R E VI E WS
****
Director: Tom McCarthy
Actors: Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams, Live Schreiber,
John Slattery, Brian d’Arcy James, Stanley Tucci
Production: Anonymous Content, First Look Media, Participant Media,
Rocklin/Faust
By Naomi Tukker
Huntsman
*
Director: Cedric Nicolas-Troyan
Starring: Charlize Theron, Chris Hemsworth, Emily Blunt, Jessica Chastain
Studio: Universal Pictures
Rating: PG–13 Runtime: 1hr 54min
By Tomi Olugbemi
Once upon a time, there was a mediocre film about a
princess-cum-warrior called Snow White and the Huntsman that
needed no sequel. And then, along came this film, doubling as a
pseudo-prequel as well, but with no Snow White!
You couldn’t make this sort of thing up, but Hollywood had
a go: the princess was without screen time and an evil, thoughtto-be-dead villain queen named Ravenna re-emerges from an
ominous, magical mirror.
The villain queen’s younger sister, Freya, wielded ice-bending
powers similar to those of Elsa in Disney’s Frozen, and the Huntsman’s wife reappeared from the throes of death. It was a risible
attempt at squeezing a plot from an already-exhausted story. This
unhinged confection of CGI porn and deranged scriptwriting,
shouldn’t have been allowed to escape from the studio.
The star-studded ensemble cast of Theron, Blunt, Chastain and
Hemsworth, helmed by first-time director, Cedric Nicolas-Troyan,
did little to make up for Kristen Stewart’s absence as Snow White.
The plotline is far more scandalous, a half-baked mash-up of
Tolkien, Game of Thrones and the brothers Grimm. Freya’s (Blunt)
child dies and a lover’s betrayal sparks her latent magic ice powers. She flees to a new kingdom, freeze killing her enemies.
She abducts hapless children and turns them into the most
fearless warriors in the realm: the Huntsmen.
Permafrosted with indignation, she builds an ice wall to
separate the lovers and banishes Sara to the dungeons while Eric
escapes. Many winters and springs later, Eric and Sara reunite in the company of four dwarfs, what else!
The Huntsman is truly the film that got away, that escaped with
just enough sentimentality and usual tropes to pull an audience.
Apart from the wit of the dwarves, who brought much needed
humour to an otherwise clichéd story of teenage-like squabbles and
formulaic war themes, this film is a real gawdforsaken turkey.
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Following its Best Picture Oscar, the movie was privately screened by the Catholic Church’s special commission on
clerical abuse, and Vatican Radio reported that clerics in Rome
had been recommending the film to each other.
And it is a measure of the movie’s scrupulous portrayal of one
of the biggest sexual abuse scandals to hit the Roman Catholic
Church, that the Vatican’s own Newspaper L’ Observatore Romano described it as “not anti-Catholic”.
This scintillating movie tells the true story how journalists unravelled the Catholic Church’s darkest secret, that there was worldwide systematic child abuse by priests from as early as the 1950s.
Named after the Boston Globe’s elite investigative team responsible for the Pulitzer Prize-winning probe into clerical sexual
abuse in 2003, the film follows steely editor Walter “Robby”
Robinson (Michael Keaton) and his team on their biggest story.
It is the outsider, the new editor-in-chief Marty Baron (Liev
Schreiber), who rekindles the flame of a story published and buried
decades earlier. Sealed Church documents, put forward by a lawyer
provide a new insight on abuse accusations against a single priest.
Deputy managing editor Ben Bradlee Jr. (John Slattery) and
Robinson both respond with scepticism over the idea of pursuing
the Boston Archdiocese. “You wanna sue the Church?”(Bradlee Jr).
Initially, only one lone priest was the subject of the investigation but the team begin to uncover a widening pattern of sexual
abuse by Catholic priests in the Massachusetts Archdiocese.
Tenacious reporter Michael Rezendes (Mark Rufallo) drags
you around town chasing the elusive lawyer and the key documents. The sympathetic yet acute Sacha Pfeiffer (Rachel McAdams) fields harrowing testimony of the victims.
The Boston Archdiocese where the film is set attempted a
cover-up which eventually led to the resignation of Cardinal
Archbishop Bernard Law.
Superbly written by John Slattery and directed by Tom McCarthy, the double Oscar-wining drama dives deeper, reveals the
emotional impact of the findings on the journalists involved.
The combination of first-rate acting, and a gripping orchestral
score, courtesy of Lord of the Rings trilogy composer Howard Shore,
delivers a film that has you holding your breath until the credits roll.
The kids weren’t all right: and it was only the Boston Globe’s
blistering exposé that shone the light of justice into the unholy
corridors of the Archdiocese of Boston
Archbishop Law was subsequently promoted to the Basilica
di Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, one of the biggest churches in
the world.