With the compelling, cadaverous Donald Sumpter (last seen in “The Constant Gardener”) as an English cop.- A.L. There is no denying the momentum of the story, or Mortensen’s shade-wearing composure, but some of the casting (Cassel especially) is askew, and the tone keeps lurching from the sombre into the ghastly as Cronenberg strives to maintain his reputation as a master bloodletter. The result, despite the modern setting, is a strangely old-fashioned fable, with a redeeming innocent thrown among evil men. What Cronenberg and his screenwriter, Steve Knight, want to engineer is a collision between worlds that have nothing-no social habits or moral norms-in common. Into this murk comes Anna (Naomi Watts), a midwife who is trying to trace the family of an orphaned Russian child. He takes care of business for Semyon (Armin Mueller-Stahl), a soft-spoken restaurateur with frightening blue eyes, and Semyon’s whining son (Vincent Cassel). The new David Cronenberg film, set among Russian mobsters in London, stars Viggo Mortensen as Nikolai, a part-time chauffeur and full-time threat. Reviewed this week in The Current Cinema.
Photographed, to the hilt, by Roger Deakins.- Anthony Lane (Reviewed in our issue of 10/1/07.) (Angelika Film Center and Lincoln Square.) The film dies long before Jesse James does such liveliness as there is springs from the subplots and bit parts-notably from Paul Schneider as Dick Liddil, a much better Lothario than he was an outlaw. The film concludes with a fascinating, if sketchy, account of Ford’s own celebrity, but it can hardly compensate for the sluggish indulgence of the preceding couple of hours. James also humors his young admirer, Robert Ford (Casey Affleck), who starts off wanting to imitate his hero and ends up killing him. Brad Pitt plays Jesse James, who is at the tail end of his career and joins up with his brother Frank (Sam Shepard) for one last train robbery, then spends the rest of the story skulking under an alias or settling scores. Now he has done it again-at greater length, with bigger stars, far fewer laughs, and only a fraction of the effect. Seven years ago, Andrew Dominik directed a film called “Chopper,” a brisk and alarming account of a career criminal whose infamy has shaded into legend. THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD Still, it’s an audacious and creatively risky wonder, with enough visual pizzazz amid the insanity to capture the spirit of those turbulent times.- Bruce Diones (In wide release.) Because the screenplay is light on dialogue and most of the story is told through the songs, the film never really gets a thorough hold on any of its characters-it’s cameo-friendly but emotionally neutered. The film is populated with characters named Jude, Lucy, JoJo, Prudence, and Sadie, and the Beatles songs have been reworked (by Elliot Goldenthal and T-Bone Burnett) for the varying degrees of musical talent on display (Bono is fantastic Eddie Izzard, less so). Set in the mid-sixties, the film is about an English boy from Liverpool (Jim Sturgess) who moves to Greenwich Village and meets a beautiful, soon to be radicalized girl (Evan Rachel Wood) together with her Vietnam-bound brother, they embark on the trippy adventures of the era. Fine condition.Julie Taymor, who staged “The Lion King” and directed a hallucinogenic film version of “Titus Andronicus,” lavishes all her visual genius on this overscaled production, which connects almost three dozen Beatles songs with the thinnest thread of a story. She has also twice been nominated for an Emmy Award.
In 2009, Harden r eceived a Tony Award for the Broadway play "God of Carnage". She has starred in a string of successful mainstream and independent movies, such as Space Cowboys (2000), Into the Wild (2007), and The Mist (2007), for which she won the Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress.
She received an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Lee Krasner in Pollock (2000). Harden's breakthrough role was in Miller's Crossing (1990) and then The First Wives Club (1996) which was followed by several roles which gained her wider fame including the comedy Flubber (1997) and Meet Joe Black (1998). 1959) is an American film and theatre actress. It is/important to DO your Best./Marcia Gay Harden" in black felt. The Academy Award-winning actress signs her name with a quotation on this black and white photograph picturing her in a sweater on the beachĪutograph quotation on photograph signed: "It's not important/to BE the Best.