based on actual events
Preservation of the environment shouldn’t be a political issue, let alone a controversial one. Yet the right wing governments of the western world are frequently abandoning environmental and climate change issues, even building entire grand-standing platforms on how the entire act of climate change is a mere myth. The masses no longer trust “experts”, no matter how many facts they have on their side about the devastating realities of our changing environment.
I still fondly remember the day that was subsequently christened the “Miracle on the Hudson”, when it was discovered that a plane successfully landed on the Hudson River after an incident in the air when both engines were destroyed. Amazingly, everyone on board survived. It was one of the first times I had heard of something like this happening, and I would say that most of America, if not the world, was equally spellbound.
Edgar Ramírez is electrifying as welterweight boxing champion Roberto Durán in the new movie Hands of Stone. Unfortunately, writer/director Jonathan Jakubowicz’s routinely conceived, routinely executed boxing biopic is a dull canvas for a performance, slashed in such angry red brush strokes. The movie goes the distance, though not as cleanly or directly as we might have wished.
When it comes to World War II, there is never a shortage of stories that are needed and are waiting to be told. Anthropoid is one of these stories. The film begins with an introduction to the true events that have led up to the assassination of a high-ranking Nazi official to be rendered a necessary means in a time of war.
In recent years, the gangster film seems to be a stale genre, with a majority of the films lacking any distinctive qualities. Last year’s Black Mass is a prime example, with the only really memorable aspect of the film being Johnny Depp’s performance. Viewed against this backdrop, then, The Infiltrator just manages to stand out amongst modern films.
“Based on a true story.” “Based on true events.” “Inspired by actual events.
It’s very easy for the media to get overexcited about a new Meryl Streep film, and one costarring Hugh Grant and directed by Stephen Frears at that, but this time there’s something different. I think maybe, what with the recent success of The Iron Lady and the confusion over Suffragette (where she was on screen for only a few moments), the media and filmgoers are suffering from a little overindulgence when it comes to one of the world’s greatest actresses. So although Florence Foster Jenkins has been promoted widely, it hasn’t been the film on everyone’s lips.
It may be fair to first point out that the question of this article has always been a conflicting issue that continuously floats around in the film industry. People often perceive the growing medium of cinema as a device for entertainment or as a brief, escapist distraction from society’s painful realities. This experience has impacted on how people think and behave within society, and Hollywood continue to question the extent to which films influence reality.
“Literature is invention. Fiction is fiction. To call a story a true story is an insult to both art and truth.
Hollywood and the golden age of film have now all but faded into history, and any glimpse into that world is for that reason a glimpse into history itself. Trumbo is a look at the show business world following the Cold War, when Hollywood started to blacklist people solely due to their political alignments. Starring the very talented Bryan Cranston as the titular character, the film is not only a successful character study and biopic, it is also an engaging and entertaining glimpse at a very dark time in Hollywood’s history.
In June of 2015, the Supreme Court declared same-sex marriage legal in the United States. A prominent subject in the news, almost daily it seems that another celebrity or sports player has come out as gay, bisexual, or transgender; Caitlyn Jenner’s recent transformation being a prime example. Although there are still those that are resistant to it, having an alternate sexual orientation or gender identity is now acceptable in the modern world.
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discovered I had not lived. — Walden (Henry David Thoreau) Set in the remote wilderness of Montana and South Dakota in the 1820s, director Alejandro Iñárritu’s biographical western, The Revenant, follows fur trapper Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his remarkable quest of survival and retribution. Having been mauled by a bear and left for dead, Glass must find a strength and resolve to overcome the elements and fight his way back to civilization while attempting to have a cathartic release from his experiences.
Concussion does to the sports film what I was sincerely hoping it would avoid: it dramatizes its subject in such an unbelievable way that it becomes nothing more than mindless propaganda. Dealing with the true subject of brain injuries within retired NFL players, the film simply floats from one cliché to the next, which left me feeling almost dazed after it had finished.
In the Heart of the Sea was originally supposed to premiere in early 2015, but it was pushed to later in the year at the last second. Ron Howard hoped that more people would come out to see the film now as opposed to in early spring, since some other oceanic adventure films have seen success around this time (Life of Pi, for example). It was my sincere hope that pushing the film to December was also because it would be worthy of premiering next to more awards-friendly films, which could mean that it was better than originally expected.
On a chilly night in November 1959, two desperate young drifters slaughtered a family outside Holcomb, Kansas for $40, a pair of binoculars, and a transistor radio. The macabre slayings and the manhunt, trial, and execution of the pair of “natural born killers” who committed the crimes gripped the nation. Celebrated writer Truman Capote published a bestselling book about the case called In Cold Blood that was turned into a gripping 1967 movie, which is one of the best of the later film noirs.