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flavia18
Reviews
The Queen (2006)
Amazing script, even more amazing performances, this film reveals a fundamental truth.
DEFINITE SPOILERS
This film captured not just the essence of the British Monarchy, but the relationship the British people have with it, and even the national character, not to mention putting everything the public has gleaned (or could have gleaned, had they/we cared to look beyond the immediate) of the British Royal Family, itself.
If you ask the casual observer about the Windsors, s/he may very well parrot Cherie Blair's virulent anti-monarchy remarks about how soulless/shallow/parasitical they are. And the film absolutely shows how out of touch HM is (or, perhaps, seemed) with the thoughts/views/feelings of the modern-day British subject.
However, we must look closer - and the film not just allows us to do so, it does so for us: it is Tony Blair who becomes the vehicle for revealing the truth. He starts off the film feeling as others do, but after seeing HM close up, hearing what she has to say on the subject of propriety & guidance - the 2 things which are demanded most of her - he comes to see not just HM's point of view, but the worth of the Monarchy itself. He starts off by all-but-agreeing with his wife on the subject of the Royal Family - and ends the film by lambasting those who dare to criticize the Queen.
Another way in which HM's vision of Britain is portrayed is through the stag. Prince Philip et al are seen treating the stag as centuries of Britons have treated them: stalking carefully over days, taking care to keep the "contest" as level as possible (even if you hate hunting as much as I do, you must understand that this is the intent). And what happens to the stag? A "commercial guest" of a once-proud neighboring manor is all-but handed the stag through the careful staging of beaters, still manages to botch the job, and the beaters must finish off the poor animal. I used to think that the stag was Diana, killed through her courting the vulturazzis, who could then not be "turned off", but I have come to see that the stag as a metaphor of the British character, damaged through abandoning traditional British ways. Anyone doubting my interpretation has only to look at the undisputed historical facts of the film: even while mourning the woman who seemingly rejected everything for which the Monarchy stands (and mourning her because of that stance), what did the people want? Or, more tellingly, who? They wanted their Queen. Exactly in the manner of grieving children wanting Mommy to come tell them everything will be all right (& this is not meant as an insult to those who felt that way: it is a human condition).
(NOTE: it has come to my attention that the director, himself, has spoken out on the reaction to the film, & particularly this part of it. He has said that the stag was meant to signify the Monarchy, itself, and that the use of an old stag, with an astonishing number of points was deliberate, because, as was made clear in the dialogue, it would normally have been shot long before. But he has also said that this, as well as his entire portrayal of HM & the Monarchy, was NOT meant to be positive, & that he is amazed by how many people felt "sympathetic" to the Queen after viewing the movie. So even if I did not grasp what he wanted to say, neither did the bulk of his viewers: What this says to me is that there are some fundamental truths that no movie maker can ever destroy if he is honest in his subjects.)
Helen Mirren, of course, was spectacular. James Cromwell was luckily very good - he looks as much like Prince Philip as any actor could get, so it's a good thing he could pull it off. Michael Sheen was also aided by physical resemblance. One hopes for Cherie Blair's sake that Helen McCrory's interpretation of her was terrible! Prince Charles was captured very well by Alex Jennings: the indecisiveness brought on by years of the Establishment contradicting his thoughts/views/ideas, the frustration at not just that, but in dealing with Diana, or getting anyone to believe his side of the story (that one anguished outburst of "Now they see what it was like!", & that Diana's public and private personnae were maddeningly disparate, cut right to the heart of it). Sylvia Sims also evoked the Queen Mother very thoroughly - and I am extremely grateful for and admiring of the director's decision never to show the younger princes in any real detail. It's bad enough we eavesdrop on the elders - they should be allowed as much privacy as possible. After all, a good deal of film was about their privacy - and what lack of privacy can do to a person.
I watch this film over and over - it's riveting.
The Sea Hawk (1924)
Great Movie, Especially for its Time
As swashbuckling a pirate movie as you can imagine, spanning 3 continents, as many cultures and 2 religions, it is also a charming historical piece. I won't be discussing the entire plot of the movie, just touching on a few things.
Though we often train ourselves to think that our forbears were stuffy and conservative while we are open-minded and liberal, this film, as so many silent films do, shows us differently. There are open statements about the falseness of Christianity *as practiced by the Christians as depicted in this movie*, and Islam is shown as a valid and equal alternative - you certainly wouldn't see any of that today! And it is the portrayal of Islam in the movie that prompted me to write, if only as a segment on a larger theme: historical accuracy. I'm not sure which was more interesting, the things they got right or those they got wrong.
I was amazed to see how very realistic the costumes looked - one of the men even looked as though taken out of a portrait of the Earl of Leicester (Queen Elizabeth's "boyfriend") in old age, right down to the dark streak in the middle of his rather oval beard. I'm not used to silent movies getting it right, costume-wise. But my "faith" was restored at the first sight of the heroine. She was laughably dressed in a hodge-podge of Tudor, Elizabethan and 20's shaped clothes. It's only her beauty that keeps you (okay, maybe just me) from laughing outright. Though her outfits do improve somewhat, they never reach anywhere near the accuracy of the men's, nor do any of the women's. Oh well; they're costumed enough so you get the general feel of what they are supposed to portray; I suppose I shouldn't try to demand more! I am not nearly as much of an expert on period Arabian clothes, but I do believe they got the armor (the helmets, for sure) correct. They certainly looked like what most people expect - sometimes a director has to go for that.
But when it came to Islam, and the customs of the surrounding culture, they were either amazingly accurate - like the marriage by declaration, and a married woman having to be veiled - or hysterically wrong. For instance, a young villain is said to be "harem-born & woman raised". It was silly to mention the first part - all babies are born where their mothers are - but the latter part would never have happened: boys were taken from their mothers by around age 7, especially boys of a ruling family; they would need to be trained in the arts of war and leadership. Then there was the amazingly convenient bit about how "Muslim law demands the captives be sold in the market place." Oh sure, tell us anything, what do we know? And the name "Fenzileh"?? Who comes up with these things? Same guy who came up with "Allahkibollah!" as an exclamation, I guess! :-) But I must stress that these errors are minor, and do not in any way detract from the movie as a whole. If anything, they add a bit of comic relief - if not as superb as that delivered by Wallace Beery, who amply demonstrates here how he came to be a lasting fixture in Hollywood. He is a stand out among the more usual posturing/gesturing done by most of the other players - none of whom can be truly faulted. I am sure that had not Milton Sills died so tragically young(ish), he would have been a major star for years to come.
Hua Mu Lan (1964)
Very fine film
Having heard more than a few complaints about the Disney version (most specifically about the portrayal of culture and adherence to the actual legend), I researched the legend, and found it be to be extremely curt, so I was even more keen to find a Chinese version, wondering how a whole movie could be made from the scant bones in it. What I found was a pleasing spectacle that actually bears some responsibility for the Disney movie. There is no romance in the original story, but this movie puts one in, and Disney seems to have faithfully copied it, as well as the injunction against women joining the army at all. While this movie certainly doesn't have a talking dragon or semi-sentient cricket, it does have many comical (tho' not huge belly laugh-making) interactions between Mulan (which is treated as an asexual name here) and the other soldiers. It also invents a cousin who goes with her as sort of a shield against discovery, tho' this is done away with rather quickly. I am not so great an aficionado of Chinese opera to be able to tell if this is a representative example or not, but it certainly seemed to me to be an impressive spectacle - lots of action, elaborate costumes, and many gestures I do recognize from other operas. I also found a very Communist spirit (in the very nicest way!) to the movie: the idea of sacrificing all for the good of the state, whether you are a man or a woman.
The Corner (2000)
Just so no one forgets....
Officer Ira Weiner died trying to save a houseful of children being held at gunpoint by a junkie. While everyone is busy sobbing over people who refused to get their own lives in order, someone should take at least one minute to grieve over the life taken from this courageous, kind-hearted young man whose only crime was that he not only wanted to uphold the law, and rescue children screaming for help, but he also wanted to be kind to the criminal! He went in to try to talk the man down, and, because he was trying to be non-threatening, he did not draw his gun. The perp got his gun and shot him with it. Even this was not enough for that criminal - he then stabbed Ira repeatedly with an icepick while he lay dying.
If the show did not show this, the show misrepresented the facts.
No, I did not see the show - I wish I had. But I knew Ira Weiner; he was my brother's best friend.
Sons of Liberty (1939)
Well-made kitsch (Only the slightest of spoilers)
This must have been Hollywood's way of trying to say what everyone in power knew but were afraid to say out loud: there was another threat to liberty afoot, and, this time, Jews were in especial danger. Why else would Hollywood have chosen to focus on Chaim Solomon out of so many other equally deserving patriots (And is this role the reason Claude Rains was chose to play the title role in "Mr. Skeffington"?)? The short is expectedly both solemn and melodramatic, given the subject matter and the reason for its being made. Rains, as could be expected, rises above the material, giving a real performance and not just emoting.
I have read the comments of the viewer who feels that the short is "anti-British." Well, if so, then it is just as "anti-British" as the movie "Fire Over England" was "anti-Spanish". In other words, not at all.
The Scarlet Empress (1934)
Dietrich better than some critics insist (Maybe a minor spoiler), costuming lukewarm
I have to disagree with those who say, flat-out, that Marlene Dietrich did not, or could not, play an innocent very well on film. I beg to differ, certainly in the early scenes of the film. Her wide-eyed breathlessness was very believable - certainly as believable as any other acting on the screen. It is, in fact, the very first scene where she has to take the first step in transforming from innocent to jaded that she falters. Her actions and facial expressions are awkward at best, even imbecilic. The most ridiculous thing is her insisting on putting straw in her mouth, but this is obviously on the demand of the director, because she does it somewhat later in the film to great effect.
I want also to remark on the costuming: most is rather in line with the usual half-baked interpretations of historical costuming done by Hollywood - and, as usual in badly-costumed epics, the poor negligee takes the brunt of it. But 3 gowns are of note. The very first dress she wears is a very good approximation of period line, a riding outfit that is seen when she runs up the stairs is instantly recognizable as being from the period, and, from little could actually be seen of her wedding dress, I think it is a close replica of the original.
The Ten Commandments (1956)
Some things that may have been overlooked
It may be just individual tastes, even with the change in time, but I have never been able to see how or why anyone could naturally assume Anne Baxter, attractive as she was, was "obviously" so much more beautiful than Yvonne deCarlo. I found Miss deCarlo lovelier, and not just because the script pointed out that "Sepphora (Tzipporah)" had a superior character. My guess is that deMille chose Miss deCarlo in that particular role because of the relative fame/box office of the two ladies - or because Miss deCarlo had a distinctly more "earthy" quality than Miss Baxter.
Another even smaller but very important, note is Woody Strode. He says nothing in the film, and yet, in both scenes where he figures, he is the focus of attention. As the silent King of Ethiopia, you get the feeling that, even beaten in battle, he is unconquered, and knows himself to be Pharoah's equal. That his silence is not through fear, but pride. You cannot take your eyes from him. And when he is doing double-duty as one of Bithia's bearers, he uses a facial expression regrettably inflicted on black actors through the ages - that of wide-rolling eyed fear - but when *he* does it, you get none of the cringing, whining feel you get when other actors were out through this same pace. You get the natural fear of simple people - of any color - of a power greater than they understand.
A lot of people damn this movie as camp, and there are loads of foul-ups - both technical and scriptural (shoe-horning Jesus into a story where he *cannot* belong is the worst and most insulting) - but the visuals are superb, the acting is fine and the movie itself a treat to watch; it stands the test of time.
One Night with the King (2006)
Beautiful but mediocre at best (DEFINITE SPOILERS)
(Of course, how much can you "spoil" a film where the subject matter is known by schoolchildren the world over?)
I have to say that the scale of the production was perfect and the overall the visual effects of the movie were very enjoyable. The reminder to the audience about how we came to be cursed with the Amalekites was not only clever, it was a surprisingly faithful to Judaism/history - which, I am not surprised to say, the movie tried not to be.
I am not complaining that they had to set it in India, where it didn't belong; the beauty of the film made up for any mental jarring there. And I know that sometimes an ancient story must be "updated" in order to catch everyone's interest anew, but the least they could have done was not pretended that any ancient Persian queen was going to have any political power whatsoever. It not only detracted from the original story of Esther (it completely destroyed the real story of Vashti and Xerxes), it was laughably anachronistic. The way they engineered the separation between the King and Esther mentioned in the Megillah was clumsy, and made worse by the fact that they NEVER clear up the misunderstanding between the 2 of them - never! This is irritating in and of itself, but it is compounded by the fact that this then gives the King absolutely no reason to reconcile with her. For the producers to have pretended that it was only the queen who was forbidden to approach the king uninvited was odd, especially in light of the previously mentioned fact that they insisted she had her own political power. But I suppose they were trying to heighten the drama. And I suppose I should be grateful that they only shoehorned in one egregious (& false) reference to Jesus - at least that I caught. The only other change as bad as the proselytizing was sticking in a Jewish love interest before Hadassah/Esther gets taken up (& the "taking up" was deliberately, and without any justification, harshly dramatized. Lame). My guess is that they put him in there to show how Esther really loved Xerxes more than anyone else, but all it really did was make her look fickle. The dumbest addition was the stupidly heavy-handed swastika as a persona emblem for Haman and all Amalekites - who always dressed in black. We get it, already, we get it!! I could not help but be irritated by all the changes, because the story is powerful as it is.
As far as the actors went, Tiffany DuPont was disappointing. She was at times awkward, and never truly believable. Tiny Lester was a disappointment as well: he looked magnificent, but audibly reminded me very much of John Wayne in "The Conqueror" - an actor so out of his element as to be pitiable. John Rhys Davies was his usual excellent self. Peter O'Toole looked too horribly frail to have wielded the sword that he did; he almost looked as tho' he were drugged. Sadly, this may be the last we see of him on the Big Screen. Luke Goss was a mixed bag. He sounded to me for the most part as tho' he had to have learned his lines by rote, and hadn't quite gotten all the nuances of what he was saying. But in the scene where he proposes to Esther, he did not look like an actor: he looked like a man whose entire life depended on the next words spoken by the woman in front of him.
If you can ignore all the changes, and take it as a totally new story, the movie is still too clumsy to really shine. I'm glad I went to the matinée showing; I didn't think it was worth the full price.
The Prisoner of Zenda (1984)
One of the Very Best Versions Ever Made
My husband and I are great aficionados of this story, and we have every single version available (except the Peter Sellar's travesty) - and our only quibble is that he still thinks the Ronald Coleman version is the best, while I think *this* version is the best. But I admit that it's hardly fair to compare a black-and-white movie, with the necessary time constraints, to a color (gotta show that RED HAIR!) mini-series with a great deal more scope to develop the characters, etc.
I agree with the previous assessment of the British viewer about the cast, with the addition of saying that Victoria Weeks made a perfect Princess Flavia: a real grasp of the character as a person as well as a position - no cardboard/cookie cutter princess portrayal there. Malcolm Sinclair said that he felt it was rather obvious that he was very young and untried when he did the series, but I honestly can't see it.
Perhaps one of the best things about the series is the feel; contributed to by not just the setting - everything had the look and feel of a small country tucked away in the requisite Balkans - but the costumes as well were undeniably the best of any version made to date. People rarely think about costuming setting the mood, but with a period piece, it is crucial to get the clothes right, or no one buys that it's another time and place.
It's a crime, I tell you, a CRIME that the Beeb hasn't brought this out on video or DVD!!
Valmont (1989)
One Minor Note re: Costuming
The costumes were a definite mixed bag, with the truly awful ones being dreadfully jarring: sloppy wigs, gowns cut in an obviously un-period way, Colin Firth's completely incorrect hairdo (they pretty much just stuck a ponytail on him without modifying his own modern hairstyle one bit) - at one point, Annette Bening wears a dress that had to be made from a CIVIL WAR pattern - at least 80 YEARS out of date! I saw a hat on Sian Phillips that looked as though it had been hot glued together and then decorated with plastic string pearls.
I know most people don't have the eye that I do for these things, but if you know anything at all about historical costuming, you may not want to bother with this one.
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005)
Some major annoyances, but the rest fabulous
For all the things they had to cut out, the director really had his nerve throwing in the stupid things he did - specifically the goony dance numbers of the entry into Hogwarts of the other schools (to say nothing of the disgustingly gratuitous breast/rear shots of the Beauxbatons girls). I understand the cinematic need to differentiate the schools, but was it really necessary to change the other 2 schools to same-sex schools? That struck me as a weak, cheap ploy. The costumes and attitudes (which were terrific choices) enough would have worked - the director should have had some faith in himself.
However, using Neville instead of Dobby was a fabulous idea, both cinematically as well as plot-wise, because it helps show Neville's growth & sets his character up for the next movie.
Visually, the dragon sequence was the best in the film - as it was doubtless supposed to be. I suppose it would have been too much to ask to have Harry's scene be shorter so we could see the other champions fight their dragons - especially given that it was all CGI & not animatronic, but let's not be greedy! I disagreed with the way Diggory was portrayed, & not just from a fangeek perspective. If the director was going to add/change things to differentiate between foreign schools, he should have kept in characterization that delineated the different Hogwarts Houses. He took out everything that made Cedric as special as he was written - thereby at least slightly undercutting the devastation of his loss.
The setting for the Ball - incredibly gorgeous! Everyone gave sterling performances - no surprise there :-)
Where Are My Children? (1916)
Remarkable presentation of subject matter, both emotional and logical.
I was amazed at both the subject matter of the movie, and how it was handled. This movie was incredibly even-handed; I can't understand how so many people insist that this is strictly an anti-abortion movie! Abortion is shown as both horrible and not: also condemned is the fact of women being forced to have children when they are not equipped to do so. The trial scene makes this very clear - not only is a reputable doctor shown as testifying for the benefits of abortion, but his views are fully aired in the movie. The rest of the film does show the prevailing society view - most notably the touching use of angels to represent children coming into the womb, as well as going back to Heaven. Of course, it is also quite possible that this might be a device of equivocation: that if the souls return to Heaven the same way they originally came down to earth, surely they can just come back down again...? But even more poignant than this depiction is the ghostly adult images of the children referenced in the title: the phantoms of what might have been not only surrounding the father, but quite firmly between him and his wife.