Category: Movie Reviews

I liked this movie. All the pieces fit together. The story is nicely conceived and plotted, the motivations are on the money, the quest is real and believable. The scenery is stunning. The characters are well drawn, well developed, and beautifully acted. The music is lush and pulsing. The end is a bit corny, but touching.

But there’s something missing, and I can’t put my finger on it.  Maybe it’s the way the Roman soldiers speak in informal American with lots of contractions and authentic emotions. Usually Roman soldiers are staid, don’t feel pain, and speak in thees and thous. These men don’t. They sweat, get dirty, are afraid, and wish their fathers were alive. They have hopes and dreams. They want their eagle back.

Whatever it was that was missing (let me know if you figure it out), I liked this film a lot. The lessons that could be drawn from this film are powerful.

Here’s the story: The 9^th Roman Legion ventured to the north of Britain in A.D. 120. They were never seen again, and their standard—the Eagle—was thus lost, to their shame. (The eagle is a gold-colored metal image of the noble bird that would have been affixed to a pike and carried into battle, much as later soldiers would carry flags.) Someone says: “Eagle lost, honor lost; Honor lost, all lost.” I wouldn’t go that far for an inanimate symbol, but then again, I will never conquer an Empire.

Twenty years pass. The son of the 9^th’s Commander comes to Britain. Against the advice of his uncle, ridiculed by the Roman army, and accompanied by just one slave, Marcus (Tatum) ventures north to find the Eagle and to learn, if possible, what became of his father’s legion.

They arrive at Hadrian’s Wall—the northern limit of the Roman Empire—where they are told their mission is impossible, and that they will not survive. Marcus demands that the gate be opened for them, and he and Esca the Slave ( Bell) pass from freedom and safety into a very dangerous, probably fatal, unknown.

Here, my heart was gripped, because this is the truth of the Christian life, is it not? To live fully for Jesus, you must pass from what is known. You must leave your self behind—all that seems safe, all that seems real—and you must even turn your back on people you love who want the best for you and therefore think you are wrong, crazy, and doomed. (You are not turning your back on them in rejection: you are turning to what you must do for Christ.) As you walk through this gate, you enter the unknown, the impossible. If you do not do this, you cannot follow Christ, you will not see His purpose for you, and thus you will not fulfill it.  No, I did not begin singing, “The world behind me, the Cross before me,” but I thought about it.

In the wild north of Britain, Marcus and Esca do find what happened to the 9^th, they do meet up with some fearful terrors. We see nobility, self-sacrifice, love, and patriotism. Grippingly, we see this from those on both sides of the issue, and we in the audience cannot forget that the “enemies” are the ones whose land the Romans have occupied, and that they have suffered grievously under the rule of this people who had ventured to Britain for (really) no good reason.

Still, we root for Marcus and with good cause. The end is nice, if a little silly.

A couple of other things: last week I saw (regrettably) SANCTUM, a bad movie with a fatal flaw: mercy killings.  Interestingly, in SANCTUM, there is a scene where a man is horribly wounded, and will probably die. He is lying on a small patch of dry ground surrounded by water. He begs his son to drown him, presumably so that he will not suffer a long, painful death. His son holds his father down under the water, murdering him.  A few minutes later, the son swims out to safety, and there are people there! We think, “Oh no! There’s a chance he could have gotten help for his father!” But no, it’s too late.

In THE EAGLE, a man is horribly wounded, and will probably die. He is lying on a small patch of dry ground surrounded by water. He says to his companion, “You go. Leave me here.” His companion says, “No, I am going to get help.” In case you were wondering, this is the correct way to resolve this scene, and is one of the reasons that THE EAGLE is a far better movie than SANCTUM. Another way in which EAGLE is better than SANCTUM is that I cared about the characters. I wanted them to live. I wanted them to win.

One other teeny-tiny thing: THE EAGLE has redeemed Hungarian filmmaking for me. THE NUTCRACKER in 3D was so very awful that I thought I would not be able ever to sit through another Hungarian production, but much of THE EAGLE was filmed in Hungary, and a great part of the credits is list after list of Hungarian names. So, hurrah for the Hungarians. They made a good movie. Again, it’s not great (something is missing, I don’t know what), but you will come away from it with interesting ideas, and you will not feel that you wasted your money. As noted in my NUTCRACKER review, I am 1/4 Hungarian Jew. As these lists of Hungarian names went by, I said to my husband, “Do you see any Goldbergers?” Then after a horrible moment, I realized why not…certain things happened to Hungarian Jews after my great-grandparents came to America. “Never mind,” I said.

This is a battle movie. There are no side love interests. It would probably work for teenagers who will enjoy the fighting (graphic, but not close to HENRY V, which—admit it—you love), but also be able to benefit from the lessons of faith, nobility, self-sacrifice, and redemption. If your kids/students are up to it, you could also work in a little discussion on imperialism. I could see a nice feisty little argument on whether exporting civilization to curb rank paganism is a worthwhile endeavor. Get them to argue both sides. There are also the slave/master and patriot/traitor questions that could be worked on with this movie.  It’s PG-13, and that’s probably about right. I might wait until 15, but I’m a stick-in-the-mud, if you couldn’t tell.

Short answer: yes.

Directed by Alister Grierson. I say this first, because it needs to be known right away that although James Cameron’s name  is on this film, it is as producer, not director, so he’s not the only one to blame, just the most recognizable name on the list of those who are.

This movie is a mess from its freaky opening scene, its bizarre second scene that looks and sounds like it came straight out of a bad 1970s television show, all the way to its awful end, punctuated by a few moments of suspense.  My overriding feeling was embarrased dread.

I was embarrassed because the script was so poorly written, the plot so wrong, the characterizations so inconsistent. I experience dread as one by one the people I sort-of knew but really did not love died off. They didn’t die on their own either.

(I am about to describe the movie’s  “fatal flaw.” That is, there are some things about a movie that can be overlooked, because after all, moviemaking is a hard business and not everyone in it is at the top of his game. Too, you can guess wrong and have your Cyclone-in-Australia film released during the week a Cyclone hit Australia. But some things are not overlookable. These are fatal flaws.)

In what is to me a “fatal flaw”—meaning because of this the movie should not be seen by anyone—“mercy killings” occur.  Injured people are “put out of their misery” by being held under water until they die.  I don’t know what they call this in Australia where this movie was made, but here we call that murder.  You don’t get a pass on this just because you’re underground , just because you’re in distress. Nor can you put it in your movie and expect me not to call you out, just in case you were wondering.

Besides the fatal flaw, there are many other problems. I’ll pick a few.

Frank (Roxburgh) is the leader of this group of cavers (never called spelunkers, by the way). He knows a storm is coming, and that it could flood the cave,  but he  decides not to come up to the surface to wait it out. No thinking person would do this, not even one who can only feel at home in this “inner sanctum” of his.  He also puts the job of delivering critical supplies into the hands of an unreliable minor child. No one would do this, especially when it is clear that supplies are regularly delivered through other means.

Nor would any thinking person (especially one who had climbed Everest and knew the risks of hypothermia) plunge into cold water for an escape dive of unknown duration without a wetsuit.  The woman who does this, Victoria, is the girlfriend (“Baby,” ad nauseum) of the billionaire who finances this particular cave venture. The wetsuit is there, it is available, but she doesn’t want to wear it and they don’t make her. Dumb. In real life, you’d tear her clothes off and put it on her. In fact, that might have spiced up the movie a little. They do later tear all her clothes off to get her warmed up after the inevitable chill sets in, and she has dressed for the moment, black lace and all. Dumb thing to wear on a cave dive, but she may be a woman of limited ideas.

A huge problem is Frank’s son Josh. Josh has to come on this outing because his father has custody of him for a month out of every year. Sure, but the kid looks like he’s 25. Again, maybe things are different down under, but here it comes across as just awkward. Nor do we hear anything about “back home,” “high school” or “my prom date,” or anything at all to let us know how old this “child” is. Strangely, this kid who supposedly only hangs out with Adventure Dad 30 days a year is the team’s best climber and can hold his breath for many long minutes under water without appearing to be in any distress whatever. I was informed on the way home that this skill is called “breathhold” diving. News to me.

The Billionaire Financier of the operation (I forget his name) is your stereotypical billionaire brat. I really don’t think anyone could become a billionaire without a lot of discipline, nor could you stay a billionaire (at least in this market) without an awful lot of savvy and forethought, something sadly lacking in the entire caving operation here. He turns into a screaming lunatic at the end, but it’s not worth waiting through the movie to get to that strange moment.

There are a few minutes at the end when the Manly Looking Son and the Man Who Can Only Understand Life Underground have a meeting of the heart. Years of mutual disgust fall away and we see what might have been. It’s short, sweet, and then there’s murder. Whatever.

The end is incredibly odd. Though we know a cyclone has just passed over, when the survivor emerges from the sea, he sees children playing and their father fishing. Seems odd if a massive storm has just passed by. As we know from this week’s news, when a cyclone hits Australia, they evacuate the coastal towns.

One other thing that caused me great distress was the casting of people of color in this movie. There are only Caucasians on the caving team, but there are a great many aboriginal-looking people up on the surface, looking for all the world like token color. One man has a bone through his nose even. None of them has any speaking lines, and they are only used to do menial hauling labor. I was disgusted. C’mon, people. Have we seriously not come any farther than this?

A mess from beginning to end. Stay home and watch Inception on DVD.

(Moral concerns: mercy killings [fatal flaw], profanity, vulgar language and  gestures, criminal negligence)

In 2008, the financial markets of the United States tripped, slipped, careened toward disaster. I distinctly remember saying, “Wow, I wonder how much the Dow will fall tomorrow?” not at all worried that the mortgage fiasco and related meltdowns would impact my cozy little world.

But many people—like those depicted in The Company Men—saw their worlds shaken. They lost jobs, homes, marriages, reputations. Nor was the end of 2008 one of those moments when one could simply pick oneself up, shake off the dust, and get back in the saddle. There were no more desks to ride.

The Company Men shows successful families taking massive hits and wavering under the pressure. Not every family can take the stress of losing it all. I thought I might feel smug toward them, as in, “Yeah, buster, now you can go to a real job like the rest of us,” but I didn’t: these men had worked hard for many years to acquire the things they had. They deserved to be able to keep them. (I know from experience that losing everything when that everything will fit into a small Toyota is no big deal. Wal-Mart purchases are replaceable. I’m guessing that having to sell the Degas off the study wall is devastation of a far more painful sort.)

The cast cannot be beat: Ben Affleck, Tommy Lee Jones, Chris Cooper, Craig Nelson. Huge actors at the top of their games doing an important movie about something that matters. Nice work, gentlemen.

Perhaps one lesson of this film is that families can survive a financial implosion if all the right pieces are in place—love, extended family support, and oh yes, faith, courage, and enthusiasm.  A man who wants to shoulder the burden of supporting his family alone is a noble thing to see. Ben Affleck portrays this with grace and vulnerability. I felt his pain when his Porsche was taken away. I was sad.

But not every family can survive, and when the most dysfunctional—therefore least likely to succeed—of these families experienced their nearly-inevitable denouement, I felt nothing but sorrow.

I suppose there would be many people who would turn up their noses at rich people losing money, but I did not. Wouldn’t it be lovely to have a beachside home with a fountain? Yes, it would.  And I am sorry for someone who has this and then, through no fault of his own—and while the CEO is lining his pockets on the backs of thousands of fired 9-to-5ers—loses it all. There is also that little detail (often missed by anti-rich-people commentators) that it’s the people with money who build businesses, hire people, support economies, take risks, and so forth.

Happily, America runs on successful businesses, and there is always room for someone with a great idea to gather a team, work hard, invest everything, take enormous risk and look forward to a new payday. And while a good job making enough money to be comfortable with is not the end-all of life, it is of course a lovely thing. The  Company Men leaves us feeling good about America, good about working hard, and happy that committed families can survive the most stressful of times.

(family cautions: the Lord’s name is taken in vain a few times. There are a few vulgarities. A married man is having an affair. A woman struts around in her foundationals, except when she doesn’t for one teeny startling second. I wouldn’t take kids to this.)

The Way Back, starring Ed Harris, is not your ordinary anti-communist movie. There are no evil Russian scientists, no squeaky-clean Americans. There are no moving speeches, no revolutions, no bread lines, no up-with-the-proletariat rhetoric, no political arguments.
Instead of all that, we have what is certainly a most powerful argument against communism—that people will do anything to get away from it. They will walk four thousand miles. Through Siberia. Across the Gobi desert. Over the Himalayas.

(For that matter, they will get in little rafts and paddle ninety miles, risking their lives to arrive “dry foot” in Florida, but that is a different story.)

The story of the seven men who escaped from a Siberian prison camp in 1941 was first told in the book The Long Walk. Written by Slawomir Rawicz in 1956 as autobiographical, it was later revealed that Mr. Rawicz did not in fact make this walk (as is claimed in the book), but learned about it by reading army records. Researchers do not agree on whether the long walk actually happened, although there is some evidence it may have.

The filmmakers are a bit conflicted as well: at the beginning of the movie, we are told that this walk occurred and that the movie is dedicated to those who endured it. At the tail end of the credits, however, there is your ordinary disclaimer: this movie is a work of fiction. Any resemblence to anyone living or dead is unintentional.

I think it matters. If the long walk did occur, it is nothing less than heroism—the triumph of the human spirit longing to be free, and to give itself that others may be free. However, if the walk did not happen, then we have to see this movie as a kind of allegory of the corporate heroism of the victims of communism: peoples and nations trudging through the frozen wilderness of the initial crackdowns, hounded by trenchcoated terrors; then gasping through the blazing waterless deserts of the decades of famine, starvation, and human tragedy; then, at last, scaling the seemingly insurmountable heights of revolution to gain their freedom.

In that light, then, perhaps it doesn’t matter whether the Walk was literally taken by seven men. The journey itself did happen. God be thanked, the peoples formerly imprisoned by the Soviet Union live today in societies far freer than they would have dared imagine fifty years ago. They do not tremble at the fear of the knock in the night. This movie can stand as a testimony of their enduring the unendurable, and as a witness to the rest of us of what hell awaits those who hold their liberty lightly.

I first read The Long Walk in 1990, and was so riveted by the story, I went back to it again and again over the following twenty years. The book is a far better tale than the movie—more interesting people, more touching human interaction, more astonishing life-sustaining providences—but the movie will certainly reach more people and perhaps serve the purpose of educating some who don’t understand what all the fuss was about and why we still talk about the Cold War as if it mattered.

The film is long, and there are scenes where no one speaks. I fear that the lack of action and suspense, as well as the not-great script and mediocre characterizations (with the exception of Mr. Harris, who does his usual class-act work) may not hold the attention of the younger audience, which is a shame.

(One character makes some “girly” sketches, but one can hardly blame him. He’s locked up for 25 years in the Gulag, after all. Give the guy a break. Still, just so you know before bringing your kids. It might be better to wait for The Way Back to stream into your home, so you can scoot through these bits. There’s no bad language.)

Written, produced, and starring Seth Rogen, The Green Hornet is a movie that was badly conceived, badly written, and crassly acted. It is not a well-crafted comedy nor a well-crafted action flick, reminding me of RED, the movie about the retired CIA agents that couldn’t figure out whether it wanted to be a thriller or a mockery.

Britt Reid (Rogen) is the spoiled son of an extremely wealthy newspaper owner. He has been both overindulged and emotionally starved by his widowed father who has no time for him. When his father dies unexpectedly, Britt is thrown into the world of newspaper editing, for which he has no time, no inclination, and no aptitude.

He decides to become important by being a hero. He will be a good guy. But that’s too scary, because if you’re a good guy, the bad guys will be after you. Brain wave: he’ll be a good guy who pretends to be a bad guy so that bad guys will not hurt him. This actually sounds like an interesting premise, except for one teeny weeny problem: he and his sidekick Kato actually do bad things.

In fact, in their first hero-outing, they kill a police officer, and commit a tremendous amount of property destruction. This is not the way to become a community hero. However, at least they rescue two anonymous, unidentifiable people from a group of thugs.

Heady with this success, Britt and Kato (Asian sidekick, played ably, but stereotypically, by Jay Chou) proceed to blow up cars, houses, and meth labs, killing everyone as they go. They do not feel bad about this. Nor do they ever again visit the idea of helping people.

Turns out the D.A. is the bad guy, and all kinds of horrendous destruction and death follow this revelation. All the while, we are treated to the supposed-to-be funny, but painfully crass acting of Mr. Rogen.

Cameron Diaz shows up as Journalism Barbie, no surprise here. All the usual jokes about her derriere and her hotness levels are made, as well as a few unfunny comments about how she is not aging all that well. I don’t know why Ms. Diaz takes this abuse, although my best bet is there is a lot of money in it, and if someone wants to mock me for several million dollars, I say, bring it on.

In the end, it seems to be all right to murder as many people as you like, cause the deaths of many, many others so that you can save your newspaper and kill the corrupt district attorney. Britt is not sorry for the mayhem, nor does he seem to realize he has committed any crimes.

The script is plain and uninteresting: no dry humor, no witty give-and-take, no smart comebacks. There is no love interest, no heroism, no saving-the-girl, no character development.

I don’t know who will watch this with enjoyment. Maybe it would be okay with the sound off, because there are a few interesting fight sequences and some big explosions.

One other small, but irritating, detail. The movie is supposedly set in Los Angeles, but we never see L.A. There are no views of the city or even iconic images such as City Hall or the skyline or the Chinese Theater or the Hollywood sign.

Defnitely don’t see this movie. If you insist on seeing it, you must not take your children. There is quite a lot of crass innuendo and one or two trashy sequences at the beginning.

The Duke of York stammers. This is not really a national disaster because he is the second son of George V, and therefore not up for the big job. That is, unless Big Brother David does something stupid like grow up to be a selfish wastrel besotted with an unavailable, unattractive, and unlikeable woman. That still wouldn’t have been a problem, had David (the Prince of Wales, later Edward VIII) been content to keep the still-married Wallis Simpson under wraps, but as we all know, he wanted to marry her, needed to marry her, and would marry her.

Now the stammer is a national disaster. The Duke of York has become George VI with the abdication of his brother. He can’t speak more than a few words—sometimes not even that—without agonizingly long pauses, chokings, and false starts.

It’s 1936, not a good time to have a Head of State who can’t give a speech. Just a few hundred miles East of London is someone who can make very good, very long, and very patriotic speeches. In German. If George VI can’t pull a speech together for a big moment, such as announcing that England is at war with the brown-shirted mustache-man, his position as king may be wobbly. Maybe the cry will go up louder than it had been for the newly-minted Duke of Windsor to come back, wife and all.

Of course, Bertie’s tried everything to remediate his speech impediment. He’s tried every method, every doctor who can be found. Now, at last, he finds Lionel Logue, an Australian speech teacher who promises to help.

The audience hopes he can help, because watching Colin Firth choke and strain is heartbreaking. Mr. Logue attempts to break through the good King’s decades of repressed feelings so that the king can own his voice and thereby lead his Nation.

When Hitler invades Poland in 1939, and war begins, George VI must broadcast to his people for eight minutes, an Everest-like feat for a man who can barely speak to his own wife. With one-quarter of the world listening (the sun never sets, etc.), the king approaches the microphone. The light flashes. Mr. Logue nods encouragingly. It is time for the King’s Speech.

The actors all give wonderful performances. Firth delivers brilliantly, giving us a King George VI who is deeply in love with his wife, is as loyal to Duty and Country as George’s daughter has been, and is absolutely committed to overcoming a debilitating handicap. Hats off to them both: George VI who actually did it, and Colin Firth who shows us how.

Geoffrey Rush also gives a stellar performance as Mr. Logue. He makes a speech therapist into a hero and does it with heart and poignancy. We feel for him as a father, as a man: we want him to win.

Helena Bonham Carter is loving and lovely as the future Queen Mum. Wallis is suitably awful. David is suitably dominated. Queen Mary is regal, all queen.

Too bad this movie probably won’t do too terribly well at the box office. It is a wonderful movie, but very few people under 30 will care about it. This is a shame, because there are so many good things to take away from this movie: keep trying, for one thing. Don’t give up on yourself. Do your duty even when it’s painful. And so on.

There were some odd moments for this history major. For example, the Churchill character is all wrong. He has dark hair, he scowls all the time, he actually walks in front of the king into a room, and says (like we believe this), “I hate microphones too.”

The Archbishop of Canterbury is likewise awkward. In one scene, he tells the King, “Your job is to consult and to advise; you didn’t consult, but I’m going to advise.” The “advise and consent” has to do with Parliament, not the Archbishop, and certainly here it is wrenched out of context–we’re talking about the King’s choice of a speech tutor, not policy or legislation.

There are other oddities: The Duke of York goes to 10 Downing Street, rather than the PM calling on him. In another scene, we see Mr. Churchill speaking to the Duke about the inevitability of his brother’s abdication and suggesting he use the name George when he succeeds. In all my years as a Churchill fanatic, I missed this bit. Usually, Churchill is at Eddy 8’s side, encouraging him, and going to bat for him against Stanley Baldwin & Co., to the extent of endangering his own political career.

I wondered why, since obviously Colin Firth does a good impersonation of George VI, why they didn’t just get someone to do this in 1939, considering the potential for Empire-wide emotional disaster if the King gets on the wireless and flubs up in 58 countries. A pinch-speaker would have saved Bertie a world of trouble. It was all radio then, you know. No one would have known. Which makes his struggle all the more heroic.

There are a lot of “f”s and “sh”s in this movie, because Mr. Logue is attempting to un-repress the king, and swearing a lot is quite freeing, apparently. In one scene toward the end of the movie (the most memorable scene perhaps in the whole film), just before the Speech, a great many of these short Anglo-Saxon words are used to great effect. Also singing and dancing. I believe that even non-swearers of the most repressed natures will enjoy this scene. I did, if that’s any indication, but you might want to warn your teenagers that what may be proper for a King attempting to inspire his Nation is not at all proper for a young man or woman who lives in your house.

A wonderful, heartwarming movie.