To say that Michael McGowan’s One Week suffered from the wrong movie/wrong time syndrome would be an understatement. Much like the beautiful movie Walk The Line, Joaquin Phoenix’s performance and the film were overshadowed by Jamie Foxx’s Ray, which came out a year earlier. From most critics’ perspectives, Ray was a slightly better movie. While Phoenix received a Best Actor Academy Award nomination, there was no chance he would win it because Foxx won the award a year before. The Academy wasn’t going to reward essentially the same movie with a nearly identical lead performance. The unfortunate part was that these movies were based on legendary actors (Johnny Cash in Walk The Line, Ray Charles in Ray), and each actor portrayed each man correctly.
Category Archives: Drama
About Last Night (1986)
I would have seen it years ago if I had been made aware of how great Edward Zwick’s movie was. I had always known About Last Night was an 80’s classic, but I associated it with cheesy teenage comedies like The Breakfast Club, St. Elmo’s Fire, and Pretty in Pink. And while those movies have a certain charm, I put them all into the same category. By association, I also classified About Last Night with those movies because of the stars Rob Lowe and Demi Moore. Over time, I, for whatever reason, associated the plot with two people who met, had a wild night of sex, and then spent the rest of the movie regretting that decision. This story didn’t interest me either. I’ve seen that movie play out hundreds of times on the screen. Had I not stumbled upon About Last Night on cable one night, I might never have seen it. Had I not, I may have forever missed out on a good movie.
Sherrybaby (2006)
Maggie Gyllenhaal demonstrates her range as an actress in the little-known but critically acclaimed Sherrybaby. Gyllenhaal is a household name by now, though she hasn’t been in too many blockbuster movies. In fact, as of 2011, her only film that earned more than $75 million at the box office was The Dark Knight, which would have made its money regardless of whether she had been in it. This statement doesn’t mean to take anything away from Gyllenhaal. She is a very talented actress and will be a Hollywood A-lister for the next decade and more. However, in the movies I have seen her in thus far (namely Stranger Than Fiction, Crazy Heart, The Dark Knight), I’ve seen her play the same sweet girl next store who is likable, urns heads, and puts the needs of others before her. There’s always a fear that if an actor repeatedly plays the same character, she will be typecast and find it difficult to break that mold. Seeing Gyllenhaal star as the lead character in Sherrybaby showed me that she has the range and won’t allow herself to get pigeonholed into that same sweet character we’re accustomed to seeing her in.
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (2008)
If you aren’t in the mood for a heavy-hitting movie, stay away from Mark Herman’s 2008 World War II-based drama The Boy In the Striped Pajamas. It stars newcomer Asa Butterfield (The Wolfman, Nanny McPhee Returns) as eight-year-old Bruno, the son of a predominant Nazi official. Despite his protests, he is forced to move from the comforts of his Berlin home to the outskirts of the country so that his father can be closer to the concentration camps that he has been a part of organizing and running.
The Green Mile (1999)
The Green Mile was Frank Darabont’s (The Mist, The Majestic) first movie following The Shawshank Redemption, a riveting prison movie that has found a permanent spot on many critics and movie fan’s top ten of all-time lists. The expectations were high for The Green Mile, if not altogether unrealistic. Like The Shawshank Redemption, this movie was set almost exclusively in prison. Like The Shawshank Redemption, this movie was based on a Stephen King novel. Like The Shawshank Redemption, this movie was set somewhere in middle America, reasonably close to the time frame of World War I, though neither of these movies ever really talks about any war. The Green Mile was set in 1932, while The Shawshank Redemption was set in 1946. The expectations for The Green Mile might have been unrealistic. I say this because of the reasons mentioned above, but also because it starred Tom Hanks (Forrest Gump, Philadelphia), Hollywood’s #1 leading man at the time, who was fresh off of receiving his 5th Academy Award Nomination for Best Actor after his performance in Saving Private Ryan. While The Green Mile is not as good as The Shawshank Redemption (my favorite film of all time, at the time of this review), it is still an incredible movie that everybody should see at least once.