Deranged. Aggressive. Exorbitant. Implausible. Unhinged. Riveting. Adrenaline pumping. Wildly entertaining. Worthwhile Unhinged. Many adjectives describe Russell Crowe’s (Boy Erased, A Beautiful Mind), although words that would not be included would be well-crafted, consistent, or coherent. It’s a diverting 90-minute escape from the cruel reality of 2020, and it’s for that reason alone that I recommend it more than I would during a typical year. Starting with the film’s first scene, director Derrick Borte (American Dreamer, London Town) shows you the world he’s created around his leading character while setting the mood for what will be a relentless ride.
Category Archives: Russell Crowe
Fathers and Daughters (2016)
Sometimes, when I’m at home looking for something to watch, I’ll say an actor’s name to my voice-activated remote control. After recently rewatching and reviewing 3:10 to Yuma, I was interested in seeing what other Russell Crowe (Gladiator, Cinderella Man) movies I might be interested in rewatching or viewing for the first time. When I saw Fathers and Daughters, a movie I had never heard of before, I decided to play the trailer. Within 30 seconds, I stopped the trailer. I had successfully been teased enough to want to watch the movie without knowing more about it. I didn’t need to read any reviews, which may have turned me off. I saw it was a relationship movie that revolved around a past traumatic event that involved Crowe. That was all I needed.
3:10 to Yuma (2007)
The Western genre is a dying one. Gone are the days of John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, et al., and the era of Westerns in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. Once a staple in American cinema, those films are now few and far between. Years could pass before a good Western connects with critics and audiences alike. Unforgiven reset the standard in 1992, connecting with critics and audiences alike while earning nine Oscar nominations and taking home four, most notably for Best Picture. Others have followed. Appaloosa, Hostiles, True Grit, Tombstone, and Open Range were big-budget movies that hit the screen with reckless aggression. True Grit was the most successful with the critics (10 Oscar nominations, but no wins), but even the success of this film fails when compared to Unforgiven.
Boy Erased (2018)
After two movies, the jury is still out on Joel Edgerton as a director. After catching fire with 2015’s surprise hit The Gift, Edgerton tried his hand with material based on a true story, adapting and writing the screenplay for Garrard Conley’s novel Boy Erased. To be perfectly transparent, I had extremely high expectations for this film. This was actually a novel that I read a couple of years ago, well before I knew that a film based on the story was in the process. I enjoyed the novel, and when I saw that the cast was to include Edgerton, Lucas Hedges, Nicole Kidman, Russell Crowe and that it was already being mentioned in Oscar discussions before it was released, I was more than excited. However, I knew that the topic of this film was a controversial one. When I read the book, I don’t think that I was dissatisfied with the ending, but one that I felt was rushed quite a bit. Boy Erased was definitely one of my ten most anticipated films of the year. And like a few others in my ten most anticipated films of the year (namely First Man), it completely failed to impress. A film that should have been ripe with emotion left me completely unaffected the entire time.
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The Nice Guys (2016)
“Nice Guys Finish Last.” That’s a saying we’ve all heard before. The grunge band Green Day wrote an iconic song about it in the mid-1990s. I’ll alter the quote a little in saying that The Nice Guys finishes last. This was not my favorite movie. I knew that I would probably feel this way going into the film, but I was willing to sacrifice the two hours because it starred two of my favorite actors in Ryan Gosling (Blue Valentine, Drive) and Russell Crowe (Gladiator, A Beautiful Mind). Despite its 90% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, I had no faith in this movie. Its style wasn’t my favorite. Shane Black (Iron Man 3, Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang) style for directing this movie was similar to that of Joel and Ethan Coen in that it blended comedy, drama, action, dark comedy, crime (both organized and unorganized), and even small bits of horror to try to come up with a unique idea. Was The Nice Guys a unique idea? No, not really?
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