joshua ( 2007 film )
teaser poster for the theatrical release of 28 weeks later. © 2007 twentieth century fox film corporation
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song download: urltoken a lyrics video for the fly written by dave matthews and preformed by jacob kogan (who played joshua in the film) from the soundtrack joshua (2007). joshua is an american psychological horror / thriller film and was written by george ratliff and david gilbert, directed by george ratliff, and produced by johnathan dorfman .
( 2007) is one of these fear - of - children films, good of kind. it was briefly packaged as
joshua (2007) directed by george ratliff cast: sam rockwell, vera farmiga, jacob kogan, celia weston, dallas roberts, michael mckean, nancy giles, linda larkin, alex draper, stephanie roth haberle, ezra barnes, jodie markell, rufus collins, haviland morris 2007  105 minutes rated: (for language and thematic elements involving a child). reviewed by dustin putman, july 14, 2007 .
african american cinema archives b. ruby rich blu - ray / dvd reviews book reviews chinese cinema digital media documentary feminism film festivals film reviews french cinema hollywood interviews joshua clover paul julian smith race and film rob white social justice television
mr. rockwell with jacob kogan, rear, and vera farmiga in a scene from the film joshua. 
one theater. three days. $ 279 in 2007. that’s pretty much the full theatrical story of mary mcguckian’s tale of addiction, which won the director a best feature film award at the 2007 san diego film festival—and a best actress honor for jennifer tilly, who is just one member of an enormous cast that includes andie macdowell, colm feore, rupert graves, and former baywatch babe donna d’errico .
how is joshua not titled portrait of the serial killer as a young boy? that' s just as perfect a description of this film as i can manage. the film carefully and precisely constructs our notion of who the titular character is through a series of increasingly alarming behavior which is at its creepiest when the film is quiet, the mark of any great atmospheric horror film .
new york - - although dave matthews' face is never seen in the new movie
joshua ,
he plays a crucial role in the spooky film, writing the song the demented child character croons as the film draws to a close .
- - advisory: this film contains mild violence, disturbing scenes and strong language .
major funding for film quarterly is provided by the justfilms initiative of the ford foundation .
vera farmiga (image on screen) and jacob kogan in
joshua .
joshua bell - the four seasons
summer
iii. presto (video )
box office chart held few surprises. every film in the top five was close to our
, barely earned a quarter of that. i don’t think any film will come close to
i loved this when i first saw it back in 2007. revisiting the film confirmed that it' s some kind of masterpiece .
joshua
is one of the most grounded and realistic
evil kid movies
i' ve ever seen. like the best efforts in this genre, it not only taps into extreme fears, but it sheds light on the everyday anxieties of parenthood .
could have learned a thing or two from what
joshua
offers up .
joshua clover is the author of the matrix (bfi modern classics, 2004) .
joshua (jacob kogan) feat. dave matthews - the fly (full version )
won the race to the top of the box office chart and did so with ease. however, that film, and practically every film in the top five, failed to live up to expectations .
poised self - consciously between art and entertainment, joshua offers imaginative staging and some superb performances .
joshua' s fondness is somehow evidence of an even deeper evil, & that first glint of understanding in his uncle' s expression at the end is the film' s best, quietest chill .
, as the film earned $ 41. 46 million during its first day in china, and $ 47. 55 million if you include previews. the international numbers will save this film and justify more sequels .
the film is the ultimate birth control. if you plan on one day having kids, don' t see this film. if you already have children, you will never look at them the same way again .
looking for movie tickets? enter your location to see which movie theaters are playing joshua near you .
an open - ended plot - boiler of a film, joshua is a startlingly disturbing tale of domestic implosion. the introduction of a new baby starts unraveling the family at the center of the film, exacerbating the mother with its incessant cries and putting the father in the midst of an increasingly hard to control home environment, with…
. for example, the film earned first place in russia with $ 11. 42 million over the weekend, while
at first, joshua invites you almost to imagine the boy' s sense of rejection and growing frustration .
the tomatometer score — based on the opinions of hundreds of film and television critics — is a trusted measurement of critical recommendation for millions of fans. it represents the percentage of professional critic reviews that are positive for a given film or television show .
joshua is one of those horror films where after you are done viewing it, you just sit there and think about what you have experienced, about what you have just gone through. it' s a film that made me think, wondor, and just kept me at an uneasy, unsettling feeling after the film had ended. director, george ratliff has crafted a very dark and very disturbing film about a disturbed, yet highly intelligent young 9 - year old boy named joshua, as his erratic behavior slowly starts to tare apart the family. i don' t want to say too much, but this is a very creepy and sophistacated horror film that will truly keep you on your feet! sam rockwell and vera farmiga portray…
ratliff never acknowledges that his audience has likely seen this setup dozens of times before, making the film feel laborious and unsurprising .
their vile abusive parents, would be vastly more credible, though it' s just not been done that way in film .
this movie moved waaay too slow for its own good. i know the director was going for that show - burn dread that i like so much in artful contemporary horror, but they payoff in this film was infinitsimal. there are so many interesting avenues this film could have explored, but it introduced then abandoned every one of them. joshua and his grandmother' s rabid religiosity, abby' s sever recurrent post - partum depression, the inherent tensions between brad' s homelife and career and joshua' s own emotional turmoil are all completely wasted here. i think that the shifting focus between the characters in this film was a mistake. first it' s abby, and she' s quickly disposed of, then it would appear to be joshua for a little while, and the plot finally settles on the unravelling brad. just when it looks like they' re going to grant joshua some depth, they flatten him out again. which is the biggest shame in the film, because he could have proven to be a new breed of bad seed. oh well .
there' s a subtle little fillip at the end which showed joshua capable of something approximating love, for his faggy attentive uncle, which puts joshua' s effete good grooming, love of museums, & hatred of sports, in a slightly homophobic context .
like we were thinking ,
then went back to see if the film could be edited to include a reference or two to the title .
but ratliff has made a genre film, and if you make a genre film, you either fulfill the genre, transform it, transcend it or apotheosize it. you can' t do it halfway, and you can' t offer up something that' s not quite as satisfying .
the video tape joshua pulls from the drawer to watch is dated 2 / 29 / 1997. 1997 was not a leap year .
history, in its lumbering way, can still outpace hollywood. the original trailer for the kingdom (peter berg, 2007) played late last year, promising the purest propaganda film of the era. an american base in saudi arabia has been suicide - bombed by a terrorist mastermind. voice of liberal reason: “you have to let the tools of diplomacy work. ” cue jennifer garner, no - nonsense forensics expert: “if we can’t get there now, we will not find the man responsible for this crime. ”
joshua is the main attraction, but it is his parents whose eyes we as the audience see through. vera farmiga (2006' s
the cairn family welcome a newborn baby into their family, and slowly sanity begins to unravel for everyone. at the heart of the insanity is joshua, a 9 - year old prodigy with an obsession for egyptian death rites. we all know where this story is headed, of course, having been privy to a number of bad seed knockoffs. thankfully, writer / director george ratliff knows this, too. what sets joshua apart is its attention to character and personal drama. to be honest, this film could easily be classified as a drama rather than a horror film, and that’s its greatest strength .
the video tape joshua pulls from the drawer to watch is dated 2 / 29 / 1997. 1997 was not a leap year. see more »
the leader of the dave matthews band is part of the company, ato pictures, that produced
joshua ,
starring sam rockwell. matthews says he was involved in finding the film project, but was not very involved in the production (one exception _ urging that rockwell be one of the actors) .
so stop reading right here & return to this article after seeing the film, then see if you agree with me about the basis for its capacity to disturb .
i had a different take on the film. firstly, i belive that joshua was abused. the drawings, trail of dead pets etc point to this - and there is no doubt there is something wrong with the child. also let' s not forget the bruising on joshua' s back to which the dad exclaimed
who did this to you ?
. the end scene in which josh and ned are playing the piano together indicate to me the possibility of ned abusing joshua... i believe that someone was, but ned seems the only one to have had the proximity of doing so .
poised self - consciously between art and entertainment, “joshua” offers imaginative staging and some superb performances. celia weston is all clenched teeth and frozen hair as joshua’s aggressively christian grandmother, while dallas roberts brings so much charisma to the minor role of an empathetic uncle, you wish he were around more often .
joshua ,
which opens in limited release friday and expands to wider release later this month, is about a musical child whose family life dramatically alters once his baby sister is born. quickly, the family starts to fall apart, and joshua seems to be at the center of its downfall .
despite several such creepy moments, the film' s fundamental narrative is more wearying than horrifying. certainly, the monster child plot is familiar, but the easy fit of the
bad mothers
into joshua' s apparent worldview - - they' re weak, needy, angry - - is downright disappointing. while brad is by no means a conventional guy hero, he' s no match for the scheming, ingenious boy. joshua' s story overwhelms all .
more precise than the monster film genre, the zombie flick (a perennial cultstud fave) is cinematic silly putty: cheap, gross fun, with a knack for picking up the day’s newsprint and stretching it across the warp of what looks a lot like dead flesh. for a brief passage of time, it seems like 28 weeks later (juan carlos fresnadillo, 2007) will be the best war movie ever. this despite the fact that it’s barely distinct from predecessor 28 days later (danny boyle, 2002), origin of the fast zombie trend .
it' s a small thing, really, but it sets up the tension that will drive george ratliff' s urban horror movie. the trouble begins for nine - year - old joshua (jacob kogan) when his father brad (sam rockwell) pulls him away from the soccer game to attend the birth of his sister lily. the first glimpse joshua has of the intruder is from a hospital room door: he looks in on mom abby (vera farmiga) and dad cooing over their precious bundle. grim and pale, joshua here adopts the demon - child demeanor he will maintain for the rest of george ratliff' s film .
i hate to be the rube to say it, but
the bad seed ,
the 1956 camp classic, did this sort of thing better. yes ,
joshua
has it all over
the bad seed
in terms of composition, and it does incite dread in a way that the earlier film never did. but
the bad seed
had one thing that
joshua
lacks and desperately needs: it had a pint - size sociopath who was fun to hate .
vera farmiga who plays joshua' s mother. would also play a mother to another evil child.' esther' in the 2009 horror thriller' orphan' .
but something curious happened. after an advance screening or two, the film vanished; trailers too. life went on. the test numbers for the real war surged downward to darkness .
the movie is okay but it has a lot of loopholes. joshua is a sick child who is both brilliant and insane. his actions were all well calculated and planned. this is a case of extreme sibling rivalry. . joshua has been very insecure with his parents' love for him which was brought about by lily his baby sister. i think joshua idolizes his uncle too much that he did everything just to ruin his own parents so that he could be with his uncle who was also a disturbed man .
“joshua” is rated r (under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). it has breast - feeding, child - slapping, granny - pushing and rodent - stuffing .
< i > joshua < / i > is the tale of brad (sam rockwell) and abby (vera farmiga) cairn, perfect manhattan parents in a perfect manhattan apartment whose perfect life begins to crack after the birth of their second child lily. shortly after lily arrives home, a dark side of prodigy son joshua slowly begins to reveal itself .
for the lowly protagonist, david mann, spielberg hand - picked character actor dennis weaver because he loved his performance as the jittery and feeble hotel night manager in orson welles’s 1958 film touch of evil .
the screenwriters adopt a strategy of having all of joshua' s crimes take place offscreen. they have their reasons. by keeping the crimes offstage, joshua' s evil is never grounded in practicalities. he can float through the film as a frightening spirit of menace, as almost an abstraction. moreover, if we were to see him actually poisoning the hamsters in school, the spectacle might look unconvincing or unintentionally funny, and the whole picture could come crashing down. but as it stands, the picture doesn' t crash - - it just never takes off .
but ultimately all this restraint leaves the impression that
joshua
was a thriller made by a director who just wasn' t interested in thrilling. ratliff, who made the documentary
hell house ,
is more at home depicting the scenes of family life - - an uncompromising portrait of stress, fatigue and unhappiness. the film' s dialogue has an expansive, naturalistic quality that makes the viewer feel like an eavesdropper. it' s in these details that the movie' s strengths lie, and people who like
joshua
will like it for these reasons .
what a strangle little film. i think this is one of those films that needs to be watched a second time before you can fully appreciate it. maybe. i' ve yet to find out .
having taken an interest in ancient egypt & the mummification process, we about half expect joshua will be using a long skinny spoon to scoop out his baby sister' s brains through her nose. but there is no goriness to the film, & though he does eventually get round to mummifying something, in the main this interest merely adds to the suspense of a story that remains strictly psychological .
part of the fun of joshua is the skill with which ratliff juggles horror and realism, feeding one into the other until we become part of the unraveling of the cairns' perfect life .
the closing themesong, david matthews'
the fly ,
is a sweet tune of horror that explains it all, in case any of us missed the point. it' s sung first by joshua as one of the creepiest serenades of love ever seen on film, then by matthews behind the end credits. it made me watch all the credits just to hear the song while my stomach continued sinking with a kind of awe for what it reveals. too bad the whole film wasn' t as awe - inspiring as this close, but it' s frankly in great part david matthews' doing .
the whispering routine, however, seems to have been an afterthought & not well developed. it' s as though the film were mostly in the can when someone said ,
hey, we could call it
i don' t like soccer ,
joshua says later that night. tucked into bed, he looks up at brad, who does his inept best to reassure him: it' s okay not to play soccer, it' s okay not to like baseball. joshua persists .
do you ever feel weird about me, your weird son ?
brad blanches, caught out with no ready answer except the usual platitudes. so now you know: joshua - - brilliant student, musical prodigy - - is feeling unloved, jealous, and afraid. and he' s weird .
joshua falls a bit flat at the end, but overall it delivers some genuine old - school chills - something that was missing when macaulay culkin played a similar role in
the good son .
joshua
is a masterful study in subtlety that proves horror films don' t necessarily require gouged eyes and decapitations to earn their place in the higher echelons of the genre. take the recent
the cairn' s life seems to be a harmonic family: the father brad works as a stockbroker, his wife abby takes care of their common new - born daughter lily, and the 9 - year - old joshua is high - talented. but the appearances are deceptive. joshua becomes gradual jealously, that his parents give the baby more attention than him. therefore he begins to terrorize his family .
the arrival of a newborn girl causes the gradual disintegration of the cairn family; particularly for 9 - year - old joshua, an eccentric boy whose proper upbringing and refined tastes both take a sinister turn .
i would warn the dear reader of this review to stop now & read no further, as almost anything said of the film will be a spoiler. it would be better to view it before finishing my analysis thereof. if it' s review enough, i can assure the reader it' s definitely worth watching; its small surprises will be more effective if you enter the film completely uncertain who in the story is the nuttiest of a nutty batch .
as the truck rams the car over the cliff and falls off in the final film, there is a low roar sound effect that the filmmaker included to emphasize the death of the truck. spielberg, who wanted the truck to seem
the cairn' s life seems to be a harmonic family: the father brad works as a stockbroker, his wife abby takes care of their common new - born daughter lily, and the 9 - year - old joshua is high - talented. but the appearances are deceptive. joshua becomes gradual jealously, that his parents give the baby more attention than him. therefore he begins to terrorize his family. written by rsavlsg
here' s a type of horror film which reflects a cultural fear of children. if children are especially intelligent, they will use their intelligence to cause harm. if they develop a special power, they will use it for harm .
anyone who' s ever heard (or just imagined) troubling sounds coming from a fuzzy baby monitor or fretted while their fifth - grader traversed a big - city crosswalk will have their nerves seriously jangled by joshua .
i' m not so sure that the writers left this movie without an ending. i think the message is in joshua' s composition at the end of the son, as well as hidden in the nature of his relationship with his parents throughout the movie. joshua is a constant figure in the film, however, when his parents are present, he becomes scenery. he repeatedly questions his parents love for him, however discusses in his song that he never doubted his uncle' s love for him. perhaps the point was not for joshua to continue to kill until there was no one left, but rather to set it up such that custody of him and his sister should go to his uncle
as it always should have been
. with his mother, grandmother and father out of the way, the only relative who could take custody of he and his sister was his uncle .
are simply awful at just 16% positive. furthermore, early reports suggest the audience reaction won’t be much better. it’s too soon to tell if this film is going to underperform already low expectations, but this is not a good sign .
the arrival of a newborn girl causes the gradual disintegration of the cairn family; particularly for 9 - year - old joshua (kogan), an eccentric boy whose proper upbringing and refined tastes both take a sinister turn .
the arrival of a newborn girl causes the gradual disintegration of the cairn family; particularly for 9 - year - old joshua (kogan), an eccentric boy whose proper upbringing and refined tastes... see more »
joshua is definitely a disturbed child, but it must be questioned why he is the way he is. parental influence must have played some role in this. although i don' t think joshua has been abused, as is claimed in this movie, i think his mother and father are both unstable to different degrees. being as bright as he is, joshua is probably very aware of this. and like the person who posted the last comment, i believe he does everything he does not purely because he is evil. i think he just wants to live a life with his uncle that would be drastically better for him than the current situation with his parents .
the contrived script expects us to believe that joshua' s fainting spells, his nocturnal home videos of his sleeping family and his acts of violence on crowded new york city streets fail to raise suspicion until it is too late .
do you know what joshua said to his sister on the video which is watched by brad? you know, the video recorded by joshua during the night with the infrared video - camera. i did' nt hear what he said... the theory in which joshua has been abused by ned is possible. but i think he feels forsaken by his mother who is always with lily, and by his father who is always working (and maybe is cheating on abby)... so, he has just wanted to change his parents by ned without killing... and i think it because of the video that he started to look for separate from his parents .
when his dad at last comes to the realization of how deeply narcisistic & evil his son is, he sets out to protect the infant & himself in the worst conceivable ways, proclaiming open warfare on joshua. alas for brad, joshua' s way, way ahead of him. and before it' s over, daddy won' t be able to argue very convincingly that he' s not himself a vicious child abuser whose kid is innocence personified .
the 1996 yugoslavian film pretty village, pretty flame proves that hit films don’t necessarily translate from continent to continent. while it received plenty of favorable reviews from american film critics, pretty village, pretty flame only managed to attract $ 211 worth of business when it received a one - theater / one - week release on january 16, 1998. a far cry from the nearly 800, 000 moviegoers who caught it in serbia (which was close to 10 percent of the country’s total population at the time) .
will one of the nation' s greatest violinists be noticed in a d. c. metro stop during rush hour? joshua bell experimented for gene weingarten' s story in the washington post: urltoken (video by john w. poole )
and $ 171. 2 worldwide. its biggest opening came from the u. k. , where it earned $ 14. 50 million in 608 theaters, while mexico wasn’t far behind with $ 12. 34 million. however, arguably its most impressive opening came in brazil where it earned $ 7. 5 million, which is the best opening for an animated film in that market. the film has already made enough to pay for its $ 75 million production budget, so it is a monster hit. however, its decline from
so, indeed, my biggest qualms with the film is that the writers did not commit to either explaining joshua nor to him really becoming the monster. he is a monster. it' s pretty clear that he killed his grandmother, though she honestly could have fallen. we know that he drove his mother crazy or, at least, pushed her over the edge. so, why not have him go all the way? it might have been the more artistically enthralling way to end the film without explanation, but the device can also be used when the writers don' t know where to go next. they' ve built all this up, but cannot figure out how to end it or where to go with it. there is no good triumphs over evil in this film, and we are left without knowing what will happen to joshua, why he' s this way, nor whether he will eventually take the lives of those remaining in his life. artistically, it is up to us to decide. we don’t get the perfect resolution like in the good son where susan evans must choose to drop one of two children off a cliff, her own son henry who has been wreaking havoc on their lives for months, or her nephew mark. guess which one she chooses ?
joshua: suspense thriller. starring sam rockwell, vera farmiga, dallas roberts and jacob kogan. (r. 105 minutes. at bay area theaters. for complete listings and show times, and to buy tickets to select theaters, go to urltoken
homeless man: can you help me out, little man? just something. anything. i' m no chooser here. joshua cairn: i' ll give you five dollars if you let me throw a rock at you. see more »
and having a high opinion of himself, joshua doesn' t find them worthy of him; so even if they' d remained sufficiently doting & attentive, there' s a good chance he' d' ve still set out to destroy them .
such is the opening which in the dvd' s extras we find out has a connection to the rest of the story (she was the evil child' s nanny), though in the final edit of the film, the opening scene has nothing to do with anything .
in a way normalcy is the subject of “joshua, ” which opens friday. the title character is a 9 - year - old prodigy — an exceptional student, a brilliant musician — whose more ordinary parents, played by mr. rockwell and vera farmiga, don’t know quite what to make of him. trouble is, he knows exactly what to make of them. and when joshua’s place in the family is threatened by a baby sister, his reaction is typical, but his behavior is a bit extreme .
opened with $ 7. 84 million. it is also a little better than its debut here, given the size of the two markets, and the slumping rubles. on the other hand, the film managed $ 13. 9 million in the u. k. , compared to
will fall just short of $ 60 million at the box office this weekend, according to sunday estimates from paramount. the studio has the film coming in at $ 59. 6 million over three days, which is substantially short of the $ 79. 2 million earned on debut by
eagle - eyed viewers will catch the word “flammable” scrawled across the back of the truck, yet when it careens off the cliff at the end of the movie it doesn’t go boom. the studio wanted a big explosion, but the director wanted a slower demise for his film’s villain .
buffing its tacky premise to an industrial - strength gloss, “joshua” zeroes in on the privileged marriage of brad and abby cairn (sam rockwell and vera farmiga), whose plush new york city apartment boasts a grand piano and a central park view. the piano is for their 9 - year - old son, joshua (jacob kogan), a musical prodigy and a joyless child with televangelist - perfect hair and an unhealthy interest in embalming. favoring preppie outfits and ramrod posture, joshua is as polished and robotic — and as lethal to old ladies and small animals — as his cinematic forebears, like rhoda in “the bad seed” and henry in “the good son, ” though neither, to my recollection, ever broke from ghoulish pursuits long enough to master beethoven’s piano sonata no. 12 .
still took second place with ease, but it was the only other film to earn more than $ 10 million over the independence day long weekend. overall, the box office pulled in $ 132 million over the weekend, which is 27% less than last weekend. compared to the same weekend
if i shared a bit more of our cultural phobia about children, the preposterous character of joshua would' ve been one of the best psychopaths seen in a while, a well - made & profoundly cynical tale of suspense that completely justifies a terror of little boys .
with $ 29. 2 million. this is the best single day for an animated film this year. to emphasize, this isn’t just the best opening day, but the best single day, and it should top that on saturday. the previous record was $ 23. 00 million, earned by
the snakerama gas station seen in the film also appears in spielberg' s 1979 world war ii comedy, 1941, with actress lucille benson again appearing as the proprietor. the two elderly people weaver tries to flag down in a car also appear as helpless motorists in close encounters of the third kind .
intelligent and realistic about its subject matter, the running themes, including sibling jealousy, familial dissidence, and parent - child relations, consistently hit a relevant note. ultimately, it is the knowledge of all the horrific possibilities for what could happen rather than the foresight of what does happen where the film ratchets up and then maintains its entrancing levels of fear and dread. sleekly photographed by benoit debie and brilliantly scored by nico muhlythe use of the off - key piano chords are an invaluable atmospheric addition
joshua
is a haunting and evocative motion picture that stays with you .
after winning a slew of awards and nominations at film festivals and other key industry events around the world—including a world cinema grand jury prize nomination at sundance—you would think that carlos moreno’s colombian crime world drama dog eat dog would have the legs to sustain a single - cinema theatrical release. and you would be wrong .
the woods where the dogs live will become the major setting for the bulk of the film, but gone from the final edit is any connection to the evil child, any reason for the nanny having been in that distant neck of the woods, like much that will unfold, it' s all just nonsense .
the financial failure of this mexican horror flick certainly isn’t a result of shoddy marketing materials; its u. s. distributor, magnolia pictures, even earned a golden trailer award nomination for best horror poster. the film currently holds a zero percent rating on rotten tomatoes (though 22 percent of the audience liked it) .
the little fellow in
joshua
is hateful, but it' s not fun hating him. he' s vile. he' s obnoxious. he' s fake in his every utterance, but not amusingly fake - - disturbingly fake, in that one can see how he' d fool his parents, who are exhausted from overwork and from dealing with a screaming infant. (guess who' s making the infant scream ?) if you' ve never wanted to punch a child in the face, see
joshua
and discover a whole new side of yourself .
' joshua.' thriller about a family that falls apart after the birth of a baby. with sam rockwell, vera farmiga. director: george ratliff (1: 40). r: language, disturbing images. at the village 7, regal e - walk and loews 84th street .
fortunately, he added, he had “just chewed up all the scenery in ‘snow angels. ’ ” in that unreleased movie, which like “joshua” was first seen at sundance in january, he plays “a born - again christian alcoholic who’s chasing after his ex - wife and kind of goes postal. ”
as proof that the site can ruin a film’s box office chances. besides that charge, the other two main complaints i’m hearing over and over again are a .) rotten tomatoes is a very shallow site, especially the tomatometer. and b .) it is killing in - depth critical examination of movies. i’ll tackle those claims below .
the note that joshua leaves for his father reads :
dad, / eaten lunch already / and gone to / the brooklyn museum of art / having fun with nunu and lily .
if you arrange the first letter of each line in order, it reveals an acrostic for
death .
see more »
characterized by repeated, precisely composed and internal frames, joshua carefully builds a case against the boy, his actions unseen but affecting abby apparently by the hour. during a family dinnertime, he watches them with lily, then announces that someone died in their apartment .
someone has died on pretty much every inch of this planet ,
he informs his parents, their startled faces nearly frozen as they look back at him. again with the creepiness: after studying mummies, joshua disembowels his stuffed pandy, explaining to a dumbfounded brad that the egyptians broke a dead body' s nose and
drained the brain through its opening .
for all its surface glamour and mainstream ambitions “joshua” taps into something dark and guilty about being a parent, acknowledging that innocence is not necessarily every child’s default position. “you don’t have to love me, ” joshua tells his stunned father, admitting — in a way the adult cannot — that some children are intrinsically unlovable. because of this attention to naturalism, the movie digs deeper than its predecessors to unearth truths that few parents care to face. (witness the storm of outrage when the writer ayelet waldman confessed, in a 2005 essay and later on “the oprah winfrey show, ” to loving her husband more than her children. )
, and 2014 could not compete with that, so it lost ground to 2013. june hopes to turn things around and there are some reasons to be optimistic. all four weeks there is at least one film opening that at least has a shot at $ 100 million. there are even two films that at least have a shot at $ 300 million .
the first scene in joshua is both banal and ominous. young boys are playing soccer, the camera focused on their thin, be - socksed legs as they kick the ball and dash across the grass. the idyll is instantly adjusted when the coach yells out ,
you' re playing like a bunch of little girls !
but it’s sam rockwell’s spectacular turn as the harried paterfamilias that simultaneously binds the film and pushes its boundaries. whether coddling his character’s doped - up wife or reaching out to his wacky son, mr. rockwell is never less than convincing as a stressed - out dad whose life is slowly disintegrating. the story might get away from him, but his grip on that character never falters .
we are introduced to a well - cast young actor, jacob koban as eight year old joshua. this young actor seems to understand the concept of
less is more
& presents a blank gaze & dandified veneer that permits to viewer to project onto him every expectation already in them about how bad even a well - behaved child might really be .
is by far their biggest property. even including the film’s grosses from wednesday and thursday, its $ 69 million debut is barely in the top ten for the year so far, and poor reviews and a b + cinemascore mean that it won’t have significant legs, even with a bit of help from the upcoming july 4 weekend. so all eyes are going to be on its overseas performance .
easily won the race for the top of the box office chart and became the first film released in 2014 to earn more than $ 100 million during its opening weekend. granted, it barely made it, but we will take it. this helped the overall box office climb by 20% to $ 190 million over the weekend. unfortunately, this was still 8% lower than the same weekend
the staging of the doom of vince (joel edgerton) involving sneaky evil david, one of his hellhounds, & an ice - covered lake, is one of the better horror sequences in a film with fewer good bits than it needed. the doom of roxane (sarah wayne callies) & the doom of the detective (dule hill) both fail miserably, for lack of imagination or emotional content .
spielberg got his start directing for tv at the age of 21, helming episodes of such shows as night gallery and marcus welby, m. d. but the aspiring filmmaker was desperately searching for a property he could turn into a feature film. it was spielberg' s secretary, nona tyson, who found matheson’s story in playboy and first sent it to her boss to potentially adapt into a movie .
it' d be a stressful situation even if joshua' s plan wasn' t, in essence, to insure that neither his mother nor his father is ever loved by anyone ever, to the end of their lives. yep. that' s the plan. and honest to shit, it' s a much spookier plan than just killing' em outright .
“ghastly” kind of says it all. this 1950s - inspired sci - fi musical—which stars creed bratton (a. k. a. creed from the office) —may have nabbed five awards on the american film festival circuit, but it only managed to scare up $ 117 during the week it spent in a single theater in kansas city, kansas in october 2012. maybe that’s because it had screened at the kansas international film festival less than three weeks earlier? in the spring of 2013, johnny tried again, placing the movie in six theaters over the course of four weeks. while it managed to break the $ 1000 mark in revenues when it showed in two theaters in l. a. ($ 1356 to be exact), its total run earned back just $ 2436 of its estimated $ 2 million budget .
with: sam rockwell (brad cairn), vera farmiga (abby cairn), celia weston (hazel cairn), dallas roberts (ned davidoff), michael mckean (chester jerkins), alex draper (stewart slocum), nancy giles (betsy polsheck), linda larkin (ms. danforth), stephanie roth haberle (pediatrician) and jacob kogan (joshua cairn) .
and i would be surprised if it tops $ 150 million by any serious margin. june looks a lot more profitable. there are five weeks and every week there is at least one film with a great shot at $ 100 million or more. in fact, there are four films with at least a decent shot at $ 200 million and we could double the number of $ 300 million hits released so far this year .
) is an emotional wreck for the bulk of the running time as mother abby. it initially seems as if she is the crazy one in the family, prone to unpleasant mood swings and at her wit' s end over dealing with her fussy new daughter. as she fights to keep it together for the love of her son, the question becomes: is abby losing her mind, or is it all being meticulously orchestrated by joshua? the answer is left somewhat ambiguousmy inclination is that her problems stem from bothand that is as it should be. a scene in which abby and joshua play hide - and - seek is dripping with the kind of suspense rarely seen and captured, and it' s a testament to director george ratliff that he achieves this despite little in the way of action occurring .
but more than anything ,
joshua
is a showcase for the immensely gifted rockwell, who pushes himself through an astonishing range of emotions. and every aspect of his character - the cool dad, the terrified husband, the placating son - is completely convincing. well, almost completely: by the end, we know better than to believe him when he insists that everything is going to be just fine .
in june, universal floated an autumn release date—and a new trailer. it recuts much of the same material with some new stuff, newly dark and ominous, now scored to u2’s “bullet the blue sky. ” “allow us to help your men catch this criminal, ” pleads team leader jamie foxx. “we shouldn’t be here. we shouldn’t be here! ” professes their host. cut to patrician politico: “the end comes no matter what. the only thing that matters is, how do you wanna go out? ” a movie about why we had to go in becomes a movie about how we should comport ourselves while there, with hints of exit strategy and a militant - pacifist soundtrack—the film seemingly edited from pro - to antiwar, without ever being released. the circuit of culture grows shorter than ever; the intermediate phase, where cultural studies labors to suture the film to the history around it, has been rendered obsolete .
it’s no accident that mr. rockwell cited three particularly creepy films to make his point. “joshua” is the latest in a long line of “bad seed” movies that portray children as avatars of evil. mr. ratliff knows that his movie can be construed as a nightmare view of parenthood. “i always blame david gilbert, my co - writer, ” he said in a telephone interview. “it was 100 percent his idea. ”
it' s gonna get better
is brad' s mantra, but it doesn' t. in fact, it gets much, much worse. and joshua, it' s becoming clear, is at the center of the storm. it' s always been obvious that he' s an unusual boy, but brad, much to his own horror, is starting to wonder if he' s an evil one .
it’s certainly a far cry from the sleek, rambling upper east side apartment of the family in “joshua. ” the boy, played with eerie calm by jacob kogan, goes to an elite private school. mr. rockwell’s character is a hedge - fund manager who plays squash at a fancy club. at home mr. rockwell has no central park views, and he exercises at crunch. his passion is boxing, not squash .
less than one month after he accepted a best actor oscar for his portrayal of idi amin in the last king of scotland, forest whitaker was making news of a different sort when the supernatural thriller he starred in alongside gabrielle anwar was released in one theater for three days and recouped less than. 005 percent of its $ 7 million budget. as the film’s tagline stated :
you can bury the past, but sometimes the past won' t stay buried ...
) is an unsung dramatic actor who finds the truth in each moment and holds on it. the way in which his character metamorphosizes is disconcerting and yet absolutely electrifying, going from a happy - go - lucky dad with undying love for joshua to a beaten - down soul on the verge of losing everything and questioning who his son really is. in a nicely nuanced and understated supporting turn, dallas roberts (2006' s
in this coldly elegant setting, evil manifests without the aid of the usual retro - gothic signifiers like the inverted crucifix or the malevolent nanny. instead the sinister is an elusive presence, as much a part of the mise - en - scène as the baby’s crib, to which joshua is developing an eerie attraction. but for abby, trapped in her gleaming prison with not one but two disagreeable children, the more immediate horror is motherhood itself .
,
for example, seen by myself less than an hour before
joshua .
the former spared no expense on the red stuff, but that apparently didn' t leave enough money for acquiring a good script. the end result was a movie that was unscary and dramatically cold. by comparison, this modern - day
bad seed
tale expertly weaves a spell of genuine frights and jittery tension even in the most innocuous of scenes .
hence this version of film criticism seems of late like child’s play. the geopolitics decoder ring always works, and with a minimum of twiddles: 1–2–3 baghdad! (alternately, the count can go 9–11 - new york !) cinematic administrations are always dummies for the current regimes; villains, once mere criminals, now tend toward self - serving ideologues, worshipping at the altar of blow - stuff - up - ism. when we go out at night, terror is the order of the day.
joshua ( also known as the devil 's child ) is a 2007 american psychological thriller horror film about an affluent young manhattan family and how they are torn apart by the increasingly sadistic behavior of their disturbed son , joshua . the film was directed and co-written by george ratliff , and stars sam rockwell , vera farmiga and jacob kogan . it was released on july 6 , 2007 in the united states by fox searchlight pictures . 
joshua (also known as the devil's child) is a 2007 american psychological thriller horror film about an affluent young manhattan family and how they are torn apart by the increasingly sadistic behavior of their disturbed son, joshua. the film was directed and co-written by george ratliff, and stars sam rockwell, vera farmiga and jacob kogan. it was released on july 6, 2007 in the united states by fox searchlight pictures.
joshua (also known as the devil's child) is a 2007 american psychological thriller horror film about an affluent young manhattan family and how they are torn apart by the increasingly sadistic behavior of their disturbed son, joshua. the film was directed and co-written by george ratliff, and stars sam rockwell, vera farmiga and jacob kogan. it was released on july 6, 2007 in the united states by fox searchlight pictures.