Archive for category: Reviews

What acting! Colin Firth was superb in last year’s A Single Man, but his portrayal of the stammering King George VI is a tour de force. Geoffrey Rush is no slouch, either, as his commoner tutor. Beyond the acting, though, the film struck me as somewhat trivial. Why? Because I’ve never heard of George VI? Because I couldn’t understand Lionel’s methods, or what effect, if any they had? Because I’d seen all the punch lines in the previews? Because, despite it all, reading a speech in a private room didn’t seem like much of an accomplishment?

Great style, but not much substance, this makes one wonder if the Western genre is “all played out.” The one novelty was the flowery and erudite diction, spoken principally by the precocious 14-year-old. Beyond that, every move was one we’d seen before, and Jeff Bridges gave us a little too much Jeff Bridges, coming so soon after his similar role in Crazy Heart. The final rescue scene was both unbelievable and unemotional, a major anticlimax. I think the Coens could learn a reverse lesson from Zatoichi, a latter-day Japanese samurai film

How do you make a movie interesting when it is about one man stuck in a pit for, apparently, 127 hours, especially when we know when and how he gets out? I am still wondering, after watching this film by Danny Boyle, director of Slumdog Millionaire. I admit to not watching it all, as the thought of Aron Ralston’s severing his forearm was too gruesome to contemplate, which also probably factored into my not enjoying all the runup to this moment. But ultimately, it was the absence of any bigger point that left me limp and led to a rating well below the similarly situated Buried. James Franco will get more kudos than Ryan Reynolds, but I was bothered by the way he walked like a duck and didn’t seem to physically deteriorate during his ordeal.

A very skillful adaptation of the book, with only Dr. Teleborian disappointing my mental image. One wonders how someone who had not read the book would appreciate, or follow, the complex story, but then again there probably aren’t many people who fall in that category. For those of us who had read it, it was fun to see how various scenes would be portrayed. It was also instructive to see whole subplots that were omitted – notably Erika’s entire newspaper career and Blomkvist’s affair with Monika – without compromise. For similar reasons, it will be interesting to see the Hollywood versions, although I can’t imagine any other reason to see them. We skipped the second instalment, but I’m sure the critics were right when they said this was the best of the lot. In a way, it is sad to think that Blomkvist and Salander are now leaving our lives.

A casually clever countryside caper, the kind the British do so well, mostly about love – or is it sex? There are no car crashes – albeit a stampede of cows – and no patent absurdities – albeit a number of stretches. There are, however, a number of fun characters, all gracefully identified in cameo credits, and various morals to choose from. It’s not Gosford Park or even Cold Comfort Farm, but it passed the time pleasantly, and without the pretensions of, say, City of Final Destination.