adaptation – Page 18 – PopCult Reviews

Movie Review – Goodfellas

Goodfellas (1990)
Written by Nicholas Pileggi & Martin Scorsese
Directed by Martin Scorsese

Goodfellas is without a doubt one of the most influential films of the last 50 years. I would argue this movie has influenced East Coast Italian Americans’ portrayal far more than Francis Ford Coppola’s Godfather films. While Coppola’s work is concerned with the mythic figures at the top, Scorsese explores the regular working class wise guys who have to hustle every day to make money and stay alive. This makes them incredibly relatable. Audiences will always relate to the guy who’s just trying to get by, then the mafia kingpin at the top. I would say Goodfellas is the best gangster film ever made.

Movie Review – The Last Temptation of Christ

The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)
Written by Paul Schrader
Directed by Martin Scorsese

It’s absolutely fascinating to see two artists who have delivered masterpieces (Taxi Driver, Raging Bull) so spectacularly bomb a film. I think it’s especially interesting because this was such a passion project for Martin Scorsese. He first read Niko Kazantzakis’s novel while filming Boxcar Bertha for Roger Corman in 1972. In turn, Scorsese gave the book to Schrader, and the two planned to make this as the follow-up to The King of Comedy. Right-wing fundamentalist Christian groups and Catholic morality organizations started letter writing to complain about the production, and Paramount pulled back.

Movie Review – The Color of Money

The Color of Money (1986)
Written by Richard Price
Directed by Martin Scorsese

The Color of Money is a very appropriately titled film because it feels like Martin Scorsese made it to progress other projects, mostly The Last Temptation of Christ. This was essentially a work-for-hire picture that helped keep Scorsese busy and honing his craft. He doesn’t really use any of the stable of actors you might expect, even in minor roles. John Turturro, who had a “blink and you’ll miss him” cameo in Raging Bull, has a small supporting role, but overall, this is a group of performers Scorsese was working with for the first time. Paul Newman and Tom Cruise are the co-male leads, with Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio as the female lead. It’s also a sequel to a film made twenty years earlier. All these elements make for a movie you probably wouldn’t guess Scorsese made unless you saw the opening credits.

Movie Review – Last and First Men

Last and First Men (2020)
Written by Jóhann Jóhannsson & José Enrique Macián
Directed by Jóhann Jóhannsson

In 2016, I went to the theater to see Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival. One of the things that stuck with me when the end credits rolled was the haunting score by Jóhann Jóhannsson. Since his first solo album in 2002, the Icelandic composer had already established himself blending traditional orchestra, electronic instruments, and choral elements. Last and First Men would be his only directorial effort. It premiered in early 2020 at the Berlin Film Festival, but Jóhannsson had died in 2018. Toxicology reports showed a lethal combination of cocaine and flu medication in his system. Jóhannsson was only 48 years old.

Movie Review – Jindabyne

Jindabyne (2006)
Written by Raymond Carver and Beatrix Christian
Directed by Ray Lawrence

In 2006, sixteen Australian films were released worldwide, one of the largest international surges of movies from that country. Lawrence’s picture is a quiet one, very mature in its storytelling. He’s clearly comfortable telling stories in his own way, letting moments breathe. It’s quite different from the more commercial style editing of Bliss. Obviously, Lawrence was closer to his beginnings in advertising then, so he told stories in that mode. With 21 years between Bliss and Jindabyne, he’d changed as an artist aesthetically, but this picture finds Lawrence still exploring the conflict of personalities in intimate relationships.

Movie Review – Lantana

Lantana (2001)
Written by Andrew Bovell
Directed by Ray Lawrence

Ray Lawrence took sixteen years off between his first and second films. His career seems to coincide with the two peaks in international interest in Australian cinema in the last forty years. In the 1980s, there was a sudden spike of interest in the United States around Australian media. Directors like Peter Weir and actors like Mel Gibson became hot commodities. Crocodile Dundee was a pretty massive phenomenon in the States. Even bizarre comedies like Young Einstein starring the comedic actor Yahoo Serious had their moment in the spotlight. Lawrence’s Bliss came out in 1985 and never really swept up Americans, but it was definitely given a high stature in Australia. Jump to 2001, as a new wave of Australian films begins capturing the attention of audiences, and Lawrence gives us the highest-grossing movie in Australian history, Lantana.

Movie Review – Bliss (1985)

Bliss (1985)
Written by Ray Lawrence & Peter Carey
Directed by Ray Lawrence

In twenty-one years, Australian filmmaker Ray Lawrence made three movies with a sixteen-year gap between his first two. His first film, Bliss, caused hundreds to walk out of its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival and won the 1985 Australian Academy Award. Lawrence was born in London in 1948 and moved to Australia when he was 11. After he graduated from high school, Lawrence attended and subsequently dropped out of university. This lead to his work in advertising in Sydney and then a move back to London producing commercials. When he finally returned to Australia, Lawrence started his own production company that became one of the top producers of commercials in the continent. It was during his time in advertising that Lawrence met author Peter Carey and they became quick friends. This led to a screenwriting partnership that led to two full-length screenplays. Eventually, they decided to adapt Carey’s award-winning novel Bliss for the big screen.

Movie Review – Marnie

Marnie (1964)
Written by Jay Presson Allen
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock

All good things must come to an end. Marnie would mark the downturn of Alfred Hitchcock’s directorial career. He’d just come off a fantastic streak of films: Vertigo, North by Northwest, Psycho, The Birds. That many consecutive movies that immediately became iconic is quite an achievement, so it is a little unfair that critics turned their noses up so hard at what Hitch released for the rest of his career. On the other hand, he set the standard so high that we expect something brilliant. Marnie has all those things you expect in a Hitchcock movie but done so much more clunkily, with a deep strain of misogyny boring through the entire production. In some ways, Marnie is Hitch letting the mask slipping and showing too much of his true self to us.

Movie Review – The Birds

The Birds (1963)
Written by Daphne du Maurier & Evan Hunter
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock

The Birds is unlike any Hitchcock film I have ever seen. Three years after shocking audiences with Psycho, a film that is also slightly off from most of the director’s work but still sharing some psychological traits, we get this straight up man versus nature horror film. The first half is very slow, almost a comedy-drama, and every once in a while, we get a hint that something is off. Then the second half hits, and the film slides into total chaos. What we get is what I see as a reasonably angry film that expresses some of Hitchcock’s misanthropy in horrifying and comedically absurd ways.

Movie Review – Nomadland

Nomadland (2020)
Written & Directed by Chloe Zhao

It’s tempting to single out 2020 as an exceptionally rough year, but I argue that life for millions of people has been a generational cycle of struggle for as long as anyone can remember. The United States is caught in a cycle of economic recessions that batter people working in the industrial & service industries worse and worse. Writer Jessica Bruder detailed the American subculture of older workers who live in a perpetual state of migration, taking rough menial seasonal labor while living out of RVs and vans. This community first gained prominence in the wake of the 2008 recession, which saw swaths of homeowners losing their homes due to inhumane business practices. Her book details these people’s tragedies and triumphs breaking their backs to make ends meet and keep traveling up the road to the next spot. Most importantly, it highlights how American corporations have made this migrant labor a key component in their business model.