Ben Foster

Motor City

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Miller (Alan Ritchson) in prison

Would Motor City be a better film without the gimmick? Which is? No dialogue. Or not much anyway. Five lines, the blurbs say, though even that might be an exaggeration. Director Potsy Ponciroli made Old Henry a few years ago, and I liked that. So I gave him the benefit of the doubt and waded in, finding the wordlessness by turns charming, fascinating, irritating and cute but ultimately rewarding. You have to surrender yourself to his conceit, I reckon, which I eventually did. Dialogue is not strictly that important anyway, this being the story of a dude in 1970s Detroit who is fitted up for a crime he didn’t commit – he’s been … Read more

Sharp Corner

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Josh with chainsaw

Beta-male-goes-mad time with Sharp Corner, borrowing the arc of The Shining and starring Ben Foster as a Jack Nicholson stand-in. There is no Overlook Hotel or supernatural stuff. Instead the action takes place in a “mansion” outside the city where Foster’s Josh McCall has moved his family, not once wondering why this great big house in the middle of nowhere could be bought at a price they could afford. The reason becomes obvious on their first night in the place when, as Josh and wife Rachel (Cobie Smulders) christen their new home by having sex on living room floor, they are rudely interrupted by a car wheel flying through their picture window. Sharp … Read more

The Messenger

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Ben Foster, The Messenger

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 13 March Henry Shrapnel dies, 1842 On this day in 1842, Major General Henry Shrapnel, British army officer, died aged 80, at his home, Peartree House, Southampton, UK. It was he who is supposed to have invented the “spherical case” bomb, which exploded in mid-air (there is every likelihood that it was in fact a French engineer called Bernard Forst de Bélidor). A hollow cannonball filled with lead shot, it was designed to inflict massive damage on people. Until then cannonballs had been solid and had achieved maximum impact when used against ships – it was the massive splintering of oak … Read more

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