The influence of one of the most infamous photos from the American Civil War is still felt today, 159 years later. The picture, taken by the Union Army, of Gordon, a formerly enslaved man known as “Whipped Peter,” display his scourged bare back, the result of brutal whippings.
The indelible image, commonly called The Scourged Back, provided incontrovertible proof of the cruelty of American slavery and helped fuel the abolitionist movement. Now, courtesy of director Antoine Fuqua and his film “Emancipation,” now streaming on Apple TV+, the story behind the photograph is being told. “We are going to make sure that every person in the world truly knows what slavery looks like,” said the photographer who took the picture.
Will Smith, in his first role since the slap heard ‘round the world, is Peter, a deeply religious Haitian slave torn from his wife Dodienne (Charmaine Bingwa) and children to be sold to a Confederate labor camp. Unable to remain silent when the camp’s overseers, like the sadistic Fassel (Ben Foster), abuse the enslaved men working to his left and right, he is labelled defiant and regularly beaten or threatened with a loaded gun to his head.
“They break the bones in my body more times than I can count,” he says later, “but they never break me.”
When Peter learns of the Emancipation Proclamation, signaling that President Lincoln has freed the slaves, he plans an escape, fleeing with a group of men through some of Louisiana’s most treacherous swamps. Driven toward freedom, and the possibility of being reunited with his family, Peter battles nature, and beasts, both the four-legged and two-legged kind, to survive.
Shot in daguerreotype black and white, resembling a high contrast tin type photograph, “Emancipation” looks like a historical document of a sort, but comes with a modern storytelling sensibility. It is both a brutal representation of the evils of slavery and a Will Smith action movie.
As Peter makes his way through the bayou, rubbing onion on his clothes to put the bloodhounds off his scent, battling an alligator or defending himself with a cross-shaped necklace, his journey is rife with danger. The tense action scenes, which make up the bulk of the movie, are well realized by director Fuqua, but they come at the expense of the character.
We come to understand that Peter is a smart, courageous and resourceful man whose deeply held religious beliefs have given him a roadmap for life, but the film appears more interested in the way he sidesteps danger rather than creating a fully-formed portrait of the man himself.
Smith is raw in his performance and Peter’s inspirational journey to family and freedom is a visceral one, but, as presented, not a deep one.
For better and for worse we know what to expect from a Will Smith hero’s journey film and “Emancipation,” for better and for worse, is just that. It folds a death-defying action movie around a vivid portrait of the scourge of slavery and it’s an uneasy balance. On one side, the film is propped up by Fuqua’s deft, propulsive handling of the action. On the other, it feels like a missed opportunity to dig deep into what made Peter tick.
If “Game of Thrones” style decapitations are your thing, the fifteenth-century set “Medieval,” now playing in theatres, may be right up your alley.
Based on the early life of famous Hussite commander Jan Žižka of Trocnov (Ben Foster), “Medieval” is like an old-timey superhero origin story. Žižka’s story is the stuff of cinema. He was a fearsome warrior, a hero who never lost a battle, so the story isn’t what bogs down the movie, it’s the telling of it.
Set in 1402, the film opens with the voice of Lord Boresh (Michael Caine). “Power, tyranny, Violence; Europe is engulfed in war, plague and famine.”
In other words, “Yikes!” The Holy Roman Empire is in chaos, following the death of its reigning emperor. To prevent King Sigismund of Hungary (Matthew Goode) from taking the throne by force, Žižka is conscripted to kidnap Lady Katherine (Sophie Lowe), the French fiancée of Lord Rosenberg (Til Schweiger), a powerful ally of Sigismund.
In retaliation, France sends an army to retrieve her. As the heat rises on the battlefield, so it does between Katherine and Jan, who, when he isn’t busy wielding an axe to fight against the corruption and greed of the ruling class, find the time to fall in love.
From the title on down, “Medieval” has a generic feel. It is bloody and brutal—with the appropriate bone-crunching SFX—when it needs to be, and features fine period details, but the storytelling is formulaic; “Game of Throne” Lite.
There are interesting elements, particularly regarding the warrior’s religious convictions and political leanings, but the Foster feels miscast. His trademarked intensity is missing, which is bewildering considering the amped up nature of the battle footage.
“Medieval” is ham fisted. The action scenes are absolutely brutal, featuring the kind of violence usually reserved for bloody horror movies. The political intrigue is convoluted, and for a film that aims to pay tribute to a real-life hero, inaccurate. It gets the tone of the time correct. The reaction of the rebellious locals, worn down by years of high taxes, feels authentic, but Boresh, for instance, the catalyst of much of the action, has been cut out of whole cloth. It feels as though the history has been manipulated to fit the story director Petr Jakl wanted to tell, rather than fashioning the story around the history.
“Hustle,” a new sports dramedy staring Adam Sandler, now streaming on Netflix, is an underdog story like “Rocky,” if that movie featured Burgess Meredith’s name above the title instead of Sylvester Stallone.
Sandler plays Stanley Sugarman, a veteran basketball scout for the Philadelphia 76ers. Decades spent on the road searching for new talent have left him weary and jaded, missing his wife (Queen Latifah) and daughter (Jordan Hull).
His new boss, the arrogant Vince Merrick (Ben Foster), isn’t making the job any easier. The two butt heads over Stanley’s latest find, Spanish b-ball phenom Bo Cruz (NBA star Juancho Hernangomez). On the court Bo is all unrefined power, used to hustling unsuspecting players for cash. Stanley sees greatness in him, but Bo’s troubled past raises alarms with Merrick and the 76ers management.
Convinced he has a winner, Stanley brings Bo to the United States. They form a bond based on their love of basketball and family, and together set out to prove that they have what it takes to succeed on the court and in life.
“Hustle” may be formulaic and easy to read, but it succeeds because of the chemistry between Sandler and Hernangomez. What begins as an odd couple pairing quickly becomes something more. This isn’t “Billy Madison” with a basketball, it’s a story of fathers and sons, of mentorship, one that provides uplift while avoiding the sentimentality that often shoehorns its way into movies like this.
Sandler’s performance is simple. It’s not as showy as his work in “Uncut Gems” or “Punch Drunk Love.” Instead, he infuses Stanley with world weariness tempered with resilience, to create a sincere portrait of a man and the game he loves. Screenwriters Taylor Materne and Will Fetters nail the seriocomic tone, feeding Sandler a string of self-depreciating one-liners that help define the character.
Director Jeremiah Zagar and cinematographer Zak Mulligan capture the excitement of the game with frenetic on-court camera work that heightens the drama and showcases the NBA action and player skills.
“Hustle” is an upbeat, predictable sports story but succeeds because of the stakes. You’ll know where this story is going (NO SPOILERS HERE) but it transcends the usual sports narrative because the characters have it all on the line. It’s not about the basketball, really, it’s more about the struggle of overcoming adversity and thus has a universal appeal even if you’ve never heard of an Alley-Oop.
The things Will (Ben Foster) does to protect his daughter Tom (Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie) in “Leave No Trace,” a new film by Debra Granik, director of “Winter’s Bone,” may be the things that endanger her.
When we first meet Will he is a vet with PTSD living way off the grid with Tom, his only daughter. Their home is a makeshift camp in an Oregon state public park. Home schooled, Tom has never experienced the outside world, and only knows what Will has taught her about life. “Where is your home?” she’s asked. “My dad,” comes the answer. When she is spotted in the park, social services are alerted. Father and daughter are taken in, housed and reintegrated into society. Tom drinks the new experiences in, making friends at school and church, as the realization sinks in that her father is not cut out for life around other people. “The same thing that’s wrong with you isn’t wrong with me,” she says. Hoping to regain his lost independence Will convinces Tom to hit the road in search of a more fulfilling life.
The questions at the heart of “Leave No Trace” are based on whether or not Will is a good father. Is he doing what is right for Tom? Their needs are so different, is he self-serving, prioritizing his needs over hers? The answers lie in Granik’s beautifully told story about the connections between people and the value of relationships.
Much of the film’s power comes from the lead performances. Foster is more reserved here, less bug-eyed and edgy, than we’ve seen him in the past. His take on Will is gentle with a deep reservoir of pain that bubbles just below the surface. It’s formidable stuff equalled by newcomer Harcourt McKenzie. Granik has an eye for casting, discovering Vera Farmiga in “Down to the Bone” and Jennifer Lawrence in “Winter’s Bone,” and here she does it again. The young New Zealand actress gives Tom empathy and wide-eyed innocence mixed with curiosity. She is never less than natural and never less than believable.
“Leave No Trace” is an emotionally potent story about finding a path in life, even if it differs from the ones you love.
When you think of Christian Bale what picture do you conjure up in your mind’s eye? Is it as American Psycho’s square-jawed investment banker Patrick Bateman? Or is it as the gaunt whisper of a man from The Machinist? Perhaps it’s as 3:10 to Yuma’s scruffy cowboy Dan Evans or the cowled Caped Crusader of the Batman films.
The point is Bale recreates himself from film to film. “It’s helpful not to look like yourself,” he recently told The Guardian. “If I look in the mirror and go, ‘Ah, that doesn’t look like me,’ that’s helpful.”
He could make a fortune playing superheroes in action movies but instead chooses to shake things up. Since his breakthrough performance in 1987’s Empire of the Sun, he has been a chameleon, losing 60 pounds to play the skeletal lead in The Machinist and gaining a beer gut and a combover for his role in American Hustle.
Creating the “Olympian physique” of serial killer Patrick Bateman in American Psycho took some discipline. “I’m English,” he said, “we don’t have many gyms around. We’d rather go to a pub instead.” A trainer and a protein diet took off the pounds.
As boxer and former drug addict Dicky Ecklund in The Fighter he dropped 30 pounds and used makeup and prosthetics to age himself. How did he lose the weight? “Usually I always say, ‘Oh, I do a lot of coke whenever I lose weight.’ I’m not sure if it’s so funny for this movie, to say that.” In reality he trained with the real-life Ecklund and boxed the pounds off.
In Velvet Goldmine he plays a London journalist looking into the life and faked death of glam rock singer Brian Slade (Jonathan Rhys Meyers). Once again he had to physically transform, but not in the traditional way.
When his mom saw that he was working out and running at 6 a.m. she said, “Christian, what are you doing? You’re doing a film about sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll. Why don’t you do it the way they did it? They weren’t out running. They drank a helluva lot and lived unhealthily.” “I took that to heart,” he said.
This weekend he appears in Hostiles as the elaborately moustachioed Joseph J. Blocker, an 1892-era U.S. Army captain approaching retirement, grappling with the anguish and regret that has scarred his soul. The impressive ’stache may be his biggest physical transformation for this role — the AV Club joked “Christian Bale’s moustache is the best thing about Hostiles” — but he says the biggest change here was spiritual.
To create the character’s contemplative demeanour he spent a lot of time “sitting in a room quietly staring at a wall.” He says he likes to get as “distant as possible” from his own personality. Imagining Blocker’s life journey before filming allowed him to internalize the character and “feel like you’re trying very hard by the time you get to be working.”
Next up for Bale is the biopic Backseat. He shaved his head and packed on pounds — “I’ve just been eating a lot of pies,” he says — to play former U.S. vice-president Dick Cheney. “I’ve got to stop doing it,” says the 43-year-old actor of the extreme weight gain. “I suspect it’s going to take longer to get this off.”
“Hostiles,” the new Christian Bale drama, is a period piece with a potent message for today. With a nod to the John Wayne classic “The Searchers,” it’s a sombre tale of a man who must confront his deeply held racism.
Set in 1892, Bale plays Joseph J. Blocker, a U.S. Army captain approaching retirement; soul darkened by a career spent warring with indigenous peoples. He’s lost many of his men at the hands of his enemy, seen his people butchered and scalped. In return he turned battlegrounds into killing fields soaked in blood.
Under orders he reluctantly does one last official job before riding off into the sunset. His commanding officer (Stephen Lang) gives him a choice, escort an old enemy, Cheyenne war chief Yellow Hawk (Wes Studi) now dying of cancer, from an remote Army gaol in New Mexico to the Chief’s home in the grasslands of Montana or face a court martial. Putting together a crew of his most trusted men, including his right hand man Sergeant Tommy Metz (Rory Cochrane), he begins the long, dangerous trek. A day or so in the come across Rosalie Quaid (Rosamund Pike), a widow whose family was slaughter right in front of her.
The physical journey is ripe with danger—they are ambushed by Comanche and must drop off a dangerous prisoner (Ben Foster) along the way—but the metaphysical journey is more interesting. As the days pass Blocker rediscovers his humanity; the man he was before he allowed hate to overwhelm.
Writer, director Scott Cooper’s film drips with gravitas. It is a serious minded look at the bigotry and brutality that fuelled the U.S. Army dealings with the frontier tribes while making room for Blocker’s redemptive arc. But for as beautiful as the movie is, it never feels authentic. Sure you can almost smell the campfires, blood and sweat. Cooper’s details are evocative of a time and place, it’s the relationships between the characters that don’t ring true. The anti-racism message is a powerful and important one but turned into a cliché in its execution. Underdeveloped indigenous characters, all stoicism and nobility, seem to exist only to aid Blocker’s attitude change, which makes the movie feel lopsided, tilted toward Blocker and his band of white saviours.
I think the movie mostly has its heart in the right place in terms of promoting tolerance but the reconciliation portrayed here feels off kilter. (SPOILER ALERT) By the time the end credits roll on this ponderous story, the white viewpoint of the storytelling is made all too clear in a conclusion that sees the two above the title stars come to the rescue of a young indigenous character.
“Hostiles” is a beautifully turned out film. Cooper fills each frame of this deliberately paced movie with a kind of bleak beauty. But with the elegance of the filmmaking comes frustration at the story’s missteps. Bale digs deep, grappling with the anguish and regret that has scarred Blocker’s soul but his transformation doesn’t seem real, or possible.
This weekend professor of religious iconology and symbology Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) returns to theatres in Inferno, the third movie in the Da Vinci Code franchise.
In 2006 the fictional Harvard prof made his big screen debut, uncovering the complicated personal life of Jesus Christ in The Da Vinci Code. Three years later he used his knowledge of symbology to unravel the mystery of a secret brotherhood called the Illuminati and thwart a terrorist act against the Vatican.
In between those two movies I received dozens of outraged emails, long tracts regarding Dan Brown’s books, the up-coming movie, The Illuminati and the veracity of the stories.
In response to the anxious folks who contacted me, concerned the film, which had not been released yet, would be a dangerous piece of anti-Catholic propaganda, I wrote a forward to my Angels and Demons review, pointing letter writers toward the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano. They described Angels and Demons as “harmless entertainment which hardly affects the genius and mystery of Christianity.” Their review noted it is filled with historical inaccuracies but went on to suggest that one could make a game of pointing out all of the film’s historical mistakes.
In other words, don’t take it seriously and you’ll have a good time. Despite the Vatican newspaper’s warm embrace, the film still ignited a firestorm of criticism from people upset about the story’s alleged anti-Catholic sentiments, “malicious myths” and churches being associated with scenes of murder.
Inferno sidesteps religious controversy with a tale of a deadly virus that threatens all of humanity, but cinema and religion have often made for uncomfortable pairings.
In 1999 the Catholic League denounced Dogma’s tale of two fallen angels (Ben Affleck and Matt Damon) trying to get back into heaven as “blasphemy.” More recently uproar erupted over Darren Aronofsky’s unorthodox take on the story of Noah. Jerry Johnson, president of the National Religious Broadcasters, loudly objected to the film’s “insertion of the extremist environmental agenda.”
Perhaps the most controversial religious film ever was The Devils, based on Aldous Huxley’s nonfiction book The Devils of Loudun. Years before Ken Russell made the movie, a filmmaker approached Huxley wanting to turn the story of a radical 17th century French Catholic priest accused of witchcraft and burned at the stake, into a film. Huxley said, ‘Don’t do it. Don’t make a movie out of this.’ He thought there was no way the story could be presented in an entertaining way without short-circuiting people’s minds. Turns out maybe he was right.
Forty-five years after its release Russell’s film is little seen but much talked about. Banned, censored and still unavailable in its complete form on Blu-Ray, the movie’s graphic church orgy offended many—and was cut to pieces and removed by censors—but it’s more than shock and titillation. It’s a film that makes a serious statement about the struggle between church and state but does so in an entertaining and provocative way.
Lots of movies contain violence or sex or religion, but Russell mixed all three together in one toxic cocktail. If released today The Devils may not inspire riots in the streets, as it did in 1971, but if presented in its complete form the following indignation would make the Angels and Demons protests seem tame.
A better title for “Inferno,” the latest big screen exploits of symbology professor Robert Langdon, might have been “The Da Vinci Code: This Time it’s Personal.” Not only must Langdon, once again in the form of Tom Hanks, confront an old love but he also must dig deep into his shattered memory to piece together the clues of his greatest mystery ever.
Or something like that.
The convoluted story begins with bioengineer and billionaire Bertrand Zobrist (Ben Foster) spewing his extreme theories on the planet’s problems. “Every ill on earth can be traced back to overpopulation,” he says. In the space of just twenty four hours Zobrist drops out of the picture, and Langdon is found disoriented and put under the care of Dr. Sienna Brooks (Felicity Jones). “What am I doing in Florence?” he asks. Suffering from retrograde amnesia and terrifying visions of a hellish nature, people with heads twisted back to front, seas of fire, pools of blood and serpents, he struggles to remember the events of the last forty-eight hours.
With the help of Brooks he goes on the run from a determined assassin (Ana Ularu) and the World Health Organization until he can gather the clues that will lead him to the Inferno Virus, a plague planted by Zobrist to cull the world’s population by half. “Humanity is the disease,” he cackles, “Inferno is the cure.”
Add in close calls, narrow escapes and clues hidden in Italian antiquities and you have “Inferno,” the thriller with no clue how to be thrilling. Instead it’s two hours of exposition, a lesson in Botticelli and Dante. Whatever thrills there were to be mined from David Koepp’s script are blunted by director Ron Howard’s habit of showing and telling clues and info over and over, not trusting the viewer to be able to follow along. With convoluted clues and lots of Italian names and places to keep track of “Inferno” repeats information ad nauseam.
This is the third time Hanks has played Langdon but in the fullness of time I don’t think we’ll look back on the symbologist as the actor’s most memorable character. He carries the movies, which have made hundreds of millions of dollars, but he’s less a character then he is an exposition machine, an explainer of obscure history, a purveyor of aha moments. Hanks is a charmer, but he’s done in trying to wade through the movie’s scripting mire.
Sharing the screen is Jones, soon to be seen in “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.” As Dr. Brooks she is Langdon’s intellectual match and one of the dual engines that keeps the story plodding along, but spends most of the film nodding in agreement to Langdon’s sudden, remarkable realisations.
As the villain Foster’s few appearances—he’s peppered throughout usually appearing in video clips, is further proof that Hollywood doesn’t know what to do with this talented actor.
More fun is Irrfan Khan as the calm, cool and collected head of a mysterious group that manages risks for high profile clients. He’s deadly, duplicitous and James Bond villain suave.
The obvious joke here is that “Inferno” is clueless. But it’s not, it’s overstuffed with clues, just not thrills.
The real stars of the new neo-western “Hell or High Water” aren’t the top line cast, Chris Pine, Ben Foster and Jeff Bridges. All are terrific, but the main attractions are the Fast Cash and Debt Relief signs that dot the West Texas landscape. They’re the reason we’re here and the engine that propels this story of outlaws, buddies and banks.
Pine plays Toby, a divorced father of two with a plan to make a better life for his kids. “I’ve been poor my whole life,” says Toby (Pine). “It’s like a disease passed from generation to generation. My parents their parents before them. It becomes a sickness. But not my boys.” With his estranged brother Tanner (Foster), an ex-convict ripe with attitude and anger, he plans a series of robberies to get some old fashioned Texas-style justice against the Texas Midlands Banks who loaned their mother just enough money to keep her in debt for the rest of her short life. They are robbing hoods that steal from the rich, the banks, to give to the poor, themselves. “To see you boys pay the banks back with their own money,” says their attorney. “It doesn’t get much more Texan than that.”
Between them and their revenge is Texas Ranger Marcus (Bridges), a grizzled veteran just weeks away from retirement. “Did you hear about them bank robberies,” says his half-Comanche partner Alberto (Gil Birmingham),” we might get to have some fun before they send you off to the rocking chair.”
Echoes of the Coen brothers ricochet throughout “Hell or High Water.” Aside from Coen regular Bridges, the movie exists in an amoral universe populated by down-on-their-heels types, done in either by poor life decisions, circumstance, age or temperament. English director David Mackenzie places these characters amid sun bleached landscapes and the hardened faces of citizens asserting their Second Amendment rights. It feels like the Coen Brothers but only because Joel and Ethan has visited this nihilistic comedy territory several times before. Mackenzie hasn’t simply made “No Country For Old Men Lite,” he’s combined interesting characters with a languid pace that apes the speed of life in West Texas to create a potent portrait of a time and place.
Set against the backdrop of West Texas’s perpetual economic downturn and those ever-present Fast cash signs, it’s a story not just about the four men but the circumstance that pitted them against one another.
“Hell or High Water” is two buddy movies in one. As one of the brothers Foster is reliable in his familiar man-on-the-edge role, but it is Pine who impresses. He underplays Toby, never doing more than he has to and avoiding the theatrics of his “Star Trek” films. It’s a career best performance that shows there is more to him than larger-than-life franchise work.
As the heavy-breathing lion in winter Bridges brings both gravitas and a light touch. His skill as a Ranger is evident but so is his offbeat sensibility. “Now that looks like a man who could foreclose on a house,” he says when meeting a recently robbed bank manager. It’s a throwaway line but Bridges brings it to life in a way that made me wonder if there is a more comfortable presence on screen than Bridges? He is matched in ease and charm by Birmingham who is a perfect foil for Bridges.
With its unhurried, deliberate pace Nick Cave’s suitably moody score and Mackenzie’s eye for detail “Hell or High Water” is more than a stop-gap between Coen Brothers neo westerns, it’s one of the most richly satisfying movies of the year so far.
