The Film Junkie

Though we have certainly seen films about divorce and how that divorce affects the children, the parents, but never before have we really gotten inside the relationship between a son and a father that have been abandoned.

We have a stereotype in the Western world that it is always the father who leaves a family, but in this brilliant film, the mother leaves to find herself.  She knows that she can be more than a mother and wife and needs to seek out that person in the world outside of the life she has known.

Meryl Streep is heart-breaking as this mother who is both wrong and right.  She won as Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her role and she allows you to see into a woman who is so conflicted and torn apart by her own confusion.

Dustin Hoffman is fantastic as a man who has always been the breadwinner and must now become both mother and father.  Hoffman excells at capturing the fallable man, just as he did in ‘The Graduate’ and ‘Tootsie’.  He won the Best Actor Oscar for this performance and you can clearly see why.

This Best Picture winner is a small film, not flashy, nor melodramatic.  What I love most is how consistenly real it feels throughout, as through we are a fly on the wall of this man’s experience and we are able to watch him grow.

Grade: A+

Probably the first epic film ever made, D.W. Griffith’s masterpiece is the story of the Civil War and its aftermath in South Carolina.

Watching this three hour silent film is one of the most aggravating, offensive and undoubtedly historical film experiences I have ever had.  It is an often painful film to watch because it is trying to convince the audience that black people are better off being slaves.

The theme of this movie is that without the Ku Klux Klan, America would have been run down by drunk, idiotic, power-hungry black men.  These men would have raped all the white women, killed all the white men and left America a sad wreck of what it once was.

The film gives the worst depiction of black people I have ever seen.  Any black character with any action, lines or significance is played by a white actor or actress in blackface.  The only time we actually see real black actors in the film is when they are dancing or drinking.

Yes, I know this film was made in 1915.  But there is simply no excuse for such a blatantly racist re-writing of history.  Griffith wants us to feel like the Civil War almost ruined America, that without it the South would be serene and peaceful.  Our hero is the man who invents the KKK!

As a film, the acting is bad, even for a silent movie.  The war scenes are very good and the crowd scenes set the standard for years to come.  It is a well constructed drama that is far too long and lags in the last 2 hours.  The white characters all look the same and thus the love stories get very confusing.

I can’t give a high grade to such a racist movie, I simply cannot.

Grade: D

I was beginning to question whether or not I really do love Woody Allen movies as much as I think I do, and then this little treat came along and assured me that Allen is a genius.

This film deals with the modern existential dilemma of life, love and death set in Czarist Russia during the Napoleonic Wars.  Allen plays Boris, a man forced into the war and many other strange situations when all he really wants to do is marry his cousin (“twice removed”) Sonia (the angelic Diane Keaton).  It is equal parts absurdity and Fellini homage, a feat that could only really be attempted by Allen.

Allen struts through this comedy like Buster Keaton with Groucho Marx’s humour and the sensibility of a writer raised on Sid Caesar (as Allen was).  He is the pathetic little man, like Keaton, who is able to acheive greatness with a sparkling wit and scandalous double entendre, like Marx, and make a scathing cultural commentary, like Caesar, at the same time.

Diane Keaton matches Allen with her own brand of absurdity.  Where Mia Farrow is Allen’s neurotic muse and Scarlett Johansson seems now to be his sexual muse, Keaton is, undoubtedly, his comedic and intellectual muse.  There is one scene (pictured below) in which the two of them are caught in the same frame bouncing back and forth through their subconscious melodrama that it pure ridiculous hilarity.

It seems like it wouldn’t work, but it is one of my favorite Allen comedies.

Grade: A-

Who would have thought that a TV show about the Roman Empire would be such a sexy and thrilling comment on society during times of war?

The story flips back and forth between the plot of the nobility and Julius Caesar (Ciaran Hinds from 2005’s ’Munich’) and his niece, Atia (the genius Polly Walker, 2002’s ‘Savage Messiah’), and two soliders of the lower class, the headstrong dumbbell Titus Pullo (Ray Stevenson from 2004’s ‘King Arthur’) and the brave and proud Lucius Vorenus (Kevin McKidd, 2007’s ‘Hannibal Rising’).

Both classes have their appeal, but we all can’t help but falling in love with Vorenus and Pullo.  They are brutish men with their own codes and laws who are both sexy and masculine in a way that stands apart from most male characters on television.

Vorenus’ wife Niobe (Indira Varma, most recently in 2006’s ‘Basic Instinct 2′) is one of the most lovely and tragic female characters on TV.  Thinking her husband was long dead, she begins an affair, but when he returns after 8 years at war she is forced to pretend that the child is instead her grandson.  Niobe shows that lower class women at the time were not slaves, but just as complex as those of the upper class.

Walker is brilliant as the manipulative and controlling Atia.  She goes head-to-head with her lover, Mark Antony (James Purefoy from 2004’s ‘Vanity Fair’), using her sexuality and bloodline to defend herself and her children.

This is an incredible show that seems to be pretty close to fact historically, but more than anything presents interesting characters intwined in complex and fascinating storylines.

I suppose you can guess how the season ends (it involves a dude named Brutus), but knowing what will happen is not the point, it is about enjoying the ride.

Grade: A

I have been hearing for years how scandalous this film is, how it portrays Brooke Shields as a pre-teen prostitute and caused an uproar when it came out.

From a modern perspective, it is less a scandal and more a disturbing wannabe art film.  Shields trounces around with an odd confidence despite being naked or nearly naked for most the film.  We never see her engaging in sexual acts, but we are given the illusion of such activities.

It is not really a film worth viewing, unless you are interested in prostitution in New Orleans during the first World War.  It is badly acted, badly constructed and awkwardly edited.

If not for the uproar, it wouldn’t even be worth mentioning.

Grade: C-

I was not expecting to like this movie.  I actually went in with the lowest of expectations having only seen one Bond film before, that being the extraordinarily misogynistic ‘Goldfinger’ (1964).

Yet somehow, this film charmed me like Mr. Bond himself.  Daniel Craig is smoldering and sexy in a 21st centurey sense.  That being the same as ‘300’s Gerard Butler, the buff and sculpted hero.  Craig’s predecessors had all been lean and thin, but not really buff in the way that Craig is.  He really looks like he could kick just about anyone’s ass and survive just about anything.  Also, he is able to go toe-to-toe with the incomparable Judi Dench as M, not an easy task, but he genuinely seems to be in the same league.

The film follows a re-invented Bond after having just achieved 007 status, on his first big mission.  He makes a few rookie mistakes, and is great to see a somewhat vulnerable Bond, one who is able to fall for the girl after all.

Mads Mikkelsen is terrifying as the Le Chiffre, a man who literally cries tears.  He is scary in a way that only an unknown actor (to American audiences) could be, in that we never know what is coming next.

Eva Green is, I am guessing, the first real Bond woman.  She is strong, smart and sexy, but it never feels false (like say Denise Richards as a nuclear scientist in 1999’s ‘The World Is Not Enough’, or so I hear).  Green is a fantastic actress for whom I hope doors open after this captivating performance.

The end of the movie falls apart a little bit, but all in all I was impressed and that is truly saying something.

Grade: B+

This is not the story of who Marie Antoinette was, but rather who she might have been. 

It does not claim to be a history, instead Sofia Coppola re-imagines the court of Versailles during the French Revolution through the eyes of a child of the 1980’s.  Both time periods are remembered as those of excess and decadence and I think Coppola’s prerogative works here.

Kirsten Dunst is charming as the young queen, she is an under-rated actress and I would like to see her take on more roles like this.  Jascon Schwartzman is great as ever is his small role as Louis XVII.  They have great chemistry as a couple thrown together in the name of polticial solidarity and as children uncomfortable with the responsibility of breeding and courtly life.

Coppola imagines Antoinette as a girl becoming a woman, delighted by cakes, shoes, dresses and nature, while distressed by tradition and life under complete scrutiny.  Dunst plays her well as she turns from the wide-eyed innocent into the weathered monarch.

This is not the complete story of Antoinette’s life, it takes her from her departure of Austria through her marriage and children to the point where she and Louis must adandon Versailles as they are bombarded by the Revolution.

This is a quiet and bright, sparkling film that works well only when one abandons one’s historic eye and uses instead one’s eye for self-fulfillment and self-definition.

A misunderstood achievement by the masterful Sofia Coppola.

Grade: A

Nancy Meyers has officially taken Nora Ephron’s (1993’s ‘Sleepless in Seattle’ and 1998’s ‘You’ve Got Mail’) crown as the New Queen of the Rom-Com.  Her follow-up to ‘Something’s Gotta Give’ (2003) and ‘What Women Want’ (2000), is this sweet simple film that tells the story of two women, Iris (Kate Winslet) and Amanda (Cameron Diaz), who decide to swap houses for the Xmas holiday despite not knowing one another.  They find their new lives appealing and interesting and of course discover men to love them (Jack Black and Jude Law, respectively).

Sure the plot is a little…contrived, but the idea overall is a neat one, though it works better in some places than others.

The Diaz-Law love, is one of magnetic sexual attraction, while the Winslet-Black love is one of chemistry and personality.  I wish the film spent more time with Winslet and Black, their love story is too short-handed, while we grow to really know and appreciate the Diaz-Law love.

I really don’t like Cameron Diaz and here she is one again prancing around with REAL actors, especially Winslet who is, in my opinion, the best actress of their generation.  Diaz is out-classed at every angle.  She has some sweet moments, but that is mostly thanks to the incredibly likable Jude Law. 

There are cool bits where Diaz’ character, who is a movie trailer editor, envisions her life in trailers, and a really original relationship between Winslet and an elderly neighbour (Eli Wallach) who was once a great Hollywood screenwriter.

Ultimately, I wished this movie had given Winslet more screen time, cut out her stupid lovelorn relationship with Rufus Sewell and really gotten to the meat of her character.  At over 2 hours this movie had more to tell, a rare thing for a modern film.

If only there was no Diaz….

Grade: B

Woody Allen stars in (but does not direct) this film about McCarthyism and the blacklisting of many Hollywood writers in the television industry.  Allen plays Howard Prince, a cashier and sometime bookie who is “barely literate”, who agrees to act as the front for his blacklisted friend and two other writers.

Allen pulls back his strong personality and plays a funny, but somewhat understated role.  The laughs come from Zero Mostel (1968’s ‘The Producers’) in his final film role; Mostel plays a blacklisted comedian who is forced to the bottom of the barrel despite being a “personality”.  He was a great actor, and this was a great role to go out on.

This film was obviously close to the hearts of those involved.  During the end credits we see that many of the main production team had been blacklisted.  Walter Bernstein was nominated for a writing Oscar for this film.

Overall the film is a bit uneven.  Allen tries to play up his usual schtick when it comes to the silly romantic plot, but his final scene in front of the UnAmerican Activities Subcommitee makes the whole film worthwhile.

A fascinating topic and a pretty good film.

Grade: B+

This film follows the story of Bettie Page (Gretchen Mol), the Bible-thumping, sexually-abused Tennessee gal who came to New York and made a big splash as the most famous pin-up of all time in the 1950s and then disappeared into obscurity.

Director Mary Harron certainly knows how to cover the darker side of society, having directed the brilliant ‘American Psycho’ (2000).  Here she chooses to shoot Bettie in black and white until she hits the beaches of Miami, where she moved when she abandoned modelling, when the film turns to colour.  This choice actually works, showing the lighter side of Page when she is allowed to be comfortable and at home in Miami and when she is trying to be something she is not in New York.

Mol gives her greatest performance as Page.  She plays to the kind-hearted and reasonable woman who was raised a certain way, but will not allow that to inform the decisions she makes.  Mol has been a favorite of mine for years, she was the best part of Woody Allen’s misstep ‘Celebrity’ (1998) and she was lovely in the over-looked ‘Music From Another Room’ (1998), but here she is able to show layers and colours that her previous work has not allowed her.  I hope this film capapults her to the A-list, but if not at least she has this one great role.

The film is short and sweet, never dwelling too long on the dark side of what these photographs were really saying.  It hints at the larger governmental issues with the bondage, but this is Bettie’s story and she seemed to run at the first hint of controversy.  The film could have gone a bit deeper and darker, there are some pieces missing, but all in all it is an interesting look at a woman we all recognize but know so little about.

Grade: B+