This being Thursday, it's time for another edition of Thursday Movie Picks, the blogathon run by Wandering Through the Shelves. This week, the theme is True Crime:
OK, not that sort of twoo. At any rate, I thought of quite a few movies before deciding on a theme-within-a-theme of defendants who don't get the benefit of the doubt because they're considered icky:
And to be honest, I didn't even have to use A Man for All Seasons, even though the quote above is extremely relevant to the theme and relevant today. I was able to come up with three other movies:
The Prisoner of Shark Island (1936). Warner Baxter plays Dr. Samuel Mudd, a Marylander known to have some sympathies to the Confederate cause. So, when John Wilkes Booth broke his leg jumping from the balcony after shooting Abraham Lincoln, he was taken to Dr. Mudd to treat the injury, Mudd presumably knowing nothing about the assassination. For this, Mudd was sentenced to a long spell in the federal prison in the Dry Tortugas off the Florida Keys, a truly hellish prison.
A Cry in the Dark (1988). Meryl Streep and Sam Neill play the Chamberlains, a pair of Australian Seventh-Day Adventists who take their family to a popular vacation spot in the outback, where their baby disappears, presumably dragged off by a dingo. The coroner's inquest backs them up, but then a new prosecution decides to prosecute Mrs. Chamberlain for murder, with the public whipped into a frenzy because of the couple's non-traditional religious views. The movie also spawed the famous line:
Reversal of Fortune (1990). Jeremy Irons won an Oscar for playing wealthy but tough to get along with Claus von Bülow, in an estranged marriage to Sunny (Glenn Close, in flashbacks). When one of her medical injections results in her overdosing and winding up in a persistent vegetative state, Claus is tried for the case. Fearing his wealthy wife's side of the family is perverting the course of justice, he approaches the prominent media-savvy lawyer Alan Dershowitz (Ron Silver) to take his case. When Dershowitz tells his students at Harvard Law he's taking the case, some of his students, notably a young Felicity Huffman, are less than impressed, but Dershowitz tells his class something that's still relevant today:
Noirsville Neo Noir Images of the Week
11 hours ago
2 comments:
I finally watched that Dtreep film one day when I was sick...it was ok and, after decades, it was proven that a dingo took her baby.i have to see Reversal of Fortune. I remember this major trail and how hated he was. A man for all Seasons is a great film and one I first saw in school.
Interesting choices. Shark Island was one of Warner Baxter's best performances. What a miscarriage of justice Dr. Mudd was subjected to. While the other two are chilly, distancing films their stories are fascinating ones.
All three of mine deal with a true life murder.
Anatomy of a Murder (1959)-Complex, provocative and at the time of its release scandalous story of on Army Lieutenant (Ben Gazzara) accused of the murder of a man he claims raped his loose moraled wife (Lee Remick). He’s defended by a laconic but wily lawyer (James Stewart) who goes up against an equally canny prosecutor (George C. Scott). Excellent Otto Preminger courtroom drama with a top flight cast that also includes Eve Arden and Arthur O’Connell is based on a novel whose source was an actual murder case.
Heavenly Creatures (1994)-When wealthy teenager Juliet (Kate Winslet) transfers from England to Christchurch, New Zealand, with her family, she meets and quickly bonds with quiet, brooding Pauline (Melanie Lynskey) through their shared love of singing screen star Mario Lanza and games of make believe. At first all is well but when their parents begin to suspect that their increasingly intense friendship is becoming something more the girls decide to run away to America. As the girls fears focus on anyone who might tear them apart they take extreme measures to remove anything or anyone they see as obstacles. Based on a notorious New Zealand murder case this brilliantly acted and chilling drama was the first major critical success for director Peter Jackson.
Zodiac (2007)-In the late 1960s and 1970s, San Francisco is gripped by fear as its residents are plagued by a serial killer who calls himself Zodiac. Investigators (Mark Ruffalo, Anthony Edwards) and reporters (Jake Gyllenhaal, Robert Downey Jr.) become obsessed with learning the killer's identity and bringing him to justice. Meanwhile, Zodiac claims victim after victim and taunts the authorities with cryptic messages, cyphers and menacing phone calls. Unsettling David Finchner film has its share of good points but deals with an ugly, ghoulish story.
Post a Comment