Review: "Hacksaw Ridge"

by Chris Feil

Caught between championing pacifism and luxuriating in brutality, Hacksaw Ridge struggles to have it both ways. Telling the story of WWII medic Desmond T. Doss (Andrew Garfield), America’s first conscientious objector (a soldier refusing to bear arms) who rescued over seventy soldiers in a single night. What plays out is part old-fashioned star vehicle for Garfield and part survival epic.

The film is as bloodthirsty as Mel Gibson’s other directorial efforts despite Doss’s message at the center. There is more fascination in the multitude of ways military bodies can be destroyed than Doss’s moral stance against that very violence - Gibson’s gaze is never more invigorated than when someone is brutalized. While the third act could simply be presented as the grim reality of war, it is instead an aimless fetishizing of bloodshed. This won’t come as a surprise to the dissenters of Gibson’s filmography, but the habit is perhaps more glaring given it is directly at odds with the material. The taste level is questionable and the subject gets lost.

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Sony is Finally Serious About a "Dragon Tattoo" Sequel

Chris here. Just when you think the Lisbeth Salander ship has sailed, Sony keeps dangling a Girl With the Dragon Tattoo sequel potential in front of us even without original director David Fincher. Well now we have some concrete news: the studio is fast-tracking The Girl in the Spider's Web for a production start next year and they are courting Don't Breathe's Fede Alvarex to take the helm.

Curiously, this skips the two novels that follow Dragon Tattoo, which had at one point been discussed to be combined into a single film. Dropping those stories means we'll miss out on some of the series's most thrilling moments that are also heavy of Salander's background. Not written by original author Stieg Larsson, Spider's Web could be a more standalone piece to keep those reported high costs at bay. Either way, after Don't Breathe was a sharp and tidy thriller (and inching closer to a stunning $90 million gross) it's clear Alvarez is ready for a larger project.

So does this mean that Rooney Mara and Daniel Craig will be totting back to the Sweden's underbelly? Mara's interest is still piqued as of the last time she was asked (depsite rumors of an Alicia Vikander swap), but will the Brady Corbet-directed 70MM musical Vox Lux conflict? Craig can't seem to decide on whether or not to be Bond again, so I'm guessing no Mara would mean no Craig - he also has the miniseries adaptation Purity to keep him busy. Is the series worth exploring without the Fincher/Mara/Craig trifecta?

It's Electrifying. It's Electrifying.

Jason from MNPP here -- isn't it strange, the stories that suddenly catch fire with the movie-makers and ignite dueling projects that race towards the finish line to beat the other to the eyes of the public? You've got your Volcano and Dante's Peak, you've got Deep Impact and Armageddon, and for those of you who don't see Disaster Movies as the be-all end-all of the cinematic form you've got Capote and Infamous... in which that southern writer was tossed at New York Society like a killer meteorite from outer space.

Today comes new news of another bizarre example - the the 1880s a battle over who would best monetize the invention of electricity was waged between George Westinghouse and Thomas Edison, and all of sudden, some one-hundred-and-thirty odd years later, it's all Hollywood wants to talk about.

I've been following the momentum of the movie called The Current War semi-regularly over at MNPP because a cast of handsome dudes have been attaching and un-attaching themselves from it for a few months -- as of right now the film will star Nicholas Hoult, Benedict Cumberbatch, Michael Shannon, and just today Spider-man himself Tom Holland has joined the cast. Oh and Katherine Waterston too, because I guess there needs to be a token wife character who frets at the sidelines of all the men's manly business. The Current War will be directed by Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, who made Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, and it's set to start filming next month.

Meanwhile everybody's favorite Oscar nominee Morten Tyldum is making a film called The Last Days of Night, based on a book by the same title, which tells the story from the point of view of Westinghouse's lawyer, who will be played by Eddie Redmayne. That movie is supposed to start filming in February. Do you think Benedict Cumberbatch and Morten both had their light-bulb moments (as it were) on the set of The Imitation Game, and this is some kind of secret spiteful race between the two of them? That's how I'm making entertainment out of the story for myself anyway.

YNMS: T2 Trainspotting

 by Murtada

Where were you in 1996 when the first Trainspotting was released? Your answer to that question might determine how excited you are for the sequel, T2 Trainspotting. It was an exciting shot in the arm for 90s cinema three whole years before the banner year of 1999. It also soldified the careers of Danny Boyle and Ewan McGregor. They allegedly had a tiff, over The Beach (2000). A movie few remember fondly if at all. Glad they patched things up. So let's dive into the trailer with our patented Yes No Maybe So. 

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Happy National Sandwich Day!

What's your favorite sandwich?

Besides the artisinal classic Diego-Maribel-Gael, that is. Mine is the iconic grilled cheese though I also indulge in a little pastrami & swiss on occasion.

On this day in showbiz history...

1921 Charles Bronson of Death Wish and Dirty Dozen fame is born
1931 Monica Vitti born in Italy. You haven't lived until you've seen her mussing with her hair in L'Avventura
1952 Roseanne Barr is born in Utah of all places. Goes on to create one of the best and most important sitcoms of all time, Roseanne
1954 The first Godzilla movie opens. Many more will follow
1956 The Wizard of Oz gets its first television airing. Annual showings will become a beloved tradition that cements the movie's cultural legacy
1957 Hunky action icon Dolph Lundren born in Stockholm
1963 Popular Oscar winning documentarian Davis Guggenheim is born. His films include He Named Me Malala, An Inconvenient Truth, and Waiting for Superman
1964 Awesome Danish actress Paprika Steen is born. If you've never seen her work rent The Celebration (1998) and Applause (2009) immediately to start
1995 Jodie Foster's still underrated very funny Home for the Holidays with Holly Hunter in great comic form opens in theaters
1998 Shakespeare in Love premieres in New York. After an extremely heated still divisive Oscar battle over its next few months it wins Best Picture, a decision we co-sign here at TFE since The Truman Show wasn't nominated. On this day also Bob Kane, the co-creator of Batman, dies. To think that the last Batman movie in his lifetime was Batman and Robin, poor guy.

Let's all agree that Volver is a masterpiece (and not just a masterwork of cleavage appreciation)

2006 Pedro Almodóvar's Volver (2006) opens in New York and Los Angeles. Becomes one of his most popular movies, nabs Penélope Cruz her first Oscar nomination, and remains one of the best films of the Aughts and of Pedro's career. It's utterly embarrassing that Oscar didn't nominate it for Best Foreign Language Film 

and one year from today...
2017 Thor: Ragnarok opens