Marcia Gay Harden is perfect as his wife, the painter Lee Krasner, in a role that’s satisfyingly developed.
Harris, who also directs, does a great job of articulating the artist’s gifts and his mental struggles, often at the same time. It can’t have been an easy role, but he convinces in the part to the extent that it’s impossible to imagine any other actor doing it so well.
Jennifer Connelly plays Ruth Kligman, who Pollock had an affair with shortly before his death in a car accident.
Jim Carrey stars as Truman Burbank, a man who doesn’t realise that his whole life has been filmed for a reality TV show broadcast to millions. This show is masterminded by Christof (Ed Harris), portrayed as an almost godlike figure.
It's a fascinating idea, but the execution seems fatally flawed. In places the storytelling isn't strong enough – mainly because you can’t easily tell what’s meant to be TV footage and what is us seeing what’s really going on.
The plot only works at all if you don't ask any questions of it. For example, why does Carrey’s character perform as though he’s in a TV show when he doesn’t know he is? And how does the acting role actually work for his wife (Laura Linney), who is on duty 24 hours a day, 365 days per year?
An “ordinary” American, Tom Stall, works in a cafe in a small town. One day, a pair of crooks come in and threaten him and his staff. With what might be pure luck or uncanny combat skills, he quickly dispenses with them and is celebrated as a hero by the town. But then some gangsters show up in the same diner and appear to know Tom. Is this just a case of mistaken identity or does he have a troubling and mysterious past?
Viggo Mortensen stars, bringing depth to a complicated part. His wife is played brilliantly by Maria Bello in a fully rounded role. Ed Harris plays the sinister criminal whose appearance changes everything.
There’s strong suspense and – as the title implies – a fair bit of blood. Cronenberg explores the nature of identity and violence, and the impact they have on family life.
It's a scary and compassionate drama.
Disaster film.
The world has been saved from environmental disaster by a hi-tech space station (the actual science isn’t explained), but when it malfunctions extreme weather takes a deadly hit on Earth. It turns out that the tech has been sabotaged – with suspicion going all the way up to the US President – and it takes the station’s creator Jake (Gerard Butler) to save the world from total climate meltdown.
The film is utterly ludicrous but quite entertaining if you don’t ask any questions. Jim Sturgess is laughable as Jake’s sweaty, anxious brother Max, who has family “issues” (and looks a bit like Chris de Burgh). Abbie Cornish plays his tough, secret-service girlfriend. Alexandra Maria Lara is the sensitive and appealing space station commander who becomes Jake’s love interest. Ed Harris is the U.S. Secretary of State serving the president, who is played by Andy Garcia.
The script is wooden and the plotting is entirely predictable. But the CGI scenes of extreme weather are exciting and the action rattles along so quickly that you don’t have time to assess whether any of it makes sense.
Adapted by David Mamet from his own 1984 play, this is a remarkable film that transfers amazingly well to the screen.
The plot deals with four real estate salesmen engaged in conning their clients. Although the details of the con are never fully explained, the real point is the relationships between the characters and the way they talk to each other as their situation intensifies across two days. These dynamics are explored with unusual intelligence.
I’ve never known so much swearing in a film. Also, there is a huge amount of dialogue with machine-gun-fire speech between the characters as they interact. Jack Lemmon, Al Pacino, Ed Harris and Alan Arkin are all superb, in their own ways, reflecting the tension that goes with their illegal work. And Alec Baldwin is more powerful than usual, playing a motivational salesman sent to inspire the others.
Casey Affleck and Michelle Monaghan play a couple who agree to investigate a missing girl in a poor part of Boston. They do so in parallel with the police, who are led by Ed Harris and Morgan Freeman.
There are plenty of surprises as the plot twists and turns, but the resolution is satisfying and none of the threads collapse under scrutiny – as tends to happen with lesser storylines.
One criticism: a lot of the dialogue is difficult to make out.
It’s a reasonable premise and the three leads are all charismatic and watchable. What slightly ruins the film is the presence of two child actors (Jena Malone and Liam Aiken) who seem a little too self-conscious and self-aware. I never really believed they were real people with real feelings – perhaps because they speak lines that were clearly written for them by adults.
The emotional draw is watching the two women come to terms with their situations and with each other, which of course they eventually do. No one seems to mind that Ed Harris isn’t around much. Also, as in so many films, the characters’ wealth and upward mobility is never in question. Jackie lives in a mansion that seems to get bigger every time we see it. That’s not really a flaw of the film – rich people have problems, too – but it does seem to lessen any drama that the script attempts to build up.
An expert Russian sniper, Vasily Zaytsev (Jude Law) plays a cat-and-mouse game with German sniper Major König (Ed Harris) during the Battle of Stalingrad in 1942. Vasily, who becomes a national hero, is aided by his lover Tania (Rachel Weisz), his friend Danilov (Joseph Fiennes) and Nikita Khrushchev (Bob Hoskins), who realises the marksman's value in terms of propaganda.
Some of the sets don’t look especially realistic (not sure if that’s because it’s early CGI or whether it’s something to do with the models they used), but the scenes of soldiers being shot down in their hundreds look all too plausible.
The relationships between the key characters are convincing, and Law and Weisz in particular create a strong chemistry together.
It’s one of the more compelling war films because it makes you care about the characters and understand their motivations – including those of the villain. And while the love story is touching, the overall narrative never gives way to sentimentality.
While robbing a billionaire’s mansion, a skilled burglar named Luther Whitney (Clint Eastwood) witnesses a crime involving the US President (Gene Hackman) and his secret service operatives. Because of the President’s careless actions in an affair with the billionaire’s wife, his mistress ends up getting shot. Detective Seth Frank (Ed Harris) begins to investigate the death, for which Whitney now finds himself the main suspect.
All three male leads are charismatic and appealing. The secret service team are less impressive, although there’s a funny and clever scene in which the President dances with his Chief of Staff (Judy Davis). It’s moments like this – and a scene in which Ed Harris shows his attraction to the burglar’s estranged daughter Kate (Laura Linney) – that exhibit the warmth and intelligence that make the film so enjoyable. There’s also fun to be had in Whitney’s skill as a master of disguises, and there’s a fairly touching thread in which – despite everything – Luther and Kate begin to re-connect.
It’s a taut drama that steadily builds tension. We know that disaster is on the way, so there’s added suspense in waiting for that moment. I especially liked the Mission Control sections, which showed how much of an ingenious team effort the rescue attempt was.
The casting and acting is spot-on, and makes this film stand out:
• Tom Hanks plays Jim Lovell, from whose memoir this was adapted. Hanks does his usual thing, but it works. His almost bland demeanour seems to match the highly sought after brave-but-calm profile of that of a well-adjusted astronaut.
• Kevin Bacon is perfectly acceptable as backup Command Module pilot Jack Swigert even though this actor is often now seen as a figure of fun.
• Bill Paxton is solid as Lunar Module pilot Fred Haise.
• Kathleen Quinlan is Lovell’s wife, trying to hold it together at home with the kids. The “worried wife” role can’t be a rewarding one for any actor, and too often that part is underwritten (see Deepwater Horizon or The Untouchables), but Quinlan convincingly portrays someone whose personal nightmare becomes a drama watched by the entire world.
• Ed Harris is impressive as the tough but compassionate Flight Director Gene Kranz.
• Gary Sinise is excellent as pilot Ken Mattingly, who misses out on the mission itself but helps the crew by mirroring their predicament in a NASA flight simulator.
I liked the fact that in the film, as in real life, it wasn’t about luck or heroism or faith or fate. It was science that saved them – a triumph of knowledge and rational thought. A lesson to be learned there for all of us.
