Joshua

Plot synopsis:
Brad (Sam Rockwell) and Abby Cairn (Vera Farmiga) are an affluent New York couple with two children. Their firstborn, 9-year-old Joshua (Jacob Kogan), is a child prodigy to such a degree that he thinks and acts decades ahead of his age. He is nearly always clad in conservative business attire and demonstrating limitless brilliance as a pianist with a marked predilection for "dissonant" classical pieces.
Joshua gravitates toward his aesthete uncle Ned (Dallas Roberts) as a close friend, but distances himself from his immediate kin, particularly following the birth of his sister Lilly. As the days pass, bizarre events transpire as the mood at the house regresses from healthy and happy to strange and disorienting. As the baby's whines drive an already strained Abby to the point of a nervous breakdown, Joshua devolves from eccentric to downright sociopathic behavior.
Joshua causes a fight between his mother (who is Jewish, but non-religious) and paternal grandmother (who is an Evangelical Christian and who constantly proselytizes Joshua) when he tells his parents he wants to become a Christian. Abby gets very angry and swears at the grandmother, telling her to leave her house immediately. Joshua later convinces his mother to join him in a game of hide-and-seek. As Abby counts to fifty, Joshua takes his baby sister from her crib to hide with him, causing his mother to panic and pass out while searching for them in the empty penthouse above them, before he puts the baby back into the crib to make it look as though his mother was hallucinating the entire incident.
Later, after discussing Abby's psychological problems with his brother-in-law Ned, Brad takes two weeks off from his job to look after Abby and his children. When he arrives home, Joshua has gone to the Brooklyn Museum with his sister and their grandmother Hazel (Celia Weston). Joshua frightens his grandmother by describing to her in detail about Seth, the Egyptian God of Chaos, and his violent acts. While they are at the museum, Brad watches a video tape of Joshua scaring his baby sister with a light, making her cry. He arrives at the museum, just in time to see Joshua attempt to push his sister in her carriage down a large flight of stairs, but he stops when he is caught by his grandmother, whom he proceeds to push down the large staircase, killing her and disguising it as an accident. However, Brad is convinced Joshua pushed her and confides in Ned at the funeral.
That night, Brad installs a lock on his bedroom door and tells Joshua that Lilly will be sleeping with him, fearing Joshua will attempt to do something to his sister. That night, Joshua builds a house of blocks in the living room and provokes his father. Brad tells him he won't be able to hurt anyone else, as he now realizes he is causing trouble. Later that week, on Ned's recommendation, Brad brings Betsy (Nancy Giles), a psychologist, into the home to meet Joshua. Betsy comes to the conclusion that Joshua is being abused. Later, Brad tells him he is being sent away to a boarding school, causing Joshua to run away. When Brad arrives home, he finds Joshua hiding in a cupboard, crying hysterically with a large bruise on his back.
The next morning, he and Joshua go for a walk with his sister, but Joshua has stolen her pacifier, causing her to cry. When Brad confronts him, he begins to mock him, causing Brad to strike him. After Brad realizes what he did, he tries to apologize. Joshua further taunts him, which drives Brad to beating his son in public, strengthening Joshua's case of abuse and sending Brad to jail for child abuse and assault. In addition, it is indicated that Joshua has framed his father for tampering with his mother's medications, suggesting that Brad will spend the rest of his life in prison, leaving Ned to adopt Joshua and his sister.
In the last scene of the film, Joshua is playing a piano while his uncle Ned is talking to a person in a phone about having a nanny to take care of Lilly. Afterwards, Ned sits with Joshua and the two compose a song with Joshua singing an original song. The lyrics of the song are basically how Joshua's parents both will never be loved by anyone due to all the events. It is then revealed in the song that he only wanted to be with Ned and got rid of everyone else.

Tags: revenge

Review:
I remember seeing this movie years ago, and my memories of it were that it was a pretty decent western.
Sadly, time had faded the negative things about this movie.To be sure, there are a few positive things I can say.
Combining the scenery with the musical score makes for some haunting sequences.But most of the movie doesn't work.
The bad guys are even thinner characters, all of them seemingly alike.There is also a lot of poor direction.
It's presented in the dullest way possible, a feeling that keeps coming up in the rest of the movie.Although some of the music is haunting, the low budget of the movie means that the same bars of music are played over and over, which becomes annoying.
Though this would probably resulted in a running time not qualifying for a feature-length movie.One last thing I would like to bring up: The pan-and-scanning of this widescreen movie is TERRIBLE.
You can't properly read the opening and closing credits, and when there is more than one character on screen, one of them is often cut off (sometimes ALL of the characters are chopped offscreen!) This movie needs to be seen in its full widescreen glory, but since the movie is now in the public domain, it seems very unlikely anyone would spend the expense to release this movie on DVD restored..
Not much time is spend on any sort of character development, but we've all seen these types of characters in every other western anyhow.
It's true that there is not a lot of dialog from Fred Williamson, but his character (Joshua) is a lone cowboy sneaking along quietly through the desert.
The film has a real nice gritty Italian look to it and its starkness works fairly well with the story.
It's not going to be the greatest movie you've ever seen but it's interesting enough to watch once.
JOSHUA: THE BLACK RIDER (3 outta 5 stars) I am almost tempted to give this movie 5 out of 5 stars because it is almost perfect in its simplicity...
a western movie can't get much more straight-forward than this: a man's mother is killed...
and he spends the rest of the movie tracking and killing the men who did it.
I *like* movies that take their time.
Fred Williamson plays the title character...
The bad guys kidnap a woman along the way and rape her a few times but by the movie's end she has inexplicably allied herself with one of her assailants.
Practically the entire soundtrack of this movie is a 90 second piece of faux-spaghetti-western music that gets repeated again and again and again...
towards the end of the movie it almost becomes comical when that same old theme is repeated yet again.
I think you need to *really* be a fan of westerns to like this one..
In Joshua the music fit the film perfectly, especially the low growl when the camera turned to the black rider.
Though I prefer an unpredictable story line, this film can be good when one prefers sometime something simple.
The previous poster commented that this movie was not available in Widescreen.There's at least 2 ways to get this in Widescreen.
The other movie is some William Shatner film.
I was pretty shocked to see it in widescreen considering the package was only $5.00.The 2nd way is on the 'Legends of the West' 8 Movie Collection.
I'm pretty sure that's widescreen as well.Slow movie that drags on.
The theme song repeats all the way throughout the movie.
Don't remember if there was more than one actual song played throughout it's entirety.This movie is really only for Blaxploitation/Fred Williamson completests..
Joshua (Fred Williamson) tracks the band of cutthroats who shot down his defenseless mother (not a good thing to do to a strong black man) through the desert and into an implicitly racist town where things really heat up.Great location photography makes this low-budget blaxploitation/western look better than it's dollar figure would suggest.This is a minimalist viewing experience where the story (like a silent picture) is told primarily in pictures with most of the sparse dialog inconsequential, which I think explains the mixed reviews.Personally, I thought it was an okay movie but I'd wish that the filmmakers would have beefed up the script with more dramatics and emotions, playing up the racism in the town and forcing Williamson to fight to extract the despicable villains.Also, It would have been nice to see a recognizable character actor (Aldo Ray or Cameron Mitchell anyone?
I don't usually like westerns, but I enjoyed this immensely.Twice!
Such remains mostly unresolved, but I liked the coolness of the loner, quietly righting wrongs along the way, mostly against the odds, but with effortless precision & skillfulness if not mastery as he goes about his unfolding journey.
Personally, I was mindful of the concept of 'vengeance is mine says the Lord!' I could well imagine God inspiring such a man in pursuit of love for his beloved, mother or wife or other aspects of love, as variously reflected here in the powerless but generous farmer, & the quiet ways of the returned war hero on a new mission, who seemed to be threatened more than he spoke!
I've 200 Spaghetti Westerns, so I watch a lot that most people would consider of borderline merit, so I'm very capable of overlooking production shortcuts for the sake of the bigger picture.
It wasn't so much awful as it was really incompetent.Fred Williamson does well in the lead role...but he should stay away from script writing!!!
Technically the history, physical possibility of a thing happening, etc., was actually as bad as Quentin Tarantino.
You could write five pages on the continuity errors section of this page.I gave it a 2 instead of a 1 because the scenery was nice, it was a western and Fred was OK.
Joshua starring Fred Williamson in the title role tells the story of a returning black civil war veteran who finds his mother murdered and some other woman abducted by this gang of some really loathsome cretins.
Of course Williamson's duty is clear.The film was shot in the sacred John Ford country of Monument Valley, Arizona which as a tourist spot boasts of its fame as a location for some of the best westerns ever done.
This however was not one of them.The story of Patty Hearst was fresh in people's minds and the woman abducted decides she likes it with the gang.
Let's say she becomes less and less inhibited in her sexual relations with the gang and she's more like an outlaw groupie by the time the film ends.Unless you're a fan of Fred Williamson, pass this one by..
We've seen the vengeance-chase thing, the silent hero thing so many times and, with "Joshua" it's a case of here we go again, this time with lesser results.Fred Williamson acquited himself well, but the rest of the cast could have used some bad guy acting lessons.The music could have used less excess.
At one point it sounded like somebody was just learning to play "Chopsticks."Also unnecessary was the 'bosom' scene.
By the way, every now and then it looked like they came close to connecting.The scenery was excellent, the horses were pretty.
Wow, what a great film, I can't believe how some of the reviewers did not enjoy this movie!!!!
The music really set the tone on Williamson's character.
He wasn't riding to play no games, nor have much conversation - he was riding to avenge his mothers death and the music and lack of dialogue from him showed that.Some people are just to critical on films like this.
Just stop looking for things to complain about with a movie like this and just enjoy it.Great film..
Someone, even if the star of the film Williamson himself, should have never allowed this film to reach the public with the simplistic kindergarten theme song played in the opening credits as well as various times through the film.
With such a humble production, the task of the music department would be to merely stay out of the way and not detract from the overall end product.
Unfortunately, the music in this film fails miserably and detracts from any momentum that the average acting gains.
Williams is pretty good in the lead role and his stoic approach is in tune with the Western gunslinger theme.
I really like western films but this one is absolutely insupportable.
The cast is completely lost in a series of scenes that made no sense at all (like the showdown in the cave when Joshua killed the last outlaw).
Williamson develops a zombie-like performance all the time and that contributes to make this mess a complete waste of time and a great exercise of patience..
Fred Williamson also authored the story and wrote the screenplay for this Western vehicle for himself.
He plays the title character, a black man who fought for the Union side during the Civil War. He travels to the homestead where his mother (Kathryn Jackson, "The Black Godfather") has been a maid for a frontier family.
Naturally, he relentlessly stalks them, aiming to kill them one at a time in the name of vengeance.Produced and directed by Larry G.
Spangler ("The Life and Times of Xaviera Hollander"), this is neither very good nor very bad.
The scenery looks reasonably good as shot in the 2.35:1 aspect ratio, but you can tell this was still done on a budget.
Mexican superstar Isela Vega ("Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia") doesn't get a lot to work with, playing the good hearted woman who comes to Williamsons' aid at critical times.
Ralph Willingham, in his only film role, is annoying as shrill old fart Weasel, a member of the gang.Taking everything into consideration, this is an okay viewing for a Hammer fan / completist, but it's absolutely nothing special.Six out of 10..
Western vengeance with unstopped pursuit starred by a king of blaxploitation, Fred Williamson.
After a savage massacre of his mother and kidnapping a girl, the black rider (Fred Williamson) , a civil war veteran , set out a personal vendetta and a rescue against a band of outlaws .
The black rider travels the Soutwestern territories and crosses paths until finding nasties .This is an average Western revenge plenty of violence , riding chases , shootouts, grisly killings and results to be quite entertaining, in spite of some slow-moving scene s.
With similar plot to Italian Western , whose main argument being ¨revenge¨ and likeness to ¨Chato¨ where Charles Bronson revenges , one by one , the killers his family .
Displays extraordinary landscapes with glimmer cinematography like is well reflected on the breathtaking outdoors filmed in natural parks of Monument Valley .
This Western with lots of action packs a boring and repetitious musical score by synthesizer .
The film is starred by Fred Williamson , one of the first African-American male action star of the Blaxploitation of the early 1970s , including his filmography the followings : ¨Black Caesar¨ , ¨Hammer¨ , ¨The man bolt and Black eye¨ ; besides , Isela Vega who played Western for Cantinflas in ¨Por mis Pistolas¨ and Sam Peckinpah , in ¨Bring me the head of Alfred Garcia¨ .
The motion picture was regularly directed by Larry Spangler , director and producer of ¨Legend and soul of Charlie¨ , again with Fred Williamson .
Should Have Been a Pretty Good Blaxploitation Western.
With the Civil War just ended a Union soldier by the name of "Joshua" (Fred Williamson) is looking forward to starting a new life and is on his way to meet his mother who had been staying with a young couple who are about to be married.
Unfortunately, upon arriving there he learns that 5 men have killed his mother and abducted the young woman (played by Brenda Venus).
Now rather than reveal any more of this movie I will just say that it had a fairly interesting plot.
However, the music played during several of the action scenes was rather annoying, the character development needed improvement and some of the scenarios lacked any sense of realism.
In essence then, what should have been a pretty good Blaxploitation Western turned out to be slightly below average and I recommend it only to those who might be interested in a film of this sub-genre..
When "Joshua" blew his horn, the FILM came tumbling down..
Blaxploitation figure Williamson starred in and wrote this western revenge saga which bears a passing resemblance to the equally cheap "Cry Blood, Apache".
He plays a returning Civil War soldier coming to meet his mother Jackson who is a domestic for Hendrick and Venus, a farmer and his mail-order wife.
When Williamson finds out that his mother is dead, he sets out to systematically eliminate the quintet of killers who, incidentally, have taken Venus with them for comfort.
Like many films before and after this one, a lone man stalks and kills a series of bad guys, always finding a way to get each one alone.
This wouldn't be so bad if the killings had been handled in any sort of creative or arresting way.
Williamson cuts a nice figure, all in black, against the dusty landscape and he's intimidating to be sure.
Unfortunately, with an exception or two, he makes the other actors look like they just got the script seconds before the cameras rolled.
Hendrick does okay with his small role and Vega isn't bad as a woman who briefly distracts and aids Williamson during his quest.
By the time she's ready to be rescued, the audience has already been praying for most of the movie that she'll be shot in the head!
The other major debit of the film is the agonizing musical score.
The same six-note sequence is played, with an occasional variation, over and OVER and O-V-E-R throughout the course of the movie!
Every once in a while, something else is played, but mostly it's this same droning, horrid bit of music that threatens to continue forever.
Williamson makes this passable, but it surely isn't good..
I got it in a 20-movie "Mean Guns" westerns 5-DVD set.
A lot of rare "gems" were in this movie set.
And Joshua I felt is Definitely a excellent Fred Williamson film & western!
Fred Williamson is an amazing actor & writer.
While that may be true, (Some of the scenes we have seen in many a western) I felt they were handled from every original angles.
Passable revenge Western.
Tough black soldier Joshua (a credible performance by Fred Williamson, who also wrote the slight script) returns home after fighting for the Union during the Civil War only to discover that his beloved mother was murdered by a gang of evil white bandits.
Joshua decides to track said gang so he can exact a harsh revenge on all of them.
The acting is likewise hit or miss: Cal Bartlett cuts a suitably hateful figure as ruthless ring leader Jed, Brenda Venus makes for a fetching damsel in distress, Isela Vega contributes a lively turn as a feisty Mexican woman, and Ralph Willingham dreadfully hams it up as annoying comic relief crazy old coot Weasle.
"You know what it feels like to kill?".
While watching this film I was reminded of a 1970's clunker titled "Cry Blood, Apache", a movie Western that still holds sway with me as one of the worst I've seen.
But the thing I liked about that picture that's done here as well is the inventive way the title character goes about dispatching the outlaws that killed his mother in the opening set up.
'Cry Blood' was even cooler, the bad guy got a bag over his head with the snake inside - think about it.The second outlaw to be done in by Joshua (Fred Williamson) presented a bit of a puzzling situation.
It occurred right in the bad guys' camp, but it wasn't made clear how Joshua got near enough to spear his victim at such close quarters.
The real head scratcher for me was how the kidnapped and repeatedly raped woman portrayed by Brenda Venus went so far overboard in her Stockholm Syndrome transformation with gang leader Jed (Calvin Bartlett).
Also, if you think about it (here I go again), wouldn't that have been the longest rendition of 'Oh, Susannah' ever played, seeing as how the pursuing Joshua got involved in a couple more scrapes before he made his appearance there.As for the over all musical theme, I have to go against the naysayers.
If I had to find a main fault with the picture, it would be the inordinate amount of time spent riding and tracking the outlaws.
********SPOILER************Fred Williamson's Joshua is your basic Vengeance themed Spaghetti Western.
This one is about a black civil war veteran who returns home to find his mother has been murdered by a gang of white thugs.
There is little character developed, almost no dialog, a couple scenes that make absolutely no sense and that do not advance the story in any way.
There is no intimacy in this film with any of the characters.
Isela Vega plays a farmer's wife whom the gang kidnaps and repeatedly rapes.
By the end of the movie she has developed an unexplained and unexamined relationship with the head of the Gang.
The fetching beauty is totally wasted in this movie in a thankless role.This is a cynically scripted film that asks very little of the viewer other than to watch Mr. Williamson awkwardly ride a horse across the countryside.
Ken Maynard, he is not.One feels that had Williamson developed his characters and plot more he might have had something here, although the vengeance themed Western has been done ad infinitum with two much better examples being Nevada Smith with Steve McQueen, and Last Train from Gun Hill with Kirk Douglas.
By the end of this contemptuous movie, the viewer doesn't really care about any of it.