Movies, Drama
War movies fall into three categories. Government-funded propaganda that is designed to rally the civilian population, summer action movies that hope to thrill youngsters with exhilarating battle scenes in which good in the end triumphs over evil, and finally critical films that want to undermine the very premise that war is something anyone should desire. Iwo Jima firmly belongs to the third genre. I cannot recall ever watching a war movie that is able make you believe you are on the battlefield, trying to duck the bullets flying a few centimeters from your nose. Steve SpielbergLetters from Iwo Jima
Movies, Drama
Don’t! Stop! Don’t! Stop! Don’t… Don’t stop! I thought that Notes on a Scandal was a film about one of these notorious conservative British politicians caught up in a sex scandal. Wrong! The scandal involves people from a very different social group. Not knowing anything about the plot made the film all the more suspenseful. Notes on a Scandal manages to pull off what Little Children failed to do: drive you to the edge of your seat. Call it, “Adults Playing With Fire.” I was lured into the theatre by a recent profile of Cate Blanchett in the New Yorker (see below). The article celebrated her as one of the great actresses of our time. This was not on display in Babel or the Lord of the Rings trilogy. According to the article, her acting in Notes on a Scandal is excellent. Indeed, the film is very good, but not because of Blanchett. She is responsible for its only two flaws:Notes on a Scandal
Movies, Drama
If I could decide the Oscars all by myself, the King (Forest Whitaker) and the Queen (Helen Mirren) would receive the 2007 Oscars for best actor. (Postscript February 26: they did win the Oscars!) The two roles could not be more different. But Whitaker and Mirren individually deliver one of the best performances in the history of cinema portraying a real human being. Mirren plays the reigning Queen of England (see my review of a few weeks ago) whereas Forest Whitaker plays the Idi Amin, who brutally ruled Uganda from 1971 to 1979. Forest Whitaker has given many fine performances, for example in The Crying Game. Playing the complicated and contradictory personality of Amin has handed Whitaker a role that I am sure will become his defining performance. The feelings you experience in The Last King of Scotland could not be more different from The Queen. The Queen satisfies oneThe Last King of Scotland
Movies, Drama
Sarah (Kate Winslet) and Brad (Patrick Wilson) meet on a playground in a suburb of Boston just as their marriage is entering a difficult period. They feel an immediate attraction. Little Children chronicles how people who are stuck in a staid, lifeless marriage struggle when they develop extra-marital romantic feelings, unexpectedly standing before a temptation they thought only other people could yield to. The interesting part of the Little Children, however, is not this main plot, but the story of the other characters that show up in the community of Sarah and Brad: a man who had been in prison for exposing himself to little children, a crazy ex-policemen who makes it his mission to protect the community from this “pervert,” the mother of the “pervert” who tries to get her son’s mind off children by finding him a wife through newspaper ads;Little Children
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