Little fantasy but some awards
Movies seen at the end of 2005/start of 2006.
Originally written: February 2006
Good Luck and Good Night
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Mrs Henderson Presents
Nanny McPhee
Rumor Has it ...
Crash
Being Julia
Kung Fu Hustle
2046
Bewitched
The Shawshank Redemption
Somehow over the holidays I couldn't bring myself to go to either of the big fantasy movies that dominated the box office for a few weeks (Narnia and King Kong). I am a voracious reader of fantasy literature but have never been able to get into the Narnia series. I can't put my finger on the reason for this; perhaps CS Lewis and I are not meant for each other. I cannot be that I just have some difficulties with the Narnia paradigm - one major difference between Tolkien and Lewis is that JRRT's creation is self-contained, whereas Lewis' interacts with our world. In the Narnia-style, the point of view is provided by people from our universe who fall into the fantasy world (while Tolkien, and those who follow his style, provide a point of view from within the secondary creation). I have no trouble, a priori with the Narnia style: I like Guy Gavriel Kay's Fionavar Tapestry, a trilogy based on the Lewis method, just as much as I like his other, self-contained, fantasies. I have just finished re-reading Stephen Donaldson's two-novel Mordant's Need series. His point of view in those books (like in the Thomas Covenant books) is a traveller from our universe who falls into theirs. I don't think the reason from my alienation from Lewis is to do with his more overtly Christian message: I never really got far enough into the books to be put off by it. But, for whatever reason, I haven't fallen for Narnia and, when a movie of it was made, and made by Disney, and then deliberately promoted as a Christian fantasy to try and get the crowd that went to Passion of the Christ, I felt no strong desire to see the movie. A family member worked on the recent remake of King Kong and, to an extent, his reports made that movie easy to resist. I suppose I'll see both movies eventually but, in the meantime, we have seen a strange assortment of movie fare over the last few months, many of them on DVD.
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Our movie going experience is reflected to an extent in the nominations for the 2006 Academy Awards just announced. The academy has turned to the more serious films, with fairly interesting themes, and largely ignored the big budget, and effects-driven, movies. Interestingly, for the first time in some years, the films nominated for Best Picture are also those whose directors have been nominated and each has also been nominated for best screenplay, either original or adaptation. Three of the five have had their lead nominated for an acting award (and two of those have supporting actors nominated as well); and one has only a supporting actor nominee. Munich has no actor nominated at all. Several movies have multiple acting nominations but none for picture or director. Two of the movies nominated for best picture are discussed below; two have just opened; and one hasn't surfaced in Auz at all. I'm fairly sure just from the buzz that Brokeback Mountain will win best picture and director for Ang Lee; Phillip Seymour Hoffman, a great character actor, should win best actor for the eponymous Capote; Rachael Weisz, whom I discussed last issue in The Constant Gardener, will win best supporting actress and Paul Giamatti, whose performance in Cinderella Man was noted a few issues back, should win best supporting actor. Much as I love Judi Dench (in Mrs Henderson Presents, see below), best actress seems to be a toss-up between Felicity Huffman, as a transsexual in Transamerica (she was so good in Sports Night that I wonder what ever happened to her television career) and Reese Witherspoon (as June Carter Cash). I suspect Witherspoon will but I'd love to see Mrs Macy win.
Black and White Minstrels
Good Night and Good Luck is many people's choice for film of the year. And it may be. But I am an historian and it got my back up even before I entered the cinema. "In a nation terrorised by its own government one man dared to tell the truth", says its catch line. The movie (for those who haven't taken interest in a film whose only special effect is black and white cinematography and whose only fantasy is that of the obdurate, but right, reporter) concerns the clash between television's Edward R Murrow and the Senate's Joseph R McCarthy, towards the end of the latter's career as a demagog. Let's get the history straight: McCarthy was not the government (he was a member of the legislative branch who used the 'bully pulpit' to promote himself without regard to the consequences to those caught in his crusade) and Murrow's 'truth' took a long time in coming: McCarthy had been operating for over four years before Murrow's expose. What co-writer and director George Clooney is trying to do with the catch-line is draw our attention to the contemporary 'terrorism' of the US government and the contemporary failure of the media to expose it. In the same way that Arthur Miller used the Salem witch trials to examine McCarthyism, Clooney is using the McCarthyism to shed light on the Bushies and their allies, and their use of guilt by association and similar tactics to attack those they perceive as enemies. The film's narrative is deceptively simple: Murrow, with his producer Fred Friendly, decides that McCarthy has gone too far in his demagoguery and decide to expose him, using his own words to convict him. In this they are supported, albeit reluctantly, by the hierarchy of CBS, personified in CEO William Paley, owner of the network. Their activities raise both ethical questions about 'objective' reporting and practical questions about the possibilities of retaliation by McCarthy against them and their associates. Clooney has used monochrome because of his decision not to cast an actor in the role of McCarthy, but to use (as Murrow did) the demagog's own performances. The result is a fascinating film that explores the press's responsibility in the face of attempts to blunt its ability to expose fraud and corruption in the political sphere. David Strathairn, better known as a character actor in films like Sneakers and LA Confidential, has the lead and is quietly effective. This is not a flashy performance but he captures much of the essence of Murrow, by use of subtle gestures and facial movements. Murrow does not claim to be an objective newsman. He made his name reporting the Blitz and feels that his viewers are entitled to his interpretation of what they are seeing; but he pays for his independence as a newsman by having to do a series of celebrity interviews (we see his piece on Liberace in the film). Finally, when he has what he sees as sufficient evidence, he targets McCarthy. In supporting roles, Clooney (as Friendly), Frank Langella (as Paley) and Robert Downey Jr (as one of the journalists on Murrow's staff) are equally effective. But the stand-out performance is delivered by McCarthy. Having decided that no actor could do justice to the demagog's rantings, Clooney has used exclusively library footage of the Senator's performances. Leaving aside the deification of the crusading journalist and the hyperbole of the film's tagline, this is superior film-making, using the recent past to shine a spotlight on current trends. This is not the cinema of escape nor of the mindless vapidity of contemporary comedy. This is the use of cinema that is analogous to Murrow's use of television: a medium for entertainment for also for education. It succeeds because it entertains and doesn't just preach. And Clooney shows that he is more than just a pretty face.
The Trouble with Harry
Harry Potter and Goblet of Fire is less knee-bendingly faithful to its source material than the three earlier Potter films. It is therefore ironic that it is also the most English of the films and the first to catch something of the Tom Brown-public school flavor of the novels. I'd premise that the latter is due to the fact that director Mike Newell is a pom, and that his predecessors had not been. The plot is pared down pretty well to the bone: there is still an arc from the Quidditch world cup through the Tri-Wizard tournament to the confrontation with the Death-Eaters and Voldemort. This leaves much less time for the sort of comic by-play that was a part of the earlier films and, as a result, the film flies past the viewer at speed, slowed down only by the scenes attached to the Yule Ball, where Harry's social immaturity is contrasted with his wizarding maturity. I understand that such nods to the effects of puberty are obligatory in bildungsroman such as the Potter series, but Rowling has been at her least effective in such episodes and this film is similarly handicapped. Leaving that quibble aside, and some quibbles with the changes to the plot (a minor concern that Beauxbatons was turned into an all-girls' school and Durmstrang into an all-boys academy and a major whinge about the way in which Harry's confrontation with the dragon is played out on film), this is nonetheless a very enjoyable and entertaining movie. The three juvenile leads, now all rapidly aging, are again successful. My personal preference for Emma Watson's interpretation of Hermione Granger should not derogate from the brilliant job that Daniel Radcliffe does with Harry or, increasingly, Rupert Grint's quirky Ron Weasley. Given the exigencies of the plot and the concentration on the activities of these three, and the other tournament protagonists, we see a lot less of Snape, McGonagall, Hagrid and, even, Dumbledore. The one teacher who does get screen-time is "Mad-Eye" Moody and Brendan Gleeson has a great time exploiting his eccentricities. Miranda Richardson is the other major cast addition this time, fleshing out hack journalist Rita Skeeter with relish is a number of early scenes, but she fades out of the movie towards the end, far more so than she does in the book. Ralph Fiennes' appearance as You-Know-Who is delayed until the climax but the combination of special-effects-driven serpentine facial features and the actor's spectral voice make his Voldemort and especially chilling character. His confrontation with Harry marks the next step in the maturation of the Potter character and of the series. I'm not sure that, in the end, this is as gratifying a film as the first three. Partly because the pacing of the film leaves less time for us to become re-acquainted with the characters and partly because the film, like the book from which it is adapted, is fairly much a single-note song, marking a transition from the light-heartedness of the first three books, prefigured in the ending of Prisoner of Azkaban, to the increasingly dark tales of Harry's adolescence. I understand the necessity but regret the loss of innocence and fun. A very good movie, even if not quite up to the standard of the first three.
They Might Be Giants
I first became aware of Judi Dench in the late 1960s when she toured Australia with the RSC and around the same time played Titania, opposite Ian Richardson, in an RSC filmed version of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Well before her recent, belated, recognition as a great actress, especially as the Queens Victoria and Elizabeth, and in lending some gravitas to the Pierce Brosnan Bonds, As Time Goes By was a favorite English TV comedy. So I am always glad when a film gives Dench a chance to shine. Mrs Henderson Presents is such a film, its virtues being expanded because Bob Hoskins is also given a good, strong role. The film is a slightly fictionalised version of the latter stages of the life of Laura Henderson, a relict of an Anglo-Indian businessman, who spent her widowhood as the owner of London's Windmill Theatre, the venue of musical review, with nudity, that became famous in WW2 for, allegedly, never closing its doors, even at the height of the Blitz. The film plays fast and loose with the time-line, compressing the action, from purchase to war, into to a few months, and ignores the fact that the Windmill did indeed close, albeit only for a very short period. None of that is really important. The script (the dialog if not the story, which is a little thin, as might be expected in a semi-musical biopic) and the performances from the leads are well worth concentrating on. Dench's interpretation of Mrs Henderson, like her performance in the delicious telemovie, The Last of the Blonde Bombshells, is pitch perfect, relishing the barbed dialog that Martin Sherman provides. She has the lion's share of the dramatic, as well as the humorous set-pieces, leaving Hoskin's Vivian Van Damm, to be more of the sheet-anchor around which the others perform. He is the professional theatre manager she hires to look after her theatre and it is their interaction that is the solid centre for the film. Interspersed is the story of the Windmill's development, shown in rehearsal and through a number of staged musical performances. Strong support for the leads is provided by Kelly Reilly as the most beautiful of the English roses hired to bare their bodies in the tableaux, by Will Young as the lead singer, by Thelma Barlow as Mrs Henderson's dotty upper class mate and confidante, and by Christopher Guest as the uptight Lord Chamberlain. Director Stephen Frears stages the musical numbers well and uses his resources, particularly the lead actors, to great effect. The result is a confection: a fun romp with another great Dench performance (and another movie that would fit well into the roll-call of films that provide Hollywood's alternate history of the human race).
Emma, Warts and All
Not quite so successful is Emma Thompson's most recent combination actor/author stint, Nanny McPhee. Having done really well in the dual roles with Sense and Sensibility (probably the best of a bad lot as far as Jane Austen adaptations is concerned), she drops the ball a little with her latest. The problem is not with the story or the central character but with the overall impact of the movie. It ends up falling between stools, in as much as it doesn't seem to know what demographic it is trying for. It is essentially a kids' movie, with the usual lessons about obedience and conformity, leavened a little towards the end, but the uglification of the eponymous character appears to have the effect of alienating the littlies. So Nanny McPhee, for all her magic and mystery, never quite becomes the post-modern Maria or Mary Poppins. It is the latter to which she is most closely related: a magical nanny who comes to the aid of Colin Firth feckless Victorian father unable to control his seven children after the passing of his late, and strongly lamented, wife. The children, indoctrinated in the tales of their age, are wary of a new marriage, lest they become the victims of a wicked stepmother, and dad's choice of putative wife, played to the hilt by Celia Imrie, meets their worst expectations. Before we can meet her, however, we have to be shown the kids' excesses and the family situation (including the domestics, Kelly MacDonald is the maid and Imelda Staunton the cook, and the rich titled aunt, Angela Lansbury, doing a dotty Joyce Grenfell impersonation). If Staunton and Lansbury were not outre enough, there are a couple of luvvies, Derek Jacobi and Patrick Barlow, outrageous as dad's employers at the undertakers. The kids are creditable enough, led by Thomas Sangster (so good in Love Actually), but their mischief-making is pretty much by the numbers and Nanny McPhee is the inspiration for the better of their japes. Thompson is reasonable as the nanny and Colin Firth gives one of his better performances as the helpless paterfamilias. Aside from Kelly MacDonald, the rest of the adult cast is right over-the-top, trying I think for a panto feeling, which might work on stage but rarely does on film. The ending is telegraphed from the first scenes but there is some enjoyment in the journey, Nonetheless it is a film that I cannot recommend either for parents or (based on their reaction at the session we were at in beautiful Miranda) for the kiddies.
A Post-Modern Post Graduate
The conceit behind Rob Reiner's new movie, Rumor has it ..., is interesting enough in a Hollywood kind of way. It is by no means original, harking back to a previous hit movie, but it re-imagines and expands that movie in a way that is both original and entertaining, for most of the way. Basically the movie takes the people from The Graduate, particularly Benjamin Braddock and Mrs Robinson, ages them thirty years and introduces the latter's granddaughter, who may be the former's daughter. It's written by Ted Griffin, who scripted the recent Ocean's Eleven remake and Matchstick Men, both movies centring on con-men. Among its producers are George Clooney and Steven Soderburgh, the other auteurs from Ocean's, and I wonder whether the script was originally commissioned by Soderburgh with the idea that Clooney would play the lead role, the grown-up version of Ben, yclept Beau, and played here by Kevin Costner. The granddaughter is Susan, played by Jennifer Aniston, and at the start of the film she returns to Pasadena for her sister's wedding, with her lawyer fiance in tow. Her mother is dead but she learns from her granny (Shirley MacLaine in yet another meaty comedy role) that her mum took French leave a few days before her wedding and, from a mate of her mum's (Kathy Bates in an uncredited cameo), enough data to link her family with the events in The Graduate and the possibility that her father is not her father. So she tracks down Beau, now a dot.com millionaire, and puts the question. It's a roundabout Meet Cute but the film works well up to this point, and a little beyond it, until the writer runs out of steam and cannot quite resolve the plot without recourse to events that do not match the earlier ones in creativity. And this is a bit of a shame because this movie had potential to be something really special. It ends up being serviceable, without being great, a few good laughs in the first hours but some tedious attempts to resolve the pickle towards the end. Like the movie Aniston is serviceable. She remains the only one of the Friends likely to succeed as a movie lead (Lisa Kudrow will be relegated to Eve Arden roles in support) and her perky personality is used effectively in the lead role. MacLaine and Costner are a better than that. Like her turn in In Her Shoes, MacLaine is allowed a little leeway and uses it well (although it's a shame that Anne Bancroft couldn't have played the part - it would have been the finest touch of homage had she done so). Costner was well-served by the part opposite Joan Allen in Upside of Anger and is equally good here. He plays it fast and light, although not called on for many comical turns. Support is provided by Richard Jenkins as the father, Mena Suvari as the sister and Mark Ruffalo as the boyfriend. He is probably the least effective of the cast, largely because his character is not particularly well-drawn and bears the brunt of the plot developments in the finale. Good light entertainment, and a little more for those with memories of Mrs Robinson.
Seen on video
Crash is one of this year's Best Picture nominees and it is perhaps the best ensemble acting job I have seen in a long time. This is not the movie based on the Ballard novel but an original story, written and directed by Paul Haggis, a graduate of episode television, whose script for last year's Million Dollar Baby was so good. In many ways this one may be better. Instead of a three-hander, we have a complex narrative that interlinks a series of characters in Los Angeles through a 24-hour period. Black, Anglo-Celtic, Hispanic, Iranian, Korean and other, they are linked by the unfolding series of events and by racism, either as victims or perpetrators, of exploiters of racial stereotypes or applicants of them. Many of the episodes link to attempted carjacking of a black SUV by a couple of blacks and to the activities of a pair of (white) LA cops, who pull over and terrorise a black TV director and his wife, and then later interact with the same couple separately, in ways that defy our expectations. If there were a central character it would be Don Cheadle's detective, investigating a crime that will affect him personally. And while it might appear that the multiplicity of story-lines would create confusion, they don't: like Lawrence Kasdan's Grand Canyon, they lead back to a thematic unity, reinforcing the message of the movie - that we are like pinballs, crashing into each other in random ways, with adverse effects and with ameliorative effects, and neither karma nor status can guarantee a favorable outcome. As well written as it is, with some incredibly crisp dialog, and as well directed and cut as it is, Crash succeeds largely because of the cast. The 'name' actors, like Brendan Fraser and Sandra Bullock, have important parts but no more or less important than the rest. Matt Dillon stands out as a uniformed cop trying to deal with an ill father and an unsympathetic HMO and Cheadle is, as ever, very good indeed. But so are Terrence Howard (the director), Thandie Newton (his wife), Jennifer Esposito (Cheadle's partner), rapper Ludacris (as a carjacker), Shaun Taub (the Iranian store owner) and Michael Pena (the Latino locksmith). They all have their story to tell, most go in and out of the movie in an intricate ballet as the tale unfolds and the interactions lead to tragedy, to redemption, and to revelation. This is a great movie that does not suffer from being seen on the smaller screen so, if you missed it at the cinema, try and catch up with it.
Last year Annette Bening was nominated for an Oscar for her performance as an aging grande dame of the London theatre in Being Julia. Having now seen the film I can understand the nomination but I'm glad it didn't lead to an award, because the part is all show, and little substance. The film itself is a sort of second-rate All About Eve, with Bening in the Bette Davis role, a sun, about whom all the planets revolve. Directed by Istvan Szabo, whose Sunshine was a treat about three generations of a Hungarian Jewish family, and written by Ronald Harwood, writer of The Dresser, one of the better English backstage dramas, this should have been so much better. We have the aging Julia, stuck in a long-running hit, her manager/husband (Jeremy irons), her dresser (Juliet Stevenson), her lover (Bruce Greenwood), and her would-be lover (Miriam Margolyes). Into this come a stage-struck young American who Julia becomes obsessed with, and a young actress (the Eve Harrington of the piece) who seduces him to get to her. Bening puts on a show, inspired by the ghost of her first director (Michael Gambon), indicating her inability to distinguish the real from the theatrical. Everything is a performance for Julia and the piece is resolved on stage, during the opening night of her new play, when the star and the ingenue finally come into conflict. There is a lot of fun getting there, especially from Bening, Gambon and Stevenson who all relish their roles and play them to the hilt but the artificiality of the resolution (not to mention the absence of a role equivalent of Addison de Witt, to provide some balance for the lead) derogates from the film's success. As a showpiece for an actress showing her craft, though, it is very effective.
Kung fu Hustle has not been nominated for an Oscar, although it was nominated for a Golden Globe for foreign language films and cleaned up at the Hong Kong film awards. The auteur is Stephen Chow, credited as director, lead actor, co-producer and co-writer, and I imagine co-choreographer of the fight stunts. This is a silly chop socky movie, and I don't use the term 'silly' there in any derogatory sense. The Axe Gang control Shanghai and Sing, a small-time operator, wants in. His activities draw the gang to Pig Sty Alley where they are confronted by three Kung Fu masters, who proceed to teach them a lesson, and where they disturb the quiet reclusiveness of the Landlord and Landlady, who turn out to be more than comic relief. Sing and his amiable, large and stupid sidekick are caught in the middle and, when the gang brings in the heavy artillery (The Beast, the ultimate Kung Fu master) to finish of the Pig Sty pair, they have to finally choose sides. There is little point to the story other than as a way of bracketing the various martial arts episodes and Sing, a past master at both the violence and the comedy, whose Shaolin Soccer, was his breakthrough movie in the west, handles it well. The film goes way of the top and stays there for the final half-hour, with a succession of more and more incredible fights and stunts. It is also genuinely funny, especially in the roles of the Landlord and his dumpy, but dangerous, wife. A good romp.
2046 is the first Kong Kar Wai I have seen and, as a result, I might have missed some references from earlier movies in his career. This one mixes romance with a science fiction subplot. The central character Chow (Tony Leung) is a journalist writing a series of SF stories set in 2046. Every so often, the main narrative is interrupted by brief excerpts from the future novels. Meanwhile Chow carries on a series of affairs, largely with the women who occupy the room next to his at the hotel in which he lives, co-incidentally, he is in 2047 and they are in 2046. These women are played by some of the most beautiful Chinese actresses, including Gong Li, Faye Wong and Ziyi Zhang, a prostitute who may be Chow's soul-mate but whom he eventually relinquishes. The film is visually gorgeous and thematically barren. Whatever point about the nature of love or the way of the future Kong had in mind is lost in a miasma of pretentiousness and blather. The future elements are, at best, pseudo-sf that provide little or no real comment on the story in the foreground. Beautiful to watch and lovingly constructed, this cinema experience is as empty as the protagonist's love life.
And at that it is better than the movie version of Bewitched, which features Will Ferrell at his unfunniest and Nicole Kidman in a stunningly poor performance as the witch hired to play Samantha. Even Michael Caine (as Nic's dad) and Shirley MacLaine (the actress hired to play Endora) cannot save this mess. There are some things better left undone. A re-imagining of Bewitched, which, Agnes Moorehead and Paul Lynde aside, was never all that good is one of those things. I saw it on in-house TV on a Press Council road-trip. It's possible that even Desperate Housewives (something I consider should be talked about but never seen) might have been better.
From our DVD collection - reviews of good and great movies not previously reviewed
The Shawshank Redemption may be the best film never to win an Oscar. Long one of our favorites, it was ranked 4 in the recent ABC poll of favorite films and is at #2 in the imdb.com Top 250. It is also. surprisingly frequently, the nomination of sportspeople for their all-time best movie as well. What is it about this movie, written and directed by Frank Darabont, from a Stephen King non-horror short story that has caused it to emerge from the relative obscurity of surrounding its release into a position of such prominence, not just as a cult movie but as a genuinely loved and admired one. The film has a deceptively simple storyline. Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) is a banker jailed in the late 1940s for the murder of his wife and the guy she was banging. In Shawshank Prison he meets Red (Morgan Freeman), a lifer, and his cronies. Originally a target of the 'sisters', Andy doesn't make friends easily but his fiscal skills win gain him the attention of the guards and the Warden and, indirectly, the friendship of a coterie of inmates. Andy still doesn't quite fit in. Like everyone in Shawshank, except Red apparently, he proclaims his innocence but, unlike the others, he refuses to relinquish his hope. It is his hope of a new life that sustains him through the horrors of prison life, particularly in the first few years, before he makes his adjustment to prison life. (As Andy says: Remember, Red, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things. And no good thing ever dies.) There are a number of interesting supporting performances in the piece, the most notable being from James Whitmore, as an old con who befriends Andy, and as an ensemble, the cast is impeccable. But the focus remains on the two central characters and in those parts Freeman and Robbins give great performances. Although each has subsequently won supporting actor Oscars, these are perhaps the most believable performances of their careers. One of its key features is the narration provided by Freeman, foreshadowing similar narrations more recently in Million Dollar Baby and War of the Worlds. The one quibble I have with the movie is that it has a multiplicity of endings. I could have climaxed with Andy's eventual escape from Shawshank but doesn't. There is a fairly long anti-climax (although it is perhaps unfair to describe the last 15 minutes as such because they provide commentary on the thematic elements that had preceded them, reinforcing and re-interpreting earlier scenes in a surprising way) leading to what might be seen as a sappier ending than might have been achieved earlier but you have to admired a movie that deals with the themes of male friendship and male bonding (and the implications of homosexuality throughout) without recourse to the overt violence or double-talk philosophy that spoils movies like The Fight Club and is prepared to end with two men embracing on a Mexican beach. Yeah, I think it would be fair to say ... I liked The Shawshank Redemption from the start. I'm glad that others have found out about it as well and unreservedly recommend it to your attention.
[Note: Information about the movies mentioned, including cast and crew lists and all sorts of trivia, is available at the Internet Movie Database (IMDb).]