Historical costume drama, stronger on the costumes than on the history or drama. Those two elements come down to a kind of Late Renaissance Godfather, in which a feminist-revisionist Elizabeth I is installed in the part of Michael Corleone, evolving from a frolicsome carefree girl (no virgin, she) into a …
The Battle of Stalingrad, reduced ridiculously to a personal "duel" between superstar snipers, a Russian peasant and a German aristocrat. ("It's the essence of the class struggle," opines the editor of a propaganda newsletter.) The telescopic shootouts are meticulously diagrammed, and there are several spectacular shots of aerial attacks, and …
True story of a U.S. Ranger assault on a POW camp in the Philippines toward the end of the Second World War, though the first-person narrator, the leader of the assault, starts back a bit further: "In 1941 the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor...." John Dahl, the director, had had trouble …
You'd never guess, from the weight of the thing, that this is one of Shakespeare's comedies -- unless maybe by the device of the woman-disguised-as-a-man and fooling her own husband. Further, the naturalistic acting (faltering delivery, sotto voce, peppered with pauses), the cut-aways to authentic Venice locales, and the drowning-out …
The country that gave the world football has since delivered a painful pattern of loss. Why can’t England’s men win at their own game? Joseph Fiennes plays Gareth Southgate in James Graham’s hit play of nation and game. Filmed live on stage at the National Theatre, Rupert Goold (Judy) directs.
Joseph Fiennes glowers then gawks his way through Kevin Reynolds' sun-blanched, strangely passionless account of the events following the Passion of Christ. Fiennes is Clavius, a Roman centurion assigned to keeping the peace in Jerusalem, but the peace he really wants is that of “a day without death,” preferably in …
Splashy feature debut for the man behind the cable-television series Nip/Tuck, writer-director Ryan Murphy, a hey-look-at-me cannonball, adapted from the "memoir" of Augusten Burroughs. Set in the Seventies, it spans his prepubescence ("I guess it doesn't matter where I begin," the narrator comments in voice-over, "because nobody's going to believe …
Wouldn't it be fun to think that the Bard suffered from writer's block, that he received a shove from "Kit" Marlowe to get the old plot-ball rolling, that he stole lines from soap-box orators, that he was rewriting his deathless dialogue daily during rehearsals, that one of the actors in …
Animated Arabian Nights tale: the ancient mariner given a contempo makeover ("You catch that last move? Pretty cool, huh?") and matched with an equal-opportunity kick-ass chick. What trace of the old Sinbad remains? His supposed noble sacrifice at the end, returning to Syracuse to face the music for the theft …
Nicole Kidman and Joseph Fiennes play the recently transplanted parents of two in small-town Australia. Their son is given to walking around town late at night; their daughter, to more horizontal activities. (See also: the reason for the recent move.) When the kids disappear, the family's business becomes everybody's business …
Roman centurion Sean Bean goes looking for the boy Jesus, long before Roman Centurion Joseph Fiennes went looking for the risen Jesus, and almost as long before Roman centurion George Clooney stumbled upon the crucified Jesus. Cyrus Nowrasteh directs.