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WALK THE LINE – Joaquin Phoenix, Reese Witherspoon

Walk the Line (2005)
Direction: James Mangold
Screenplay: Gill Dennis and James Mangold, from Johnny Cash’s The Man in Black and Cash: The Autobiography
Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Reese Witherspoon, Ginnifer Goodwin, Robert Patrick, Dallas Roberts
 

Reese Witherspoon, Joaquin Phoenix in Walk the Line
 

First of all, I must admit that before watching Walk the Line I knew nothing about Johnny Cash’s music. In fact, I used to think of Johnny Cash as a Las Vegas act in the style of Tony Bennett or Neil Diamond. If nothing else, James Mangold’s overlong and more than a tad melodramatic biopic — which he and Gill Dennis adapted from two Cash autobiographies — made me realize that Cash was a Nashville (not Vegas) act who became a [...]

CRASH – Sandra Bullock, Matt Dillon, Ryan Phillippe

Crash (2005)
Director: Paul Haggis
Screenplay: Paul Haggis and Bobby Moresco
Cast: Sandra Bullock, Don Cheadle, Matt Dillon, Jennifer Esposito, William Fichtner, Brendan Fraser, Terrence Howard, Chris ‘Ludacris’ Bridges, Thandie Newton, Ryan Phillippe, Larenz Tate, Michael Peña, Shaun Toub
 
Ryan Phillippe in Crash
 

Screenwriter Paul Haggis‘ multiple award-winning directorial début is set in a Los Angeles that is part Quentin Tarantino, part Paul Thomas Anderson, part Spike Lee, and part Bret Easton Ellis; it is also a surreal place that has precious little in common with the actual Southern California metropolis.
Crash is all about how the Angeleno boiling — definitely not melting — pot is about to explode at any minute. According to Haggis and co-screenwriter Bobby Moresco, Los Angeles denizens spend all [...]

KING KONG – Naomi Watts – d: Peter Jackson

King Kong (2005)
Direction: Peter Jackson
Screenplay: Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, and Peter Jackson; from Merian C. Cooper and Edgar Wallace’s story for the 1933 film
Cast: Naomi Watts, Jack Black, Adrien Brody, Thomas Kretschmann, Jamie Bell, Kyle Chandler, Colin Hanks, Andy Serkis, Craig Hall, Evan Parke
 

 

The biggest disappointment about Peter Jackson’s King Kong is that, despite all the p.r. regarding Jackson’s fascination with the Merian C. Cooper & Ernest B. Schoedsack 1933 horror classic, this latest remake is considerably closer in spirit — or lack thereof — to the 1976 Dino De Laurentiis production, with (heavy) touches of Jurassic Park and Raiders of the Lost Ark thrown in. In other words, the new King Kong is very much the sort of adventure [...]

MUNICH d: Steven Spielberg

Munich (2005)
Direction: Steven Spielberg
Screenplay: Tony Kushner and Eric Roth; from George Jonas’ book Vengeance: The True Story of an Israeli Counter-Terrorist Team
Cast: Eric Bana, Geoffrey Rush, Daniel Craig, Mathieu Kassovitz, Ciaran Hinds, Hanns Zischler, Ayelet Zurer, Michel Lonsdale, Gila Almagor, Mathieu Amalric, Moritz Bleibtreu, Marie-Josée Croze, Lynn Cohen, Omar Metwally, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi
 

Eric Bana, Daniel Craig, Ciaran Hinds, Hanns Zischler, Mathieu Kassovitz in Munich
 

Alternately intriguing and irritating, thought-provoking and banal, subtle and patronizing, the biggest surprise about Steven Spielberg’s Munich is that it — however grudgingly — works. The film, which Spielberg himself has referred to as "prayer for peace," follows five men contracted by Israel to avenge the massacre of that country’s athletes during the 1972 Olympic Games in [...]

MATCH POINT d: Woody Allen

Match Point (2005)
Direction and screenplay: Woody Allen
Cast: Scarlett Johansson, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Emily Mortimer, Matthew Goode, Brian Cox, Penelope Wilton
 

 

If Alfred Hitchcock were to direct a screenplay co-written by Nietzsche and Dostoevsky, and based on Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy, the result would be something like Woody Allen’s latest opus, Match Point. A dark fable about the vagaries of chance in a godless world, Allen’s aesthetically old-fashioned crime drama belies a haunting postmodern sensibility.
Set in London, the basic plot of Match Point follows certain key elements of Dreiser’s An American Tragedy: After experiencing the joys of wealth and high social standing (read: power), an ambitious petit bourgeois resorts to whatever it takes to maintain his newfound status. Between the [...]

MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA – Ziyi Zhang, Gong Li, Michelle Yeoh

Memoirs of a Geisha (2005)
Direction: Rob Marshall
Screenplay: Robin Swicord; from Arthur Golden’s novel
Cast: Ziyi Zhang, Gong Li, Michelle Yeoh, Ken Watanabe, Koji Yakusho, Youki Kudoh, Mako, Tsai Chin
 

 

There are some movies that are released before their time. Only years or decades later, do they come to be appreciated. In the case Rob Marshall’s Memoirs of a Geisha, based on Arthur Golden’s bestseller about the life and love of a young geisha in pre-World War II Japan, it’s the other way around. It is a movie released after – way after — its time.
As long as its makers chopped off about a third of its 145-minute running time, Memoirs of a Geisha would have worked beautifully as a silent film, [...]

BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN d: Ang Lee

Brokeback Mountain (2005)
Direction: Ang Lee
Screenplay: Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana; from E. Annie Proulx’s short story
Cast: Heath Ledger, Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Williams, Anne Hathaway, Randy Quaid, Linda Cardellini, Kate Mara
 

 

Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain is without a doubt a culturally significant motion picture. The same-sex romantic drama has won numerous awards, has been discussed all over the media, and has been labeled "groundbreaking" by numerous film critics. Of course, the fact that those critics’ knowledge of film history only goes as far back as Revenge of the Sith should not be held against Lee’s film. Yet, except for a few touching moments in its second half Brokeback Mountain fails to become fully involving chiefly because its central relationship — between a [...]

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