Rating: - Where is the DVD??
This great, unjustly forgotten John Huston film has fallen by the wayside, and that's a real shame. A striking cinematic adaptation of the Flannery O'Connor novel, Wise Blood boasts Brad Dourif in the lead role, Hazel Motes, and Dourif nails it. When you see the film, you realize it would be really tough to imagine anyone else alive at the time being able to carry off the role. Harry Dean Stanton, as usual, adds his terrific skills as the "blind" preacher Asa Hawkes, and Ned Beatty is also along for the ride as singing preacher Hoover Shoates.
Motes, Hawkes, and Shoates--all preachers. ... Read More
Rating: - One of the best films ever made.
A film that is frightening in its bleakness, hysterically funny in its blackness, kind in its humanity and understanding and stoic in its vision. Amazingly all of these emotions are evoked at the same time.
Reputedly Huston's favorite of all of his films it's obviously a labor of love. Spectacular cast of character actors most of them in their best roles. Brad Dourif was born for this role. Stanton's best film. Beatty's irritatingly pathetic leech is spot on. Dan Shor's hilariously pathetic lost looser had me in stitches. Amy Wright's sexy needy white trash is repelling and attractive at ... Read More
Rating: - Ten Stars, Really
Another superb John Huston film. This time it is based on a black-humor Flannery O'Connor short novel of t he same title. I read the original, and the film sticks pretty close to it.
Brad Dourif is unforgettable in the role of Hazel Motes "a Christian malgre lui" in O'Connor's phrase. Returning home from WWII, he finds his family home deserted, and embarks on a spiritual journey that is at once sad and hilarious. He is obsessed by religion, and tries to start a Church without Christ, but of course, he is only fooling himself.
Dan Shor plays a confused kid who tries to befriend ... Read More
Rating: - A Good Film is Hard to Find.
If this film seems crazy, try reading Flannery O'Connor's novel of the same name. The low budget John Huston had for filming sometimes seems slighty annoying, especially the modern cars in what seems like a period piece, but you can't read O'Connor's short story collections, A Good Man is Hard to Find and Everything That Rises Must Converge, without feeling the same sense of collision. This film played the college circuit and was widely influential, far beyond its limited screening. O'Connor inspired Bruce Springsteen, for instance, to create his best album, Nebraska.
Rating: - "Wise Blood": Through a Glass Darkly
This movie is difficult to watch because it deals with alienation, masochism and religious quackery; however the acting (especially by Brad Dourif and Harry Dean Stanton)is superb, and the script catches the spirit of its literary source very effectively. Just don't expect anyone to ride off into the sunset.
- 