2006 Fall - Holiday Movie Reviews

The Queen — Helen Mirren does her turn as Queen Elizabeth II at the time of the death of Princess Diana. I love Mirren's acting, and here she absolutely nails the portrayal of this contemporary public figure. This is a well-done movie from start to finish, capturing the entire royal family as the anachronistic and hide-bound figures they no doubt are, but without sinking to the malice that most modern films descend into when approaching historic institutions that are no longer comprehensible to today's tastes. In fact, this movie is a refreshing departure from the typical conspiratorial mishmash that permeates most recent trends in cinema. James Cromwell's performance as Prince Phillip should dispel all the conspiracy theories about his plots against Diana, since he is here shown to be the most obtuse fellow to ever walk on two legs. There is one especially priceless scene with Mirren where he goes on and on about how hapless Charles was in conducting his marital relations. Also, Michael Sheen, the actor who plays Tony Blair, does a good job of accenting the ways in which history bumps up against the tides of modern politics, as he desperately tries to advise the Queen of the maelstrom she confronts with Diana's death. The filmmakers show due respect to the feelings of Diana's children by not showing them on-screen except in archival footage, and Diana herself is also likewise depicted only in the photos and film we have all seen. That choice is interesting in and of itself because I believe the intention is to elevate her to something like a saintly presence. The effect on me, however, was to render Diana as much less the ideal figure I tend to remember, and more a creature of mere glamour, someone who played to the cameras that so loved her, in order to exact a petty revenge on the family who disappointed and ultimately rejected her. This is a very satisfying film, even when it takes a few fictional liberties: Anyone who knows even a little bit about English history will appreciate the symbolism and the pathos of the scenes of the Queen and the stag. The only Oscar pick I'm making this year is Helen Mirren for Leading Actress.

The Illusionist — I went to see this movie because of the buzz it had garnered, and because Edward Norton played the protagonist. I had no real idea of what to expect when I went in, and sometimes that's a good thing. Sometimes a lovely little picture like this one can bring more delight with its offbeat tale than a well-known story can ever do, no matter how well rendered. In sum, this is a love story set in 19th century Vienna. Beyond these words of praise I don't want to go into details of the plot. If you haven't already, do go and see this film. This movie is so good that even though I guessed the ending by about a third of the way through I still stayed engaged with the story until the end. This movie is so good that not even the presence of Jessica (to call her an actress is to laugh) Biehl, as the love interest, could spoil it. In fact, even she rises to the level of the material and the other actors around her. Rufus Sewell as Archduke Leopold turns in another quality performance as the heavy. I have admired the acting of Edward Norton since I saw him in the overrated American History X, and here he commands the screen just as his character commands his stage illusions. Also, many of you reading this will know the acting of Paul Giamatti better than I do because most of his films have not appealed to me, but here he plays the police chief caught between the fascinating stage magician (Norton) and the malevolent authority figure (Sewell), with great dexterity. Perhaps that is the most telling thing about The Illusionist, that the acting, the writing, the direction, all the elements of filmmaking combine in this movie just as all the elements in a conjurer's bag of tricks would do to take the audience to a place of magical surprise and satisfaction. This is a work of great imagination brought to cinematic fulfillment with a deft hand. This is certainly one for the dvd collection.

Hollywoodland — This movie is the recounting of the mysterious suicide of George Reeves, television's Superman back in the '50s. Being a member of the Boomer generation myself I can still vaguely remember being disturbed when I heard the news that Superman had done himself in, so I looked forward to seeing this movie. Maybe it was just the way the day had gone for me otherwise, but if I was hoping for closure or enlightenment, I must say I was disappointed. That's not to say Hollywoodland is a bad film, but I think it's telling that although it runs just under two hours, it seemed longer to me. The acting of the principals — Ben Affleck, Diane Lane and Adrien Brody — is certainly engaging. There are supporting performances as well that serve to capture a time and a place and a way of life that is almost mythic to us now, just as the whole superhero oeuvre is a sort of mythology for our time. The problem for me with this movie is that it never really takes a point of view about its subject. It tries through the vehicle of Brody's detective to ferret out all the possibilities, but can never bring itself to offer a real judgment about what happened. So the film muddles along and we in the audience are left unsatisfied. Ben Affleck has been much praised for his portrayal of Reeves, and I will say that his acting here shows a maturity that I cannot recall from the one or two other of his roles that I've seen. Still, if I was disappointed given my historic interest in the subject, for the rest of you I say Netflix it.

The Prestige — This is another cinematic treatment of 19th century stage magicians, this time with Hugh Jackman, Christian Bale and Michael Caine as the principals. The Prestige is much closer in its focus to my usual sci-fi/fantasy realm of film criticism than The Illusionist, but it turns out to be much less gratifying as a movie and as a piece of storytelling. This is basically a guy picture, two male dogs competing to see who's biggest and baddest, with the older, wiser Caine struggling to avert the inevitable disaster. The women who share Jackman's and Bale's lives are incidental to their competition for supremacy as stage magicians, and thus become their victims one after another. This is a complete waste of the luminous Scarlett Johannson's talent, although she does as much with her limited role as possible. Not even the prolonged valentine to the work of Nicola Tesla can save this picture. Tesla is played by a shockingly rejuvenate David Bowie. The marvelous Andy Serkis plays his able assistant. Perhaps it's historically accurate to think of Edwardian London as unrelentingly miserable in the Dickensian sense, but there is simply no redemption here that makes this movie worth the audience's time or money. Skip it.

The Fountain — The reviews on this movie were largely negative, but I like Rachel Weisz, and I can't skip a film that takes on reincarnation and the search for the fountain of youth as its subject matter. This is a flawed film in terms of its storytelling structure, and Hugh Jackman's acting is pretty one-dimensional. I found myself checking off some of the visual elements as I watched, which is to say the story bogged down in cinematic technicalities too much. Nevertheless, this is a visually breathtaking movie, and it is a profound meditation on coming to terms with our human mortality that is worth the time and money to take in. I did not find the story to be as disjointed and opaque as most other critics claimed. Weisz turns in another lovely, well-crafted performance, maintaining her sense of self as she moves through her lifetimes that effortlessly describes a continuity of the soul we all wish we could be sure of. It is the frame-by-frame visuals, however, that captured me. They are dense and complex, and they tell their own story, which leads the film inexorably up to its climax. That climax verges on excess, but I felt like it was justified given the visual complexity that precedes it. Still, this is not a movie that will appeal to many. If you think Gattaca crossed with 2001 you won't be far from understanding why The Fountain has limited appeal, but I think it will be worth your time to check it out.

The Children of Men — This movie is based on the P. D. James novel of the same title. Because of the book's author, and because its subject matter concerns a plague that destroys human fertility — so that the human race is slowly dying off, with no replacement population until a miracle pregnancy occurs — I was most eager to see this film. I confess I did not read James' novel before I saw the movie, and perhaps my takeaway impression is the result of my own thinking about similar issues for over a decade, but I have seldom been so disappointed in a movie. I'm not quite sure whether it was the screenplay or the director, or most likely a combination of both, but this movie is flat, derivative, and while not quite a complete bore, there is nothing new or imaginative about it. The plot is muddled and the exposition absent until nearly two-thirds through, so that it's impossible to know who the hero is; and Clive Owen's flat performance does nothing to persuade us that it's him until very, very late in the story. The saddest thing, artistically, is the fact that the filmmakers indulge in all the usual dystopian stereotypes — i.e., there is no observable difference in the portrayal of social upheaval in this film versus any given movie about overpopulation. I should think that a dying, shrinking population would create a diametrically opposite set of problems to the dislocations of excess populations. But here we are treated to the graffiti-covered buildings, littered streets, scruffy homeless ready to become the lumpen-masses mob. I've seen all this before.

While all foreigners, even other Europeans, are suspects to the UK authorities in this futurist fable, the obvious emphasis on the victimization of Arabs and Muslims in this film reminded me of their similar treatment in V for Vendetta. Which made me realize something that I think is rather important vis-à-vis art and creativity at the dawn of the 21st century: Maybe it's because we have such an information glut due to computer technology and the internet, but it seems to me that we do not and apparently cannot think creatively, imaginatively, differently about character and motive in modern storytelling. Modern cinema is rapidly reaching the point of reductionism where it's impossible, apparently, for a screenwriter or director to create a scene that isn't just a stereotype. In a world where the old are dying off and there are no children to be used by politicians for cheap advantage, isn't it just possible that even Arabs and Muslims in the West would behave differently than to simply appear as masked, gun-toting hostiles parading at a funeral in a scene that is not appreciably different from Gaza in the 1990s? Despite the current emphasis on non-judgmental "art," this scene in Children of Men drove home to me how we in the West are completely unable right now to talk about Islam and its enmity to us with anything approaching understanding.

This foolish fear of making judgments, especially decisions about good and evil, right and wrong, friend and enemy, may be the problem for artists generally in our current era, at least in Occidental civilization. When literacy and philosophy are prisoners of superstition, even a dressed up version of superstition like "political correctness," it becomes impossible for artistic discernment to occur. It is this discernment — individual and free-willed — that gives art its power to uplift and ennoble us. What does occur in the absence of what used to be called the courage of one's convictions is very much what we have now in the "entertainment industry," a mishmash of reductionism and stereotype, with little thought and no imagination behind it. Children of Men reminded me of this grievous lack, and that, to me, was its only virtue.

The Good Shepherd — Scott Fitzgerald famously wrote, "The rich are different than you and me." If I may be so bold, I think he meant the ruling class, not the merely wealthy. Ladies and gentlemen, dear readers, if you want to understand something historically real and truthful about how we got to the world in which we languish today, go see The Good Shepherd. The pace of the unfolding narrative here is elegiac, but in a way that seems timeless rather than long. There is a gritty authenticity to the successive scenes, in a story arc that covers the working life of C. I. A. operative Edwin Wilson, a period from the 1930s to the 1960s. The performances of everyone in the cast are button-downed and tense. I have gained a whole new respect for Robert DeNiro, as an actor and as a director. He manages an economy of expression visually and verbally, in both roles, which creates the mood of history as film noir. I didn't quite lose my sense that I was watching Matt Damon and Angelina Jolie, but I doubt that they will ever do better jobs of losing themselves before the camera into the depths of their characters. This movie is clear-eyed and cold-blooded. It pulls no punches. In short, The Good Shepherd is cinema verite, the best I've seen in a long time. I highly recommend this movie. Do check it out.

Notable movies I didn't see this fall: The Black Dahlia, Brian DePalma's treatment of the notorious Hollywood crime; it was very badly reviewed and disappeared from theaters in about five minutes, so I missed it. Eragon — I am embarrassed to admit that I just missed this. I didn't make it a priority because it had the look of a Chronicles of Narnia clone. By the time I found out the original book(s) was authored by a home-schooled conservative, it was gone from theaters. Sorry. I still hope to see The Departed and Babel before Oscar night, but I'm not doing predictions this year, other than Mirren.

Copyright © 2/22/2007, Erin Iris Earth-child