Salon.com > Morgan Freeman

Pick of the week: “Oblivion,” Tom Cruise’s gorgeous sci-fi allegory

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 02:00:00 +0000

Science fiction is always more about the present, and even the past, than it is about the future, which by definition we don’t know anything about. That’s certainly true of “Oblivion,” the sly, surprising and visually magnificent Tom Cruise vehicle that has forced me – and many other people, I suspect – to revise my first opinion of director Joseph Kosinski. In fact, on some bizarre level “Oblivion” feels like a more grown-up and vastly improved version of Kosinski’s murky and ludicrous “TRON: Legacy,” a movie I compared to sticking your head into a barrel of ink full of fluorescent glow-sticks.

Is “Olympus Has Fallen” anti-Obama?

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 11:45:00 +0000

In the new film "Olympus Has Fallen," a black man is acting president, Ashley Judd is (for a time) the first lady and paramilitary forces with North Korean ties overwhelm the White House defenses. The president, vice president and secretary of defense barricade themselves in a bunker deep underneath 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue -- good thing, because the White House is a burning shambles.

Get used to seeing the president's home under attack. This summer brings "White House Down," a film starring Jamie Foxx as the president in a seat of power under siege. Later this month, the "G.I. Joe" sequel is to feature black flags flown over the White House as a mysterious supervillain impersonates the president and takes over the country. The "Iron Man 3" trailer reaches its climax at a shot of Air Force One getting shot out of the sky.

So what is it we thrill to about watching our national landmarks destroyed on the big screen? And at a time when real North Korea nuclear threats are in the news, what's so entertaining about watching them score a direct hit on Washington?

Viral Morgan Freeman “shooting” rant not by Morgan Freeman

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 18:40:00 +0000

By now, you may have seen the following rant that's being shared on Facebook. It's been attributed to actor Morgan Freeman:

Like so many things circulating around on the Internet, it's not true. TheWrap's Todd Cunningham reached out to Freeman's publicist, who claimed the statement was a hoax. "He never made or posted any statement," Cunningham confirmed.

So, then, who did?

Morgan Freeman speaks up in gay marriage fight

Sun, 25 Nov 2012 22:54:00 +0000

Morgan Freeman, actor and voice of moral authority, is supporting marriage equality in a new ad. The spot from Human Rights Campaign comes after Freeman's (and his voice's) recent win supporting President Obama in a late campaign voiceover and days before the Supreme Court decides whether to take up the issue. Featuring images of the Statue of Liberty, the Constitution, Martin Luther King, the Washington Monument and the open road, the short video could leave discouraged opponents of marriage equality without even a scrap of patriotic imagery to energize their struggling cause.

Watch:

Morgan Freeman denies doing ad for NC candidate

Mon, 01 Nov 2010 21:44:00 +0000

Oscar-winning actor Morgan Freeman is disputing a Republican congressional candidate's claim that he did a voiceover for a campaign ad.

Freeman said in a statement through his publicist Monday that he never recorded any ads for North Carolina candidate B.J. Lawson and that he does not support Lawson's candidacy. Lawson is trying to unseat Democratic Rep. David Price.

The advertisement features a narrator with a voice that resembles Freeman's. The narrator concludes, "It's time that you and I had a voice in Washington. Vote B.J. Lawson for Congress."

Lawson and campaign manager Martin Avila initially said Freeman did the ad. Avila later backed off that claim, saying the campaign had a contract signed for a Freeman ad with Los Angeles-based agency M.E.I. Political. The agency did not return a call seeking comment.

“Red”: Cynical, idiotic — and a total blast

Sat, 16 Oct 2010 01:30:00 +0000

Film critics always run the risk of digging for deeper meanings below the surface of crap entertainment products (although heaven knows I would never do anything like that). In the case of a campy, clever, intentionally dumb espionage caper like "Red," which is based on an obscure DC Comics graphic novel, it's safe to say that ideology is beside the point. Still, "Red" arrives in the same year as "Salt," "The A-Team" and "Knight and Day," and tells a strikingly similar story: The military-intelligence complex has become a nexus of bureaucratic evil, and only the outcasts, retirees and traitors are fighting for truth and justice. (Yes, of course this is just this year's model of the age-old tale about individuals battling a corrupt system.)

Morgan Freeman: Making Mandela sexy

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 01:20:00 +0000

Morgan Freeman hasn't just played God; he actually is the voice of God. He has gazed down from heaven upon penguins, narrating the intricacies of their life-and-death struggles; in Steven Spielberg's "War of the Worlds," he reveals, in his all-seeing, all-knowing wisdom, that the invading aliens are dying because they have no immunity to diseases that barely faze humans; and, perhaps most significantly, his is the first voice you hear when you turn on the CBS Evening News. The voice of Morgan Freeman is everywhere; it's like God wallpaper.

“An Unfinished Life”

Fri, 09 Sep 2005 19:01:00 +0000

Lasse Hallström's "An Unfinished Life" is so conventional it's almost audacious. No one makes movies like this anymore, for some bad reasons as well as good ones. A taciturn rancher who, still bitter over the death of his son some 10 years ago, relearns how to love by getting to know the granddaughter he never knew he had; a man who has been mauled by a bear, and who suffers such severe pain he can barely leave his bed, but who nonetheless defends the growly beast with convenient circle-of-life maxims like "He was just doin' what bears do." How are we, enlightened moviegoers of the new century, supposed to countenance such characters without snorting into our popcorn?

If "An Unfinished Life" had been made 10 or 12 years ago, we'd have, rightfully, dismissed it as an intensely earnest, overly manicured, run-of-the-mill melodrama. But today "An Unfinished Life" comes off more as a curiosity than anything. The picture is outrageously predictable and somewhat poky, but there's also something admirably bold about the way it so adamantly demands we swallow its hokum. I couldn't believe half the things that came out of these characters' mouths, and yet I found myself perfectly willing to hang around until the end, just to make sure every intensely obvious character transformation took place as promised -- and to find out what happened to the bear.