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Two movies opened last Friday, but I forgot to send the reviews to this list!
here are the URLs for those who prefer to read it on my website:
I made mistakes in both reviews, which readers at NRO have politely pointed out. I criticized "Kings Men" for a microphone boom being visible in some shots, but have been told that this is the fault of the projectionist, not the filmmaker.
and in "Flyboys" I said that its a bit "over the top" for a character to keep a lion as a pet, but apparently that's authentic; two cubs were kept by the Americans in the Lafayette Escadrille, named "Whiskey" and "Soda".
Here are the two reviews, pasted in below.
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All the King's Men In 1946 Robert Penn Warren published a novel, "All the King's Men," which took Even better, because the setting of this story is the duplicitous world of politics, it can be made to point to our President or, confusingly, just about anybody else. It was James Carville who initially suggested to producer Mike Medavoy that his favorite novel was due for a remake (Carville gets an executive producer credit). Early in the film, shoddy construction of a school causes three children to die in a fire; in a New York Times feature, Carville points out that this kinda sounds like those levees last year. And director Steven Zallian explains how a reporter connected the dots from W to Willie Stark: "a character who becomes sure of himself and runs roughshod over the judiciary, the arrogance of power." On the other hand, Willie expresses strong beliefs, and that reminds Zallian of how he wished Al Gore had been more outspoken in 2004. And a voice on the soundtrack that says "Get the gun" during the opening credits comes from a recording made at the scene of RFK's assassination. Well, that's straightened out. All that's left is to take in the story, which is not as easy as it sounds because Sean Penn, as Willie, rumbles and slurs in a parody of southern backwoods patter that you have to think about for a moment and mentally translate. Penn is a terrific actor (in this film, especially when he's swaying and shouting through drunken speeches), but the accent suits him like a bad toupee (speaking of, why the Lyle Lovett hair?). I say this as a native southerner. I have heard a lot of accents across the south. I grew up in Jude Law does no better in the role of Jack Burden. Granted, his southern accent is more comprehensible, but it's less believable, and he's just wrong for the part to start with. Jack is burdened, all right, a perceptive character with plenty of troubles, and Jude is just too pretty. He's even prettier than Kate Winslett is here, which seems impossible. Kate, as childhood friend and sometime sweetheart Ann Stanton, wears thick black eyebrows and a wavy blonde mane. Winslett is a beautiful woman, but somehow the combination is heavy and graceless. Patricia Clarkson is wonderful, as always, as Sadie Burke, and James Gandolfini is delectable as Tiny Duffy. Jackie Earle Haley is perfect in the virtually non-speaking role of Sugar Boy. Mark Ruffalo makes a game attempt at portraying Adam Stanton, but we don't get to see much of him, and this absence unbalances the plot. He may have been trimmed back too far in Director Zallian's attempts to get the story across more clearly. The film was due to be released last December, but test audiences left confused about the plot and characters' relationships to each other (and some details are still foggy to me). If it doesn't sound like enough big names yet, add Anthony Hopkins as Judge Irwin, probably the most effective and engaging member of the cast. In general, it's just too many big names bumping into each other and failing to mesh well. What isn't accomplished on the screen is handed over to the soundtrack, and it labors and mourns and swells and shimmers as required, strong-arming the audience's emotions like one of Willie's goons. And for all that grandiosity, there are some goofy mistakes. The boom mike descends into the frame several times during a couple of climactic scenes. (This may be a dumb question, but if you can CGI in a monster, why can't you CGI out a mike?) When Jack goes to dig up dirt on a Savannah character, he is seen in a government office looking through a tome of "South Carolina Civil Suits." And another thing: southerners don't call carbonated drinks "pop" -- maybe "soda" or "coke" or "soft drinks," but not "pop." And there weren't clusters of roadside memorial crosses in the 1950's. And the widow Littlepaugh has *way* too many candles and crosses going on; the designer doesn't seem to understand how these elements are actually used in a devout life. She has a whole collection of altar crosses, as if she has been sneaking into churches at off hours and making away with them. And my sharp-eyed seminary graduate companion noted that the pastor at the funeral service is reading from a Book of Common Prayer with unlikely thumb tabs; if it's meant to be a Bible, he's reading the Gospel of John in the Old Testament. And the chaplain opens the state legislative session with a prayer anachronistically addressed to God as "You," not "Thee." And don't get me started on those accents again.
*****
Flyboys War movies are the Dinty Moore Beef Stew of cinema: meat, potatoes, coupla carrots, and no surprises. You got your dashing-but-human cowboy, the center of the story. You got your noble African-American. You got your clean-cut fellow who will at some point go, sweating and trembling, into shock. You got your plump, condescending child of privilege. And you got your enigmatic battle-hardened hero, who appears as if from the shadows, speaks lines that are somehow both cryptic and blunt, and then retreats. In this movie, he has a pet lion, which might push things over the top a bit. If this is the kind of movie you relish, "Flyboys" will hit the spot. It comes from director Tony Bill, who has a long string of credits as an actor and a director of TV movies, and made his biggest splash as producer of "The Sting" back in 1973. James Franco, a James Dean look-alike (memorable as Spiderman's jealous friend Harry Osborne) heads the cast, which is hardly overwhelmed by stars - probably a good thing for an ensemble story like this. The screening audience greeted the closing credits with applause, and this was preceded by the sound of grown men sniffling. You know what - it *is* a stirring story. Perhaps there is no way to tell it that doesn't sound familiar, because heroes everywhere have some things in common. The story is that of the Lafayette Escadrille. Before the The film follows a group of young volunteers as they leave their homes and arrive at the training field in A good bit of the story takes place in the air, as good-guy and enemy planes weave around each other, the pilots shooting and evading and coping with mechanical problems (each has been given a hammer for hitting the mounted gun when it jams). The cockpits are open, and battling pilots can pull up alongside and give each other the once-over, like drag-strip challengers at a stop light. However, since everyone wears a leather helmet and goggles, it's sometimes hard to identify just which hero is onscreen. The air battles are gorgeous to watch, and you can see that the ballet fascinates the pilots as well, because when they're on the ground they're often replicating the action manually, one hand soaring after another. It's both satisfying and scary to watch planes collapse in the air, fall apart, and plummet. The showpiece of the film is a battle with a German dirigible. This is in the trailer, so I don't think I give anything away by revealing that it ends when a crippled good-guy plane deliberately flies into the hydrogen-filled blimp. The progress of flames ripping through the stages of the craft is awesome to watch, but I found that the sight of a plane flying into a structure and exploding it still has too many unfortunate echoes to stand alone as a film event. Plenty of stuff happens on the ground, too. The cowboy meets a pretty young Frenchwoman who is caring for her orphaned niece and nephews. Neither of them speak the other's language, and their romance, though predictable, is not cloying. The characters who, at the beginning of the film need to learn a lesson, learn the lesson they need. The ones who need to find courage, find it. Every thread of the plot proceeds in time-honored stately fashion, and all elements - acting, lighting, writing, sets - serve a united purpose (the music is a bit bombastic, but maybe that's appropriate for the genre). This movie is admirable on its own terms, as a fine example of its genre, but if it's not your cup of tea you may well be bored before the whole 139 minute production unrolls. But if you go knowing what you're getting into, you'll have a fine time. ********
Frederica Mathewes-Green www.frederica.com |
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