Posts Tagged ‘Joel Edgerton’
Monday, June 26th, 2023
MASTER GARDENER is the latest from Paul Schrader, who I consider to be on a late career roll between FIRST REFORMED and THE CARD COUNTER. This one is thematically related to those, and Schrader has called the three of them his unintentional “Lonely Man Trilogy,” but the template goes all the way back to TAXI DRIVER and has been loosely repeated over and over again throughout his filmography. Which is one of the things I love about him.
This time the journal-writing weirdo narrator is Narvel Roth (Joel Edgerton, JANE GOT A GUN), the fastidious horticulturalist in charge of Gracewood Gardens, an estate in Louisiana (filmed at a former plantation). He’s very loyal to his aging heiress boss, Norma Haverhill (Sigourney Weaver, ABDUCTION) – including having sex with her on demand – so he does as she says when she instructs him to take on her troubled grand-niece Maya (Quintessa Swindell, BLACK ADAM) as an apprentice. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Devonte Hynes, Esai Morales, Jared Bankens, Joel Edgerton, Matt Mercurio, Paul Schrader, Quintessa Swindell, Sigourney Weaver
Posted in Reviews, Crime, Drama, Thriller | 8 Comments »
Monday, September 27th, 2021
THE GREEN KNIGHT was one of my adventures in mostly-empty Covid-era theater-going, but I’m always working on a million things at once and I didn’t finish the review until after it’s left most theaters and most people’s minds. And yet I continue, undaunted. (It’s on VOD now and comes to disc October 12th.)
It’s the latest from director David Lowery (PETE’S DRAGON, A GHOST STORY, THE OLD MAN & THE GUN), and it’s his weird arty take on a fantasy knight movie, released, as you would imagine, by A24. I enjoyed this at a mostly empty matinee, just as I did with pre-pandemic movies like 300: RISE OF AN EMPIRE, HERCULES and KING ARTHUR: LEGEND OF THE SWORD. But I don’t consider this to be in that same genre I call “fantasy sword guy movies,” and not just because he uses an ax. It’s different because the whole appeal of it is different. It’s more about deconstructing the things we expect from that genre, or at least finding a different angle on them, than reveling in them.
It’s based on an anonymous 14th-century poem called Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. And I tend to like movies based on anonymous poems, judging by the only two I can think of, BEOWULF and BEOWULF. I never heard of this one, but it has been adapted before, including as SWORD OF THE VALIANT, which I went ahead and watched afterward. And I certainly didn’t get this from the movie, but Sir Gawain (Dev Patel, CHAPPIE) is one of the members of King Arthur (Sean Harris, PROMETHEUS)’s Round Table. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: A24, Alicia Vikander, anonymous poems, Barry Keoghan, Cannon Films, Christmas, Cyrielle Clair, David Lowery, Dev Patel, Erin Kellyman, Joel Edgerton, John Rhys-Davies, King Arthur, Miles O'Keefe, Peter Cushing, Ralph Ineson, Sarita Choudhury, Sean Connery, Sean Harris, Sir Gawain, Trevor Howard
Posted in Fantasy/Swords, Reviews | 12 Comments »
Tuesday, April 24th, 2018
JANE GOT A GUN is a straight forward modern western, and a pretty good one. It doesn’t reinvent the genre, or have a new twist on it, other than to star Natalie Portman (STAR WARS I, II, III), who also produced it and fought to bring it back to life after the original director famously left on the first day of production.
I can see why she cared about it so much. It’s a good role for her, one she must’ve done alot of preparation for. She’s a much more natural western heroine than I pictured. Jane Hammond lives in a little house on a remote patch of land with a young daughter (Maisie McMaster). One day her husband Bill (Noah Emmerich, WINDTALKERS), who everybody calls “Ham,” comes home dying of a bullet wound. She does exactly what all movie people do in that situation – give him a bottle of liquor, pull the slug out with tongs, and most importantly DROP THE SLUG INTO A METAL BOWL – then chews him out, puts on a hat and a coat and goes out to take care of business.
Okay, I’m making that sound a little more badass than it is, because Jane’s no-fuckin-around demeanor makes it seem that way. She’s not going to get revenge or nothing, she’s actually going to drop the kid off at a friend’s house and then go beg her drunk ex-boyfriend to protect her from the Bishop Boys, the guys who shot Ham and who he says are coming for him. And for her. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Boyd Holbrook, Brian Duffield, Ewan McGregor, Gavin O'Connor, Joel Edgerton, Lynne Ramsay, Natalie Portman, Noah Emmerich
Posted in Reviews, Western | 7 Comments »
Tuesday, December 6th, 2016
LOVING is a pretty simple true story about something that should be pretty simple: two people are in love and having a baby and decide to get married and build a life together. Should be up to them to decide if that’s a good idea, you would think, but the trouble is that Richard Loving (Joel Edgerton, WARRIOR) is white and Mildred Jeter (Ruth Negga, THE SAMARITAN, WARCRAFT) is black, and in Virginia in 1958 it was illegal for them to get married.
Like same sex couples before we got marriage equality a few years back, they had to go somewhere else to get married (Washington DC), but back at home the cops kick in their door one night and arrest them. Richard gets bailed out but they won’t let him bail out Mildred. Wait to see the judge on Monday, they say, as if that’s a reasonable thing to ask a man whose pregnant wife is currently locked up in a cold cell for ludicrous reasons. They threaten to arrest him if he keeps trying to get her released.
The judge would make the Lovings do a year for this – for being married! – but they plea bargain. Instead they have to leave the state (their home, their property, their family, their jobs) and not come back together for 25 years. So, against their will, they go to raise their kid (soon kids, plural) in the city.
(Virginia: 13 electoral votes. DC: 3 votes starting in 1961.) (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: ACLU, Jeff Nichols, Joel Edgerton, Marton Csokas, Michael Shannon, Nick Kroll, racism, Ruth Negga
Posted in Drama, Reviews | 7 Comments »
Tuesday, June 7th, 2016
THE GIFT is a domestic stalker thriller that seems very familiar from the outset. Happy successful white couple Simon (Jason Bateman, SMOKIN’ ACES) and Robyn (Rebecca Hall, THE TOWN) buy a beautiful new house in a lovely new suburb. Simon has a promising job and possible Big Promotion. They’re trying to have a baby. They quickly make new friends at work and in the neighborhood and have those sophisticated adult dinner parties with the wine and what not that I have seen in movies but am not invited to. They have a dog.
And at the store they run into a guy Simon knew way back in high school. Joel Edgerton (WARRIOR) plays Gordon Moseley, a.k.a. Gordo, a.k.a. Gordo the Weirdo. Simon says he barely knew him, but the guy seems nice enough and anxious to welcome them to town (even if it’s weird that he shows up at their house with too many gifts) and they invite him over for dinner. And he keeps wanting to be their best friend. It’s awkward, but harmless. OR IS IT?
(Harmless I mean. There is no question that it’s awkward.) (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Allison Tolman, Busy Phillips, Jason Bateman, Joel Edgerton, Nash Edgerton, Rebecca Hall, Wendell Pierce
Posted in Reviews, Thriller | 11 Comments »
Monday, June 24th, 2013
I’m kinda late on writing this one up, not sure if it’s even playing anywhere anymore, but what are you gonna do.
THE GREAT GATSBY is the story of this rich guy that’s in love with a gal that’s already married. It turns out he only got rich to try to impress her ’cause when he first fell in love with her 5 years ago she found out he was, as he says, penniless, and married this other asshole, etc. Leonardo DiCaprio (THE QUICK AND THE DEAD) plays the rich guy, Gatsby, Carey Mulligan (DRIVE) plays his love interest Daisy Buchanan, and Joel Edgerton (ANIMAL KINGDOM) plays her husband Tommy. But the main character is actually Tobey Maguire as whatsisdick, Daisy’s weiner of a cousin. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: 3D, Baz Luhrmann, Carey Mulligan, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jason Clarke, Jay-Z, Joel Edgerton, Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire
Posted in Drama, Reviews | 29 Comments »
Thursday, January 10th, 2013
Okay, we were all horses pulling the Kathryn Bigelow bandwagon, right? We loved her for POINT BREAK and NEAR DARK, mostly. Also BLUE STEEL and STRANGE DAYS and all that. But did any of us ever predict Respectable Kathryn Bigelow would come about, and if so, did we guess how fuckin good that Bigelow would turn out to be? I sure didn’t.
The respect came for THE HURT LOCKER in 2008. It got the Oscar for best picture and she got best director, the only woman to receive that honor so far. It also had one of those career-exploding performances, the one that launched Jeremy Renner, at the time known mainly for playing Jeffrey Dahmer, into the guy who has two Oscar nominations and co-starred in big ass movies like THE AVENGERS and GHOST PROTOCOL and starred in THE BOURNE LEGACY and hosted Saturday Night Live and all this. I loved THE HURT LOCKER, which I saw as an ingeniously structured suspense thriller and character drama for its time that also worked as a deconstruction of many of our favorite action movie tropes. So I had high expectations for ZERO DARK THIRTY, and somehow it exceeded them.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: CIA, Edgar Ramirez, Frank Grillo, Harold Perrineau, James Gandolfini, Jason Clarke, Jennifer Ehle, Jeremy Strong, Jessica Chastain, Joel Edgerton, Kathryn Bigelow, Mark Boal, Mark Duplass, Scott Adkins
Posted in Drama, Reviews, Thriller | 203 Comments »
Friday, March 9th, 2012
Well, here’s the thing…
(get it?)
Let’s say you love John Carpenter’s THE THING so much you want to make a prequel to it explaining what led up to the dog running from the burnt up base. And you’re very careful to stay true to the tone and style of the 1982 movie, and to make all the little details match up. Then what do you call your movie?
Well, THE THING, of course. To mimic THE THING and take its place, like a Thing. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Joel Edgerton, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, premaquels
Posted in Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 100 Comments »
Wednesday, September 21st, 2011
I’m surprised it took this long for somebody to make a straight drama about mixed martial artists. It seems so obvious. It would inherently have all the same dramatic elements as a boxing movie (underdog reaching for the top, wife tired of seeing him beat up, society treating him as a dumb brute, then the fear of losing it all by a loss or an injury, all that) plus the novelty of an expanded repertoire of moves (kicks, chokes, armbars, throws, flying knees) and of being a popular newer sport that hasn’t been done to death in movies. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: fighting tournament, Gavin O'Connor, Joel Edgerton, MMA, Nick Nolte, post-action, Tom Hardy
Posted in Drama, Reviews | 28 Comments »
Every once in a while there’s enough goings on in this type of movies we love that it’s worth a bunch of quick mentions in one post, to make sure everybody is up-to-date. So here is the rundown in the form of a convenient numbered list.
