Coram Deo ~

Looking at contemporary culture from a Christian worldview

Tag Archives: Joel Edgerton


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My Review of THE BOYS IN THE BOAT

The Boys in the Boat, rated PG-13
*** ½

The Boys in the Boat is a well-made inspirational film based on the best-selling book by Daniel James Brown. The film was directed by two-time Oscar winner George Clooney (Argo, Syriana). The screenplay was written by Mark L. Smith (The Reverant).
The film is set in 1936 during the depression. It focuses on the University of Washington Huskies eight-man rowing team. Coach Al Ulbrickson, played by Joel Edgerton (The Stranger), needs a winning season to keep his job. The best rowing team in the country will represent the United States in the Olympics to be held in Berlin in front of Hitler.
The film revolves around Joe Rantz, played by Callum Turner (Fantastic Beasts films). Jobs are hard to find. Turner lives in poverty, sleeping in an old car and patching holes in his shoes with newspaper, and doesn’t always have money for food. He is taking classes to be an engineer at the University of Washington. He has been on his own after being abandoned at age fourteen by his father. He barely has enough money to eat and if he doesn’t find a job soon, he will no longer be able to continue his college education, having fallen behind in paying his tuition.
Sitting behind him in his engineering class is Joyce, played by Hadley Robinson (Little Women). Joyce reminds him that he had a crush on her back in the fourth grade.

*****SPOILER ALERT*****
The film shows a growing romance between the two.
Joe hears about a way to get a job by making the eight-person rowing team at the university, so he and a friend go to the tryouts, which are physically grueling. Neither had any previous rowing experience, but Joe does make the team, which gives him a room and a job.
Peter Guinness plays George Pocock, the wise and likeable mentor and maker of the boats that the team will row.
The film takes us through a few of the team’s races, beginning with the battle against the University of California Bears. The junior team outperforms the varsity team, and the coach makes the controversial decision to use the junior varsity team, instead of the varsity team, in an important race. If things go badly in the race, it could cost Coach Ulbrickson his job.
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The film has themes of sacrifice, hard work, and teamwork. The film is given a PG-13 rating for some adult language, including the abuse of God’s and Jesus’s names.
None of the actors had any rowing experience prior to making the film. They trained for five months.
The film features a solid cast, with particularly good performances by Turner, Edgerton, and Guinness. It also features some excellent historically recreated settings, and period costumes.
The Boys in the Boat is an enjoyable, though slightly predictable underdog story that the entire family can enjoy, with the understanding that the film does contain some adult language.


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MY REVIEW OF LOVING

lovingLoving, rated PG-13
***

Loving is a well-acted portrayal of a true love story that changed U.S. history.
This film is directed and written by Jeff Nichols (Mud). The film has received Golden Globe nominations for Joel Edgerton and Ruth Negga, and a Best Actress Oscar nomination for Negga. The film received a standing ovation at its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2016.
At the heart of this film is Richard Loving (Joel Edgerton, The Gift) and his girlfriend Mildred (Ruth Negga). The film begins in 1958 in the state of Virginia.  Richard is a hard-working auto mechanic and construction worker. The film opens with Mildred telling Richard that she is pregnant. He is happy with the news. They want to get married but can’t in Virginia as Richard is white and Mildred is black. Interracial marriage has been illegal in Virginia since 1924. So they go to Washington D.C. to get married, and then return back to their families and to the property Richard purchased for their future home in Caroline County, Virginia to begin their married life together.

***SPOILER ALERT***
But they are soon violently awoken in the middle of the night by the county sheriff and some of his deputies, and arrested for violating a law prohibiting interracial marriage. Their lawyer Frank Beazley (Bill Camp, The Night Of) enters a plea before the judge that in effect says that if they plead guilty they must leave the state for a period of 25 years.  They then move to Washington D.C. and begin their family, which grows to three children. But they long to return to Virginia.
Mildred watches a civil rights march led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and eventually writes a letter to Attorney General Robert Kennedy. This begins a legal battle that will last nearly 11 years.  Nick Kroll portrays ACLU attorney Bernie Cohen who helps the Lovings take their case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.  The U.S. Supreme Court decision of Loving v. Virginia was decided June 12, 1967. It unanimously held that Virginia’s “Racial Integrity Act of 1924,” which forbade marriage between people of different races, was unconstitutional. This decision therefore effectively voided all such laws in other states as well.
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The acting performances by Edgerton and Negga are outstanding. Their love for each other under extremely trying circumstances comes through clearly. On the downside, the film moved extremely slowly. The film is rated PG-13 for a small amount of adult language and a few uses of the “n-word”.
Nichols was able to tell the story of the Loving family as accurately as possible by relying on Nancy Buirski’s 2011 documentary The Loving Story. The documentary captured many details of the couple’s private lives, and much of the dialogue in the film comes directly from the documentary. The Lovings story has also been portrayed in the 1996 TV movie Mr. and Mrs. Loving, which starred Timothy Hutton and Lela Rochon.


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My Movie Review ~ Black Mass

Black MassBlack Mass, rated R
***

This film is based on the book Black Mass: Whitey Bulger, the FBI, and a Devil’s Deal by Dick Lehr and Gerard O’Neill. It is directed by Scott Cooper (Crazy Heart, Out of the Furnace), and written by Mark Mallouk and Jez Butterworth (Spectre, Edge of Tomorrow). The film tells the true story of Jimmy “Whitey” Bulger, played by a heavily made up Johnny Depp, who has been nominated for Best Actor for his performance by the Screen Actors Guild.

The film begins in 1975; in South Boston, Jimmy’s empire includes drugs, prostitution and racketeering. His chief rival is Jerry Angiulo, who heads the Italian mafia, a prime target of the FBI. Jimmy Connolly, well played by Joel Edgerton, who wrote, directed and starred as Gordo in 2015’s excellent The Gift, is an FBI agent and childhood friend of Whitey. He owes Whitey for protecting him when they were kids. He proposes a secret arrangement that will benefit Whitey by allowing him to serve as an FBI informant on the Italian mafia, while they look the other way on his illegal activities. As Connolly gets in deeper and deeper with Whitey, we see him begin to dress, act and even walk differently, and have relationship difficulties with his boss (Kevin Bacon) and wife Marianne (Julianne Nicholson). Fellow-agent John Morris (David Harbour) works with Connelly on this arrangement for several years until he can take it no longer. Lead Prosecutor Fred Wyshak (Corey Stoll from House of Cards) can’t figure out why Bulger and his group continue to rule Boston right under the nose of the FBI.

The film is told in flashbacks as Bulger’s inner circle Kevin Weeks (Jesse Plemons), Steve Flemmi (Rory Cochrane) and John Martorano (W. Earl Brown), to lessen their sentences, years later provide the FBI with information about Whitey. Bulger is portrayed as a brutal monster, showing kindness only to his card-cheating mother, girlfriend (Dakota Johnson), his young son (Luke Ryan), and Massachusetts State Senator and University President brother Billy (Benedict Cumberbatch (Sherlock, Imitation Game). This is an amazing true story.

Bulger would become number two (behind only Osama bin Laden) on the FBI’s “Most Wanted” list during the 16 years he was in hiding before his capture in California in 2011.

The film is “R” for a significant amount of adult language (including several abuses of God’s and Jesus’ names and lots of f-bombs), and brutal violence (beatings and murders). It features a strong cast, led by Depp, who continues to show his versatility as an actor, and the multi-talented Edgerton, who builds on his critically acclaimed work in The Gift.


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Movie Review ~ The Gift

The GiftThe Gift, rated R
*** ½

This psychological thriller stars Jason Bateman as Simon and Rebecca Hall as his wife Robyn. They have just relocated from Chicago to Simon’s hometown in Southern California where Simon has accepted a promising new job with a security systems firm. They purchased a new home with a beautiful view as they hope to leave the sadness of Robyn’s miscarriage behind in Chicago and get a fresh new start. Robyn struggled with addiction to prescription medicine after the miscarriage and is fragile emotionally.

As the couple is shopping for their new home they run into Gordon, or ‘Gordo’, played by Joel Edgerton (The Great Gatsby), who also wrote and directed the film. Gordo and Simon went to high school together, but Simon doesn’t appear to remember him in an awkward scene. Gordo overhears the couple’s address in the store and shows up at their home uninvited when Simon is at work. Each time he shows up at their home he leaves a wrapped gift at the front door. Robyn is kind to him and invites him to have dinner with them. Gordo seems socially uncomfortable but returns the favor, inviting them to a dinner party at his home.

Jason becomes increasingly irritable around Gordo, and tells Robyn that they used to call Gordo “Weirdo” (the original working title of the film), in high school. He decides to set boundaries with Gordo, telling him he doesn’t want him to stop by their home any longer. That changes the relationship between Gordon and Simon.

But Robyn, still struggling with the effects of the miscarriage and the addiction to prescription medicine is afraid to be in the home by herself during the day. Her only friend is neighbor Lucy (Allison Tolman). Alone by herself during the day Robyn hears noises. Is someone in the house? Cinematographer Eduard Grau effectively gives us Robyn’s view of the hallways of the empty home as we sit on the edge of our seat waiting to see if someone is indeed in the house. And now their dog Bojangles (named after the song “Mr. Bojangles”), goes missing. What is going on?

As time goes on, Robyn suspects that Simon and Gordo have more of a history than Simon is telling her. What she finds out drives her further away from Simon. What else isn’t he telling her? Does she even really know him? And there seems to be little Simon won’t do to advance his career at his new firm.

The film is rated “R” for a significant amount of adult language, including the misuse/abuse of God’s and Jesus’ names several times. It features themes of fear, bullying and revenge. The Bible passage Psalm 7:14-15 plays a role in the film. Edgerton, Bateman and Hall are all excellent in their roles. Edgerton’s writing is sharp, and it’s hard to believe this is his first major film as a director.