{"id":7120,"date":"2018-03-14T07:41:53","date_gmt":"2018-03-14T11:41:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7120"},"modified":"2018-04-02T08:13:51","modified_gmt":"2018-04-02T12:13:51","slug":"icmthem-the-good-and-the-bad-of-recent-biopics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7120","title":{"rendered":"ICYMThem: The Good and the Bad of Recent Biopics"},"content":{"rendered":"

Film Stars Don\u2019t Die in Liverpool<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\"AnnetteThis beneath-the-radar film directed by Paul McGuigan (script by Matt Greenhalgh) shows\u00a0 the last days of Academy-Award-winning actress Gloria Grahame (trailer<\/a>). In her final illness, she turns to a former lover, the much younger actor, Peter Turner, and the flashbacks about their relationship in its heyday are sparkling and fun. They knew how to enjoy life and each other.<\/p>\n

Annette Bening makes a charming, sexy Grahame, riddled with vanities, and Jamie Bell is Turner\u2014sincere and doing the right thing. One heart-rending moment of unselfish love and compassion from each of them. Julie Walters is excellent as Turner\u2019s mother, unaccustomed to consorting with Hollywood stars, but able to establish a strong human connection.<\/p>\n

Rotten Tomatoes<\/a> Critics Rating 80%; audiences 71%.<\/p>\n

Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\"MarkWhile Watergate revelations piled up daily in the early 1970s, in all the excruciating details of high-level misdeeds, one mystery remained: Who was the high-ranking source, \u201cDeep Throat\u201d? Washington Post<\/em> reporters gave this name to one of history\u2019s most important whistle-blowers.<\/p>\n

Thirty years later Americans learned the source had been Mark Felt, J. Edgar Hoover\u2019s #2, the man expected to next head the FBI. Felt was aced out of the position by the White House when Hoover died unexpectedly. Were his actions revenge? Or more noble? I saw the film and cannot answer that.<\/p>\n

This is great material about a consequential period. Too bad the filmmakers couldn\u2019t make better use of it. Liam Neeson (Felt) looks cadaverous, and writer\/director Peter Landesman gives the actors some really wooden dialog, offering little depth (trailer<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Rotten Tomatoes<\/a> Critics Rating 35%; audiences 43%.<\/p>\n

Marshall<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\"MarshallAnother biopic that doesn\u2019t live up to its source material is Reginald Hudlin\u2019s Marshall<\/em>, written by Jacob and Michael Koskoff (trailer<\/a>). Chadwick Boseman nicely plays Thurgood Marshall in his early days, fighting for equal treatment under the law for black Americans. He finds a litigation partner in a reluctant Sam Friedman (played by Josh Gad. The acting is fine, but the scenes and dialog are clich\u00e9d, and the rest of the characters two-dimensional.<\/p>\n

End-titles mention the 33 cases Marshall argued before the Supreme Court\u2014surely there were numerous episodes embedded in those cases that would bring new issues to light, more illuminating than the courtroom drama presented here: a black man accused of raping and trying to kill a white woman. It would have been interesting to see how the nation\u2019s top court responded to civil rights issues, rather than the predictable provincial racism of a local justice system. We\u2019ve seen that scenario before. Says critic Indra Arriaga<\/a> in the Anchorage Press<\/em>, \u201cMarshall<\/em> misses opportunity after opportunity to be truthful and relevant in the world today.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rotten Tomatoes<\/a> Critics Rating: 83%; audiences 85%.<\/p>\n

Read the Book?<\/strong><\/span>
\n<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Film Stars Don\u2019t Die in Liverpool This beneath-the-radar film directed by Paul McGuigan (script by Matt Greenhalgh) shows\u00a0 the last days of Academy-Award-winning actress Gloria Grahame (trailer). In her final illness, she turns to a former lover, the much younger … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"ICMThem: The Good and the Bad of Recent Biopics - disappointing use of compelling material","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[265,61,366,118,57,104],"tags":[1264,128,1265,416,1266],"class_list":["post-7120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biography","category-character","category-drama","category-memoir","category-movies","category-the-morgue","tag-gloria-grahame","tag-history","tag-mark-felt","tag-real-life","tag-thurgood-marshall"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-1QQ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7120"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7120\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7166,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7120\/revisions\/7166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}