Word: phoenix
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...America, not Mexico" and "No work today. The Minutemen have arrived." Then the group of two dozen men and women, holding U.S. flags and cameras in their hands, turned the corner and started bearing down on Hispanic workers waiting for jobs outside the Macehualli day-labor center in northern Phoenix, Ariz. Sensing trouble, some took refuge behind the gates of the center, and others melted away down side streets. As the laborers fled, the protesters tried to take pictures of their faces. "This is our country!" shouted a Minuteman. "We are under invasion...
...Line is designed as a Christian epic. In this particular it diverges from last year's exemplary musical bio-pic, Ray, which depicted Ray Charles as a roiling spirit who conquered his demons on his own. This movie's Johnny Cash - in a scary-good turn by Joaquin Phoenix - is a haunted man who is redeemed by a good woman, June Carter...
...Witherspoon has been pinwheeling this spunky charm for ages. Phoenix's triumph is even more substantial. Though his singing voice (he and Witherspoon do their own vocals) can't approach Cash in its lonesome depths, he has the gift of finding a home in this troubled mind, of moving in and living there. When he stands before an audience, unleashes the dread Cash stare and holds his guitar like a machine gun, you wonder if he's going to open fire on the crowd or himself. If Witherspoon has the gift of residing in her character, of moving...
...credit for Phoenix's performance has to go to Mangold, who has always been good at finding the bleak melodrama in taciturn souls: Pruitt Taylor Vince's short-order cook in Heavy, Sly Stallone's tired sheriff in Cop Land. If Mangold's new movie has a problem, it's that he and co-screenwriter Gill Dennis sometimes walk the lines of the inspirational biography too rigorously. John's father, Ray Cash (Robert Patrick), is a one-note ogre who blames John for surviving his more adored younger brother, and whose condemnation of the singer lasts way longer than...
...James MangoldTwentieth Century Fox4 1/2 stars1968. Folsom Prison. The walls are gray, the guards are getting worried, and the inmates are pounding the floor with lace-less boots. Onstage, the band is playing a thrumming bass line, glancing nervously at each other. In the back room, Johnny Cash (Joaquin Phoenix) is staring at a table saw. On this day, he will record his hit album, “At Folsom Prison.” Before the show, though, we need to know how he got there.James Mangold’s Cash biopic, “Walk the Line?...