Movie Review The Darkest Hour

The Darkest Hour (2017) 

Directed by Joe Wright 

Written by Anthony McCarten 

Starring Gary Oldman, Kristen Scott Thomas, Lily James, Stephen Dillane, Ben Mendelsohn 

Release Date November 22nd, 2017 

With the release of the movie Darkest Hour starring Gary Oldman, there has been a new reckoning with the legacy of Sir Winston Churchill, one that has brought to light some of Churchill’s more horrific qualities. On his podcast Revisionist History, journalist Malcolm Gladwell reflected on Churchill with specific criticisms about the legendary Prime Minister’s policies toward India, policies that many feel were driven by Churchill’s Hitler-like disdain for the Indian people. Then there was the policy of strategic bombing in Germany which may have actually extended the war by two more years even as Churchill is recalled as that war’s great, heroic leader.

There is also talk of Churchill’s treatment of black people and women, none of it flattering. These revelations have cast a pall over the legacy of one of largest and most vaunted figures of the 20th Century. Thus, the release of a movie which chooses to focus on making the Prime Minister's legacy more suitably entertaining, it’s natural to cast a side eye at such a movie. Or one may be driven to madness trying to balance the notion that Darkest Hour is a very good film but one which aims its greatness at a figure who may not be so great, or at the very least, not worthy of such historic hagiography.

May 1940

Darkest Hour stars the inimitable Gary Oldman in the role of Prime Minister Winston Churchill. The story picks up in May of 1940 in first days in which Mr. Churchill inherited the office of Prime Minister from the deposed Neville Chamberlain. Churchill was no one’s first choice, a suspicion confirmed by King Edward (Ben Mendelsohn) early in the film when he asks why Lord Halifax (Stephen Dillane), his choice for Prime Minister, had passed on the job.

Churchill is the only candidate that both parties in Parliament will accept as a war time Prime Minister, despite what the King describes as a litany of military failures dating back to World War 1. Even with Churchill being offered and accepting the position, it’s barely a day before backbiting and jockeying for position to replace him begins, all the while Europe is falling quickly as German Panzer tanks decimate Holland and Belgium and begin an assault on France that will eventually lead to the beaches of Dunkirk and England’s "finest hour."

Find my full length review on the Geeks Community on Vocal 

Classic Movie Review Four Weddings and a Funeral

Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994) 

Directed by Mike Newell

Written by Richard Curtis 

Starring Hugh Grant, Andie McDowell, John Hannah, Simon Callow, Kristen Scott Thomas 

Release Date April 15th, 1994 

Published April 15th, 1994 

Four Weddings and a Funeral is exactly what the title says it is, four weddings and one funeral over a period of about a year in the life of a group of British friends. Charles (Hugh Grant) seems to attend a wedding a week these days. Despite his deplorable record as a ladies man, which will play out through the series of weddings that occur, Charles keeps getting invited to weddings and goes in with the hope of hooking up. He's cynical about love but secretly a romantic. We will learn this via his strange and strained relationship with Carrie (Andie McDowell). 

At the first of four weddings Charles attends he's the best man. Naturally, he nearly ruins the wedding by forgetting the rings. Thankfully, his friends, Tom (James Fleet), Gareth (Simon Callow), Matthew (John Hannah), and Fiona (Kristen Scott Thomas), along with Charles' sister, Scarlett (Charlotte Coleman), are able to bail him out. Narrowly avoiding that disaster, Charles stumbles into a potential non-disaster when he meets Carrie. For Charles, it's love at first sight. For Carrie, she seems to like the floppy Englishman but it takes a minute for her to warm to him. The two end up sleeping together, after some shenanigans, but then she's off, back to America. 

Cut to wedding number 2. Charles is just a guest this time and instead of nearly ruining the wedding, the universe appears to be ruining Charles' day. Not only were he and Scarlett nearly late to the wedding, they always are, he ends up at the reception sat at a table with not one, not two, but three of his ex-girlfriends. Each takes the time to tell a story about Charles, ones in which he appears to insult one of the other two exes. It's a catastrophe but one that he hope might be mitigated when he sees that Carrie has come to this wedding as well. This too however, is a disaster as Carrie is here with her new fiancée. This doesn't stop Charles and Carrie from hooking up but it's certainly not a good indication of long term plans. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media

Movie Review Nowhere Boy

Nowhere Boy (2009) 

Directed by Sam Taylor Wood

Written by Matt Greenhalgh

Starring Aaron Johnson, Kristen Scott Thomas,Thomas Brodie-Sangster, David Morrisey

Release Date December 26th, 2009 

Published April 15th, 2010 

Few actors have had as good a year as quietly as 21 year old Aaron Johnson. First he blasted off into stardom with his role as nerdy kid turned superhero in the wonderfully subversive “Kick Ass.” Then, in late 2010, Johnson turned his nerd image from “Kick Ass” on its ear with a brilliant turn as a teenaged John Lennon in “Nowhere Boy,” now on DVD.

“Nowhere Boy,” directed by newcomer Sam Taylor Wood, takes us through the teen years of the iconic Beatles co-founder John Lennon. The story begins in sadness as, after a brief introduction, young John Lennon loses his beloved Uncle George to a heart attack.

It was George who had fostered John’s creativity and interest in music under the disapproving gaze of John’s Aunt Mimi (Kristen Scott Thomas) With George gone the unmoored John falls in with his older Cousin, Stan (James Johnson) who leads John to the discovery of his mother Julia (Ann Marie Duff) who had surrendered him to his Aunt following the disappearance of his father a merchant seaman.

While visiting his mother, without telling his Aunt, John discovered Rock n’ Roll, Fats Domino and Elvis Presley. Julia bought John his first guitar and watched him learn to play in her living room. As John’s grades slip at school Mimi becomes suspicious and a family showdown is inevitable. Director Sam Taylor Wood takes a good deal of creative license to bring a little extra drama to the real life events of John Lennon’s formative years but there is nothing so dramatic or untrue that it will leave fans crying foul.

The key to “Nowhere Boy” is not in the dramatized narrative of John Lennon’s teen years anyway. Rather, the key is the lively and fresh faced performance of Aaron Johnson who captures both the cocksure, comic musician side of Lennon and the vulnerable boy at his heart. Lennon was forever affected by the strange role that his mother played in his life and that comes out throughout his musical career.

“Nowhere Boy” gets its juice not only from lending a Freudian context to Lennon’s later work but by dramatizing the history of The Beatles like never before. Sam Taylor Wood gives us as close an approximation as we are likely to get of the events that created the greatest rock band of all time.

Through the performances of Aaron Johnson as Lennon, Thomas Brodie Sangster as a pubescent Paul McCartney and Sam Bell as George Harrison we get a glimpse at music history never before seen. Nowhere Boy succeeds in revealing John Lennon and the ways his childhood influenced the rest of his life and when you hear songs like “Mother” you will flash back to this film and be awash in new and more poignant meanings.

The same could be said of several other Lennon solo records as well as Beatles classics should one want to parse their psychology but my point is merely that Nowhere Boy works as both a companion piece to the legendary John Lennon canon and as a stand alone drama of one young man’s journey toward unlikely success. In Aaron Johnson’s ultra-cool performance we get the John Lennon we imagined as a young man, cocky, funny and ungodly talented with just a hint of a haunted soul.

Movie Review Mission Impossible

Mission Impossible (1996) 

Directed by Brian De Palma 

Written by David Koepp, Robert Towne

Starring Tom Cruise, Jon Voight, Emilio Estevez, Emmanuelle Beart, Kristen Scott Thomas

Release Date May 22nd, 1996

Published May 20th, 2016 

Mission Impossible doesn’t really hold up. I hate to say it because I really enjoy most of the franchise but the 1996 movie doesn’t hold up 22 years later. Watching Mission Impossible with modern eyes, the flaws stand out from Cruise’s desperate performance, Jon Voight’s lazy performance and the underwritten female characters stand apart from the lesser good things about the movie.

Ethan Hunt is an agent of the Impossible Mission Force, a branch of the CIA that specializes in the kind of espionage of the most impossible nature. Hunt works under veteran agent Jim Phelps (Jon Voight) alongside a team that includes Jack (Emilio Estevez), Sarah (Kristen Scott Thomas), and Claire (Emmanuelle Beart). Claire is Jim’s wife though quickly sees that she and Ethan appear to have eyes for each other.

A digression, the chemistry between Cruise and Beart has heat from time to time but the great disappointment of the movie is how little is done to exploit that chemistry. Brian DePalma is one of the great sleaze directors of all time and for him to allow the Ethan-Claire relationship to be so innocent to the point of being cookie-cutter, ala dozens of similar movie relationships, indicates how little this is really a Brian DePalma movie.

On a mission in Prague attempting to prevent a Russian spy from stealing a list of the real identities of IMF agents worldwide, everyone on Hunt’s team is murdered and he is framed for their deaths. On the run, Ethan is surprised and notably suspicious, to find Claire had survived despite having been in a car that later exploded. Nevertheless, he trusts her to be part of his mission to find the person who framed him. 

Mission Impossible was directed by Brian DePalma who appears to have been hired for his name value and not his style. Mission Impossible contains almost none of the classic DePalma style of sexy, weird, chaos. Sure, some of DePalma’s output is deeply problematic through the lens of history but you can’t argue that he was boring except when he directed Mission Impossible.

Compared to movies like Snake Eyes or Carrie, the action tropes of Mission Impossible are dull.

It’s hard not to assume that Mission Impossible is boring because of Tom Cruise. I say this as a fan of Tom Cruise. I am genuinely someone who believes Cruise is a fine actor. However, the deep, almost fetishistic control Cruise has over his onscreen persona can keep him from being fun. The actor assiduously avoids anything controversial, he plays it safe especially here in the wake of his first real failure, his much mocked performance in Interview with the Vampire.

Mission Impossible is such a rigidly paced action movie that even that classic Tom Cruise twinkle in the eye and million dollar smile are toned down and held back in favor of a stoic, dare I say, charisma dimmed performance. I get that Ethan Hunt is supposed to be a rigid, book hero but we go to the movies to see stars and big personalities and while his willingness to let the action do the talking is nice, I’d rather he have some personality while he’s action-ing.

It’s especially egregious because I expect so much more from both Cruise and Brian DePalma. DePalma has an eye for idiosyncrasy and had he been allowed to find the idiosyncrasies of Ethan Hunt and exploit them and had there been anything even remotely controversial about the character, perhaps the movie would hold up over time. Instead, looking back at the original, it’s a wonder this franchise is still around.

Thankfully, the franchise picks up the personality in the other movies, especially when they allow John Woo to make the film franchise his own. Here however, Brian DePalma is wasted and the film is shocking by the numbers. Cruise is sweaty and desperate throughout, rarely allowing Ethan to have a personality beyond his remarkable competence and impressive physicality. Kristen Scott Thomas and Emilio Estevez are killed off and Emmanuelle Beart is left with far too much of the dramatic heavy lifting.

The one thing that stands out as genuinely inspired in Mission Impossible ‘96 is the casting of Vanessa Redgrave as the big bad. The veteran actress is the one person in the film who is genuinely having fun. Redgrave sinks her teeth into the role and in her brief screen time the film is as fun as she is. The rest of the movie however, is just dour. Jon Voight especially is miscast as Jim Phelps.

Oddly the only even remotely controversial thing about Mission Impossible, and mind you I am not asking for the film to be outre in a violent or transgressive way, just have some personality. The only controversy the film courted was in the portrayal of Jim Phelps. Phelps was one of the main characters of the beloved TV series Mission Impossible and the twists and turns of his plot angered fans who held a love for Peter Graves’ stoic, reliable performance.

Even the famed train sequence that closes Mission Impossible appears less impressive though the frame of history. In wrestling terms, Mission Impossible is what is called a Spot Fest, a match centered on the biggest moves the competitors are capable of. The series focuses heavily on topping one big action spot after another and what’s happened in the more modern sequels has rendered the helicopter spot from the original film not unlike the Hulk Hogan leg-drop, a move that was once iconic and now seems rather silly next to a 5 Star Frog Splash.

If only Mission Impossible had half the personality of a wrestling match, perhaps it wouldn’t be so unremarkable.

Movie Review Life As a House

Life as a House (2001) 

Directed by Irwin Winkler 

Written by Mark Andrus 

Starring Kevin Kline, Kristen Scott Thomas, Hayden Christensen, Jena Malone, Mary Steenburgen

Release Date October 26th, 2001 

Published October 27th, 2001 

Life as A House starring Kevin Kline and directed by Irwin Winkler has been universally praised by critics and fans which leaves me wondering: did I see the same movie they did? I watched Life as a House in permanent awe of how derivative, obvious, and faux-deep Life as a House is. This is a middle aged man's very obvious, up his own backside, conception of what makes a deep statement about life. Honestly, I am embarrassed for everyone involved. 

Life as a House is the story of George, a depressed divorcee with a son who hates him, and who loses his job early in the film and then finds out he has terminal cancer. Is this a movie character or a biblical tragedy? With all that has happened George decides it's time to build his dream house which, for those who are a little on the slow side, is a metaphor for his rebirth. Do you get it? His life is represented by the house? Does that resonate with you? 

The house he currently lives in is a rundown shack overlooking the ocean in a beautiful neighborhood. Don't even get me started on that implausibility, which, duh, is a metaphor for who he used to be. The screenplay doesn't trust us to figure the metaphors out ourselves. Instead there is dialogue to state the obvious. You see, the rundown house is who he is when we meet him and the new house is who he is going to be. Do you get it? Because the voiceover will explain this if you don't. GAH!!!!! 

Life as a House is filled with such trite dialogue that continuously states the obvious as if leading blind audience members through a story the screenwriter thinks is so deep we won't get it. And it's sad because the actors: Kline, Kristin Scott Thomas as his ex wife, and Hayden Christenson as his son, have the ability to communicate these emotions with subtle acting. But no, instead the film is filled with leaden dialogue and a couple of hundred direct lifts from American Beauty. Yes that's right dear reader not only is the film dull, it's unoriginal.

From the voiceover narration at the beginning and end to the score to George's 'Lesterlike' rebirth, including a kiss with an underage sexpot, Life as A House is like American Beauty filtered through TV's Hallmark hall of fame.

P.S.: I refuse to make any cute housebuilding aside. Honestly, if I hear another critic use a pun title like "House is built on a great FOUNDATION HA HA," I will scream.