Oscar Isaac Tagged Articles at Cinematical

To some, the name Alejandro Amenábar sparks instant interest. But if it does not, let me refresh your memory. In 1997, he wrote (with Mateo Gil) and directed the Spanish film Open Your Eyes -- which North American audiences know better by its ultra-strange U.S. remake Vanilla Sky. 2001 marked his English film premiere, the eerie Nicole Kidman thriller The Others (the only feature Gil hasn't co-written). And then in 2004, he went back to Spanish filmmaking with the Javier Bardem-starring Oscar winner The Sea Inside. Now he's grabbed the likes of Rachel Weisz, Max Minghella, and Oscar Isaac for a film that doesn't journey through facial reconstruction, ghosts, or euthanasia. It's a gorgeous, thought-provoking Roman epic called Agora.

The film focuses on one of the most impressive female figures in history – Hypatia, a leading thinker in the Rome-governed Alexandria, considered to be the first notable woman of mathematics. She studied philosophy and astronomy, and both pagan and Christian students from far and wide came together to study under her. "For all men on account of her extraordinary dignity and virtue admired her the more."

Back in February, I briefly mentioned through a casting bite that Alejandro Amenabar was gearing up for his next film, and had cast Rachel Weisz and Homayoun Ershadi from The Kite Runner. Now Variety has fleshed out the whole project. It's called Agora, the filmmaker wrote it with Mateo Gil, and it will be Amenabar's second English-language feature, after The Others.

Rachel Weisz and Max Minghella (Art School Confidential) star in the film, which takes place in Ancient Egypt. More specifically, Weisz will play the astrologer-philosopher Hypatia of Alexandria, in Roman Egypt during the fourth century. "Trapped in the Library of Alexandria as religious riots flare on the city's streets, Hypatia battles to save the collected wisdom of the ancient world. Meanwhile, her slave Davus (Minghella) is torn between his love for his mistress and the freedom he could attain by joining the rising tide of Christianity." Aside from Ershadi, Oscar Isaac, Ashraf Barhom, Michael Lonsdale, and Rupert Evans have roles.

Amenabar plans to use a "hyper-realist approach" to bring Alexandria to life, and says: "We want the audience to see, feel and smell a remote civilization as if it were as real as the present day." To me, it definitely sounds worth is, and is certainly better than Weisz doing a million Mummy sequels. Are you ready to get dirty in Ancient Egypt?

Knowing almost nothing about this filming of The Nativity Story before I went to see it, I imagined that I might enjoy it if, somehow, Joseph and Mary were shrunk down to human dimensions. The trials of two young adults on a 100-mile foot journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem, attempting to make King Herod's April 15th tax deadline, could make a decent yarn. Unfortunately, director Catherine Hardwicke had something different in mind. She forgoes a reality-based rendering of the myth in favor of a heap of prophecy-babble and a weirdly off-topic astrology subplot, both of which plant the film on uneasy ground in the realm of signs and wonders. The couple's journey is prompted by a visit from a descending angel who looks, incredibly, like a Commodores-era Lionel Richie. He clues them that they are inside The Greatest Story Ever Told, and from then on, Mary (Keisha Castle-Hughes) and Joseph (Oscar Isaac) speak of the fetus Jesus as if he's already turned water into wine. If you've ever been around new parents, you know how annoying that can be.

As the power couple descend on Bethlehem, we are forced to endure a B-story involving the three 'wise men' of scripture, crazily interpreted here as a trio of sideshow occultists who live in a dusty lair filled with cheap-looking pieces of astrology equipment and maps that look like kiddie placemats from Denny's. When used together, they can apparently foretell the birth of celebrities. These wise men made me want to pull my hair out. They engage in endless, pointless bantering about which star-map will get them to the Messiah's birthplace, while tossing off one-liners that were old when Shecky Green was a boy, nevermind Jesus. If the film has a weakest link, it's these scenes. They're so self-parodic that they seem purposefully inserted to kill whatever religious buzz the true believers in the audience might build up. Shouldn't a story about the birth of God be told with a straight face? Is the source material really so thin that this kind of filler, not fit for Saturday morning cartoons, had to be included?