Philadelphia (1993)
Directed by Jonathan Demme
Two competing lawyers join forces to sue a prestigious law firm for AIDS discrimination. As their unlikely friendship develops, their courage overcomes the prejudice and corruption of their powerful adversaries.
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What critics compared Philadelphia to
At the same time, Dallas Buyers Club also deserves credit for being the first Hollywood film with significant LGBTQ themes since Brokeback Mountain in 2005, and the first significant AIDS film since Philadelphia in 1993.
Woodroof’s transformation from hostile bigot to understanding, sympathetic brother to the gay community stretches back to Jonathan Demme’s twenty-year old “Philadelphia,” in which the lawyer played by Denzel Washington followed much the same emotional trajectory.
But Dallas Buyers Club shows how little Hollywood dramas about AIDS have advanced since Jonathan Demme ’s (homo)sexless, sanitized Philadelphia (1993).
It is widely believed that the Academy was sympathetic to McConaughey and Leto because the Academy usually favors actors who play people who are terminally ill (Tom Hanks in "Philadelphia" for example.)
Although the films are very different in style, there is a comparison to be made with Jonathan Demme's Philadelphia , in which Denzel Washington plays a homophobic lawyer who takes on an Aids-related unfair dismissal case, a move that brings about personal change and reconciliation.
It's been 20 years since Tom Hanks put a movie star's face on the AIDS crisis in Philadelphia.
Plus, he’s unconvincing as a gay man, in that familiar, self-congratulatory, straining to appear fair-minded and unprejudiced way reminiscent of those unbelievable paragons Tom Hanks and Antonio Banderas in Philadelphia.
After all, Tom Hanks played a homosexual in the terrific "Philadelphia" and his career, after the Oscar, has continued a meteoric rise.
Unlike the chaste coupling of Tom Hanks and Antonio Banderas in 1993's "Philadelphia," Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger's gay relationship happens on screen.
It's also a landmark in gay cinema, a groundbreaking picture with the power to touch a general audience the way the more didactic Philadelphia did in 1993.
“Philadelphia” writer Ron Nyswaner’s script — which he adapted from the novel by Bethan Roberts, with Michael Grandage (“Genius”) directing — shapes this mystery somewhat strangely, since audiences presumably know this is a love-triangle intrigue going in, and Marion harbors some guilt for her role in what happened (so she mustn’t be completely oblivious), but the filmmakers still want there to be a sense of surprise and discovery as they peel the artichoke one leaf at a time.
Directed by Michael Grandage, and adapted by Philadelphia screenwriter Ron Nyswaner from Bethan Roberts’s 2012 novel, the film takes place exclusively in England’s south coast town of Brighton, where the older versions of Marion and Tom (played by Gina McKee and Linus Roache) have been living a pretty uneventful life.
The other culprit is the screenplay by gay Oscar-winning script-writer Ron Nyswaner ("Philadelphia").
For "My Policeman," director Michael Grandage (see 2016's "Genius") works from a screenplay by Ron Nyswaner (Oscar-nominated for 1993's "Philadelphia"), adapting the book by Bethan Roberts.
(It’s certainly far different from the treatment of Andrew Beckett’s sex life in 1993’s “Philadelphia,” which Nyswaner wrote, which was practically nonexistent.)
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His portrait of gays and their lifestyle makes Cruising (1980) look like Philadelphia (1993).
Ironically, it's when he's resisted that urge that he's had his biggest hits -- the tautly focused "Silence of the Lambs," the conventionally plotted "Philadelphia."
You were willing to overlook reputed homophobe Denzel Washington talking Will Smith out of lip-locking a dude in “Six Degrees of Separation” to cast him in your gay/AIDS/Maria Callas opus, “Philadelphia.”
Director Jonathan Demme made two of the most significant Hollywood films in the early 1990s, The Silence of the Lambs and Philadelphia but recently he has been predominantly making documentaries.
Demme's career took a turn away from that sort of intimate, loose-jointed filmmaking with stiff exercises like "Silence of the Lambs" and "The Manchurian Candidate," and with oversize and overwrought projects like "Philadelphia."
Under the direction of Jonathan Demme, best known for his meticulous character studies in "The Silence of the Lambs" and "Philadelphia," "Rachel Getting Married" attempts to delve into the relationship between the two sisters and their seesaw battle for sanity and meaning.
Those who believe that Jonathan Demme went all soft with Philadelphia and never recovered may not be reassured by his latest movie, an ensemble tale of family pathology gussied up with vérité camera work, world music and improvising actors both trained and not.