Just to get it out of the way: No, Russell Crowe isn't very good. But what makes his performance really stand out — in a negative way — is the caliber of performance around him. We all expected Hugh Jackman and supporting cast like Colm Wilkinson (the original Jean Valjean) and Frances Ruffelle to stand out, but the biggest surprises in the finished product are the scope of the film's production and a devastating performance by Anne Hathaway as Fantine. It's a truly impressive accomplishment, and I've never really even liked Les Miz.
The Invisible War
More and more, documentaries are forced to serve the function the so-called "legitimate" media once fulfilled, namely, reporting those stories meant to inform and provoke. Kirby Dick's (This Film is Not Yet Rated, Outrage) searing indictment of the U.S. military and its mishandling of the epidemic of sexual assault in its ranks is the latest to provide that call to arms. By the Department of Defense's own estimates, 20 percent of women in the armed services have been sexually assaulted, and a recent lawsuit filed by several survivors of sexual assault against the DoD was dismissed by a federal district court that ruled rape was an "occupational hazard of military service." Next up, Emeril's new jicama coleslaw recipe.
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