Tag Archives: Hope and Glory

8 Shots From 8 Films: Special John Boorman Edition

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

4 (or more) Shots From 4 (or more) Films is just what it says it is, 4 (or more) shots from 4 (or more) of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 (or more) Shots From 4 (or more) Films lets the visuals do the talking.

Today, the Shattered Lens wishes a happy 92nd birthday to British director John Boorman.

Boorman is one of those great director who sometimes doesn’t seem to get as much credit as he deserves.  An undeniably idiosyncratic director, Boorman easily moved from genre to genre and who brought his own individual style to each of his films.  Sometimes, critics and audiences responded to that vision and sometimes, they didn’t.  And yet even Boorman’s so-called failures have come to be appreciated over the years.  Zardoz is a cult classic.  Even The Exorcist II: The Heretic is not quite the disaster that some insist.  If nothing else, it’s one of the strangest studio productions to ever be released.

At his best, Boorman is one of the most influential directors of all time.  How many neo-noirs have ripped off the look and the feel of Point Blank?  The ending of Deliverance has been imitated by a countless number of horror films and, indeed, every backwoods thriller owes a debt to Boorman’s film about four businessmen spending a weekend canoeing.  Excalibur is one of the most elegiac of all the Arthurian films while Hope and Glory retains its power to make audiences both laugh and cry with its portrayal of life on the British homefront during World War II.  Meanwhile, films like The General and The Emerald Forest gave underrated characters actors like Powers Boothe and Brendan Gleeson a chance to shine.

So today, in honor of the career and the legacy of John Boorman, here are….

8 Shots from 8 John Boorman Films

Point Blank (1967, directed by John Boorman, DP: Philip H. Lathrop)

Deliverance (1972, directed by John Boorman, DP: Vilmos Zsigmond)

Zardoz (1974, directed by John Boorman, DP: Geoffrey Unsworth)

The Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977, dir by John Boorman, DP: William A. Fraker)

Excalibur (1981, dir by John Boorman, DP: Alex Thomson)

The Emerald Forest (1985, dir by John Boorman. DP: Philippe Rousselot)

Hope and Glory (1987, dir by John Boorman, DP: Philippe Rousselot)

The General (1998, dir by John Boorman, DP: Seamus Deasy)

8 Shots From 8 Films: Special John Boorman Edition

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

4 (or more) Shots From 4 (or more) Films is just what it says it is, 4 (or more) shots from 4 (or more) of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 (or more) Shots From 4 (or more) Films lets the visuals do the talking.

Today, the Shattered Lens wishes a happy 88th birthday to British director John Boorman.

Boorman is one of those great director who sometimes doesn’t seem to get as much credit as he deserves.  An undeniably idiosyncratic director, Boorman easily moved from genre to genre and who brought his own individual style to each of his films.  Sometimes, critics and audiences responded to that vision and sometimes, they didn’t.  And yet even Boorman’s so-called failures have come to be appreciated over the years.  Zardoz is a cult classic.  Even The Exorcist II: The Heretic is not quite the disaster that some insist.  If nothing else, it’s one of the strangest studio productions to ever be released.

At his best, Boorman is one of the most influential directors of all time.  How many neo-noirs have ripped off the look and the feel of Point Blank?  The ending of Deliverance has been imitated by a countless number of horror films and, indeed, every backwoods thriller owes a debt to Boorman’s film about four businessmen spending a weekend canoeing.  Excalibur is one of the most elegiac of all the Arthurian films while Hope and Glory retains its power to make audiences both laugh and cry with its portrayal of life on the British homefront during World War II.  Meanwhile, films like The General and The Emerald Forest gave underrated characters actors like Powers Boothe and Brendan Gleeson a chance to shine.

So today, in honor of the career and the legacy of John Boorman, here are….

8 Shots from 8 John Boorman Films

Point Blank (1967, dir by John Boorman, DP: Philip H. Lathrop)

Deliverance (1972,dir by John Boorman, DP: Vilmos Zsigmond)

Zardoz (1974, dir by John Boorman, DP: Geoffrey Unsworth)

The Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977, dir by John Boorman, DP: William A. Fraker)

Excalibur (1981, dir by John Boorman, DP: Alex Thomson)

The Emerald Forest (1985, dir by John Boorman. DP: Philippe Rousselot)

Hope and Glory (1987, dir by John Boorman, DP: Philippe Rousselot)

The General (1998, dir by John Boorman, DP: Seamus Deasy)

 

Lisa Reviews An Oscar Nominee: Hope and Glory (dir by John Boorman)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The world is at war and a child is having the adventure of a lifetime.

That’s the idea behind the 1987 best picture nominee, Hope and Glory.  Taking place at the start of World War II, Hope and Glory shows us the Blitz through the eyes of ten year-old Billy Rowan (Sebastian Rice-Edwards).  The world around Billy is on that is full of destruction, death, and often surreal imagery.  It’s a world where school children wear gas masks and the nights are full of explosions and shaking walls.  In the morning, everyone steps outside to see whose house has been destroyed.

Billy’s father, Clive (David Hayman), joins the army, leaving his wife Grace (Sarah Miles) to look after the Billy, Susie (Gerladine Muir), and their rebellious older sister, Dawn (Sammi Davis).  While Dawn falls in love with a Canadian soldier (Jean-Marc Barr) and Grace is tempted to have an affair with her husband’s best friend, Mac (Derrick O’Connor), Billy spends his days exploring the ruins of London and collecting scrap metal.  He and his friends loot bombed-out houses for all that they can find.  When they hear that Pauline’s (Sara Langton) mother was killed in the bombing, they blithely ask her if it’s true.  And while Billy eventually comes to better appreciate the reality of what’s happening around him, the rest of his friends remain cheerfully unconcerned.  “Thank you, Adolf!” one yells to the sky after learning that their school has been bombed.

Hope and Glory is a comedy but it has a very serious core.  Even while we’re watching Billy having his adventures, we’re very aware of what’s happening in the background.  For that matter, so is Billy, even if he doesn’t always immediately understand what he’s seeing or hearing.  Billy may be confused as to why Grace and Dawn have such a strained relationship but, for the observant viewer, the clues are there in every tense line of dialogue, awkward silence, and sidelong glance.  One of the film’s best scenes features Billy pretending to be asleep while listening to Grace and Mac talking about their past together.  As they speak, it becomes obvious that Grace may have married Clive but she’s always loved Mac.  Marrying Clive allowed her to have a family and a home, both of which now seem as if they could all just instantly disappear depending on where the bombs randomly land.  It’s a sweet but rather sad scene, one that’s perfectly played by both Sarah Miles and Derrick O’Connor.

I cried a lot while watching Hope and Glory.  I cried when Clive told his family that he was leaving.  I cried when Billy was forced to confront the reality of war.  I even teared up when Billy, while cheerfully exploring the ruins of a house, caught sight of the house’s former inhabitant watching him with a shell-shocked expression on her face.  But it’s also a very funny film.  About halfway through, Billy’s grandfather (Ian Bannen) shows up and he’s a wonderfully cantankerous and proudly contrary character.  It was also hard not to like little Roger (Nicky Taylor), the pint-sized leader of the gang who swaggers like a mini-James Cagney and delivers his lines with a rat-a-tat combination of innocence and jerkiness.

Not surprisingly, Hope and Glory was autobiographical.  Director John Boorman based this film on his childhood and Hope and Glory is sweetly touching in the way that only a story that comes from the heart can be.  This deeply moving and very funny film was nominated for best picture but it lost to The Last Emperor.

Let’s Second Guess The Academy: 1987 Best Picture

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Near-Dark-Bill-Paxton

It’s time for another edition of Let’s Second Guess the Academy!  This time, we’re taking a second look at the race for Best Picture of 1987.

Can you remember which film won Best Picture for 1987?  Don’t feel bad if you can’t because Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor is one of the lesser known Oscar winners.  The film’s relative obscurity leads to one natural question: was it truly the best film released in 1987?

Or should the Oscar have gone to one of the other films nominated — Broadcast News, Hope and Glory, Fatal Attraction, or Moonstruck?

Let your voice be heard by voting below!

After voting for which nominated film you think should have won, give some thought to some of the 1987 films that were not nominated.  Was Moonstruck truly a better film than Near Dark or Full Metal jacket?  Ask yourself what would have happened if The Last Emperor hadn’t been released in the United States or what if Fatal Attraction hadn’t been a huge box office smash.  What if none of the five best picture nominees had been eligible to be nominated in 1987?  Which five films would you have nominated in their place?

Let us know by voting below.  As always, you can vote for up to five alternative nominees and write-ins are accepted!

Happy voting!

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