JOAQUIN PHOENIX MOVIES MOVIE
“It swirls over the top sometimes, but there never is any doubt you’re watching a movie about something.” “It breathes, it twirls, it prances right up into your face,” wrote Eric Harrison for the Houston Chronicle. Of course, it helps that he had a fine cast to work with aside from Rush, who netted an Oscar nomination, Quills boasts the talents of Kate Winslet, Michael Caine, and Joaquin Phoenix, whose turn as the Marquis’ asylum warden, Abbé du Coulmier, adds a particularly tortured note of repression to the proceedings. But director Philip Kaufman, working from a script by Doug Wright (adapted from Wright’s Obie-winning play), had more on his mind than titillation in fact, the movie’s really more of a statement about how society deals with sexuality and mental illness. It would be hard to put together a worthwhile biopic about the Marquis de Sade without indulging in a certain amount of lurid cinema, and 2000’s Quills - starring Geoffrey Rush in a tour de force performance as the institutionalized author - definitely makes room for matters of the (supple) flesh. As far as Shyamalan’s star has fallen in recent years, Signs also stands as proof of his ability to ratchet up suspense as Susan Stark argued for the Detroit News, it’s “a complex story told with assurance and performed with quiet conviction” that “smoothly and stylishly blends scares and substance.” While it didn’t quite live up to the expectations generated by its predecessors, this supernatural thriller about aliens touching down and wreaking havoc in a small Pennsylvania town continued the writer-director’s run of critical goodwill and box office gold, thanks in part to a marquee-blazing cast that included Mel Gibson as the priest-farmer whose crops are disturbed by extraterrestrial forces and Joaquin Phoenix as his brother. Night Shyamalan was on a roll after The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable, and the third entry in his blockbuster twist-ending trilogy - 2002’s Signs - was one of the more highly anticipated films of the year.
This weekend, Phoenix goes wide with Inherent Vice, and we decided to celebrate by turning our attention to some of his brightest critical highlights. Formerly a screen tyke following in the footsteps of his sibling River Phoenix, young Joaquin has grown into one of the more entertainingly inscrutable leading men in the movie business, and the owner of a filmography that includes everything from mainstream fare like 8mm and Brother Bear to arthouse favorites like The Master. But going Hollywood as an adult when your big brother is already famous? Forget about it - unless you’re Joaquin Phoenix, that is.
It’s hard enough making a longterm career out of a few roles as a child actor.
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