Word: franked
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Frank McCourt is a storyteller. He has an accent seemingly unaffected by a half-century in the United States, a brogue so rich and textured that it fills the room completely and envelops his listeners. He cracks jokes--smart, pointed and wickedly funny. He talks about "long-legged Episcopalians" with "apocalyptic bosoms," the seven deadly sins, and the "explosive creativity" of the American adolescent. (His plan for exterminating Saddam Hussein is to "drop 1,000 American Adolescents with boom boxes in Baghdad or Teheran.") And he talks about how taking attendance at McKee Vocational and Technical High School sounded like...
...Bringing Out the Dead, Martin Scorsese resurrects a Manhattan savior of the streets in Frank Pierce (Nicolas Cage), a burned-out medic who has lost faith in himself and is haunted by the ghost of a girl he couldn't save. He finally finds redemption with the help of Mary (Patricia Arquette), whose own suffering brings them together. Here, Scorcese revisits his Last Temptation of Christ with a bit of Taxi Driver thrown in. With enough Christian motifs packed into the film to revive Sunday school memories for any born-again atheist, this movie explores the world of the paramedics...
...Centered in this movie-world is Frank Pierce. Set in the early '90s, the film covers three nights in Manhattan in its heyday of urban despair. The whole world's an ambulance, it seems, and all the people in it merely victims. This movie pulls, emotionally as well as aesthetically. Sounds and colors of the sirens and streetlights are stretched out to a wail and a blur, and anguish tugs on every line of Cage's face. Many key scenes are cramped into the driver's seat and bloody siren lights stain the medics' faces. This gristly and sometimes hallucinatory...
...Basic message: Everyone needs a little bit of love, and a whole lot of salvation. For Frank, however, salvation is something he can't find because everywhere he sees Rose, the ghost of a girl he couldn't save. Saving lives to replace the ones he has lost is not the redemption he seeks. Instead he needs absolution that will help him understand the limits of his role. And he finds this through Mary, the daughter of a heart attack victim. A reformed druggie, Mary hovers between the worlds of Frank's hell and that of the living, as they...
...Sure the religious themes of loss and redemption may not be original, but Scorsese's creation bleeds Frank Pierce and the nighttime world of New York City with all its grotesque beauty and pain. This film needs no savior, but it still owes a lot of its moving power to its star, Nicolas Cage, who finally takes a break' from all of Joel Bruckheimer's testosterone flicks and returns to an actor's movie, one that can showcase his intensity and expressive range. Cage has found the perfect vehicle to display his talent as another less glorious, but equally moving...