Saturday 30 September 2017
Watch ‘American Made,’ Then Watch These Movies
Whether for additional context or to complete the Escobar Cinematic Universe, these picks will add to your appreciation of Doug Liman’s latest.
Anytime a movie is based on major historical events, there are going to be a lot of other films to recommend as pieces in a cinematic universe of true stories. American Made depicts a biography set in the background of the cocaine trade and the CIA’s support of Nicaraguan contras. One of its characters being Pablo Escobar (played by Mauricio Mejia) means it can link to plenty of feature films, documentaries, and TV series such as Netflix’s Narcos.
And its protagonist, Barry Seal (played by Tom Cruise), has already been the focus of the TV movie Doublecrossed, in which he’s portrayed by Dennis Hopper (I recommended this as a movie to watch beforehand), and was a minor character in last year’s The Infiltrator, played by Michael Paré. There are so many suggestions to make for post-American Made viewing, and so honorable mentions galore can be found among this week’s eight picks.
Bedtime for Bonzo (1951)
Let’s begin with something silly but substantial. When most people think of Ronald Reagan’s acting career, they think of the movie with the chimpanzee (many others think of his role as “the Gipper” in Knute Rockne, All American, but nothing’s more memorable than simian cinema). It’s the only one referenced by name among the Reagan movie clips in American Made, and it’s the one most representative of the disconnect between his performances in Hollywood and his performances in politics.
While mostly recommended because it’s featured in the movie at hand, it is so featured for a reason as an introduction to the man whose presidency would change Barry Seal’s life for better and for worse. There aren’t many other Reagan-led films that are must-sees for the context of that earlier career (Dark Victory and The Killers are great films he appears in, however). But I do encourage following it with more Reagan biopics and documentaries, including 2003’s The Reagans and 2011’s Reagan.
Bananas (1971)
American Made has a lot more humor than I expected, causing me to call to mind one of Woody Allen’s funniest early films. Bananas stars the filmmaker as an American who, like Seal, is unhappy with his job before winding up mixed up in too much Latin America-based adventure for his own good. While Seal’s real-life track was focused on drug trafficking and gun running plus a bit of rebel group training, Allen’s protagonist is primarily involved with a rebel army in a fictionalized “banana republic.”
Movies dealing with revolutionaries in Latin America go back much further than the era of CIA interference, with the 1923 Harold Lloyd silent comedy Why Worry? and the 1940 James Cagney vehicle Torrid Zone being two worthy examples. Later, about the time of American Made‘s initial setting, there’s the 1979 comedy The In-Laws, which does deal with the CIA and a man brought in way over his head through Central American shenanigans. Nothing, though, tops the Howard Cosell-commentated coup at the start of Allen’s Bananas.
Scarface (1983)
One of my favorite comparisons made in a review of American Made Drew McWeeny’s descriptionis of the movie as “Forrest Gump if Oliver Stone directed it.” I guess I should have both Gump and maybe the Cruise-led Stone film Born on the Fourth of July, but instead I’ll skip the former ingredient and skew the latter to recommend a movie scripted by Stone instead. Not that Scarface is hard up for recognition these days.
Brian DePalma’s remake of the 1932 gangster film classic is very much of its time, starting off with events tied to an actual mass migration of Cubans to America fleeing communist rule and leading into the topical issue of cocaine trafficking. We can imagine that Al Pacino’s Tony Montana is dealing drugs brought into Miami by the Contras who get the shipments from Colombia via Barry Seal. Had it not been a fiction, maybe Escobar would have been the South American kingpin.
Stone would of course go on to direct his own movies involving relevant subject matter, including the true story-based Salvador to JFK (conspiracy theorists believe Seal was involved with the assassination) to his documentaries on Latin American leaders. I also am one of the few critics who recommend the underrated near-masterpiece Savages, which deals with marijuana and a Mexican drug cartel but similarly involves initially smalltime characters in way over their head.
Blow (2001)
I thought about including Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas on this list, partly because it’s been another major point of comparison for American Made reviews. And it does have that fourth-wall-breaking true story with flair sensibility that likely influenced Doug Liman’s new movie, as it has most of these kinds of crime films. But you’ve all seen it already, right? Another Goodfellas-like (or Goodfellas light) feature that has more relevance is this final narrative effort from the late Ted Demme.
Blow stars Johnny Depp as George Jung, another notorious American who became extremely wealthy (similarly having too much cash to know what to do with) by penetrating the Medellin cartel and becoming one of its biggest cocaine smugglers. Jung and Seal’s stories never intertwined as far as I know — not between their two movies, at least — as the former worked with Escobar in the ’70s prior to the latter’s involvement. Their biopics have that overlap of Escobar, though, and Carlos Ledher, who is renamed “Diego Delgado” in Blow (played by Jordi Molla there, by Fredy Yate Escobar in American Made). Jung and Seal are basically individual antiheroes to Escobar’s Nick Fury in the Medellin Cinematic Universe.
Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002)
The way American Made sets up its story, with Seal seemingly out of the blue being recruited by CIA (via Domhnall Gleason’s character), reminds me of this adaptation of Chuck Barris’s memoir and his purported own work for the intelligence organization. Barris, played by Sam Rockwell, purported to have been approached by the CIA (via director/co-star George Clooney’s character), and like Seal it was at a bar. The big difference between the two figures is Barris supposedly worked as an American assassin.
Seal’s situation, never mind that it’s backed up as not just a true story but outright historical fact, is much more plausible (though the conspiracy theories of his early years make it even more believable), yet the farfetched aspects of Confessions of a Dangerous Mind are what makes it so much fun (and certainly appealing to screenwriter Charlie Kaufman). Barris, of course, became famous totally separate from his CIA work, as a songwriter and game show host, while Seal became famous because of his CIA work.
Maria Full of Grace (2004)
While movies like Blow and American Made sort of glamorize the big deal drug smugglers, this is a very different, much bleaker depiction of cocaine transport from Colombia to the US. Catalina Sandino Moreno earned an Oscar for her performance as a 17-year-old drug mule in the unforgettable drama. Does she get rich flying many kilos in a private plane? No, she swallows 62 cocaine pellets, braving both the chance of them opening up in her stomach and killing her (and her unborn baby) and the risk of being caught by customs authorities.
Far more individuals share this story of the drug trade than they relate to Jung and Seal types. And many don’t even get as far as Sandino Moreno’s character, Maria. Either they attempt the journey and overdose from a leaked pellet — something depicted quite horrifyingly in this movie — or they’re imprisoned in their home or neighboring nation for doing a less dangerous yet more seductive and commonplace job. There’s a new documentary called Cocaine Prison that presents the unfortunate reality of an overcrowded prison in Bolivia (location of Scarface‘s cartel) mostly filled with poor, low-level cocaine mule.
American Gangster (2007)
While most of the movies on this list involve the smuggling of cocaine, like American Made, this other American-titled movie presents a parallel scenario with the trade of heroin. Denzel Washington portrays infamous Harlem gangster Frank Lucas, who transported the drug from Thailand to the US via secret compartments in coffins carrying servicemen who died in the Vietnam War. The fictionalized biopic, directed by Ridley Scott, also stars Russell Crowe as Richie Roberts, the detective who took Lucas down, and Ruby Dee in a wonderful Oscar-nominated performance as Lucas’s mama.
Of course, from there you want to also check out Mr. Untouchable, Marc Levin’s documentary released the same year about Cuba Gooding Jr.’s character, Nicky Barnes. Also The French Connection, which is referenced directly in American Gangster and indirectly with its opening being loosely tied to the end of the 1971 Best Picture winner.
Although Lucas isn’t connected to the cocaine trade, he and Barnes are considered among the most significant drug lords of all time, alongside Escobar, Manuel Noriega (who has also had biopics, including one strangely starring Bob Hoskins), and “Freeway” Rick Ross, subject of Levin’s 2015 documentary Freeway: Crack in the System and portrayed by Michael K. Williams in the 2014 movie Kill the Messenger, about Gary Webb, the journalist who uncovered the CIA’s involvement in the import and trade of cocaine to fund the Contras.
Cocaine Cowboys: Reloaded (2014)
I’ve been recommending documentaries throughout this column, but this is the official obligatory doc of the week. Director Billy Corben and producer Alfred Spellman’s Cocaine Cowboys films are essential if you’re interested in more stories like and tied to the one in American Made. In fact, Cocaine Cowboys: Reloaded reworks the 2006 original so it covers more material, including stuff on Seal and his assassination — Corben actually tried to interview “Cumbamba,” one of the hitmen responsible for Seal’s death but was turned down.
For the most part, though, the docs are focused on Miami and the effect the drug trade has had on its growth — basically what Seal is credited with aiding via his running cocaine through Nicaragua to the Florida city. Another figure Corben and Spellman tried to get for the doc was Max Mermelstein, a drug smuggler who like Seal turned informant but unlike Seal had actually truly infiltrated the Escobar circle (Mermelstein’s memoir, “The Man Who Made it Snow,” is also being turned into a movie). But his and Seal’s joint associate, the late trafficker Jon Peters, is a major part of Cocaine Cowboys and the Reloaded update, which also tells of Mermelstein’s story. Mickey Munday, a pilot and drug smuggler similar to Seal, is also interviewed.
The article Watch ‘American Made,’ Then Watch These Movies appeared first on Film School Rejects.
[The Daily] NYFF 2017: Lucrecia Martel’s Zama
[The Daily] NYFF 2017: Valeska Grisebach’s Western
[The Daily] NYFF 2017: Ruben Östlund’s The Square
[The Daily] NYFF 2017: Did You Wonder Who Fired the Gun?
[The Daily] NYFF 2017: Serge Bozon’s Mrs. Hyde
Marion Cotillard’s Next Movie Sounds Intense
By Sheryl Oh
Vanessa Filho’s debut feature already sounds like an intense drama that fits perfectly into Cotillard’s oeuvre.
Marion Cotillard, particularly in her recent filmography, usually goes straight for experienced auteurs when planning her next career move. She has done a thorough mix of blockbuster and arthouse films with established names such as the Dardennes and Christopher Nolan, effortlessly switching between French cinema and Hollywood. But her latest picture will foster the talents of a new feature director. Variety reports that Cotillard has joined forces with Vanessa Filho on Gueule d’ange.
Gueule d’ange tells the story of a single mother who abandons her young daughter after meeting a stranger in a club. Filho and writer-director Alain Dias – known as Diasteme – served as scriptwriters for the project. Cotillard is undoubtedly the most famous face attached to star; she will feature alongside Ayline Etaix, Alban Lenoir, and Amélie Daure in the film.
If Gueule d’ange ends up being anything like the Dardennes’ menacingly quiet Two Days, One Night in intensity, audiences are in for an emotional rollercoaster. They will most likely be thankful for those overwhelming feelings, though. Two Days, One Night competed for a number of prizes at multiple film festivals and award ceremonies and was Belgium’s Oscar selection for a Foreign Language Film nomination. The combination of the film’s stripped back production and Cotillard’s powerhouse performance was an electrified match. Cotillard’s work in the film received a near 15-minute standing ovation at Cannes and earned her a second Academy Award nomination. Although Two Days, One Night was the only film she would appear in that year, Cotillard stood out brilliantly.
The article Marion Cotillard’s Next Movie Sounds Intense appeared first on Film School Rejects.
Fantastic Fest Review: Benson and Moorhead's Brilliant 'The Endless'
Justin Benson & Aaron Moorhead are a filmmaking duo that have quietly made some of the best genre films the indie world has seen in recent memory. Their first film, Resolution, switched up the game when it came to stories about storytelling, and Spring, for all its interesting & intelligent monster movie elements, is a heartfelt and beautiful tale of love. Their latest, The Endless, goes back to a storytelling well the team dipped into with their first film, but it plays on such an elaborately greater level that it becomes a beast completely unto itself. The Endless is a horror/sci-fi film like nothing the cinematic world has seen thus far and only serves to prove Benson & Moorhead as some of the strongest voices in the world of indie cinema.
In the film, the two filmmakers play versions of themselves, Justin and Aaron, two brothers who ten years prior escaped from a cult located deep in the wilderness. Out of the blue, they receive a video package, a message from one of the cult members that convinces Aaron they need to return in an attempt at some sort of closure between the two groups. What the brothers find upon their return isn't what they were expecting.
When they arrive, the cult takes them back in with open arms as if their departure from the group left no ill feelings in its wake. Justin is still a little apprehensive about the all-inclusive nature of the group, and the strange occurrences in the surrounding environment aren't helping matters. Aaron, on the other hand, is convinced the cult is the answer to the brothers' existential crisis that has been building since they first left. The mystery builds, the unanswered questions about the area and the group build with it, and Justin and Aaron must learn to depend on one another if they are to find a way to escape once again.
It's a vague premise with which The Endless is working on, but that aspect only serves to hide the very deeply-hidden meaning about it all. Benson & Moorhead's films always work from a certain, abstract point of view that only reveals more layers and various pieces of an answer, not the answer itself. Cinematic artists like David Lynch and writers who dig deep into the questions of the universe like H.P. Lovecraft are clear inspirations for the works of Benson & Moorhead, but that never keeps the duo's films from working at the same level of enigmatic brilliance.
There is such a clear understanding of mystery about their work. As with their previous works, the mystery at the heart of The Endless only aids in the strength of what the filmmaking duo is claiming about personal identity and human relationships. Storytelling has become the primary way human beings make sense of the universe surrounding us, and Benson & Moorhead keenly skirt around the answers to it all and still embrace the very nature of what it means to be human.
They do this in the most personal of ways with The Endless. The reasoning behind the duo playing the two leads themselves builds on that personal essence in their latest film, and the two embody their respective parts with natural ability. Justin is the one who needs answers while Aaron is the more romantic of the two, able to blindly accept that the answers we seek from the universe aren't always the answers we want. The dynamic between the two is also a strong factor to the film, as well, and creates an organic bond that would potentially be absent should it be two other actors in the roles.
The Endless has so many surprises in store for viewers, especially if the viewer is familiar with the films of Benson & Moorhead thus far, that it is rather difficult to go into more detail about how it all plays out. Nonetheless, the brilliance on display in their latest project cannot be missed or denied. The Endless is a fascinating and eye-opening look at human interaction and the way storytelling has consumed every aspect of the experience of our lives. Groundbreaking and mesmerizing, The Endless is the latest proof that the filmmaking team of Benson & Moorhead are ones to watch when it comes to cinema that makes you think.
Follow Jeremy on Twitter - @JeremyKKirk
Friday 29 September 2017
Official Trailer for Brazilian Western 'O Matador' From Marcelo Galvão
"When you're born to kill, you have to have an empty mind." Netflix has unveiled an official trailer for a Brazilian western titled O Matador, telling the story of Cabeleira, a feared killer living in the countryside of Pernambuco State in the 1940's. Diogo Morgado stars as Cabeleira, a gunman who goes looking for his missing mentor but ends up working for a ruthless French land baron as a hired assassin. The cast includes Maria de Medeiros, Will Roberts, Etienne Chicot, Phil Miler, Marat Descartes, Mel Lisboa, and Paulo Gorgulho. The trailer has another English title, simply just The Killer, but I like O Matador better. This definitely seems like a gritty western, with plenty of violence and slick cinematography. Watch below.
Here's the official trailer for Marcelo Galvão's O Matador, direct from Netflix's YouTube:
In a lawless land, Shaggy (Diogo Morgado), investigates the whereabouts of the bandit, Seven Ears (Deto Montegro). His search leads him back to civilization and ensures that in death, he finally learns how to live. His journey will bring him to discover that his violent past is a legacy that refuses to die alongside him. O Matador is both written and directed by up-and-coming Brazilian filmmaker Marcelo Galvão, of the films Farewell, Buddies, La riña, Quarta B, and Bellini and the Devil previously, as well as a number of short films. This film has not premiered at any film festivals or otherwise yet. Netflix will release Galvão's O Matador streaming exclusively starting November 10th this fall. So who's interested in seeing this film?
‘Flight of the Navigator’ Remake Lands a New Writer
By Farah Cheded
Joe Henderson’s attachment is promising news for those that have been hoping this reboot will finally take off.
Before Stranger Things, there was 1986’s Flight of the Navigator, which features a similarly thrilling cocktail of cute kids, aliens and nasty men in lab coats. Given that so much of today’s culture is looking like a redux of the ‘80s and ’90s, it’s almost no wonder that two major studios have just decided to revive reboot efforts for this family favorite, as The Hollywood Reporter announced.
The 1986 kids’ sci-fi features an adorable 12-year old named David Freeman (Joey Cramer) who loses consciousness after falling into a ravine in 1976. 8 years later, he wakes up, dazed and confused and not having aged a day. As David tries to puzzle out what’s happened to him, NASA arrives nearby to investigate a UFO that has coincidentally crash-landed into some power lines. Those clever folks at the space agency put two and two together and soon, David is put through Disney’s version of the Eleven treatment as the scientists probe their new “national security secret”.
To everyone’s shock, it’s discovered that David’s brain is loaded up like a USB stick with maps of galaxies completely unknown to humans. Sensing that NASA aren’t likely to let him go back home anytime soon, David hatches an escape plan with the help of Max, the UFO’s wisecracking robot pilot (voiced by Pee-wee Herman actor Paul Reubens). What follows is a bit of a cat-and-mouse chase with NASA agents playing the villains.
Given the movie’s Disney affiliation, you can rest assured everything comes up roses for the sweet kid, although Cliff De Young and Veronica Cartwright’s performances as David’s bereft parents are authentically touching enough to make this a more profound affair than your average Mouse movie.
While some considered the 1986 film a little too obviously derivative of Steven Spielberg, Randall Kleiser (of Grease fame) did well to make a family flick this poignant and funny. It didn’t exactly wow at the box office, but it was enough of a cult favourite that Disney saw reboot potential in it back in 2009, when Brad Copeland (Arrested Development, Life in Pieces) was hired to pen a first draft. For unknown reasons, his attempts never came to fruition, and in 2012, Disney set writing partners Colin Trevorrow and Derek Connelly to work on another draft with a view to having Trevorrow direct. In a June 2015 interview, though, Trevorrow indicated that Disney didn’t seem too interested in the idea of a Flight of the Navigator remake anymore.
Now, under a new writer and new studios – Lionsgate and The Henson Company – there is real hope that this current reboot could take off. It’s interesting to note that the original Flight of the Navigator used puppetry to animate its “Mini Pee-Wee’s Playhouse of cool alien creatures”, so The Henson Company’s involvement could be meaningful here, should the team behind the reboot decide to go old-school on special effects.
The article ‘Flight of the Navigator’ Remake Lands a New Writer appeared first on Film School Rejects.
A Look Back at Ten of The Greatest Face-Offs in Movie History
Celebrating great movie rivalries in honor of ‘Battle of the Sexes.’
Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris’ new biopic Battle of the Sexes depicts the rivalry between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs as being mostly for show. Riggs does not really buy into the chauvinist pig persona he’s selling, but that does not mean that many of his supporters don’t. So while he still poses a huge problem, and you still want to see him lose because of what his victory would mean for actual misogynists, you don’t actively want him to get hit by a bus or anything.
A title like Battle of the Sexes inspires ideas of genuine, cut-throat antagonism, and while the film is well-made and satisfying in other regards, it doesn’t deliver much in the rivalry department. With that in mind, the following is a list of some of the biggest, best, and most intense rivalries to grace the silver screen. Now, since I was looking to craft a list of rivalries instead of a list of the best villains and their accompanying heroes, I only included films where both parties are somewhat comparably sympathetic—or, in some cases, more or less equally despicable. I also avoided films where “rivalry” is a synonym for unresolved sexual tension because otherwise, this would end up being a list of rom-coms. (There’s nothing wrong with lists of rom-coms; that just really wasn’t what I was going for.)
If you get to the end and realize you didn’t see your favorite, that’s probably because I, regrettably, have not seen every film ever made.
Alfred Borden and Robert Angier, The Prestige
What begins as your standard workplace rivalry between two entry-level magicians both looking to score Michael Caine as a mentor quickly evolves into something else entirely after Angier’s (Hugh Jackman) wife Julia dies in a magic trick gone wrong that may or may not be Borden’s (Christian Bale) fault. As the rivals grow more and more consumed with not just one-upping each other’s successes, but actively sabotaging each other’s acts, the film turns into a mind-bending barrage of twists and turns. David Bowie and Gollum even get involved. The fact that the film was released in 2006 when Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale were more or less Marvel and DC’s cinematic MVPs just adds one more delightful layer to a film already deliciously full of them.
Daniel Plainview and Eli Sunday, There Will Be Blood
When a young man by the name of Paul Sunday tells oil prospector Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) the location of his family ranch, which he claims sits on top of a large oil reserve, for a nifty $500 cash, it seems like a pretty good exchange. However, when he arrives at the Sunday ranch, Plainview finds an unexpected challenge in the form of Paul’s twin brother Eli (Paul Dano), a minister for the Church of The Third Revelation, who is just as cunning and power-hungry as Plainview but far better able to disguise himself as a humble man doing the good lord’s work. It’s an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object that culminates in one of the greatest closing scenes of all time, thanks in no small part to the fact that Paul Dano manages to be one of the few actors who go up against Daniel Day-Lewis and not look blatantly like, well, an actor. Because Day-Lewis is just that good—think of all those scenes in Lincoln that feel like watching actual Abraham Lincoln talking to Joseph Gordon-Levitt in a fake mustache. (Let’s not even talk about Gangs of New York.) Anyway, Dano as Sunday actually holds his own toe-to-toe with Day-Lewis’ Plainview, and what a dance it is.
Billy Hoyle and Sidney Deane, White Men Can’t Jump
One of the most ’90s things to ever exist that isn’t a picture of Will Smith or the pint-sized Olsen twins in overalls, this classic sports comedy starring Wesley Snipes and Woody Harrelson as two street basketball players out-hustling each other also features one of cinema’s great rivalries of a more light-hearted nature. It’s also getting a reboot for some reason.
Antonio Salieri and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Amadeus
Though Salieri (F. Murray Abraham) is jealous and weak and generally sort of slimy throughout the film, his situation—knowing music well enough to truly appreciate Mozart’s (Tom Hulce) genius while also knowing that his own work could never even hope to compare—is so relatable, especially in comparison to Mozart’s extreme genius and almost child-like rudeness, that you can’t help but feel something for the guy, even as he decides to deal with his feelings of inadequacy by doing everything in his power to destroy Mozart’s life. That said, you can’t help but feel something for Mozart either. Perhaps the most fascinating thing about this particular rivalry, though, is that in comparison to most others, there really isn’t a question of superiority—no question of Salieri composing something that would even come close to rivaling anything of Mozart’s—and yet, their rivalry still has an extremely compelling tension to it. Quite like There Will Be Blood, though, it’s really the quality of the performances that seal the deal; no other film in the more than thirty years since has managed to earn two nominations in the Oscar Best Actor category (ironically though, it was Salieri who won).
Professor X and Magneto, X-Men franchise
While the first X-Men film presents Magneto as more-or-less a genuine villain whose evildoing is made more understandable by his childhood concentration camp experience, later installments—especially the prequel-sequel-reboots—double down on Magneto’s moral ambiguity while playing up more of the shortcomings of Professor X’s approach to the point where I feel comfortable including the pair on this list.
Captain America and Iron Man, Captain America: Civil War
While our first superhero entry featured one, shall we say, goody-two-shoes, and one dapper but morally grey individual who sometimes has a very good point, one of the genius things about Captain America: Civil War is how well it manages to make Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) and Steve Roger’s opinions truly irreconcilable and antagonistic. Their stances are both flawed, but reasonable enough to be understandable and empathetic. We will have to wait until Avengers: Infinity War to see how, or even if, Team Cap and Team Stark will every truly reconcile, but the MCU damn well sure did a fantastic job of tearing them apart.
Rocky Balboa and Apollo Creed, Rocky
What list of cinematic rivalries would be complete without including the most famous cinematic sports rivalry of them all? Even though enmity ceases to define the relationship between Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone) and Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers) after Rocky II, developing into a friendship that ends as a full-blown tragic bromance in Rocky IV, they will always be remembered best for the rivalry with which they began.
Vincent Hanna and Neil McCauley, Heat
The sort of cat-and-mouse story where one is not always sure who is actually the cat in the situation, Michael Mann’s epic crime thriller details LAPD Lieutenant Vincent Hanna’s (Al Pacino) pursuit of professional thief Neil McCauley (Robert De Niro) in a film that actually lives up to the hype of being the meeting ground for two of the greatest actors of their generation. The fascinating thing about this particular rivalry, though, is how in spite of being incredibly cut-throat, it is also portrayed as being an entirely professional matter. When they first meet face-to-face, they stop for coffee and bond over how their commitment to their work has left their personal life in shambles—and that they are each willing to do whatever necessary to stop the other, including the use of lethal force. But, you know, no hard feelings.
Mary, Queen of Scots and Queen Elizabeth I, Mary, Queen of Scotts
Okay, so the film itself is the sort of well-made, well-acted but vaguely bland biopic that seems to exist if for no other reason than to be somehow nominated for a host of awards without managing to pick up any devoted or long-lasting fans, but the historic rivalry between Queen Elizabeth I and her first cousin once removed (not to be confused with Elizabeth’s half-sister Mary, best known for burning a whole lot of people at the stake) is one the silver screen keeps on coming back to, so it felt wrong not to include it here. Perhaps they are just pursuing it until they finally manage to get it right—the next attempt, starring Saoirse Ronan as Mary and Margot Robbie as Elizabeth, is scheduled for release next year.
Tracy Flick and Jim McAllister, Election
Alexander Payne’s 1999 satire of both suburban high school and politics is notable for providing cinema with one of its very limited number of number male-female non-romantic rivalries in the likable but somewhat pathetic high school teacher Jim (Matthew Broderick) and obnoxious high school senior and cutthroat opportunist Tracy (Reese Witherspoon). It’s sharp, it’s funny, and it will make you hate high school all over again without even having to get within a mile of a locker.
The article A Look Back at Ten of The Greatest Face-Offs in Movie History appeared first on Film School Rejects.
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