strongest: originality + direction + music + minorities
weakest: message
Cast: Imogen Poots, Michael Shannon, Justin Long, Rosanna Arquette, Michael Nyqvist, Emmanuelle Devos
Director: Matthew M. Ross
Writer: Matthew M. Ross
Cinematographer: Eric Koretz
Editor: Jennifer Lilly, Rebecca Rodriguez
Composer: Danny Bensi, Saunder Jurriaans
strongest: minorities
weakest: humor
Of the four couples whose inner life is exposed, trust is only found in the non-caucasian one.
Cast: Anthony LaPaglia, Kerry Armstrong, Rachael Blake, Geoffrey Rush, Barbara Hershey, Vince Colosimo
Directed by Ray Lawrence
Written by Andrew Bovell
strongest: minorities
weakest: direction + structure
Director: Bruce Beresford
Writer: Susan McMartin
Actors: Eddie Murphy, Britt Robertson, Natascha McElhone
strongest: script + music
weakest: structure + humor
Director: Derek Cianfrance
Writers: Derek Cianfrance (written for the screen by), M.L. Stedman (novel)
Actors: Michael Fassbender, Alicia Vikander, Rachel Weisz
On mothers’ interchangeability, see also Frozen River (Courtney Hunt, 2008)
Director: David Fincher
Writers: Gillian Flynn (screenplay), Gillian Flynn (novel)
Actors: Ben Affleck, Rosamund Pike, Neil Patrick Harris
“The only time you liked yourself was when you were trying to be someone this cunt might like. I’m not a quitter, I’m that cunt. I killed for you; who else can say that? You think you’d be happy with a nice Midwestern girl? No way, baby! I’m it.”
Director: James L. Brooks
Writer: James L. Brooks
Actors: William Hurt, Albert Brooks, Holly Hunter
The story doesn’t go anywhere / Holly Hunter is great but the other female roles are excessively stereotyped.
Director: Asghar Farhadi
Writers: Asghar Farhadi, Mani Haghighi
Actors: Hamid Farokhnezhad, Hediyeh Tehrani, Taraneh Alidoosti
A young woman – very much in love and soon to get married – meets
A woman who is devastated because her husband has an affair and
A divorced woman who remembers the time her husband was madly in love with her.
Nevertheless…
Director: Norman Foster
Writers: Alan Campbell (screenplay), Norman Foster (screenplay)
Actors: Ann Sheridan, Dennis O’Keefe, Robert Keith
Director: Byron Haskin
Writers: Roy Huggins (screenplay), Roy Huggins (serial)
Actors: Lizabeth Scott, Don DeFore, Dan Duryea
Director: Vincent Sherman
Writers: David Goodis (original screenplay), James Gunn (original screenplay)
Actors: Ann Sheridan, Lew Ayres, Zachary Scott
Same year, same director, same actress, same infidelity theme as precedent movie (Nora Prentiss) but this one with a more traditional approach. As in Nora Prentiss, a film noir with no real bad guy (or bad girl), except for the greedy Martin Barrow (Steven Gearey).
Eve Arden steals the show, a feminine counterpart to George Sanders.
Director: Vincent Sherman
Writers: Paul Webster (story), Jack Sobell (story)
Actors: Ann Sheridan, Kent Smith, Bruce Bennett
Nice film noir without any bad guy (or bad girl), just a man who “reached for something, going about it the wrong way.” CineMaven’s ESSAYS from the COUCH