Classic Movie Review The Remains of the Day

The Remains of the Day (1993) 

Directed by James Ivory 

Written by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Harold Pinter 

Starring Anthony Hopkins, Emma Thompson, Christopher Reeve 

Release Date November 5th 1993 

Published November 16th, 2023 

When I was growing up my perception of Merchant Ivory films was that they were homework. The names were synonymous with glowing critical reviews and awards shows. Merchant Ivory made prestige pictures and I was not a fan of prestige pictures. You could not have convinced me to watch a Merchant Ivory movie when I was a teenager. I would sooner give up soda and baseball cards than watch a movie like The Remains of the Day, a British post-war drama of quiet and methodical precision and melodrama. I would sooner stop playing Nintendo than watch a Merchant Ivory movie. I was as immature as any other teenager. 

But now I am an adult. I have more refined tastes. I watch foreign films and I write lengthy articles about the duality of the movie All About Eve or the hypnotic beauty and pacing of a Sophia Coppola movie. Surely, in middle age I will have reached a place where I find a Merchant Ivory movie appealing. Surely, an Oscar nominated film like The Remains of the Day will find new meaning for me as a grown man. But, Sadly, no. I find The Remains of the Day as tedious and boring as I likely would have as a teenager. I'm sorry, I just don't get what anyone sees in this movie. I've been told by older critics and friends of my mother, essentially boomers, that this is the height of sophisticated drama and I just don't buy it. 

The Remains of the Day stars Anthony Hopkins as Stevens, the head of the staff at stately Darlington Manor. He's a butler, just like his father before him and he takes pride in his position. Keeping an orderly house and a mannerly staff is a point of great pride for Stevens. And he values employees who feel a similar sense of pride. When he hires a new head maid, Miss Sarah 'Sally' Kenton (Emma Thompson), he finds a kindred spirit. She also values an orderly house and a well managed staff and together they serve the master of the house, The Earl of Darlington (James Fox). 

In flashback we are taken to prior to the start of World War 2. Darlington is the center of political intrigue. Big English politicians come to Darlington to quietly debate over what to do about the growing threat of Germany. We will come to find out that Lord Darlington is on the side of appeasement, a side that will not fare well when the war comes to England and will be nearly wiped out once the war ends. The other half of The Remains of the Day is set in post-war where Stephens is now working for a former American Congressman (Christopher Reeve) and he's seeking to rehire Sally who'd left years earlier over Lord Darlington's stance on appeasing the Germans. 

She was greatly upset when Lord Darlington welcomes German officials to the manor and prior to their arrival, he has Stephens fire a pair of young Jewish maids so as not to upset his visitors. The firing is a large part of what causes Sally to accept a proposal from a suitor, a middle-class businessman who offers her the chance to join him in opening an Inn. The other part of her reasoning is being upset with Stevens for willingly allowed the young and desperately poor maids to be fired. The rupture in their relationship becomes the subject of the final act of The Remains of the Day. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Classic Movie Review Silence of the Lambs

Silence of the Lambs (1991) 

Directed by Jonathan Demme 

Written by Ted Tally 

Starring Jodie Foster, Anthony Hopkins, Scott Glenn 

Release Date February 14th, 1991 

Box Office $272 million dollars 

In many respects, Silence of the Lambs is the most successful horror movie of the 1990s. The film is the second highest grossing horror movie of the decade, behind only David Fincher's Seven, but it also swept the Academy Awards, winning Best Actress for Jodie Foster, Best Actor for Anthony Hopkins and Best Picture among other awards. Oddly enough, it's this remarkable level of success and respectability that causes many to dismiss the idea that Silence of the Lambs is a horror movie. Horror movies are supposed to be shown in drive ins or on late night cable television. Horror Movies do not sweep the Oscars and, in fact, aren't allowed in the hallowed halls of respectable Hollywood. 

And yet, there should be no question that we are watching and adoring a horror movie. Clarice Starling, for all of her respectable traits and awards pedigree, is a terrific example of the Final Girl archetype. Yes, she's dressed up with a terrific actor in Jodie Foster and built with a respect for women that the horror genre typically lacks, but nevertheless, the final moments of Clarice's search for the big bad of Silence of the Lambs casts Clarice as a tremendous example of the Final Girl, the survivor who lives to tell the tale of what happened with the killer. 

A lot of people who claim they don't like horror movies want to knock down the notion that Silence of the Lambs is a horror movie out of their stubborn belief that they don't find such films entertaining. On the other side, there are hardcore horror fans who don't want to accept Silence of the Lambs as a horror movie because it is too respectable, too beloved. It's a horror film for the normies who wouldn't last but a few minutes watching a 'real' horror movie. Silence of the Lambs also lacks in the kinds of transgressive bad taste that is also a hallmark of 'real' horror movies. 

Silence of the Lambs opens on FBI Trainee Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) running through the woods, alone. It might seem like nothing but there is a heft to this image. A woman running alone through the woods a classic horror movie scenario. Whether you are talking about Friday the 13th or The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, when you place a woman in the context of being alone running through the woods, the echoes of horror movies of the past are evoked. I am going to take the image a little further however, and speculate a little bit about something a little esoteric. 

Find my full length review at Horror.Media

Movie Review Armageddon Time

Armageddon Time (2002) 

Directed by James Gray 

Written by James Gray 

Starring Anthony Hopkins, Anne Hathaway, Jeremy Strong 

Release Date November 4th, 2022 

Published November 10th, 2022 

Armageddon Time  stars Michael Banks Repeta as Paul, a young man in 1980 New York City attending public school. Paul comes from a Jewish background but his family has hidden that behind the name Graf. At school, Paul is unremarkable, a minor rebel who mocks his teacher. He finds a friend in Johnny (Jaylin Webb), a fellow outcast, a young black kid whose been held back at least once. Johnny is in trouble a lot, mostly because his teacher just assumes Johnny is the one causing trouble. 

At home, Paul has a loving, if somewhat angry family. Paul has somehow convinced himself that his family is rich though we can clearly see that there are middle class at best. Regardless, Paul takes liberties with his parents, especially by ordering take out even after his mother, Anne Hathaway, has cooked an expansive dinner for their entire family. His father, played by Jeremy Strong, is loving but can be overbearing and outright abusive. 

That abusive side comes out when Paul finds trouble at school. With Johnny, Paul is caught smoking marijuana in the school bathroom. Paul's father finds out and give his son a frightening beating with a belt in a scene that director James Gray is smart not to romanticize. Many of Gray's generation, my generation, as well, tend to act as if a father who beat their kids was a 'disciplinarian' and not an abuser. Gray and Jeremy Strong give the father character in Armageddon Time a more complex rendering as a man who loves his kids but also feels at a loss at how to care for them. It's clear he was also beaten as a child and he sees it as the only way forward as a parent. 

Paul gets pulled out of his public school and placed in a rich private school with the help of his benevolent and loving grandfather, played by Anthony Hopkins. At this rich private school Paul runs in the same circle as the sons of the Trump family. When they see Paul talking with Johnny at the gates of the school, their sneering racism causes Paul to pull away from his friend. At the urging of his grandfather, Paul tries to repair his friendship but his plan to do so only causes more problems. 

At his new school, the line between white and black, the privileged and the less than privileged, is brought into stark contrast when Maryanne Trump (Jessica Chastain in cameo), visits the school and delivers a speech. The speech is like a message directly to Paul, and thus to us, about where you stand and who you stand for. Will you be part of the future she proposes led by the rich elite, or stand with those in need of help. 

I think... honestly, I am not entirely sure what James Gray is going for overall. There are elements of class warfare, and something being said about white-privilege and the racial divide. That said, what point James Grey is trying to make is undermined by his storytelling choices. The lasting memory of Armageddon Time is that of a young black kid acting as a functionary in the coming of age of a young white kid. The young black kid has no life, no dimension, he exists to teach a lesson to our main character. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media. 

Movie Review: You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger

You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger (2010) 

Directed by Woody Allen

Written by Woody Allen 

Starring Naomi Watts, Anthony Hopkins, Josh Brolin, Lucy Punch

Release date September 22nd, 2010

Published September 22nd, 2010

Woody Allen has long been a cynic and often a downer, especially in recent years. However, that cynicism as in the underappreciated comedy “Anything Else” or last year's weaker but not bad “Whatever Works” was at least leavened with biting humor. For his latest effort "You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger" Allen has given in to an arrogant cynicism that desperately could use some better jokes.

Gemma Jones is ostensibly the star of "You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger," if only for the fact that she plays the character who is most subject of Allen's contempt, as Helena a woman whose husband of 45 years, Alfie (Anthony Hopkins), has left her. Having become a severe burden to her daughter Sally (Naomi Watts) and her husband Roy (Josh Brolin), they have fobbed Helena off on a fortune teller named Cristal (Pauline Collins) who has become a friend and guru.

Sally meanwhile, has a budding flirtation with her boss played by Antonio Banderas and Roy, struggling as a novelist who can't finish his second book, begins an affair with a neighbor played by Frieda Pinto. And then there is poor, pathetic Alfie who after leaving Helena has taken up with a prostitute named Charmaine (Lucy Punch) who is spending him into the poorhouse and cheating on him even as he professes love for her and wears out his Viagra prescriptions to keep up with her.

In the universe of Woody Allen, Sally, Roy and Alfie are burdened with the knowledge of their longings and sorrows while Helena takes idiot comfort in plans for her afterlife, living again as she has lived in the past, possibly as Cleopatra or some sort of English royalty; what point would there be to a dull past life?

In this universe there is no comfort for the intellectual while the dullard finds peace in her foolishness and is the only character to emerge unscathed. Now, as a fellow non-believer who finds such things as past lives, after-life, fortune tellers and mediums to be mere hokum, I can identify with Mr. Allen's loathing of such things. However, Mr. Allen becomes boorish when he protests the fools without humor as he does in "You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger."

As Mr. Allen wields his bitterness by mocking Helena he seems to lose track or simply pay no mind to the travails of Sally and Roy. Naomi Watts and Josh Brolin play at having had romantic chemistry, a good trait for a couple portraying marital decay, but as the marriage ends and once it is over we are merely taught a lesson in chance that has little humor or interest.

Roy brings about his own moral undoing but it has little to do with his cheating on his wife or falling in love with Ms. Pinto. As for Sally, she has no real moral undoing; she's merely unlucky in love. Neither plot is delivered with much humor or insight; it's likely the mundane nature of Sally's plight is the point of her story but I think if we want mundane we can find plenty of it in our own lives.

Alfie's plot is the only one to generate much of any comic steam and all of that comes from the wonderful performance of Lucy Punch as Charmaine. Ms. Punch is a walking punch line of snapping gum and streetwalker cliché. Her overwrought idiot line reads are almost all jokes and Ms. Punch delivers them with effortless humor. Mr. Hopkins is good as the dazed old timer pretending he's still young and yet realizing that all he really wants is a comfortable chair but his realizations are nothing new.

If you enjoy Woody Allen's brand of cynicism, minus his usual wit then "You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger" is the movie for you. While I am as much a cynic when it comes to religion, the afterlife, mediums, fortune tellers and the like, I try not to bore people with my rationality. Mr. Allen bores away in "You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger" and like meeting the know-it-all at a party you cannot run away to the other side of the room fast enough.

Movie Review: Collide

Collide (2017) 

Directed by Eran Creevy 

Written by F. Scott Frazier 

Starring Nicholas Hoult, Ben Kingsley, Anthony Hopkins, Felicity Jones 

Release Date February 24th, 2017 

Published February 24th, 2017 

“Collide,” starring Nicholas Hoult, Anthony Hopkins and Ben Kingsley has been sitting on a shelf for three years. Do I need to tell you much more about “Collide” than that fact? Okay, fine, movie reviews are required to be more than two lines so I will do my best to discuss the merits of “Collide” but again, if you understand the nature of the Hollywood release schedule, the fact that a movie has sat on a shelf for so long is very, very telling.

“Collide” stars Nicholas Hoult as Casey, an American living in Germany and making a living as a small-time drug dealer. Casey decides to give up drug dealing when he meets and falls in love with Juliette (Felicity Jones), a fellow American expat turned bartender. Things are looking up for the young couple in love until it is revealed that Juliette has a severe movie disease and needs an expensive plot point to save her life.

To get the money for Juliette’s transplant Casey takes a job from Geran (Ben Kingsley), his former drug dealing boss. The job pays just enough to pay for Juliette’s surgery (KISMET!) but it is also very dangerous. Casey and a partner must steal millions of dollars in cocaine from Germany’s biggest drug dealer, Hagen Kahl (Anthony Hopkins). The plan is silly and overstuffed and naturally doesn’t go as planned. Kahl figures out who Casey is, takes Juliette hostage and the stage is set for a lot of shouting into cell phones and car chases only slightly noisier than the shouting.

Speaking of shouting, does Ben Kingsley remember a time when he wasn’t shouting? Once a well thought of character actor, Kingsley has receded well into parody. Many critics, myself included, used to joke about Kingsley simply nabbing paychecks by accepting every role he’s offered. It’s not funny anymore. Sir Ben has morphed from the actor we laughed along with as he hammed his way through “Bloodrayne” or “The Last Legion” to that actor we pity for having lost his touch.

Anthony Hopkins hasn’t quite sunk to Sir Ben’s depths but he is not far off. Hopkins gives Kingsley a run for his money in the not giving a single damn about his performance. Hopkins can still put a bit of sizzle into his hammy monologues but “Collide” contains far too many instances of Hopkins monologuing just to keep himself awake in a scene.

Poor Nicholas Hoult is caught in the crossfire of the senior hams and is rendered bland in comparison. In his desperate attempt to take seriously the silliness he’s given to deliver and endure; Hoult is amiable but wholly defeated. It is Yeoman's work to take seriously the over-complicated silliness of “Collide” and it is hard to fault Hoult, an otherwise handsome and welcome presence, for being tired and overwhelmed.

Full disclosure, “Collide” was delayed because it’s original distributor, Relativity Media, went out of business and not necessarily because it isn’t any good. Of course, if the film were good it likely would have been bought out and released sometime in the last three years. Why the film is in theaters nationwide now is a mystery likely linked to a contractual obligation of some sort.

Movie Review: Beowulf

Beowulf (2007) 

Directed by Robert Zemeckis

Written by Neil Gaiman, Roger Avary 

Starring Ray Winstone, Anthony Hopkins, Angelina Jolie, John Malkovich, Robin Wright Penn

Release Date November 16th, 2007

Published November 16th, 2007

Allow me to admit my bias against Beowulf right here at the begin of my review. I am not a fan of the technology used to bring this literary classic to life. My preference has been and will always be in favor of real, flesh and blood actors over the computer simulations. The entirely CGI approach of director Robert Zemeckis does absolutely nothing for me.

Some find the technology to be mind blowing, I find it to be lifeless, like watching someone else play a video game. The fact is, this technology hasn't impressed me since 1998's breakthrough animated flick Final Fantasy. That film lacked life as well but was a technical revelation that Robert Zemeckis has been chasing ever since.

Zemeckis' Beowulf like his kiddie flick The Polar Express has done little to improve upon the motion capture animation that made Final Fantasy a breakthrough nearly a decade ago. Though some will say that the eyes of the character are more lively and their movements are less herky jerky, I didn't notice the difference. Then again, I'm biased.

Ray Winstone donned the doodads and googahs to bring himself to CGI life as a gym rat looking Beowulf. All rippling muscle and blustery boastfulness, Beowulf comes to this nameless Danish kingdom in order to slay a demon who hates merriment. Each time the good time charlies of the kingdom get together for some music and some mead, the demon appears and tears them limb from limb.

Enter Beowulf and his army of viking-esque conquerors. Taking time from their raping and pillaging to take advantage of the bounty on the demon's head, Beowulf and company stake out the King's (Anthony Hopkins) mead hall and begin a massive party meant to draw the ire of the demon. It works, but when the demon, Grendel (Crispin Glover), arrive he manages to kill half of Beowulf's men.

Beowulf however, does manage to kill the demon and is soon after named the heir to the king's throne. Not before he is once again pressed into demon killing duty to take on Grendel's mother (Angelina Jolie). Beowulf's showdown with Grendel's mother seems like a success but in reality only maintains a long standing curse on the kingdom that Beowulf soon comes to rule as king.

The last act, with Beowulf as an old man taking on one last battle, is the most compelling of the film but by that point I wasn't all that engaged in this videogame writ large. I simply could not find a way inside this cold, impersonal form of filmmaking. It's not just the creepy looking technologically rendered characters but the storytelling gimmicks employed by director Robert Zemeckis and writers Neil Gaiman and Roger Avery.

The story itself plays like a group of middle aged guys trying to relate to their teenage sons by adopting the hip lingo of the day. Imagine your dad using the phrase 'bling bling' and you get my meaning. Beowulf apes the hip action of 300 but with a tin ear toward why teens went for that blood, guts and technology event.

300 succeeded as a hip music video version of history. Beowulf is classic rock to 300's Finger 11. (Is that a hip reference or what? Hey kids?) 

Putting the ugly technology aside Beowulf, as voiced by the great Ray Winstone, is something of a feckless hero. He boasts of killing copious sea monsters, the number of which changes with every telling of his story. He boasts of killing many demons but even the one he does kill isn't nearly as impressive as the story he fabricates about the killing.

Indeed much of the tale of brave Beowulf comes from his own fantastical storytelling. I get that this is supposed to be his torturous character flaw but it turned me off from the first moment and even when his moment of redemption arrives, late in the third act, I wasn't all that moved. Of course, this could be further attributed to the technology of Beowulf. I can't say whether a flesh and blood actor might have made this character more compelling.

This idea that CGI can compete with real flesh and blood actors is absolutely ludicrous. Take a moment to ponder the lead performance of Ray Winstone in Beowulf and juxtapose it against his minor supporting turn in The Departed and there is no contest. Winstone in person in The Departed is far more interesting than any shred of the fake Ray Winstone crafted in Beowulf.

Frankly, my reaction to Winstone in Beowulf is one of embarrassment. I feel bad for this fine actor that he must be subjected to this treatment in Beowulf. That he must undergo CGI plastic surgery to find stardom in mainstream movies is a sad commentary. Ray Winstone is so much more moving in the flesh than he ever could be in rippling CGI muscle.

The supporting characters are even less interesting. Anthony Hopkins bellows his way through the role of the aging king. Robin Wright Penn's Queen is a lovely CGI rendered beauty but something of a wet blanket in the end. Beowulf's men, including the usually terrific Brenden Gleeson, are colorful but are mostly cannon fodder for the demons.

Only Angelina Jolie as Grendel's mother registers beyond the technology. Though she looks like Angelina Jolie rendered in videogame form, this is a videogame I would love to play. Jolie looks gorgeous in her animated nudity, the naughty bits barely covered by a sheen of gold that forever coats her demon self. Her storyline is undercooked and forgettable but Zemeckis can atleast claim to have created the sexiest cartoon since Jessica Rabbit.

Whether that is something to be proud of I will leave you to answer for yourself.

So what is the point of Beowulf? Reading Roger Ebert's review you get the impression that it is something of a satire. I however, saw the film as deathly self serious, for the most part, with a few moments of ill-conceived humor that feel off key and out of place. Take for instance the extended Austin Powers gag that features a naked Beowulf conveniently placed behind any number of gag props to cover his manhood.

Why must Beowulf be nude? A nod to the underwear models of 300? Maybe, but I don't know for sure. All I know is that Beowulf is quite uncomfortably nude and taking part in scenes that Jerry Seinfeld would no doubt classify as bad naked, as opposed to the Angelina Jolie nude scenes which are entirely good naked in the most gratuitous fashion.

I say nude and yet we are talking about a PG 13 movie. Curious? Somehow the MPAA classifies animated nudity as not being nudity. Of course with Beowulf's little Beowulf conveniently hidden behind a series of props, we have no real test of the MPAA's stomach on the issue of animated nudity. Jolie too is conveniently covered with dripping gold over her naughty bit. This must mean something to the oddballs at the MPAA.

Stranger than the films approach to nudity, and the MPAA's standards for such, is the attitude taken toward violence in the film and by the standard setters. Beowulf is exceptionally bloody and violent in the same blood spurting vein as 300. Yet, without the CGI nakedness, 300 is rated R and Beowulf is PG-13. Beowulf is covered in blood, heads ripped from bodies, limbs and flesh copiously torn and yet the MPAA never feels as if 13 year old children should be protected? What then were they so concerned about with 300?

I must say that I love the kink of CGI nudity and violence messing with the stale minds of the MPAA censors. That they must render a decision on such utter ridiculousness as the sight of animated boobs is terrifically funny.

That I have spent the past few paragraphs discussing things about Beowulf that have little to do with the quality of the film itself should give you a good sense of how little I cared for it overall. I have no interest in discussing the entertainment value of the action or my reactions to the climactic scenes or to the 3D rendering, because my reactions weren't nearly as interesting as the jokey elements on the periphery of this self serious CGI cartoon.

I'm biased. I want real, flesh and blood actors and will accept no substitute. Like the much reviled Jar Jar Binks, Beowulf is an impressive work of technology but he remains lifeless and unmoving to me. Ray Winstone, Anthony Hopkins and Angelina Jolie do more with the glint in their eyes and the lines of their faces than could ever be captured by a computer. Acting is a physical profession. It is a mind, body, soul profession that communicates emotions and ideas beyond mere words.

The lifeless videogame characters of Beowulf, whether rendered in 3D or flat 2d, can never compel as well as a real life, flesh and blood actor. This is the failure of Beowulf and any film that follows the ludicrous idea that our stars can be replaced with computer chips.

Movie Review: Bobby

Bobby (2006)

Directed by Emilio Estevez 

Written by Emilio Estevez 

Starring Laurence Fishburne, Anthony Hopkins, Helen Hunt, Lindsay Lohan, Demi Moore, Elijah Woods

Release Date November 17th, 2006

Published November 17th, 2006 

For most of its 2 hour and 10 minute runtime Bobby is a bad movie. The dialogue stilted. Extraneous characters crowd each other for screen time and lame montages remind us that the film is set in the 1960's, as if the death of Bobby Kennedy weren't enough of a reminder. That said, the last 20 minutes of Bobby take on the emotional equivalent of a giant boulder rolling down a hill. Somehow after all of the bad dialogue and bad characters, we find ourselves invested in the tragedy of it all.

Most of it is our own emotion about how Bobby Kennedy may have changed the world had not Sirhan Sirhan changed it in an entirely different way. There is no denying however, that what writer-director Emilio Estevez does with these last 20 minutes is powerful, affecting work. If only he could have done that with the whole film, I could actually recommend it.

On June 6th 1968 a joyous crowd of supporters and hotel employees awaited the arrival of Bobby Kennedy, the man many believed would be the next president of the United States. Kennedy established his California headquarters at Los Angeles' famed Ambassador Hotel and it was expected that night he would be there to celebrate his victory in the California Democratic primary. Indeed Bobby Kennedy did win the primary but moments after delivering his victory speech, Bobby joined his brother John in the annals of history, gunned down by an assassins bullet.

Emilio Estevez's Bobby is not about Bobby Kennedy and is only tangentially about the assassination. For the most part Bobby is a reassembling of the moment in 1968 when Kennedy was killed. Calling together a Love Boat sized cast of stars, Emilio Estevez wastes much time finding something for everyone to be doing rather than relating them all to the death of Bobby Kennedy.

The cast is far too large to detail who everyone is, Estevez himself can barely make time to give name to each of his many characters, better still to list just some of the Fantasy Island cast of Bobby. Sharon Stone, Lindsey Lohan, William . Macy, Nick Cannon, Heather Graham, Helen Hunt, Martin Sheen, Laurence Fishburne, Joshua Jackson, Shia Le Beouf, Ashton Kutcher, Demi Moore, Anthony Hopkins, Christian Slater, Harry Belafonte and even a role for director Estevez as well.

With a cast this large; all Estevez can do is create a revolving door where characters are brought on screen at random and quickly shuffled off before we get to know to much about them. Many of the minor subplots created for these stars could, with great ease, be excised with no damage to the movie, and some edits would even improve the movie.

Take for instance Ashton Kutcher who plays a drug dealer who sells LSD to a couple of Kennedy volunteers. The LSD montage that follows is like a reminder that these things took place in the sixties. In case we may have forgotten, Nixon was the enemy, vietnam was bad and an LSD trip is always accompanied by psychedelic rock music and goofy camera angles. These scenes could be cut from the film and the only change to the movie would be removing Kutcher's name from the movie poster.

The same could be said of Kutcher's real life paramour Demi Moore. Moore plays a fading caberet star who performs in the Hotel night club. Her function is allegedly that she will be the one to introduce Bobby Kennedy that night. However, when the scene comes, Moore is nowhere to be found. Estevez uses historical footage of Kennedy taking the podium and delivering his speech.

Moore and Estevez's own role as her husband in the film are two more characters who could be easily eliminated to clear up some of the clutter that is the cast of Bobby.

The one actor who gets enough screentime and invests that time well is Freddie Rodriguez. The former Six Feet Under star plays Jose a young busboy who had planned on seeing Don Drysdale set the consecutive shutout record that night when he was told he was needed at work. When Bobby Kennedy was lead through the kitchen he came face to face with Jose and suddenly next to him, but unseen by him, a man with a gun. As Kennedy lay on the floor Jose is their comforting him.

The real Jose was named Juan Romero. He was just 17 years old, which makes the 31 year old Rodriguez an odd choice for the role. However, verisimilitude is not a big part of Bobby. Estevez changes the names of many of the people involved including those of the people who were also shot in the spray of bullets fired by Sirhan Sirhan. Why Estevez chose drama over historical accuracy is curious but inconsequential.

The best thing about Bobby is the ending of the film which manages to corral a few of the films many extranneous characters and turn a few of them into important players. Elijah Wood plays a newly married young man who ends up in the kitchen near Kennedy when he is shot. Helen Hunt as the trophy wife of Martin Sheen also ends up in that kitchen. Heather Graham and Joy Bryant in the ballroom deliver strong reactions. And Nick Cannon as a Kennedy volunteer with dreams of a job in the White House captures the emotion of the moment just after Kennedy was taken from the hotel.

These characters finally take on meaning as they become our emotional stand ins. The overwhelming emotions they express allow us identification and the opportunity to share in the grief of this history changing death. The reactions of these characters are played beneath the audio of one of Robert Kennedy's wonderful speeches about the devastation of violence and the promise of the future.

Is the movie cheating a little using Kennedy's speech to comment on his own assassination rather than crafting something of it's own? Yeah, maybe, but it works. So does the few moments of historic footage of Kennedy greeting throngs of people who lined up to see him wherever he went. Audio from his many speeches open and close the film making you wish that Estevez had simply made a documentary of this footage and audio rather than attempting to remake Crash with Bobby Kennedy.

Crash is indeed the template for Bobby. An expansive cast, plots that revolve and collide with one another and a moment of devastating connection. The difference is that Crash is more focused and far better written than Bobby. Crash writer-director Paul Haggis managed to place his cast in a context that was at once believable and dramatic. Emilio Estevez fails to create characters and situations that exist beyond types and what they represent of 60's culture. There is no emotional context until the last 20 minutes when the death of Bobby Kennedy draws some but not all of these characters into the same movie.

The ending of Bobby is undeniably powerful, but, for the most part, most of Bobby is simply a bad movie. Put in all the starpower you want, you can't magazine cover your way into a good movie. Bobby is stilted and awkward and meandering and despite the great ending, and the terrific work of Freddie Rodriguez, Bobby is far too messy and unfocused for me to give it a pass.

Movie Review: All the King's Men

All the King's Men (2006) 

Directed by Steven Zaillian

Written by Steven Zaillian 

Starring Sean Penn, Jude Law, Kate Winslet, Anthony Hopkins, James Gandolfini, Mark Ruffalo, Patricia Clarkson, Jackie Earl Haley

Release Date September 22nd, 2006

Published September 22nd, 2006 

In late 1930's Louisiana writer Robert Penn Warren fell under the spell of the charismatic, larger than life Governor, Huey P. Long. Long's passionate, man of the people rhetoric, his complicated almost amoral lifestyle and his tragic death, were all the inspiration Warren needed to write his masterpiece novel All The Kings Men.

The book won the Pulitzer Prize and was adapted to the big screen in 1949 where it went on to win Best Picture. More than 50 years later All The Kings Men has once again been adapted to the big screen and while it features a fiery performance from Sean Penn, the film is a catastrophic failure. Made with the intention of winning an Oscar, the film could be a parody of the corruption of its own creation with Sean Penn's Willie Stark character standing in for greedy producers eager for awards glory.

Willie Stark (Sean Penn) was a true man of the people. His first foray into politics was fighting to make sure the local school was built by the best contractors with the best materials and not by friends of the local politicians in his small corner of Louisiana. When his fight failed his career as a politician seemed to have ended with it but when the school collapsed and four kids were killed, Willie Stark went from down on his luck salesman to crusader for truth and justuce and soon a potential candidate for Governor.

Reporter Jack Burden (Jude Law) was among the first to see Willie's man of the people earnestness and be struck by the rarity of an honest politician. He first met Willie during the fight for the school but became forever entwined with Willie after the school collapse and the beginning of Willie's improbable run for Governor.

Willie's political education began on that first run for governor when he finds that he is merely a patsy candidate meant to divide the electorate and help a more prominent candidate win office. His disillusionment turns to determination and by the time of the next election Willie knows how this corrupt game is played and sweeps into office a conquering hero of incorruptibility.

Of course, Willie was quite corrupt by this time and once in office with the mandate of his people his corruption comes to full flower. Jack Burden, having given up journalism, joins Willie's staff as a top political fire fighter and while he is hurt by Willie's fall from grace, he is merely a witness. That begins to change when politics calls for Jack to use his influence on an old friend of his family, Judge Irwin (Anthony Hopkins). Willie needs Judge Irwin on his side to avoid impeachment and it falls to Jack to find dirt on the man he once considered a father figure.

Jack's conflicting loyalty to Willie and to Judge Irwin is the thrust of the final act of All The Kings Men a surprisingly lackluster drama from writer-director Steven Zaillian. With pretensions of greatness, Zaillian crafts All The Kings Men as if just making the movie were enough to warrant huzzahs all around. The film is so full of its own value that James Horner's score is like a thundering Greek chorus of 'see how important we all are' hyperbole.

The problems with All The Kings Men extend from Zaillian's lackadaisical direction to the cast of all stars who are often just not suited for the material. The most glaring example is Jude Law who, as Jack Burden the movie's narrator and dramatic center, struggles with keeping his natural good looks and charm out of the role of a burnout cynic and struggles, far more mightily, with a brutal Louisiana drawl. Law's Jack Burden is a cypher, milling about the movie searching for a purpose beyond merely providing exposition.

Jack is the audience's eyes and ears and yet he seems to miss so much. As Willie Stark is becoming more and more corrupt we want to see the smoky back rooms and the shady deals. Instead we are stuck with Jack and his dull subplot involving old friends played by Kate Winslet, also poorly cast as a Louisiana aristocrat, and Mark Ruffalo. Though the subplot becomes important late in the film, its relevance early on is poorly established and distracting.

Regardless of the films many flaws Sean Penn is electrifying in All The Kings Men. His fiery passion explodes in fits of righteous rage that are at times inspiring and lamentable. As he was on the rise Willie Stark's outrage made him seem as if he indeed could end corruption in all government. However, once elected and educated in how the gears of politics turn, Willie's inflammatory rhetoric became cover for his own corruption. This is the one effective element of an otherwise disappointing melodrama.

All The Kings Men boasts a cast of respected actors and Oscar winners, including writer-director Zaillian himself, yet somehow all the starpower on the screen and behind the scenes never manages to turn the movie into anything more than an extravagant demonstration of how much a studio will pay to win an Oscar. All The Kings Men is like a machine crafted to win awards with little regard to whether it was deserving of any honor.

Sean Penn is passionate to the point of almost eating the scenery but his fiery oratory skills are the only reason to see All The Kings Men an otherwise lifeless excercise in failure. Remakes are often mere reflections of the original and this new version of All The Kings Men is a perfect example of reflected glory. The movie takes the shine of the respected work of writer Robert Penn Warren and the Oscar winning 1949 film and simply mirrors it.

The cache of the original glory and an all star cast cannot hide the slapdash quality of Steven Zaillian's All The Kings Men, a movie machine cynically crafted for critical applause.

Movie Review: The Wolfman

The Wolfman (2010) 

Directed by Joe Johnston 

Written by Andrew Kevin Walker, David Self 

Starring Emily Blunt, Benicio Del Toro, Anthony Hopkins, Hugo Weaving 

Release Date February 12th, 2010 

Published February 11th, 2010 

Andrew Kevin Walker is one of the most daring and dark screenwriters Hollywood has ever known. As famous as his script for Seven is, Walker may be known better as the most rewritten screenwriter in history. Rewrites of Walker screenplays include 8Mm, Sleepy Hollow and countless un-produced properties from Superman to X-Men.

His work has been criticized for being too dark and violent for mainstream audiences, despite Seven having made more than 300 million dollars worldwide. It was with this in mind that Walker went to work on a remake of The Wolfman in 2007. Today, The Wolfman is ready for the big screen and, no surprise, Walker's work has once again been rewritten into a compromised, mainstream ready version.

The Wolfman 2010 remixes Lon Chaney's classic creature with modern day special effects wizardry. It is directed by Jumanji and Jusassic Park 3 director Joe Johnston as a wild ride of techno factory dreariness. Benicio Del Toro takes the lead role of Lawrence Talbot an actor raised in America but born in Wales.

Lawrence happens to be touring in England when his brother Ben is mauled to death by some unknown creature. Ben's fiancee Gwen (Emily Blunt) informs Lawrence of his brother's death and calls him back to his childhood home where Gwen is staying with Lawrence's estranged father Sir Jon Talbot (Sir Anthony Hopkins). Father and son parted ways when Lawrence was a child and witnessed the aftermath of his mother's suicide by cutting her own throat.

Lawrence spent years in a mental health facility before going overseas. His return is warm enough for a father who put his son in a psych ward but the undercurrents of discord are resonant in their halting conversations. Lawrence gets on far better with Gwen whose grief rather quickly gives way to a sad flirtatiousness that Lawrence welcomes.

Unfortunately, the romance has to be put on hold as Lawrence searches for the beast that murdered his brother. The townsfolk blame a dancing bear owned by local gypsies but Lawrence, visiting the gypsies, encounters a woman, Maleva (Geraldine Chaplin) who has a different and far more terrifying theory: a Werewolf did it.

Lawrence has no time to be skeptical of Maleva as soon the camp is overrun by villagers and then the angry, ravenous beast himself. Lawrence chases the beast into the forest and is bitten. When his wounds heal startlingly fast there is only one conclusion, he will become a beast himself.

While Lawrence ponders his fate, Inspector Abberline (Hugo Weaving) arrives and with suspicions cast on Lawrence he aims to keep a close eye on him.

The plot puzzle that emerges in The Wolfman fits together well enough. Sadly, director Joe Johnston's hyper-kinetic style does not seem to fit a story that thrives on atmosphere and heightened emotions. Johnston cuts to quickly, whirls and tilts his camera and relies on too many cheeseball effects scenes for the gothic atmosphere to set in.

Watch The Wolfman and you find that stars Benicio Del Toro and Sir Anthony Hopkins are making one movie while director Joe Johnston seems to be making another. Del Toro and Hopkins halt and suspect and busily feel each other out as fits a movie of a slower, more deliberate pace. There are important father/son issues they hope to seed into the story. Director Johnston leaves them no time for that however.

Johnston's charge is to make a fast paced monster movie with modern tech and modern gore. Neither approach is wrong really but the two together are ill-fit and the film falters for a lack of a singular vision. That vision likely could have been writer Andrew Kevin Walker’s whose script the cast signed on for and then saw rewritten when director Johnston came on board by the more by the more mainstream horror writer David Self (The Haunting, Thirteen Days).

The failure to meld two visions into one movie is the failure of The Wolfman and yet it is hard to call the whole film a disaster. Makeup and effects legend Rick Baker's work on Del Toro, what little we see of it in the final CGI heavy edit, is solid as is the work of Del Toro who cuts a strong figure as the titular Wolfman.

It's unfortunate that once again Andrew Kevin Walker finds his work compromised into a by-committee, safe for the simpleton mainstream crowd horror movie. Hollywood studios it seems are the first to underestimate the brains and taste of the majority of audiences and that is part of the downfall of The Wolfman.

Movie Review: Alexander

Alexander (2004) 

Directed by Oliver Stone 

Written by Oliver Stone, Laeta Kalogridis 

Starring Colin Farrell, Angelina Jolie, Val Kilmer, Jared Leto, Rosario Dawson, Anthony Hopkins

Release Date November 24th, 2004

Published November 23rd, 2004 

If Aaron Spelling had made a movie about Alexander The Great, it might sound a lot like the one Oliver Stone has just pushed into theaters: A breathy, overcooked melodrama of hot-blooded hardbodies falling in and out of bed in between fighting wars. Oliver Stone's Alexander is a big budget bio-pic that would feel more at home as a trashy TV movie than as a potential Oscar nominee.

Some 300 years before the birth of Christ, one man ruled most of planet Earth before his 32nd birthday. Alexander the Great, the son of King Phillip of Macedonia (Val Kilmer) and Queen Olympias (Angelina Jolie), was never supposed to be king. Because of a feud between his mother and father, Alexander was caught in the midst of a power struggle that leads to his father's murder and suspicion that his mother may have arranged the killing. 

Regardless of how he rose to power, once Alexander took power, he lead his charges to the ends of the world conquering and civilizing all barbarian tribes along the way. His story is marked with the deaths of thousands, but history is written by the victors which may be why Alexander is remembered as a benevolent conqueror who maintained palaces and people in power even after defeating their military forces on the battlefield.

Watching Stone's take on the life of Alexander would leave you to believe that Alexander's bloodiest battles were with his own top advisors, none of whom shared his vision of Asia as part of the Macedonian empire. Alexander's men simply wanted the riches of Asia to take back to Greece or the kingdom of Babylon, but Alexander -- a regular 4th century Jesse Jackson -- wanted a rainbow coalition of subjects who would help him rule the world and mix all the races of man; a regular united colors of Benetton style conqueror. 

Yes, according to Stone, Alexander was a champion of civil rights who even took a Persian wife, Roxana (Rosario Dawson), to placate his new Persian subjects. Alexander was also a champion of gay rights as well often sharing a same-sex canoodle with slaves of various ethnicities and sharing an especially close relationship with one of his top generals, Hephaistos (Jared Leto). The two soldiers never consummate the relationship on screen but it's clear from the dewy-eyed gazes and quivery-voiced declarations that if it wouldn't hurt the box office they might have hopped into bed.

Colin Farrell has played sexually confused man-child before, in the indie A Home At The End Of The World. However, there is a big difference between a broken home teenager searching for a family and an identity and the man who united the kingdoms of man before his 32nd birthday. If you want to play the character gay, that's fine, but do it with more depth than whiny schoolgirl stares and grandiloquent speeches whose only weight comes from the fact that they are delivered with an accent.

What happened to the fire that Colin Farrell used to carry him through his best performance in Tigerland? The fire that made him a logical choice for mega-stardom? Somewhere in the making of Alexander, that fire was replaced by the petulant longings of a dewy-eyed manchild. With his childish mood swings, it's hard to believe that this guy could have conquered his mother’s bedroom let alone the known world. I don't need Alexander to be John Wayne but a little butching up couldn't hurt. 

As for his mother, Jolie's performance provides the film’s only entertaining moments; not for her eloquent line readings or smoldering presence but rather the campy Joan Collins-style overacting she employs. Her every scene reminded me of the behind the scenes scheming that Collins made so deliciously goofy on Dynasty. Kilmer is no John Forsythe but he can bite into the scenery with the best of them and here he's a regular Jeremy Irons, absolutely chewing the walls.

Oliver Stone has always been prone to excess, but even by his standards, Alexander is a little much. His ego is way out in front of his storytelling here and what should be an epic feels more like an exercise of Stone's ability to raise large amounts of studio capital to feed his massive ego. A true disaster, Alexander will be remembered on Oscar night only as the subject of one of Chris Rock's biting monologue punchlines. 

Movie Review The Human Stain

The Human Stain (2003) 

Directed by Robert Benton 

Written by Nicholas Meyer 

Starring Anthony Hopkins, Nicole Kidman, Ed Harris, Gary Sinise 

Release Date October 31st, 2003 

Published November 4th, 2003 

This is truly one of the worst titles you've ever seen. It's made worse by the fact that it is only part metaphor and does in fact refer to the gutter-minded definition your so ashamed to ascribe it. In his 2000 novel The Human Stain, writer Phillip Roth makes it clear that his title refers to that infamous blue dress owned by Monica Lewinsky. Yes there is a deeper metaphorical meaning to the title for the books characters but it's the Monica definition that people come away with and in so doing, forget that there is a rather compelling drama behind that title.

For the film adaptation of Roth's novel, director Robert Benton may have been better off without the literal title. The film is all about the metaphor with little mention of Roth's contempt for the Clinton impeachment and to his book’s first act plot point. You shouldn't judge a book (or movie) by it's title but in this case it's hard not to. So many people will avoid seeing this film because of that title that it renders the whole thing meaningless.

Coleman Silk (Sir Anthony Hopkins) has, in his time as Dean of Classics at Berkshire College, turned the sleepy small town institution into the shadow of an Ivy League University. In so doing he has made many friends and many more enemies. Therefore, it's not surprising then that when he makes one seemingly minor mistake on the eve of his retirement that his enemies seize upon it to get rid of him early.

Coleman's mistake was referring to a pair of students who never showed up in his class as "spooks.” Coleman's reference was to the ghostly definition of the word but because the missing students were African-Americans a complaint was filed and some people seized on the other definition of the word spooks as a racial epithet. And so it is that the very people Coleman himself hired at the college that shove him out the door.

The controversy is ironic because Coleman himself is African-American though you would not know it to look at him. He has for most of his 71 years passed himself off as Jewish and because of his light skin has never had to admit to anyone he is black. Coleman never told his wife of more than 40 years or his colleagues at the college or his closest friend a writer, Nathan Zuckerman (Gary Sinise), who after Coleman's death must piece his life together from the scraps of lies and half truths he left behind.

Coleman's death is another great source of controversy. After quitting his job, losing his wife to an embolism and becoming a pariah in his small town, Coleman takes up a scandalous affair with Faunia Farley (Nicole Kidman) a woman half his age, divorced and working as a janitor at the college. Faunia's ex-husband Les (Ed Harris) is a Vietnam veteran and highly unstable.

The situation that Coleman has placed himself in is one that is obviously dangerous. It's a situation that someone of his dignity and intelligence should never find himself in, as his friends including Nathan and his Lawyer Nelson Primus (Clark Gregg) remind him constantly. However as Faunia tells him when they first meet, action is the enemy of thought. Coleman acts without thinking allowing lust to overcome logic. Whether or not Coleman and Faunia can achieve something beyond lust is one of the film’s central questions.

Parallel to the main love story is Coleman's history. Flashbacks take us back 50 years to when Coleman (played in the past by newcomer Wentworth Miller) first decided his life would be easier if lived as a white Jew. While attending school in New York City, Coleman meets a beautiful Midwestern blonde named Steena Paulson (Jacinda Barrett). Steena has no idea that Coleman is African-American, she assumes he is Jewish which explains his ethnic looks. It seems like true love but when Coleman brings Steena home to meet his mother, he gets his first lesson in why his life might be easier if he pretended he was someone else.

The backstory is actually far more interesting than the central love story. Wentworth Miller and Jacinda Barrett light up the screen with a fiery chemistry. Ms. Barrett is particularly surprising as she pulls off the wide-eyed innocence of a mid twentieth century Midwesterner. Until now she has been cast as sexpots, typecast from her time as a one the over-sexed simpletons on MTV's The Real World (she was in the London cast).

Of course, Sir Anthony Hopkins and Nicole Kidman make strong impressions, they are terrific actors. Their plot however is astoundingly dreary. Any momentary light that shines in their relationship is punished and it's only in the flashbacks to Coleman and Steena, before she dumped him, that we get any reprieve from the constant onslaught of misery.

Director Robert Benton has a knack for capturing older male characters preparing to conquer their old age. It was Benton who directed Paul Newman to his best late years performance in Nobody's Fool. Here he does well by Sir Anthony Hopkins by giving the legendary actor his first romantic lead role. Unfortunately, as great as Mr. Hopkins is, I never believed he and Wentworth Miller were playing the same character. After leaving his job at the college Coleman's connection to his past is left only as an ironic passage in his life. The film shifts it's focus to his relationship with Faunia which has nothing to do with race. It's an entirely different plot.

As for the allusion to the Lewinsky scandal, that was far more the book’s concern than the films. It is referred on more than one occasion and as in the book it is brought up as an example of political correctness run amok. It runs parallel to the ridiculousness of Coleman's own persecution for his racist remark that wasn't racist. Clinton's indiscretion was bad but not impeachable. 

The novel used Coleman and Faunia's many problems to magnify why Clinton-Lewinsky was such a meaningless endeavor, the movie makes the same reference and both seem heavy-handed to those of us who already realize what a bunch of trumped up ridiculousness Clinton-Lewinsky was. Of course issues of race, and death and family are more important than whether or not Bill Clinton got a BJ in the Oval Office. We know that! Thankfully the film doesn't linger on the point.

I would have liked to see more about Coleman growing up. Pretending to be white while coming of age in the 50's and 60’s with the rise of the Civil Rights movement, that has more inherent drama than any semi-controversial small town May-December romance ever could. Someday someone should revisit Roth's novel and extrapolate on the ideas put forth about Coleman's youth. That sounds like a movie I would like to see.

Movie Review Red Dragon

Red Dragon (2002) 

Directed by Bret Ratner 

Written by Ted Tally

Starring Anthony Hopkins, Edward Norton, Ralph Fiennes, Harvey Keitel, Emily Watson, Mary Louise Parker, Phillip Seymour Hoffman

Release Date October 4th, 2002 

Published October 3rd, 2002 

In 1991, The Silence Of The Lambs captured pop culture with a character more frightening than any horror movie cliché. Dr. Hannibal Lecter, as portrayed by Sir Anthony Hopkins, embodied intelligence that was as frightening as any weapon Jason Voorhees ever used.

With Jodie Foster’s Clarice Starling as the perfect foil, Hopkins tore into the psyche of moviegoers dissecting their fears the way he did his victims. The style and wit of Hannibal Lecter thrust the character off the screen and into pop culture. Even the lame sequel Hannibal, which turned the character into a horror movie monster, couldn’t completely destroy Hannibal Lecter.

Now with the release of Red Dragon, Anthony Hopkins has a vehicle that restores the character to the elements that made it iconic; the gray jumpsuit, the glass cage and the menacing intelligence. If only director Brett Ratner had the same skill with the remaining cast and story of Red Dragon, it could have been the equal of the original. As it is, Red Dragon is a solid but brutal by-the-numbers thriller with one of those endings that just makes you shake your head and wish they would have quit while they were ahead.

As the credits roll it is 1980 and Dr. Hannibal Lecter is a well respected forensic psychologist, enjoying the symphony and entertaining guests with his unique culinary skills. In a scene written by Lambs screenwriter Ted Tally, Hopkins teases the audience with the fate of a missing symphony musician being discussed by Dr. Lecter’s dinner guests. After dinner FBI agent Will Graham (Edward Norton), arrives at Lecter’s door to discuss a case that Lecter is consulting on. In yet another very well written scene, Norton and Hopkins match wits as Graham slowly realizes the friendly doctor is actually his suspect.

The capture of Hannibal Lecter is merely the opening act of Red Dragon, the meat of the story is Grant’s search for a serial killer dubbed by the media as The Tooth Fairy, for his penchant to bite his victims. The killer's method is simple, he stalks a family 'til the night of a full moon when he attacks, killing husbands and children and raping the mothers. The killer breaks all of the mirrors in the home using the glass as a weapon and placing it in the eyes of his victims. As Will investigates he realizes that he can’t get inside this case without help and is forced to turn to Dr. Lecter for advice. As the conversations between Lecter and Graham proceed, Lecter takes an interest in The Tooth Fairy and finds the interest to be mutual as the two killers trade messages in a tabloid personals column.

The logistics of Lecter’s being able to place an ad from his jail cell is one of a number of logical leaps by director Brett Ratner. Others include Graham’s finding of clues other investigators couldn’t, not an unusual trait for an FBI expert except that the evidence is as obvious as an episode of CSI. Those factual inconsistencies aside, the characters in Red Dragon are smart and engaging enough to carry the viewers over the logical rough spots.

As The Tooth Fairy, Ralph Fienes returns to the type of character acting that won him an Oscar for Schindler’s List. Portraying both the killer's depraved brutality and his sensitive sadness, Fiennes almost earns the audience's sympathy, especially after he begins a tentative relationship with a blind coworker named Reba, played by fellow Oscar nominee Emily Watson. Since Reba can’t see him, he is comfortable with her. She can’t see the scar on his lip he is so ashamed of, the scar that drives him to destroy every mirror he sees. Reba knows the guy is odd but she has no idea he is a sought after serial killer. There is an amazing sweetness to the relationship that is leavened by Tooth Fairy’s twisted insanity. When Reba isn’t around he argues with his imaginary master, the Red Dragon, over whether or not to kill her.

Rounding out this amazing cast is Philip Seymour Hoffman as a sleazy tabloid journalist who Graham uses to tease Tooth Fairy into showing himself. The plan backfires resulting in one of the more shocking and memorable scenes in the film. The cast also includes Harvey Keitel as Graham’s boss and Mary Louise Parker, greatly underused as Graham’s wife.

Never one to take much notice of film score I must say how impressed I was with the work of Danny Elfman. While at times the score employs cheesy horror film screeches, most of the score is deep bass and ornamental horns that give each scene sonic depth. The score is effective and memorable and vital to the film's tone. Also impressive is Dante Spinotti’s cinematography which is most notable for how mundane it is. Never getting in the way, the lighting is stylish without being overbearing and the film's brutality and violence is given a realistic feel by Spinotti’s camerawork.

Give director Brett Ratner credit for working with talented people, unfortunately his own talent isn’t as well pronounced. Ratner’s direction is a heavy handed crowd pleasing style that pushes aside artistic touches in favor of manipulating the audience with violence and manufactured suspense. Especially overwrought is the ending, yet another case of false ending overkill. Had the director stopped 15 minutes earlier the film may have ended in a more tragic and poetic way. However Ratner has some very obvious setups that need to be paid off. You know those scenes that seem to have no bearing on the story but you know they have to pay off at some point? Red Dragon ends with two of those scenes.

And then there is Anthony Hopkins, who has said this will be the last we see of him as Hannibal Lecter. Hopkins’s performance is Oscar Worthy, he hits every note perfectly with wit and menace. There has never before and will likely never again be a killer more fascinating than Hannibal Lecter. Red Dragon gives the character the send off he deserves.

Despite its shortcomings, the thrilling suspense of the majority of the film and the stellar cast make Red Dragon easy to recommend.

Movie Review: Bad Company

Bad Company (2002) 

Directed by Joel Schumacher

Written by Jason Richman 

Starring Chris Rock, Anthony Hopkins, Gabriel Macht

Release Date June 7th, 2002

Published June 6th, 2002 

Anyone who has ever written a screenplay knows one of the hardest parts is coming up with a title. Back in 2000 Jerry Bruckheimer thought that when he bankrolled a mismatched, fish out of water, buddy, action comedy that the film had a perfect title. That title was Black Sheep. Bruckheimer had forgotten that just three years earlier Chris Farley and David Spade starred in a god-awful comedy of the same title. So the title was changed, however, the new title now seems just as curious. 

Bad Company is the title of at least a dozen films, one of which was a spy movie made in 1990 starring Laurence Fishburne and Ellen Barkin. Curiously that film is just like the new Bad Company, about CIA agents. Of course the fact that I have spent the first few paragraphs of this review writing about the title of the film should indicate how I felt about this latest Bad Company.

Chris Rock stars in dual roles, the first being an undercover CIA agent who is killed in the former Czech Republic in an arms deal gone bad. The second role is that of the CIA agent’s estranged twin brother Jake Hayes. After his twin brother’s death, Jake is recruited by the CIA to replace him and complete the arms deal. Jake is not surprisingly reluctant to team with the CIA and his brother’s former partner Oakes (Sir Anthony Hopkins). After finances are discussed, Jake eagerly takes up his brother’s cause.

This, of course leads to one of those typical fish out of water sequences where the low class character has to learn to be high class and do so in very little time. Jake needs to know which fork to use at a fancy dinner and needs to learn how to dress, walk and speak. It's a scene cribbed from a dozen other formula fish out of water comedies and not improved upon here. 

Once Jake is ready he is taken to the Czech Republic to do the deal, but wouldn't you know it, the same guys who killed his brother are already waiting for Jake and the CIA and the deal goes bad. The nuclear weapon that was the subject of the deal is stolen and moved to New York City, and somehow Jake's girlfriend is kidnapped. I'm sure there was a good reason for how the bad guys figured out Jake wasn't his brother but I was so bored with Bad Company by this point I didn't care.

It's not surprising to find this formula swill was directed by Joel Schumacher, the king of formula swill. (I should note my still simmering bitterness towards the man who destroyed the Batman series). What is surprising is seeing two actors as talented as Sir Anthony Hopkins and Chris Rock in such a conventional film. From the script to the screen, I can't imagine they couldn't see how formulaic and trite this material was. 

Rock deserves a lot of credit for going off the script as often as he does, providing the only solace from the lame formula with bits taken from his standup act and his natural wit. Sir Anthony Hopkins on the other hand makes it clear that he is merely picking up a check sleepwalking through the entire film, especially it's lamest of all ending. 

It would be very easy for me to blame Joel Schumacher for this formula trash but the real fault lies with Jerry Bruckheimer. He after all is the one who keeps financing this supposedly crowd pleasing, screen tested trash. Bruckheimer knows formula swill because he and his late partner Don Simpson invented it.

Movie Review: Fracture

Fracture (2007) 

Directed by Gregory Hoblit

Written by Daniel Pyne, Glenn Gers

Starring Ryan Gosling, Anthony Hopkins, David Straithairn, Rosamund Pike, Embeth Davidtz, Cliff Curtis, Billy Burke, Fiona Shaw 

Release Date April 20th, 2007

Published 19th, 2007

There is plenty of Oscar related gravitas to go around on the new thriller Fracture. Star Anthony Hopkins won an Oscar for Silence of the Lambs. His young co-star Ryan Gosling is fresh off of his first nomination for Half Nelson and David Straithairn isn't long from his Best actor nomination for Good Night and Good Luck. With all of that Oscar gold shining  it could be easy to miss how shallow and unworthy a movie like Fracture is.

This movie of the week, sub-Law & Order-CSI, thriller wastes a group of great actors on a plot full of minor cracks and imperfections or fractures if you will.

Willy Beachum (Ryan Gosling) has one foot out the door. Having just landed a big paycheck; corporate law gig; Willy is leaving behind the district attorney's office and his 100% conviction rate. He just has one case left on the docket and it looks like a slam dunk. A wealthy older man, Ted Crawford (Anthony Hopkins), has attempted to murder his much younger wife (Embeth Davidtz). Crawford confessed to shooting her. The police on the scene found the gun in his hand. They were the only people in the house. This guy is guilty.

So how can this guy Ted plead not guilty? And why did he decide to represent himself in court. If Willy weren't already out the door on his way to that new job; he might have asked these important questions and maybe he wouldn't have been ambushed in court and made to look like a fool when it's revealed that the lead cop on the case, detective Rob Nunnally (Billy Burke), the man who took the confession and found the murder weapon, was sleeping with the victim.

Now, a case that should have been a slam dunk; is now a case that could cost Willy his career.

With the Oscar pedigreed cast and a complicated thriller plot, Fracture should work. Unfortunately, director Gregory Hoblit and writers Daniel Pyne Glen Gers can't get out of the way of these remarkable actors. Placing them in an untenable maze of cop and lawyer show garbage, Fracture unfolds like an average CSI or Law & Order episode, only less believable.

Despite a plot that betrays him, Ryan Gosling turns in a surprisingly good performance. Watching him work is like watching a young Newman or Redford as they came into their own as actors. Gosling has the looks and the brains of those legends and most importantly that classic smolder of a leading man. There is a scene in Fracture with Gosling and Rosamund Pike who plays his very brief love interest. They meet for the first time at an opera and sitting down the aisle from one another; Gosling gives Pike a look that has more heat than your average sex scene. It's a look that only a great leading man could give.

Anthony Hopkins can't help but be entertaining but in Fracture he seems a little more tired than we've ever seen him. Sleepwalking through this underwhelming plot' Hopkins falls back on a gleem in his eye and a forced creepy smile to sell this malevolent character. He also has Hannibal Lecter to fall back on and there are plenty of laconic Lecter-isms in Ted Crawford. Hopkins is still watchable but there is a cruise control feel to this performance.

What the creators of Fracture fail to realize is that modern audiences in the age of Court TV, CSI and Law & Order audiences are more savvy and knowledgeable about the law and law enforcement than ever before. So, when Willy misses an obvious bit of legal maneuvering, the cops seem to ignore pertinent information, or the killer makes an obvious forensic mistake, we notice and it takes us out of the movie.

I spent more time in Fracture pulling apart its legal logic, or lack of knowledge, than I did watching these two wonderful actors work together. It's a shame, because the few minutes I did watch the actors, they were very good.

Two great actors, one not so great movie, Fracture fails to take advantage of a seriously good pedigree. Instead we get a sub-cop show thriller that relies on ill logic and poor decision making by characters who should no better.  The creators of Fracture underestimate the intelligence of their audience and think they can play fast and loose with the rules of law enforcement. However, in the day and age of Court TV and Forensic Files, we know more than they give us credit for and the ill-logic of Fracture shows through.