Glory (1989)
Directed by Edward Zwick
Robert Gould Shaw leads the US Civil War's first all-black volunteer company, fighting prejudices of both his own Union army and the Confederates.
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What critics compared Glory to
Screenwriter Steven Knight (“Eastern Promises”) and director Edward Zwick (“Glory”) make the U.S. vs. U.S.S.R. rivalry the film’s central focus.
Directed by Oscar-winner Edward Zwick (Glory, The Last Samurai), Pawn Sacrifice is a very handsome and visually well-crafted addition to the biopic genre, thanks in no small part to the combined efforts of Zwick and director of photography Bradford Young ( Selma ).
Going back, Zwick first struck gold with Glory (1989), an amazing combination of war movie, true story, and a plea for racial tolerance.
Many of his best-known works—Glory, The Last Samurai, and Love and Other Drugs—are biopics of one kind or another, telling inspirational and dramatic tales of history crammed into neat three-act plot structures.
Great effort went into making “Pawn Sacrifice,” about chess beast Bobby Fischer (Tobey Maguire), into a powerfully bland biopic — the kind of barndoor broad, montage- and pop hits-heavy crowd-pleaser that is “Glory” and “The Last Samurai” director Edward Zwick’s stock in trade.
That approach, from director Ed Zwick (“Glory”) and screenwriter Steven Knight (“Locke”), is helped immeasurably by the bravura performance of Tobey Maguire as Fischer.
These are among many moments reminiscent from past slavery productions, but "12 Years a Slave" does not engross to the level of seeing "Roots" for the first time, nor does it possess the grace or cinematography of the caliber of "Glory."
There’s deep violence in Northup’s violin’s snapped strings, not to mention the worst whipping scene ever captured on film—not even Denzel Washington’s runaway-slave whipping in “Glory” comes close.
Structurally, that’s not entirely unlike the dramatic problem you also find in films like Glory, which seem to think that the evils of prejudice would only be recognizable when viewed by a character introduced to these injustices for the first time.
Hollywood has produced plenty of historical dramas about race and racism (many dominated by white protagonists or major characters) from The Help to Glory.
The director, Edward Zwick ("Legends of the Fall," "Courage Under Fire," "Glory"), makes an admirable effort to combine a quiet, spiritual serenity with a harsh, worldly reality, and he almost succeeds.
With no pretensions of approaching Kurusawa’s masterful The Last Samurai or Zhang Yimou’s visually dazzling Hero, Edward Zwick’s epic sincerely takes on themes previously explored in Glory.
The film is very reminiscent of director Edward Zwick's earlier work entitled "Glory" in which the all black 54th regiment of Massachusetts valiantly sacrifices their lives at Fort Wagner during the Civil War.
Zwick�s Glory is also reminisced with the new conscripts' first battle test in the forest and someone to hold onto Algren�s writings before a suicidal final attack.
If not quite up to the standard of 1989's "Glory" -- director Edward Zwick's last historical war epic -- the film is nonetheless filled with exhilarating, gruesomely beautiful battle sequences and stylish nods to the great Kurosawa films, especially "Seven Samurai," "Yojimbo" and "Ran."
Director Edward Zwick has always impressed me with his ability to handle battlefield drama with such films as his epic “Glory” and more introspective “Courage Under Fire.”
Like "Glory," the film about the African-American fighting men of the Civil War that was really about Matthew Broderick's character becoming a more liberal humanitarian, "The Help" positions Stone's character — the budding journalist who undertakes a clandestine book project gathering stories from the African-American housekeepers and child-raisers of Jackson — front and center.
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).
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There's Epic Zwick, the guy who makes films like "Glory" and "Legends Of The Fall" and "The Last Samurai" and "Defiance."
In film, Zwick has mostly occupied himself with epic storytelling such as "Legends of the Fall," "Glory" and "Blood Diamond," with the romance of his 1986 rom-com "About Last Night" really just a distant (and not that great) memory.
A Stanley Kramer for our times, director Edward Zwick has spent much of his career raising social consciousnessabout war (Glory, Courage Under Fire, Defiance), terrorism (The Siege), and human exploitation (Blood Diamond)while lowering pulses.
Edward Zwick, the man who brought us films like Glory, Blood Diamond, The Last Samurai and Defiance, brings us Love And Other Drugs, a vast departure from the type of films we usually see from him.
For all its faults, 2008's Defiance was a solid, if solemn, war movie — a reminder of the Edward Zwick who made Glory back in 1989, before he went down the overwrought potboiler trail with dreck like The Last Samurai and Blood Diamond.
Realizing what a tough sell an ironic satire about the pharmaceutical industry would be as a feature film, co-writer/director Ed Zwick ("Glory," "Blood Diamond") has made the move to pare it with a bog standard dramatic romance plot which quickly pushes everything else out of the way to take over the film.
Similar to seeing a young Denzel Washington cry a single tear in Glory (1989), everyone in the audience can tell that this young man has a very bright future.
This is an epic on the scale of Gone With the Wind (1939) or Glory (1989).
There was hope, but not for long -- Edward Zwick, following his own Man-Friday formula from Glory and The Last Samurai, has decided that that the plight of the Other can only be seen through an Aryan presence, hence the film in a New York minute goes from Hounsou's plight as a family man caught in the bestial upheavals of Sierra Leone to the spurious spiritual awakening of greedy, lily-white scoundrel Leonardo DiCaprio, who duly (and dully) learns to be a good man in Africa while trying to fuck Oscar-bait staple Jennifer Connelly.
Skip it: Director Edward Zwick's ("Glory") many action sequences are well done but often slip into cliché, with several tearful exchanges conveniently tucked in between the gunfire.
As directed by Edward Zwick, the "thirtysomething" co-creator who moved on to films great ("Glory"), good ("The Last Samurai"), and neither ("The Siege"), "Blood Diamond" wears both its social conscience and its Hollywood calculation on its sleeve.
Director Edward Zwick ("Last Samurai," "Glory"), who enjoys hanging messages on his big-budget epics, put this one together from recent headlines, and Leonardo DiCaprio (who seems to be in every other big-budget movie these days), the dynamic Djimon Hounsou, and the multitalented Jennifer Connelly star.
Director Edward Zwick ("Glory," "The Last Samurai") packs an incredible amount of information into the first two hours of "Blood Diamond," which was filmed in South Africa and captures with vivid, kinetic energy the beauty of the African countryside, the cultural mash-ups of its cities and the rank horror of its myriad bloody wars, here put firmly in the context of 300 years of colonization and exploitation.
Edward Zwick ("Glory"/"Leaving Normal"/"The Siege") directs a problematic thriller that left enough on the table to be cheered for its effort in recognizing that things are not right in Africa, but the well-intentioned action flick never quite overcomes its mindless blockbuster mentality and with being so sanctimoniously liberal.
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Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly called Spielberg "our most spectacular poet of war," which is not a label anyone applied to Kubrick or Oliver Stone or Coppola -- or even Edward Zwick, whose Glory and Courage Under Fire captured the moral complexity of war far more effectively than anything in Saving Private Ryan.
(Century 16, Century 12) Director Edward Zwick and composer James Horner, the team that so successfully set off the emotional fireworks in "Glory," deliver sweeping images and an overblown musical score that fail to elevate this western to anything other than an epic horse opera.
Such people, one imagines, include director Edward Zwick, he of television's "thirtysomething" and the movie "Glory."
Director Zwick of Glory and thirtysomething fame somehow âfalls on the legendâ this time around.
"Legends of the Fall" is big, bombastic and in the hands of director Edward Zwick ("Glory"), a bit much.
The latest offering from Edward Zwick, the director of Glory , is the kind of movie that doesn't require much effort to surrender to and enjoy.