Richard Attenborough
15 connections found
View:
Connections, in both directions
Frequently, race-issue films act as if black victims of racism don’t matter at all; Richard Attenborough’s Cry Freedom (1987), about South African leader Stephen Biko, is focused almost entirely on Kevin Kline’s fleeing journalist.
Based on the bestest-seller by Kathryn Stockett, The Help joins Glory , Cry Freedom , Driving Miss Daisy , and many other noble adaptations in filtering the black experience through the white experience, but credit Stockett (and the film) for conceiving a sneaky end-around.
It's also familiar because Hollywood stories of racism usually skew to the white character leading the charge against injustice (Mississippi Burning, Glory, Cry Freedom).
But this performance is more than a skin-deep portrayal; it is a full-bodied portrait, and it’s another likely best-actor trophy-taker that reminded me of Ben Kingsley’s turn in “Gandhi.”
I’ve been a sucker for creepy-doll flicks ever since that ventriloquists’ dummy from Magic put its unblinking spell on me back in 1978.
It's how you get Cry Freedom, a thriller about Steve Biko (Denzel Washington) that mostly locks Biko into flashbacks while a white journalist (Kevin Kline) tries to flee apartheid-era South Africa; a movie about the death of Medgar Evers that's focused on his assassin; Steven Spielberg legislative historical dramas about white men fighting over who owns black people and what it means to do so.
Films about British military flops are not a rarity, with A Bridge Too Far, Zulu and Gallipoli among the best, but Dunkirk likewise encapsulates the heroic aspect to defeat in both our real and myth-making cinematic history.
By making a big and bold tentpole war movie in the mold of The Longest Day or A Bridge Too Far, told about a battle or campaign and not a character-centered story using the battle as thrilling backdrop, Nolan left himself no escape hatch.
Julian Cook in “A Bridge Too Far” was a kind of Robert Redfordish character, so cast Robert Redford in the brief part, and let sheer star-power steam over the five-minute-and-done performance.
Criminally under-represented in the annals of movie history, the wartime evacuation of Dunkirk has been crying out for a classic film interpretation to rank alongside genre leaders The Longest Day, A Bridge Too Far and Saving Private Ryan.
"Zack Snyder's Justice League" also happens to be four hours long, making it slightly shorter than 1963's "Cleopatra," and about an hour longer than 1982's "Gandhi."
But this approach makes us laugh at these comical figures, rather than be truly unsettled by any genuine, inner ugliness—think John Gielgud as the obliviously racist Lord Irwin in Attenborough’s Gandhi.
What comes out of all this is an earnestly produced potboiler version of A Chorus Line, with dry humping.
But then you notice that the stars are Jim Sturgess (Across the Universe) and Kate Beckinsale (Underworld), which is certainly interesting enough to make one look a little closer, and note that the supporting cast includes people like Michael Caine (Get Carter), Ben Kingsley (Gandhi), Sinead Cusack (V for Vendetta), Brendan Gleeson (28 Days Later), Jason Flemyng (Below), and David Thewlis (The Big Lebowski) … and if you’re any sort of film fan, you then peer in for an even closer look.
Corruption, murder and civil war in Africa at the hands of rebels/international companies/governments can make compelling viewing in the hands of the right film maker (Cry Freedom, Hotel Rwanda and The Constant Gardener, etc).
Regardless of how well the story is told, there's always something slightly suspicious about using a white man as a vehicle to examine the struggle of another culture; remember the ill-fated "Cry Freedom," in which the experiences of South African legend Steven Biko were shown through the eyes of a white English journalist?
The director Sam Mendes, fresh from two Bond films, has learned from A Bridge Too Far and The Thin Red Line the value of sprinkling recognisable actors among the khaki greens of a war movie.
A far cry from such tame war movies as A Bridge Too Far and yes, in comparison, even Saving Private Ryan, this controversial film dramatizes a failed 1993 U. N. peacekeeping operation undertaken by U.S. forces in Somalia.
This isn't, after all, a comprehensive bio-drama like Richard Attenborough's Chaplin.
Downey goes full black, or at least Kirk’s interpretation of such, and the result is perhaps the most complete comic transformation since he put on the wig and makeup as the Little Tramp in Chaplin (which gets hysterically referenced here.)
In 2008, Lionsgate re-released Chaplin for its 15th anniversary, and probably to cash in on current Downey fever (with his justly celebrated parts in this year's Iron Man and Tropic Thunder ).