Showing posts with label movie. Show all posts
Showing posts with label movie. Show all posts

Sunday, January 5, 2025

Adulterers (2015) - free will ... and its consequences:


Adulterers


Adulterers is a cautionary tale, a powerful drama inspired by true events, and far more compelling than the contrived Fatal Attraction (1987) and Unfaithful (2002).


How you feel at the end of Adulterers may depend on your personal experience of the subject it deals with.
It’s right there in the title.
If you’ve ever been cheated on by your significant other – then this movie might sting.
If you have cheated on your significant other – then this movie should rightly sting if you have any conscience and sense of guilt about the choice you made.

Consequences for making the wrong choice is the theme unflinchingly examined in this movie, released in the United States on January 5, 2016, written, produced and directed by H.M. Coakley.

Lead actor, Sean Farris threw himself into this role of a betrayed husband.
We see the anguish of his character, his pain, regret, broken heart, broken life, and ultimately broken mind.

Sean Farris is Samuel, a store assistant, working extra hours during a sweltering New Orleans afternoon.
It’s his first wedding anniversary; a special day in any marriage.
Samuel is a proud and happy man, deeply in love with his wife, Ashley (Danielle Savre).
He regrets having to work so many hours and laments at their lack of money, but he plans on making it up to Ashley.
He swings by his home halfway through his day, carrying his wife’s favorite flowers and chocolates.
Besides their money troubles, all seems right with Samuel’s world until he catches Ashley and her lover, Damien (Mehcad Brooks), naked, having sex in the bedroom.
Devastated, Samuel shoots them both.

This is not a spoiler; it happens within the first twelve minutes.


Downstairs, he sits on the couch, and drinks whiskey straight from the bottle.
Suffering a psychological break, he rethinks the situation.


This time, in his imagination, he doesn’t pull the trigger.

What if I’d waited instead of acting on impulse?
What would I say to them?
How far would I go to punish them?
What would they say to justify their sin, or lie their way out of the situation? 

These questions are the basis for the imagined trial and torture he puts his wife and her lover through in that stifling room.


As Samuel struggles with the pain of betrayal and infidelity, the wedding ring, crucifix and Bible often the focus of the camera, he struggles with his faith.

Finally, as Samuel himself points out:

"You ain't sorry. You're just sorry that you got caught. It's time that you dealt with the consequences of your actions."

In forcing them to face the consequences of their actions, Samuel is then left to face the consequences of his own.


There are no winners in this story; everyone is destroyed.


Adultery … it’s all fun and games ... until you get caught!

Friday, December 13, 2024

The Telephone Box (1972) - it’s enough to give you phone phobia!


La Cabina / The Telephone Box (1972)


Shortly before New Year, we watched Phone Booth (2002) again, a great thriller starring Colin Farrell, Forest Whitaker, Katie Holmes, Radha Mitchell, and Kiefer Sutherland.


Farrell plays an unscrupulous New York publicist who answers a ringing phone in a booth he’s standing next to.
The caller warns him he’ll be killed if he attempts to leave the booth … and … the story develops from there.
The claustrophobic atmosphere of Phone Booth reminded me of a 1972 Spanish short movie I saw on TV during the mid-‘80’s called La Cabina (aka The Telephone Box).

A unfortunate guy (José Luis López Vázquez), in a world long before the invention of the cell phone, attempts to make a call in a street booth.
The door closes on him as he discovers the phone doesn’t work.
He tries to leave, but the door is locked tight.


He’s trapped in there a long time as a crowd of onlookers gather … and … the story develops from there.
La Cabina is quirky and dated, but still worth the half-hour to watch, with an original story that delivers a surreal and scary twist.


Although street booths have mostly disappeared, La Cabina is a great reason to own a cell phone … but then you have to consider what happened in Stephen King’s novel: Cell.


Yikes!

I read that folks in Spain, shortly after La Cabina was released on December 13, 1972, took to preventing the door in phone booths from shutting completely by keeping their foot in the gap.

I can’t imagine why.

Wednesday, October 16, 2024

On this day in movie history - Barfly (1987):


Barfly

directed by Barbet Schroeder
written by Charles Bukowski
was released in the United States on October 16, 1987.
Music by Jack Baran.

Cast:

Mickey Rourke, Faye Dunaway, Alice Krige, Jack Nance, J.C. Quinn, Frank Stallone, Sandy Martin, Roberta Bassin, Gloria LeRoy, Joe Unger, Harry Cohn, Pruitt Taylor Vince, Joe Rice, Julie ‘Sunny’ Pearson, Donald L. Norden, Wil Albert, Hal Shafer, Zeke Manners, Pearl Shear, Rik Colitti, Michael Collins, Ronald G. Joseph, Damon Hines, Lahmard J. Tate, Gary Carlos Cervantes, Peter Conti, Vance Colvig Jr., Stacey Pickren, Leonard Termo, Gary Cox, Fritz Feld, Albert Henderson, Sandy Rose, Madalyn Carol, George Marshall Ruge, Debby Lynn Ross, Charles Bukowski, John Forker.

Saturday, October 5, 2024

On this day in movie history - Spielberg (2017):


Spielberg

a documentary on director Steven Spielberg,
directed by Susan Lacy,
was released at the New York Film Festival in the United States on October 5, 2017.

Cast:

Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Richard Dreyfuss, Bill Butler, John Williams, David Edelstein, Michael Phillips, Nancy Spielberg, Anne Spielberg, Janet Maslin, Sue Spielberg, Leah Adler, Arnold Spielberg, J.J. Abrams, Sid Sheinberg, James Brolin, David Geffen, Roger Ernest, Steven Bochco, George Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola, Vilmos Zsigmond, Brian De Palma, Tony Kushner, Bob Balaban, Tom Hanks, Drew Barrymore, Peter Coyote, Melissa Mathison, Leonardo DiCaprio, A.O. Scott, Kathleen Kennedy, Harrison Ford, Tom Stoppard, Walter F. Parkes, Oprah Winfrey, J. Hoberman, Frank Marshall, Christian Bale, Liam Neeson, Ralph Fiennes, Ben Kingsley, Janusz Kaminski, Michael Kahn, Annette Insdorf, Dennis Muren, David Koepp, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, Rick Carter, Robert Zemeckis, Ron Meyer, Laurie MacDonald, Cate Blanchett, Holly Hunter, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Dustin Hoffman, Lawrence Kasdan, Daniel Day-Lewis, Sally Field, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Todd McCarthy, Tom Cruise, Eric Bana, Daniel Craig, Adam Somner, Joanna Johnston, Alan Alda, Karen Allen, William Atherton, Richard Attenborough, Dan Aykroyd, Ned Beatty, John Belushi, Ed Bradley, Tom Brokaw, Jessica Capshaw, Kate Capshaw, Dana Carvey, Bill Clinton, Sean Connery, Joan Crawford, Hugh Downs, Denholm Elliott, Peter Falk, Paul Freeman, Teri Garr, Danny Glover, Whoopi Goldberg, Cary Guffey, Goldie Hawn, Alfred Hitchcock, Norman Howell, Amy Irving, Ben Johnson, Wayne Knight, Shia LaBeouf, Marcia Lucas, K.C. Martel, Mike Myers, George Negus, Al Pacino, Fievel Posner, Dan Rather, John Rhys-Davies, Terry Richards, Oliver Robins, Mark Rylance, Roy Scheider, Gene Shalit, Robert Shaw, Dinah Shore, Tom Snyder, Rebecca Spielberg, Sasha Spielberg, Theo Spielberg, David Strathairn, Henry Thomas, François Truffaut, Dennis Weaver, Robert Young, Margaret Avery, Ruby Barnhill, Marlon Brando, Edward Burns, John Candy, David Costabile, Melinda Dillon, Dakota Fanning, Morgan Freeman, Adam Goldberg, Alec Guinness, Mark Hamill, Hal Holbrook, Anthony Hopkins, Djimon Hounsou, Byron Jennings, Tommy Lee Jones, Charlie Korsmo, Ronald Lacey, Maurice LaMarche, Lee Majors, Joseph Mazzello, Samantha Morton, Sam Neill, Frances O'Connor, Kevin J. O'Connor, Peter O'Toole, Haley Joel Osment, Barry Pepper, Giovanni Ribisi, Ariana Richards, Miranda Richardson, Pat Roach, Geoffrey Rush, Amy Ryan, Omar Sharif, Martin Short, Tom Sizemore, Robert Stack, Christopher Walken, Dee Wallace, Robin Williams.