Archive for the ‘Antoine Fuqua’ Category

Michael

Director:  Antoine Fuqua

Cast: Jafaar Jackson, Nia Long, Colman Domingo, KeiLyn Durrel Jones, Michael Andrew Baker, Zach Kenney, Miles Teller, Mike Myers, Kendrick Sampson

Running Time: 2 hours and 7 minutes

Film Rating: 8 out of 10

Training Day and Southpaw director Antoine Fuqua turns his attention as a director away from the hugely popular Equalizer action franchise to direct a musical biopic of Michael Jackson simply titled Michael.

The main actor who plays Michael Jackson in this film is the famous singer’s nephew Jaafar Jackson son of Jermaine Jackson who does an excellent job of playing the King of Pop as he slowly emerges out of the restrictive confines of the Jackson Five to become one of the biggest pop stars in the world in the 1980’s.

Michael focuses on the early years of Michael Jackson from his time as the youngest of the Jackson Five who is repeatedly a target of his abusive and power hungry father Joseph Jackson, a stand out Oscar worthy performance by double Oscar nominee (Rustin, Sing Song) Colman Domingo.

Domingo is excellent as Joseph Jackson the patriarch of the Jackson family who is determined to emancipate his family from poverty and elevate them into wealth and stardom. Michael is different and has a close relationship with his mother Katherine Jackson well played by Nia Long.

What makes Colman Domingo’s chilling performance as the pushy father so brilliant is that it is so against type compared to some of the more flamboyant roles that Domingo has played.

Oscar nominated for screenwriting for The Aviator, Hugo and Gladiator, John Logan’s brilliant script holds Michael together complete with superb direction by Antoine Fuqua. Fortunately what John Logan does in his screenplay is to focus on the music and not the peculiar lifestyle that Michael Jackson led.

Jaafar Jackson is brilliant playing a version of his famous uncle in a film biopic that focuses on the catchy music including the absolute hits like Thriller, Billy Jean and Bad.

Audiences should watch out for a fantastic cameo by Mike Myers as CBS record producer Walter Yetnikoff who is persuaded by Jackson’s manager to put the music video Thriller onto MTV in the early 1980’s, the decade of the music video and one of the reasons why Michael Jackson become so famous so quickly.

Despite his setback when his hair caught on fire shooting a commercial for Pepsi at the Shrine auditorium in Los Angeles in 1984, Michael Jackson succeeded in becoming a mega popstar in the decade of excess. Jackson’s later fame soon eclipsed his famous family and eventually he had the courage to stand up to his controlling father and finally let his own light shine through.

Jaafar Jackson and Colman Domingo are both excellent as the breakout kid that wants to escape to Neverland and the overbearing ruthless father that wants to stifle his son’s creativity.

Featuring excellent music numbers, polished production design by Barbara Ling and glossy cinematography by Dion Beebe, Michael is worth seeing as a musical biopic and gets a film rating of 8 out of 10.

See Michael on the biggest screen possible as the music numbers are brilliant held together by a competent script by John Logan. Highly recommended viewing.

2016 Toronto International

Film Festival Winners

Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) takes place every year in September in Toronto, Canada.

Films which premiere at Toronto are often nominated for Academy Awards the following year.

TIFF does not hand out individual prizes for Best Actor or Actress but focuses on amongst others the following awards:
People’s Choice Award & Best Canadian Feature Film

Opening Night Film: The Magnificent Seven directed by Antoine Fuqua starring Denzel Washington, Chris Pratt and Ethan Hawke

People’s Choice Award: La La Land directed by Damien Chazelle – starring Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone, Finn Wittrock, J. K. Simmons & Rosemarie DeWitt

Best Canadian Film: Those who make Revolution only Dig their Graves Halfway directed by Mathieu Denis and Simon Lavoie

The Magnificent Seven

Director:  Antoine Fuqua

Cast: Denzel Washington, Chris Pratt, Ethan Hawke, Vincent D’Onofrio, Haley Bennett, Peter Sarsgaard, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Luke Grimes, Matt Bomer, Martin Sensmeier, Cam Gigandet

Antoine Fuqua gathers his favourite actors into his latest impressive film.

In Fuqua’s bespoke remake of John Sturgeon’s 1960 classic film The Magnificent Seven, as an African American film director he reclaims the Western genre in a bold step towards reimagining American Western mythology which will surely shape how cinema goers view the Western film genre.

Gone are the days of Western films primarily being made up of morally dubious cowboys mostly played by dashing European actors fighting savage Red Indians or each other in high noon stand offs.

Director Fuqua’s superb The Magnificent Seven is as diverse as Westerns come, showing that while perceptions of the American West have largely been Eurocentric, the real history of the American West was far more complex.

The setting is Rose Creek, California in 1879. A small dusty town a three day ride away from the Californian state capital Sacramento, at the height of the Gold Rush.

Rose Creek is being tormented by a malicious industrialist Bartholomew Bogue wonderfully played against type by character actor Peter Sarsgaard (Blue Jasmine), who not only burns down the moral centre of the town, the church, but casually kills some its town folk, much to the horror of the remaining witnesses.

Rose Creek’s town representative, a feisty widow Emma Cullen, played by rising star Haley Bennett enlists the help of sharp shooter Chisolm, expertly played by Oscar winner Denzel Washington (Training Day, Glory).

Chisolm gathers a motley crew of cowboys and one red Indian, consisting of the heavy drinking Irishman Josh Faraday, comically played by Chris Pratt, sharp shooter Goodnight Robicheaux played by Ethan Hawke (Training Day, Before Sunrise), lonesome tracker Jack Horne played by Vincent D’Onofrio, Billy Rocks played by Korean star Byung-hun Lee, Vasquez, played by rising Mexican star Manual Garcia-Rulfo last seen in Cake opposite Jennifer Aniston and finally Native American actor Martin Sensmeier who plays Comanche Indian Red Harvest.

With the gang in tow and the town folk galvanized for action, audiences should expect the final gun battle of Rose creek to be thrilling. Fortunately this is where The Magnificent Seven delivers as the final act of the film is truly brilliant, with superb sound editing and haunting production design, Fuqua pays homage to the original version and to the genre as a whole while deftly reimagining Westerns as a more diverse and multi-cultural affair.

Not since the Coen brothers reworking of the Oscar nominated True Grit, have I enjoyed a Western as much. The Magnificent Seven does justice to its genre assisted by superb performances by Washington and Sarsgaard as opponents with a vicious score to settle.

Audiences that enjoyed James Mangold’s 3:10 to Yuma and the Coen brothers True Grit, will love Antoine Fuqua’s The Magnificent Seven as he reclaims the Western genre and hopefully opens the doors for this much loved film genre to be bravely re-explored in the 21^st century. This is a genre which desperately needs a Hollywood resurgence.

Now if only a director could tackle a film version of Cormac McCarthy’s brutal tale of the Mexican frontier wars in his gripping Western novel, Blood Meridian, then that would be a film worth seeing.

Olympus Has Fallen

Director: Antoine Fuqua

Cast: Gerard Butler, Morgan Freeman, Ashley Judd, Aaron Eckhart, Robert Foster, Angela Bassett, Dylan McDermott, Melissa Leo, Radha Mitchell, Cole Hauser

Whilst it is not about the Greek financial crisis, Olympus Has Fallen, is a gripping, albeit unsubtle hostage drama involving  a vicious attack on the White House by a Korean paramilitary group who is seeking vengeance on America for the Korean War. Featuring Gerard Butler (Machine Gun Preacher, 300) as the original action hero, Mike Banning who is first introduced as a secret service aide to the youngish gung-ho American President Benjamin Asher played by Aaron Eckhart and the gorgeous First Lady briefly played by Ashley Judd at the Presidential retreat at Camp David where on a routine presidential outing a terrible car crash occurs on an icy bridge during a blizzard.

The action swiftly moves 18 months later to the White House and Capitol Hill where the rest of the cast is introduced including Oscar winners Morgan Freeman as the Secretary of State Trumbull and Melissa Leo as the tough Secretary of Defence Ruth McMillan along with Oscar nominees Angela Bassett as Secret Service Director Lynne Jacobs and Robert Forster as General Edward Clegg. Director of the Oscar winning film Training Day, Antoine Fugua throws caution to the wind and without much intrigue depicts a full scale assault on the White House by a group of rogue Korean operatives, lead by Kang played by Rick Yune of Die Another Day fame,  who attack a key meeting  between the American and South Korean presidents and literally annihilate half of Washington DC including the famed Washington Monument.

Fuque as director excels in his trademark bloody action style, and Olympus Has Fallen is no different and whilst the audience will be gripped in the midst of a Taking of Pelham 1,2,3 type hostage crisis, whereby the President is held captive by the villainous Kang with the assistance of some unlikely traitors, as a film it certainly does not leave much to the imagination.

The film’s action and violence is fast and thick which does little for any sense of diplomacy or pay tribute to the more complex political dynamic that America has with the 21^st Century Korean peninsula, along with the current intricate relations Washington DC has with both Seoul and Pyongyang, the film only serves to bolster American patriotism at the hands of a foreign enemy invasion.

Whilst the action sequences are brutal and spectacular the remaining characterization in the film lies too thin to make this outlandish plot entirely plausible, although it is gripping entertainment but not nearly as good as Fugua’s all American crime dramas like Brooklyn’s Finest and Shooter. Watch out for particularly good performances by Dylan McDermott as Secret Agent Forbes and Melissa Leo (The Fighter, Frozen River) as the tortured hostage and resilient Washington politician, whilst the rest of the cast including Radha Mitchell as Banning’s wife Leah and Cole Hauser have minimal screen time.

Olympus has Fallen is an intense action thriller with a vaguely political narrative serving to bolster American propaganda, but subtlety is not its strong suit, nor was it meant to be plausible or intriguing, just downright entertaining. Recommended viewing but not in the cinematic league of Enemy of the State, Spy Games or the brilliant Zero Dark Thirty.