.
Zoe Saldana is great as Lena, who was so desperate to start a family she began a relationship with someone else while her love was gone.
Casey Affleck almost threw away his career with the disastrous high concept fauxmentary I’m Still Here (2010), but as Rodney Blaze he’s almost as good as Robert Ford.
Willem Dafoe gives off a creepy vibe, but he’s the most effective Jesus Christ, and his version of the Green Goblin is one of the very best film supervillains.
Harrelson career roll in the Hunger Games films and the first season of True Detective continues in his performance as Harlan, a perfect balance of maniacal blood lust and cold rationality. When all’s said and done, Harrelson will finish with one of the most impressive resumes in Hollywood.
The story isn’t spectacular, but the movie is well crafted and beautifully acted.
The Fifth Estate (2013)
The story of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange (Benedict Cumberbatch) didn’t scream “blockbuster” to me, but I liked it better than I thought I would.
Cumberbatch is on the cusp of overexposure or exhaustion. In 2013 alone, he was in Star Trek into Darkness; 12 Years a Slave; The Fifth Estate; The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug; August: Osgage County; and the third series of the BBC smash Sherlock.
I love Laura Linney but she’s stiff and wooden as Sarah Shaw.
I’m sympathetic to Assange’s free speech advocacy, but the movie takes a complex figure and whitewashes any part of his life story which doesn’t contribute to their hero narrative.
Bill Condon, the director of Dreamgirls (2006) and The Twilight Saga wasn’t a good fit for a biographical film about a political terrorist. If someone with a background in thrillers or political espionage films had been given the material, it might have worked better.
It’s a better than advertised, but it’s so busy justifying Assange, it doesn’t bother to look at who he is, which is a far more interesting story.
South Pacific (1958)
In the early stages of the second World War, Lt. Joseph Cable falls in love with a pacific islander, Liat, while Ensign Nellie Forbush (Mitzi Gaynor) falls in love with widowed Frenchman Emile de Becque, but struggles with her prejudices when she discovers his previous wife was an islander.
This is a fairly faithful adaptation of the musical, but it’s about an hour too long and its anti-racism message, controversial and cutting edge in the mid 1950s, seems dated and tame today and, in an ironic twist, some of the songs, including “Happy Talk” are often seen as racist by contemporary critics. Annoyingly, the filmmakers used color filters for different emotions.
The stars of the famed Broadway musical, Ezio Pinza and Mary Martin were set to star in this adaptation, but Pinza died before production began.
I found myself awkwardly humming “I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair,” for weeks, and “There is Nothing Like a Dame” is a fun, lively number, but the famed “Some Enchanted Evening” fell a little flat.
Joshua Logan cowrote the book and directed the original Broadway production, before directing this adaptation. He was too close to the material and couldn’t bring himself to make the necessary cuts which could have made it a classic.
It’s fun musical, but too padded for a film, and plays like material written over sixty years ago.