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Ironweed - (1987)
Francis Phelan (Jack Nicholson) was drunk when he accidentally dropped his baby boy, killing him when he was only 13 days old. 22 years later, after abandoning his family because of the grief and shame, he wanders about town - a drunken bum, eating at soup kitchens, finding scraps of work here and there, and looking out for his companion, Helen Archer (Meryl Streep). Helen is sick, and lives a similar kind of life - but she was once a talented musician and singer. Ironweed sees these characters taking stock, remembering their former lives, and fending off ghosts and visions of a different reality. It really touched me - and I'm surprised to find that it's rarely talked about or seen today. Perhaps that's because it indeed is depressing - but seeing Francis walk about his old neighborhood remembering, and then visiting his family after being gone for so long, is so touching it makes up for the dour tone. Have these characters resorted to booze because their lives are so tough, or are their lives that tough because they've resorted to booze? It's a vicious cycle. Tom Waits proves that he's just an all-round talent in this as bum (what else?) Rudy. Nicholson and Streep - of course they're brilliant. They're two of the greatest. Looks like I've been missing out, not reading any of William Kennedy's novels - he adapted his own work here. Sad, and melancholy.
8/10
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A Time to Kill - (1996)
Pardon the expression, but A Time to Kill is like a courtroom drama on crack. Carl Lee Hailey (Samuel L. Jackson) takes out the two misanthropes who raped his 10-year-old daughter with an automatic, permanently disabling Deputy Sheriff Dwayne Looney (Chris Cooper) in the process. Lawyer Jake Brigance (Matthew McConaughey) takes the case - knowing that the prospect of a fair trial in Mississippi, for a black man killing two white men, is going to be a tall order. Enter Freddie Lee Cobb (Kiefer Sutherland), brother of one of the dead men, and the Ku Klux Klan. I tell you, in this movie everyone gets a terrible beating, everyone gets their house burned down, everyone gets kidnapped at some stage, and everyone gets shot at least once. The town descends into war, as Brigance takes on stuffy prosecutor Rufus Buckley (Kevin Spacey) with the help of progressive advocate Ellen Roark (Sandra Bullock) - suffering setback after setback, and leaving, as his last resort, his final summation. Donald Sutherland pokes his head in from time to time as Brigance's mentor, but shares no scenes with his son. A Time to Kill goes for two and a half hours, and gets so heavy-handed in it's noble desire to shoot down racism and inequality that I think it might backfire just a little. But boy oh boy, it sure isn't boring.
6/10
Last edited by Gideon58; 10-15-23 at 10:06 PM.