Starring Colin Farrell, Angelina Jolie, Anthony Hopkins, and Val Kilmer
Directed by Oliver Stone
Rated: R
Reviewed by Kirk Buchner
I was really looking forward to seeing this movie. From the viewpoint of someone who has studied Alexander the Great’s exploits in university and considers himself a fan of Oliver Stone’s work, how could this movie miss? Well, as it turns out… Oliver Stone finally did it. He made a boring movie.
Any screenwriting book will tell you the first basic rule of writing a good script is show, don't tell. But Stone decided the best way to tell Alexander the Great's life was tell, don't show.
Stone reduces Alexander's exploits to Ptolemy's (Anthony Hopkins) narrations and shows us just two battles - at Guagamela and India. We hear of Alexander's other advances, but see none. The two battles aren't spectacular. They're so disorganized and confusing that Stone relies on Ptolemy to tell us what happened after one battle. When we get to the film's big moment - Alexander facing up to a warring elephant in India - it has no impact because we've lost interest in this clunker. We're then treated to what seems like an acid flashback.
Stone wants to emphasize Alexander's bisexuality, yet doesn't have the guts to give us an honest depiction. The love affair between Alexander (Colin Farrell) and his commander and childhood friend, Hephaestion (Jared Leto), is limited to laughable glances and the occasional shoulder rub. Give me a break! Not once do these lovers even consider a peck on the cheek. They do hug a lot, though. That's about as bold as Stone gets.
Colin Farrell does not make a convincing Alexander. He's more Alexander the Adorable than Alexander the Great. He whines and mopes rather than inspire or threaten. Though Alexander never seems to have a bad hair day.
Farrell makes no attempt to hide his Irish brogue and, with an international cast, the smorgasbord of accents quickly turns absurd. At one point, when Alexander argues with one of his commanders, one actor sounds Irish, the other like Sean Connery. It's priceless.
Farrell's woefully miscast. His Alexander lacks passion. There's no madness to his method. Farrell's limited acting range becomes clearly evident in a scene when Alexander rallies his troops before a battle. Stone means to draw comparisons to Shakespearean Prince Hal's famous battle cry, but watch Farrell fall flat and then go watch Kenneth Branagh's mesmerizing Crispin's Day speech in Henry V (1989), and you'll realize Farrell's limitations as an actor.
Leto proves yet again what a wooden performer he is. Though the poor chap's given little to do other than to make goo-goo eyes at Alexander. Jonathan Rhys-Meyers barely registers as Cassander, and Kilmer staggers about as if he's still playing Jim Morrison.
With various accents pummeling the screen, it's surprising Angelina Jolie decided Alexander's mother, Olympias, should have some weird, mock Transylvanian accent. It makes it impossible to take anything she says seriously. Never mind the fact that Jolie's just a year younger than Farrell, and that she never ages in the film, even though Alexander, at one point, ages from 4 to 19.
Of course, no Oliver Stone film would be complete without conspiracy theories and allusions to contemporary politics. Alexander conquers Persia, part of which is now modern Iraq, because, he says, people want change and to live free. There's also mention - because showing us would make sense - of a guerrilla war the Persians waged after Alexander took Babylon.
The film's packed with so many pointless scenes you wonder if Stone left anything on the cutting room floor. There's an unbearably long, terribly written shouting match between Alexander and Cleitus, needless cuts back to an older Ptolemy and a superfluous moment involving Aristotle (Christopher Plummer).
A prime example of Hollywood excess, this dud cost $150 million. Just think of how many wonderful and worthy smaller-budget films could have been made instead. And don't tell me there aren't countless terrific scripts floating around Hollywood not being read because the writers don't have the right connections.
Greeks shouldn't be upset that Stone depicted Alexander as bisexual. They should be outraged he turned Alexander into a gargantuan bore.
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Beyond the Sea Lions Gate Films
Starring Kevin Spacey, Kate Bosworth, John Goodman, and Bob Hoskins.
Directed by Kevin Spacey
Rated: PG-13
Reviewed by Gary Goldstein
Beyond the Sea, the new biopic about 1960s pop music icon Bobby Darin, is clearly a labor of love for its star, director, producer, and co-writer Kevin Spacey. But passion projects can be double-edged swords and this one is no exception.
Spacey’s movie gives us the ole razzle-dazzle, for sure. With its fanciful, fantasy dance numbers; Spacey’s superb, spot-on renditions of Darin’s many hits (“Dream Lover,” “Mack the Knife,” a show stopping “Artificial Flowers”); and a kaleidoscope of period fashion, attitude, and patter, the film is often a brash diversion.
That said, you really have to wonder if Darin’s showy, abbreviated life (he died at 37 of chronic heart disease) is really worth all the big-screen fuss. Peel away the glitz and focus on the man and, like they say, there’s not much “there” there. And that may well have been Darin, a guy presented here as a fast-talking locomotive with one goal in mind: chart-topping success. Hell, it’s not all his fault. I mean, if you were told as a kid your ticker was gonna give and you wouldn’t live past 15, you’d push the envelope, too. Especially if your piano-tinkling, good-time gal mom Polly (a broad Brenda Blethyn, with yet another wonky regional accent) was there fanning the flames.
Darin had the music in him and it pushed him way past his teen years. At 22, he shot to fame, knocking out the nation singing “Splish Splash” on American Bandstand. More hits followed, his star rose, and they even let him act in movies. And it was in Italy, on the set of the Rock Hudson comedy Come September, that Darin met his wife-to-be, fresh-scrubbed teen ingénue Sandra Dee (a luminous, fragile Kate Bosworth). But it’s in these scenes that the movie really confirms Darin’s skin-deep charm as he woos the virginal Dee with his cheesy, pie-in-the-sky pronouncements, all while trying to ditch Dee’s protective, gargoyle of a mother (Greta Scacchi, unrecognizable). Dee’s heartbreakingly pretty, sure, and a far cry from the girls in the Bronx (where Darin grew up, as Walden Robert Cassotto), but their courtship plays as if the performer was just fulfilling a checklist--“Woo and marry beautiful starlet, become Hollywood’s golden couple.”
Spacey mostly plays Darin head on, without the grays we’ve come to expect (depend on) from this fine actor. Maybe directing got in the way of his acting focus, though I doubt it, Spacey’s far too savvy an artist for that. More likely, he was simply enamored with Darin’s mythic, fleeting place in pop culture, and the breezy, candy-colored era he thrived in. Or maybe he just wanted to sing and dance on screen, and the rest is just, well, the rest.
Superstar Darin’s finger-snapping self-absorption eventually starts to bug everyone around him. Whether it’s Dee (whose own sad trajectory is given short, second-fiddle shrift), Bobby’s manager Steve Blauner (John Goodman), his shrill older sister Nina (overplayed by the usually-reliable Caroline Aaron), or friend and brother-in-law Charlie (Bob Hoskins), the singer can never give the people closest to him as much as he can--or wants to--give his adoring audiences. Darin’s a disappointment, but he doesn’t seem to care. As long as he gets his dream gig at New York’s famed Copacabana, it’s all good.
The fact that Spacey never lets the character grow or change in real ways (yeah, he becomes a disillusioned hippie later on, but it’s more “haute” than heart) again makes you wonder how compelling Darin is as a movie subject. Unlike the subjects of two other recent musical bios, Cole Porter (De-Lovely) and Ray Charles (Ray), there’s a lack of internal conflict to Darin. Aside from his “living on borrowed time” business and an 11th-hour, if-it-wasn’t-true-you’d-never-buy-it revelation about his sister Nina, it’s pretty much cardboard city. Even the deeper elements of Darin’s relationship to ex-movie star Dee are fuzzy, played loud and unclear.
Unfortunately, Spacey’s just too old to play the early-20s-to-late-30s Darin convincingly (no news here - the actor’s as much as said so himself). Despite Darin’s premature baldness and Spacey’s occasionally eerie resemblance to the singer, it still don’t quite wash. And, in Spacey’s scenes opposite the 20-year-old Bosworth, the age issue is even more pronounced. Not to say Spacey shouldn’t have played the part - in many ways it fits him like a glove - but you do have to check your calculator at the door.
Beyond The Sea’s movie-within-a-movie framing device doesn’t help continuity matters either. As in De-Lovely, which also used this approach, it feels tacked on and desperate (not to mention a bit confusing). It’s as if Spacey felt he needed to amp up the movie beyond cable fare and justify its feature status. And his imaginary interactions with a little-boy version of himself (William Ullrich, not quite ready for prime time) only add to these scenes’ forced, pre-fab feel.
Spacey absolutely deserves credit for going to the mat for Bobby Darin in such a ballsy and energetic way. And, as an opportunity to revisit Darin’s classic, if not exactly seminal hits, Beyond the Sea might be worth the sit. But, over thirty years after the performer’s death, it often feels like too little, too late.
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Callas Forever Here! Films
Starring Fanny Ardant, Jeremy Irons, Joan Plowright, and Jay Rodan
Directed by Franco Zeffirelli
Not Yet Rated
Reviewed by Rachel Ferguson
The allure of Franco Zeffirelli’s 2002 film Callas Forever is somewhat akin to that of a car crash. Not because of curiosity about death or gore, but because of the fascination we have with the drama that accompanies tragic mistakes. In the case of Maria Callas, the legendary opera singer, the drama is her slow acceptance of the end of her career, and the catalyst that initiates this is a potential re-vamping of it.
The film is a fictional story of Callas’ emergence from retirement to do a film of Carmen in which she lip-synchs to a recording from twenty years earlier. She is convinced to do this largely by her agent, Larry Kelly (Jeremy Irons). At first, Callas (who is played by the very lovely Fanny Ardant) is thrilled at the chance of playing a role she had never acted on stage, and re-living the magic of being the theatrical center of attention. As the filming wraps up, however, she is haunted by the knowledge that, deep down, the film is a fraud, her voice is shot, and her illustrious career as a diva has come to an end. (And herein lies the car crash metaphor - the death of her career occurs via the tragic mistake of lip-synch.)
The film’s good attributes are roughly equivalent to its not-so-good ones. Some of the supporting cast and their subsequent subplots are laughable at times. Jay Rodan, who plays Iron’s love interest, is pretty but very bland, and his lines are trite. The otherwise excellent Joan Plowright relies too much on her bumbling persona, where she could have delved much deeper into her role as Callas’ old and very dear friend. This results in a general icky feeling when their scenes crop up, because they could have been so much better. In general, it seems as though Zeffirelli used the supporting cast to provide a very shallow background for Callas’ tragedy.
This unfortunately applies to Jeremy Irons as well. One gets the feeling that many of his scenes were left on the cutting room floor, because in the scenes that made it, he seems like a fuller character than we’ve been led to believe. He did what he could with a role that was rather flat and a relationship (with the pretty boy) that is rather unbelievable. His character, the stressed-out manager/friend of Callas who gives her one last go at excellence, exists only to provide background for Callas’ story.
The gem, of course, is Fanny Ardant, who captures Callas’ need for drama and feelings of loss and inadequacy beautifully. (There is a scene in which she is shown singing along- but an octave lower- with a previous recording of herself that is immensely powerful.)
The film is worth seeing if only for her performance, and for the ethereal soundtrack of Ms. Callas herself. It’s not profoundly effective, but something about Callas’ fighting finish is touching, and beautiful.
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Starring Jude Law, Natalie Portman, Clive Owen, and Julia Roberts
Directed by Mike Nichols
Rated: R
Reviewed by Aaron Licht
Closer is an insightful relationship sex drama, like Sex, Lies & Videotape (1989, Soderbergh), Pinter’s Betrayal (1983, Jones), and Your Friends & Neighbours (1998, LaBute). Some of these romances are idealistic, like Before Sunset (2004, Linklater), while others are cruel and hate-filled like Closer. Whether I swoon or wince, this genre always promises an engaging experience.
Playwright Patrick Marber adapted Closer from his award-winning play. His drama, like many successful plays adapted for the screen, incorporates intelligent dialogue and realistic deeply-felt romance. Lovers’ quarrels are charged with such dramatic potential that many scenes are longer than in typical relationship dramas. Expect dialogue that will make one pause and think, while their exact meaning may remain more elusive. Consider the following line, screamed while charging towards its victim, “Know what a heart looks like? A fist covered with blood!”
Director Mike Nichols is a veteran of spicy sex dramas, The Graduate (1967), Carnal Knowledge (1972) and The Birdcage (1996). At 74, he is still exploring philosophical relationship issues.
Apparently Nichols took the material very seriously, as he made the four leads immerse themselves in their characters with rehearsals for over a month. And it shows. Jude Law, Natalie Portman, Clive Owen and yes, even Julia Roberts are all at their best. Portman’s performance is easily her best yet, and as it comes as no surprise, she’s astonishingly beautiful. After almost a decade, Portman is shedding her role as Queen Amidala from the recent Star Wars films. Despite playing a stripper in Closer, her subtle looks of confusion are what moves you. Honest.
The story revolves around a typical situation, characters swinging from one relationship to the next; loving, dumping and obsessing with painful knife-in-the-back slow twisting revenge. The plot makes subtle jumps around in time, usually skipping by the happy moments and focusing on the painful. It’s about a complex four-way relationship and not to disappoint, but don’t expect any Roberts/Portman or Owen/Law hook-ups. Although one such coupling does enjoy a nasty session of cybersex together. Indeed, it makes perfect sense once you see it in context.
Another of my favorite scenes transpires at a strip club. What if a stripper is visited by someone from their past and toys between the rules of the club and a true intimate moment? The situation is rife with drama and again, it makes perfect sense in context.
No character gets away guilt-free. At the end of the second act, I had little sympathy for any character. When the credits rolled, all I wanted was a cold shower (although I still had a strong desire to give Portman a small kiss and hold her close). Do these cruel lovers make the film less enjoyable? Perhaps, but it’s a simple truth that everyone can get ugly when caught up with sex, love and betrayal.
The film is successful, and is enjoyable for those looking for a serious relationship drama. At the screening, I sat next to a drunk, loaded on cheap brandy from his brown paper bag (apparently an ‘actor’ once he found out I worked in film, but that’s beside the point). He left after ten minutes, claiming that “there aren’t enough guns for me man.” Closer may not have any gunplay, but its intimate, sensual and confused characters will inspire you to evaluate the trying relationships in your life.
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Finding Neverland Miramax
Starring Johnny Depp, Kate Winslet, Julie Christie, and Dustin Hoffman.
Directed by Marc Forster
Rated: PG
Reviewed by Kevan C. Peterson
It is hard to pull off a film about childhood without getting overly sentimental, especially in Hollywood. However, Finding Neverland, may not be so much about childhood as it is about the process of “growing up,” regardless of your age. Everyone in the movie undergoes some transformation from a younger to an older version of themselves. Whether it is through the process of coping with the loss of a loved one, letting go of a child, or perhaps letting go of childish thoughts, all of the characters in this tale must grow older in order to survive.
No one drops the “acting ball” in this film as surprisingly nuanced performances find their way to the screen from Julie Christie (Harry Potter), Mackenzie Crook (The Office), Radha Mitchell (Man on Fire), and Freddie Highmore (Two Brothers). Slightly more stated performances from Johnny Depp, Dustin Hoffman and Kate Winslet are equally fun to watch.
The movie follows the development of the story of Peter Pan as the author, J.M. Barrie (played by Johnny Depp) bases his fantasies on the real life experiences he has with a poor family he befriends in the park one day. The family has been through hard times. The children have lost their father, and their mother, Sylvia Davies (Kate Winslet), can barely manage to keep up with the task of caring for her children. Barrie sees the children struggle as they try to cope with this new harsh reality. At first he tries his best to help them hold onto their youth, but ultimately they must all face the reality of this
new world together.
Dustin Hoffman, as theatre owner Charles Frohman, steals every scene he appears in. In fact, powerhouse performances by the whole cast, including (surprisingly) all of the children, make this a film worth seeing. Normally it is hard enough to find one great child actor, let alone four, but what better film to attract young talent then the story of Peter Pan.
Although this movie is only about the development of the literary material we have come to know as Peter Pan, and not actually the story of Peter Pan itself, all the core values and themes have been transferred into Finding Neverland, and like any good story should, they hold up just fine.
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The Machinist Paramount Classics
Starring Christian Bale, John Sharian and Jennifer Jason Leigh
Directed by Brad Anderson
Rated: R
Reviewed by Malcolm Maclachlan
In The Machinist, Christian Bale plays a man who’s losing his mind; which is appropriate, because Bale himself must have lost his mind to lose 63 pounds to star in this pale Twilight Zone impression.
Bale stars as Trevor Reznik, a machine press operator who is suffering paranoid delusions and hasn’t slept in a year. He keeps a log of his weight loss in sticky notes on his closet door. He’s obsessed with a mysterious man named Ivan who nobody else seems to think exists, played by an impressively creepy John Sharian. A troubled loner, Reznik at least has enough money to pay a prostitute with a heart of gold (Jennifer Jason Leigh), who is mainly there so Reznik doesn’t just talk to himself.
What is real and what isn’t? Are some of the characters merely figments of Reznik’s troubled imagination? This is a film that has an easier time keeping you guessing than keeping you caring. It might have worked better as an extended music video. The motifs are glaring enough: right turn or left, fish heads, hangman. Then there’s Ivan’s red car, standing out in scenes where everything else is so washed out that it might as well have been shot in black and white. And be sure to check out the writing on Reznik’s t-shirt when the, um, surprise ending comes.
There is a small amount of gore, but the sight of severed fingers is nowhere close to being as horrifying as the sight of Bale himself. It’s not just that he’s skinny, it’s how detailed his thinness becomes. In clothes, he looks like that guy in your high school freshman class who shot up a foot without putting on any weight. But when he takes his shirt off—which he does with the frequency of an action hero coated in spray-on sweat—his shoulders look like he’s an angel about to sprout wings. His hipbones stick out so far it’s like he’s wearing clown pants. Bale’s frail frame is the real star, and may be the only thing that keeps you watching. If Super Size Me has an opposite, it’s this movie.
Bale is in every scene, and he does an admirable job trying to save this film. The problem isn’t him, it’s the script. But surely he had a chance to read it before he agreed to drop from 180 to 120. Losing weight to star in a good film—say Taxi Driver, The Pianist, or even Trainspotting — is understandable. Of course, just as those films helped make their emaciated leading men into stars, Bale probably made a good career move. Many more people will see his turkey-after-Thanksgiving ribcage than will ever see this film. Sure enough, Bale has been cast as the next Batman. While it might be nice seeing a caped crusader who has really suffered, hopefully we’ll have a hard time recognizing him.
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National Treasure Buena Vista Pictures
Starring Nicolas Cage, Diane Kruger, Justin Bartha, Jon Voight, and Harvey Keitel
Directed by John Turteltaub
Rated: PG
Reviewed by Natasha Jackson
At first glance, one would expect the worst from National Treasure: lots of big theatrical explosions and spectacularly choreographed gun fights. But at a second glance, this movie is much more. National Treasure is the story of Benjamin Franklin Gates (let’s just call him Ben) played by the always fabulous Nicolas Cage, and his family of treasure hunters. Three generations of his family, including his father, played by Jon Voigt, have all been seeking the same treasure.
According to Ben’s grandfather, one of their ancestors was alerted of the treasure by a signer of the Declaration of Independence before dying. The clues are hidden all over the earth and the Gates men have spent a lifetime seeking this treasure that may not actually exist.
The movie opens with Gates in Antarctica seeking the ominous clue Charlotte, which it turns out, is actually a sunken ship. The first clue is unveiled in the Charlotte, which leads to the movie’s far-fetched plot. The key to the treasure, they find, is that it is on the back of the Declaration of Independence. Ian, Gates’ wealthy partner as well as the financier of this excursion, decides he wants the treasure for himself. The only way Gates can prevent this is by pre-empting Ian’s attempt and stealing the Declaration himself.
Ben and his sidekick Riley (Justin Bartha) steal the Declaration and are followed by the FBI, Ian and his henchmen, and Dr. Chase from the National Archives. The treasure hunt leads them through the most historic parts of the country, yet still fails to capture the uniqueness of this plot. This movie falls victim to its own ostentation. With a several million dollar budget and two Oscar winners this movie still falls short.
National Treasure contains all of the elements of a great film, a handsome leading man with a penchant for witty one-liners (Cage), a computer geek with a proclivity for equally witty one-liners (Justin Bartha) and a beautiful woman reluctant to cooperate at first but succumbing in the end. With this winning combination this movie should have been much better. Cage shines, as does the rest of the cast, but the story is full of unlikely coincidences that not even a child would believe.
The biggest problem with this film is not the believability issue, but a major problem that Disney often faces when attempting to attract the older set. Disney tries to make movies meant for children and adults but fails horribly. Just like the sugar-coated view of integration presented in Remember the Titans, National Treasure takes the road of illogical coincidences instead of a less exciting but more realistic portrayal of this story. The historic references are there for the older viewers, and the far-fetched plotlines are for the youngsters.
Overall this movie should and could have been better, but it fell prey to its own delusions of grandeur. Too much hype and not enough delivery make this a movie worth waiting for until it hits the local video store.
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The Sea Inside Fine Line Features
Starring Javier Bardem, Belen Rueda, and Lola Duenas
Directed by Alejandro Amenabar
Rated: PG-13
Reviewed by Wolfgang Dios
“The person who really loves me will help me die.” That’s the bold, and deeply affecting statement made by Ramon Sampedro (Javier Bardem), a 55-year old maritime mechanic who was paralyzed in a horrific diving accident along the coast of Galicia, Spain in 1968. Having broken his neck, he spends thirty years in bed as a quadriplegic, then petitions the state to allow him to die ‘with dignity’; i.e., euthanasia. It’s a formidable dilemma, made all the more haunting by Ramon’s constantly cheerful demeanour and sense of humour. Unable to move, he jokes that to travel three feet is “an impossible journey.” The film is based on an actual person, who published both a book of poetry and a volume entitled Letters from Hell.
As the film opens, the bed-ridden Sampedro is visited by Julia (Belen Rueda), a lawyer who is suffering from a debilitating disease herself, and is more than a little fearful for her own future. It’s that dual resonance that forms the emotional core of the film, and is by far its most fascinating component. However, Sampedro’s desire to die is complicated by the stubborn and taciturn opposition of his elder brother, who has cared for him all these years, and sacrificed his own dreams to care for his sibling.
Then a young and impoverished local mother of two, Rosa (Lola Duenas) visits Sampedro. Her life too is one of quiet desperation, but she nevertheless tries to persuade Sampedro that life is, after all, worth living. Rosa and Julia vie for Sampedro’s love and understanding, and, conversely, his own desire to die is brought into focus by the strong presence of the two women.
The film is extremely static. Though Bardem is a proficient and Oscar-nominated actor (for his portrayal of the flamboyant Cuban homosexual poet in Julian Schnabel’s Before Night Falls) and possesses a commanding physical presence, his passive confinement to the bed and the few actions allowed him (writing and answering the telephone with his mouth) are a constraint above which the film never really rises. There are metaphorical (and beautiful) flights through the countryside as Sampedro imagines himself free and uninjured, even kissing Julia on a beach. But it is really the troubled Rosa (played by Duenas and one of Spain’s most acclaimed actresses) whose presence gently, and often unobtrusively, enlivens the film, and who finally emerges as the pivotal character. It’s a beautifully nuanced performance, with the rest of the cast hampered by a conflict that is often too abstract, resulting in numerous arguments on the value of life or the freedom to choose death, most of which are overtly familiar. Wisely, director Amenabar (best known for The Others and Open Your Eyes, which was later remade as Vanilla Sky with Tom Cruise) restricts himself to one brief courtroom scene where, cruelly, Sampedro is not allowed to speak in his own defence.
While the film deserves credit for raising these issues (particularly considering the recent death of Christopher Reeve), the past is seen almost entirely in brief, episodic montages that do not, in the end, create convincing characters. Only once does Sampedro seem to question his own decision.
Sadly, most of the characters in The Sea Inside are defined too exclusively by their illness, rather than their common humanity. The Sea Inside has already won the Grand Jury and Best Actor awards at the Venice International Film Festival, and is Spain’s main contender for Best Foreign Language Film at next year’s Academy Awards. Commendable though it may be in terms of the ambitious topics it juggles, it is too muted and constrained to be truly affecting.
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