Drama

Five Corners

By / / 1980s, 1987 / Leave a Comment

Despite going to the cinema two, sometimes three, times a week in the 1980s, I have no recollection of Five Corners.

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Five Corners

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The 1987 film, which stars Jodie Foster, Tim Robbins, John Turturro, and Todd Graff, spans roughly two days around a few blocks in the Bronx in 1964.

It’s a curious film. Directed by Tony Bill, Five Corners is set in a stylized New York populated by quirky, yet stereotypical, characters. It’s humorous one minute and dark the next — as well as darkly humorous at times.

Turturro is particularly outstanding as the sociopathic Heinz, who’s just gotten out of prison for the attempted rape of Linda (Foster) and returned to the neighborhood still obsessed with her. He’s backed by solid performances by Foster, Graff (who plays her boyfriend, Jamie), and Robbins (her pacifist protector, Harry).

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Throne of Blood

By / / 1950s, 1957 / Leave a Comment

Everything in Akira Kurosawa‘s Throne of Blood is spot-on, as usual. The leads — Toshiro Mifune and Isuzu Yamada as the ostensible Macbeth and Lady Macbeth — are impeccable as Kurosawa blends the Shakespeare tragedy with Japanese Noh performance, with a dose of John Ford western for good measure.

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"Throne of Blood"

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It’s a tightly crafted, brilliantly acted, pared-down adaptation of Macbeth set in feudal Japan.

What more can be said about the 1957 film (or any of Kurosawa’s other 29 films, for that matter) that hasn’t been said?

So rather than re-analyze Throne of Blood, I want to ask a question I think about often as I’m watching, in particular, foreign films: How much am I missing?

In film club, most of the movies we watch were produced years ago, in other countries, and in languages other than English. We’re viewing them from a 2020s, American perspective. We’re not watching the movies in the context they were produced.

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A Raisin in the Sun

By / / 1960s, 1961 / Leave a Comment

I hadn’t seen A Raisin in the Sun in decades, probably not since the 1970s or early ’80s, until we rewatched it in the film club.

A Raisin in the Sun started out as a stage play. All of the major cast members from the original Broadway production starred in the film adaptation, save for Stephen Perry who plays the young son, Travis.

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A Raisin in the Sun

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Maybe adaptation isn’t the right word.

Watching the movie is like watching a stage play rather than a film. That extends to the acting and the makeup.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s great film; it just has some technical flaws.

A Raisin in the Sun, based on Lorraine Hansberry’s play, focuses on the Youngers, a multi-generational Black family, living in a south Chicago tenement, who are dealing with the death of a father and a $10,000 insurance payout.

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