Movie Review Speed Racer

Speed Racer (2008) 

Directed by Lilly and Lana Wachowski

Written by Lilly and Lana Wachowski 

Starring Emile Hirsch, Matthew Fox, John Goodman, Susan Sarandon, Roger Allam

Release Date May 9th, 2008 

Published May 8th, 2008 

The team behind The Matrix, Lana and Lilly Wachowski, are back behind the camera for the first time since the last Matrix sequel lumbered into theaters 4 years ago. They are back with a big budget bang, adapting the boomer anime retro strip Speed Racer into an eye popping effects extravaganza. This candy colored action-racing smorgasbord is a feast for the eyes and a triumph for modern special effects. 

Emile Hirsch stars as Speed Racer, the hottest young driver on the world racing league tour. Coming off a big win, Speed is being pursued by every corporate entity on the globe, but especially by the smarmy head of Royalton International (Roger Allam). Royalton wants Speed on his team and dazzles him with his sprawling car plant.

Speed however, he cannot be bought. With the support of his family, Speed sees no need to take the corporate money. This means Royalton will have to destroy Speed as well as Racer Motors, the independent team run by Pops (John Goodman) and Mom (Susan Surandon) Racer, Speed's parents. The team includes Speed's gal Trixie (Christina Ricci) and his lead mechanic Sparky (Kick Gurry).

Always along for the ride are Speed's little brother Spritle (Paulie Litt) and his pet monkey Chim Chim. Rounding out the cast is the mysterious Racer X (Matthew Fox) who has a reputation for causing crashes but more often than not he comes out on the side of good. Fox's performance as Racer X is far more key to the plot and to what is so good about Speed Racer than he first 

From a technological standpoint, Speed Racer is a leap forward in the way computers and movies intertwine. The virtual world that Wachowski's craft for Speed Racer is one of the most impressive visuals ever brought to the screen. Some will complain that it is all too busy and jolting, top video game-esque but those are people who are showing their age.

Speed Racer is a movie made specifically for boys 10 to 14 years old. The humor, the videogame visual style and even the cardboard cut out characters are aimed at a younger, less discriminating audience. Where adults may find the flat performances and flabby script slightly tedious, kids will be taken with the film's quick cuts, candy colors and juvenile humor.

Then there is Matthew Fox as Racer X who could be this generation's Han Solo. A taciturn bad boy with ambiguous intentions, Racer X is the big brother every kid would love to have and fills the same role for the earnest young Speed who evokes Luke Skywalker with great ease. I don't make the Star Wars allusions, lightly, I genuinely believe that Speed Racer has that kind of youth defining appeal. 

Though it was made for the kids, all audiences will be dazzled by the technology of Speed Racer. The extraordinary visuals, the exceptional way real actors are integrated into digital backgrounds, and the exciting action scenes crafted almost entirely with computers are some of the most striking and breathtaking visuals in film history.

As film technology improves Speed Racer will be remembered as a historic leap forward. The visionary Lilly and Lana Wachowski have expanded our collective movie imagination and while many will find the experience jarring, I expect that many more will be blown away. Myself, I was immersed in the visual splendor and overjoyed by the fun and excitement of Speed Racer. The movie may rely on technology to a ludicrous degree but it's so skillful in that use of technology that I really didn't mind. 

As Star Wars was a watershed for my generation, Speed Racer may be for a generation of 10 to 14 year old boys who will no doubt begin a lifelong love of movies thanks to the remarkable work of Lilly and Lana Wachowski. Circumstance may conspire to keep Speed Racer from becoming a true world wide blockbuster but history will recall Speed Racer as a historic stride in the history of film technology. On that alone I can recommend Speed Racer.

Movie Review: The Queen

The Queen (2006)

Directed by Stephen Frears 

Written by Peter Morgan 

Starring Helen Mirren, Michael Sheen, James Cromwell, Helen McCrory, Roger Allam 

Release Date September 15th, 2006 

Published November 1st, 2006 

My memory of the death of Princess Diana begins with me being at work. It was after midnight and I was on the radio on Mix 96 a popular adult contemporary radio station. An employee watching the news wires at a news radio station in the same building brought me the breaking news about the car accident and the eventual pronouncement of death. I was in my second year as a broadcaster and had never broken into programming before.

I made the call to forgo waking my boss to ask permission and went ahead and went on the air with the tragic news. Then I made another editorial decision, I removed Billy Joel's "Only The Good Die Young" from my playlist. I wasn't supposed to, it was and remains against protocol for anyone to remove songs from the playlist. I made the decision I felt was appropriate and stuck by it.

My decision was extraordinarily minor in the grand scheme of things but appropriate responses to this tragedy are very much apart of the discussion that takes place in the movie The Queen, starring Helen Mirren, which details the seemingly inappropriate response of the monarchy to the death of the former Princess. The Royal Family was already clinging to relevance when Princess Di was tragically killed in a Paris car accident, in the wake of Di's death, the question of relevance gave way to questions of necessity and desire. 

In the five days between when Diana the Princess of Whales was killed in a car accident in Paris and the time she was laid to rest in a funeral at Westminster Abbey, England held vigil outside Buckingham Palace awaiting a response from their Queen, Queen Elizabeth the 2nd (Helen Mirren). There was none. The Queen along with husband Prince Philip (James Cromwell), the Queen Mum (Sylvia Sims), Prince Charles (Alex Jennings) and his and Diana's sons remained sequestered at the royal palace at Balmorel.

The non-response was roundly roasted throughout the British press and lead to articles and polls touting the fact that many Britons were coming around to the idea of ending the monarchy altogether. Watching this spectacle, with more than a little vested interest, was the newly installed British Prime Minister Tony Blair (Michael Sheen). It was Blair who took the pulse of the people and lead the public mourning of Diana; he dubbed her the People's Princess.

Blair's response to the tragedy was lauded by the people and the press because it felt un-calculated and yet it managed to heighten pressure on the Queen who remained in a cocoon of royal propriety, unwilling to issue even a statement and, at a critical moment, refusing fly a flag over Buckingham Palace at half staff as so many had called on her to do. Even seemingly minor gestures of public grieving over Diana appeared impossible for the cold-hearted Queen. 

The achievement of Stephen Frears' The Queen is to give context and reason to Queen Elizabeth's non-response. At no point are those of us who liked Princess Diana going to agree with the cold and detached way Queen Elizabeth reacted to Diana's death but we can be understanding and even, possibly, cut the Queen a little slack based on the complicated and strained standards upheld by the Royal Family. Tradition may seem rather silly to outsiders, but inside the palace, protocol is a religion. 

The film doesn't intend to criticize the Queen, deify Diana, or make excuses for either. The Queen presents the facts and allows us to make up our own minds about these people. Thus when the Queen says Diana isn't even royalty anymore we are rightly taken aback. However, as we learn a little more of the Queen's background and we cut deeper into this factory sealed world of royalty, we can come to understand how such detachment and such an unbending attachment to protocol and propriety might lead to exactly the response the Queen has.

Essentially, chilly, dispassionate, detachment is part of the breeding of a Queen and to expect anything else is simply dishonest. Does this excuse such inhumanity as the Queen being unwilling to make any compromise or even acknowledge the obvious, growing need of her people for an emotional response to the tragedy? No, but it does explain it.

The movie The Queen turns on the brilliant, Oscar worthy work of Helen Mirren. This is by far the best performance by any actress this year. Mirren captures the icy demeanor we all know of Queen Elizabeth and then infuses her with a withering intelligence, self awareness, and, by the end, a certain poignancy as she must come to terms with how the times and her subjects have passed her by.

Michael Sheen as Tony Blair borders at times on making the Prime Minister a toadying stooge to the monarchy but, for the most part, the movie captures the popular Blair, the one who was the chief mourner of Diana. Michael Sheen's conception of Blair is a man of the people who knew just how to react to tragedy. Keep in mind, Blair was squarely in the middle of a battle of wills that few realized was happening. On one side was the monarchy whose detachment was reaching a critical point and on the other side were the people who, without a royal response to the tragedy, were coming  around to the idea of no monarchy at all.

Sheen deftly plays Blair's conflict as he must manage the entirely unmanageable Queen while members of his own staff, and even his wife, Cherie Blair, well played by Helen McRory, talked openly about whether the time of the monarchy had passed. This is award level work by Sheen who slowly works Blair's golden boy charm into the smart, savvy persona that Blair held until recently when his decision to join the American adventure in Iraq began eroding his standing with the British people.

Before seeing The Queen I watched Emilio Estevez's supremely flawed movie Bobby another movie that is at least sort of about the tragic death of a beloved public figure. Watching Bobby made me look a little deeper at the death of Princess Diana and the overwhelming response people had to it. The death of Bobby Kennedy effected history, literally. He could have gone on to become the most powerful man in the world and made decisions that would have rippled through history even today.

Princess Diana, on the other hand, her death, though tragic did not effect history. I'm not meaning in anyway to demean the Princess whose good works and charity effected millions of lives, but there is a difference between the effect of her life and that of Bobby Kennedy that makes the response to her death a little puzzling.

For five days the crowds of mourners swelled into the millions and the public outcry over the non-response of the monarchy nearly called for a storming of castles. The out sized response was a testament to how much the people loved Princess Diana but to an outsider like myself it seemed a little much. The Queen portrays Queen Elizabeth as something of an outsider herself, in relation to her people and this allowed me, at the very least, to identify with her and respect her decision not to engage in the public wringing of emotion.

Queen Elizabeth was wrong to be so cold to someone who had borne her two grandchildren, one of whom is the future King, and there is no question that she could have made a couple of compromises to placate the public. Many were right to criticize her detachment and inability to change with the times. What the movie The Queen effectively offers however is an opportunity, if you are so inclined, to identify with Queen Elizabeth and her more than fair unwillingness to engage in the public's outpouring of emotion.

The Queen is a sensational film with academy notable performances from Helen Mirren and Michael Sheen. The Queen is also smart, entertaining and endlessly watchable for what might on the surface seem like another British chamber piece; impenetrable to the average American moviegoer. The Queen has the gravitas of masterpiece theater but a story that engages all audiences. The Queen is a true must see picture.