THE SWEET HEREAFTER – Ian Holm, Sarah Polley
The Sweet Hereafter (1997)
Direction: Atom Egoyan
Screenplay: Atom Egoyan; from Russell Banks’ novel
Cast: Ian Holm, Sarah Polley, Bruce Greenwood, Tom McCamus, Gabrielle Rose, Alberta Watson, Caerthan Banks, Maury Chaykin
Ian Holm, Sarah Polley in The Sweet Hereafter
By Dan Schneider of Cosmoetica:
Some films are well crafted but lifeless. Others err by believing they can too readily make an audience care for a character just by having a traumatic situation beset him early on. The Sweet Hereafter, a 1997 drama by Canadian director and screenwriter Atom Egoyan, suffers from both maladies. It’s not a bad film, but it certainly is not a great film, either — much less ‘the best film of the year’ as Los Angeles Times [...]
by Dan Schneider | September 2, 2009
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Tags: Atom Egoyan, Ian Holm, Oscar 1997, Oscar Movies, Psychological Drama, Russell Banks, Sarah Polley, The Sweet Hereafter
THE SWEET HEREAFTER d: Atom Egoyan
THE SWEET HEREAFTER Review: Part I
Nichole is also hamhandedly used as a symbol when she recites Robert Browning’s poem The Pied Piper of Hamelin. The idea of lost children is so obvious in The Sweet Hereafter that the reason Egoyan adds this touch is bewildering, save that he — bizarrely — felt the loss wasn’t evident enough. That begs the question of just how confident Egoyan was in Banks’ original work, for the poem is only one of many elements in the film that are supposed to be significantly different from the book.
Another side story focuses — of course — on the lone man in town, Billy Ansell, who, [...]
by Dan Schneider | September 2, 2009
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Tags: Atom Egoyan, Bruce Greenwood, DVDs, Film Reviews, Ian Holm, Russell Banks, Sarah Polley, The Sweet Hereafter
AFFLICTION – Nick Nolte – d: Paul Schrader
Affliction (1998)
Direction: Paul Schrader
Screenplay: Paul Schrader, from Russell Banks’ novel
Cast: Nick Nolte, Sissy Spacek, James Coburn, Willem Dafoe, Mary Beth Hurt, Jim True, Marian Seldes
Set in a snowy New England town, Affliction could have been an excellent study of a dysfunctional family’s cycle of violence at a time of rapid socioeconomic changes. Unfortunately, Paul Schrader’s film doesn’t quite reach those heights. Based on a novel by Russell Banks (who also penned the equally snowy The Sweet Hereafter), Schrader’s film adaptation relies on a realistic wintry atmosphere (courtesy of cinematographer Paul Sarossy) to convey the deadness inside the heart of the story’s protagonist, the angst-ridden, small-town sheriff Wade Whitehouse (Nick Nolte). The middle-aged Wade is intent on [...]
by Andre Soares | October 19, 2004
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Tags: Affliction, Film Reviews, James Coburn, Mary Beth Hurt, Nick Nolte, Oscar 1998, Oscar Movies, Paul Schrader, Russell Banks, Sissy Spacek, Willem Dafoe
