18 September 2015

If nobody sees it . . .

Black Mass

Crit
"Unrecognizable" is a word tossed around promiscuously in film writing. An otherwise excellent profile of My Future Wife Julianne Moore in the current New Yorker calls her unrecognizable in a still for her role as Laurel Hester in the upcoming Freeheld. Well, I haven't seen the still, but I've seen the trailer for the film several times, and from the first, in early scenes and late, cancer-invaded ones, the face, the smile, the grimace are all unmistakably Julie.

In contrast, there was a moment about an hour and a half into this film when I looked at the alien, shark-eyed face that I'd been looking at in almost every scene and thought, for the first time, "Oh, yes: I see Johnny Depp there." Not a great film, and probably not even one of Depp's top ten performances (which is not to say it's not excellent; it is), but if there's not a makeup Oscar® nomination here, somebody wasn't paying attention.

Oh, and one other thing (well, actually about a million): Julianne Nicholson's freckles.
Trailers

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