Oscar winner Forest Whitaker has enjoyed a long and varied career that has brought him critical and commercial success, as well as disaster, and not forgetting the coveted Best Actor Oscar.
And he is back on the big screen this week with Our Family Wedding which sees the planning of what is supposed to the happiest day of you life descend into insults and chaos.
So to celebrate the release of the movie we take a look at some of Whitaker's best performances and movies.
- Platoon
Ok so he may not have had a huge role in the movie but Platoon is one of the greatest war movies to have been committed to film as he joined the likes of Willem Defoe, Charlie Sheen and Tom Berenger.
A young recruit in Vietnam faces a moral crisis when confronted with the horrors of war and the duality of man.
Platoon is an unsympathetic film it doesn't gloss over the troubles in Vietnam to suit and American cinema going audience. Stone depicts some soldiers as violent killers who struggle with seeing their friends injured and killed and take out their rage on a nearby village.
The village scene is perhaps one of the most harrowing of the entire film as American soldiers, struggling with their anger, kill, torture and rape Vietnamese villagers.
Stone also showed controversial issues within the U.S. army such as drug abuse, which has largely been speculated upon in recent years, the bullying behaviour by more experienced soldiers on the new, inexperienced recruits and the killing of unpopular officers.
- Good Morning Vietnam
Just a year after the success of the Platoon Whitaker was back in a war movie with Good Morning, Vietnam, which saw him star alongside Robin Williams.
Based on the life of an actual person, the story of an unconventional American radio disc jockey in Vietnam during the war.
We are all use to see the hard hitting Vietnam war movies but Good Morning, Vietnam was a breath of fresh air in this genre as Williams brought a great comedy to the film.
Williams and Whitaker banter well together throughout the movie which, despite it's topic, is brimming with laughs.
- The Last King of Scotland
The Last king of Scotland allowed Whitaker to truly flex his acting muscles as she took on the role of Idi Amin, which of course brought him an Oscar.
In the early 1970s, Nicholas Garrigan, a young semi-idealistic Scottish doctor, comes to Uganda to assist in a rural hospital. Once there, he soon meets up with the new President, Idi Amin, who promises a golden age for the African nation. Garrigan hits it off immediately with the rabid Scotland fan, who soon offers him a senior position in the national health department and becomes one of Amin's closest advisers.
However as the years pass, Garrigan cannot help but notice Amin's increasingly erratic behaviour that grows beyond a legitimate fear of assassination into a murderous insanity that is driving Uganda into bloody ruin.
Realizing his dire situation with the lunatic leader unwilling to let him go home, Garrigan must make some crucial decisions that could mean his death if the despot finds out.
Whitaker shows the different side of Amin from vulnerable and tender to menacing and cruel in this movie as he delivers a really powerful performance that had Oscar winner written all over it.
- Where The Wild Things Are
Ok so Whitaker didn't actually star in the movie be he did voice the character of Ira but Where The Wild Things Are was one of the best movies of 2010.
Max, a rambunctious and sensitive boy feels misunderstood at home and escapes to where the Wild Things are. He lands on an island where he meets mysterious and strange creatures whose emotions are as wild and unpredictable as their actions.
The Wild Things desperately long for a leader to guide them, just as Max longs for a kingdom to rule. When Max is crowned king, he promises to create a place where everyone will be happy.
Max soon finds, though, that ruling his kingdom is not so easy and his relationships there prove to be more complicated than he originally thought.
Forget the fact that this is an adaptation of a children’s book this movie is for anybody who has ever run around screaming, climbed trees, rolled in the dirt then laughed about it afterwards, we all remember those days when life was innocent and care free.
This film has a little bit of everything from fun, laughter and funny characters to a real message and gut wrenching ending.
This idea of simplicity and minimalist plot really does work well and the writing is a breath of fresh air pair that with some great visuals and there is no way that this movie will disappoint.
Other movies that are well worth a watch include biopic movie Bird, The Crying Game, Smoke and Prêt-à-Porter but I would give Battlefield Earth a miss.
Our Family Wedding is released 18th June.
FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw
Tagged in Forest Whitaker