Word: joe
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Name Is Joe basically traces the implicitly painful and Damoclean progress of the recovering alcoholic. It's not like there are regular scenes of stare-offs with bottles, or moments of temptation and ultimate white-knuckled resolve in front of seedy liquor stores next to check cash-ins. Loach instead wisely lets Joe's successes speak for themselves, their very modesty giving them a fragility; at one point Joe's safe wallpapering gig almost spins into disaster when a welfare agent snaps telephoto pics to expose his outside earnings (Joe paints the agent's car). Mullen's performance is ultranaturalistic...
...Needless to say, the whole thing gets horribly depressing. What did you expect? But Mullan evokes Joe's momentary relapse mesmerizingly--the image of a riff opening awesomely to inner infernal domains about describes it--and it's sudden and wrenching, more than a predictable downward spiral style. It's something to look forward to, as a change of pace from the sentimental (though heartfelt) scenes between Goodall and Mullan...
...real in the underworld, and maybe it's just that all the baddies learn from TV these days anyway (see James Wood's vague gestures toward 70's Scorsese things in Another Day In Paradise). But, offering to help Liam pay a debt to the local hooligan head honcho, Joe does actually get to deliver A Package, ostensibly just driving a car back and forth, and, yes, Joe is not allowed to pull out of the deal once he's In. Just ignore the details and take it for Joe's display of self-sacrifice and still self-respect...
...like Joe, you will; he's a decent, genuinely funny and not in fact always imminently tragic guy (despite my take...
...Joe Green defeated Ole Miss' Vikrant Chada in three sets, winning...