Movie Review: Walk the Line

Posted by admin on Dec 9, 2005 in Volume 14 Issue 1 | 0 comments

WALK THE LINE

Every good thing you have heard about Walk the Line is true. Acting? Flawless. Cinematography? Stellar. Casting? Tyler Hilton as Elvis was a bad choice, but still incredible casting. But let me give you some context: I’m not a Johnny Cash fan. I don’t own a single album or MP3 of his music, and he’s not listed with my friends on MySpace. With this said, I know nothing of the man other than “Ring of Fire” and “Hurt”— which I thought were cool songs. With James Mangold’s release of this biography, I soon found out that this Johnny Cash guy is a pretty big deal. He pioneered a sound that was deeply rooted in gospel but found its success in folk. And I realized that one thing doesn’t change in being a musician: there will always be sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll. Mangold doesn’t let up on this side of Johnny Cash.

With shouts of Oscar jumping out all over this film, it will inevitably be compared to last year’s Ray. But Walk the Line is in a class all by itself—looked at from any angle. Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon deliver an amazing portrayal of the relationship between Cash and his wife, June Carter, achieving almost perfect imitations of their voices and mannerisms.

The film begins with Johnny Cash waiting to perform the first concert of his famous tour, starting at Fulsom Country Prison in California. It then switches to a flashback of 1944, and the audience gets a glimpse of JC’s childhood, family and growing up years. The film goes on to play out how John became the famous Johnny Cash, developing the love story between him and June Carter, and showcasing several of his songs along the way.
Look for Walk the Line to open doors for Mr. Phoenix and be the coining film on James Mangold’s résumé.

-Gabriel Gross

HARRY POTTER AMD THE GOBLE OF FIRE

At long last, the fourth film featuring the exploits of everyone’s favourite wizard has arrived. Having never read the books nor been a huge fan of the series (okay, a non-fan), I’m only going to concern myself with the film itself. I’ll leave the comparisons with the book to the die-hard fans and the 30-something people with no girlfriends, and, at the same time, happily bypass endless nitpickings of what they got right or wrong.A
The main child actors (Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint) have all matured into well-rounded actors and their scenes now carry more weight and emotion. Daniel Radcliffe (in the role of Harry Potter) in particular gives a good performance– showing why he was born for this role. The weakest link of the “big three” has to be Emma Watson (playing Hermione Granger), as some of her scenes seem forced.

This movie is well done from a purely cinematic point of view. The cinematography was quite breathtaking (especially in IMAX), most of the Computer Graphic Imagery is fairly seamless, and the musical score is well done. One of my nitpicks has to be the pacing of the film, which, at over two and a half hours long, still feels truncated. One instance is the subplot where Harry begins to like this girl (yes, they’ve hit puberty). It just didn’t fit well and she disappears later in the film. Also the appearance of Lord Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes) just wasn’t that intimidating; Fiennes is an amazing actor, he just isn’t menacing enough to play you-know-who.

On the whole this was a decent film, worth the price of admission. Does this series compare to others (i.e. LOTR, Star Wars)? Not a chance. Will it make tons of money? Heck yes, and we still have three more to look forward to.

– Jonah Love