Beautiful Park
Movies from the beginning of 2002
Originally written: April 2002
A Beautiful Mind
2002 Oscars
Gosford Park
Monster's Ball
Bandits
Kate and Leopold
Ali
K-Pax
Showtime
A Knight's Tale
The Tailor of Panama
Nurse Betty
The Oscars have passed by again. A much better show than usual thanks to better scripts from some good screenwriters on the various craft awards. The fact that Memento had insufficient nominations and Moulin Rouge missed out on the major awards was to be expected. Still it was good to see Ron Howard finally recognised and I was not upset by A Beautiful Mind winning (see below). However, my Wilde (JRH's alternate Oscars - the full list can be found on my website) for 2001 goes to Memento, just ahead of Moulin Rouge, mainly because they dared.
The blacklash leading to awards to Denzel Washington and Halle Berry was fairly typical of the Oscars. Berry's performance was of sufficient quality but I have not seen either Dench's Iris or Spacek's In the Bedroom. Russell Crowe was excellent in A Beautiful Mind but, having not seen Training Day, I am unsure of the extent to which Washington's award was political rather than deserved. Crowe basically won last year because he didn't win for The Insider the year before. His performance in Gladiator is the least best of the three: The Insider, Gladiator and A Beautiful Mind. He may not have won this year because he won last year. Washington deserved the award several times over the last decade, and may have won it for the body of work rather than the particular role. After all his Malcolm X lost to Al Pacino in Scent of a Woman - and Pacino won then for his previous twenty years more so than for his Marine Colonel.
Berry's hysterics after winning and Tom Cruise's faux-serious introductory remarks justifying the show in the light of 11/9 were the stand-out for usual Oscar guff. Gwyneth Paltrow's dress was the worst fashion abomination. But Berry's dress and Sharon Stone's were among many outstanding outfits. For me, the most deserved wins were Randy Newman's win (at last) for the cute song from Monsters Inc, Shrek's win in the Animation Feature award and For the Birds winning Animated Short Film and Sydney Poitier's Honorary Oscar. The outstanding sequences were the mix of Cirque de Soleil and movie stunt work in an amazingly choreographed sequence and Woody Allen's schtick about New York. And Poitier's speech.
Freddy Got Fingered garnered the majority of the Golden Raspberries for worst achievement. For the first time in Razzie history an on-screen dishonouree, Tom Green, turned up to collect his four and a half awards, for worst film, worst director, worst actor, worst screenplay and half of the worst couple ('Tom Green and any animal he abuses in the film'). He received no award for his brief marriage to, and separation from, Drew Barrymore. Neither did she, although she probably deserves it more.
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A Game Theory
John Forbes Nash is a mathematician whose work in game theory has proved a strong foundation for economic theories developed over the succeeding fifty years. He also suffered from schizophrenia. A Beautiful Mind is a dramatic work based on his life and work. It is not a documentary, nor a panegyric. You'd think that after a 100 years of films, many critics might have learned that a dramatic work is not an attempt to relate a true history and a film, based on a book, is not the same thing as the book itself. Yet they still insist on telling us, in microscopic detail at times, the factual inaccuracies in Akiva Goldsman's excellent script. One Sydney critic spent over half his review dealing with the story of Nash, rather than the film. ABM, now dubbed the best movie of 2001 by the Academy, is a good movie and the more so because it contains four or five truly excellent performances, and is supremely well put together. The centrepiece of the film is Russell Crowe's performance in the role of Nash. He manages to convey both his alienation from his fellow students, largely a product as we learn of his mental state, and his disintegration as his illness develops. The script externalises the illness in several interesting ways, which I will not go into here, but the way in which it is done is true to the character and true to my knowledge of the symptoms of schizophrenia. Crowe is supported by Jennifer Connelly (in just about her first decent role since Labyrinth) as Nash's wife and helpmeet. Her brittle performance is outstanding and helps Crowe underline many of the developments. In truly supporting roles are Christopher Plummer as the shrink who tries to cure Nash, Ed Harris as a spook who leads Nash further into his disintegration and Paul Bettany as his college room-mate who stays with him through his battles. Ron Howard has never had the recognition he deserves for his directing. While dilettantes like Costner and Gibson, and even journeymen like Redford and Eastwood, have garnered honours, Howard has continued to direct a series of good and effective movies, including Apollo 13 among many others. The shorts for this movie are very good, because they deal solely with the first half of the film, with Nash's genius and his illness, they do not give away much of the latter half of the movie as he finds a way of adjusting his life to his illness and reintegrates with the real world. These scenes are particularly well done. (One smart-arse footnote: having seen John Nash at the Oscars I suspect that, in reality, he should more accurately have been portrayed by Austin Pendleton, one of my favourite character actors, who is seen briefly in the movie as a representative of the Nobel Prize committee.)
I recommend A Beautiful Mind almost without reservation. It contains a truly wonderful performance and is based on a very good script.
... and Ian McKellen was in New Zealand
A great script is at the centre of Robert Altman's latest ensemble piece, Gosford Park. Written by Julian Fellowes, his first film script, its central conceits are so precious that it would take an incredibly untalented director and cast to undo them. Fortunately the movie is blessed with neither. Altman may not be the vigorous force he was at the time of M*A*S*H or Nashville, or even The Player, but he still knows how to move his pawns and is still using over-lapping dialogue to give more naturalistic feel to his films. And he has employed just about every available thespian in the UK. The central idea of the movie is very Agatha Christie - a hunting party at a country estate where the host becomes the centre of a series of nasty feelings from various of his guests and ends up rather dead. But, unlike Christie, for whom the servants would have been convenient props on the edge of her view, Altman is perhaps even more interested in what occurs downstairs than what is happening in the drawing room. The main weakness in the film, and it is but a minor drawback, is that there are a number of the upstairs characters whose place in the scenario is never clarified sufficiently and who seem to be there to make up the numbers. Not so downstairs, where the house's servants are joined by those accompanying their master's guests. Here the characters are rich and varied, ranging from Eileen Atkins' saucy cook through Helen Mirren's housekeeper, Alan Bates' Butler and valets such as Derek Jacobi and Richard E Grant to Emily Watson's maid. The three main interlopers, and the three who are in a sense in the middle of the action, are Kelly Macdonald (the aunt's maid), Clive Owens (the brother-in-law's manservant) and Ryan Phillippe (the American's companion). Upstairs Maggie Smith (the aunt) engages in egregious scene-stealing and Michael Gambon (your host) has extravagant fun. There are also parts for Jeremy Northam, Kristin Scott Thomas and Stephen Fry (the inspector). In all this the murder mystery is rather cursorily dealt with: the visiting maid is the one that cracks the case which the upper-class twit inspector has no idea about. But that's not the point: this is a classic comedy of manners and Altman manages to keep most of the balls in the air most of the time. A thoroughly enjoyable romp.
Comfort stop
The script for Monster's Ball is not all that strong when compared to the two above, and the direction is less assured but the outcome is one of the more interesting two-handers I've seen recently. The movie starts with the events leading up to, and following, the execution of a murderer. It isolates from most of their contacts two of those involved: the murderer's wife and the chief of the guard detail. Hank (Bill Bob Thornton) is not very sympathetic. He is racist and inward-looking, perhaps the product of his appalling father (Peter Boyle), a former head of the execution squad, now confined to Hanks' house where he makes everyone's life miserable, and a loveless marriage of which Sonny (Heath Ledger in an effective cameo) seems to be the only tangible remains. Leticia (Halle Berry) is barely holding it together as she loses her job and is about to lose her house, and as she conducts a love-hate relationship with her son, Tyrell, an obese juvenile slob. About half-way through, Hank and Leticia are thrown together. She is certainly unaware of his connection to her late husband; we are never clear when he realises who she is. Hank is certainly the one who grows through his relationship with Leticia, but you also see some blossoming in her as she realises that another person sees her as an attractive and useful human being. The performances are measured and strong and are the chief reason for seeing the film. I was also surprised and gratified by the ending which, in a way, plays on the audience's expectations and reverses them. This is the third, at least, in a series of films which have recently used the execution chamber as a jumping off point for a detailed character study: like Dead Man Walking and The Green Mile, there's a lot to think about here. The pace is slow to begin with, deliberately so, but it picks up with, and follows, the two protagonists' own humours. Despite that slowness, this rewards viewing.
... and three's a road movie
Far less serious is the three-hander Bandits, directed by Barry Levinson, who knows how to milk a situation for its humour. This movie is very post-modernist, in the sense that it has researched just about every part of it from earlier movies, particularly the two Newman/Redford buddy movies, Butch Cassidy and The Sting. Bruce Willis and Billy Bob Thornton play a couple of escaped cons who start a crime spree down the west coast of the US. They become the 'sleepover bandits' after their MO of kidnapping bank managers the night before a robbery and staying with them till opening time when the manager is expected to open the bank to them. Willis is the brave and athletic one; Thornton the smart and sensitive one, with all the phobias and allergies (including BBT's own phobia about antique furniture). The third leg of the triangle - the woman they both love - is played with comic flair and aplomb by Cate Blanchett, who proceeds to steal the movie right from under the sleepover bandits. She is a housewife-with-attitude who is desperate to find a place in life where she fits in and it's right between the two bandits. She sleeps with both, she perhaps loves both, but won't commit to either. The ending, which is where the movie starts and keeps drifting back to (it's told largely in flash-back), is one that most will pick, particularly those with some film-history. There aren't many well-told comic crime tales these days, but Willis, Thornton and, especially, Blanchett make this road-trip fun.
Loved him ...
Hugh Jackman is very good in Kate and Leopold, the latest in the time travel romantic comedy genre. Kate is Meg Ryan and is her usual fragile working girl, this time in advertising. Her former boyfriend is a scientist who brings back one of his ancestors (his titled British relative) from the late nineteenth century. Leopold is charming, mannered and omni-skilled. He romances Kate for all he's worth and the inevitable happens. This is an enjoyable romp but has all the depth of a sitcom. If it were not for Jackman's superior performance, there would be little on which to remark. He raises it to a movie well worth seeing.
Short cuts
Ali is unfortunately a mess. Will Smith is good in the title role but the movie itself, which tries to give some idea of a decade of the champ's life, is too messy in its construction, and too unbalanced. The wives and girlfriends tumble in and out; so do the opponents. The section in Zaire for the 'Rumble in the Jungle' is far too long, again throwing the balance of the film. And John Voight's impersonation of Howard Cossell belongs in a different movie. I was disappointed largely because Michael Mann had made some really great films of late, including The Insider, Heat and the Last of the Mohicans. Here he lacks any dramatic unity.
K-Pax is a fun alien-among-us movie with Kevin Spacey as the proto-alien named Prot, pronounced 'Proat'. Jeff Bridges, who knows something of aliens, having been just about the best alien in movies, is the shrink who must treat Prot and try to cure him. Spacey is excellent and Bridges rumpled. The mystery is well-developed and well-solved, although the script leaves the matter of Prot's alienness just open enough at the end to satisfy both the sceptical and the believer.
Showtime demonstrates that William Shatner has no future but as a parody of himself, the part he plays with some elan but little conviction here. The McGuffin is that Rene Russo develops a reality show which features two serving policemen, serious Robert de Niro and less serious Eddie Murphy. Then they try and turn police reality into a cop show. The film is fun for about half of it and then runs out of steam, largely because the script introduces elements of a plot that needs to be settled. And this seriousness undermines the fun.
Seen on video
I quite enjoyed A Knight's Tale which is, as it sounds, a story loosely derived from The Canterbury Tales. In fact, a Geoffrey Chaucer plays a pivotal role in this strange film. The conceit is to turn jousting into a modern professional sport, with PR agents, spectators, rock music and waves. Heath Ledger is the titled character, only he's a peasant pretending to be a knight, with the assistance of a couple of off-siders (one of whom is The Full Monty's Mark Addy) and the aforementioned Chaucer, played by Paul Bettany. Rufus Sewell plays the villain. Apart for the sameness of the jousting scenes and the odd deus ex machina in the plot, it's an enjoyable romp provided you don't take it seriously.
The Tailor of Panama is a superior thriller-comedy with Geoffrey Rush as the eponymous character and Pierce Brosnan as a down-and-out MI6 agent who uses the tailor (and is used by him) to gather intelligence on the Panamanians. Jamie Lee Curtis is Rush's wife. Directed by John Boorman, with a script that John Le Carre contributed to, this clips along at a frantic pace towards an apparently tragic end. Rush is great in this and Brosnan is surprisingly good, playing against type. Well worth seeing.
Nurse Betty has excellent performances from Renee Zellwegger and Morgan Freeman, she a housewife who thinks she's engaged to a soap opera doctor, he a hitman who's on her trail for reasons too complicated to worry us now. They hold the movie together despite Chris Tucker and Greg Kinnear to a satisfactory ending and a superfluous anti-climax. Worth it for the two performances.
[Note: Information about the movies mentioned, including cast and crew lists and all sorts of trivia, is available at the Internet Movie Database (IMDb).]