Change Your Image
edw1218
Reviews
Ride with the Devil (1999)
Ang Lee succeeds in yet another genre
Overshadowed by publicity surrounding the film debut of Jewel, "Ride With The Devil" quickly flopped at the box office last year, leaving Ang Lee's very good Civil War drama unknown to many. Lee, acclaimed director of "Sense And Sensibility" and "The Ice Storm, scores a winner in yet another genre with this story of a group of southern renegades battling union soldiers.
The first hour of the film sets the world of these bushwackers as they seize several towns in bloody shoot-outs with federal soldiers. We also learn the men are not fighting for the continuation of slavery, but the preservation of Southern society as is. The film is at its best as it focuses on the personal lives of Jake (Tobey Maguire), Jack Bull (Skeet Ulrich), and Holt (Jeffrey Wright), the two whites and a black scout guarding a pro-south family in Missouri. Jewel is the widowed daughter-in-law of this family and immediately takes a liking to Jack Bull.
After the family flees for Texas, the men drop Jewel and bounce back and forth between traveling solo and with the bushwackers. The film always travels parallel to the war with some symbolic references made between the bushwackers' battles and the Civil War. Lee makes a strong statement for the cause of these men in the name of fighting until the death for what you believe in, but it will be difficult for most to empathize with those basically battling for the South.
It is a sincere shame that what should have been independent star Jeffrey Wright's coming-out party was crashed by the craziness surrounding Jewel's debut. Wright is outstanding with both Jewel and Maguire providing adequate support.
The biggest reason for the film's success, however, is Lee's delicate direction. He sets very well another era unfamiliar to movie-goers and paces the film very well (the 2:19 never seem arduous). "Ride With The Devil" gets a 7.
Clerks (1994)
My favorite film of all time is a perfect comedy.
The perfect film for pseudo art house intellectuals, Kevin Smith's hilarious $27,000-debut feature "Clerks" is simply a perfect comedy. Smith's script combines vulgar, gross-out topics with rants on some things as basic as love and relationships. The two are so seamlessly sewn together, they make the works of one of Smith's biggest influences, John Hughes, seem tame in comparison. The hilarity never slows in the 90-minute masterpiece as Smith manages to involve some plot in what's basically a chat comedy. The film is surprisingly well-acted considering all of the cast's amateur status, with Jeff Anderson as the lead character's sidekick Randal turning in one of the most memorable comedic performances ever. Three films ("Mallrats", "Chasing Amy", and "Dogma") later this remains Smith's most enjoyable work. It's legacy has been firmly stamped as one of the most important and influential independent films of all time and it has landed Smith an army of loyal followers.
The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
A spectacular debut unfortunately followed by a lackluster sophomore effort
After being slightly dissappointed by "The Green Mile", I decided to check out Frank Darabont's first adaptation of a Steven King prison story once again. "The Shawshank Redemption" remained as much of an enjoyably original modern classic after this second viewing. In this second viewing, I appreciated even more the sparklingly sharp dialogue between Morgan Freeman and Tim Robbins. Like in "Green Mile", Darabont set the scene of a depression-era prison extremely well. The director was also well-served to use King's vivid character descriptions to make the supporting characters as memorable as the leads. The result was an instant, uplifting classic about hope brought to the most hopeless locations.