FIFTY SHADES Movies’ Director James Foley Dies at 71- A Look Back at His Films
Filmmaker James Foley Dies at 71
Film director James Foley has passed away and the filmmaker has left behind an incredibly diverse body of motion picture work.
New York-born director, James Foley, has died from complications due to brain cancer at the age of 71. He leaves behind a series of very intriguing motion pictures which were compelling ever since he first came on to the scene in Hollywood.
His first major film was a stylish movie I discovered on cable back in the mid 1980’s called Reckless. It was a unique dramatic picture which featured then-sex symbols Aidan Quinn and Daryl Hannah. Automatically, Foley’s work intrigued me and then he ended up following that picture up with the deeply moving At Close Range from 1986 which starred Christopher Walken and Sean Penn. I blinked and missed that he directed Madonna’s box-office disappointment, Who’s That Girl, but was impressed when the filmmaker worked with one of the best casts ever assembled for the fine, theatrical-feeling and intense picture, Glengarry Glen Ross.
By the time 1996 rolled around, I got to review his movie, Fear, for a paper I was working at during college and realized that Foley had certainly perfected the craft of film-making even if Fear (which starred Mark Wahlberg as a psycho) wasn’t great. It was competently made, and that was a staple of the films Foley tended to make. I also reviewed The Chamber and found his work on the Gene Hackman/Chris O’Donnell starrer a bit different than the other John Grisham adaptations before it. Foley brought cinematic style to a somber movie that I thought was a lot better than most people.
Of course, many people know Foley best these days for his more recent work on the Fifty Shades of Grey sequels. Foley directed Fifty Shades Darker and Fifty Shades Freed. He didn’t direct the first movie in this franchise, yet the follow-up movies were incredibly typical of the director’s showy style that manifested itself in a way that resonated more with audiences than with critics. It’s safe to say that Foley was a director that didn’t want his audience to be bored and virtually always kept the movies he made moving at a fast clip.
Foley made films that weren’t good such as Perfect Stranger with Halle Berry and Bruce Willis. Still, Foley’s style was impeccable and that’s why he got hired to make so many movies that relied on that unique ingredient to bring audiences into the theater. He may have failed as much as he succeeded in telling stories the way the critics wanted him to, but Foley had that style of film-making that always kept me involved in his movies whether they were good, great or merely mediocre as a whole. His methods of storytelling were an integral part of making his work very distinct whether you liked it or did not.
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