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Reviews
Wallander (2008)
A Riveting Series
KURT WALLANDER: THE DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL Tram wires
Cross northern skies
Cut my blue heart in two
My knuckles bleed
Down the tattered street On a door that shouldn't be In front of me
Lyric by Emily Barker from "Nostalgia", the theme song for Wallander
Television used to be a wasteland of melodrama and situation comedies, but in the past 10 years has become more of a home for excellent dramas than film, which far too often seems to get caught up in fads like 3D and spectacular special effects to draw in younger viewers. An example of great television drama is the BBC series "Wallander", starring Kenneth Branagh, who is often and deservedly compared to Laurence Olivier. 9 of these 90 minute police dramas have been made over the past 6 years, based on the best-selling mystery novels by Swedish author Henning Mankell; 3 more are currently being made and will be the final episodes in the series.
Branagh plays Kurt Wallander as a brooding, melancholic, burned out Police Inspector, whose moods match the barren Swedish landscape where the series has been filmed. Wallander is an obsessive workaholic who gets way too involved in his grisly work investigating homicides; his first wife has divorced him and moved on, and his grown daughter eventually stops speaking to him because his devotion to his work just leaves too little room for anyone who cares about him. When he moves in with a new girlfriend in a later episode, he immediately discovers a buried skeleton on the property and jumps on a ferry going over to Poland without even telephoning the girlfriend; he always expresses remorse, however, and we root for Wallander despite his getting lost in the fog of his inner demons.
Branagh said in an interview that he thinks the public has "great affection towards the character. There is no machismo swagger about him. He has this open-wound quality, and he takes all of these crimes personally. He has a sense of quiet, but intense moral outrage. He's appalled and surprised when people commit these terrible acts of cruelty, and he has an empathy for the victim that is almost dangerous to him."
In episode 2, his daughter has signed him up for an online dating service; his date observes that he doesn't seem able to create any professional distance between himself and his work as he talks about two young people who have been brutally murdered: Ella: Shouldn't you try to remember the good that you do? The bigger picture? Kurt: I don't really think there is a bigger picture. This is where we live. These are our lives, and they are fragile, and precarious. And miraculous. They're all we have. And for Sonya, and for Jonas, it doesn't really seem
..fair.
Police inspectors like Wallander see the dark side of the human experience; a 15 year old girl douses herself with gasoline and sets herself on fire in front of him; he sees and has to smell bloated, decomposing corpses, a body that has been put through a pulp shredder, and a corpse stolen from the coroner that has had its hands and feet hacked off before being dumped into the ocean. And the distraught family members of the perpetrators and the victims take out their anger on Wallander. It truly is the dark night of the soul, and one wonders why anyone would be willing to do a job like this day after day, year after year. Wallender himself says at one point that he has "been dead inside."
He is a man in crisis, as a profiler observes
and in one both pathetic and poignant bit of dialogue, he says that maybe he needs to get out
. "raise some carrots, and a few pigs; yes
.a few pigs."
The production values for this series are outstanding; the cinematography of this overcast topography perfectly matches the glumness of the life that Wallander leads. The music is haunting, and many of the acting performances are just outstanding. At the center of it all is Branagh himself, who does the best acting I have ever seen him do in this series, and that is really saying something.
Lincoln (2012)
The Worst Film Spielberg has ever made
Wow, what a bad film. This is a two and a half hour long colossal bore that reeks of self-importance, but comes off as indulgent and lacking the gravitas it so obviously aspires to. I can't remember when I've ever seen a film when I felt so aware of the well-known actors playing the roles
look, there's Tommy Lee Jones in a wig, and there's James Spader playing a rascal, Daniel Day-Lewis as the big man, and OMG, Sally Field as Mrs. Lincoln (look at those wrinkles!). There's David Straithairn, and that's old Hal Holbrook --- guess he actually still is alive and working after all. It's a reunion of many of my favorite actors from the 70's and 80's. And I'm bored, really bored; how long is this film again? I noticed that this film was nominated for multiple Golden Globe Awards, including the awful, verbose screenplay by Tony Kushner, and the virtually non-existent musical score from John Williams, as well as Spielberg for Best Director, Day-Lewis for Best Actor, and Field and Jones for Best Supporting Actress and Actor. Are you kidding me? Did any of the voters actually sit through this film? All of these people have done some incredible work over the years, but no, not in this film. The best of the performances is from Day-Lewis, but even he can't completely pull off bringing the mythical Lincoln alive for those of us who grew up relating to the man as the face on our pennies, five dollar bills, and Mount Rushmore. This is no biography of Lincoln; this is a short snippet of time in the waning days of the Civil War, when Lincoln was using every political dirty trick in the book to advance the noble cause of the passage of the 13th Amendment in the House of Representatives, the amendment that abolished slavery once and for all. The House of Representatives was every bit as dysfunctional in 1865 as it still is in 2012, an interesting facet of history that frankly comes off as depressing. The most amusing character in the film is the one played by James Spader, the Machiavellian vote buyer who promises defeated Congressmen future jobs as Postmasters and Revenue Collectors in exchange for their votes to pass the Amendment. Jared Harris is also amusing as Ulysses S. Grant, who wants to seize all Southern farms from their traitorous owners and turn the farms over to the newly freed slaves. Ultimately, I think what Spielberg needs to realize is that a documentary filmmaker like Ken Burns can and does make better films about major historical figures like Lincoln, who are so much larger than life that no actor in a historical drama could ever adequately portray them on screen in a believable way.
Hitchcock (2012)
An Ode to the Master of Suspense
What a wonderful experience this film was! It's too bad whoever else was responsible for the marketing of this film did not have the same magic of Hitch himself, as unfortunately only a few people are going to see this film, unfortunately released in the blitz of the Holiday Season deluge. Director Sacha Gervasi's film deserves a better fate. Set in 1959, Hitch (Anthony Hopkins) was now 60, and many of the studio heads and reporters think his best days are behind him. He picks "Psycho" as his next project; Paramount won't fund it, so Hitch and his wife Alma (Helen Mirren) mortgage their house to make the film on a relatively low budget. In a wonderful bit of dialogue from screenwriter John J. McLaughlin, Alma asks Hitchcock to explain to her one time and one time only why he feels like they must bet everything they have in order to make this particular film:
ALFRED HITCHCOCK Remember the fun we had when we started out and there was so little money and time? We took risks, we experimented. We invented new ways of making pictures because we had to. I want to feel that kind of freedom again.
Hitchcock always had an eye for the beautiful women who appeared in his films, much to the chagrin of Alma. The tension in their relationship is at the center of the film "Hitchcock"; a contributor to Rotten Tomatoes suggested that this film could even be called "Dial M for Marriage." This marital tension is exacerbated by the flattery shown Alma by another writer, Whitfield Cook (Danny Huston), which transforms Hitchcock into the same kind of maniac as Norman Bates. When Hitchcock is directing and providing verbal motivation to Janet Leigh (played by the wonderful Scarlet Johannson) in the scene where she is driving down the road to meet her boyfriend after she has stolen $40,000 in cash from the real estate firm she worked for, he lets loose with this vicious barrage of venom:
ALFRED HITCHCOCK You could return the money secretly, but what would be the point? You, Marion Crane. The prim and proper girl who's always been so tight and respectable. So perfect and untouchable. Well, they know all about your dirty little secret, don't they? Your messy, sticky lunchtime trysts. Yes, your boss Mr. Lowery could even smell the sex on you—
There is another particularly creepy scene where Hitch spies on Vera Miles on the film set in exactly the same way that Norman Bates spies on Marion Crane in "Psycho", almost what you could call life imitating art. And another brilliant moment comes at the premiere screening of the film during the famous shower scene where Marion gets murdered; Hitch stands outside in the foyer, directing the screams from the audience as if he were conducting a symphony of horror, which I guess he was.
Alma was always fiercely loyal to Hitchcock, despite having to always be a second fiddle to her gregarious spouse in public and despite having to apparently deal with a lack of physical affection. When he accuses her of being unfaithful, she stands her ground and really dresses him down, in the kind of scene that is generating Oscar talk for the actress Helen Mirren: (more great dialogue from screenwriter John J. McLaughlin) ALMA Might I remind you that I have weighed-in on every aspect of this film so far, as I have done on every picture you've done in the last three decades. And the first time you show the film, it will be my notes that you want. I celebrate with you if the reviews are good and I cry for you if they are not. I host your parties and put up with those fantasy romances with your leading ladies. And when you're out promoting this film around the world, I will stand beside or, rather, slightly behind you, smiling endlessly for the press even when I'm ready to drop, being gracious to people who look through me as if I were invisible because all they can see is the grand and glorious "Alfred Hitchcock."
I thoroughly enjoyed the scenes where Hitchcock was doing battle with the MPAA Censorship office; before 1965, this office had the power to prevent any nudity, profanity, overt violence, interracial romance, homosexuality, and anything they deemed offensive from appearing in Hollywood films, because their seal of approval was required for exhibition. "Psycho" trivia nuts like me know that this film had the first scene ever of an actual toilet in a film; a scene in this film accurately relates Hitch having to convince the MPAA Board that such a scene was necessary for the film because of the clues it presented that were critical to the plot. But Hitchcock was also battling with them over the possibility of any nudity in the shower scene and with the theme of Norman being a transvestite.
GEOFFREY SHURLOCK The Code will absolutely not permit you to show a knife penetrating a woman's flesh. ALFRED HITCHCOCK I assure you, Geoffrey, my murders, are always models of taste and discretion. GEOFFREY SHURLOCK Is there any improper suggestion of nudity in this murder scene in the shower? ALFRED HITCHCOCK She won't be nude. She'll be wearing a shower cap.
There are some problems with the script, particularly with the unnecessary dream sequences involving Hitchcock and the real-life serial killer Ed Gein, whose story inspired the book "Psycho." But all in all, this was a delightful look inside the life of the most influential director in Hollywood between 1940 and 1960. "Psycho" was his most successful film, and the experience seems to have also given him a new appreciation of the invaluable role that Alma had played in both his personal and public lives.
The Dark Knight Rises (2012)
Terrible Film
I sat through 3 hours of this film last night and just could not believe how boring it was, and how it just was not any fun at all. Very little action, lots of brooding and the most boring Batman villain ever. Bane is a third rate Darth Vader, and his voice-over is mixed way too high; plus there is no motivation I could see for what he was doing.
My 14 year old daughter was so bored also that she kept asking me when it was going to be over. I personally think this film is an early leader for this year's Razzies. Worst Picture, Worst Director, Worst Screenplay, Worst Acting, and Worst Editing are some of the potential "honors" that immediately come to mind.